A Whole Nother Story Read Free Page B

is arguably the greatest innovation of all time, though the name of its inventor remains a mystery because in those days there were no patents. There were no patents because there were no lawyers. That is, until after the wheel was invented and ran over some people. Then there were lawyers everywhere.
    And so my advice to any and all would-be inventors is to make sure you patent and protect your ideas if you wish to receive the proper credit. And, as in the case of Mr. Ethan Cheeseman, I would advise you to be extremely careful that you do not invent something so fantastically wonderful and useful that you become the target of corporate villains, international superspies, and government agencies so secret that their names are not known.

CHAPTER 2
    M r. Cheeseman and his three smart, witty, attractive, polite, and relatively odor-free children were packed up and ready to move away, once again, to their new home, which they all hoped would have a sound roof and a pleasantsmelling driveway.
    “Okay, this is it,” said Mr. Cheeseman. He flipped off the light in the boys’ room, and when he did he saw something through the window that caused his eyes to narrow.
    “What is it, Dad?” asked Barton. “What’s wrong?”
    “They’re here,” said Mr. Cheeseman, his gaze fixed on a gray sedan parked out front, beneath the dull glow of a streetlight. “They’re already here.”
    “Grrrrr,” said Pinky.
    “What do we do now?” asked Saffron. In the two years they’d been on the run, this was the first time they hadn’t gotten away before the coats arrived.
    “I can’t promise it’ll work,” said Mr. Cheeseman, nervously biting his lower lip. “But I’ve got an idea.”
    Mr. Cheeseman led the children through the darkened house and into the garage, where the rusted white station wagon was loaded to the ceiling with all it could hold in the way of toys, clothing, dirt clods shaped like celebrities, and the LVR, disassembled into several large pieces and covered with a blue tarp.
    As always, the car had been backed into the garage, its nose facing the door to help hasten a last-minute escape.
    “Even if we do get past them,” said Barton, “won’t they just follow us?”
    “I think they’ll try,” said Mr. Cheeseman. “But if all goes according to plan, they won’t get very far.”
    “Why not?” asked Barton.
    “A little invention I like to call the Inertia Ray,” said Mr. Cheeseman as he helped a very sleepy Crandall into the backseat.
    “What’s an Inertia Ray?” wondered Saffron.
    “I came up with the idea while working on the LVR, which operates on the principle that the speed of light can be manipulated to alter the speed of objects in its path,” Mr. Cheeseman explained. “Scientifically speaking, people who are struck by a beam of light traveling at several times the speed of light will be temporarily rendered motionless.”
    “But how can light travel faster than the speed of light?” asked Barton. “That’s impossible.”
    “Not necessarily,” said Saffron, not about to miss an opportunity to show off her oversized brain. “Light could be made to travel faster than the speed of light the same way a tortoise could be made to travel faster than the speed of a tortoise. By boarding a fast-moving train or an airplane.”
    “Exactly,” said Mr. Cheeseman. “The Inertia Ray is to light as that jet airplane is to the tortoise.”
    “I understand that,” said Saffron. “But how will it help us now?”
    “Well, that’s obvious,” said Barton. “Tell her, Dad.”
    “It’s simple, really,” said Mr. Cheeseman. “Last night, I hooked up the Inertia Ray to the high beams of the station wagon. Let’s hope I did it correctly because right now it’s our only hope of getting out of here.”
    With that, Mr. Cheeseman fired up the engine. He took a deep breath and narrowed his eyes, then clicked the automatic garage door opener. Slowly, the door peeled away to reveal the gray car parked