Mad Scientists' Club (14 page)

Jeff Crocker rapped his gavel on the table. "As president, I appoint Henry Mulligan to figure that out," he said, "and whatever he decides is what we'll do!"

"That's all got to be figured out real scientific," said Freddy Muldoon, looking at Dinky Poore as though he hadn't grown up yet.

The next three weeks we were pretty busy. We knew we faced some stiff competition, because there were a lot of old-time balloonists entered in the race. Mike Corcoran, who runs the Idle Hour Pool Palace down on Baker Street, was sponsoring Harmon Muldoon's entry. We knew that Mike wanted to win the race for the sake of the publicity, and he was willing to put up a lot of money to make sure Harmon had the best balloon in the field of entries. We figured it was a case of Henry Mulligan's brains against all the money Harmon had behind him.

But where science is concerned, brains can make up for a lot of money, and we all had faith in Henry.

We built our balloon up in the loft over Mr. Snodgrass' hardware store. We didn't want to build it in Jeff Crocker's barn because some member of Harmon's gang is always hanging around trying to spy on what we're doing. The loft over Snodgrass' Hardware is on the third floor, and it's pretty hard to spy on anything going on there.

One thing about balloons you've got to be careful about -- they're great Yo-yos. They can swing you up into the sky in a hurry, and then drop you back down again just as fast. Henry says it has something to do with the equilibrium between a body and the medium it's floating in. As long as your balloon weighs just a little less than the air it displaces, you're fine. It'll float along just a little way above the earth and not give you any trouble. But if the temperature rises, or an updraft catches you, you can zoom right up to twenty thousand feet and find yourself gasping for breath. When the updraft leaves you, or the temperature cools off, you find you've got the proverbial "lead balloon" on your hands, and you start losing altitude like crazy. The balloon doesn't just float back down to where it belongs. Gravity pulls it down so fast that it'll crash right into the ground if you don't have some kind of ballast to throw overboard, or some other means of increasing your lift.

Most balloonists figure to compensate for this by letting some of the gas out of the bag when they're rising too fast, or dumping sandbags overboard when they're dropping too fast. The big problem, of course, is that they eventually run out of gas, or sand, and they can't control the altitude of the balloon. Then they have to ditch it and give up. In a fifty-mile race, it's a good bet that better than ninety per cent of the balloons won't finish.

Henry figured he had this problem licked, and this was our big secret.

Henry's mother complains that he'd rather think than eat. Sometimes he'll start thinking right in the middle of supper. He'll push his plate aside and he won't take another bite until he's figured out a problem that's on his mind. When she nags him about not touching his food, he slips it under the table to the family dog while her back is turned. The Mulligans have the fattest dog in the neighborhood.

Some people think Henry's a nut. But to him food isn't that important. You gotta eat enough to keep strong, he always says, but don't let it go to your head. It all depends on whether you want to be a scientist when you grow up or the fat man of the circus.

Freddy Muldoon is different. He's always thinking too, but usually it's about food. When he asked Henry if he could be one of the flight crew on the balloon, Henry told him we didn't need that much ballast.

Henry's idea was really quite simple. Most great ideas are. He figured you could keep a balloon under control if you could just vary the size of it by pumping gas in and out of the bag. Then you wouldn't need any ballast. With a couple of pressure tanks in the gondola and a good compressor, you could pump gas back into the tanks when you wanted to go down, and let it expand into the balloon again when you wanted to go up.

We made the envelope for our balloon out of silk from surplus parachutes and inflated it in Jeff Crocker's barn in order to paint it. If you've never painted a balloon, don't try it. It's a lot worse than painting a house. There isn't any way to climb up on it; and even if you could, there isn't any way to keep yourself from falling off. Dinky Poore did most of the painting, slung in a big trash can hanging from a rope hung over the rafters in Jeff's barn.

Later we trucked the thing out to a clearing in the hills back of Strawberry Lake for some captive flight tests. Henry's calculations proved to be just about right. The balloon had over six hundred pounds of lift, which was enough to carry three of us in the gondola, along with the two pressure tanks for the helium supply, the gasoline-driven compressor, and a little miscellaneous gear. We floated it about a hundred feet in the air, tied down with long ropes, so Henry could experiment with the compressor and get an idea how rapidly the balloon would gain or lose altitude. He also had us tie it down with just one rope attached to a spring scale, so we could measure the amount of lift it had under full load.

When we got all through with the captive trials, Henry was satisfied. "I've studied the terrain between White Fork and the fair grounds," he said, "and I figure we've got to stay at about twelve hundred feet to clear the highest hills. But we've got enough lift to float at two thousand, if everything works perfectly and the weather conditions are ideal."

"Two thousand feet is nothin'," said Freddy Muldoon.

"It is if you have to step out at the end of the line," said Mortimer Dalrymple.

"Why two thousand feet, Henry?" I asked.

"At this time of year, on clear days, there's a fast-moving layer of air at that altitude. It might move us along at twenty-five or thirty miles an hour, right toward the fair grounds. I checked all this with the meteorologist at Westport Field."

"Better not let Harmon Muldoon know that," said Dinky.

"Shucks, I'll bet we're not the only ones that know it," said Homer Snodgrass. "There's a lot of old-time balloonists in this race. They know all about the weather and the winds around here."

"Sure, they do," Henry observed, "but the big question is whether they can get up to two thousand feet and stay there. I figure we can if there are just three of us in the gondola, and one of them has to be you, Dinky."

"Aw, nuts!" said Freddy Muldoon.

We all knew that Henry had to be the second one, so the rest of us drew lots to see who would be lucky number three, and I got the long straw.

"Nuts!" said Freddy Muldoon.

The night before the big race, Zeke Boniface hauled us and all our gear over to White Fork in Richard the Deep Breather. We camped out on the grounds of the race track, where the balloons would start from, so we could be up early in the morning. There's a lot of work to be done before you can get a balloon off the ground. They just don't go up by themselves.

Naturally, we didn't sleep too much. There were a lot of other groups there making preparations for the launching in the morning, and Homer Snodgrass kept circulating among them, picking up gossip and information. Homer was particularly interested, because Daphne Muldoon, still his girl friend, would be selected Queen of the County Fair if our balloon won the race.

There were about twenty balloons entered in the race, and they were painted all the colors of the rainbow and then some. Some of them were decorated to look like Christmas-tree ornaments, and others like spinning tops. There was one that looked like a big fish and another one shaped like a big green caterpillar. Harmon Muldoon called his the "Green Onion," and it looked like one.

"I hope it springs a leek," quipped Dinky Poore, when he first saw it.

Our own balloon had a face painted on it that looked a little bit like Mayor Scragg. We called it "The Head." The nose on the face marked the location of the rip panel. You have to have a rip panel in case you get caught in a high wind near the ground and you want to let all the gas out of your balloon at once. Otherwise you might get dragged for miles, and smash up against trees and rocks.

The race was slated to start at eight o'clock sharp, and as early as 4 A.M. a lot of ground crews were already inflating their balloons and tying them down to stakes driven into the ground. Henry said we'd wait until well after sunrise to inflate The Head, because there was usually a strong wind about the time the sun came up, and with the temperature rising about twenty degrees, a lot of the crews were going to have a tough time holding their balloons on the ground. He proved right, too.

Harmon Muldoon's gang came over to look at our balloon and kid us as much as they could. We had it spread out on the ground, ready to inflate and weighted down with rocks and boards.

"You guys keep quiet!" said Jeff Crocker, when he saw them coming. "Let Henry and me do the talking. We don't want to get a fight started."

"Well, if that isn't the most!" said Stony Martin, who is known as a loudmouth even in Harmon Muldoon's gang.

"The most what?" chorused the rest of the gang.

"The most flattest balloon I ever saw!" said Stony, kicking one edge of the envelope. This was greeted with a loud guffaw.

"When you stop laughing, supposing you tell me what we can do for you," said Jeff, lounging back against his sleeping bag. "Did you come over for some advice?"

Harmon Muldoon bristled. He stood before Jeff with his fists dug into his hips. "We just came over to see if you were carrying any BB guns or sling shots," he said. "They're outlawed, you know."

"Do tell!" sighed Mortimer Dalrymple, breathing on his fingernails and polishing them on his shirt front.

"Oh, my gracious!" said Freddy Muldoon, with a loud sniffle. "That reminds me. I forgot to bring my bow and arrows!"

"I thought I told you guys to cool it," said Jeff, getting to his feet. He looked Harmon Muldoon straight in the eye. "If we win this race, Harmon, we'll win it fair and square. That's the only way we want it."

"We're not worried about you winning it," snorted Stony Martin. "We just want you to keep out of our way -- that is, if you manage to get this sad sack off the ground."

"If we get in your way, write us a letter about it," said Mortimer, stifling a yawn.

"Stow it, Mortimer!" Jeff warned.

"What's your crew gonna ride in?" asked Harmon. "I don't see any gondola around here."

"This is our gondola," said Henry, tapping the bundle he was leaning against.

"What is it?"

"It's an inflatable life raft," said Henry. "Or didn't you know that you have to fly right across Strawberry Lake to get to the fair grounds?"

"We know it," shouted Stony with great glee, "but we're not planning on making any stops!"

After the laughter had died down, Henry smiled quietly. "Judging from your conversation, I assume you're using hot air for gas," he said coolly.

"Maybe you can talk your way across the lake," chirped Dinky Poore.

"That'll be enough of that!" said Jeff, standing up to his full height and looking down on Harmon Muldoon. "I think our guests are leaving. Nice of you to drop by, fellows!"

As the group shuffled off, Stony Martin aimed a rabbit punch at the back of Dinky Poore's neck. But somehow his feet went out from under him and he hit the ground with a thud.

"Excuse me!" said Mortimer Dalrymple, pulling his legs out of the way and handing Stony his hat. "For a minute I thought you'd lost your head!"

As soon as the sun came up, a pretty strong wind blew in from the east, just as Henry said it would. A lot of the crews had trouble keeping their balloons tied down. Two of them broke their moorings completely. They went careening across the race track and got fouled up in the woods on the other side of the railroad tracks.

"Scratch two balloons," said Henry. "They'll never get those repaired in time to get in the race."

Later we wandered over to see how Harmon Muldoon's gang was doing with the Green Onion. Sure enough, they were in trouble. They had to let some of the gas out of their bag to keep it from lifting off, and it had pulled out several of the mooring stakes. When we got there, the whole gang was flailing around trying to keep the rig from blowing away. Everybody had hold of a rope, trying to snub the lines shorter and tie the balloon closer to the ground. The huge bag was pitching and tossing in the wind like a cork on a stormy sea.

"You'll never do it that way," shouted Henry. "Work on one rope at a time!"

Just then a strong gust of wind shot the balloon skyward. Two of the crew lost their footing and were dragged across the ground until they let go of the ropes. Another mooring line snapped loose from the balloon. Stony Martin, with a rope coiled tightly around his left arm, was jerked off his feet and whipped sideways in a wide, sweeping curve. Only one line remained tied to a stake, and the force of the balloon's oscillations was working the stake loose from the ground. Stony was dangling six feet in the air, his legs kicking wildly, trying to find something solid to hold on to.