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head, Frank stood up. He let go of Joe’s hands and held him by the backs of the legs instead, which steadied Joe.
    â€œYou okay up there?” Frank asked.
    â€œYup!” said Joe.
    Slowly, Frank made his way over to the edge of the platform.
    â€œI can almost reach it!” said Joe, straining up to catch the edges of the vent beyond the grate.
    Frank took another step forward. Now his toes were right up against the edge of the platform.
    â€œAlmost—just a little farther.”
    Frank took a tiny half step. Now his toes were sticking out over the edge, but Joe’s weight helped keep him from tipping forward.
    â€œI can’t go any farther!” said Frank.
    â€œGot it!” Joe pulled himself up. There were a few seconds of banging, and then Joe’s arms reached out from inside the vent.
    â€œGrab my hands,” he said.
    Frank leaned as far forward as he could, then reached up and grabbed Joe’s wrists.
    â€œReady?” said Frank.
    â€œOn the count of three,” said Joe.
    â€œOne … two … three!”
    On “three,” Frank jumped up. Joe pulled as hard as he could. For a second, Frank seemed to hang in the air. Then
zoom!
—up he went into the vent, like a piece of lint being sucked into a vacuum cleaner.
    Inside, the vent was dark. There were little patches of light where the grates were, but aside from that, it was a long, dark, narrow tunnel, just wide enough for Frank and Joe to crawl in. Joe began creeping forward, careful not to put any weight on the vents, since they could fall open and send the boys tumbling onto the ground below.
    Frank followed Joe, then paused.
    â€œHey, Joe?”
    â€œYeah, Frank?”
    â€œHow are we going to get back down?”
    There was a long pause.
    â€œI hadn’t thought about that,” said Joe.
    After a minute the boys continued crawling. All they could hope for was that the vent would let them out somewhere safe … eventually.
    In the dark the tunnel got narrower and then wider again. It turned to the left and the right and the left again. It seemed to twist back on itself sometimes. Frank and Joe lost all sense of direction. Once, they came to a ladder and had to climb ten more feet. Eventually, it seemed to get brighter.
    â€œI think there’s a way out up ahead!” said Joe. He began to crawl faster. Finally, the boys could make out a square opening at the end of the tunnel. There should have been a grate, like at all the other openings, but this one was missing.
    Joe stuck his head out of the hole.
    â€œIt’s a classroom,” he said.
    After a few seconds he managed to pullhimself entirely out of the vent. Frank was right behind him—too close behind him. Frank’s arm got tangled up with Joe’s leg, and instead of carefully climbing out, the two boys fell out with a loud crash!
    BRAACKSSH!
    They knocked over a desk, and the sound of the metal against the tiled floor was deafening in the quiet room.

    Suddenly there was the sound of footsteps approaching. The boys looked up and saw a man in a white lab coat running toward them.
    â€œWhat are you boys doing?” the man demanded. “Are you with that girl? What did she do with my frogs?”

9
Science to the Rescue!
    Mr. Willis!” said Frank. The man in the lab coat was the fifth-grade science teacher, Mr. Willis. Neither Joe nor Frank had had him as a teacher yet, but Frank knew him from doing extra-credit projects for the science fair.
    â€œWell, my word. Frank Hardy! What are you doing in my classroom?”
    â€œWe didn’t mean to end up here, sir.” Even though he was one of the younger teachers, Mr. Willis was one of those old-school types who liked to be called “sir” and thought politeness was superimportant.
    â€œYeah,” Joe said, “we were lost in the vents.”
    Mr. Willis turned to Joe. “And you are … ?” he asked.
    â€œJoe. Joe Hardy.