The Flying Sorcerer
The Flying Sorcerer
© 1968 by Bertrand R. Brinley
Illustrations by Charles Geer
D
INKY P
OORE DIDN'T usually miss
meetings of the Mad Scientists' Club; so when we hadn't seen him around
the clubhouse for four straight days, we figured something was wrong.
"Maybe he deserted, and joined up with Harmon's gang," said Freddy
Muldoon, who was probably Dinky's best friend. "He was pretty gloomy
all last week, and he hardly opened his mouth."
"Stow it!" said Mortimer Dalrymple. "Dinky wouldn't do that."
"I dunno," Freddy persisted. "He was acting kinda cagey, like, and I
haven't laid eyes on him all this week."
"Have you been to his house?" Henry Mulligan asked him.
"Yeah! But he don't answer. I holler through the back fence, like always,
and Mrs. Poore says he ain't there. I think he deserted."
"Baloney!" said Homer Snodgrass. "You always want to make a big mystery
out of everything."
"Well, I ain't no Pollyanna like you!" Freddy blustered.
"Go soak your head!" Homer retorted, as Jeff Crocker rapped his gavel
on the packing crate and called for order.
"What do you think, Charlie?" Jeff asked me. "You always know what to
do with Dinky when he has one of his moods."
"Maybe we could send a delegation around to his house, and find out
what's wrong," I suggested. "Or is that too practical?"
"Seems like the least we could do," Mortimer observed. "After all,
he might be dead."
"Hoh, boy!" Freddy snorted, slapping his palm to his forehead. "I hope
you never donate your brain to science. It would set civilization back
fifty years."
The upshot was that Jeff appointed Freddy and me as a committee of
two to make a formal call at Dinky's house. We went there right after
the meeting.
"Is Dinky sick?" I asked Mrs. Poore, when she answered the door.
Mrs. Poore looked startled for a moment. Then she said, "Maybe he is! I
hadn't thought of that."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, I don't know, exactly," she said, "but he's been acting strangely,
lately. He gets up early, and I pack him a lunch, and I don't see him
again until suppertime -- or sometimes until way after dark. What has he
been doing?"
"That's what we wanted to ask
you," said Freddy.
"Ask
me?" Mrs. Poore looked startled again. "Why? Hasn't he been
with you?"
"We haven't seen Dinky all week," I explained.
"Oh, dear!" said Mrs. Poore, holding the tips of her fingers to her lips.
"Don't tell me -- No! -- I never thought of that!"
Freddy Muldoon screwed his eyes up into tiny slits. "He isn't dead,
is he?"
"Oh! Gracious no!" Mrs. Poore laughed. "Whatever gave you that idea,
Freddy?"
"Just a nutty friend of mine," Freddy shrugged. "Forget it!"
"Well, do you know where he is now?" I asked her.
"I've no idea," she said, putting her fingers to her lips again. "I just
assumed he'd been with you boys all week. You know how it is...." She
hesitated for a moment. "Well, you boys are always busy with some kind
of crazy project -- I mean -- well, I just don't worry about Dinky, even if
he comes in long after midnight, because I know he's working on something
important with all of you, and..."
"Never mind, Mrs. Poore. We'll find out what he's up to!" Freddy
interrupted her. He gave an exaggerated bow and strode off the porch
with me following him.
We knew we could find out where Dinky was, and what he was doing. It was
just a question of how long it would take. Unless Dinky had discovered
some new hideout that none of us knew about, it was just a matter of
checking all our regular haunts until we found him. Jeff ticked off the
spots on our big wall map of Mammoth County in his barn: Indian Hill,
Brake Hill, Memorial Point, the old zinc mine, the quarry, Mammoth Falls,
the old mill on Lemon Creek, Zeke Boniface's junkyard, the old Harkness
mansion, Elmer Pridgin's cabin, Jason Barnaby's apple orchard, and a
dozen other places. Then he split us up into two-man teams (in the Mad
Scientists' Club nobody goes off on a mission alone), and we set off on
our bicycles to look for Dinky.
Freddy and I had already checked out Zeke's junkyard, and were heading
for the apple orchard when we got a call on the radio from Mortimer. He
and Homer claimed they could see Dinky, crouched on top of Lookout Rock
high up on Indian Hill. They had hollered to him from the road, but he
wouldn't answer their call and they were going up after him.
All of us made for Indian Hill, and when we had scrambled to the summit
we found Mortimer and Homer trying to coax Dinky down off the rock. But
he wouldn't budge. He just kept scanning the horizon through a pair of
binoculars and muttering to himself.
"What's the matter with you, you little nut?" Jeff shouted at him, when he
and Henry had arrived. "Come on down here, or we'll come up and get you."
|
"Go away!" said Dinky petulantly.
"I'm going to count to ten," Jeff warned, "and if you aren't down here
I'm coming up to get you."
"Come ahead!" Dinky pouted. "I'll kick anybody in the face that sticks
his head up here."
We all looked at each other. Dinky was peering intently at the horizon.
"Let him stay there til he grows up!" Mortimer said disgustedly.
"If you don't come down, we'll vote you out of the club! How do you like
that?" taunted Freddy.
"Yeah!" Mortimer chimed in. "We already voted you 'most likely to secede.'
How do you like that?"
"Very funny!" Dinky said with a yawn.
"Dinky, won't you please tell us what you're doing up there?" Henry
pleaded.
Dinky pulled his eyes away from the binoculars and stared at Henry for
a moment. "I'm looking for flying saucers," he said matter-of-factly.
Everybody laughed.
"Come on, Dinky. Be serious," Jeff prodded.
"I'm looking for flying saucers!" Dinky repeated.
"How many have you seen?" asked Mortimer.
"I ain't seen none yet," Dinky replied. "But I will."
Everybody laughed again. Then Dinky turned his back on us; but not before
we saw a big tear trickle down his left cheek.
"The kid's daft," said Mortimer. "He really means it."
"Look! He's crying. He's crying," shouted Freddy, jumping up and down.
"Shut up! You big fathead!" Dinky blubbered, throwing down a handful of
loose pebbles.
"Wait a minute! Wait a minute!" Henry cautioned. "Let's not get emotional
about it. Dinky, if you stay up there in that hot sun much longer you'll
see flying saucers all right -- and pink elephants too."
"I don't care," Dinky sniffled. "I'm gonna stay here till I see one."
"There ain't no such thing as flying saucers, you nut!" said Freddy
Muldoon.
"Yes there is," Dinky persisted. "You read about them in the paper every
day. People are seeing them all over the country -- everybody except
me. I bet I'm the only person in the whole world that hasn't seen one."
"Cool it, man," said Mortimer. "Flying saucers aren't news
anymore. They're as old as the hills."
"Nuts to you," said Dinky. "They're the latest."
"Oh, yeah? I just betcha people been seein' them things for three thousand
years," Mortimer teased. "I betcha that Arabian that invented the Magic
Carpet started the whole thing. I been told people called him the first
Flying Sorcerer."
Another handful of pebbles came flying down from the rock, and Henry
pulled Mortimer off to one side to talk with Jeff. They whispered together
for a minute, and Jeff and Mortimer nodded their heads.
"Dinky!" said Henry, walking back to the base of the rock. "Will you come
down if we promise you that we'll build a flying saucer -- a real one --
just for you?"
"Honest?" said Dinky, doubtfully.
"Honest!"
"Scout's Honor?"
"Scout's Honor!" said Henry.
"A real flying saucer that will fly?"
"A real flying saucer that will fly!" said Henry.
"That's what I thought you'd do!" said Dinky, and he slid down off
the rock.
Henry was true to his word. He had us all working like beavers for
the next two weeks, building something far better than anything we had
dreamed of. Most of us had thought he was kidding when he told Dinky
we would build a flying saucer that could really fly. But when we found
out what he had in mind, we got pretty excited.
Henry and Jeff drew up some plans for a real monster of a saucer. It was
about twenty feet in diameter and six feet high; shaped like a flat top,
or one of those striped Christmas tree ornaments squashed down. Henry
explained that we would have to build it on the principle of a dirigible,
with a rigid, but very lightweight frame covered with an envelope of
balloon silk. Filled with some of the helium we had left over from our
last balloon expedition, it would have enough lift to stay aloft with
the added weight of a propulsion system and a few other gadgets Henry
had dreamed up to make the experiment more interesting.
We decided to build the thing in one of the old ore car sheds near the
entrance to the abandoned zinc mine up in the hills west of Strawberry
Lake. Nobody except us ever snooped around there, and besides, Henry
figured it would be a good place to operate from once we got the saucer
built.
We had most everything we needed, except material for the frame. Henry
figured that bamboo would be the best thing, because it is tough and light
and easy to work with. But bamboo doesn't grow in our part of the country.
"I know where there's plenty of bamboo," said Freddy Muldoon.
"Where?" asked Jeff.
"I seen a whole load of new fishin' poles -- great big ones -- comin'
in at Snodgrass's Hardware Store."
Everybody turned and looked at Homer. Homer Snodgrass rubbed his nose and
dug the toe of one shoe into the top of the other. "Okay!" he said. "I'll
volunteer to work in the store Saturday morning."
That solved our problem on the bamboo. Saturday morning Dinky and
I sat in the shade in the alley back of Snodgrass's Hardware Store,
along with Freddy Muldoon. Every time Homer had an excuse to go back
to the stockroom to fill an order, he'd throw another fishing pole out
the window, and one of us would lug it down the alley to a vacant lot
where he hid them in the tall grass. Homer had to work a little overtime,
because it took us until two o'clock in the afternoon before we thought
we had enough poles to do the job. Homer's dad was so proud of him for
working past noontime that he paid him an extra fifty cents.
With the bamboo poles we constructed two geodesic domes, twenty feet
across, and then mated the two together to form a flattened sphere. On
top we added a little, fat, circular structure that looked like a tank
turret. Henry explained that the geodesic construction, with mutually
supporting triangles of bamboo lashed together, would give us the
strongest frame with the least amount of material. We didn't need a lot
of supporting braces inside, and could use the rest of our bamboo for
mounting the propulsion system and the other gadgets we wanted to have
on board.
The propulsion system consisted of two large tanks of pressurized carbon
dioxide attached to nozzles which protruded from the underside of the
saucer. There were two sets of nozzles; one set projecting horizontally,
and the other two pointing down at about a forty-five degree angle. With
two solenoid-operated valves for each tank, controlled from a central
relay box, we could exhaust spurts of carbon dioxide gas through either
set of nozzles as a pair, or actuate them individually in any combination
we wanted to. In this way we could make the saucer fly straight ahead,
zoom upward at a sharp angle, or execute a few banks and turns.
"We'll only be able to fly it when it's fairly calm," Henry said,
"because we won't have enough power to buck a strong wind, and we'll
run out of fuel pretty fast."
We mounted a bright green light in the turret, and over it we fitted an
aluminum cylinder with a slit in it. A little electric motor, powered
by a dry cell, would rotate the cylinder just like the reflector for a
lighthouse beacon. We installed a ring of clear plexiglass inside the
turret, and cemented it to the balloon silk that covered the turret. Then
we cut windows through the silk, and we had a first-class spook effect
that would make anyone think the saucer was sending out coded signals.
Around the perimeter of the saucer we mounted twelve spin rockets that
burned a mixture of zinc and sulphur. We could fire any of these by
sending a signal through the command receiver, and make the saucer spin
on its vertical axis. If we wanted to fire them all at once, we could
really create a sensation.
Besides the command receiver, we installed a second receiver for a
voice channel and mounted two speakers in the bottom of the saucer --
"just in case we want to broadcast messages to earthmen," Jeff explained.
"Once we get this thing up in the air, how do we get, it down
again?" asked Freddy Muldoon.
"Good question!" said Mortimer. "That shows you're thinking."
"When I want an answer from you, I'll ask a more stupid question,"
Freddy retorted.
"It so happens that
is a very good question, Freddy," Henry
interrupted. "Because we're going to have to depend on a good deal of luck
to get the thing back down and we may lose it entirely. When and where
we try to fly it will depend a lot on wind conditions. What I hope to do
is launch it from here, give it a little push from the propulsion tanks,
and let it drift out over the lake toward town. It should drift at about
a thousand feet. The zinc mine, here, is about five hundred feet above the
elevation of the town; so we'd have to try and bring it down gradually, by
letting some of the helium escape as we head it back in this direction."
"Pretty hairy!" said Freddy, scratching his head.
"And that's not all of the problem," said Henry. "We want to make it do
a few stunts while it's floating over town; but we have to make sure we
have enough carbon dioxide left in the tanks to push it back here. We
can save fuel if we have a light wind blowing back in this direction. But
if we have a crosswind, we just won't be able to fly it."
"Why not let Freddy ride in it?" Mortimer suggested. "He has a lot of
extra wind."
Henry ignored the comment, and Freddy curled his lip in disdain.
"Then there's the problem of capturing the thing when it gets back here,"
Henry continued. "We might have to chase it all over the hillside, even
if we get it back down to the right altitude; and it might get fouled up
in the trees. It might even miss this ridge of hills and keep on going
toward Claiborne."
"If that happens, we could let all the helium out through the escape valve
and let it crash wherever it wants to," said Jeff. "We could probably
get to it before anyone else could, because we'd know about where it is."
"Seems to me they bring dirigibles down with handlines that they drop
over the side. Why don't we do something like that?" I suggested.
"We'll have to," said Henry. "I guess we could coil a couple of ropes
on the underside of the saucer, and cut 'em loose with the same command
signal that opens the helium escape valve."
"We'll stand a better chance of snatching it if we weight the ropes with
some grappling hooks, and string a few hundred yards of wire between
the trees up on the ridge there," said Jeff.
"Now everybody's thinking," said Mortimer.
"Yeah! Everybody but you," sneered Freddy Muldoon.
"I've been thinking too," said Mortimer, "and I've thought up a name
for this flat balloon. I move we christen it The Flying Sorcerer as a
tribute to my wit."
"I like The Flat Balloon better," said Freddy.
"It's my saucer," said Dinky Poore, "and I vote for The Flying Sorcerer,
because it sounds a lot cornier."
And that was it. We painted the name around the turret, and The Flying
Sorcerer was ready to confound the populace of Mammoth Falls.
For the Sorcerer's first voyage we picked a quiet evening when there
was scarcely any wind at all. It was dusk, and a few puffy white clouds
high in the sky reflected the last rays of the sun as the saucer lifted
off from the old zinc mine and started to drift toward town. We didn't
dare fly the thing in full daylight for fear it would look too phony.
Homer and I were stationed in the loft over his father's hardware store,
where we could get a good view of the Town Square. Henry tends to be
very scientific about things, even when we're just pulling a prank;
so he insisted we take notes of people's reactions in a logbook. He
figured our observations might provide some valuable psychological data
for the people who have to investigate flying-saucer reports. While I
kept watch at the window, Homer sat cross-legged on the floor and took
down everything I described.
7:48 p.m. I can just barely see the thing against that bright spot in the
clouds. I can't see any lights, so they must not have turned on the beacon
yet. It seems to be moving this way, all right. Hey! It looks pretty good.
7:57 p.m. There's a man with a straw hat down in the square. I think he
sees it. He's scratching his head. Now he just grabbed another man and
he's pointing up in the sky. The beacon light just went on. You can see
it flashing around. It looks real weird. Now there's a few people coming
out of the Midtown Grill. One man's got a hamburger in his hand. He
just dropped it in the street. There comes Billy Dahr down the steps of
the Police Station.... No, he's running back inside. The saucer's just
about over the square now. It's just hanging up there.
Just then Henry called on the radio. He wanted to know if we could
see the saucer. "Yes!" said Homer. "A lot of people in the square have
already seen it. Better get it out of here."
"We'll give 'em a little show first," said Henry. "Keep your eyes peeled."
8:00 p.m. I think Henry just ignited a couple of the spin rockets. There
are a lot of sparks flying out around it. Yeah! It looks like a Fourth
of July pinwheel up there. Now it's zooming straight up in a spiral. He
must have cut in the lift jets. I think Billy Dahr's trying to pick it up
in a pair of field glasses. He's holding something up to his eyes. Now
he's backing up to get a better view. There's a whole bunch of people
around him. Oops! He fell flat on his back in that petunia bed behind
the bandstand. I don't think the saucer's spinning anymore. Tell Henry
to shut off the beacon light! I can just barely see the thing now. I
think it's heading back over the lake.
8:15 p.m. There are still a lot of people in the square. They're walking
around talking to each other and pointing up in the sky and rubbernecking
all over the place. Some of them will probably stay here all night,
hoping to see the thing again.
And that was the end of the first report on The Flying Sorcerer's
appearance over Mammoth Falls. The rest of the gang back at the zinc mine
managed to recapture it, but only after a pretty hairy chase all over
the top of the ridge. As far as the people in town were concerned, the
saucer just went out of sight when Henry shut the beacon light off. But
he had to turn it on again while the thing was still over Strawberry
Lake, so he could tell how to maneuver the craft back to the mine. The
main trouble was he couldn't tell what direction the nozzles were
pointing when he'd give a signal for another squirt of carbon dioxide,
and sometimes he'd just push it farther off course. Fortunately a light
breeze came up out of the east, and the saucer eventually floated toward
the mine of its own accord. It got caught in a slight updraft just as
it reached the hills, and though Henry let a lot of the helium escape
in a hurry, the thing just kept bobbing up and down in the updraft and
almost popped over the ridge. Just when they thought they had lost it,
one of the grappling hooks caught in the topmost branches of a tall ash
and Dinky shinnied up to tie a line to it.
We decided we wouldn't fly the saucer again until we had added a rudder
over the point where the propulsion nozzles projected from the underside
of the body. This would give it more directional stability, and also
tell us what direction the nozzles were pointing.
The next day the
Mammoth Falls Gazette had the story plastered all
over its front page. MYSTERIOUS OBJECT SEEN IN SKY. MANY RESIDENTS TELL
OF SIGHTING FLYING SAUCER. CONSTABLE DAHR GIVES EYEWITNESS DESCRIPTION
OF STRANGE CRAFT. AIR FORCE PROMISES INVESTIGATION. Freddy Muldoon
brought some copies to the clubhouse so we could cut out the articles
to keep our scrapbook up to date, and Mortimer Dalrymple read them all
out loud. They were pretty wild.
One man claimed the saucer had zoomed off at five thousand miles an hour
when it went out of sight. When a reporter asked him how he could tell
it was moving that fast, he said, "I'm a good judge of speed!" Another
man said the thing was about the size of a house, and it would zoom up
to twenty thousand feet and then come back down again as though it was
looking for a place to land. Several people said that if you looked
straight at the thing it made you feel dizzy, and one man said he was
blinded for about five minutes by an intense beam of light that zapped
him right in the eyes. A woman swore she saw a man jump out of the craft
and parachute down to earth, but nobody else would agree with her. There
were many reports of a loud humming noise coming from the saucer, and
some people commented on a strange smell in the air.
"Hey! That smell's not a bad idea," said Mortimer. "Let's drop a load
of stink bombs next time."
"Maybe we could make the thing cackle and lay a few rotten eggs,"
mused Freddy.
Even Henry laughed at the possibilities this suggested. "That's something
to think about," he admitted, "but it's too early for stunts like that. We
don't want to tip our hand yet."
The next day's paper carried an interview with Colonel March, the
commander at Westport Field. The Colonel said he had made a full report
on the Mammoth Falls "incident" to the Project Blue Book office at
Wright-Patterson Field in Ohio. "It is their job to investigate all
reports of unidentified flying objects," he told the
Gazette,
"and they have promised to send a team of investigators here immediately."
The investigators, headed by a professor of psychology from Columbia
University, showed up that very day, in fact. But they were very
secretive about their investigation. They wouldn't make any statements
for publication, except to say that there was nothing unusual about the
"Mammoth Falls sightings," as far as they could tell. One member of the
team, a professor of physics, said that meteorological records showed
there had been a temperature inversion in the Mammoth Falls area the
day the phenomenon was seen, and that "aerial mirages are not uncommon
under such conditions." This explanation, of course, satisfied no one.
The team spent three days in town interviewing eyewitnesses, many of whom,
we were sure, hadn't seen anything at all. The day after they left town
we flew The Flying Sorcerer again.
On its second voyage the saucer performed well, and Mortimer broadcast
some weird sound effects over the speakers to satisfy those people who
had thought they heard a loud humming noise coming from the craft. But as
soon as the thing was sighted somebody called the Air Force at Westport
Field to report it. The Air Force claimed there was nothing on their
radar, but after they had several calls they agreed to scramble two
chase planes to investigate.
We didn't know what was going on, of course, but we did hear the jets
screaming overhead as they passed over town on their takeoff. We guessed
what it meant, and Homer called Henry on the radio in time to get the
beacon light on the saucer turned off before the planes could circle
back on their search pattern. Henry headed the craft for the hills at
full thrust. From the zinc mine he could see the two jets catch the last
rays of the sun as they banked to return, and he figured there wouldn't
be time to get The Flying Sorcerer back to the hills before they would
sight it. But darkness was closing in fast, and there might be a chance if
he could bring it in low over the lake where it was almost dark as night.
The idea was a good one, but in his excitement Henry let too much helium
escape and The Flying Sorcerer plopped into the lake before it reached
the far shore, with its carbon dioxide fuel exhausted. It floated like
a cork, though, and when we managed to make our way through the dense
woods on the western shore a couple of hours later, we found it sitting
like a duck on a pond about two hundred yards out in the lake. Jeff
and Mortimer swam out and took it in tow, and when they brought it to
shore we nudged it into one of the deep coves that reach back among the
fingers of the hills in that area. We camouflaged it as well as we could
with branches and leaves, and left it there until we could figure out
how to get it back in the air again.
What we didn't know at the time was that the pilot of one of the chase
planes had caught sight of it just before it settled into the murky
shadows below the horizon, and had managed to train his gun cameras on
it. The pilot figured he had the first picture of a flying saucer ever
taken by an Air Force plane, and the Information Officer at Westport
Field lost no time in getting the photo spread across the front page of
the
Gazette the next morning.
If we thought we were causing a stir before, it was nothing compared to
what happened now. Colonel March didn't have to request an investigation
this time. All sorts of amateur "investigators" of flying saucers and
psychic phenomena descended on Mammoth Falls, and the Project Blue Book
officials set up a field office in the Town Hall. The pilot who took
the picture found himself taking lie detector tests. Then he was sent to
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for a mental examination, so none of the
amateur investigators or the press could talk to him. Lieutenant Graham,
the Information Officer, got bawled out for releasing the picture to
the newspaper before the Air Force could authenticate it. Colonel March
found himself right in the middle. He was being harassed by reporters
for a statement, and the Pentagon was telling him to keep his mouth shut.
Nobody knew what had happened to the saucer after the pilot lost sight
of it, and rumors were flying around town that the thing had crashed
in the hills and little green men had been seen trying to thumb rides
from motorists. There was scarcely anybody on the streets after dark,
and Lem Perkins refused to make milk deliveries until after the sun came
up. There was a regular panic among housewives when some dolt started
a rumor that all the hens in the area were laying radioactive eggs, and
Mayor Scragg had to ask the Department of Agriculture to test all the eggs
in the stores. Effajean Lightbody, who is president of the Mammoth Falls
Woman's Club, wrote a letter to the
Gazette asking the Mayor to
put a curfew into effect after eight P.M.; and Abner Sharples, who wants
to be Mayor, told the Lions Club that if he was running the town he'd ask
the Governor to send in the National Guard so people could sleep at night.
During the daytime a lot of adventurous volunteers were scouring
the hills west of Strawberry Lake, hoping to find a crew of Martian
astronauts waiting for an invitation to the White House, but nobody found
anything. Harmon Muldoon, Freddy's cousin, led a group of searchers to
the old zinc mine but we had moved all our radio gear out of there, and
the place looked as abandoned as ever. We figured we'd just lay low for
a while and let human nature take its course. It did, the very next day.
Freddy and I were helping Henry mow his back lawn, when Mrs. Mulligan
called from the kitchen door to say Henry had an important visitor. She
acted all flustered and excited.
"I'll bet I know who that is," Henry said with a nervous little
laugh. "You guys better come in with me."
We went inside to find Colonel March sitting in the big Boston rocker in
Mrs. Mulligan's living room. He looked pretty haggard and his uniform was
a little crumpled, but he was just as cheerful as ever. Mrs. Mulligan was
darting about the room picking up papers and wiping the dust off things
with her apron. "Excuse me," she said, "I'll just be a minute!" And
with that she swept a handful of peanut shells off an end table into
her apron pocket and disappeared into the kitchen.
"I was just driving by and thought I'd drop in and say 'hello,'" said
the Colonel as he got up to shake hands.
"Hello!" said Henry.
"You won't be able to drive much farther," said Freddy Muldoon. "This
is a dead end street."
The Colonel chuckled indulgently and tweaked Freddy's left ear as he
settled back into his seat. Then he looked straight at Henry and said
very casually, "What have you been up to lately?"
"Nothing much," said Henry.
"Nothing much?"
"The same old stuff," Henry shrugged.
The Colonel fished in his pocket for a cigarette. "What do you think of
all the excitement in town?" he asked.
"What excitement?" said Freddy Muldoon.
The Colonel chuckled again and lit his cigarette. "I mean all this
business about flying saucers," he explained.
"Oh, that! Some people are real kooks!" said Freddy.
"What do you think, Henry?"
"I think it's very amusing," said Henry, rubbing his nose.
"Yes, I suppose it is amusing," the Colonel agreed, "but I haven't been
able to get any sleep for three nights in a row now."
"That's too bad," said Henry, clasping his hands over one knee.
The conversation lapsed and the Colonel stared at the ceiling for a while.
Then he shifted uneasily in his seat and started to twirl his hat between
his knees. Finally, he cleared his throat and said, "I was thinking you
boys might be able to help me out."
"We're not much good on insomnia," said Henry.
"Why don't you go see a doctor?" suggested Freddy.
The Colonel laughed again, a little bitterly. "I don't think I need
a doctor," he said. "But if we could cut this investigation short,
I might be able to get some sleep."
There was another silence. In the middle of it Mrs. Mulligan came
bustling in with a cup of tea for Colonel March and a plate of cucumber
sandwiches. "Won't you have a cup of tea, Colonel March? It will do you
good," she said. "You must be a very busy man just now. My, isn't this
flying saucer business a caution, though. Excuse me, I must get my wash
out on the line." And she disappeared into the kitchen again.
The Colonel smiled his appreciation, but looked askance at the sandwiches.
"Cucumber sandwiches?" he said uncertainly.
"Yes! They're very good," said Henry.
"Have one," said Freddy, taking a handful. "They make you burp."
"I might try just one," said the Colonel. "I haven't had time for any
lunch today." He took one sandwich and munched it speculatively. Then
he fastened his light blue eyes directly on me.
"To get back to what we were discussing," he said, "have any of you boys
seen any flying saucers around here?"
I looked at Freddy, and Freddy looked at Henry, and Henry uncrossed his
legs and clasped his hands around the other knee. "What do you mean by
a flying saucer, Colonel?" he asked.
"Well, let's just say any strange object in the sky that you can't
explain."
"No!" said Henry. I breathed a little easier and Freddy reached for
another handful of sandwiches.
The Colonel popped the rest of his sandwich into his mouth and chewed
it thoughtfully. "That's too bad!" he said. "I just hoped you boys might
have some valuable information for me."
Freddy gurgled something unintelligible through a mouthful of sliced
cucumber.
"Yes, I certainly agree!" said the Colonel. "You were right, Henry. Those
sandwiches are awfully good. I think I'll just have another." But his
hand stopped in mid-air as he saw that the plate was already empty.
"You have to move fast when you're at the same table with Freddy,"
said Henry. "Let me get you another from the kitchen."
"Oh, no! Thank you," said the Colonel. "I think I'd better be getting
on now, anyway." And he picked up his hat and strode to the door.
"Whew!" I whistled when the Colonel had gone. "Maybe we'd better lay
low for a while."
"You told a lie!" said Freddy Muldoon, pointing a stubby finger at Henry.
"No, I didn't," Henry protested. "He asked me if I had seen anything in
the sky that I couldn't explain, and I said 'No,' and that's the truth."
Freddy thought this over for a while. "Boy, you ought to be a politician
when you grow up!" he said, finally. "If you ever run for President,
remind me to vote for somebody else."
"I still think we ought to lay low for a while," I repeated.
"I don't know about that," Henry said. "That's just what they'd expect
us to do. If Colonel March really suspects us, and I think he does,
then we'd be tipping our hand by knocking off operations. He'd figure he
had the problem solved, and that he guessed right. If we really want to
obfuscate everybody, the thing we should do is launch The Flying Sorcerer
as soon as we can -- tonight. Nobody would think we'd have the nerve to
do that right after Colonel March came to see us."
"Hey! You just used a forty-eight-cent word," said Freddy. "How do we
obscufate everybody?"
"That's
obfuscate!" said Henry. "Let's just say it means we keep
'em guessing."
Since Harmon Muldoon had led the Project Blue Book investigators to our
operations center at the old zinc mine, we decided we had to become more
mobile. What we needed was a big truck to mount all our equipment in,
so we could move around from place to place. Zeke Boniface, who runs
the most interesting junkyard in town, had just the truck we needed,
so we took him into our confidence.
Zeke's truck, Richard the Deep Breather, is an ancient rig, but he
always manages to keep it running. Not that anyone else could. There
is a mysterious relationship between Zeke and the truck that is hard
to explain. You know how some mechanical things will only respond to
the tinkering of one person? That's how it is with Richard the Deep
Breather. If it weren't for Zeke, the old truck would be part of the huge
pile of rusting junk in his yard, instead of the living, deep-breathing
monster it is. True mechanical genius is a rare gift, and Zeke has it. He
believes in doing things with as little human effort as possible. His
junkyard is so full of labor-saving contraptions that he can run the
whole operation without ever getting off the broken-down couch in his
office if he wants to. It's a fact that Zeke has enough brains to be a
millionaire, except that he'd rather fish.
We mounted all our radio gear in the truck and Zeke picked up the Sorcerer
after we had hauled it from its hiding place in the cove to the Lake Road,
and grove it to the zinc mine well before dusk with Henry, Mortimer,
and Jeff on board. Homer and I stayed behind to monitor the flight of
the Sorcerer from the loft over the Snodgrass Hardware Store.
Dinky and Freddy had a special assignment. Henry figured it might be the
last flight for The Flying Sorcerer, and he wanted Dinky and Freddy to
"obfuscate everybody real good," as Freddy put it. The radio news that
afternoon had carried an announcement by Colonel March. He said his own
investigation had disclosed no evidence of unidentified flying objects
in the area, that the sightings which had been reported had a plausible
explanation, and that he was sending the Project Blue Book investigators
home. In answer to questions, he would only say that he had "solved the
mystery" to his own satisfaction, and that he was reasonably certain
there would be no more UFO reports coming from the Mammoth Falls area.
Henry had gone into one of his blue funks when he heard the broadcast,
and nobody could communicate with him for about fifteen minutes. When
he came out of it, he pulled Freddy and Dinky off to one side and gave
them some rapid-fire instructions. They scooted out of the clubhouse,
where we had been planning the night's operations, and we didn't see
them again until evening.
From where we sat in the loft over the hardware store, Homer and I
could just barely see the high ridge of the hills beyond Strawberry Lake
silhouetted against the fading light of the sunset. In the Town Square,
three stories beneath us, there were the usual late evening strollers
and gossips swapping exaggerated accounts of the day's events, and
rumors of imagined events. The Fire Department crew had set their hoses
out to dry in front of the station during the afternoon, and they were
now busily engaged in folding them back into the racks on the trucks. A
four-piece Salvation Army band was playing hymns rather loudly, and a
little off key, in front of Garmisch's Sausage Shop. Nobody was paying
any attention to them, except two dogs that always hang around in front
of the sausage shop for some reason. They were sitting on the curb,
howling every time the cornet player blew a high note.
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 Garmisch'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.
"Stop here!" I shouted to Zeke, and Richard the Deep Breather shuddered
to a full stall as he slammed on the brakes.
We all scrambled out of the truck, clambered through the barbed wire
fence that separated the road from the pasture, and headed for a clump
of big juniper bushes about twenty yards away. Two more shotgun blasts
split the air, and we stuck our heads up above the juniper to see Joel
Prendergast puffing and stumbling up the slope of the hill, blasting
away at the Sorcerer whenever he could get within range. His wife was
farther down the slope with a big stick in her hand, hoping to scare
off their huge Holstein bull, who was snorting and pawing the ground,
trying to find a way up to where all the excitement was. Their hired
hand was floundering around somewhere to the rear of the bull, managing
to keep out of the action and still look busy.
We crouched there behind the bush, wanting to dash out and save the
Sorcerer, but knowing that we might get a seat full of buckshot if we
did. We watched, helpless, as Joel Prendergast unloaded two more barrels
and blasted a gaping hole in the side of the craft. The last of the
helium escaped with a whoosh, and the once proud Sorcerer came crashing
to the ground. You could hear the bamboo struts snapping loose inside her.
Just then the Holstein bull raised his nose in the air and gave out
with a bellow that left no doubt of his intention. He pawed the ground
twice, snorted loudly, then charged headlong up the slope toward the
Sorcerer. Mrs. Prendergast scampered out of the way, and Joel barely made
it to safety behind an outcropping of granite as a pair of flashing horns
mounted on fourteen hundred pounds of muscle zipped past him and plowed
head on into the fragile silk and bamboo hull. He went right through
it, of course, and it collapsed around him. He was still bellowing
and thrashing around inside the thing, trying to get his horns loose,
when we crawled away from the juniper and made our way back through the
pasture fence.
"What a mess!" said Mortimer Dalrymple, after we had gotten through the
fence. "If that bull had any sense he'd have known that saucer might
be full of little green men with death-ray guns, and all that stuff."
"That's what ignorance will do to you," said Henry. "You can't fool
anybody who's really stupid."
Dinky Poore was blubbering, like he usually does when one of our projects
comes a cropper; but this time it was worse, because he always felt The
Flying Sorcerer had been built just for him and he had a very personal
attachment to it. Homer Snodgrass tried to comfort him, but Dinky pushed
him away.
"Phew! You stink!" he said.
"I do not!" Homer protested.
"Oh, yes you do," said Freddy Muldoon. "You sure don't smell like
no rose."
"I must've stepped in something bad!" said Homer, trying to inspect his
shoes in the darkness.
"I think you sat in it!" said Mortimer Dalrymple. "Just for that you'll
have to ride on the running board. You're not getting in the back of
the truck with
me."
"Me, neither!" said Freddy Muldoon.
So Homer rode home standing up on the running board, while the rest of
us stretched out in the back of Richard the Deep Breather and dreamed
about real flying saucers and imaginary bulls.
Last updated 4 Apr 98 by
max
The Flying Sorcerer
The Flying Sorcerer
© 1968 by Bertrand R. Brinley
Illustrations by Charles Geer
D
INKY P
OORE DIDN'T usually miss
meetings of the Mad Scientists' Club; so when we hadn't seen him around
the clubhouse for four straight days, we figured something was wrong.
"Maybe he deserted, and joined up with Harmon's gang," said Freddy
Muldoon, who was probably Dinky's best friend. "He was pretty gloomy
all last week, and he hardly opened his mouth."
"Stow it!" said Mortimer Dalrymple. "Dinky wouldn't do that."
"I dunno," Freddy persisted. "He was acting kinda cagey, like, and I
haven't laid eyes on him all this week."
"Have you been to his house?" Henry Mulligan asked him.
"Yeah! But he don't answer. I holler through the back fence, like always,
and Mrs. Poore says he ain't there. I think he deserted."
"Baloney!" said Homer Snodgrass. "You always want to make a big mystery
out of everything."
"Well, I ain't no Pollyanna like you!" Freddy blustered.
"Go soak your head!" Homer retorted, as Jeff Crocker rapped his gavel
on the packing crate and called for order.
"What do you think, Charlie?" Jeff asked me. "You always know what to
do with Dinky when he has one of his moods."
"Maybe we could send a delegation around to his house, and find out
what's wrong," I suggested. "Or is that too practical?"
"Seems like the least we could do," Mortimer observed. "After all,
he might be dead."
"Hoh, boy!" Freddy snorted, slapping his palm to his forehead. "I hope
you never donate your brain to science. It would set civilization back
fifty years."
The upshot was that Jeff appointed Freddy and me as a committee of
two to make a formal call at Dinky's house. We went there right after
the meeting.
"Is Dinky sick?" I asked Mrs. Poore, when she answered the door.
Mrs. Poore looked startled for a moment. Then she said, "Maybe he is! I
hadn't thought of that."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, I don't know, exactly," she said, "but he's been acting strangely,
lately. He gets up early, and I pack him a lunch, and I don't see him
again until suppertime -- or sometimes until way after dark. What has he
been doing?"
"That's what we wanted to ask
you," said Freddy.
"Ask
me?" Mrs. Poore looked startled again. "Why? Hasn't he been
with you?"
"We haven't seen Dinky all week," I explained.
"Oh, dear!" said Mrs. Poore, holding the tips of her fingers to her lips.
"Don't tell me -- No! -- I never thought of that!"
Freddy Muldoon screwed his eyes up into tiny slits. "He isn't dead,
is he?"
"Oh! Gracious no!" Mrs. Poore laughed. "Whatever gave you that idea,
Freddy?"
"Just a nutty friend of mine," Freddy shrugged. "Forget it!"
"Well, do you know where he is now?" I asked her.
"I've no idea," she said, putting her fingers to her lips again. "I just
assumed he'd been with you boys all week. You know how it is...." She
hesitated for a moment. "Well, you boys are always busy with some kind
of crazy project -- I mean -- well, I just don't worry about Dinky, even if
he comes in long after midnight, because I know he's working on something
important with all of you, and..."
"Never mind, Mrs. Poore. We'll find out what he's up to!" Freddy
interrupted her. He gave an exaggerated bow and strode off the porch
with me following him.
We knew we could find out where Dinky was, and what he was doing. It was
just a question of how long it would take. Unless Dinky had discovered
some new hideout that none of us knew about, it was just a matter of
checking all our regular haunts until we found him. Jeff ticked off the
spots on our big wall map of Mammoth County in his barn: Indian Hill,
Brake Hill, Memorial Point, the old zinc mine, the quarry, Mammoth Falls,
the old mill on Lemon Creek, Zeke Boniface's junkyard, the old Harkness
mansion, Elmer Pridgin's cabin, Jason Barnaby's apple orchard, and a
dozen other places. Then he split us up into two-man teams (in the Mad
Scientists' Club nobody goes off on a mission alone), and we set off on
our bicycles to look for Dinky.
Freddy and I had already checked out Zeke's junkyard, and were heading
for the apple orchard when we got a call on the radio from Mortimer. He
and Homer claimed they could see Dinky, crouched on top of Lookout Rock
high up on Indian Hill. They had hollered to him from the road, but he
wouldn't answer their call and they were going up after him.
All of us made for Indian Hill, and when we had scrambled to the summit
we found Mortimer and Homer trying to coax Dinky down off the rock. But
he wouldn't budge. He just kept scanning the horizon through a pair of
binoculars and muttering to himself.
"What's the matter with you, you little nut?" Jeff shouted at him, when he
and Henry had arrived. "Come on down here, or we'll come up and get you."
|
|
"Go away!" said Dinky petulantly.
"I'm going to count to ten," Jeff warned, "and if you aren't down here
I'm coming up to get you."
"Come ahead!" Dinky pouted. "I'll kick anybody in the face that sticks
his head up here."
We all looked at each other. Dinky was peering intently at the horizon.
"Let him stay there til he grows up!" Mortimer said disgustedly.
"If you don't come down, we'll vote you out of the club! How do you like
that?" taunted Freddy.
"Yeah!" Mortimer chimed in. "We already voted you 'most likely to secede.'
How do you like that?"
"Very funny!" Dinky said with a yawn.
"Dinky, won't you please tell us what you're doing up there?" Henry
pleaded.
Dinky pulled his eyes away from the binoculars and stared at Henry for
a moment. "I'm looking for flying saucers," he said matter-of-factly.
Everybody laughed.
"Come on, Dinky. Be serious," Jeff prodded.
"I'm looking for flying saucers!" Dinky repeated.
"How many have you seen?" asked Mortimer.
"I ain't seen none yet," Dinky replied. "But I will."
Everybody laughed again. Then Dinky turned his back on us; but not before
we saw a big tear trickle down his left cheek.
"The kid's daft," said Mortimer. "He really means it."
"Look! He's crying. He's crying," shouted Freddy, jumping up and down.
"Shut up! You big fathead!" Dinky blubbered, throwing down a handful of
loose pebbles.
"Wait a minute! Wait a minute!" Henry cautioned. "Let's not get emotional
about it. Dinky, if you stay up there in that hot sun much longer you'll
see flying saucers all right -- and pink elephants too."
"I don't care," Dinky sniffled. "I'm gonna stay here till I see one."
"There ain't no such thing as flying saucers, you nut!" said Freddy
Muldoon.
"Yes there is," Dinky persisted. "You read about them in the paper every
day. People are seeing them all over the country -- everybody except
me. I bet I'm the only person in the whole world that hasn't seen one."
"Cool it, man," said Mortimer. "Flying saucers aren't news
anymore. They're as old as the hills."
"Nuts to you," said Dinky. "They're the latest."
"Oh, yeah? I just betcha people been seein' them things for three thousand
years," Mortimer teased. "I betcha that Arabian that invented the Magic
Carpet started the whole thing. I been told people called him the first
Flying Sorcerer."
Another handful of pebbles came flying down from the rock, and Henry
pulled Mortimer off to one side to talk with Jeff. They whispered together
for a minute, and Jeff and Mortimer nodded their heads.
"Dinky!" said Henry, walking back to the base of the rock. "Will you come
down if we promise you that we'll build a flying saucer -- a real one --
just for you?"
"Honest?" said Dinky, doubtfully.
"Honest!"
"Scout's Honor?"
"Scout's Honor!" said Henry.
"A real flying saucer that will fly?"
"A real flying saucer that will fly!" said Henry.
"That's what I thought you'd do!" said Dinky, and he slid down off
the rock.
Henry was true to his word. He had us all working like beavers for
the next two weeks, building something far better than anything we had
dreamed of. Most of us had thought he was kidding when he told Dinky
we would build a flying saucer that could really fly. But when we found
out what he had in mind, we got pretty excited.
Henry and Jeff drew up some plans for a real monster of a saucer. It was
about twenty feet in diameter and six feet high; shaped like a flat top,
or one of those striped Christmas tree ornaments squashed down. Henry
explained that we would have to build it on the principle of a dirigible,
with a rigid, but very lightweight frame covered with an envelope of
balloon silk. Filled with some of the helium we had left over from our
last balloon expedition, it would have enough lift to stay aloft with
the added weight of a propulsion system and a few other gadgets Henry
had dreamed up to make the experiment more interesting.
We decided to build the thing in one of the old ore car sheds near the
entrance to the abandoned zinc mine up in the hills west of Strawberry
Lake. Nobody except us ever snooped around there, and besides, Henry
figured it would be a good place to operate from once we got the saucer
built.
We had most everything we needed, except material for the frame. Henry
figured that bamboo would be the best thing, because it is tough and light
and easy to work with. But bamboo doesn't grow in our part of the country.
"I know where there's plenty of bamboo," said Freddy Muldoon.
"Where?" asked Jeff.
"I seen a whole load of new fishin' poles -- great big ones -- comin'
in at Snodgrass's Hardware Store."
Everybody turned and looked at Homer. Homer Snodgrass rubbed his nose and
dug the toe of one shoe into the top of the other. "Okay!" he said. "I'll
volunteer to work in the store Saturday morning."
That solved our problem on the bamboo. Saturday morning Dinky and
I sat in the shade in the alley back of Snodgrass's Hardware Store,
along with Freddy Muldoon. Every time Homer had an excuse to go back
to the stockroom to fill an order, he'd throw another fishing pole out
the window, and one of us would lug it down the alley to a vacant lot
where he hid them in the tall grass. Homer had to work a little overtime,
because it took us until two o'clock in the afternoon before we thought
we had enough poles to do the job. Homer's dad was so proud of him for
working past noontime that he paid him an extra fifty cents.
With the bamboo poles we constructed two geodesic domes, twenty feet
across, and then mated the two together to form a flattened sphere. On
top we added a little, fat, circular structure that looked like a tank
turret. Henry explained that the geodesic construction, with mutually
supporting triangles of bamboo lashed together, would give us the
strongest frame with the least amount of material. We didn't need a lot
of supporting braces inside, and could use the rest of our bamboo for
mounting the propulsion system and the other gadgets we wanted to have
on board.
The propulsion system consisted of two large tanks of pressurized carbon
dioxide attached to nozzles which protruded from the underside of the
saucer. There were two sets of nozzles; one set projecting horizontally,
and the other two pointing down at about a forty-five degree angle. With
two solenoid-operated valves for each tank, controlled from a central
relay box, we could exhaust spurts of carbon dioxide gas through either
set of nozzles as a pair, or actuate them individually in any combination
we wanted to. In this way we could make the saucer fly straight ahead,
zoom upward at a sharp angle, or execute a few banks and turns.
"We'll only be able to fly it when it's fairly calm," Henry said,
"because we won't have enough power to buck a strong wind, and we'll
run out of fuel pretty fast."
We mounted a bright green light in the turret, and over it we fitted an
aluminum cylinder with a slit in it. A little electric motor, powered
by a dry cell, would rotate the cylinder just like the reflector for a
lighthouse beacon. We installed a ring of clear plexiglass inside the
turret, and cemented it to the balloon silk that covered the turret. Then
we cut windows through the silk, and we had a first-class spook effect
that would make anyone think the saucer was sending out coded signals.
Around the perimeter of the saucer we mounted twelve spin rockets that
burned a mixture of zinc and sulphur. We could fire any of these by
sending a signal through the command receiver, and make the saucer spin
on its vertical axis. If we wanted to fire them all at once, we could
really create a sensation.
Besides the command receiver, we installed a second receiver for a
voice channel and mounted two speakers in the bottom of the saucer --
"just in case we want to broadcast messages to earthmen," Jeff explained.
"Once we get this thing up in the air, how do we get, it down
again?" asked Freddy Muldoon.
"Good question!" said Mortimer. "That shows you're thinking."
"When I want an answer from you, I'll ask a more stupid question,"
Freddy retorted.
"It so happens that
is a very good question, Freddy," Henry
interrupted. "Because we're going to have to depend on a good deal of luck
to get the thing back down and we may lose it entirely. When and where
we try to fly it will depend a lot on wind conditions. What I hope to do
is launch it from here, give it a little push from the propulsion tanks,
and let it drift out over the lake toward town. It should drift at about
a thousand feet. The zinc mine, here, is about five hundred feet above the
elevation of the town; so we'd have to try and bring it down gradually, by
letting some of the helium escape as we head it back in this direction."
"Pretty hairy!" said Freddy, scratching his head.
"And that's not all of the problem," said Henry. "We want to make it do
a few stunts while it's floating over town; but we have to make sure we
have enough carbon dioxide left in the tanks to push it back here. We
can save fuel if we have a light wind blowing back in this direction. But
if we have a crosswind, we just won't be able to fly it."
"Why not let Freddy ride in it?" Mortimer suggested. "He has a lot of
extra wind."
Henry ignored the comment, and Freddy curled his lip in disdain.
"Then there's the problem of capturing the thing when it gets back here,"
Henry continued. "We might have to chase it all over the hillside, even
if we get it back down to the right altitude; and it might get fouled up
in the trees. It might even miss this ridge of hills and keep on going
toward Claiborne."
"If that happens, we could let all the helium out through the escape valve
and let it crash wherever it wants to," said Jeff. "We could probably
get to it before anyone else could, because we'd know about where it is."
"Seems to me they bring dirigibles down with handlines that they drop
over the side. Why don't we do something like that?" I suggested.
"We'll have to," said Henry. "I guess we could coil a couple of ropes
on the underside of the saucer, and cut 'em loose with the same command
signal that opens the helium escape valve."
"We'll stand a better chance of snatching it if we weight the ropes with
some grappling hooks, and string a few hundred yards of wire between
the trees up on the ridge there," said Jeff.
"Now everybody's thinking," said Mortimer.
"Yeah! Everybody but you," sneered Freddy Muldoon.
"I've been thinking too," said Mortimer, "and I've thought up a name
for this flat balloon. I move we christen it The Flying Sorcerer as a
tribute to my wit."
"I like The Flat Balloon better," said Freddy.
"It's my saucer," said Dinky Poore, "and I vote for The Flying Sorcerer,
because it sounds a lot cornier."
And that was it. We painted the name around the turret, and The Flying
Sorcerer was ready to confound the populace of Mammoth Falls.
For the Sorcerer's first voyage we picked a quiet evening when there
was scarcely any wind at all. It was dusk, and a few puffy white clouds
high in the sky reflected the last rays of the sun as the saucer lifted
off from the old zinc mine and started to drift toward town. We didn't
dare fly the thing in full daylight for fear it would look too phony.
Homer and I were stationed in the loft over his father's hardware store,
where we could get a good view of the Town Square. Henry tends to be
very scientific about things, even when we're just pulling a prank;
so he insisted we take notes of people's reactions in a logbook. He
figured our observations might provide some valuable psychological data
for the people who have to investigate flying-saucer reports. While I
kept watch at the window, Homer sat cross-legged on the floor and took
down everything I described.
7:48 p.m. I can just barely see the thing against that bright spot in the
clouds. I can't see any lights, so they must not have turned on the beacon
yet. It seems to be moving this way, all right. Hey! It looks pretty good.
7:57 p.m. There's a man with a straw hat down in the square. I think he
sees it. He's scratching his head. Now he just grabbed another man and
he's pointing up in the sky. The beacon light just went on. You can see
it flashing around. It looks real weird. Now there's a few people coming
out of the Midtown Grill. One man's got a hamburger in his hand. He
just dropped it in the street. There comes Billy Dahr down the steps of
the Police Station.... No, he's running back inside. The saucer's just
about over the square now. It's just hanging up there.
Just then Henry called on the radio. He wanted to know if we could
see the saucer. "Yes!" said Homer. "A lot of people in the square have
already seen it. Better get it out of here."
"We'll give 'em a little show first," said Henry. "Keep your eyes peeled."
8:00 p.m. I think Henry just ignited a couple of the spin rockets. There
are a lot of sparks flying out around it. Yeah! It looks like a Fourth
of July pinwheel up there. Now it's zooming straight up in a spiral. He
must have cut in the lift jets. I think Billy Dahr's trying to pick it up
in a pair of field glasses. He's holding something up to his eyes. Now
he's backing up to get a better view. There's a whole bunch of people
around him. Oops! He fell flat on his back in that petunia bed behind
the bandstand. I don't think the saucer's spinning anymore. Tell Henry
to shut off the beacon light! I can just barely see the thing now. I
think it's heading back over the lake.
8:15 p.m. There are still a lot of people in the square. They're walking
around talking to each other and pointing up in the sky and rubbernecking
all over the place. Some of them will probably stay here all night,
hoping to see the thing again.
And that was the end of the first report on The Flying Sorcerer's
appearance over Mammoth Falls. The rest of the gang back at the zinc mine
managed to recapture it, but only after a pretty hairy chase all over
the top of the ridge. As far as the people in town were concerned, the
saucer just went out of sight when Henry shut the beacon light off. But
he had to turn it on again while the thing was still over Strawberry
Lake, so he could tell how to maneuver the craft back to the mine. The
main trouble was he couldn't tell what direction the nozzles were
pointing when he'd give a signal for another squirt of carbon dioxide,
and sometimes he'd just push it farther off course. Fortunately a light
breeze came up out of the east, and the saucer eventually floated toward
the mine of its own accord. It got caught in a slight updraft just as
it reached the hills, and though Henry let a lot of the helium escape
in a hurry, the thing just kept bobbing up and down in the updraft and
almost popped over the ridge. Just when they thought they had lost it,
one of the grappling hooks caught in the topmost branches of a tall ash
and Dinky shinnied up to tie a line to it.
We decided we wouldn't fly the saucer again until we had added a rudder
over the point where the propulsion nozzles projected from the underside
of the body. This would give it more directional stability, and also
tell us what direction the nozzles were pointing.
The next day the
Mammoth Falls Gazette had the story plastered all
over its front page. MYSTERIOUS OBJECT SEEN IN SKY. MANY RESIDENTS TELL
OF SIGHTING FLYING SAUCER. CONSTABLE DAHR GIVES EYEWITNESS DESCRIPTION
OF STRANGE CRAFT. AIR FORCE PROMISES INVESTIGATION. Freddy Muldoon
brought some copies to the clubhouse so we could cut out the articles
to keep our scrapbook up to date, and Mortimer Dalrymple read them all
out loud. They were pretty wild.
One man claimed the saucer had zoomed off at five thousand miles an hour
when it went out of sight. When a reporter asked him how he could tell
it was moving that fast, he said, "I'm a good judge of speed!" Another
man said the thing was about the size of a house, and it would zoom up
to twenty thousand feet and then come back down again as though it was
looking for a place to land. Several people said that if you looked
straight at the thing it made you feel dizzy, and one man said he was
blinded for about five minutes by an intense beam of light that zapped
him right in the eyes. A woman swore she saw a man jump out of the craft
and parachute down to earth, but nobody else would agree with her. There
were many reports of a loud humming noise coming from the saucer, and
some people commented on a strange smell in the air.
"Hey! That smell's not a bad idea," said Mortimer. "Let's drop a load
of stink bombs next time."
"Maybe we could make the thing cackle and lay a few rotten eggs,"
mused Freddy.
Even Henry laughed at the possibilities this suggested. "That's something
to think about," he admitted, "but it's too early for stunts like that. We
don't want to tip our hand yet."
The next day's paper carried an interview with Colonel March, the
commander at Westport Field. The Colonel said he had made a full report
on the Mammoth Falls "incident" to the Project Blue Book office at
Wright-Patterson Field in Ohio. "It is their job to investigate all
reports of unidentified flying objects," he told the
Gazette,
"and they have promised to send a team of investigators here immediately."
The investigators, headed by a professor of psychology from Columbia
University, showed up that very day, in fact. But they were very
secretive about their investigation. They wouldn't make any statements
for publication, except to say that there was nothing unusual about the
"Mammoth Falls sightings," as far as they could tell. One member of the
team, a professor of physics, said that meteorological records showed
there had been a temperature inversion in the Mammoth Falls area the
day the phenomenon was seen, and that "aerial mirages are not uncommon
under such conditions." This explanation, of course, satisfied no one.
The team spent three days in town interviewing eyewitnesses, many of whom,
we were sure, hadn't seen anything at all. The day after they left town
we flew The Flying Sorcerer again.
On its second voyage the saucer performed well, and Mortimer broadcast
some weird sound effects over the speakers to satisfy those people who
had thought they heard a loud humming noise coming from the craft. But as
soon as the thing was sighted somebody called the Air Force at Westport
Field to report it. The Air Force claimed there was nothing on their
radar, but after they had several calls they agreed to scramble two
chase planes to investigate.
We didn't know what was going on, of course, but we did hear the jets
screaming overhead as they passed over town on their takeoff. We guessed
what it meant, and Homer called Henry on the radio in time to get the
beacon light on the saucer turned off before the planes could circle
back on their search pattern. Henry headed the craft for the hills at
full thrust. From the zinc mine he could see the two jets catch the last
rays of the sun as they banked to return, and he figured there wouldn't
be time to get The Flying Sorcerer back to the hills before they would
sight it. But darkness was closing in fast, and there might be a chance if
he could bring it in low over the lake where it was almost dark as night.
The idea was a good one, but in his excitement Henry let too much helium
escape and The Flying Sorcerer plopped into the lake before it reached
the far shore, with its carbon dioxide fuel exhausted. It floated like
a cork, though, and when we managed to make our way through the dense
woods on the western shore a couple of hours later, we found it sitting
like a duck on a pond about two hundred yards out in the lake. Jeff
and Mortimer swam out and took it in tow, and when they brought it to
shore we nudged it into one of the deep coves that reach back among the
fingers of the hills in that area. We camouflaged it as well as we could
with branches and leaves, and left it there until we could figure out
how to get it back in the air again.
What we didn't know at the time was that the pilot of one of the chase
planes had caught sight of it just before it settled into the murky
shadows below the horizon, and had managed to train his gun cameras on
it. The pilot figured he had the first picture of a flying saucer ever
taken by an Air Force plane, and the Information Officer at Westport
Field lost no time in getting the photo spread across the front page of
the
Gazette the next morning.
If we thought we were causing a stir before, it was nothing compared to
what happened now. Colonel March didn't have to request an investigation
this time. All sorts of amateur "investigators" of flying saucers and
psychic phenomena descended on Mammoth Falls, and the Project Blue Book
officials set up a field office in the Town Hall. The pilot who took
the picture found himself taking lie detector tests. Then he was sent to
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base for a mental examination, so none of the
amateur investigators or the press could talk to him. Lieutenant Graham,
the Information Officer, got bawled out for releasing the picture to
the newspaper before the Air Force could authenticate it. Colonel March
found himself right in the middle. He was being harassed by reporters
for a statement, and the Pentagon was telling him to keep his mouth shut.
Nobody knew what had happened to the saucer after the pilot lost sight
of it, and rumors were flying around town that the thing had crashed
in the hills and little green men had been seen trying to thumb rides
from motorists. There was scarcely anybody on the streets after dark,
and Lem Perkins refused to make milk deliveries until after the sun came
up. There was a regular panic among housewives when some dolt started
a rumor that all the hens in the area were laying radioactive eggs, and
Mayor Scragg had to ask the Department of Agriculture to test all the eggs
in the stores. Effajean Lightbody, who is president of the Mammoth Falls
Woman's Club, wrote a letter to the
Gazette asking the Mayor to
put a curfew into effect after eight P.M.; and Abner Sharples, who wants
to be Mayor, told the Lions Club that if he was running the town he'd ask
the Governor to send in the National Guard so people could sleep at night.
During the daytime a lot of adventurous volunteers were scouring
the hills west of Strawberry Lake, hoping to find a crew of Martian
astronauts waiting for an invitation to the White House, but nobody found
anything. Harmon Muldoon, Freddy's cousin, led a group of searchers to
the old zinc mine but we had moved all our radio gear out of there, and
the place looked as abandoned as ever. We figured we'd just lay low for
a while and let human nature take its course. It did, the very next day.
Freddy and I were helping Henry mow his back lawn, when Mrs. Mulligan
called from the kitchen door to say Henry had an important visitor. She
acted all flustered and excited.
"I'll bet I know who that is," Henry said with a nervous little
laugh. "You guys better come in with me."
We went inside to find Colonel March sitting in the big Boston rocker in
Mrs. Mulligan's living room. He looked pretty haggard and his uniform was
a little crumpled, but he was just as cheerful as ever. Mrs. Mulligan was
darting about the room picking up papers and wiping the dust off things
with her apron. "Excuse me," she said, "I'll just be a minute!" And
with that she swept a handful of peanut shells off an end table into
her apron pocket and disappeared into the kitchen.
"I was just driving by and thought I'd drop in and say 'hello,'" said
the Colonel as he got up to shake hands.
"Hello!" said Henry.
"You won't be able to drive much farther," said Freddy Muldoon. "This
is a dead end street."
The Colonel chuckled indulgently and tweaked Freddy's left ear as he
settled back into his seat. Then he looked straight at Henry and said
very casually, "What have you been up to lately?"
"Nothing much," said Henry.
"Nothing much?"
"The same old stuff," Henry shrugged.
The Colonel fished in his pocket for a cigarette. "What do you think of
all the excitement in town?" he asked.
"What excitement?" said Freddy Muldoon.
The Colonel chuckled again and lit his cigarette. "I mean all this
business about flying saucers," he explained.
"Oh, that! Some people are real kooks!" said Freddy.
"What do you think, Henry?"
"I think it's very amusing," said Henry, rubbing his nose.
"Yes, I suppose it is amusing," the Colonel agreed, "but I haven't been
able to get any sleep for three nights in a row now."
"That's too bad," said Henry, clasping his hands over one knee.
The conversation lapsed and the Colonel stared at the ceiling for a while.
Then he shifted uneasily in his seat and started to twirl his hat between
his knees. Finally, he cleared his throat and said, "I was thinking you
boys might be able to help me out."
"We're not much good on insomnia," said Henry.
"Why don't you go see a doctor?" suggested Freddy.
The Colonel laughed again, a little bitterly. "I don't think I need
a doctor," he said. "But if we could cut this investigation short,
I might be able to get some sleep."
There was another silence. In the middle of it Mrs. Mulligan came
bustling in with a cup of tea for Colonel March and a plate of cucumber
sandwiches. "Won't you have a cup of tea, Colonel March? It will do you
good," she said. "You must be a very busy man just now. My, isn't this
flying saucer business a caution, though. Excuse me, I must get my wash
out on the line." And she disappeared into the kitchen again.
The Colonel smiled his appreciation, but looked askance at the sandwiches.
"Cucumber sandwiches?" he said uncertainly.
"Yes! They're very good," said Henry.
"Have one," said Freddy, taking a handful. "They make you burp."
"I might try just one," said the Colonel. "I haven't had time for any
lunch today." He took one sandwich and munched it speculatively. Then
he fastened his light blue eyes directly on me.
"To get back to what we were discussing," he said, "have any of you boys
seen any flying saucers around here?"
I looked at Freddy, and Freddy looked at Henry, and Henry uncrossed his
legs and clasped his hands around the other knee. "What do you mean by
a flying saucer, Colonel?" he asked.
"Well, let's just say any strange object in the sky that you can't
explain."
"No!" said Henry. I breathed a little easier and Freddy reached for
another handful of sandwiches.
The Colonel popped the rest of his sandwich into his mouth and chewed
it thoughtfully. "That's too bad!" he said. "I just hoped you boys might
have some valuable information for me."
Freddy gurgled something unintelligible through a mouthful of sliced
cucumber.
"Yes, I certainly agree!" said the Colonel. "You were right, Henry. Those
sandwiches are awfully good. I think I'll just have another." But his
hand stopped in mid-air as he saw that the plate was already empty.
"You have to move fast when you're at the same table with Freddy,"
said Henry. "Let me get you another from the kitchen."
"Oh, no! Thank you," said the Colonel. "I think I'd better be getting
on now, anyway." And he picked up his hat and strode to the door.
"Whew!" I whistled when the Colonel had gone. "Maybe we'd better lay
low for a while."
"You told a lie!" said Freddy Muldoon, pointing a stubby finger at Henry.
"No, I didn't," Henry protested. "He asked me if I had seen anything in
the sky that I couldn't explain, and I said 'No,' and that's the truth."
Freddy thought this over for a while. "Boy, you ought to be a politician
when you grow up!" he said, finally. "If you ever run for President,
remind me to vote for somebody else."
"I still think we ought to lay low for a while," I repeated.
"I don't know about that," Henry said. "That's just what they'd expect
us to do. If Colonel March really suspects us, and I think he does,
then we'd be tipping our hand by knocking off operations. He'd figure he
had the problem solved, and that he guessed right. If we really want to
obfuscate everybody, the thing we should do is launch The Flying Sorcerer
as soon as we can -- tonight. Nobody would think we'd have the nerve to
do that right after Colonel March came to see us."
"Hey! You just used a forty-eight-cent word," said Freddy. "How do we
obscufate everybody?"
"That's
obfuscate!" said Henry. "Let's just say it means we keep
'em guessing."
Since Harmon Muldoon had led the Project Blue Book investigators to our
operations center at the old zinc mine, we decided we had to become more
mobile. What we needed was a big truck to mount all our equipment in,
so we could move around from place to place. Zeke Boniface, who runs
the most interesting junkyard in town, had just the truck we needed,
so we took him into our confidence.
Zeke's truck, Richard the Deep Breather, is an ancient rig, but he
always manages to keep it running. Not that anyone else could. There
is a mysterious relationship between Zeke and the truck that is hard
to explain. You know how some mechanical things will only respond to
the tinkering of one person? That's how it is with Richard the Deep
Breather. If it weren't for Zeke, the old truck would be part of the huge
pile of rusting junk in his yard, instead of the living, deep-breathing
monster it is. True mechanical genius is a rare gift, and Zeke has it. He
believes in doing things with as little human effort as possible. His
junkyard is so full of labor-saving contraptions that he can run the
whole operation without ever getting off the broken-down couch in his
office if he wants to. It's a fact that Zeke has enough brains to be a
millionaire, except that he'd rather fish.
We mounted all our radio gear in the truck and Zeke picked up the Sorcerer
after we had hauled it from its hiding place in the cove to the Lake Road,
and grove it to the zinc mine well before dusk with Henry, Mortimer,
and Jeff on board. Homer and I stayed behind to monitor the flight of
the Sorcerer from the loft over the Snodgrass Hardware Store.
Dinky and Freddy had a special assignment. Henry figured it might be the
last flight for The Flying Sorcerer, and he wanted Dinky and Freddy to
"obfuscate everybody real good," as Freddy put it. The radio news that
afternoon had carried an announcement by Colonel March. He said his own
investigation had disclosed no evidence of unidentified flying objects
in the area, that the sightings which had been reported had a plausible
explanation, and that he was sending the Project Blue Book investigators
home. In answer to questions, he would only say that he had "solved the
mystery" to his own satisfaction, and that he was reasonably certain
there would be no more UFO reports coming from the Mammoth Falls area.
Henry had gone into one of his blue funks when he heard the broadcast,
and nobody could communicate with him for about fifteen minutes. When
he came out of it, he pulled Freddy and Dinky off to one side and gave
them some rapid-fire instructions. They scooted out of the clubhouse,
where we had been planning the night's operations, and we didn't see
them again until evening.
From where we sat in the loft over the hardware store, Homer and I
could just barely see the high ridge of the hills beyond Strawberry Lake
silhouetted against the fading light of the sunset. In the Town Square,
three stories beneath us, there were the usual late evening strollers
and gossips swapping exaggerated accounts of the day's events, and
rumors of imagined events. The Fire Department crew had set their hoses
out to dry in front of the station during the afternoon, and they were
now busily engaged in folding them back into the racks on the trucks. A
four-piece Salvation Army band was playing hymns rather loudly, and a
little off key, in front of Garmisch's Sausage Shop. Nobody was paying
any attention to them, except two dogs that always hang around in front
of the sausage shop for some reason. They were sitting on the curb,
howling every time the cornet player blew a high note.
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.
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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 Garmisch'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.
"Stop here!" I shouted to Zeke, and Richard the Deep Breather shuddered
to a full stall as he slammed on the brakes.
We all scrambled out of the truck, clambered through the barbed wire
fence that separated the road from the pasture, and headed for a clump
of big juniper bushes about twenty yards away. Two more shotgun blasts
split the air, and we stuck our heads up above the juniper to see Joel
Prendergast puffing and stumbling up the slope of the hill, blasting
away at the Sorcerer whenever he could get within range. His wife was
farther down the slope with a big stick in her hand, hoping to scare
off their huge Holstein bull, who was snorting and pawing the ground,
trying to find a way up to where all the excitement was. Their hired
hand was floundering around somewhere to the rear of the bull, managing
to keep out of the action and still look busy.
We crouched there behind the bush, wanting to dash out and save the
Sorcerer, but knowing that we might get a seat full of buckshot if we
did. We watched, helpless, as Joel Prendergast unloaded two more barrels
and blasted a gaping hole in the side of the craft. The last of the
helium escaped with a whoosh, and the once proud Sorcerer came crashing
to the ground. You could hear the bamboo struts snapping loose inside her.
Just then the Holstein bull raised his nose in the air and gave out
with a bellow that left no doubt of his intention. He pawed the ground
twice, snorted loudly, then charged headlong up the slope toward the
Sorcerer. Mrs. Prendergast scampered out of the way, and Joel barely made
it to safety behind an outcropping of granite as a pair of flashing horns
mounted on fourteen hundred pounds of muscle zipped past him and plowed
head on into the fragile silk and bamboo hull. He went right through
it, of course, and it collapsed around him. He was still bellowing
and thrashing around inside the thing, trying to get his horns loose,
when we crawled away from the juniper and made our way back through the
pasture fence.
"What a mess!" said Mortimer Dalrymple, after we had gotten through the
fence. "If that bull had any sense he'd have known that saucer might
be full of little green men with death-ray guns, and all that stuff."
"That's what ignorance will do to you," said Henry. "You can't fool
anybody who's really stupid."
Dinky Poore was blubbering, like he usually does when one of our projects
comes a cropper; but this time it was worse, because he always felt The
Flying Sorcerer had been built just for him and he had a very personal
attachment to it. Homer Snodgrass tried to comfort him, but Dinky pushed
him away.
"Phew! You stink!" he said.
"I do not!" Homer protested.
"Oh, yes you do," said Freddy Muldoon. "You sure don't smell like
no rose."
"I must've stepped in something bad!" said Homer, trying to inspect his
shoes in the darkness.
"I think you sat in it!" said Mortimer Dalrymple. "Just for that you'll
have to ride on the running board. You're not getting in the back of
the truck with
me."
"Me, neither!" said Freddy Muldoon.
So Homer rode home standing up on the running board, while the rest of
us stretched out in the back of Richard the Deep Breather and dreamed
about real flying saucers and imaginary bulls.
Last updated 4 Apr 98 by
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