by John Blaine
I’m just a farmer. I guess I don’t know anything about dog sicology . (Is that how you spell it? I can’t find my dictionary.)
Everything else is very quiet, and the island is lonesome with everyone away. I went on a picnic yesterday and got sunburned, so now my nose is peeling.
Oh, yes. There is one thing more. The other day the phone rang and I answered. It was for Dad. He told whoever it was to hold the line, then came into the switchboard and made me go into the kitchen so I couldn’t listen. I think that was mean. Anyway, right after that, Professor Gordon took your Cub, Rick, and flew Dad somewhere. When he came back (Professor Gordon, I mean) he was all alone. I don’t know where Dad went. I don’t think Mom does, either. Anyway, we haven’t heard a word from him. That was on Friday afternoon. I think it’s very funny he should go off like that, but I guess it’s all right. Send me some postcards, and please try to get me some good autographs. Mom sends her love, and so does
Your loving sister,
Barby
Rick let the letter fall to his lap and looked at Scotty, his face pale.
“Dad has vanished, too!”
“Take it easy,” Scotty said quickly. “Don’t go jumping to conclusions. It must have been a legitimate phone call, because Professor Gordon flew him to the mainland. He’s probably working on the case somewhere else.”
“I wish I knew that for sure,” Rick said. He stared at the letter. “That’s Barby for you.
She puts it at the end of the letter.”
“She can’t know what’s going on,” Scotty reminded him. “To her, I guess it’s more important about Dismal and the woodchuck. It wouldn’t even occur to her that Dad might be in any danger.”
“I suppose not,” Rick agreed. “I hope it never does.”
Scotty stood up. “Where do we go? We can’t hang around here. We’ll go crazy.How about a movie?”
Rick knew that Scotty was right.Staying at the hotel, with nothing to think about but the mysterious enemy who had taken Weiss and Zircon, and possibly his father, would be worse than foolish. It would leave them in such a state of mind that they wouldn’t be able to work efficiently when the time came.
“I suppose you want to see an Oat Opera,” he said.
“Fine way to describe the sweeping panorama of an historical, Western motion picture,”
Scotty retorted.
“Historical or hysterical?”
“Take your pick. Anyway, I don’t care about seeing a Western. A nice horror picture would suit me fine.”
“Entertainment to suit the mood,” Rick agreed. “Let’s hike downtown and look at the shows.”
“Okay. Better stop at the desk first.”
Rick nodded and walked to where the sleepy clerk was reading the sports section of theWashington Star.
“Anything for Room 408?”
Drowsy eyes scanned them briefly. “Not a thing. Going out?”
“To a movie,” Scotty said.
“Call back in a couple of hours.”
“We will.”
They left the hotel and walked downG Street . Rick was turning this latest news over in his mind. Had his father’s disappearance been deliberate? Or had he fallen into the enemy’s hands, too?
“Mr. Brant!”
Rick and Scotty turned. The hotel clerk was standing on the steps waving at them.
Rick’s first thought was that some word had suddenly come from Steve Ames, then he saw that the clerk held a hat in his hands.His hat. The sudden excitement died. He walked back and took the hat. Thanking the clerk, he put the hat on and rejoined Scotty and they continued on their way. Neither of them noticed the dark-blue sedan parked across the street from the hotel. At the sound of Rick’s name, the two men in it had showed quick interest. Now, as the boys continued toward the center of the city, the sedan pulled away from the curb, heading in the opposite direction, and started around the block.
“I’m plenty worried about Dad,” Rick told Scotty. “You know the kind of people we’re working against. Anyone with brass enough to walk right into a guarded government building wouldn’t have any qualms about removing people who stood in their way.”
“Do you think I don’t realize that?”
A few cars had been drifting past, but Rick paid no attention. As they approached the corner ofNineteenth Street , though, a sedan drew up, an ordinary-looking model. There were two men in the front seat.
Rick glanced up, not particularly curious. He noticed that the man sitting beside the driver was past middle age and wore sunglasses. Then, unexpectedly, the driver of the car, a younger man with a flattened nose like an unsuccessful prize fighter, leaned past the older man and called:
“You’re Mr. Brant.Right?”
“Yes,” Rick said.
“Steve Ames sent us to pick you up. Get in.” The back door of the sedan swung open.
Rick started to obey. He walked to the open door with Scotty behind him. Then, he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. To get into the back seat, he half-turned, and the steps of the hotel, half a block down the street, came into his line of vision.
He saw the clerk, still on the hotel steps. He saw him start toward the sedan, then abruptly change his mind and run into the hotel!
Rick’s mind clicked at lightning speed. The clerk was Steve’s man. Dr. Keppner had said so! Then why had the clerk acted so strangely?
“Run, Scotty!” Rick turned and sprinted.
He was ten paces from the car when the thing hit.
There was a high, shrill whispering, then total silence. His mind commanded his legs to continue running, but there was suddenly no feeling anywhere in his body. He fought to keep his balance, but he could no longer exercise control. He fell sideways, and as he half turned in mid-air, he saw the driver getting out of the sedan.
Rick knew when he struck the sidewalk, because rough cement was suddenly close to
his eyes. Rut he felt nothing! He must have rolled when he hit, because blue sky, filtered by green leaves, was in his eyes. The thing had happened so suddenly there was no time to be afraid. He couldn’t believe that he was paralyzed. He tried to move and saw the sky shake and knew he was moving, but he couldn’t feel his muscles respond!
He tried to yell, and in his own mind he did yell, but his lips didn’t move and he could hear nothing!
Then the sky was blotted out as the driver leaned over him, reaching for him. They were pulling him into the car!
It was like a scene in a silent movie, as though it were happening to someone else. He tried to fight and his muscles refused to obey. He saw the car door loom up as he was propelled toward it, then the scene gyrated. Black macadam road came up with
frightening speed and got blacker and blacker.
Then there was nothing at all.
Ride struggled up through syrupy blackness. Once he thought he heard a voice, but he couldn’t be sure. He thought that he was encased in black tar, unable to move even a finger, but he couldn’t be sure of that, either.
He heard someone groaning andWondered if it were Scotty. What had happened to
Scotty? He struggled again, trying to free himself from the dark bonds that held him fast.
The groaning was louder now. It sounded like someone making a mighty effort to freehimself from something.
He pressed his lips tight with the effort of moving and the groaning stopped abruptly.
That startled him. The groans were his! He tried to force his eyes open and a glimmer of light showed through.
“He’s coming out of it.” The voice was small and faraway.
Rick opened his eyes and stared up at a white ceiling. He tried to roll his eyes, and miracle of miracles, he succeeded! Faces were bent over him, anxious and familiar.
Dr. Keppner. And Hartson Brant!
Rick yelled, “Dad!”
Hartson Brant was white, but he managed a joke. “Now you know how Dismal felt, son.”
With his father’s help, Rick sat up and
looked around him. He was in Dr. Keppner’s lab, on a leather couch. And Scotty was sitting next to him on a chair, a dazed grin on his face.
“We’ve had it,” Scotty said. “We’ve really had it good!”
“What happened?” Questions poured from him.
“Didn’t those men get us? Dad, where did you come from? How did we get here?”
“One thing at a time.”Hartson Brant smiled. “You got here with the help of the hotel clerk and Steve Ames. As for me, I got in by train half an hour ago after stopping over inNew York . Scotty will have to tell you the rest of it.”
“I don’t know how you felt,” Scotty said, ‘Taut I didn’t feel anything. I just heard a whispering noise and then I turned into a statue and fell flat on my back and lay there.
The men got out of the car, and the driver went for you and the other one started for me.
The driver put you on your feet like a length of cord-wood and started to shove you into the car head first.”
“I remember that,” Rick said. He was slowly realizing that he hurt all over and that his head throbbed like an ulcerated tooth.
“That was when the hotel clerk and two others came steaming down the street. Or that’s what I was told later by the clerk. My range of vision didn’t extend that far. I only know that the driver dropped you. You landed face first in the road. Isn’t your nose sore?”
Rick reached up with his hand and felt gingerly, then he let out a yelp of anguish.
“I thought it was,” Scotty said. “I guess the driver must have left the whispering box in the car, otherwise he would have used it on the clerk. As it was, he didn’t dare take time to get it, I guess, because the clerk was waving a pistol. So the two guys hopped in the car and roared off. This is hearsay, remember. I was lying there stiff as a hunk of hickory.
“Anyway, the clerk and his two helpers picked us up and carried us to the hotel. Quite a crowd was gathering. While we were in the hotel, I snapped out of it. I didn’t lose consciousness, but you must have been knocked silly when you hit the road. When I could walk, we carried you out the back way and loaded you into a car. Steve Ames had arrived by this time. The effects of the box had worn off, all right, because you were limp.”
“That was about five minutes ago,” Dr. Keppner said. “Steve has gone to try to get a line on that car.”
“But how did those men know us?” Rick asked. “How did they know we’d be there for them to get?”
“They evidently know a lot more than we give them credit for,” Keppner said grimly.
“As for the rest, they obviously had the hotel tinder observation. Perhaps a traitor on the staff tipped them off. We’ll find out sooner or later. They merely waited until you left, then swung around the block to meet you.”
Scotty rubbed his head. “But why did they want us?”
“For information, possibly,” Dr. Keppner said. “And another possibility is that they wanted you as hostages.”
Rick got to his feet, a little unsteady until Hartson Brant slipped an arm around his shoulder. There was a mirror on the other side of the small room. Rick stared, and he couldn’t believe it.
There was a large purple bruise on his forehead, and his nose was a swollen red blot that spread across the middle of his face. No wonder he felt as though he had come off second best in a war with an armored truck.
“The nose isn’t broken,” Dr. Keppner said. “It only feels broken, Rick. It’s fortunate that you have a good, thick skull. Otherwise we’d still be working over you.”
Scotty laughed.“A good, thick skull! That disposes of brother Brant. Wait until I tell Barby what the doctor said.”
“If you do,” Rick warned, “it won’t be whispers that you’ll hear, it’ll be birdies.”
Hartson Brant and Dr. Keppner chuckled.
“Unfortunate choice of words for a very fortunate boy,” Dr. Keppner said. “The clerk, who is very alert in spite of his apparent sleepiness, had been keeping an eye on the sedan, which had been parked across the street. That’s why he happened to be out there at the crucial moment. He was looking to see where it had gone.”
“We’re a lucky family,” Hartson Brant said.
“Illsay!” Rick looked at his father. “We got a letter from Barby. She said you had vanished. We were worried sick. Honest, Dad, it was worth getting knocked out just to wake up and find that those men didn’t have you.”
“Thanks, son,” Hartson Brant said seriously. “But we mustn’t lose sight of another important fact. Those men do have Weiss and Zircon.”
“If they’re still alive,” Dr. Keppner added grimly.
CHAPTER VIII
Needed: A Counterweapon
On the day following the first appearance of the whispering box, Rick, Scotty, Hartson Brant, and Dr. Keppner were seated in Keppner’s office.
Rick’s nose and forehead were still very tender, but the swelling had subsided and he looked almost normal. Aside from the wounds caused by sudden contact with the
macadam road, he had not suffered from the whispering weapon.
“The effects are easy to analyze,” Dr. Keppner said. “The first impact of the sound waves causes a paralysis of the inner ear, which is the seat of balance. The person attacked loses entire control over his balance. That is the reason for the complete lack of bodily coordination. What was the term you used, Scotty?”
Scotty grinned.“Just flopping around.Like a hooked trout.”
“A good simile.The first effect is immediately followed by a more complete paralysis of the nervous system, which I think is caused by the sheer volume of sound.”
“It seems funny to talk about sound when we couldn’t even hear it,” Rick said. “What do you think caused the whispering?”
“Leakage,” Hartson Brant explained. “I’m sure some of the compressed air leaked out, possibly through the valve or trigger that operates the weapon. Such a leak would cause a whispering or hissing sound.”
“That reminds me,” Rick said. “Maybe the reason those men didn’t use the box on the hotel clerk was because there was no time to recharge it. Wouldn’t they have to build up air pressure again?”
Dr. Keppner shook his head. “The first time they used the box, at the hospital lab, they used it twice in succession. I’m sure it needs recharging frequently, but they are probably able to build up enough pressure to last for two or three shots. They may even have two or three separate pressure tanks built into the box.”
Rick had tried to think of some way that a counter-weapon might be created, but with no success. How could they combat a sound wave?
“In order to understand what we are trying to do,” Hartson Brant said, “you boys must have a clear idea of the forces we’re working with. You’ve seen one effect of ultrasonic sound. There are many others that have been observed in experiments. There is a definite effect on the nervous system of humans when certain frequencies are used.
People become irritable and nervous, without even knowing why. Then, there are certain mechanical effects. Ultrasonic sounds have been used to set paper afire. InEngland , experiments have been conducted in washing clothes ultrasonically. The waves actually vibrate dirt right out of things.”
Dr. Keppner added, “The field has been badly neglected. Only now are we realizing the potentialities of silent sound. We may soon be using it to kill bacteria, or using it in industry to shake tiny particles around so that more uniform compounds may be formed.
There are unlimited possibilities. For the present, however, we must create an ultrasonic defense. Until we do, we are vulnerable to such attacks as you have experienced.”
“But how can we defend ourselves against a sound?” Rick demanded. “We can’t
soundproof buildings well enough, and we can’t get people to wear ear muffs.”
Hartson Brant and Dr. Keppner chuckled.
“We won’t go at it in quite that way,” Mr. Brant said. “We have learned that the whispering box operates at a very high freq
uency. We think the wave length of their sound may be high enough so that we could use what in radio is sometimes termed a heterodyne. In other words, we can create a beat frequency.”
“That’s nice,” Scotty remarked blankly.
Rick had a glimmer of understanding. Sometimes, when two radio waves were close together in frequency, they produced a squeal. That happened often on old-fashioned radios.
Hartson Brant was watching his son’s face. Rick felt his father’s glance and smiled.
“I’m working on it, dad.”
“Take your time, Rick. You can figure it out.”
“I’m not sure, but I think I know what you mean. Suppose the whispering box operates at a frequency of 50,000 cycles per second, which is just another way of saying 50,000
vibrations. You create a sound of 49,500 cycles a second and they beat against each other. The result, which would be the difference between the two frequencies, would be a tone we could hear. It would be a 500-cycle note, which is just above middle ‘A’ on the piano.”
“Very well put,” Keppner said.
Scotty had an objection. “Suppose they change frequency on you? Your counterweapon would be useless until you analyzed the new wave length.”
“Very true.And that is what makes the creation of our own defense such a problem.” Dr.
Keppner rose and paced the room. “We must make our counter-weapon flexible, and automatic. It must analyze the frequency of the whispering box, adjust its own mechanism to emit a counterfrequency, and do it so rapidly that people near by will not be affected by the attackers’ weapon.”
“There is only one means of getting such speed,” Hartson Brant added.
“Exactly.That means is electronics. Only electrons move rapidly enough. That is why we had to call onSpindriftIsland . We were depending on Weiss and Zircon to work with us here, while you, Hartson, and John Gordon continued research at home. Now, with Weiss and Zircon missing, we have had to call you down to join us.”
“How about Professor Gordon?”Scotty asked.
“We’ve asked him to stay at Spindrift to continue his work on the long-range aspects.
