New Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club

by Bertrand R. Brinley

  Suddenly Homer pinched my arm and pointed toward the far shore of the lake. There were two tiny, bright objects bobbing on the horizon just above the ridge of the hills. Soon, a third one appeared; then another, and another. One of them suddenly zoomed upward, far above the others, and continued soaring in an ever-widening circle, sketching a spiral in the half-darkened sky. More of the objects began to appear now, over the same section of the ridge, as though they had flown in from the west. Some of the objects looked like glowing, white lights. Others had a bluish tinge to them.

  This was our signal that the night's operation had begun. With Zeke's help, Henry, Mortimer, and Jeff were launching a barrage of "ghost lights," as Henry called them. These were plastic bags with the open end taped to a piece of wire mesh, or a large can lid with holes punched in it. We'd put a can of canned heat or a large candle inside the bag, cemented to the can lid. The result is the same thing as a hot air balloon, and they'll do crazier things than a kite when the air currents catch them. They'll zoom way up in the air, and then drop down just as suddenly. They'll hover, almost motionless in one spot for awhile, then scoot off sideways for a couple of miles. To people on the ground they look like something that can't happen.

  By now there were about two dozen of the ghost lights swirling in crazy patterns over Strawberry Lake -- enough to make the most sober citizen swear the town was being invaded by hundreds of flying saucers. And every minute the prevailing wind from the west was blowing them closer to Mammoth Falls. Close on their heels came the familiar flashing green light of The Flying Sorcerer. In another minute the evening strollers in the Town Square would be able to see them. Homer and I held our breath. Sitting side by side at the loft window, we could feel each other's nerves twitching.

  As we watched The Flying Sorcerer draw nearer to town, I switched on the radio to establish contact with Henry. Our plan was that Homer and I would take over control of the Sorcerer once it appeared over town, because we had a rather delicate maneuver in mind. We could get a stronger signal up to the Sorcerer's receiver from the antenna we had mounted on the roof over the loft, and we could exercise better control than we could by relaying instructions to Henry.

  The Sorcerer was coming in low -- just a few hundred feet above ground -- because it had been weighted down with lead sash weights to keep it well below its normal one-thousand foot altitude. Consequently, it caught everyone by surprise as it loomed over the roof of the fire station, and hovered there while everybody in the Town Square was busy watching the antics of the ghost lights. But they noticed it when a loud hissing sound drew their attention. Homer was letting enough helium escape from the Sorcerer to bring it down on the flat, gravelled roof of the fire station. When the crowd saw it, it was losing altitude rapidly; and it hit the roof of the fire station with an audible thunk, disappearing from the view of those in the square.

  The crowd, in a near panic, surged to the other side of the Town Square; some to try and get a better view, others just trying to get out of the way in case anything happened. Two venturesome young men were trying desperately to shinny up a telephone pole in the hopes of being able to see over the parapet of the fire station roof. The Salvation Army band had stopped playing, and its members were gazing in open-mouthed astonishment at the firemen pouring out of the stationhouse. The two dogs in front of Garinisch's Sausage Shop were howling like coyotes, with their noses thrust up in the air.

  What the onlookers couldn't see were the green-costumed figures of Dinky and Freddy, who had been hiding on the roof for two hours, and who had now scrambled over to The Flying Sorcerer to unlash the lead sash weights dangling from the rim of its framework. When they had the last one cut loose, they waved frantically in our direction, and Homer looked at me with a dumb, blank look on his face.

  "That's the signal," I whispered hoarsely. And when he didn't respond, I poked him a good one in the ribs. "Cut in the jets! Cut in the jets!" I hollered in his ear. Finally Homer came alive as he saw the Sorcerer slowly rising from the roof after being relieved of its added weight. The transmitter buzzed as he sent the signal for all four of the jet nozzles to open up. The Flying Sorcerer zoomed upward with a loud swoosh, bringing a startled shout from the spectators in the square.

  The fire station crew had rolled the big hook-and-ladder rig out front, and were starting to raise a ladder to the roof when they heard the noise. Everybody looked up at once to see two green heads with horns, peering back at them over the parapet of the roof. As the crowd gasped, tiny lights on the ends of the horns blinked on and off. Then something approaching pandemonium broke loose as the two green figures clambered onto the top of the parapet and ran back and forth as though they were looking for a way to jump down to the street. One was quite skinny, and the other was quite fat; but both were small.

  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.

  We could see two figures running toward the barn from the rear of the house as the Sorcerer plunged down a steep, grassy slope, heading for a rickety cow shed in the lower meadow. It hit the shed and cows started scattering in all directions. Then we lost sight of the whole spectacle as the lane turned behind a wooded hillock. I jabbed Zeke in the ribs.

  "Take that wagon road up to Chestnut Hill," I shouted. "Maybe we can get out in front of her and grab her when she hits the slope. She hasn't got enough lift to get over the hill."

  All the guys in the back of the truck had their heads sticking out around the edge of the tarpaulin as we jounced along the wagon road that twisted up the slope of the hill. We were about halfway up when two blasts from what sounded like a shotgun echoed among the sawed-off tree stumps that dotted the crest of the hill.