The waiting again, then Deadrock called once more, excitement in his voice. "Tom, there"s another vehicle of some kind coming in from Steamboat."
"Good! How are you fixed?"
"We can handle a regiment. Scotty is going down around the mesa to cut them off in case they try to run for it. Hank is going down on the base side. How important is it for Careless Mesa to track the shoot?"
John Gordon gave Preston the answer. "Not important enough to risk not catching all of them. The other stations are tracking."
"Get "em," Preston ordered.
"Right. Soon as it"s a little lighter. We don"t want one wriggling away in the dark."
Rick looked outside. Dawn was just breaking. It would be light enough in ten minutes. The ten minutes took an hour to pa.s.s. Then he had to wait ten more, until Deadrock came back on the air.
"They"re all yours, Tom. I fired a shot and they looked up. Then Scotty and Hank fired over their heads from each side and they saw they were trapped. They upped hands, polite as you please, and we moved in to put the cuffs on."
Scotty elaborated later. Deadrock had waited until some of the stolen goods had changed hands before firing his warning shot. That was for purposes of evidence.
Pancho and Mac maintained a stony silence, but Dusty Rhoads was eager to talk. The other two had threatened to kill him, he claimed, and had forced him to steal. No one believed this, but Dusty"s tale at least showed the connection between Miller and the thefts.
Pancho had stumbled across evidence that Miller was the Earthman, Dusty said. Dusty didn"t know what the evidence was, and Pancho refused to tell him. But when Big Mac heard about it, he accused Miller, and promised to keep silent in exchange for co-operation. He demanded to be told when a shoot was to be sabotaged. Miller agreed, in exchange for part of the profits. Mac, Pancho, and Dusty had not partic.i.p.ated in any way in the sabotage.
The other men, who had captured Rick and Scotty at Steamboat, proved to be well-known thieves with prison records. One admitted they had depended on Mac and Pancho to tip them off to any trap that might be waiting, but of course Preston had made sure no inkling reached Mac and Pancho that they were under suspicion. For that reason, the thieves had driven without hesitation to Careless Mesa to pick up the latest batch of stolen equipment--and had received the shock of their lives.
Rick thought that the trail of the Earthman had been a pretty devious one, complicated as it was by a gang of thieves as well as the saboteur himself.
He wondered briefly if Miller"s ident.i.ty would ever have come to light if he hadn"t been trapped in the rocket. But the next moment he realized it would have, eventually, because the thieves were known, and at least the janitor would have talked.
Rick and Scotty still had their jobs. Both had done well in their a.s.signed work, and could have stayed on indefinitely. But in spite of the temptation to remain for a while, the call of Spindrift was strong.
As Rick said, "It"s nice to travel, but one thing that makes it nice is that we can go back home."
A letter from Barby had made him a little homesick. Everyone was fine.
Dismal was lonesome. Jan Miller was back, with her parents. Dad was worried because he hadn"t heard from Tony Briotti and Howard Shannon, but that was probably just the slowness of mail. Barby urged them to hurry back and hoped they were finding life dull enough so they would.
She and Jan needed instruction in sailing, because they had just bought a new Comet-cla.s.s sailboat.
The boys said farewell to their friends at Scarlet Lake, not forgetting Prince Machiavelli, and returned to Spindrift two days after the successful Cetus shoot.
Back at Spindrift they spent their time instructing the girls in proper sailing technique, but Rick still had to avoid exertion, and he couldn"t swim because his arm was still bandaged. Then, one day the Brants"
family doctor announced that he was fine, and a bandage was no longer needed.
Barby looked at the scar on Rick"s forearm and her eyes opened wide.
"Rick! That was a terrible cut! How on earth did you get it?"
He couldn"t tell her the real story. He had been instructed by his father not to mention it, even to Barby. "It was pretty exciting," he said. "It happened when they let me fire a rocket."
"You fired a rocket?" Barby gasped.
"Sort of," Rick said. "I lit the fuse. I didn"t jump back far enough, though. The tail fin clipped me as it went by."
For a long while Barby wasn"t sure whether Rick"s story was true or not.
She didn"t know whether the big rockets had fuses. When she found out by questioning Dr. Zircon, she asked Scotty to remind her not to talk to Rick for twenty-four hours.
But before the day was over, Rick was packing, in company with Scotty and Dr. Zircon, for an emergency trip to the Sulu Sea. Their mission: find two missing Spindrift scientists!
What happened during the search will be told in the next exciting book of Rick"s adventures: THE PIRATES OF SHAN.
_The_ RICK BRANT SCIENCE-ADVENTURE _Stories_
BY JOHN BLAINE
THE ROCKET"S SHADOW
THE LOST CITY
SEA GOLD
100 FATHOMS UNDER
THE WHISPERING BOX MYSTERY
THE PHANTOM SHARK
SMUGGLERS" REEF
THE CAVES OF FEAR
STAIRWAY TO DANGER
THE GOLDEN SKULL
THE WAILING OCTOPUS
THE ELECTRONIC MIND READER
THE SCARLET LAKE MYSTERY