Bertrand R. Brinley Read online

  Freddy wasn't around when the meeting started, but he came busting in now, all out of breath after running all the way from his house. "The jig is up, fellas," he announced. "I think Harmon has snitched on us!"

  We all started questioning Freddy at once, of course, and Jeff had to rap for order so that we could get the story straight. It seems that Harmon had been up early in the morning, fiddling with his ham radio outfit, and had picked up Freddy's bellow coming over the air. He recognized it as the sound the monster made, and he knew that it couldn't get on the air unless the monster was sitting next to a microphone.

  "Holy smoke!" said Mortimer, slapping himself on the forehead. "We should have had brains enough to change all our frequencies after Harmon left the club. He knows which ones we use."

  Freddy explained that Harmon had then gone to the local newspaper and told a reporter what he suspected, in the hopes of claiming the reward. The editors didn't intend to print his story until they had more proof, but they were certainly going to investigate his theory. Freddy got all this information from his father, who works in the composing room.

  It didn't take us long to make a decision after getting this news. Mortimer had made good friends with one of the out-of-town reporters on the beach. His name was Bud Stewart and he wrote for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which we knew was a big newspaper. So Jeff and Mortimer went to see him, and told him the story after he had agreed to a proposition. He got his home office to agree to buy the club an oscilloscope and a ten-channel transmitter for our lab, in return for exclusive pictures of the monster. Then we all sat down with Mr. Stewart and mapped out a plan of action.

  Early the next morning we took him to our hiding place and uncovered the monster for him so he could take pictures of it. He also wanted to get some pictures of the beast in action, of course, so we planned to take it out for an excursion that very night. We figured that if we waited any longer Harmon Muldoon would have time to show the local newspaper people how to get a fix on the location of our transmitters by tuning in our frequency from two or three different places. Mr. Stewart went out to the airport to hire a helicopter. He planned to fly over the lake just before dusk, and when we saw him we were to unleash the monster.

  That night we were all in our positions early, just in case Mr. Stewart misjudged the time. It seemed like a long wait, but he finally appeared and waved to us from the helicopter. We had the beast all ready and started her out to the open water. Those of us who had to stay back in the cove couldn't see what happened next, but we could tell, from all the shouts and the way the helicopter was flying, that this was the monster's most triumphant appearance. We got all the details later, including a look at Mr. Stewart's pictures.

  The reporters who were camped on the island were ready for us this time, and three boatloads of them appeared as soon as the monster got out there. They had newsreel cameras mounted in the boats, and they were only about half a mile from the beast when Jeff gave the order to head her back to the cove. But Henry couldn't make her do a tight enough turn, and she started back on the far side of a large island that lay across the mouth of the cove. This island is a huge granite mountaintop that rises up out of the water as high as a hundred feet in some places. Once the beast got behind this mass, Henry lost contact with her, and for a few moments she was running free. For some reason the monster doubled back on its tracks, and to everyone's amazement shot out from behind the island again, heading straight for the boats of the pursuing cameramen. Incredibly, the beast suddenly gained speed and went roaring full throttle at the tiny boats now less than a quarter of a mile away.

  The newspaper men in the boats had been busy signaling their crewmen on the shore to turn on the big searchlights, and they didn't notice that the monster had reversed its course until it had closed almost half the gap between them. When they did turn to see it bearing down on them, with nostrils spouting spray and the red eyes blinking, panic broke loose among them. All three boats suddenly turned to head back for the safety of the beach. One of them nearly collided with another and had to turn so sharply that it capsized, spilling its occupants and its gear into the lake. There had been five men in the boat, and when they rose to the surface they swam frantically for the nearest island.

  Henry and Mortimer, meanwhile, were pushing buttons and flipping switches so fast that the two of them looked like a centipede with a case of poison ivy. But no matter what they did they couldn't regain control of the beast. Suddenly Mortimer shouted, "Harmon Muldoon must be transmitting on our frequency, and he's got a stronger signal than we have! He's got the thing jammed at full throttle. Cut the receiver, Henry!"

  Henry threw the emergency switch that cut off the power supply to the main receiver inside the beast. She slowed down so suddenly that the head almost went under water. Freddy was so excited that he gave out with a big "Hooray!" that sounded like the battle cry of a raging bull elephant. You could hear the screams of the people on the beach, as they heard it come out of the loudspeaker.

  "Switch to the alternate receiver now!" cried Mortimer, and Henry did so. This one operated on a different frequency, and Mortimer had insisted on installing it in case something went wrong with the main one. Since Harmon Muldoon couldn't know we were changing frequencies, it was not very likely he could jam this one too.

  The beast started back toward the cove like a docile cow coming home for supper, and the searchlights on the beach came on, finally. But all that the watchers on the shore could see was the tail of the beast disappearing in the darkness.

  It was about two hours later that we met Mr. Stewart at Martin's Ice Cream Parlor to discuss what we should do next. The local radio station had just announced that Mayor Scragg had asked the Governor to get the Navy to fire depth charges in the lake in the hope of killing the monster. The reporters and cameramen stranded on the little island had been rescued by a police launch, but they were mad as wet hens and had apparently convinced the Mayor that the beast was a menace to the public health and safety.

  We went back out to the lake that night and stripped all our equipment out of the beast, including Jeff Crocker's canoe. We mounted her frame on an old raft that someone had abandoned on the shore. Then we towed her far enough out in the lake so that she would be visible from the shore in the morning, and anchored her there. We hung a wreath of pine cones on her neck, and Henry and Mortimer rigged up some kind of a diabolical device inside her.

  As soon as it was light in the morning we all climbed up to the place on the hillside where our transmitters were located. We could see a few people on the beach looking at the beast through binoculars, but nobody was taking any boats out. When the sun started to peep over the ridge at the east end of the lake, Henry pushed a button and a lot of smoke came billowing out of the monster. All of a sudden she burst into flames that climbed about thirty feet high, and a big column of black smoke went up into the sky. When the smoke had cleared away there was nothing left on the lake but a dirty smear of oil and a few pieces of black debris and that was the last that anyone ever saw of the strange sea monster of Strawberry Lake.

  We packed up our gear and started for home; and Dinky Poore, who is the youngest member of the Mad Scientists' Club, started to cry a little bit as we were trudging through the woods. Since the monster had really been his idea in the beginning, I guess he felt as though he had lost a close relative. But Jeff told him he could have two votes the next time the club had a meeting, and he had stopped blubbering by the time we got home.

  The Big Egg

  (c) 1961 by Bertrand R. Brinley

  Illustrations by Charles Geer

  IF HARMON MULDOON had been sneaking around The Mad Scientists' clubhouse one night last August, he would have seen the whole bunch of us sitting around the table staring at a grisly-looking object about the size of a football. As events turned out, he probably was, because we aren't sure to this day whether there isn't a prehistoric creature roaming around in the swamps north of Strawberry Lake.

  "H
ow old did you say that thing was, Henry?" asked Freddy Muldoon. Freddy was staring bug-eyed at the thing, with his elbows on the table and his fingers pushing his fat cheeks up around his eyeballs.

  "It's probably about a hundred and fifty million years old, give or take a few million years," said Henry Mulligan.

  Freddy's eyes bulged larger. "There isn't anything that old," he said. "That's older'n Methuselah!"

  "That's right!" said Henry, matter-of-factly.

  "What on earth are we going to do with it?" mused Dinky Poore, blinking his eyes and yawning.

  "I don't know yet," said Henry, as he wiped his glasses. "I've got an idea, but I want to do a lot more research first."

  "In that case, I think I'll go home to bed," said Dinky, slipping off his stool.

  "Me too!" said Freddy Muldoon.

  Whenever Henry says he has an idea, we know it's time to start catching up on sleep. He'd had us out all day digging for fossils in the old quarry back in the high hills west of the lake, and we were all dog-tired. We picked up the greenish-gray object that was sitting on the table and packed it carefully in a box of sawdust. Henry ran his hand slowly over its crusty surface before we put the lid on.

  "Better lock it in the safe," he said.

  Then we all went home to ponder over the thing that Henry said was a dinosaur egg. Dinky Poore had a good point. After all, what do you do with a dinosaur egg besides look at it?

  But while the rest of us slept that hot August night, Henry Mulligan was very busy. What he was up to, none of us would have imagined in our wildest dreams. And it set in motion a chain of events that still has everyone in town confused.

  "Hey, gang, I've got a great idea!" cried Dinky Poore, as he burst into the clubhouse the next day. "Why don't we set up a tent in Homer's front yard and charge ten cents a peek to look at the egg?"

  "Crazy!" said Freddy Muldoon, who was munching sunflower seeds in the corner. "I'll bet we could almost make a million. Everybody in town would want to see it."

  But Homer Snodgrass shook his head. "I've got a better idea," he said to Dinky. "Why don't we put the tent in your front yard and charge two bits?"

  "My old man wouldn't like it. That's why!"

  "That's parents for you," said Freddy, with his chin in his hand. "Always standing in the way of progress."

  "You've got the wrong idea," said Henry, quietly. "This is a scientific curiosity. It may be an important discovery. You don't make money from a thing like that. Everybody's got a right to see it, and it's our duty to let the scientific world know about it."

  "I guess that's why there are no rich scientists," said Freddy Muldoon.

  Henry unlocked the safe and brought out the egg. It looked strangely different in the daylight, somehow. Not half so grisly.

  "It seems a lot lighter than it did last night," said Dinky Poore, as he took it out of the box and laid it on the table.

  "That's because you were tired," said Henry, "and we had to carry it a long way. You're stronger this morning."

  "I guess so," said Dinky, feeling both his muscles. Dinky is always feeling his muscles, because he has the smallest ones in the club. Come to think of it, I guess that's why Freddy is always rubbing his belly. He has the biggest stomach in the club. Dinky's always wishing his muscles would get bigger, and Freddy's always wishing his waistline would shrink.

  We helped Henry develop the pictures we had taken of the egg the night before, and we put them in a package with the loose shell fragments we had found near it. Mortimer Dalrymple, who is the only member of our club who can make the typewriter work, typed out all the dimensions and the weight of the egg, and Henry ran off to the post office to mail the whole works to some museum in New York City that he said knew all about dinosaurs. When he got back he told us what he thought we should do with the egg.

  "I guess we'll have to give it to some museum," he said, "because it might turn out to be an important discovery, but I'd like to conduct a little experiment first."

  "What's that?" asked Mortimer.

  "I think we ought to try and hatch it!" said Henry.

  Jeff Crocker dropped his gavel on the door and strode over to open the door and let a little air into the clubhouse.

  "Henry, as president of this club, I want to know if you've gone off your rocker?" he said.

  "You mean hatch a real dinosaur?" asked Dinky Poore.

  "What else would come out of a dinosaur egg?" Henry observed.

  "That egg doesn't look very fresh to me," said Homer, looking at it critically.

  Jeff Crocker mopped his brow and sat down again. "Henry, I thought you said this thing was over a hundred and fifty million years old?"

  "It probably is. But the sand around the Salton Sea is full of shrimp eggs that are over two thousand years old. You can buy them in hobby shops and in chemistry sets. All you do is put them in water and they'll hatch in twenty-four hours. If an egg doesn't die in two thousand years, when does it die?"

  "When it stinks!" said Homer Snodgrass.

  Dinky bent over and sniffed the big egg. "It does smell kind of funny," he said.

  "What on earth do you feed a real dinosaur?" asked Freddy Muldoon.

  About an hour later we were trudging through the low swamps that wind among the hills north of Strawberry Lake. This was where we had hidden the lake monster when we were building it. Almost nobody ever goes there except berry pickers, and there are a lot of places that nobody has ever explored. I guess we know the swamps as well as anybody, and even we don't ever venture into the more remote areas.

  We were picking our way carefully along a tangled path that wound around the bottom of a hill, when all of a sudden some rocks came tumbling down the slope and we heard something scurrying off through the bushes. Jeff crept up through the undergrowth and took a look around, but said he couldn't see anything.

  "Must have been a fox," he speculated.

  "Maybe it was a member of the IES spying on us," said Mortimer Dalrymple.

  "What's the IES?" asked Freddy, his eyes bulging.

  "That's the International Egg Syndicate," said Mortimer in a low voice. "They're a dangerous band of criminals that specialize in stealing dinosaur eggs from museums and selling them to private collectors all over the world."

  "Oh, knock it off, Mortimer!" Jeff muttered. "You read too many kooky books and watch all the wrong TV shows."

  "Well, you can't be too careful these days," said Mortimer. "There're all kinds of international agents running around in the bushes."

  Henry led us to a boggy area deep in the recesses of the swamp where a spit of pure white sand jutted out from the tail end of a small hill. It was mostly covered with blueberry bushes, but Henry picked out a sandy clearing near the bog and we buried the big egg there near the water, about a foot deep in the sand. We drew some lines in the sand to the edge of the clearing and placed stone markers there so we could locate the exact spot again.

  "How long does it take a big egg like that to hatch?" asked Dinky.

  "Nobody knows," said Henry, "That's one of the things we aim to find out. It would be an important contribution to paleontology."

  "Watch your language!" said Freddy Muldoon. "I heard that."

  "Would it take a year?" asked Dinky.

  "Nobody knows," said Henry.

  Dinky and Freddy weren't about to wait a year, however. They were back out in the swamp the next day to check on the egg, and when they got back into town they ran all over looking for the rest of us. They found Jeff and me at Henry's house, helping him wash the family car.

  "The egg's gone!" Freddy cried, as soon as he spied us.

  "It 'steriously disappeared!" chimed in Dinky.

  "Is that so?" Henry said, cool as a cucumber.

  "How do you know?" Jeff asked them.

  "We dug it up, and it's not there."

  "How could you dig it up, if it isn't there?" Henry asked, still scrubbing a tire.

  "Aw, c'mon, Henry. You know what I mean," said Freddy,
kicking the tire and getting his dirty fingers all over the trunk of the car.

  "I'll bet Harmon Muldoon stole it," said Dinky, jumping up and down. "I'll bet it was him out there in the bushes that kicked those rocks down."

  "Maybe we'd better go out there," said Jeff, looking at Henry.

  "I suppose so," Henry answered. "Hand me that other brush."

  "Well, let's get going," said Dinky, impatiently. "This old car can wait."

  "Tomorrow morning'll be time enough," said Henry, as he hosed down the front of the car. "If the egg's already gone, nobody can steal it."

  "Tomorrow morning?" Freddy exclaimed. "Aw, nuts! You gonna fiddle while Rome burns, I suppose!"

  "Who's burning, besides you?" said Henry, spraying him with the hose.

  "O.K., you old fiddler crab!" said Freddy.

  The next morning we did make our way out to the sandpit again, but everything seemed to be normal. The markers we had left were still in place and the ground looked undisturbed.

  "Somebody's been out here again!" said Dinky. "Freddy and I dug a big hole right there, looking for the egg, and somebody has filled it in."

  "Well, let's just see if the egg is here now," said Jeff.

  We drew lines out from the markers and started digging at the point where they intersected. The egg was there, all right, just as we'd left it, though it didn't look as though it had made much progress toward hatching. Everyone turned and looked at Dinky and Freddy.