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儿童英语读物 The Dinosaur Mystery CHAPTER 3 Dark as Night

时间:2017-08-10 02:59来源:互联网 提供网友:qing   字体: [ ]
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    (单词翻译:双击或拖选)

“Is it okay to have another muffin?” Benny whispered to Jessie the next morning at breakfast.

“Here, take mine,” Jessie told him.

“How come you’re not hungry?” Henry asked his sister.

Jessie yawned. “I’m more tired than hungry. I had the worst time falling asleep last night. First I was too hot, then it was too light in the room, then I thought I heard an alarm.”

Just as Jessie said this, Mr. Diggs walked into the kitchen. “You must have heard a car alarm. They go off at all hours for no reason in a big city like this.”

Mrs. Diggs came back from the pantry with more food for the children. “Pete left a message on the phone machine that everything was quiet all night.”

At this, Jessie looked up. “Was he sure? I saw lights in the windows of the dinosaur1 room last night, right after I heard that alarm sound. Maybe it was Pete.”

Mr. Diggs came around with more orange juice for everyone. “Oh, I doubt it. Pete spends the night on the other side of the museum at the control desk. We have remote cameras so he can keep an eye on the whole museum from there.”

“But I saw a shadow in the dinosaur room, just like the ones we saw when Pete first showed us the Tyrannosaurus last night,” Jessie explained. “Somebody was in there!”

Mrs. Diggs shook her head and smiled. “Well, with an old building like this you get all kinds of reflections from the traffic, lights, and such.”

The children finished breakfast quickly. They couldn’t wait to get started.

“Guess what?” Benny asked his sisters and brother. “Mr. Diggs is going to give me a real sorting box for my rocks and real museum signs — little ones — so I can label my collection.”

“And I’m going to give Soo Lee a display box for her bird’s nest,” Mrs. Diggs told the children.

“And guess what else?” Soo Lee asked in an excited voice. “Benny and I are going to make a museum in the boxcar in Grandfather’s backyard when we get home! Mr. Diggs said Pete will give us real museum tickets to use when people come to our museum!”

Mr. Diggs laughed. “Well, first you have to come to our museum to get some ideas. Let’s go!”

That morning the museum was flooded with daylight. The five Aldens looked everywhere at once. In one hall, they passed a giant Viking boat with the longest oars2 the children had ever seen. A couple of rooms away, a giant whale hung from the ceiling, and fingers of light made it seem as if everything were underwater.

“First stop, the planetarium3,” Mr. Diggs told the excited children. “Eve Skyler, our director, needs a lot of help there.”

Mrs. Diggs met everyone at the planetarium entrance. “I forgot to mention that this is a big surprise for Eve,” she said in a low voice. “She’s been so upset with all the confusion around here. And who can blame her? All this dust and nails and banging, and with most of our staff busy with Dino World, she’s had to cancel a number of sky shows.”

Mr. Diggs unlocked the door, and everyone stepped inside.

“Oooo!” the Aldens gasped4 as they stepped into the darkened room.

The only light came from hundreds of stars sprinkled across the ceiling. They could hear a woman’s deep voice talking from somewhere in the room.

“And over in the West is Venus,” the voice was saying.

The children tried to see who was speaking, but it was much too dark.

“What on earth?” Mr. Diggs said.

“Or what in heaven?” Jessie said.

Benny asked, “How did it get to be nighttime? And how come we’re outside all of a sudden?”

“It does feel exactly as if we’re outside.” Violet whispered. “Listen, there are crickets!”

Violet was right. The sound of crickets filled the air just as if the children were in their own backyard looking at the stars.

“It’s magic,” Violet whispered. “Like someone turned the morning into night and opened the roof to show us the stars.”

“Look.” Henry pointed5 to the lower part of the curved ceiling. “The moon is rising in the East.”

“It’s just a movie of stars and the moon,” Henry explained. “And the person who was talking is just a recording6, and so were the crickets.”

Mr. Diggs, who had been searching for the light switch inside the planetarium, called out, “Now get ready, children. I’ll make it daytime again. One … two … three!”

With that, the light went on, and the sky, the stars, and the moon all disappeared. The Aldens found themselves standing7 in a room that looked like a round movie theater with rows of seats arranged in circles.

And in one of those seats was Pete Lawlor!

“Pete!” Mr. Diggs cried. “What are you doing here? I thought you were off your shift by now. And why was the sky show running?”

Pete seemed surprised to see everyone standing there. “Uh … yeah. Dr. Skyler left a message and … well I thought I heard something suspicious in here when I was coming off my shift, and so I … I thought I’d better check it out. Then I figured, what if someone got at all this expensive equipment in here, so I decided8 to try it out.”

“Well, goodness, Pete, that’s why we have a camera security system, so you don’t have to be everywhere at once,” Mrs. Diggs said, “And where’s Nosey?”

Pete shifted from one foot to the other. “I left him with the morning guard, the way I usually do when I sign off. I’d best be going.”

With that, Pete rushed by the Aldens without so much as a hello. When everyone went inside, they found Pete’s hat on one of the seats along with his flashlight.

Mr. Diggs sighed and shook his head. “That young man is going to leave the museum unlocked one of these days or damage something valuable, and then where will we be, Emma? I’m almost tempted9 to let him go, but we’ve never had a guard here who loved the museum so much. Imagine, running the sky show at this hour just to check the equipment!”

“What is this machine anyway?” Benny asked. “Why is it full of holes?”

“It’s a special kind of projector10, Benny. When the light goes through all those little holes, it makes stars on the ceiling,” Mrs. Diggs explained.

Benny, who liked any kind of machine, took a closer look. When he did, he heard a sharp voice.

“Don’t touch that, little boy! Leave it alone!”

Everyone whirled around to see who was shouting at Benny. Up in a windowed office overlooking the planetarium stood a woman with short, straight, brown hair. She was shaking her finger at everyone below.

“Eve, my goodness!” Mr. Diggs called up. “It’s Emma and me, and we’ve brought our guests. Please come down to meet them.”

A minute or two later, the woman joined everyone. “I’m sorry, Archie. You know the planetarium doesn’t open until ten, even to school groups,” she said. She looked at the Aldens as if they were trespassing11. “In any case, we can’t open today with all the confusion.”

“We realize that, Eve,” Mr. Diggs said. “Pete mentioned you’d left a message at the security desk. Not that Pete was any kind of help in here watching the sky show just now.”

The woman’s eyebrows12 shot up. “Watching the sky show? Today? Why of all things! That’s no help at all. I simply called the security desk to ask them for the hundredth time to fix the lock. The people keep wandering in here with their lunches and their coffee cups and their … and now this school group you brought in. It’s just too much.”

“Now, now, Eve,” Mrs. Diggs said, patting the woman’s shoulder. “That’s why we’re here. This isn’t a school group. It’s the Alden family, and they’ve come to help us out. Children, this is our planetarium director, Dr. Eve Skyler.”

Henry, who was standing closest to Dr. Skyler, smiled and put out his hand, but the woman didn’t seem to notice.

“I’m sure I don’t need children underfoot with everything I have to do,” Dr. Skyler said. “Just look around. There are buckets of paint the painters just left here. Don’t even ask me how they got into my planetarium in the first place! They leave their lunch bags and soda13 cans lying around. Everything is in a mess.”

Jessie spoke14 up. “But we’re not regular visitors, Dr. Skyler. We could clean up the planetarium in no time so that you could keep running your sky shows. That’s why we came.”

Again, the woman ignored Jessie and the other Aldens. Instead, she turned her attention to Mr. and Mrs. Diggs.

“Emma, if you and Archie think I can’t run the planetarium, then you should just tell me, and I’ll resign immediately.”

“There, there, Eve,” Mrs. Diggs said in a soothing15 voice. “We want you to do what you do best, which is to teach everyone about the stars and the sky. And you can’t do it with all this rubble16 and noise.”

Mr. Diggs signaled for the children. “We’ve brought five pairs of helping17 hands here to move the construction materials out of here and do a cleanup. They’ve worked in museums and old houses, so they know how to be careful around valuable things, I promise you. This will free up your time to get the sky shows up and running tomorrow.”

Dr. Skyler didn’t agree. “Tomorrow! That isn’t possible even if we had five adult workers here, let alone these children!”

Jessie spoke up. “Just try us and see how we do.”

With several pairs of eyes on her, Dr. Skyler nodded. “All right, but mind you, you’ll have to be careful around the projector. Don’t go stirring up any dust near there. The cleaning things are through that door. And put everything back in the same place it came from.”

“We know,” Henry led the other children toward the storage room.

“Boy, she sure doesn’t want us around,” Benny said.

“She will when we make this place spic-and-span,” Henry said. He handed out work gloves, trash bags, and dust cloths to everyone.

As the children got themselves organized for a big cleaning job, they couldn’t help thinking about Pete, too.

“It sure seemed strange that he was just sitting in the planetarium watching a movie so early in the morning, don’t you think, Jessie?” Henry asked.

“Maybe he’s absentminded,” Jessie answered. “He doesn’t seem too organized.”

“Not like us!” Benny said proudly as he whizzed around pushing a big broom in circles.

“Well, you children look like a regular cleaning team,” Mrs. Diggs said when the Aldens came back into the planetarium with all the cleaning gear. “I know you’ll do a wonderful job.”

Mr. Diggs had a stack of posters in his hand. “If you finish up here this morning, you can take these Dino World posters and put them up around the area this afternoon. It’s about our big opening next week.”

Before the children could even get a look at the posters, Dr. Skyler stepped between them and Mr. Diggs. “If they’re going to help me out, Archie, they won’t have time for putting up posters. I’m afraid those will have to wait.” With that, Dr. Skyler shooed Mr. and Mrs. Diggs out the door so the Aldens could get down to work.
 


点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 dinosaur xuSxp     
n.恐龙
参考例句:
  • Are you trying to tell me that David was attacked by a dinosaur?你是想要告诉我大卫被一支恐龙所攻击?
  • He stared at the faithful miniature of the dinosaur.他凝视著精确的恐龙缩小模型。
2 oars c589a112a1b341db7277ea65b5ec7bf7     
n.桨,橹( oar的名词复数 );划手v.划(行)( oar的第三人称单数 )
参考例句:
  • He pulled as hard as he could on the oars. 他拼命地划桨。
  • The sailors are bending to the oars. 水手们在拼命地划桨。 来自《简明英汉词典》
3 planetarium y20z0     
n.天文馆;天象仪
参考例句:
  • The planetarium staff also prepared talks for radio broadcast.天文馆的工作人员还要准备讲稿给电台广播。
  • It landed in a shallow basin fifty yards from the planetarium.它降落在离天文馆五十码处的一个浅盆地中。
4 gasped e6af294d8a7477229d6749fa9e8f5b80     
v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 );喘息;倒抽气;很想要
参考例句:
  • She gasped at the wonderful view. 如此美景使她惊讶得屏住了呼吸。
  • People gasped with admiration at the superb skill of the gymnasts. 体操运动员的高超技艺令人赞叹。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
5 pointed Il8zB4     
adj.尖的,直截了当的
参考例句:
  • He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
  • She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。
6 recording UktzJj     
n.录音,记录
参考例句:
  • How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间?
  • I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。
7 standing 2hCzgo     
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的
参考例句:
  • After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
  • They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。
8 decided lvqzZd     
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的
参考例句:
  • This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
  • There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。
9 tempted b0182e969d369add1b9ce2353d3c6ad6     
v.怂恿(某人)干不正当的事;冒…的险(tempt的过去分词)
参考例句:
  • I was sorely tempted to complain, but I didn't. 我极想发牢骚,但还是没开口。
  • I was tempted by the dessert menu. 甜食菜单馋得我垂涎欲滴。
10 projector 9RCxt     
n.投影机,放映机,幻灯机
参考例句:
  • There is a new projector in my office.我的办公室里有一架新的幻灯机。
  • How long will it take to set up the projector?把这个放映机安放好需要多长时间?
11 trespassing a72d55f5288c3d37c1e7833e78593f83     
[法]非法入侵
参考例句:
  • He told me I was trespassing on private land. 他说我在擅闯私人土地。
  • Don't come trespassing on my land again. 别再闯入我的地界了。
12 eyebrows a0e6fb1330e9cfecfd1c7a4d00030ed5     
眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 )
参考例句:
  • Eyebrows stop sweat from coming down into the eyes. 眉毛挡住汗水使其不能流进眼睛。
  • His eyebrows project noticeably. 他的眉毛特别突出。
13 soda cr3ye     
n.苏打水;汽水
参考例句:
  • She doesn't enjoy drinking chocolate soda.她不喜欢喝巧克力汽水。
  • I will freshen your drink with more soda and ice cubes.我给你的饮料重加一些苏打水和冰块。
14 spoke XryyC     
n.(车轮的)辐条;轮辐;破坏某人的计划;阻挠某人的行动 v.讲,谈(speak的过去式);说;演说;从某种观点来说
参考例句:
  • They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
  • The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。
15 soothing soothing     
adj.慰藉的;使人宽心的;镇静的
参考例句:
  • Put on some nice soothing music.播放一些柔和舒缓的音乐。
  • His casual, relaxed manner was very soothing.他随意而放松的举动让人很快便平静下来。
16 rubble 8XjxP     
n.(一堆)碎石,瓦砾
参考例句:
  • After the earthquake,it took months to clean up the rubble.地震后,花了数月才清理完瓦砾。
  • After the war many cities were full of rubble.战后许多城市到处可见颓垣残壁。
17 helping 2rGzDc     
n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的,辅助的
参考例句:
  • The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
  • By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。
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