A lot of trouble might have been saved if things had worked out as Eddie
had planned. And, yet, if they had, the mystery of the missing
blueprints and the stolen radioisotope might never have been cleared up.
Hurrying home through the darkness, Eddie went over in his mind the
story he would tell his father. Perhaps it didn’t mean a thing. Perhaps
his imagination simply was running wild, as his father had hinted. He
had to admit to himself that he was prone to build rather normal
incidents into deep mysteries. He had always been that way.
Even allowing for that, however, Eddie still believed there was a strong
possibility that the events of the past weeks might tie in with the
stolen radioisotope; perhaps even with the missing blueprints from Acme
Aviation.
Right in the middle of those events the figures of the two men—Simms and
Roy Benton—kept looming up in his mind. Anyway, he thought he should
tell his father about it and let him decide whether there could be any
possible connection.
It was not, however, to be that way. Upon arriving home well after dark,
Eddie found his mother both irked and worried over his late return.
“You didn’t even ask me if you could go,” she scolded. “And you know
better than to be getting home at this late hour.”
“I—I’m sorry, Mom,” Eddie said meekly. “I didn’t know I would be gone so
long.”
Mrs. Taylor turned from the stove where she was warming his dinner.
“After you eat,” she said firmly, “I want you to go right to bed. No
television.”
It was a mild enough punishment, Eddie thought, and didn’t argue. His
father would not have been so lenient. He looked around. “Where’s Dad?”
he asked.
“Your father phoned a while ago,” his mother explained. “He’ll be home
late. Feed Sandy now; then wash up for dinner.”
Eddie opened a can of dog food, went outside, and spooned half of it
into Sandy’s dish. Capping the can with a plastic cover, he put it in
the refrigerator, then went to wash.
After dinner he kissed his mother good night and went straight to his
room. He lay in bed, going over in his mind the recent events. He
listened for his father’s arrival. He had hoped somehow to evade his
early-bedtime punishment long enough to tell his story to his father.
But he hadn’t counted on his tiredness. He fell fast asleep long before
his father came home.
The sound of the car backing out of the driveway awakened Eddie the
following morning. He washed and dressed quickly. Perhaps his mother had
gone to do a bit of early shopping. It was Saturday. Probably his father
would be home for the day. Now might be Eddie’s best chance to tell him
what had been running through his mind.
Hurrying into the kitchen, he found his mother at the dinette table
having a cup of coffee.
“Hi, Mom. Where’s Dad?” Eddie asked.
“He just drove out, Eddie,” his mother said. “He had to get over to
school early.”
“But it’s Saturday.”
“Saturdays haven’t been very restful for your father lately, have they?”
his mother said. “He has an appointment with some people from Washington
D.C. this morning.”
“About the stolen radioisotope?” Eddie wondered aloud.
“Might be,” his mother said. “He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.”
“Didn’t ask?”
“Eddie,” his mother said firmly, “the theft of that isotope is pretty
serious business. Your father is handling it the best he can. He’ll tell
us what he wants us to know. It is not our part to be asking questions.
You try to remember that, dear.”
Eddie didn’t say anything. He knew his mother was right. He was greatly
disappointed, though, that he hadn’t had the chance to talk to his
father.
Eddie was finishing breakfast when Teena telephoned.
“We’re going to Cedar Point today, aren’t we?” she asked.
“I—I guess so,” Eddie said.
“You guess so? But Mr. Anderson is holding a boat for us. This is
Saturday, you know.”
“I know.”
“Well, we should get started,” Teena insisted. “It’s some row out to
Cedar Point.”
“Hold on a minute,” Eddie said. “I’ve got to ask Mom.” He turned and
explained their plans to his mother.
“It’s all right, Eddie,” Mrs. Taylor said. “But no getting home late
like yesterday, understand?”
“Don’t worry, Mom,” Eddie promised. “We’ll start early, and get back
early.” Then he spoke to Teena.
“I’ll be right over,” Teena replied, “soon as I make us a little picnic
lunch.”
Eddie got the Geiger counter out of the closet. He told his mother how
he had been wanting to try it out on Cedar Point. He told her about the
dream he had had.
“Well, I guess you never can tell,” Mrs. Taylor said. “According to your
father, uranium ore often shows up in most unlikely places.”
“Cedar Point isn’t so unlikely, Mom,” Eddie said. “There are lots of
rock formations out there. Uranium ore is usually located where there
are plenty of rocks.”
When Teena arrived Eddie was all set to leave. He wore swimming trunks
under his blue jeans. Teena said she also had her bathing suit on in
case they had to swim home.
“Well, you children be careful,” Eddie’s mother cautioned. “The bay’s
usually nice and smooth, but it can get pretty choppy. If it does, you
head straight for shore, understand?”
“We will, Mrs. Taylor,” Teena promised.
Eddie’s mother smiled. “Be back no later than four o’clock,” she said to
Eddie.
“Right.”
“But you don’t have a watch, Eddie,” Teena said.
“I can tell by the sun,” he said proudly, then added, “pretty close,
anyway.”
Eddie carried the Geiger counter and Teena the picnic lunch as they
started toward Anderson’s Landing.
Although it was a nice sunny day for fishing, there were still several
rowboats tied up at the landing. Mr. Anderson was in his little office
at the foot of the dock.
“I’ve been expecting you,” he said. “Saved you a nice light pair of
oars, too.”
“Swell,” Eddie said. “Thanks, Mr. Anderson.”
“Take boat Number Eighteen,” the owner said. “She rides high and is
leakproof. What’s that gadget you’ve got there?”
“It’s a Geiger counter, Mr. Anderson,” Eddie said. “We hope we’ll find
some signs of uranium out on Cedar Point.”
“That the stuff you make atom bombs of?” Mr. Anderson said, with a note
of disapproval in his voice.
“You can make bombs of it,” Eddie admitted, “but nowadays scientists are
more interested in running machinery and curing diseases with it.”
“That’s the kind of thing I like to hear,” Mr. Anderson said, smiling.
“In that case, good luck.”
Soon, with Eddie at the oars, they started toward distant Cedar Point.
Eddie set the course in a line which cut at an angle across the bay. As
they were crossing the submerged sand bar, Teena pointed shoreward.
“Eddie, look,” she said.
Resting on the oars and following the direction of Teena’s finger, Eddie
saw that they were directly offshore from the cove. He also saw the
orange-and-white rowboat pulled up onto the beach.
Of even more importance, he saw two men making their way carefully down
the narrow trail which zigzagged down the face of the bluff. Even from
the distance, Eddie saw that one man was tall and thin, the other short
and fat.
“It’s those two men!” he exclaimed.
“Of course. But don’t get so excited,” Teena said. “They’re probably
just coming out fishing.”
“Coming from where?” Eddie asked. He knew there was only one place to
come from—the shack. Then he remembered that Teena didn’t know about his
visit to the shack yesterday.
“Well, anyway,” Teena said, “let’s get away from here before they come
out to fish over this sand bar. They sure would think we were spying on
them if they found us out here. I hope they don’t see us now.”
“To far away for them to tell who we are,” Eddie assured, sharing
Teena’s dislike of meeting the two men again.
Eddie started to turn back to rowing, when the flash of sun on metal
caught his eye. He knew at once that one of the men was carrying that
metal cylinder which he had seen yesterday evening in the shack, and
which he had puzzled over so long. He would like to have stayed and
gotten another look at it; that is, if the two men were coming out to
fish over the sand bar again. Yet Teena’s warning about getting away
seemed the wiser move. Eddie bent to the oars.
Less than an hour later he guided the boat onto the narrow beach at
Cedar Point.
“Phew!” he said, mopping the sweat from his forehead. “That’s a lot of
rowing.”
“It was a swell ride, Eddie,” Teena said. “I’ll row back if you want.”
“You’re a girl,” Eddie said importantly, which seemed to close the
subject about Teena doing the rowing. But Teena did help him drag the
boat up onto the beach beyond the high-water mark.
“Now to find some uranium,” Eddie said, picking up the Geiger counter.
Before starting inland to explore the point, however, he shaded his eyes
and looked back across the bay. In the far distance he could barely make
out Anderson’s Landing. Quite a few boats dotted the bay in between.
Directly in line between Cedar Point and Anderson’s Landing was the
light strip of water marking the submerged sand bar. There was only one
boat over the sand bar.
“Those two fellows are fishing in that same place again today,” Eddie
said. “They don’t seem to learn, do they?”
“Let’s not worry about them,” Teena said. “Let’s start prospecting. We
promised to be home by four. It’s a long trip back.”
The wind-swept point offered difficult hiking. Fallen trees and tangles
of underbrush slowed their progress. They had to keep on the lookout for
poison ivy.
“If leaves there are three, leave it be,” Eddie said, remembering the
familiar warning. They gave wide berth to the irritating vine whenever
they saw it.
Eddie left the Geiger counter switched on much of the time. The way led
over the rocks. There was no way of telling, except by the Geiger
counter, if any of the rocks were radioactive. The results, however,
were quite discouraging. Except for the faint background count, the
Geiger counter gave no sign of there being any uranium-bearing ore on
Cedar Point.
After a tiring hour and a half of hard climbing over and around the
outcroppings, Teena suggested they stop and eat their picnic lunch.
“Might as well,” Eddie said. “Sure doesn’t look like we’re going to find
anything out here. Lot of trouble for nothing, huh?”
“Oh, no, Eddie,” Teena disagreed. “We’re having fun aren’t we? After
all, you’re supposed to have fun during vacation.”
“Be better, though, to have fun and find some uranium, too,” Eddie said.
Teena laughed. “You sure do want everything,” she remarked.
Eddie switched off the Geiger counter. They found some shade under a
wind-twisted oak and ate their lunch. Eddie glanced at the sun. “It must
be one o’clock,” he said. “Guess we’d better be starting back. The water
will be a little choppier than this morning. Won’t be so easy to row. I
don’t want to get home late, or my mom will scalp me.”
“Let’s go,” Teena said. “Anyway, we’ve done enough prospecting out here
to know there’s no uranium around.”
On the way back to the boat Eddie tried out the Geiger counter in a
couple of places they had missed. The results were the same—negative. He
put the Geiger counter into the bottom of the boat, pushed the boat into
the water, and jumped in after Teena.
A slight breeze angling in over the bow made rowing difficult. Less than
halfway across the bay, Eddie’s arms and shoulders began to ache.
“Eddie,” Teena said from her seat in the stern, “why don’t I sit there
beside you and row with one of the oars? We’ve done it before. Just give
me a little time to get the swing of it.”
“O.K.,” Eddie said tiredly.
Teena moved up beside him on the wide center seat and took the starboard
oar handle in both hands. After a couple minutes of splashing and going
in circles, they settled down to pulling together smoothly and evenly.
“Hey, this is the best deal,” Eddie admitted.
“You see,” Teena said, “even girls can be some help.”
Eddie smiled. As they were approaching the near end of the under water
sand bar, he craned his neck around.
“Good,” he said, “those two men have gone, so we won’t run across them
again.”
They kept pulling together. The water turned light in color as the sun
reflected off the yellowish sand lying a scant ten feet beneath the
surface.
Suddenly Teena stopped rowing. “Eddie,” she said, “what’s that?”
“What’s what?” Eddie asked, resting on his oar.
“That clicking.”
“Clicking?”
He heard it then, almost beneath the seat. He glanced down.
“Yipes!” he exclaimed. “I—I forgot to switch off the Geiger counter
before I put it in the boat. Boy, if the battery is weak, Dad’ll—”
He reached toward the switch. His hand stopped in mid-air. The needle of
the radioactivity gauge was quivering far over to the right, and the
clicking which had attracted Teena’s attention was much louder and
faster than the normal background count.
“Teena! There—there’s radioactivity around here!”
“In the water?”
“No. Maybe underneath the water. Maybe on the sand bar. This is a
sensitive Geiger counter. It could pick it up all right.”
“Hey, the clicking’s getting weak again,” Teena said.
“We must be drifting away from whatever is causing it,” Eddie said. He
moved the Geiger counter up onto the seat between them. He put the
earphones on. “Now let’s kind of circle around here and try to pick it
up again.”
With nothing but a broad expanse of water and no marker to guide them,
trying to locate the spot where the Geiger counter had sputtered to life
was anything but easy.
“Eddie, I think we’re getting farther away all the time,” Teena said ten
minutes later.
“But if we don’t find it now we might never find it again,” Eddie said.
“Just a little more. Pull easy on your oar. We’ll circle to the left
and—Hey, there it is!”
The rapid clicking through the headset filled his ears. “Hold ’er
steady,” he said. He crawled quickly to the bow of the boat, lifted the
heavy concrete anchor over the gunwale, and eased it down onto the sand
bar with the Manila line attached.
“There. We won’t lose it now,” he said.
“Lose what, Eddie?”
“Whatever’s making the Geiger counter act up,” Eddie said.
“This would be an awful wet place to have to mine for uranium,” Teena
said.
“It could be done,” Eddie insisted. “Boy, we must be right over it.
Listen to those clicks. And look at that needle jump around.”
Teena looked over the side. “It looks to me like plain old yellow sand
down there,” she said.
“Might be some uranium-bearing rock under it,” Eddie said. He leaned
over his side of the boat. Although the sand bar was not far below, the
water was somewhat murky, and the ripples on the surface made it
difficult to see anything on the bottom. “Might be a tough job getting
at it, all right, but—”
The rest of the words died in Eddie’s throat, as a glint of metal
flashed in his eyes.
“Teena, there—there’s something down on the sand bar!”
“What do you mean, something?”
“Something bright. Like metal.” Eddie put his face as close to the water
as he could without falling out of the boat. “I can see it now!” he
exclaimed. “It’s about two feet long. Two or three inches thick. It
looks round, and—”
“Eddie!” Teena said. “The metal tube you saw that day in the rowboat.
You know, the day we came across those two men at the cove. Remember?”
“I remember,” Eddie said, for the thought already had sprung into his
mind.
Now two other thoughts crowded in behind it. Both were puzzling thoughts
which left his mind reeling.
What was the metal tube doing there below on the sand bar? Why, above
all things, was it sending out radioactive rays?