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"Here we go!" Tom said from the side of the water track, both hands wrapped around a large lever that looked far too important to ignore.
"Wait!" Stefanie said urgently. "Aren't you coming with us?"
"Don't worry," Tom said. "I'll be right along."
"One last thing," he continued. "We need to make sure you have the glass top on."
"Why is that?" Elise asked, her voice doing its best to remain calm.
"I thought this was a splash ride," Ervin also objected, holding the cubical Sherlock in his lap. "Isn't getting wet part of the point?"
"You'll see," Tom said, which was not particularly helpful. "Buckle up everyone!"
He did not have to say it twice. There was enough apprension for everyone except Vanessa to feverishly reach for the shoulder straps and seat belt in each log.
"Let's go!" Tom said and pressed a red button beside the lever. Immediately, a glass covering emerged straight up from the back of each log and came snapping down into place like a decision already made. A look of concern spread across the riders’ faces -- except Vanessa’s. She wore a grin not unlike the Cheshire Cat’s, the sort that seemed to arrive before the joke.
And with that, the logs lurched forward. One by one, they slipped into the tunnel. Shouts and screams echoed back, cheerful or terrified -- it was difficult to tell which. Each went happily gliding down the water track toward the cave-like opening at the end of the hall, which appeared to be waiting for them.
"This is going to be fun!" Shayna said.
Finally, when they had all disappeared, Tom himself stepped into the last log, pressed a button to cover the top and pulled a smaller version of the lever inside the log car.
And he was off, following the others as if this had always been the plan.
Stefanie was not entirely surprised at the sudden drop that happened as her log plunged into the darkness of the tunnel. What was much more a surprise was to find her and the other logs in space as she emerged from what seemed to be a light cloud of stardust.
Below her, Earth hovered at a distance that felt impolite. Then also was the moon, a bit straight ahead. She glanced at the other log-ships to see a rather horrified look on everyone's face.
That is, except for Vanessa, who was quite enjoying herself. She had not buckled herself in, apparently deciding that gravity was more of a suggestion than a rule.
The cubical Sherlock was also floating in Ervin's log. He had apparently forgotten completely about him in the strangeness of the situation.
Soon Tom's log-ship emerged from the cloud behind them.
"OK, class."
"We're not a class," Stefanie objected, but Tom paid her no mind.
"Unbuckle yourselves. You're only a meter high, so you should have at least a smidge of room to float, like Vanessa."
Slowly they did as he said, one by one.
"Now, press the green button on the dashboard," Tom continued.
"What does it do?" Elise asked.
"Nothing much, really," Tom said. "It will just help you to get a better feel for the space."
Before she could further express her concerns, Vanessa pushed her palm quickly on the button, disconnecting her glass container from the log into something like a bubble. It also doubled in size, giving her more space to float freely about the bubble.
"Wow!" she said.
Seeing that Vanessa had come to no apparent harm, Ervin, Shayna, Stefanie, and finally Elise also pressed the button. Sherlock now floated in the bubble as free as a cube could be, as did all the others.
"Can we get out of the bubble?" Vanessa asked excitedly.
"NO," Stefanie practically shouted. "Haven't you seen that movie where the guy is out in space without a suit and he almost freezes to death?"
"What movie?" Shayna asked.
"I don't remember, but it was horrifying," Stefanie responded.
"See, there's no such thing," Vanessa said, looking all over the bubble for something like a door.
"She's actually quite right," Tom said. "You would quickly freeze to death. Well, except for Sherlock, because I think he's sealed."
"Arh, arh, arh, arh," Elisa said, making a seal noise and giggling to herself. Tom made an annoyed glance in her direction.
"Space is pretty much at absolute zero, as far as temperature is concerned," Tom said.
"I've been outside in Indiana when it's zero," Ervin said. "I can take it!"
"It's not that kind of zero," Stefanie said knowingly. "He said absolute zero."
"What's that?" Sherlock said, bouncing quite happily around the bubble.
"It's minus 273.14 degrees Celsius," Tom said.
"None of this Celsius stuff," came a voice from the direction of the cloud of stardust in the distances. "We only use Fahrenheit around here!"
"Is that you, Lane?" Elise called to the cloud.
"Yes, Ervin, when you were thinking of zero degrees, you were thinking Fahrenheit. That's the temperature scale we use most of the time in America."
"As it should be!" came Lane's voice again from off in the distance.
"Do any of you know any other common temperatures in Fahrenheit?" Tom asked.
"I know that my temperature is 98.6 degrees when I don't have a fever," Elise said.
"And we sometimes get off school if there's ice rain, which happens around 32ᣞ," Ervin said.
"That's neat," Vanessa said. "You managed to speak the degree symbol!"
"Yes," Tom said, "a small circle elevated a little is the symbol for a degree. Water freezes at 32ᣞ Fahrenheit."
"The freezing rain was so much fun!" Ervin said, ignoring them. "We slid right into someone's mailbox one time last year. The road was like a sheet of ice."
"But the Celsius or Centigrade scale is much more convenient for doing science than the Fahrenheit scale," Tom continued.
"Is NOT," came Lane's voice echoing again. "It's unamerican and we won't stand for it!"
"Just ignore him," Tom said. "The Celsius scale is zero at the point where water freezes..."
"You mean where it turns to ice, right?" Shayna asked.
"Yes, and the Celsius scale is 100 degrees where water boils."
"You mean turns to steam, right?" Elise chipped in.
"Yes. These are the three phases of matter -- solid, liquid, and gas."
"Or ice, liquid water, and steam, right?" Sherlock said.
"Correct, Mr. Cube," Tom answered.
"But what's absolute zero again?" Ervin asked.
"Absolute zero is negative 273.13 degrees," Tom replied.
"That sounds really cold," Ervin said reflectively, looking down into the stars.
"Yes, it's yet another scale, the Kelvin scale. It was named after a scientist named Lord Kelvin."
"I've never heard of it, but I DON'T like it," came Lane's voice. "I only have one Lord."
"He wasn't that kind of Lord," Tom clarified. "The Kelvin scale starts at the absolute coldest temperature things are allowed to be and starts counting up from there. The size of a degree, though, is the size of a Celsius degree."
"Who says we're not allowed to go colder?" Vanessa said. "I'm going colder. I refuse to be told not to go colder."
"It's just not possible," Tom said.
"Wait," Stefanie jumped in. "At what Fahrenheit temperature does water boil? You said water boils at 100ᣞ on the Celsius scale. But what's that in Fahrenheit?"
"GREAT question," came Lane's voice. "Make America Fahrenheit again!"
"212 degrees is the Fahrenheit version of where water boils," Tom answered.
"That's pretty big," Elise said. "So if Celsius goes from 0 to 100 from freezing to boiliing, Fahrenheit goes from 32 to 212, right?"
"Excellent," Tom said. "You're getting it. And you can see why it's easier to use Celsius than Fahrenheit in science -- the numbers are less random."
"Are not!" Lane yelled from the distance.
"I guess a Fahrenheit degree must be smaller than a Celsius degree," Stefanie said, "because it takes a lot more of them to get to the boiling point of water."
"Truly a sharp observation!" Tom answered.
"So are you going to tell them the secret formulas?" Vanessa asked.
"What secret formulas," Shayna asked, now more interested in the subject. "Can we put the secret formula on chicken and start a restaurant?"
"It's not secret," Tom said. "And it's not that kind of formula."
"Don't you all want to know how to convert back and forth between Fahrenheit and Celsius and back?" Vanessa continued.
"NO, we DON'T," came Lane's voice emphatically from the void. "We are perfectly content not knowing things!"
"Ooh, I want to know," Elise said.
"You can just look it up," Stefanie said. "Or better yet, Google or ChatGPT it."
"I'd just ask Alexa," Sherlock said.
"Yes, you can look it up. But if you must know," Tom started.
"We don't want to know," Lane's voice came.
"We don't need to know," Stefanie's said.
"If you must know," Tom continued like a train that can't stop, "it's quite intuitive. You know that there's 32 degrees between where water freezes on the Fahrenheit scale (32) and where it freezes on the Celsius scale (0). And you know that there are 100 degrees between freezing and boiling on the Celsius scale..."
"Wait," Elise blurted out, "I can figure the difference out on the Fahrenheit scale. 212 - 32 is..." There was a long pause when no one was really listening. "... 180 degrees! There's 180 degrees between boiling and freezing on the Fahrenheit scale."
"Yes," Tom said, "so if you compare the two scales, it takes 180 Fahrenheit degrees to get from freezing to boiling."
"And 100 degrees on the Celsius scale to do the same," Ervin chimed in, not quite sure where the conversation was going but glad to contribute information that had already been shared.
"Divide the two and you get that a Fahrenheit degree is 9/5 of a Celsius degree," Tom said.
"Or a Celsius degree is 5/9 of a Fahrenheit degree," Elise said, quite proud of herself.
"Voila," Vanessa said. "F equals 9/5C + 32."
"Or (F - 32) times 5/9 = C," Sherlock said.
"Did you get that?" Shayna asked Stefanie.
"Kind of, but I'm just going to ask Google," she answered.
"I think that went very well," Tom said, congratulating himself. "OK, everyone, time for the black hole."
"What?" Elise said.
"No worries," it will just shrink us to a point with infinite mass and we'll go to the Briefing Party."
"That sounds rather small," Sherlock said.
"I've already shrunk dramatically once," Stefanie said. "It's not too bad."
"And I'm up for a party!" Shayna said.
With that, Tom pushed another button in his log-ship, and a swirling hole of darkness opened up.
"No need to do anything," he said. "We're already within its event horizon. It's gravity is inescapable."
Their bodies began to stretch uncontrollably in the direction of the hole as if being sucked into a drain. Ervin looked like he was trying to run in his bubble in the opposite direction. But it was no use.
The quantum extraction was inevitable.
_________________________1. A Mole in the Lab
2. The Nuclear Cafe
3. Mr. Tom's Mild Ride
4. March of the Centipedes
5. A Thick Little Boy
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