Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint (4 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

Joe Finds Out

When school was out, Joe Pearson tried to catch Danny at the classroom door, but he was too late. For the last two or three weeks Danny had been avoiding him, and Joe couldn't imagine why.

“Golly,” Joe said to himself, “he's done it again. What's been eating him lately?”

He walked home slowly. He was wondering if he had done something to hurt Danny's feelings, or to make his friend angry with him.

Then he thought, “Well, there's only one way to find out. That's to ask him.”

He stopped at home just long enough to eat a couple of doughnuts and get his bicycle. Then he set off for Danny's place. He rode his bike along the pleasant, tree-shaded streets until he came to the corner of Beckforth Road, on the edge of town, where the Professor's house stood. Past the house the road went fifteen miles through almost deserted countryside to Beckforth, a little village among the hills.

Joe was just about to cross to the Professor's house when he saw a flash of light a little way up the road. Shading his eyes, he peered that way. The flash was a reflection from a bicycle he recognized at once. It was Danny, pedaling at full speed up the road toward Beckforth.

Joe could think of no reason in the world why his friend should go in that direction.

Then, suddenly, he thought, “Gosh! Maybe he's decided to run away from home!”

It was a dreadful idea. Something must be wrong, terribly wrong—something Joe couldn't even guess at. He gulped. Then he said to himself, “I can't let him go alone. I'll go with him.”

He jumped on his bike again without a second thought and set off after Danny. But his friend had a long head start.

They rode on in this way, about half a mile apart, Danny never once looking back but hunched over his bike and going like the wind. Soon Joe was puffing. He bent to his work, and the perspiration streamed down his face. He had to slow down for a moment to wipe his eyes. When he had done so, he glanced ahead. Danny had disappeared.

He rode on, utterly bewildered. All at once he saw Danny's bike, lying in the grass by the side of the road.

Joe skidded to a halt. A thick woods came down to the very edge of the road, separated from it by a tumble-down stone wall. Leaving his bike beside Danny's, Joe climbed the wall and entered the woods. Some crushed and broken ferns told him his friend must have gone that way.

He walked a little distance, keeping a sharp eye out for footprints or other marks. The ground sloped up and the trees began to thin. Suddenly he emerged on the edge of a broad meadow. There were a few tall trees and a large red barn, its paint faded and a gaping space where its roof had been. But this wasn't what attracted Joe's attention.

He saw Danny running across the meadow toward the barn. Then he saw a man step out from behind a tree. Danny and the man talked for a moment and then went to the barn. The man knocked, and one of the large sliding doors opened. Professor Bullfinch stepped out. Joe saw him talking to Danny and then shaking his head. Danny turned and sadly walked back toward the woods.

But in the time between the opening and shutting of the door, Joe had seen something that made his hair stand on end.

It was a large metal globe, shining in the light that streamed through the open roof of the barn.

In a flash everything became clear—Danny's behavior in the past weeks, his strange answers to Joe, his speech in class that very afternoon.

“Holy leaping creepers!” Joe breathed. “Professor Bullfinch has invented a real, honest-to-goodness spaceship!”

CHAPTER NINE

Lost

Danny trudged back, kicking at loose stones. He stopped to glance at the barn. Then he almost jumped out of his skin, for a voice behind him said, “Hey, Dan!”

He whirled. “Joe!” he said. “Where—where'd you come from?”

Joe's eyes were dancing. “Gosh! Why didn't you tell me?” he cried.

“Tell you?” Danny said cautiously.

“About what's in the barn.”

“What?”

“I followed you. I didn't mean to spy on you—I thought you were running away from home. But when the Professor opened the barn door, I saw it.”

“Just what do you think you saw?” Danny asked.

“Aw, Dan, quit kidding around. I know a spaceship when I see one,” said Joe.

“Oh.” Danny rubbed his nose. Then he said, “You saw the ship? Gee, Joe, you're in trouble. It's a strict secret—a
government
secret.”

All Joe's enthusiasm evaporated, and his face returned to its usual gloom. “Ooh. What do you think they'll do to me? Shoot me at dawn, maybe?”

“No. I don't think Professor Bullfinch would let them do
that
. Anyway, I don't think anybody saw you. And I won't say anything.” He pulled Joe further into the shadows of the woods. “Now listen. First of all, I'm glad I didn't tell you anything about it. I've kept my mouth shut all this time, and now you'll have to swear to do the same.”

Joe nodded.

“Raise your right hand,” Danny ordered.

Joe did so.

“Do you, Joseph Pearson, solemnly swear by your right hand and blood to keep this deadly secret and never say a word to anybody, so help you?”

“I swear,” Joe said in a voice that sounded as if it were coming from underground.

“O.K. But I sure hope nobody ever finds out. Honest, Joe, if you ever let anything slip, I may be shot at dawn.”

They began walking back through the woods.

“Why didn't the Professor let you in?” Joe asked.

“Well, generally they let me hang around and watch them,” Danny said. “But the first trial flight of the ship is going to be sometime in the next twenty-four hours, so they made me leave. Mr. Willoughby, the head of the project, said that strict secrecy requires it.” As he said this, Danny imitated Willoughby's voice.

“He's never trusted me,” he went on. “He said a couple of times he doesn't really think a kid can keep a secret as big as this. But the Professor told him I could. And I did, too.”

“You sure did,” Joe said. “I thought you were mad at me for some reason, or crazy, or something.”

They came to the road and found their bicycles.

Danny said, “I've got to get home. I want to get those sentences out of the way tonight so I can be free tomorrow to watch the ship take off.”

“Will they let you watch?”

“No, they don't want me around. But I know a way to get to the barn without the guards' seeing me. There are security guards from the government around the building, you know.”

“Yes, I saw one of them talk to you.”

“Well, I found an old culvert that runs right up under the barn, and I get in that way sometimes when I don't want Willoughby to know.”

They pedaled along in silence for a few minutes, and then Joe said, “Listen. Suppose I come home with you and help you with the sentences?”

“Help me? How?”

“To write 'em. I can imitate your handwriting. Anyway, Miss Arnold won't know the difference. You know teachers never read those sentences.”

“That doesn't matter. It wouldn't be honest,” Dan said.

“The whole thing isn't honest,” said Joe. “Space flight
is
tomorrow, like you told her in the first place.”

“Hmm.” Dan thought that over. Then he said, “Well, yes. That's true. Okay, let's hurry.”

They whizzed along, and Danny shouted, “Rockets away! Ten, nine, eight—”

“Lay off, will you?” Joe panted. “Let's not play spaceship now—”

“—three, two, one, zero! Fire!” Danny yelled. “Whoops! My starboard rockets are missing.”

He began to swerve his bike back and forth.

“Come on, Joe,” he called. “You'd better bring your ship alongside. There are meteors crashing against my hull.”

“I don't want to—” Joe began.

Just then Danny's bike hit a stone. His wheel wobbled and the bike skidded. Down he went by the side of the road.

“I knew it, I knew it, I knew it,” Joe groaned, coming to a halt. “What did you break?”

Danny got up and dusted himself off. “Not a thing.”

“Not even an arm?”

“Nope. Just bumped.”

“Well, maybe your bike is smashed up, then,” Joe said with dark satisfaction. “I told you—”

“Not a thing wrong with it,” Danny said cheerfully.

He jumped on again. “Okay, no more rocket ships for now. Meteors are too thick here. Let's go—”

They reached home with no further accidents, and Danny asked his mother if Joe could stay to dinner. Mrs. Dunn called Mrs. Pearson and arranged matters, and the two boys went up to Danny's room to work.

They kept at it furiously, doing twenty sentences to a page, using Mrs. Dunn's vertical method. There were a few interruptions—dinner, for instance—but by eight o'clock they put down their pencils and looked wearily at each other over twenty-five pages of sentences.

“Boy!” Joe said. “I've got ‘a hundred years' on the brain. I don't think I'll ever be able to listen to the words ‘space flight' again.”

Danny gathered up the pages. “Now I know how Professor Bullfinch feels after he works on formulas,” he said. “It's a good thing we're both young and strong.”

Joe rolled over on the bed. “I feel old and weak,” he mumbled. “I don't think I'm long for this world.”

Danny just laughed. “I've got an idea that'll revive you, Joe. How about coming over first thing tomorrow?”

He lowered his voice. “How would you like to see the first spaceship leave Earth?”

“Oh, boy! Sure!” Joe said. “But how? You said they don't want you around.”

“Yes. But you and I can watch from the edge of the woods. I'll try to find out when they plan the take-off. Nobody will know we're watching. What do you say?”

Joe sat up. “Great! Are you sure we can get away with it?”

“Oh, yes. You come as early as you can. Whistle like a robin for me under the window.”

Joe got up to go. Danny added, “Remember Joe—secrecy is our watchword.”

Joe nodded.

“And Joe—” Danny scratched his nose thoughtfully. “Thanks a million. I'd never have finished these sentences if it weren't for you.”

“Ah, forget it,” Joe said, grinning. “What's a friend for?”

* * * * *

Promptly the next morning, while the grass was still wet, Joe whistled secretly like a robin under Danny's window. Mrs. Dunn stuck her head out of the kitchen window and said, “Come on in, Joe. Danny's eating breakfast. I'm sure you can do with a pancake.”

“No, thank you, Mrs. Dunn,” Joe replied, wondering how she had guessed it was he. “I'm not hungry.”

He forced himself to be polite, however, and ate six pancakes, with butter and syrup, and drank a glass of milk.

After breakfast the boys went into the living room. Danny asked softly, “All set?”

“Yes.”

“Now you can imagine how I felt when Miss Arnold caught me in a daze yesterday.”

“I know. You were thinking about today.”

“Yep. And when she said I had to write, ‘Space flight—' ”

“ ‘—is a hundred years away.' Don't ever say that sentence to me again.”

“Thank goodness it's over and done with.”

Danny turned to the bookcase. “Twenty-five pages! Look at the size of the paper clip I had to put on—”

His voice trailed off.

“What's the matter?” Joe asked.

Danny's face was pale.

“The sentences!” he gasped. “I
know
I brought them downstairs! I put them right there on top of the bookcase! And now they're gone!”

CHAPTER TEN

And Found

Joe turned green. “No,” he said. “They can't be! All that work—”

“L-l-let's not g-g-get excited,” Danny stammered. Then an idea struck him. “I'll look upstairs. Maybe I left them on the bed.”

He dashed into the hall and pounded up the steps. In a few minutes he came thumping down again. “No. Not there.”

He flew into the kitchen, with Joe at his heels.

“Mom!” he cried. “Have you seen my sentences?”

Mrs. Dunn paused in the midst of breaking an egg. “Oh, Danny, not
again
” she said. “This time it wasn't my fault, I'm sure. Where did you leave them?”

“On the bookcase in the living room.”

“And you've looked in your room?”

“Yes. Well, not
everywhere
in my room.”

“Let me see.” Mrs. Dunn broke the egg into the mixing bowl and absent-mindedly licked her fingers. “Have you looked in the hall closet? That's where your skates were last time you lost them.”

“I'll look.”

Danny hurried off. But the papers weren't in the closet.

After that, he tried all his usual “losing places”—the bottom drawer of his bureau, the old toy chest, now full of chemicals, the corner of the attic stair where he kept old electric motors—but the sentences were in none of them.

At last Mrs. Dunn asked, “Have you looked all through your pockets?”

“No,” Danny said glumly. “I'm afraid to.”

“Afraid—?”

“Because if the sentences aren't
there
, then I know they're really lost.”

Mrs. Dunn couldn't help laughing. Then all at once she stopped. “Oh, dear,” she said. “A dreadful thought just struck me. The Professor—!”

“What?”

“Well, Professor Bullfinch and Dr. Grimes left while you were eating breakfast. The Professor was arguing with Dr. Grimes about something, I don't remember what, but just before they left, he began looking through his pockets. He said, ‘Wait a minute, I'll work out the equation for you if I can find some paper.' Now I just wonder—”

“Oh, Mom! I'll bet he took the sentences. He always writes on the backs of things.” Danny held his head desperately. “Now what'll I do?”

Mrs. Dunn looked sympathetically at her son. “Oh, Danny. What a shame! If I'd only known.”

Danny took a deep breath. “Well, there's one thing I know,” he said. “I'm not going to write those sentences out again. Come on, Joe.”

Mrs. Dunn asked, “Where are you going, Danny?”

“No place special.”

“Hmm.” Mrs. Dunn took Danny firmly by the arm and led him to one side. In a soft voice, so Joe couldn't hear, she said, “Don't act rashly, son. Joe mustn't know about—you know. And don't get in the Professor's way. You remember what day this is.”

“Yes, Mom.” Danny felt a twinge of guilt. This was hardly the time for him to go into a long explanation about Joe's discovery of the barn and its contents. He told himself that if his mother knew about that, she would make no objections at all to their going together.

He kissed his mother good-bye, and then he and Joe tore out of the house.

As they biked together up the Beckforth road, Joe asked, “You know what you told me yesterday? About the guards and everything? How will you get to the Professor?”

“Don't you remember?” Danny replied. “The culvert. We'll get into the barn without being stopped. Then, if I can just get hold of the Professor—”

He steered over to the side of the road. A jeep was coming toward them. As it passed, they caught a glimpse of a tall, bronzed man in uniform sitting next to the driver.

“That's Colonel Beach, the pilot,” Danny panted. “He must have just checked over the ship. I guess he'll be back soon. We'd better hurry or we'll miss the take-off. And—oh, gosh!—what if the Professor leaves my sentences in the ship?”

He pedaled faster than ever, and Joe had no breath left with which to answer him.

They left their bicycles in the woods on the other side of the stone wall, and Danny led the way. This time he went a roundabout way, through a boggy little hollow which ended in a grove of young willows. There was an earth bank here, and in it the low stone archway of an old culvert, or drainage tunnel.

“The barn is just the other side of this hill,” Danny whispered. “We'll have to crawl a little way.”

He got down on his hands and knees and entered the culvert. Joe came right behind him.

The floor of the culvert was wet and slimy, and here and there water trickled from the roof and plopped on their heads or necks. They crawled along for what seemed like hours, although it was actually only a few minutes, and then they came into a gray patch of light. They were directly under the floor of the barn. Danny stopped. Above him was a grating. Behind him he could hear Joe mumbling faintly, “Trouble, trouble,” and he grinned.

He reached up and pushed the grating aside. Cautiously he poked his head up. There, just a few paces away, was the great sphere of the ship, looking larger than it actually was. In the side facing Danny a round, open hatchway gaped.

As he watched, with his eyes on the level of the floor, Professor Bullfinch and Dr. Grimes walked briskly around the curve of the ship's side.

Danny heard the Professor saying, “—want to show you the final arrangements for exterior viewing—”

They stepped through the hatchway and vanished inside the ship. But not before Danny had seen a familiar sheaf of yellow paper in the Professor's hand.

“Come on, Joe,” he whispered. “They've gone into the ship. And he's got my sentences with him. I don't want to get caught now and put outside. We'll have to sprint for it.”

A quick look around showed that the coast was clear. They scrambled up through the drain hole. A quick, short rush, and they tumbled through the hatchway and into the ship.