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Authors: Franklin W. Dixon

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BOOK: Darkness Falls
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“Pull over, Frank!” Joe shouted back over his shoulder to his brother. But the roar of the engine had gotten louder now and Frank hadn't heard. He must have thought the van was going around him, Joe thought. Joe had to turn forward right then to steady his bike.

On one side was the wall of solid rock. On the other, a sheer drop-off. And there wasn't enough room between for the van to pass now even if the driver wanted to.

In seconds it would have to push them right off the mountain!

Chapter 3

J
OE FRANTICALLY
searched for any way to escape as he skidded into a hairpin turn at breakneck speed. The van had to slow down to keep from skidding off the road, so the bikes sailed ahead, gaining a few seconds of precious time.

Once they were back on the straightaway, the van started gaining on them again. Joe knew it was only seconds before they were either run down or run off the cliff.

Then he saw their salvation. Up ahead and on the left, a small thicket of bushes covered a narrow gap in the mountainside wall. “There, Frank!” he shouted, pointing, and aimed his bike right at it. The bike hit the bushes and
stopped dead, sending Joe hurtling through the air. His fall was cushioned by the bushes as the van roared by.

“Frank! Are you all right?” Joe shouted, checking to make sure he himself didn't have any broken bones.

“Ow! Ow!” came Frank's voice from behind him. “This bush is full of thorns!”

Joe almost laughed when he parted the bushes and found Frank, already on his feet, pulling thorns out of the seat of his pants. “Let me help,” Joe said, yanking one out as his brother yelped in pain.

“What in the world did that guy in the van think he was doing?” Frank asked angrily. “We might have been killed!”

“Maybe that was the idea,” Joe said. “Or am I being paranoid?”

“I don't know,” Frank said. “Maybe his brakes just went bad or something. Why would anyone want to kill us, Joe?”

“No reason I can think of,” Joe had to admit. “But then, I can't think of any reason to electrocute Ebersol, either.”

Just then Tim Wheeler came to a stop beside them on the road. “Hey, you two,” he called. “Are you all right? That guy was driving like a maniac!”

“No kidding,” Joe agreed. “We were just discussing whether he was trying to kill us or not.”

“Oh, I don't think so,” Wheeler said, obviously shocked at the thought. “He swerved to get out of my way as he passed me. Maybe he just couldn't stop.”

“Well, he didn't try to get out of
our
way,” Joe said. “As a matter of fact, I think he gunned his engine when he got near us.”

“Maybe he couldn't see you in the fog,” Wheeler suggested.

“Maybe,” Joe said tersely. “Anyway, we'd better get back and tell somebody about this. We might be able to trace the van. No one got a license number, right?”

“No,” Frank said. “It was much too foggy, but I saw the van as it moved out of the fog. It was steel gray with a bubble top. Somebody at the observatory ought to know it.”

“Jake should be going by any minute now,” Wheeler said. “But he won't be able to stop on this road. We'll have to go down to Saddle Road and wait for him there. Do you think your bikes will make it?” Frank and Joe nodded.

An hour later all three were back at the observatory. The gray van with the bubble turned out to belong to a visiting research team from Japan. They had left the keys in the ignition and were quite upset that someone had used
it for a joy ride and then abandoned it on Saddle Road.

“So much for the bad brakes theory,” Joe said to Frank as they returned to their tents.

“Hi, guys,” Michele Ebersol greeted them with a smile as they entered Ebersol's tent. Her pleasant expression quickly changed to one of surprise when she saw the man walking in behind them. “Tim!” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“I'm working on a documentary about the eclipse,” he replied, returning her intent gaze. “But I'm only here because I was walking Joe and Frank back.” He and Michele stared at each other, and Frank wished he knew what they were thinking.

“Well, um,” Michele said after a pause, her voice a shade huskier than usual, “we'd better get back to work.”

“Of course. Me, too.” Abruptly, Tim turned and practically ran from the tent.

Michele watched him go before turning to the Hardys. “Where were you?” she asked. “I was about to send out a posse.”

“It's a long story,” Frank told her. “We'll tell you some other time.”

“Hmmm. Sounds intriguing. But I wouldn't tell my husband you were with Tim Wheeler if I were you,” she said, smiling sheepishly. “They're not the best of friends. Anyway, Jim
is off consulting with the observatory's meteorologist right now, and I think Everett is with a German research team. They should both be back any minute. I'd like to use this time to go over the setup with you. It's important that you know exactly what the sequence of events will be later today.”

Michele stepped over to a long table at the front of the tent. It was covered with electronic equipment. In front of it was a director's chair with the words
Cosmic Explainer
stenciled on it.

“These machines will function as our main computer terminal,” she explained as Frank and Joe listened intently. “All the data our infrared equipment generates in the aluminized tent will be fed in here through cables. Jim will stay here during the entire eclipse. He will read the data from Everett's detectors by watching this monitor. This other screen will show him what's coming in on the infrared video. The third screen will show the data digitally, and that machine will feed Jim a simultaneous printout. Got all that?”

Frank and Joe both nodded. “It sounds simple enough,” Frank said.

“Good,” she said, smiling. “Now let's go into the other tent.”

“You mean the light-tight tent, right?” Frank asked.

“Right,” Michele said, stepping from Ebersol's tent to the other one, about ten yards away. The Hardys followed her into the light lock, a small space with heavy black fabric flaps on either end. She closed the outer flap behind them, and suddenly the three of them were in pitch darkness.

“Whoa!” Frank exclaimed, surprised.

“This is to keep any light from seeping into the tent,” Michele explained. “A single ray could destroy our film.” She lifted the second flap, and they followed her into the tent.

“Brrrr!” Joe said, hugging himself as he stepped inside. “It's freezing in here.”

Michele switched on a small desk lamp. “It has to be kept at a steady forty degrees Fahrenheit in here. The film is extremely heat-sensitive, so anything warmer could cloud the image it picks up.”

“Remind me to bring my sweater,” Joe told Frank.

“And don't forget, it will be pitch-dark while you're working,” Michele went on. “You and Everett will be stationed here with your instruments. Feel free to watch the first stages of the eclipse from outside—wearing protective lenses, of course, so your eyes don't get damaged. But once we approach totality, stay inside until the eclipse is finished. That's vital. If any of us aren't positioned where we're supposed to be,
we could blow the whole operation. You'll be able to communicate with me via this intercom, by the way. I'll have a walkie-talkie, so I'll hear you.”

“Where will you be?” Frank asked her.

“I'll be outside between the tents, maintaining communications and taking photos. What you'll be seeing through your infrared lenses and what Dr. Ebersol sees on his monitors bear very little relation to what the eclipse looks like to the naked eye. We need to have some conventional photos, too.” She stepped back from the brothers and gave them a dazzling smile before taking them back outside. “It's going to be fun, isn't it?”

Frank could see that Michele was tremendously excited about the eclipse, and her enthusiasm fired his own. “I can't wait,” he told Joe as they stepped out of the tent into the sunshine.

Dr. Ebersol and Everett MacLaughlin were approaching from opposite directions. Ebersol came from the observatory, and MacLaughlin from the far side of the parking lot. Many of the foreign teams were positioned at that end.

“The weather conditions are perfect—not a cloud in the sky and none predicted,” the famous scientist announced buoyantly, getting to them first.

“Great!” Michele replied. “The equipment is set up, and I've briefed the boys. All we have to do now is run our final checks.”

“Hello, everyone,” Everett said, joining the group. “Greetings from Dr. Weinschatz. I just was talking to him and his team. They're going to be measuring any changes in the earth's gravitational pull during the eclipse.”

“Interesting,” Ebersol said with a sly smile. “But not nearly so interesting as what we're up to. Right, boys?”

Frank and Joe smiled in reply. “How long do we have until the eclipse starts?” Frank asked.

MacLaughlin checked his watch. “One hour and forty-seven minutes, thirty-five seconds,” he said.

“Give or take a nanosecond,” Joe joked. Ebersol and Michele laughed, but Everett didn't seem to get the joke.

“He's kidding,” Frank told the puzzled assistant.

“Oh!” MacLaughlin said, finally understanding. He chuckled weakly for their sake.

“Later today we'll know if you've been right about the missing planet, Jim,” Michele said.

“It should be the biggest night of our lives,” Ebersol agreed. Putting his arms around the shoulders of his wife and his assistant, he
added, “If we're right about this, we'll go down in the history books.”

“Well,” Michele said with a wry smile. “
You
will anyway.” Before he could react, she gave him a quick hug. “Which is fine with me, darling. I have all the fame I need just being married to you.”

Frank noticed that her laughter and Everett's little chuckle after her joke were slightly forced. The Great Explainer wasn't uncomfortable at all, at least not visibly.

“Isn't she a darling?” Ebersol said proudly. “Between my lovely wife and my loyal assistant, I have to say I am one very lucky astrophysicist. But enough sentiment,” he added quickly. “Let's get to work!”

The eclipse began at 5:17
P.M.
Donning goggles with dark protective lenses designed especially for looking at the sun, the Hardys gazed at the fantastic event in the heavens above them. The blazing disc of the sun began to fall into shadow as the moon's orbit placed it directly between the sun and the earth. Minute by minute, the sun grew smaller until, about forty minutes after the eclipse had begun, it resembled a fiery crescent moon.

“It won't be long now,” Michele said as their little group stared up at the sky together.

“It's just unreal!” Joe enthused. “Can you believe this, Frank?”

“I feel incredibly lucky to be here,” Frank said, but was haunted by the sudden remembrance of what Dr. Ebersol had said about an eclipse being an evil omen. The careening van hurtled again through the back of his mind. So did the image of Ebersol's hand frozen to the mike short-circuiting. Frank hoped those events were nothing sinister.

All over the mountaintop groups of people were headed into the main observatory, the many smaller buildings, and their makeshift trailers and tents. “Most of these people are here to study the sun's corona and its flares,” Ebersol explained, following Frank's glance. “Our work doesn't begin until the eclipse becomes total.”

Raising his eyes to the sun again, Frank saw that the last sliver of the sun was about to disappear behind the moon. Small beads of fire encircled the black disc at the center. “Bailey's Beads,” Michele said aloud. “Beautiful, aren't they? Like a crown of fire.”

In an instant the fiery beads were gone, too, and although it was only five-thirty on a mid-summer day, the stars were suddenly fully visible. “This is it!” Michele cried out. “Everyone to battle stations!”

Ebersol's little group hurried into their
tents—all except Michele, who remained outside.

Inside the aluminized tent it was pitch-dark and noisy from the hum of the air conditioners. Frank had to feel his way to his chair, which had been strategically placed in front of the infrared camera on its mount. He pulled off his solar goggles and peered into the lens, aiming it at the eclipsed sun. He pressed the shutter, and the camera's motor drive whirred into action, snapping picture after picture.

“Are you okay, Everett?” Joe asked. Joe had arrived at his position directly behind Frank, a second camera with extra film ready for quick reloading in the dark.

The graduate assistant's reply was a terse “Please don't talk to me during operations. I need my full concentration.” Frank heard him stumble over to his seat, where, through rubber-framed goggles, he could observe the data from his infrared detectors on a computer screen.

BOOK: Darkness Falls
8.63Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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