Nancy Clue Mysteries 3 - A Ghost in the Closet (29 page)

"We mustn't be captured and become victims to their cruel experimentation," Frank cried to Joe.

"Quick!" Joe cried, "Let's hide inside the life-size rocket ship model!"

The boys ran through the doorway and scrambled up the rungs of the needle-nosed titanium giant. They hurled themselves inside and secured the latch just as an alarm system began to wail. "We made it in the nick of time," Frank breathed with relief as he peered out the small round portal in the side of the spacecraft. Men were scurrying about, looking high and low for the intruders.

"They'll never find us here. We'll sit it out until the hullabaloo is over, find Mother and Father, then get out of here and immediately report this to NASA!" Frank schemed.

"Gouf imes," Joe said.

"What?" Frank asked.

Joe swallowed, then repeated, "I said, good idea. Hey, want a candy bar? There's a whole box here, and they're pretty good."

Frank frowned. Joe picked the queerest times to be hungry! "Here we are sitting on the biggest spy case of the twentieth century, and all you can think about is food!" Frank groaned. "Why, we've got information to win the Space Race single-handedly for our country. Think of it, Joe. We'll be the heroes of our generation. We'll be on the lips of Boy Scouts all over America!" Frank snapped out of his reverie. "Joe, what are you doing over there? Can't you sit still?"

"I'm just checking things out," Joe defended himself. "Look, there's a whole box of magazines just like the ones Willy reads. Physique Magazine. Guy's Life. Indoor Sports. I guess this goes to show you, guys are the same all over."

Frank frowned. He was intently studying the control panel of the craft. "This is an exact model of the experimental MaxxThruster Rocket NASA's been working on," Frank realized.

"Golly, you don't mean the latest rocket designed to take man into deep space?" Joe asked excitedly.

"Don't touch anything," Frank warned his brother. "We don't know if this thing is wired with alarms."

"Aye, aye, Captain," Joe grinned with a snappy salute to his brother. Just then the rocket began to rumble.

"Joe, what did you do?" Frank cried.

"Nothing," Joe gulped. "Honest." The boys tried to stop the engine, but it was too late, for inside the ship, things had begun to happen. Lights flashed; a data recorder clicked on; radarscopes beamed strange images on their screens. Frank looked out the window and saw a brilliant flash of light as the roof of the cavern appeared to open. There was nothing but blue sky above! "Do you know where we are, Joe?" he yelped. "The launch pad must be under Treasure Island!"

Joe grabbed the handle of the escape hatch and pulled it, but to no avail. "It won't open-we're stuck!" he cried.

"Lift-off minus two minutes. Lift-off minus one minute and fifty-nine seconds-" a mechanical voice announced, starting the countdown.

The boys broke out in a sweat. "This can't really be happening," Frank cried over the roar of the engines. But he knew it was; for he could feel the rocket rumble and lurch. It was really taking off!

Were the Hardlys going to be the first boys in space?

CHAPTER 47

Frank Sees the Light

"Joe-strap yourself in!" Frank directed. The boys flattened themselves on the horizontal takeoff seats and buckled the safety straps. "Sure you're in tight?" Frank asked Joe tensely. Joe nodded.

Terrible thoughts were racing through Frank's mind. Their youthful bodies could be torn asunder during the high acceleration it would take to shoot this rocket past the Earth's atmosphere. Without safety suits, they could be burned to a cinder from the sun's intensive rays. Why, they could end up as a fiery shooting star! The Hardly boys were ill-equipped for space travel, and Frank knew it!

Frank and Joe shared a solemn look. "Joe-" Frank started, then stopped. He knew he didn't need words-not with Joe! He put out his hand. There was a long, firm handclasp as silent hopes were conveyed from the eyes of each.

"Lift-off minus two seconds. Lift-off minus one second. Blastoff!"

"What thrust!" Frank found himself thinking in admiration, despite their precarious predicament. As the engines roared and rumbled beneath them, thrusting the rocket ship up, up into the sky, Frank was flooded with emotion.

"Father will never know how much I really love him," he realized with a sob. "Oh, why did I have to come to this realization now, when it's too late to tell him? I hope nobody tells Father what a knucklehead I was!" he thought worriedly.

The G-force grew stronger, flattening the boys' clean-cut features until they were no longer recognizable as America's best-loved boy detectives. The pressure proved too great for the lads. They fell into deep faints. When Frank came around, he realized the force-field had abated. He unstrapped himself and walked over to the window. Darkness punctuated by the twinkling of stars greeted his eyes.

"Joe-we're here. We're really here!" Frank cried excitedly. "We're the first boys in space!"

Joe awoke, stretched and let himself loose. "How long do you figure we've been out?" he wondered.

"Hours, probably," Frank guessed. "Look-we're high above the Earth."

Joe peeked out the window and gasped when he saw the small revolving planet they called home. He gazed through his binoculars. "What a sight!" he whistled. "Why, the continents look just like they do on our globe at home. Africa is all pink, while Europe is yellow."

"Joe, don't be silly," Frank scoffed. "That's just the effect of gamma rays on the visible spectrum."

Frank checked the levels on the control panel. "We've got three tanks of rocket fuel left, just enough to circle the moon, fling ourselves back into the Earth's orbit and make a splashdown in some nice soft body of water like Lake Merrimen," he schemed. "Lucky for us, we don't seem to feel the effects of the sun's intensive rays. The aluminum body of this rocket must be triple thick, which is sure a relief." Frank knew that if the ship were to be pierced by a meteorite, their blood would boil like water in a tea kettle.

"Happily, NASA's solved the additional problem of weightlessness in space," Frank noticed, relievedly.

He began poking around the panel, which resembled the flight panel on the Hardly speedy two-seater airplane, the Sky Princess. He took hold of the throttle in an attempt to guide the craft's course, but found it wobbling out of control!

"Look, Frank," Joe gasped as he looked out the window and saw they were hurling toward a rocky orb pockmarked with craters. "We're going to crash-land on the moon!"

"Look out, Joe," Frank cried as he grasped his brother to him, hoping to break Joe's fall. The craft came to a sudden standstill, and the boys were thrown against the panel. Suddenly the hatch popped and two men strode inside, each grabbing a Hardly boy and yanking him to his feet.

Frank gasped when he recognized the man whose hands had him by the collar. It was the handsome fellow Joe had beaned with a brick, only now he was wearing a navy blue suit with a three-buttoned jacket with wide, sloping shoulders. A crisp white shirt and a simple carmine-colored tie completed his ensemble.

"Nice suit you've got on, Frank," the man quipped sarcastically, giving Frank the once-over. "Your father said you were a snappy dresser," he added in a low tone, giving Frank a little wink. A million butterflies started flitting around in Frank's stomach. He had a million questions. How did this man speak English with no trace of an accent? And what occasion had provided context for such a casual conversation with his father?

But before Frank could say anything, the boys were forced out of the rocket at gun point. As Frank was descending the rungs, he could plainly see that what he and Joe had experienced had been a clever simulation of a rocket launch. "Now that I've taken another look, I can see this rocket's not full-size. And there's a globe and a projector," he whispered to Joe. "And giant springs underneath caused us to feel motion-"

"No talking!" the handsome man ordered. "Don't-saya-word!"

Joe and Frank exchanged fearful glances. Was this fellow friend or foe?

CHAPTER 48

Prisoners!

Midge read aloud the three signs. "Left is the Moonscape Simulation Hall, to the right is the Rocket-Propulsion Chamber, and straight ahead is the Cafeteria." They were standing on an observation deck overlooking a vast underground scientific laboratory, pleased that they had had the foresight to don disguises, as they blended right in. Why, except for the pocketbook dangling from the crook of Velma's elbow, they looked just like any of the industrious men below.

"This is just like Endless Caverns in Arizona, isn't it, Velma?" Midge exclaimed. "We went there a few years ago on our vacation," she told Jackie. "It's a huge underground cavern with a lake, a ballroom and a cafeteria. It looks like this, except for all these rockets and guys in white coats running around. That was a fun vacation, huh, babe?"

"It was a memorable trip," Velma noted, "especially the part where we were kicked out of the caverns for unseemly behavior."

"We were caught in a limestone crevice," Midge grinned. "The tour guide shone his light on us at a most inopportune time."

"A woman in our party fainted," Velma giggled, adding, "Midge and I have been thrown out of all the best places!"

Jackie smiled. She hoped some day she and Cherry would have memories like that! She swallowed hard. Better to stay focused on the task at hand and not let her mind wander to a certain dark-haired nurse with the sweetest lips and a curvy figure who was at this minute locked away with a devious titian-haired detective. "See? This can't be a Russian operation. Look-all the signs are in English."

Midge jumped in. "Look over there! It's Joe and Frank and they're being led away at gun point by two men."

Velma took Nancy's opera glasses from her purse and tried to make out what the men were saying. "The guy in the blue suit is going to take the boys away for interrogation. And they're speaking English."

"And?" Jackie said excitedly.

"Now they're talking about lunch," Velma groaned. "The other man just mentioned some cheese-"

Midge's stomach grumbled.

"Wait," Velma cried. "I was mistaken. Not some cheesethe big cheese!"

"The big boss?" Jackie guessed.

Velma nodded. "Only I can't make out his name. Oh, no, don't put that stick of chewing gum in your mouth! Drat! Now I can't make out a word he's saying! Oh, darn, they just turned a corner. Sorry."

"You did just swell, Velma," Jackie said in admiration.

"You see why I never leave the house without her?" Midge bragged to Jackie.

Still, Velma was keenly disappointed, but there was no time for pouting. They had to follow the Hardly boys and set them free! They shimmied down a fire escape, dropped to the floor and blended unobtrusively with all the other white-coated men. They turned down the corridor where Frank and Joe had disappeared when Velma suddenly gave a little cry. Her left shoe was stuck to the floor!

Velma slid her foot out of her sling-back pump. "Gum!" she grimaced as she scraped the sticky wad from her shoe. "Further proof that this place is run by Americans. Besides, look at these life-size photographic portraits lining this hallway. Aren't these the Mercury 7 astronauts?"

"I thought I recognized these fellows," Midge admitted.

"But what does Fennel Hardly's kidnapping have to do with this place?" Jackie wondered. "After all, isn't he working for these guys? Why would they kidnap him?"

"And why would Judge Meeks try to make him out to be a spy?" Midge wondered.

"Maybe he discovered something he shouldn't have," Velma guessed.

"And you know how dangerous that can be," came a deep threatening voice from behind. Midge whirled around to find a darkly handsome man in a snappy suit and hornrimmed glasses. And he was holding a gun.

"Don't say a thing," the man growled as he cocked his revolver. "Just walk!"

They did as they were told.

"Security, this is Agent Anderson," the man spoke curtly into his walkie-talkie. "I've captured three intruders in quadrant seven. I'm taking them to the interrogation chamber with the others."