Danny Dunn and the Weather Machine (5 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Lemonade Clue

The laboratory in the back of Professor Bullfinch's house had its own private entrance. As the three made their way to it, Mrs. Dunn stuck her head out the kitchen window.

“Hello, wanderers,” she called. “Anyone for a little snack?”

“In a few minutes, Mom,” Danny answered. “We've got some work to do in the lab, first.”

“All right. Oh—Danny.”

“Yes, Mom?”

“Don't make a mess in the laboratory. I've just had a wire from Professor Bullfinch. He'll be back tomorrow.”

Danny stopped short. “Tomorrow?”

“Yes, he said he might be back in time for lunch, if he could make an early plane. Isn't that good news?”

“Er—yes. Yes, it sure is,” Danny stuttered. He pulled open the laboratory door and fairly flew inside.

“We've got no time to waste,” he told the others. “Give Joe the nozzle, Irene.”

She had been carrying it all this time, and now passed it over. With shaking hands, Joe screwed it back in place. Irene aimed the machine at the sink, once again, and told Joe to turn on the faucet. Then she threw the switch.

Nothing happened. There was no sign of the pale beams, no sign of cloud or moisture.

Danny gave a yelp and sank down in a chair.

Irene wrung her hands. “What'll we do?” she wailed.

Danny pulled himself together. “I'll have to break my promise to myself again,” he said piteously. “Help me, Joe. Let's get it up on the lab bench.”

Between them, they lifted it to the stone surface. The back plate of the machine was held on by six screws. Danny got a screwdriver and unfastened them. He lifted the plate off.

Inside was a tangle of wires, tubes, and oddly shaped pieces of apparatus. Danny looked at it hopelessly.

“Even if I had seen this before,” he said, “I wouldn't be able to figure out what's wrong. We're in trouble.”

“I expected it.” Joe leaned back against the edge of the sink, and folded his arms. “Now what?”

“It's all my fault,” Danny groaned. “I should never have touched it. This is what always happens—I jump into things without thinking, and then—boom! Why don't I ever learn?”

“Aw, take it easy, Dan,” Joe said, looking sympathetically at his friend. “Even the Professor said that scientists have to be curious.”

“Yes. And curiosity killed this cat—I mean, this machine,” said Danny bitterly. “What'll I tell the Professor? Gosh, I don't know. I don't know what to do.”

He rubbed his face hard, as if that way he could start his ideas percolating. “I'll take another look inside,” he said, but without much enthusiasm. He put his hands on the sides of the machine and pushed it straight, so that the work light would shine more directly into it. Then he said, “Ow!”

“What's the matter?” Irene asked.

“I cut my finger on something.” He popped his finger in his mouth. Slowly, a strange expression spread over his face. He removed his finger and stared at it.

“Is it bleeding?” Irene said. “I'll get a bandage.

“Just a second,” said Danny.

“What is it?”

“Well, you're not going to believe this, but my blood tastes like lemonade.”

“What?” Joe cried.

Irene said, “Oh, I know why. 'Tisn't blood. Don't you remember last night when Mr. Elswing came to visit us? You were so startled, you dropped your glass of lemonade and it spilled all over IT. That's what's on your finger.”

Danny was already inspecting the machine's metal case, and mumbling to himself. Then he said, “Aha!”

“Aha?” said Joe. “Is that good or bad?”

“Both.” Danny pointed to the side of the case. “This is all smooth metal. I wondered where I could have cut my finger. Now I see —there's a crack in the metal, right here.”

“A crack?” said Irene. “Ah—when Vanderbilt grabbed the wagon, and it fell over. Right?”

Danny snapped his fingers. “If the case is cracked, something inside may be broken.”

“Here we go again,” Joe muttered.

Paying no attention, Danny peered into the maze of machinery. Wires led from the knife switch on the back plate to a six-volt wet-cell battery inside. Danny reached in, and slid the battery out.

“I was right!” he chortled.

Irene bent over to look at the battery. On the top of it were three plastic caps which covered the openings to the battery cells. When these caps were removed, distilled water could be poured into the battery. One of the caps was cracked almost in two.

“You see,” Danny went on, “when the case fell off the wagon, it must have hit the rock and cracked. This cap broke at the same time, and the acid spilled out of the cell of the battery. I'll bet you anything, that's why the machine won't work.”

“It's worth trying,” said Irene. “Is there another battery around?”

“Look on those bottom shelves,” Danny directed. “I'll unhook the cables.”

He did so, and Irene quickly found another battery and brought it over. Danny fastened the cables to it, and put it back in place. Without bothering to refasten the back plate, he closed the switch.

“There!” said Irene. “The tubes are glowing.”

“You're right. We're back in business.”

“Now, I wonder—” Irene began.

She was interrupted by a muffled cry from Joe.

He was waving his arms helplessly. The two rays met at his head, and from the neck up he was lost in a thick, white fog.

“Get me out of here!” he yelled. “Where am I?”

Danny opened the switch, and the fog thinned and faded away, leaving Joe's hair wet and his face dripping.

“Welcome back, Chief Rain-in-the-Face,” Danny laughed. “Stay away from the sink, from now on.”

“Well, it's working, anyway,” said Irene. “What about that crack, Dan? How can we fix it?”

“Professor Bullfinch isn't due home until lunchtime, at the earliest,” Danny replied. “So tomorrow we'll take the machine to Mr. Krantz, the welder, right after breakfast. He can fix it.”

“Yes, and this time we'll tie it down on the wagon,” said Joe, mopping his face with his handkerchief.

“I'll bring over a roll of wire.” Irene put a hand on Danny's arm. “Dan,” she said, “I want to ask you something.”

“What?”

“You are going to tell the Professor what happened, aren't you?”

Danny bit his lip. Then he said bravely, “Of course I am. There's no use trying to duck out on it. Maybe when he finds out we can make midget rainstorms with it, he'll forgive me.” But in his heart, Dan knew that the Professor would be disappointed in him for not using self-discipline—and knew, too, that this disappointment would be justified.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Mr. Elswing Really Splits

Mr. Krantz, WELDING, BRAZING & METALWORK CO., was a fat, red-faced man who was continually wheezing, clucking, panting, and chuckling as if he were a kind of engine himself. When the three friends came into the shop, he was welding a seam in a steel tank. He snapped off the torch, pushed up his dark goggles, and surveyed the young people who stood in a row, with IT on the wagon in front of them.

“Well, well, well,” he said. “H-t-t-t! Danny Dunn and Company. And who's this other one, the feller on the wagon? Looks familiar.”

“We need a little patching done, Mr. Krantz,” Danny said.

“Oho! Aha! Another one of your inventions, hey? I remember the last one. Didn't I make you a clamp so you could hook your telescope on your Ma's piano stool, so you'd have a revolving base for it? So you could follow the stars, hey? And you kept turning and turning it until the top came off the piano stool and down it fell, and I had to repair the telescope too? What is it this time?”

“Nothing like that, Mr. Krantz.” Danny grinned. “This is just a metal housing for a kind of box that has a crack in it.”

Mr. Krantz put his hands on his knees and bent over. “Just a kind of box, hey? I remember this—I ought to, 'cause I made it myself. It was for the Professor. What's happened to it?”

“It sort of... fell over,” Danny said reluctantly.

“Mmhm. Way, way over. Well, I shouldn't ask too many questions. My business is to weld. Right? Don't touch anything, and leave me alone with this for a few minutes.”

Humming and snorting to himself, Mr. Krantz unfastened the loops of wire with which they had bound IT to the wagon, and lifted the metal case to his workbench. While Dan and his friends watched in silent interest, he put flux on the crack and then took up a brazing rod and his torch. With the torch, he melted brass down into the crack, and in a moment or two had made a smooth, neat line which sealed up the housing and made it as good as new.

“There she is,” he said. He put IT back in the wagon, and then picked up the wire. “You don't mind if I fasten it back in place for you? Good. Not like you had it, all messy, but this way—”

He bound the wire two or three times around IT, through the handles and under the wagon. Then he coiled the leftover wire into a large loop and twisted it at the top. “Now,” he said, “you've got a kind of extra handle on top. You can hold it to steady the thing, and also to carry it if you have to. That way, you won't be so apt to let it—er—
fall
over
.”

He refused to take any pay for the job, saying that it was an honor for him to work for the great inventor, Danny Dunn, and then, gurgling with amusement, he returned to his welding.

The three dragged the wagon down the street. Mr. Krantz's shop was near the Washington Avenue gas station, and when they came to the corner they saw that a great many people were making their way along the avenue toward the airfield.

Danny went into the gas station, where one of the attendants was standing, watching the crowd with his hands in his pockets. “Excuse me, Mr. Collodi,” he said, “but what's going on? Is there a fire or something?”

“Nope.” Mr. Collodi pushed back his cap with a greasy hand. “They're going to watch the seeding.”

“Oh, I see,” said Danny. “Thanks a lot.”

He started to turn away. Then, “Huh?” he cried. “
What
seeding?”

“The cloud-seeding,” said Mr. Collodi. “It's been so dry lately, you know, and now it's been cloudy for a couple of days, I heard a fellow say they're going to scatter some stuff from a plane to make it rain. They call that cloud-seeding. They got a plane from Eastbridge, I hear.”

Danny swung round to the others. “Let's go watch!” he said.

“You mean, they actually put raindrop seeds up there and hope they'll grow?” Joe asked.

“Don't be silly, Joe,” said Irene. “They throw out tiny particles of dry ice, or make silver iodide smoke, so that the moisture in the clouds may condense around the little cold particles. If it does, those cold droplets sometimes begin to fall, and they may collect other drops, and so it rains. It's pretty much like what happens with our machine.”

“Say!” Mr. Collodi put in. “That sounds interesting. Maybe I'll go watch it myself.”

He yelled to another man in the office, “Hey, Gil! Take over, will you?” Then he said, “Come on, kids. I'll give you a lift. If you're going, you don't want to have to lug that wagon of yours all that distance.”

“Let's go,” Danny urged. “It won't take more than a few minutes.”

“But suppose the Professor gets home first?” Irene said. “We ought to take IT back to the lab.”

Danny paused. Then he said, “His telegram said that he'd get home for lunch if he made the early plane. But we've got almost an hour before lunchtime. Come on. We've never seen a cloud-seeding.”

They followed Mr. Collodi to his panel truck, which was parked beside the office, and he boosted the wagon with the machine in it into the back of the truck. The three squeezed into the cab, and Mr. Collodi drove off.

The crowd was growing, and when they got to Midston Airport, Mr. Collodi parked his truck at the gates. The friends thanked him and took their wagon. They pushed their way past the weather station building and then past the airport office. Opposite this the hangar stood, with two or three private planes parked alongside it. Here the crowd had thinned somewhat, and they made their way to the edge of the field, Danny hauling the wagon, while Joe and Irene held the loop of wire to support IT.

Danny approached a tall, thin man who was chewing on a soggy cigar. “Excuse me, mister,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“What are they going to seed with—carbon dioxide or silver iodide crystals?”

“With seeds, buddy,” said the man shortly. “What else?”

Irene snickered.

The man looked them over with a grin. Then he went on, “Listen, why ask me? I'm only the audience. Go ask the weatherman—out there on the field.”

The three turned to follow his pointing finger. Their eyes opened wide, and their mouths fell open in astonishment.

On the field, near the long, dark, shiny, central landing strip, stood
two
Mr. Elswings!

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

IT Takes Flight

“What did I tell you?” blurted Joe. “Split personality!”

Irene rubbed her eyes. The two Mr. Elswings were exactly alike, except that one of them wore a floppy panama hat, and the other carried an umbrella. “It can't be,” she said. “Not split personality. That means two people in one body.”

“Maybe he split the other way,” said Joe. “Two bodies—one people.”

“He's twins,” Danny said. “Can't you see? They look alike, but one of them has a mouth that turns down and the other is smiling. Let's go out there.”

He glanced about hastily. “I'll leave IT right here,” he said, “alongside the wall of the hangar. I'd rather not go running around the field with it. Nobody'll touch it here.”

He drew the wagon close to the hangar, and then he and his friends walked out to the twin weathermen.

The Elswings were looking up at the lowering gray clouds. Nearby stood half a dozen other men, all equally intent. Above could be heard the buzz of a plane's motors. Vanderbilt sat on his haunches near the twins. As the three friends approached, the big dog got up to meet them. Irene patted him and he panted heavily and smiled a greeting.

The scowling Elswing was saying, “It's a fake, I tell you! The farmers and businessmen who put up the money for this operation have just spent it for nothing.”

“Tut, tut, Ralph,” said the smiling Elswing. “You're always looking on the dark side of things. The seeding operation may work very well. It depends on a lot of different factors—the temperature of the clouds, the degree of moisture, the wind—you know that. It's a gamble worth taking, though, isn't it? We do need the rain badly. And if we do nothing, these clouds may simply evaporate and leave us as dry as ever.”

“Fiddlesticks, Frank!” Ralph scoffed.

One of the other men, a heavy-set fellow with a deeply tanned face, put in, “I agree with Frank. We farmers are suffering most. Anything's worth trying, I say.”

Another man—he was a local businessman named Roland Glenn—said, “Right. The drought is certainly not good for business. And look at me: I haven't been able to shave properly in days.”

“I think you're all crazy,” said Ralph Elswing, jamming his hands in his pockets. “My brother Frank is a visionary. If it rains as a result of this seeding nonsense, I'll —I'll eat my new panama hat.”

He turned away, and then he saw the three young people. “Ha!” he barked. “Here are some more of your friends, Frank—children!” Frank beamed at Danny and the others, raising his umbrella in salute. “Why, hello, kids,” he said. “Don't mind Ralph. When we used to eat apples, as boys, he always ate the green ones and it made him sour.”

Looking from one to the other of the twins, Danny blinked. They had the same round, rather pear-shaped faces, and the same curly hair; they wore the same dark suits and blue neckties. Only their expressions distinguished them. “Gee,” Danny said, “am I glad to find out there are two of you. We were worried.”

“Didn't you know?” Frank looked surprised. “Why, I thought Eddie, my nephew, would have told you.”

“We aren't all that friendly with Snit—with Eddie,” said Joe.

“Listen!” Mr. Covey, the farmer, held up his hand for attention. “I think the plane's coming down.”

The sound of the motors had grown louder. The men moved back a little way from the strip. In a moment or two, a small blue-and-white airplane dropped from the clouds, swung round in a curve, and then hummed down to make a landing. It rolled to a stop, and two men got out.

The pilot was named Abe Clark. Danny had met him once before, with the Professor. He owned several planes, and ran a small air service, flying freight, dusting and spraying crops, and taking aerial survey photographs. He walked toward the waiting men, pushing back his cap and shaking his head.

“No luck,” he said. “I'm afraid conditions aren't right for it.”

“Now are you satisfied?” said Ralph, turning to Frank with a short laugh. “You and your umbrella!”

Frank merely smiled. “Are you certain you used enough dry ice?” he said to Clark.

The pilot nodded. “I wish we had been able to fly our SuperCub. Unfortunately, it's being repaired. This Tri-Pacer is a little more difficult to use for a job like this: it has no tank, for one thing. We have to push the door open to throw out the pellets. But I'm sure we scattered plenty.”

“Maybe the particles weren't small enough,” suggested Mr. Glenn, the businessman.

“No, I don't think it was that. You know, conditions have to be just right for cloud-seeding, and even then it doesn't always work. The Elswings can tell you about that. We still don't know everything about the weather by a long shot.”

“Well,” said Frank, “how about trying it just once more?”

“Ridiculous!” Ralph barked.

“I'll try if you say so,” said Clark. “Can't tell—it may work.”

“Go ahead,” said Mr. Covey. “I say, try it again. What about the rest of you?”

The other men, who had all contributed money toward the experiment, nodded. “Okay with me,” said one of them.

“We're all agreed,” said Mr. Glenn.

Clark pulled his cap down. “All right. Come on, Harve. Let's wind it up again.” They got back into the airplane. Soon the propeller was turning. They taxied down the strip and turned around.

“We'd better get out of the way,” said Mr. Covey. The group moved over to the other side of the strip.

Danny and his friends went along, staying close to Frank Elswing. Irene held Vanderbilt's collar. The big dog paced beside her like a pony. His tongue hung out and he had a pleased simper on his face.

As they all turned round to watch the plane, Danny caught hold of Joe's arm. “Do you see what I see?” he said. “Look over there—by the hangar.”

“It's Snitcher,” said Joe. “What's he up to?”

Snitcher had edged up close to the hangar wall. He was glancing all around, as if looking for someone. Suddenly he bent down and caught hold of the handle of the wagon. He began to walk toward the back of the hangar, pulling IT along.

“Hey!” Danny shouted. “Drop that!”

“Let's get him!” yelled Joe.

But Irene acted first. She let go of Vanderbilt's collar, pointed to Snitcher, and at the top of her voice cried, “Fetch, Vanderbilt!
Fetch
!”

Vanderbilt uttered a joyous bark. He shot across the field and seized the back of Snitcher's belt in his teeth. Then he started back, pulling the struggling boy by the belt.

Suddenly everything seemed to happen at once, very rapidly, like a speeded-up motion picture.

As Vanderbilt dragged Snitcher, Snitcher dragged the wagon. The airplane had revved up and had begun to move.

Irene screamed, “Vanderbilt! Hurry!”

Snitcher let go of the wagon. Free of the extra weight, Vanderbilt lumbered across the strip and joined Irene. He stood, holding the howling Snitcher, and wagging his tail so that a cloud of dust arose.

But the wagon, with the Professor's machine on it, stood directly in the path of the rising plane. The pilot either did not see IT—which was not very large—or thought he was above it. But Danny could see that the wheels had not quite cleared the top of the ray machine.

“Oh, no!” he gasped. “It's going to hit.”

He covered his eyes.

An instant later, Joe tugged at his arm. “Danny—Danny!” he quavered. “Look!” Fearfully, Danny opened his eyes. The plane was above their heads now. And dangling from one of its wheels, caught by the loop of wire which Mr. Krantz had so carefully made, was the Professor's machine.