Wayne nodded. He held a screwdriver in one hand and the canine earmuffs in the other. “But Professor,” said Wayne, “what are the screwdrivers for?”
“Perhaps your brother Rodney knows?”
Rodney thought for a moment while scratching his forehead with the business end of his screwdriver. Then his face brightened. “Well, I remember that the other machine — the one you built this one from…”
“The Lemon Pigment Evanescizer. Yes, go on…”
“Well, I remember that once it started really going, it began to rattle, and before we finished, it was rattling quite a lot, and some of the screws that were holding it together almost shook themselves out of their grooves. I suppose, Professor, that this one rattles even more than that one did.”
“Your supposition is correct.”
“So we’ll have to work even harder to keep these screws from coming out.”
“And to keep the Evanescizer from totally dismantling itself! Rodney, my boy, that was a crackerjack observation — quite astute, right on the money!”
Wayne’s heart sank. He had been excited and eager to do his part to save the town of Pitcherville from its latest disaster, but now the happy feeling was gone. He bowed his head and looked down at the floor so that Rodney and the Professor couldn’t see in his face how badly he felt.
Wayne could not help it that he felt things stronger than his brother. That was just the way he was. And it wasn’t that he minded hearing that Rodney had just made a crackerjack observation that was astute and right on the money. He only wished that every now and then the Professor might say the same thing about him.
Wayne wondered sometimes if the Professor and his Aunt Mildred and all his friends and perhaps even his father thought he wasn’t as smart as his twin brother Rodney. Once he had even found the courage to ask his Aunt about it — to find out if it were true. “Rodney smarter than you? Oh, for Heaven’s sake, what a question!” she had replied. As she tousled his hair with affection, she had added, “You’re both equally bright young men. It’s just that Rodney reads more than you do and pours a lot more information into his head.”
After talking to his aunt, Wayne had felt a little better. He also vowed to read more books and start pouring more information into his own head. He started with Treasure Island but he could not get very far with it. Then he picked up Huckleberry Finn but could not get very far with this book either. He kept reading the lines over and over again, because his mind kept wandering, and he could not stop thinking that there were three whole Mighty Mike comic books, which his friend Grover had lent him, that were still untouched on his nightstand — just lying there waiting for him— calling to him: “Hey, Wayne! Come read me! It’s your pal, Mighty Mike! Who needs pirates and Tom Sawyer and all those…words!”
The Professor must have sensed that Wayne had lost some of his cheer, for he chucked him under the chin with his knuckles in a fatherly way and said, “If we succeed in our latest mission, I will treat the both of you to a hamburger at the Hungry Chef Diner.” The thought of eating his favorite hamburger piled high with pickles and tomato and onion was just the thing to return Wayne to his former good mood, though his chin now smelled a little of sardines.
“Now let us take our stations, gentlemen, and put this baby into gear!” The Professor put Wayne at one end of the machine, which looked very much like a washing machine with knobs and dials in odd places, and he put Rodney at the opposite end. And he put himself at the controls. “Now boys, our implementation must be careful and gradual so that the pigment atoms detach themselves slowly and individually and do not affix themselves even harder through molecular trauma. Remember that when the frequency is potted all the way up, boys, the machine will begin to vibrate and then to shake quite fiercely and you must be quick about screwing everything back in before it all falls apart. Now we cannot have that, can we?”
Rodney and Wayne shook their heads as one. Rodney took a deep breath. Wayne steadied himself before the machine.
With a flip of the switch the Peach Pigment Evanescizer began to hum.
“It’s building up steam,” said the Professor. “Not real steam. That is just an expression.”
The hum grew louder and then became a groan. The groan grew louder and then became a whine. The whine then became raised in pitch as if someone were playing a flute and taking the notes higher and higher. When the whine had reached a shrill screech it was hard for the twins not to drop their screwdrivers and Wayne to drop his canine earmuffs and throw their hands over their ears. (Wayne had considered putting on the earmuffs himself, but they were much too small to be wholly useful.) At that very same time the Evanescizer began to vibrate, just as the Professor had said it would, and now it looked like a washing machine in a different way, for it had begun to bounce and agitate as if someone had filled it with a load of heavy shoes. Gizmo decided quickly that she had had enough of the racket and went scampering out.
Within moments, the whole laboratory was shivering and shaking, and a long row of glass test tubes on one of the Professor’s worktables began to tremble and clink and then one by one each of the test tubes began to pop! in just the way that crystal glasses shatter when an opera singer reaches a high note.
Wayne and Rodney watched as the Professor turned the frequency dial even farther in its clockwise direction, taking care not to pot it up too quickly. The sound rose even higher in pitch, and now other glass objects began to shatter all about the room, including the glass panes in all the windows! Rodney wondered if this would be the means by which the peach pigment problem would be solved — by destroying everything to which the color was attached!
A moment later the boys heard the sound of someone pounding his fist upon the Professor’s back door. When no one went to open it, the door flew open on its own, revealing Officer Wall of the Pitcherville Police Department’s Loud Noises Unit. Officer Wall stood with his hands over his ears shouting, “We cannot have this, Professor Johnson! No, no, no, sir! This cannot be! I will have to cite you! I will have to cite you!”
But the Professor paid Officer Wall no heed at all. He turned the dial even farther to the right, and then suddenly the high shrill screech gave way to silence. Or, rather, the machine moved to a frequency that could no longer be heard by human ears.
“Now, that’s more like it!” said Officer Wall, enjoying the sudden quiet. He remained in the doorway, poking his fingers into his ears as if clearing his ear canals were a way to restore his temporarily-crippled hearing.
“Not done yet, Officer,” said Professor Johnson from the control deck of the Evanescizer. The Professor had hardly gotten the words out of his mouth when a howling began in the next room — just as he had predicted. Then the howling moved into the laboratory, and there was the little dog that was doing it: the Professor’s Scottish terrier Tesla. With one hand Wayne continued to screw in the wobbling screws that were working their way out on his side of the machine and with the other he tried to put the canine earmuffs around Tesla’s head as he had been instructed to do. But it was not an easy thing to do because Tesla would not remain still. He kept running back and forth and wailing and complaining, and it was almost heartbreaking to see him in such a state. After a little struggle, Wayne finally succeeded in getting the muffs around Tesla’s delicate ears, and it was no time at all before the little dog stopped complaining and sat down to study what the humans in the room were doing.