"What are the flying stingarees?" he asked quietly.
Scotty shifted position in his chair and looked at Rick quizzically.
"You don"t expect an answer. But I can tell you a few things they are not."
"Tell away," Rick urged.
"They are not flying saucers, aircraft, kites, sting rays, birds, fish, or good red herrings. Beyond that, deponent sayeth not, as the legal boys say."
"Uh-huh. And why are they not flying saucers?"
"For the same reason they"re not aircraft. If you recall all the talks with people who"ve seen them, they don"t maneuver, and they don"t travel very fast. They appear--or they"re noticed, let"s say--and they just get smaller and smaller until they vanish. They move, but not much."
Rick nodded. "The circle we drew around all the sightings doesn"t cover a very large territory. All the sightings have been within that circle.
People had to look toward Swamp Creek to see the objects. Yet, they did something interesting. They grew smaller. What makes things seem to grow smaller?"
"Apparent size decreases with distance," Scotty replied promptly.
"Sure. And how do you get distance, when the sightings are all within a circle only a few miles in diameter?"
"Only one way. With alt.i.tude. The things had to be going up."
Rick agreed. "That"s how I figure it, too. It also explains why the circle of sightings is so small. Above a certain alt.i.tude, the objects are no longer visible. Or they"re not so visible that they attract attention. I suppose we could work out some calculations. How large an object can be seen readily at what distance? Then we could apply a little trigonometry and figure their size."
"We could," Scotty agreed, "but do we need to? Let"s a.s.sume the object you saw was typical. How big was it?"
Rick thought it over. He had had only a quick glimpse, and the background had been the gray of the storm. His vision had been obscured because of the rain. "Maximum of ten feet across and maybe eight tall.
It was probably less."
"Okay. So the reason sightings are confined to this area is because the objects are fairly small. When people see them, they"re relatively close, and fairly low. Even the small planes that fly from the airfield are much bigger than the flying stingarees, but when the planes go over at about five thousand feet, they seem tiny. At that alt.i.tude the flying stingarees must be at the limit of really good visibility."
"I read you loud and clear. So the objects are sent from Calvert"s Favor, and they climb. They don"t climb straight up, though. The wind carries them. The reason I think so is that the one I saw must have been driven by the wind, right down the creek toward me. It didn"t climb until it got away from the funneling effect of the creek and into the river, then it went up pretty fast. At least it seemed to have risen fast when I looked over the top of the boat at it."
Scotty crunched an ice cube. "We"re getting somewhere. There"s only one kind of unpowered, vertical rising thing I know of. Are you with me?"
Rick finished his drink. "Balloon," he said crisply.
"On the beam," Scotty approved. "The only thing that doesn"t fit is the shape."
Rick asked, "What"s a balloon? It"s just a gas-tight container. We"re used to thinking of balloons as spheres, because it"s the most efficient shape for internal pressure. But a balloon can be any shape. Another thing--balloons for high alt.i.tudes aren"t fully inflated on the ground.
Maybe the flying stingarees have a different shape when they get higher and in less dense atmosphere where the gas distends them."
"An odd shape could be used as camouflage, too, if you didn"t want people to recognize the balloon. But why would a strange a.s.sortment of characters like Merlin and company send up balloons?" Scotty wondered.
Rick smiled. "I"ve been wondering that myself. Would they send up a balloon that didn"t carry something?"
"I don"t know. Was the one you saw carrying anything?"
Rick sat upright. "Maybe it was! You know, I haven"t even thought of it since then, but I think there was a splash when it went by. Something sort of clanged off the rail over me, even if it didn"t dent the rail.
Do you suppose the thing dropped its payload right next to us?"
"You"ll have to decide that," Scotty said. "If you heard something bounce off the rail, then a splash, I"d say there might be a pretty good chance that"s what happened. I couldn"t see any marks on the rail when we looked." They had checked the rail during the first day at Steve"s.
Rick closed his eyes and made himself remember what it had been like when he went down the catwalk to the bow. His mind drew a picture, and he saw himself bent forward into the wind. In his memory he felt the slashing rain, the slipperiness of the wet anchor line. He could visualize the water whipped into dimpled wavelets by wind and rain. He saw the flying stingaree loom, and saw himself dropping flat. There had been a clang as something hard hit the rail! There _had_ been a splash!
He went over it again, searching his memory for details he had forgotten or which had only registered vaguely at the time. He studied the shape and texture of the object he had seen so briefly. He saw its red eyes open and glare at him, saw the extended claws reaching....
He came out of his chair with a yell, arms extended to defend himself.
Scotty stood next to him in the darkness. "Hey, take it easy, Rick! I didn"t think I"d startle you so when I shook you."
Rick stared. "Did I fall asleep? I must have. I was trying to remember, and suddenly I was dreaming about red eyes and claws--"
Scotty laughed softly. "If you"ve got to have nightmares, at least do it in comfort. Let"s go to the boat and go to bed."
Rick dreamed no more of the flying stingarees. In the morning he couldn"t have said what his dreams had been about, except that they had been pleasant.
In the bright glare of morning, the whole thing seemed dreamlike. It was preposterous to imagine that flying objects, probably balloons shaped like stingarees, were launched from a famous mansion that dated back to the days of the early Maryland colony. But the sighting data couldn"t be ignored. Dreamlike or not, something strange was going on at Calvert"s Favor.
The boys breakfasted in the farmhouse, reducing Steve"s supply of eggs substantially and wiping out the bacon reserve. "We"ll have to shop sometime today," Rick observed. "Steve has plenty of food here, but we don"t want to use it when there"s a store so close."
"Sure," Scotty agreed. "But when? It may have to wait until we go after Steve. We can"t very well leave the house, or at least both of us can"t.
Ken Holt might call."
Rick nodded and poured himself a cup of coffee. He had thought of that.
They had to give Ken time to get the picture and check it out. By the latest, they should hear before noon--unless the job turned out to be very difficult. That would leave four hours before they would have to leave the house to pick up Steve. Four hours was time enough for the investigation Rick had in mind.
After breakfast they settled down with the data sheets and notebook to review them once more. But only one additional fact emerged. Two people thought, but weren"t absolutely sure, that they had seen a spurt of fire from the flying stingarees. Rick wondered if they had seen a sudden flare of sunlight from some highly reflective part of the object.
It was two minutes before nine when the phone rang. Both boys jumped, but Rick got there first. "h.e.l.lo?"
"Rick? ... This is Ken. Why don"t you give us something hard to do? The envelope arrived three minutes ago, and I was just taking the picture out when Sandy walked in. He took one look and asked what I was doing with a snapshot of Lefty Camillion. The hair is white and the mustache is gone, but it"s Lefty."
Rick gasped. "My sainted aunt! Of course! I should have known it myself."
"There"s more. Sandy recognized Lefty"s small friend too. This is an odd one, Rick. The man is Dr. Elbert K. Drews. He was fired six months ago by s.p.a.ce Electronics Industries. It was a big story for us, because the plant is located in the next town. The reason he was fired came out during the monopoly investigations. Turned out he had been selling the firm"s industrial secrets to its compet.i.tors. It was a shock, because he had such a big reputation as an electronics wizard. He got some kind of national prize a year ago for developing a new high-speed system for something. Let"s see--here"s my note. It says, "Dr. Drews was the originator of a new and unusual system for the rapid telemetry of data from s.p.a.ce. The system is considered remarkable for its compactness and speed of operation. The ground installation is scarcely larger than a console-model television set." Hope that means something to you, Rick."
"Thanks a million, Ken. It seems to fit, but I"m not sure how."
"Let us know if you find out. And if we can do anything else, you know the phone number."
"We"ll call if anything comes up. Thanks again, Ken."
Rick hung up and stared at the phone thoughtfully, trying to fit this new information into the scheme of things. Scotty had been sitting on the edge of his chair since the conversation started. He said, with some exasperation, "Well? Out with it!"
"Mr. Merlin is Lefty Camillion. His pal is an electronics wizard who was fired by s.p.a.ce Electronics Industries for selling industrial secrets to the firm"s compet.i.tors." Rick rapidly sketched in the rest of the conversation.
Scotty sank back into his chair. "His hair was black, and now it"s white. He must have been keeping it dyed, and decided to go natural. And he shaved off that mustache. Probably that was dyed black, too."