New Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club (11 page)

       
"You do too! You just don't understand it!" declared Homer stoutly.

       
"How high up will that rocket go?" asked Dinky Poore.

       
"That depends on how we design it," said Henry. "Most
rain-bearing clouds form at about five thousand feet. It's simple enough to
calculate the size of the rocket and the amount of fuel we need to lift a
cartridge of silver iodide to that altitude. But we can explode the cartridge
at any altitude we want to. We just run a fuse through the cartridge to the
propellant chamber. When the fuel burns to the top of the chamber, it ignites
the fuse. If we want to explode the cartridge at three thousand feet, we use a
very short fuse. If we want to explode it at five thousand feet, we use a
longer one."

       
"Let's try it!" said Dinky Poore eagerly. Dinky's always ready to try
anything.

       
"First we've got to build the rockets," said Henry. "This is
just a preliminary design. We've got to flight test a few before we know
whether we have the right design."

        The next
few days we were busy as beavers. We'd spend half the night building rockets in
our machine shop, up in the loft over Mr. Snodgrass's hardware store, and then
we'd pedal out to a spot in the hills west of Strawberry Lake to test-fire them
during the day. We fired them in a steep trajectory, slightly off the vertical,
so the spent rocket bodies would land in the lake. By watching for a splash as
the rocket hit the surface of the water, we could get a pretty precise
measurement from launch to impact. From this, Henry could tell us exactly how
high the rocket was going.

        After we
had fired about twenty rockets of different types, Henry declared himself
satisfied that we had the right design. Then we set to work and built about
thirty rockets, complete with cartridges filled with silver iodide crystals and
with different fuses. We designed them so the fins would fit snugly inside a
piece of corrugated rain spout which would serve as the launching tube. We used
a mixture of powdered zinc and sulphur as the propellant and fitted each rocket
with an electrical squib for an igniter. We could have launched them by
lighting a fuse with a match, but Henry said this wasn't safe. In case one blew
up, he wanted everyone to be a safe distance away. So we rigged up a firing
circuit with dry cell batteries to ignite the squib.

       
"Now whatta we do?" asked Freddy Muldoon when we had finished the
last rocket.

        Everybody
looked at Jeff, who gives most of the orders because he's president, and Jeff
looked at Henry.

        "I
think we've got to prove we can do what we think we can do, first," said
Henry. "Let's set up on Brake Hill near Mr. Barnaby's orchard and stake a
lookout there all day long. If any clouds come over, and we can hit one and
make it rain, then maybe we can expand our operations."

       
"I'm for that!" said Freddy, rubbing his pudgy stomach. "I'll
volunteer for lookout."

       
"Good!" said Jeff. "The lookout will have to go all the way to
the top of the hill to watch for clouds. That'll keep you away from the
apples."

       
"Let the minutes reflect that I withdraw my offer," said Freddy.

       
"Noted, but not approved!" said Homer, who was taking notes. "It
doesn't make any difference, anyway. Most of Mr. Barnaby's apples are Baldwins,
and they're still too green to eat."

       
"You're talking to the champion green-apple eater of Mammoth County!"
said Freddy Muldoon.

        The next
morning we all packed a lunch and set out bright and early for Brake Hill with
a supply of rockets and a couple of launching tubes. Mortimer and Freddy went
to the top of the hill with a radio to set up the cloud watch. But Freddy kept
sneaking down to snitch apples off the trees on the upper slopes of the
orchard. By noontime he had such a stomachache that he was rolling on the
ground, and Mortimer had to send him back down the hill to where we were. We
just let him lie around and groan all he wanted to.

        By early
afternoon a lot of clouds had begun to form on the horizon, and Mortimer
reported a couple of big ones being blown in from the east, right toward Brake
Hill. We got the launching tubes set up, pointing to where we thought the
clouds would come over the brow of the hill, and waited.

        In about
an hour a big puffy white one loomed over us, and Henry checked out the firing
circuit and then connected the batteries to the squib leads in the rocket
nozzles. We waited until the bulk of the cloud had drifted directly over our
heads. Then Henry said, "Fire number one!"

        Jeff
threw the switch to close the firing circuit, and the first rocket swished into
the sky, leaving a billowing cloud of smoke behind. We saw a bright flash, and
a few seconds later we heard a sharp report like a large firecracker.

       
"That one exploded a little early, about forty-five hundred feet,"
said Henry. "I counted just four seconds from the flash to the bang. The
propellant must have burned too fast."

        We saw
the bright silver flash of the spent rocket tube as it plunged down out of the
cloud and caught the rays of the sun. We waited a long minute, but nothing
happened. The huge cloud continued drifting slowly over us.

       
"Fire number two!" said Henry.

        I threw
my switch, and the second rocket shot out of its launch tube with a hissing
roar. It veered to the right momentarily, then straightened itself and plunged
like a dart into the soft underbelly of the cloud. Suddenly the whole cloud
turned a brilliant golden yellow as flaming particles shot through it in every
direction; it looked as though a bolt of lightning had struck it. Henry was
jumping up and down even before the report of the explosion had reached us, and
Homer Snodgrass was slapping him on the back.

        "A
hit! A hit! A palpable hit!" cried Homer.

       
"Let's wait and see! Let's wait and see!" cried Henry, trying to ward
off the blows.

        It was
then that we heard the
putt-putt-putt
of Jason Barnaby's rusty old
Model-T Ford and turned to see it weaving and bouncing toward us down the lane
that led through the apple orchard. Jason's two German shepherd dogs were
galloping along beside the old rattletrap, barking their heads off, and we
could see a double-barreled shotgun clamped to the windshield. Jason brought
the rattletrap to a sputtering halt in a cloud of dust and jumped down from the
seat with the shotgun clenched in one fist.

       
"What in tarnation are you young rapscallions doin' here?" he shouted
at us. "Are you stealin' my apples? What's them fireworks I been
hearin'?"

        Freddy,
who had been lying on the ground, still writhing in pain, started crawling for
the bushes at the edge of the orchard. Dinky Poore's eyes had popped wide open,
and he was trembling like a leaf. Jeff Crocker stepped forward.

        "We
weren't doing anything, Mr. Barnaby," he explained. "We were just
trying to make it rain."

       
"Trying to make it rain? If that don't beat all!" exclaimed old
Jason, whipping his hat off and slamming it onto the ground.

        His face
was redder than any apple in the orchard, and the veins in his neck stood out
as though he were going to have a fit of apoplexy. When he bent over to pick up
his hat, the startling contrast of the smooth white top of his bald head made
Mortimer Dalrymple burst out laughing.

       
"What are you laughing at, you young hyena?" Jason shouted. "If
you think you can --"

        Suddenly
Jason clapped his hand to his bare head. "What's that?" he said. And
he looked upward in time to catch another raindrop right in the corner of his
left eye. He wiped it off with a fingertip. Then he stuck his tongue out and
turned his face upward again. The drops started coming down more rapidly -- big
splashy drops that splattered on the leaves of the apple trees and sent a
cascade of tiny droplets in every direction. Jason spread his arms out with the
palms of his hands turned upward and threw his head back. He held his battered
old felt hat out in front of him, as if to catch the precious drops and hold
them forever. He opened his mouth and tried to drink in the rain. Several large
drops hit him right in the face, and a trickle of water zigzagged down the side
of his weather-beaten neck and cut a channel through the dust that covered his
skin. Suddenly he started to gyrate and cavort among the apple trees in a wild
and spontaneous dance.

       
"Whoopee!" shouted old Jason. "It's rain, rain, rain! The rain's
a fallin'. The rain's a fallin'."

        And it
was. It came down in a regular torrent. We looked upward and saw that the belly
of the huge white cloud had broken open and dark streamers of water vapor were
cascading toward the earth. We had started a regular cloudburst!

        We
scrambled to get all our gear together and pull it under the trees. The two
German shepherds were prancing around after Jason and paying no attention to
us.

       
"One thing we forgot to bring was umbrellas," said Mortimer.

       
"Not even Henry can think of everything," said Dinky Poore.

       
"You don't need no umbrellas!" came a voice from under the trees.
"Get under that tarpaulin in the back of the Model T and I'll ride you
home."

        We were
soaked to the skin, but we laughed and shouted as we bounced back through the orchard
in Jason's ancient pickup.

       
"Tarnation! If that don't beat all!" muttered Jason, as he wrestled
with the wheel. "I think I'll crack open a jug of hard cider when I get
back to the house."

        It
didn't take long for the word to get around town that we had made it rain on
Jason's apple orchard. Old Jason drove us right into town and stopped off at
Ned Carver's barbershop on his way home. In a small town the barbershop is
better than the telephone exchange when it comes to rapid communication. Mayor
Scragg was among the first to hear about it, and he stopped off at Henry's
house that night and patted him on the head and called him "Big Chief
Rainmaker."

        Charlie
Brown, the treasurer, was a little dubious, though. If we could make it rain
every time a cloud came over, he wanted to know how much it was going to cost
the town to keep us in business. Jeff assured him that we weren't interested in
draining the town treasury. All we wanted to do was help the farmers save their
crops, and if the farmers were willing to pay for the rockets and the zinc and
sulphur we needed, the Mad Scientists' Club was at their service.

        After
that, we were flooded with requests from farmers to set up rocket launchers on
their property and try to make it rain. We couldn't take care of everybody, and
we didn't want to play favorites, so we held a meeting in the clubhouse to
figure out what to do. Dinky Poore made his usual suggestion about writing to
the President for help and was voted down as usual. Freddy Muldoon thought we
could take care of everybody if we just ran fast enough from one farm to
another.

       
"Great idea, Pudgy!" said Mortimer. "Only I don't see any
Olympic medals hanging on
you
. By the time you get through breakfast,
it's time for lunch. You sweat faster than you can run, and we wouldn't want
you to drown."

       
"OK, wise guy!" Freddy shot back. "At least when I step on a
scale, something happens. I thought maybe I could stick around here and man the
radio."

        After a
lot of discussion we made a revolutionary decision. For the first time in the
history of the Mad Scientists' Club we decided to ask Harmon Muldoon's gang to
help us out.

       
"This is a community project," Henry pointed out, "and there's
no reason to be selfish about it."

       
"Nuts!" said Freddy. "My cousin will hog all the credit.
Besides, he doesn't know anything about rockets."

        "We
can teach them all they have to know," said Jeff. "As far as the
credit goes, everybody already knows who Big Chief Rainmaker is."

        Then we
all stood up and gave Henry the Indian sign, and that was the end of the
meeting. Jeff Crocker was appointed ambassador plenipotentiary to conduct
negotiations with Harmon Muldoon, because he can beat anybody in Harmon's gang
at Indian wrestling. He didn't have to put the arm on them, though. They jumped
at the opportunity to get into the act.

        We set
up several launching sites at strategic locations that gave us a chance to
cover most of the farms in the valley on fairly short notice. With Harmon's
equipment added to ours, we had a pretty good radio net operating from our
clubhouse to Jeff Crocker's barn. We couldn't be everywhere at once, even with
six two-man teams manning the launch sites, but we didn't have to worry about
cloud watchers. Every farmer in the valley was bombarding us with phone calls
each time a wisp of cloud appeared on the horizon.

        We
didn't keep count, but we must have fired about two hundred rockets during the
next two weeks. We didn't make it rain every time, of course. Sometimes we
might fire ten rockets before we got a good hit on a cloud. And sometimes we
might get a good hit, and still nothing would happen. But we did manage to hit
the jackpot often enough to make the difference between a dry year and a
drought. Most everybody in town seemed to agree that Henry's idea had saved the
farmers from a real crop failure. People he didn't even know would wave at
Henry on the street and say, "Hi, Big Chief!"