I’d fallen asleep listening to my brother snore. But it was the dead silence that woke me. That and the fact that I felt extremely thirsty. I sat up and rubbed my face with my hands. Then I eyed the empty cot next to me. Where was Joe? He never got up before me. I got to my feet and looked around.

Not only was my brother not there, neither were his things. Where’d he go? And why didn’t he wake me? I got dressed, used some of my water to brush my teeth and combed my hair. I hurried outside to look around.

The guy at the tent next door nodded to me as he mended a rip in a shirt with a cactus spine needle. Across the way, a girl was using a palm frond to sweep around her tent.

“Hey, you’re awake. How’s it going?”

I turned to see Dave a few tents down. He was using a hand-cranked clothes wringer to squeeze the water out of a pair of pants. The excess water fell into a bucket under the wringer.

I hurried over to him. “Hey.”

He gave me a quick look. “Guess I don’t have to ask how you slept.” Dave said as he dropped the pants in a basket made of woven branches. He pulled a T-shirt out of the tub next to him and started cranking it through his wringer.

“I think I nodded off before I even laid down last night.”

“You missed breakfast, but there’s probably some rutabaga muffins left.” He pointed to the biggest tent. “That’s the dining hall. Just go grab some if you want.”

My stomach rolled at the thought of eating a rutabaga anything. I think I still had some food in my pack. I’d eat that. “I think I’ll wait for lunch.” I cleared my throat. “Have you seen my brother?”

Dave looked around. “Figured he was still sleeping.”

“No, he’s not. He’s not in the tent and neither is his backpack.”

Dave shrugged. “Maybe he left. The desert’s pretty cool at night, easier to walk through it than during the day.”

I shook my head. “He wouldn’t leave.”

Dave kept cranking the wringer. It was starting to squeak every third turn and I was ready to run him through it – literally. “So...how long have you been here?”

Dave held up his cranking hand. “You can tell how long someone’s been at the compound by the hands. I’ve still got blisters. That means I’m a newbie. You should see the calluses on some of the guys around here. And the girls.”

He dropped the T-shirt on top of the rest of the damp clothes. “So...you gonna hang here for awhile?”

Until I find my brother. “A little while, at least,” I told him.

He nodded and I wondered if he might be a runaway. “So how’d you tell your parents you were moving here?”

“They told me,” Dave answered. “Father convinced my mom that this was a much better place to do her research.”

“I’m sure you weren’t too happy with it,” I said, waiting to see if he’d been unhappy about the move.

“At first, yeah,” Dave agreed. “But there are a lot of cool people at the compound. And I want there to be a planet to live on when I’m my parents’ age, you know. And that means making some changes.”

He took the bucket from under the wringer and dumped the water into the tub. “I’ll take that over to the gardens later. We recycle water as much as we can.”

I wondered how they got the water to begin with. I definitely hadn’t seen any water sources on our way into the compound. And I’d been looking. “So is your mom one of the people trying to develop alternate energy sources?”

“Yeah. You want to see?” Dave picked up the basket full of clothes.

“Definitely,” I said, hoping to see Joe while I was at it.

“Come on.”

Dave led me behind his tent. He dumped the basket at the feet of a short, skinny man hanging clothes on a line. “All done, Dad. I’m taking Frank to see Mom’s lab.”

Dave’s dad gave me a distant smile. “Welcome.”

Dave motioned to a larger tent beyond the clothes line. As we entered, he called out, “Hey, Mom, you’ve got a visitor.”

I stopped in the entryway and blinked. The inside of the tent looked like the chemistry lab at school, but with even more stuff. And none of it was made with twigs or cactus needles or palm fronds.

“Mom, this is Frank,” Dave said. He grinned at me. “Don’t be offended if she doesn’t remember your name. She’s the totally stereotypical absent-minded professor. She doesn’t remember my name half the time.”

“Not true,” said Dave’s mom. But I noticed her shoes didn’t match.

I stepped further into the tent. “What are you working on?” I asked. My fingers were itching to play with all the equipment laid out on the long tables in the tent.

“Mom just set up this system to generate water,” said Dave. He sounded really proud. “Until she showed up, everyone in the compound had to trek out to this underground spring about eight miles away and haul water back.”

“It’s nothing too innovative,” Dave’s mother said. “Everyone knows that water is made of hydrogen and oxygen and they are both incredibly common. All it takes is some energy to combine them – solar, wind, what have you – and you get H²O.”

I narrowed my eyes, studied the equipment. Something niggled at the back of my brain. Something Stench had said yesterday. “And you generate enough water for the whole compound that way?”

“Well, we recycle whatever we can,” said Dave’s mom.

“But the answer is yes,” added Dave, grinning.

“Janet!” A plump man with Einstein-wild hair burst into the tent. He wore a T-shirt with Einstein’s picture and the words Great Spirits Have Often Encountered Violent Opposition From Weak Minds on the front.

“Janet, you have to come look at the machine. I think I almost have it.” He looked at me. “Perpetual motion. The secret is magnets. Who would have thought it could be so simple?”

The quote popped in my head immediately. “ ‘Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.’ “

The man clapped my shoulder. “Yes! Exactly! I see there is a fellow devotee in our midst.” With his other hand, he shook mine. “Samuel Fisk, at your service.”

Before I could introduce myself, he spun around to grab Janet’s hand. “Come on, Janet. You’ve got to see this,” he said as he towed her away.

I started to get a closer look at things when Dave stepped in front of me. “Mom doesn’t like people in here when she’s out. But you can come back later. She’ll give you the full tour.”

I nodded and left the tent. I was determined to find Joe. Instead I found Petal. She held a bow and arrow comfortably in one hand. Something told me she was very good at hunting – but hunting what?

She smiled at me. “Good morning.”

“Morning.” I gestured to the bow and arrow. “What’s that for?”

Her smile widened. “Target practice.” She tilted her head toward a bale of hay in the distance. “See that?”

Before I could answer, she notched the arrow, pulled the string smoothly and let the arrow fly. It hit the bale dead center. Petal immediately notched another arrow. I heard the string twang. Then I saw the second arrow neatly slice the first in half.

A loud gong distracted me. Petal smiled at me and set the bow and her quiver down. “Time to go into town with Father.”

So Stench was leaving the compound. Then I had the perfect time to look for Joe. Petal grabbed my hand. “He wants you to come.” She gave it a small tug. “Come on. He hates to be kept waiting.”

I frowned but let her lead me to the Seuss-mobile as Joe called it. We got in and I noticed Dave was there along with several other guys. Stench had the wheel and Mondo had shotgun. I squeezed my way past a bunch of paint cans and took a seat. Petal joined me a moment later.

“So what are we doing?” I asked.

“Just a little mission,” said Stench, smiling broadly. “Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. I promise.”

A mission. I didn’t like the way that sounded. You didn’t call running errands a mission. What exactly did Stench have planned?

The ride was bumpy until we reached a paved road. A few minutes more, and I thought I saw a familiar sign for a motel. We were in Landers. “We’re almost there,” called out Dave and he bent over to pry off the lid to one of the paint cans.

I watched him for a moment, noting that all the paint was red – a deep, almost blood red. I was getting a very bad feeling about this. Petal grabbed a can and stepped out of the van.

Across the street a man shouted, “Go back where you came from, hippie freaks!”

I crouched in the van, watching as Dave and the other guys grabbed paint cans. Dave nodded to me. “I opened one for you too,” he said, with a wild grin.

Reluctantly, I grabbed the open paint can, the heady fumes making me want to sneeze. I got out of the van but hung back, hoping not to have to participate in whatever this was.

Stench eyed me for a moment. “Just follow the others, Frank.” He turned to face the sidewalk as I heard people approaching. Suddenly he shouted, “Now!”

Stench rushed the sidewalk and dumped the contents of the paint can on the shoulder of a woman carrying a leather purse. “Let the animals live,” he shouted. “Industrialization is evil!”

I froze for a split second watching them throw red paint on people. One guy shouted, “This is their blood!”

I moved to drop the can of paint but someone barged right up to me. The two teenage guys looked like locals and they looked ready to fight. The shorter one lunged for me and knocked the paint can from my hand.

Stench must have seen it because he yelled for a retreat. We ran and dived into the van and it pulled away, with a crowd following after it. I saw Mondo was driving this time and Stench looked positively delighted.

“That was beyond belief!” shouted Dave.

I tried to get as far away from Petal and the others by inching up against the side of the van. This was getting deadly serious. And I still didn’t know where Joe was. I had to find him.

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Disclaimer

The Hardy Boys belong to Simon and Schuster and the Stratemeyer Foundation. The authors have just borrowed them for an adventure or two. The authors promise to put the boys back when they are done with them. The authors do claim copyright to the original characters in this story. Please do not borrow original characters without express permission of the authors.