by John Blaine
The best he could do was to promise to call Steve about it and perhaps get permission
for future trips.
The Sky Wagon landed at Whiteside pier, and the trio went to the nearby garage where the Brants’ car was kept. Hartson Brant had decided it was more convenient to have a car available for use at all times than to depend on taxis, or on friends.
The local sporting goods store had a good stock of equipment and Barby was able to purchase what she wanted without difficulty. But when it came to the bathing suits, she debated over the large selection for an hour before choosing two that were identical except for color. Rick and Scotty waited impatiently, now and then prodding Barby to hurry up. She refused to be hurried.
Back at Spindrift, Jan met them with a greeting. “That certainly didn’t take long! Barby, how on earth could you pick these out so quickly?”
The boys looked at each other. Their opinion was that Barby had taken just one hour longer than necessary. Here, obviously, was that mysterious thing, the feminine mind at work. Rick examined the problem from the scientific viewpoint and got nowhere. The ways of girls defied analysis.
Both boys had to admit, however, that the results of Barby’s shopping had been worth the delay. Their own rather shabby swim trunks, torn and stained from contact with undersea rocks and coral, suddenly seemed sloppy. But when Barby examined the aqualung tanks distastefully and demanded that Rick paint them to match the new suits, both boys put their feet down emphatically.
“The tanks are that color because they’ve been treated to withstand rust and corrosion,”
Rick stated. “If we paint ‘em, the paint will only get knocked off and they’ll look terrible. I won’t do it.”
The girls exchanged a glance that seemed to say, “Boys! They have such stubborn, silly ideas!”
Jan had already gone through the exercise of clearing the aqualung hoses of water, clearing her mask while using the lung underwater, and using the reserve lever on the tank, and Rick had instructed her in the theory of diving.
Now it was time to put what she had learned to the ultimate test.
The boys hauled the equipment down to the beach in Rick’s old coaster wagon,
modified for carrying equipment,then directed the girls to check the regulators, check the tanks, and connect regulators to tanks preparatory to diving.
They lolled on the beach and watched. Scotty grinned. “This is the life. Tony Briotti tells me it’s always this way in primitive societies. The men loaf while the women work.
I’m in favor of it.”
“I’m sure you are,” Barby said acidly.
Jan said nothing, but continued to work with meticulous care. Rick watched closely, and was satisfied. There was ample equipment for all. Scotty helped Barby into her gear while Rick instructed Jan.
“This is the tough part. If you make it, that’s the end. From then on all you’ll need is practice. We’ll all swim down to the fifty-foot depth. Watch your ears and don’t try to continue down if you feel any pain. Go back up a few feet and try to clear your ears.
When we get to the bottom, I want you to take off all your equipment, swim away from it,then swim back and put it on. Okay?”
Jan gave him a tremulous smile. “I think so.”
“Good. Plan how you’ll do it. Remember, air is the last thing you’ll need, and the first.”
“I’ll remember.”
It was easy enough for a diver with plenty of experience, and the confidence that experience brings, but Rick remembered from his own training that it was plenty rough the first time.
He held the tank while Jan got into harness and said reassuringly, “You’ll make it.
You’re a natural for diving because you don’t lose your head. That’s just about the only really dangerous thing a diver can do.” He got into his harness,then picked up his movie camera in its underwater case.
At his signal, the four waded out into the cold water, splashed around a little to get accustomed to it, then put mouthpieces in place and prepared to don masks. Rick waited until last, and called, “Everybody getting air?” When they nodded, he put his own mouthpiece in place, checked to make sure the demand valve was working, then slipped the mask down from his forehead and went underwater.
There was a convenient sandy space among the rocks at the fifty-foot level. He reached it and turned to count noses. All were present. Visibility was good enough. He set his camera and took a position cross legged on the sand. Barby and Scotty took similar positions and waited.
At Rick’s signal, Jan slipped off her fins, which she placed carefully on the sand. Her weight belt followed, then her mask. Rick kept the camera going as she jerked the quick release buckle on her harness,then pulled the tank over her head, keeping the mouthpiece in place. At the last moment, she filled her lungs with air, let the mouthpiece drop to the sand, and swam away. Rick followed as she went about twenty feet into the rocks, and returned.
Jan had planned well. She picked up the mouthpiece and held it high so the air rushed out, then she popped it into her mouth and began breathing. She didn’t bother with the tank harness yet. Instead, she picked up her mask, adjusted it, and blew it clear. Only then, when she could see and breathe, did she leisurely put the harness straps in position and swing the tank over her head and into place on her back. She buckled it on, and added her weight belt. The fins were last.
A flume of air from her exhaust, a sign of exhaustion, told Rick that Jan was tired.
Probably the mental strain more than the exercise had left her too weak for further swimming. He slung the camera from a belt hook, took her hand and shook it solemnly, then led the way back to the beach.
After a short rest the others were anxious to go back in again, but Rick vetoed the idea.
“We could,” he admitted, “and probably no harm would come of it. But skin diving is the easiest thing in the world to overdo. Jan is tired. And she’s excited, even if she doesn’t look it. This afternoon, after we’ve had a little rest, we can come back again and just have fun. There won’t be any strain on Jan then, because she passed the last test with flying colors. So she can swim without worrying whether she’s meeting our standards, or doing it the way we think it ought to be done.”
He grinned at the girl. “I know it was a strain. Remember, we’ve all been through it, too.”
Jan had a nice smile. “You’re right,” she admitted. “I was so scared I wouldn’t do it correctly! Then, when I knew that it was all right, I sort of fell apart.”
Barby arose. “Come on, Jan. Let’s go shower and change.” She smiled with false sweetness at the boys. “Now that you’re through testing Jan, I’m sure you won’t mind doing your own work. ‘Bye, now.” And she left them to pick up the gear and truck it back to the laboratory building where it was kept.
Rick got to the shower first,then stretched out on his bed to wait for Scotty. It’s a fine day, he told himself. All is well. JANIG has the island covered like a blanket. The project team is going full speed ahead. We’re having fun. Jan is just the companion
Barby needs. All’s right with the world.
He turned over on his stomach and bunched his pillow up more comfortably. Then why, he asked himself, did he still feel funny?
Scotty came in from the shower, toweling vigorously. “What’s eating you?” he
demanded.
Rick turned over and stared at his pal. “Is it that obvious?”
“It is to me. What’s up?”
“I don’t know,” Rick admitted. “Wish I did. Have you noticed how quiet everything is?
It’s like the day before a hurricane moves in. The ocean gets glassy, and there isn’t any wind, and you’re almost afraid to breathe because the air is so charged a breath might start the lightning.”
“ ‘Thecalm before the storm,’” Scotty quoted. “Maybe it is. I feel it a little, too. But what can we do?”
Rick shrugged as expressively as one flat on his back could manage
.“Nothing. We can swim with the girls, and we can keep working on the radio units. But there isn’t a single thing to do so far as the project goes. I wish there were. I feel left out.”
Scotty grinned. “You’re never really happy unless we’re up to our hips in trouble or a mystery. I know what’s really bothering you. A fine, fat mystery is afoot and you haven’t a shred of it you can call your own.”
Rick had to grin back. There was much in what Scotty said. As long as the mystery of the two scientists remained unsolved, he wouldn’t be really happy.
CHAPTER VII
The Peripatetic Barber
“We’re trapped here,” Barby said stormily, “and I want you to do something about it, Rick Brant! If you don’t call Steve Ames and get permission for us to go to the mainland, I’ll do it myself!”
Rick sighed. He had tried to point out that Barby was being illogical. Neither the
Morrisons nor the Brants were trapped anywhere. It was just that common sense required the Morrisons to be careful.
Barby drove home another point. “Steve gave us a cover story, and what good is a cover story if you don’t use it?”
Scotty grinned at Rick’s expression of resignation. “Better give up,” he advised.
Jan hadn’t said anything. She just looked at Rick in a beseeching way that said as much as all Barby’s arguments.
Rick shook his head unhappily. He knew when he was licked. Come right down to it, he didn’t have the say so on Jan leaving the island, anyway. He had taken a stand against her going to Whiteside, based half on intuition and half on the knowledge that a secret soon ceases to be one when it’s flaunted in public. And Jan’s presence was a part of the big secret of Spindrift.
He stood up and shrugged. “Chances are it will be all right. But if Jan is recognized by any of theenemy . ”
“Steve isn’t even sure there is an enemy,” Barby pointed out swiftly. “How can you be so sure?”
Rick didn’t answer. He turned and went into the house, the others at his heels. In the library, he consulted the schedule Steve had given them, so they would know where to reach him at any time. The agent was at JANIG headquarters inWashington today.
Rick got the number, and asked for Steve’s extension. In a moment he had the agent on the wire.
“Let’s scramble,” he said, and threw the switch. Then, “Steve, Barby wants to take Jan to Whiteside. What do you think?”
Steve hesitated before he answered, “It’s a little hard to give reasons why she shouldn’t go, Rick. Have you checked her on the cover story?”
“Not yet. I will, though, if you say the word.”
Again Steve hesitated, and Rick knew the agent was very much in his own position.
There were no reasons to believe it would do any harm.Yet . . .
“Let her go,” Steve said finally. “Only ask her and Barby not to get into any public
parades. You know.”
“I know,” Rick affirmed. “All right, Steve. When is Marks coming?”
“We’re not certain yet. Ask your father. Marksis having some trouble with the computations.”
“Okay, Steve. See you soon.” He hung up and turned to the others. “He says all right, but please don’t get into any public parades. In other words, Barby, don’t cover too much territory.”
Scotty spoke up. “We’d better tell Duke and Jerry to leave it out of the paper.”
Duke Barrows was editor and Jerry Webster the reporter for the Whiteside paper. Both were good friends. “They’ll play ball,” Rick agreed. “Well, young ladies, when is the big safari?”
Barby consulted her watch.“Right now. We’ll dress and you can fly us over.”
“Then right now means in an hour. Okay. We’ll be ready.”
Upstairs, Rick and Scotty washed up and changed into what Scotty called “shore-going clothes” that were only slightly less informal than their dungarees and T shirts. As they finished and sat down to wait for the girls, Rick picked up one of the radio units on the workbench. All were finished, although untested. A few final decorative touches remained for Barby’s plastic headset, including setting in some rhinestones for her. It would look like any other plastic bauble when he finished.
“Let’s get some fresh batteries while we’re in town,” Rick suggested. “Then we can check these out tonight.”
“Okay. And remind me to pick up a new mouthpiece for the lung Jan uses. She says the one that’s on it now is too big and uncomfortable. It hurts her mouth.”
Jan had become proficient under water with only a few hours practice. Rick had led the girls through the entire series of underwater maneuvers with the lungs, including practice in sharing one lung between them. He was satisfied that they both had a thorough understanding of team swimming and enough sense to stay out of at least the more obvious troubles novices can get into. He was content now to let them go off on their own, which they did fairly often.
After Rick’s estimated hour the girls were ready -except that Barby had to make a phone
call. She spent another fifteen minutes arranging a small get-together at a friend’s home to introduce Jan to her chums.
“Now,” she said brightly. “We’re ready. Are you?”
Rick wisely refrained from comment.
Ten minutes later the four were in the Brants’ car, en route to Barby’s destination. Rick dropped the girls off and arranged to pick them up in two hours,then he turned the car toward town.
“Let’s visit Duke and Jerry,” he suggested.
Scotty looked at him. “Still bothered, aren’t you?”
Rick shrugged. It was hard to pinpoint the way he felt. He tried to put it into words.
“I’ve talked to the scientists, including Parnell Winston. None of them has ever heard of an ailment like the thing that struck the team scientists. Winston especially knows a lot, because he’s studied the human brain extensively. He doesn’t even know of anything similar.”
Scotty knew all this because he had been present. But talking aloud helped to make things clearer, so he only commented, “And where does that leave us?”
“At the starting line.We haven’t moved an inch forward. But at least, if medical history seems to have no record of any such cases, we can assume that something new and different caused the scientists to go off the beam.”
“Yes, but if some enemy caused it, how was it done?”
“Glad you asked that,” Rick answered gloomily. “Wish someone could answer.
Anyway, we know why it was done-if it was done. It was to cause trouble with the project. That would be important enough for an enemy to go to a lot of trouble.”
Scotty shook his head. “The thing that sticks in my craw is, how come only two of the scientists got hit? Why wasn’t the same thing used on the others? If anything was used, that is.”
Rick was bothered by the same point, and he had no answer-nor did Steve Ames, with whom they had discussed the problem.
To both boys, the puzzle was more than just an interesting problem to be solved. If
some enemy really had penetrated the project and somehow caused disruption of the scientists’ brains, then the people nearest and dearest to both of them were also in jeopardy. Spindrift now provided three out of five for the new project team.
Rick swung into the main street and into the public parking lot. The Whiteside Morning Record was in the heart of town, only a block away. Next to the parking lot was a hardware store where Rick planned to buy batteries, and diagonally across the street was theSportsCenter . Nothing in Whiteside was far from anything else; it was a typical small town.
It took only a moment to buy a box of batteries; they were the type used in hearing aids.
Then the boys crossed the street to theSportsCenter . Extra mouthpieces for the lungs were in stock. They chose one that seemed softer and smaller than the regulation models,then started for the newspaper.
Two doors away from theSportsCenter was the town’s only barbershop.
As they passed, Scotty suddenly grabbed Rick’s arm and said hurriedly, “Come back!” Quickly he led the way out of sight of the barbershop windows.
Rick looked at him curiously. “See something?”
Scotty’s forehead wrinkled. “I think so. But it’s so unlikely that I’m not sure. Rick, I thought I saw the barber from Washington-the one with the massage machine!”
Rick focused the monocular on the barbershop
Rick’s mouth opened in astonishment. “You’re kidding!”
Scotty shook his head. “I’m not. I said I wasn’t sure. But I don’t want to stand in front and look, because if it is the barber, he’d recognize us.”
Rick thought quickly. “Come on.”
Back inside theSportsCenter , he went to the manager and borrowed a powerful
monocular-a pocket telescope that was really one half of a pair of binoculars. Then he and Scotty went across the street, taking care to keep out of sight of the barbershop by using parked cars as cover.
Rick found a vantage point behind a sedan that had all its windows open. He focused the monocular on the barbershop window.
Vince Lardner, the shop owner and-until now -the sole barber, was cutting the hair of a
man Rick recognized as a local resident. A second barber was cutting the hair of another local man, but the barber had his back to the street for the moment.
Rick waited patiently. Scotty asked, “See anything?”
“Only his back.Wait a minute.”
Presently the barber spun the chair around and walked to the sink. In a moment he turned and his face came into view in the tight close-up the powerful glass provided.
Rick sank his teeth into his lip and handed the glass to Scotty wordlessly.
The pieces were beginning to fall in place now, and the assumption that the project had been penetrated was a long step closer to proved fact.
TheWashington barber had come to Whiteside!
“Wonder what he’s after?” Scotty asked.
“One thing is for sure,” Rick stated grimly. “He isn’t here just to cut hair!”