Читать книгу Dinosaur Patrol: The First Journey - G. A. Tupper - Страница 6

All sense of time vanished as I stared at the prehistoric beasts. The great Tyrannosaurus rex looked so realistic. Its head was raised to the sky with its jaws open. You could almost hear its prehistoric roar! I turned around and realized that there were other human beings in the room also. "What happened to Fred?" I asked Amy.

"Oh—he had to run home to get something," she replied. "Something very important!"

"He better get back soon," I muttered. "It's getting dark, and I'm getting hungry! It looks like our Saturday afternoon adventure is almost over."

"Give me a couple of minutes, and I'll walk you home, Amy," I said, gathering up the tools. "I want to see what Fred is up to." As I pushed Amy's bike into their driveway, I observed a light shining from Fred's window. It looks like he's hard at work. "Can you see what Fred's doing?" I asked Amy. I waited outside the front door, kicking some fallen leaves with my sneakers.

"Bill! Come on up," Fred yelled from his open bedroom window. I ran up the steps and rounded the corner to his room. An eerie, green-yellow, glowing light poured into the hallway. The computer was on.

"Hey, Bill! We have a real mystery on our hands," Fred exclaimed, waving me into the room. "It's about the painting!"

Fred was busy hunched over his computer table. He had a really fantastic room. Above the desk were shelves lined with dinosaur models. There was just about every type of prehistoric monster you could imagine.

"What's up?" I asked. "You really took off in a hurry!"

"Look at this, Bill," Fred said. He started typing on the keyboard and pulled up some information titled "Dinosaurs" in big, orange letters. "I knew something was funny about that painting, but I had to be sure!" he said. "I've been checking out when the theory of the Tyrannosaurus changed."

I pulled up a chair and examined the screen more closely. "What changed?" I asked. "The dinosaurs look the same as I've always remembered." Fred looked confident and turned towards me. He was going to tell me the complete story.

"You know, for years it was accepted that the Tyrannosaurus walked upright and dragged its tail on the ground," he explained.

"So what?" I shrugged.

"Well," Fred replied. "We've got a problem. The painting simply doesn't fit into the time period in which it was painted."

"I'm sorry, Fred," I yawned, leaning back in the chair. "I still don't follow what you’re getting at. —So what's the problem?"

"The problem is that the dinosaur painting was signed and dated by the artist in 1953. Every artist around that time would have showed the tail-dragging Tyrannosaurus," Fred replied. "Our painting doesn't. It shows the modern version of the way the Tyrannosaurus looks. This means that either the painting is a modern fake, or Arthur's theories about dinosaurs were ahead of their time!"

"Couldn't he have just made a lucky guess?" I asked.

"I'm not sure," Fred mumbled as he resumed typing on the keyboard.

Suddenly, the echo of the downstairs phone broke the silence. "It's your dad, Bill," Amy called out. "Dinner time—you better get home!"

"The mystery will have to wait," Fred said.

"See you tomorrow," I said, walking out of Fred's room and down the steps towards the front door.

"I'll try and find some more good stuff about the painting," Fred shouted from his room. My fast walk turned into a run. Dinner must be almost ready!

That evening, my mind ran through all the events of the day. The flea market, the painting, and the mystery. They all spun in my brain as I fell asleep. It certainly wasn't a restful sleep. In one dream, I was being chased down the flea market aisles by a Tyrannosaurus rex. The real shocker was when the dinosaur started sneezing at me, like my sister April. Fortunately, I was saved by the buzzing alarm clock.