New Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club (17 page)

        A group
of firemen rushed back into the stationhouse and came running out with a life
net. A weird, out-of-this-world pantomime took place for a few moments as the
two green figures ran uncertainly from one corner of the station house to the
other, and the crew of firemen stumbled back and forth with the life net,
trying to keep it beneath them.

       
Suddenly, the two green figures leaped from the parapet onto the roof again,
and disappeared from view. For a moment nothing happened. The crowd was silent,
as though they expected the pair to reappear. The firemen were frozen in
position, ready to move with the life net, or run the ladder up if the green
figures showed themselves again.

        But
Freddy and Dinky were long gone. They had dropped down through a skylight in
the fire station roof, and scrambled to the brass pole leading to the ground
floor.

        "Me
first!" Dinky said tersely, as he flung himself at the pole, wrapped his
arms around it, and slid like greased lightning to the stationhouse floor.
"Geronimo!" grunted Freddy, under his breath, as his stomach hit the
pole. He hit the floor with a thud, barely missed Dinky who was scrambling to
his feet; and when he flexed his knees to take up the shock, the seat of his
pants split wide open. If anyone had been in the fire station at the time, he
would have seen a skinny green figure disappearing through the door to the back
alley, followed by a fat one with a white bottom.

        So
fascinated had Homer and I been by the activities in front of the fire station,
that we had forgotten all about The Flying Sorcerer. Henry's voice on the radio
brought us back to reality.

       
"You forgot to cut off the jets, Homer," I screamed at him. "The
Sorcerer's almost out of sight!"

       
"Tell Henry to take over control," Homer answered. "He can
handle it better than I can."

        But when
I passed this on to Henry, he said, "I can't. Uh... we have company. I
guess... you'll have to continue the experiment like we planned."

       
"Like we planned what? Henry, we never planned nothin'. Do you mean you
want
us
to try and get the Sorcerer back to the zinc mine?"

       
"No... that won't be necessary. Just use your best judgment."

       
"Henry! Have you gone nuts? This is Charlie, remember?"

        "I
said we have company!" Henry repeated. "And they're very impressed
with our tropospheric scatter experiments."

        I
decided Henry had gone off his rocker, for sure. But what Homer and I didn't
know was that Henry and the others
did
have company. Just about the time
the Sorcerer was settling down over the fire station, Colonel March had shown
up at the zinc mine with the Project Blue Book investigators. Naturally, they
expressed a great deal of interest and curiosity over what the members of the
Mad Scientist's Club were doing with all that radio gear set up in Zeke
Boniface's truck, just at the time when the sky was full of crazy, whirling
lights.

       
"We're conducting some tropospheric scatter experiments," Henry had
explained, when the professor from Columbia inquired about the directional
transmitting antenna on the truck. "We set up whenever there are unusual
cloud formations in the area and test receptivity at various points around the
valley by bouncing signals off the clouds."

       
"Very interesting, indeed!" observed a neatly dressed, dark-faced
little man, whom Colonel March introduced as Professor Rhama Dhama Rau from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "How do you measure signal
strength?"

        "We
haven't gotten around to that," Henry answered evasively.

        It was
then he got on the radio to let us know what had happened. I couldn't figure
out for sure what Henry was trying to tell me, but I knew something was wrong.

       
"Listen, Henry, we've got real troubles," I told him. "Homer's
lost control of the Sorcerer, because he let all the carbon dioxide escape.
It's so far upstairs now that I can barely see the beacon light. It seems to be
heading northeast, and I think it's been caught in a jet stream. It's moving
pretty fast."

       
"Yes, I see it!" Henry answered. "I mean... yes, I see. Well...
uh... I think that's all we can do for tonight."

       
"Well, what do you want us to do, Henry?"

        There
was a confused pause. Then Henry said, rather indefinitely, "You might get
on your bikes and meet us at the White Fork Road bridge over Lemon Creek. I
think it would do us all good to take a long ride tonight."

        I
guessed what Henry meant. "When?" I asked.

       
"Right away!" Henry said.

        While
Henry had been talking to me on the radio, Mortimer had quietly disappeared
from the group clustered around Zeke's truck and had managed to purloin the
rotor from the distributor on Colonel March's car. When he returned to the
truck, Henry and Jeff were politely shaking hands with the two professors while
Zeke coaxed Richard the Deep Breather's balky engine back to life.

       
"We'll follow behind you to make sure you get home safely!" Colonel
March shouted above the engine's deep-throated roar.

       
"Oh, don't bother!" Jeff shouted back. "You've got more
important things to worry about. We'll get home all right."

        When
Zeke wheeled Richard the Deep Breather across the bridge at the bottom of the
ravine below the zinc mine, they could still hear Colonel March grinding the starter
on his sedan; and The Flying Sorcerer was the merest speck of light, sailing
high and away to the northeast. A strong wind had come up, and the rumble of
thunder could be heard off to the southwest.

       
"Head for Claiborne!" Henry shouted to Zeke while he tried to train
the antenna on the fleeing Sorcerer. "We've got about one chance in a
thousand of catching her, but we might as well try."

        There
was real pandemonium in the Town Square as Homer and I threaded our way through
the crowds, heading for the White Fork Road bridge. People seemed to be about
evenly divided in their reaction to what had happened. Some were trying to
organize search parties to go look for the little green men. Others were trying
to pretend that they hadn't seen anything at all. Sirens were wailing, as squad
cars from both the police station and the sheriff's office were trying to get
out of the square to respond to calls that were coming in from the countryside.
We heard somebody say that Henry Applegate had called in and reported two
glowing objects that swooped over his pasture and stampeded his cows. He wanted
the police to do something about it, because he knew all his milk was going to
be sour in the morning. On one of the police car radios we could hear another
patrol car reporting in that he was being chased up the Claiborne Turnpike by a
strange blue light that kept diving at his car, and then zooming up into the
sky again. The wind was really blowing now, and bending the trees along
Chestnut Street. It looked like a whingdinger of a storm was going to hit us,
and Homer and I bent over the handlebars of our bicycles and squinted our eyes
as we pedaled for dear life to get to the bridge.

        Dinky
and Freddy were through for the night. After they high-tailed it down the alley
behind the fire station, they ducked into a storm drain at the corner and just
plain disappeared. We have wonderful storm drains in Mammoth Falls. We get
pretty heavy rains in the early spring, and the center of town used to get flooded
almost every year. But the town council finally decided to stop messing around
with the problem, and they installed a drainage system with six-foot concrete
pipe that a man can stand up in. All Freddy and Dinky had to do was stay
underground for a few blocks, until they were out of the center of town. Then
they could take off their green suits and come up out of the storm drain any
place they wanted to. We didn't worry about them.

        Some
heavy drops of rain had already begun to fall by the time we got to the bridge.
When Zeke Boniface finally chugged around the bend in the road with Richard the
Deep Breather under a full head of steam, it was coming down in sheets -- like
somebody was dumping bucketfuls of the stuff from somewhere in the great upstairs.
Zeke had his battered derby pulled down tight over his forehead, and he was
rolling the butt of a sodden cigar from side to side in his mouth, even though
it had long gone out. Homer and I were soaked to the skin, but we handed our
bicycles up to Jeff and Mortimer and clambered aboard.

       
"We're having trouble making contact," Henry shouted above the din of
the steady tattoo of rain on the truck's tarpaulin. "But the wind seems to
be blowing her straight up the Claiborne Turnpike, and we're heading there
now."

       
"What's happened to Colonel March and those professors?" I asked,
after I had time to blow all the water out of my nose.

       
"They decided to stay up at the zinc mine," said Mortimer.

       
"The Colonel had a little trouble with the engine in his car," Jeff
explained. "I'm afraid he's going to miss all the excitement."

        Mortimer
was monitoring the police net with one radio so he could pass on reports of
sightings to Henry. Meanwhile, Jeff wrestled with the tracking antenna every
time the road took a sudden turn, trying to keep it pointed in the general
direction we thought the Sorcerer was heading. Henry would raise his hand in
the air when he caught the beep of the Sorcerer's beacon on his earphones, and
wave left or right to let Jeff know he'd lost it.

        "If
I can get a steady beep long enough to send a signal through, I'll let most of
the helium out and try to bring her down someplace where we can get to
her," said Henry.

        "I
agree with that," said Mortimer. "That's a lot easier than trying to
get the truck up to where the saucer is."

        Jeff
aimed a blow at Mortimer's head, but he had already ducked. "This is no
time for jokes. Keep your mind on what you're doing."

       
"I'll make a note of that!" said Mortimer.

        Zeke
couldn't go very fast, the way it was raining; but Henry figured we had to be
gaining ground on the Sorcerer, because the weather reports said the wind was
only twenty-five miles an hour. Two police cars passed us with their lights
flashing and their sirens wailing.

       
"They must be heading for Hiram Poore's place," said Mortimer.
"He reported a strange object with a flashing green light sailing over his
apple orchard."

       
"Good!" said Henry. "That gives us some kind of a fix. Tell Zeke
to turn off at Indian Hill Road and head for the Prendergast farm. Maybe we can
intercept it there."

        I told
Zeke what to do, and when we had turned onto Indian Hill Road I told him to
step on the gas. We were heading for the other side of the ridge of hills that
separates the Claiborne Turnpike from Indian Hill Road. We hoped we could get
to the Prendergast farm before the Sorcerer made it over the ridge. As soon as
we had gotten around the south end of the ridge and headed north, Henry shot
his arm up in the air and practically crowed.

       
"I've got it! I've got it!" he cried. "A good steady beep. I'm
going to let the helium escape and try to bring her down."

        I
crawled into the front seat of the truck beside Zeke and stuck my head out over
the canvas top of the cab. I couldn't see very far with the rain beating me in
the face, but I figured I'd be able to catch sight of the Sorcerer's turret
light if it came into view. If I thought I was wet before, it was nothing
compared to the soaking I took standing out there on the running board step.
The water seemed to be running right through me. The back of my shirt was just
as wet as the front. But it was a good thing I was out there. I caught a
flicker of light in the corner of my left eye, and I figured it couldn't he
anything but the Sorcerer, because the weather was too bad for airplanes, and
there just isn't anything else on Indian Hill Ridge but rocks, trees, and
grass.

       
"Bring her down, Henry, bring her down," I gurgled as loud as I
could. "There she is! There she is!"

        I clung
to the handgrip at the side of the windshield and rested my chin on the canvas.
With my free hand I shielded my eyes from the rain and strained to catch
another glimpse of the Sorcerer. As we rounded the bend where the road crosses
Willow Creek, I caught sight of it again. It was plummeting downward across the
face of Indian Hill Ridge. Then, suddenly, it disappeared behind a hillock to
our left.

       
"Turn in at the lane to Prendergast's farm," I shouted to Zeke.

        He waved
and chomped down harder on the stub of the cigar in his mouth. As he swung
Richard the Deep, Breather into the rocky dirt road leading to Joel
Prendergast's big red farmhouse, the rain suddenly abated. The center of the
storm had passed on to the north, and there was just the slightest sprinkle of
rain coming down. Then the moon broke through a rift in the clouds and lighted
up the sodden pastures on either side of the road. And there was the Sorcerer,
drifting aimlessly in the breeze not more than twenty feet off the ground. It
drifted right into the side of the Prendergast barn, bumped it twice, and then
slid around the corner.