"Ever competed?"
"Not yet. Our physics class in high school entered one last year in the novice classification. It wasn't much—just a powder job, but that's what got us started, though we've all been crazy about rockets ever since I can remember."
"You've got some fancy control equipment. Where do you do your machine-shop work? Or do you have it done?"
"Oh, no. We do it in the high-school shop. If the shop instructor okays you, you can work after school on your own."
"It must be quite a high school," the physicist commented. "The one I went to didn't have a machine shop."
"I guess it is a pretty progressive school," Ross agreed. "It's a mechanical-arts-and-science high school and it has more courses in math and science and shop work than most. It's nice to be able to use the shops. That's where we built our telescope."
"Astronomers too, eh?"
"Well-Morrie is the astronomer of the three of us."
"Is that so?," Cargraves inquired, turning to Morrie.
Morrie shrugged. "Oh, not exactly. We all have our hobbies. Ross goes in for chemistry and rocket fuels. Art is a radio ham and a camera nut. You can study astronomy sitting down."
"I see," the physicist replied gravely. "A matter of efficient self-protection. I knew about Art's hobbies. By the way, Art, I owe you an apology; yesterday afternoon I took a look in your basement. But don't worry-I didn't touch anything."
"Oh, I'm not worried about your touching stuff, Uncle Don," Art protested, turning pinker, "but the place must have looked a mess."
"It didn't look like a drawing room but it did look like a working laboratory. I see you keep notebooks—no, I didn't touch them, either!"
"We all keep notebooks," Morrie volunteered. "That's the influence of Ross's old man."
"Dad told me he did not care," Ross explained, "how much I messed around as long as I kept it above the tinker-toy level. He used to make me submit notes to him on everything I tried and he would grade them on clearness and completeness. After a while I got the idea and he quit."
"Does he help you with your projects?"
"Not a bit. He says they're our babies and we'll have to nurse them."
They prepared to adjourn to their clubhouse, an out-building left over from the days when the Old Ross Place was worked as a farm. They gathered up the forlorn pieces of Starstruck V, while Ross checked each item. "I guess that's all," he announced and started to pick up the remains.
"Wait a minute," Morrie suggested. "We never did search for the piece that clipped Doctor Cargraves."
"That's right," the scientist agreed. "I have a personal interest in that item, blunt instrument, missile, shrapnel, or whatever. I want to know how close I came to playing a harp."
Ross looked puzzled. "Come here, Art," he said in a low voice.
"I am here. What do you want?"
"Tell me what piece is still missing-"
"What difference does it make?" But he bent over the box containing the broken rocket and checked the items. Presently he too looked puzzled.
"Ross-"
"Yeah?"
"There isn't anything missing."
"That's what I thought. But there has to be."
"Wouldn't it be more to the point," suggested Cargraves, "to look around near where I was hit?"
"I suppose so."
They all searched, they found nothing. Presently they organized a system which covered the ground with such thoroughness that anything larger than a medium-small ant should have come to light. They found a penny and a broken Indian arrowhead, but nothing resembling a piece of the exploded rocket.
"This is getting us nowhere," the doctor admitted. "Just where was I when you found me?"
"Right in the gateway," Morrie told him. "You were collapsed on your face and-"
"Just a minute. On my face?"
"Yes. You were-"
"But how did I get knocked on my face? I was facing toward your testing ground when the lights went out. I'm sure of that. I should have fallen backwards."
"Well... I'm sure you didn't, sir. Maybe it was a ricochet, as you said."
"Hmm... maybe." The doctor looked around. There was nothing near the gate which would make a ricochet probable. He looked at the spot where he had lain and spoke to himself.
"What did you say, doctor?"
"Uh? Oh, nothing, nothing at all. Forget it. It was just a silly idea I had. It couldn't be." He straightened up as if dismissing the whole thing.
"Let's not waste any more time on my vanishing ‘blunt instrument.' It was just curiosity. Let's get on back."
The clubhouse was a one-story frame building about twenty feet square. One wall was filled with Ross's chemistry workbench with the usual clutter of test-tube racks, bunsen burners, awkward-looking, pretzel-like arrangements of glass tubing, and a double sink which looked as if it had been salvaged from a junk dealer. A home-made hood with a hinged glass front occupied one end of the bench. Parallel to the adjacent wall, in a little glass case, a precision balance' of a good make but of very early vintage stood mounted on its own concrete pillar.
"We ought to have air-conditioning," Ross told the doctor, "to do really good work."
"You haven't done so badly," Cargraves commented. The boys had covered the rough walls with ply board; the cracks had been filled and the interior painted with washable enamel. The floor they had covered with linoleum, salvaged like the sink, but serviceable. The windows and door were tight. The place was clean.
"Humidity changes could play hob with some of your experiments, however," he went on. "Do you plan to put in air-conditioning sometime?"
"I doubt it. I guess the Galileo Club is about to fold up."
"What? Oh, that seems a shame."
"It is and it isn't. This fall we all expect to go away to Tech."
"I see. But aren't there any other members?"
"There used to be, but they've moved, gone away to school, gone in the army. I suppose we could have gotten new members but we didn't try. Well . . we work together well and,... you know how it is."
Cargraves nodded. He felt that he knew more explicitly than did the boy. These three were doing serious work; most of their schoolmates, even though mechanically minded, would be more interested in needling a stripped-down car up to a hundred miles an hour than in keeping careful notes.
"Well, you are certainly comfortable here. It's a shame you can't take it with you." A low, wide, padded seat stretched from wall to wall opposite the chemistry layout. The other two boys were sprawled on it, listening. Behind them, bookshelves had been built into the wall. Jules Verne crowded against Mark's Handbook of Mechanical Engineering. Cargraves noted other old friends: H.G. Wells' Seven Famous Novels, The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, and Smyth's Atomic Energy for Military Purposes. Jammed in with them, side by side with Ley's Rockets and Eddington's Nature of the Physical World, were dozens of puip magazines of the sort with robot men or space ships on their covers.
He pulled down a dog-eared copy of Haggard's When the Earth Trembled and settled his long body between the boys. He was beginning to feel at home. These boys he knew; he had only to gaze back through the corridors of his mind to recognize himself.
Ross said, "If you'll excuse me, I want to run up to the house." Cargraves grunted, "Sure thing," with his nose still in the book. Ross came back to announce, "My mother would like all of you to stay for lunch."
Morrie grinned, Art looked troubled. "My mother thinks I eat too many meals over here as it is," he protested feebly, his eyes on his uncle. Cargraves took him by the arm. "I'll go your bail on this one, Art," he assured him; then to Ross, "Please tell your mother that we are very happy to accept."