New Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club (12 page)

        The rest
of us basked in Henry's reflected glory, of course, and we seemed to get more
smiles from the storekeepers than usual. Even Billy Dahr, the town constable,
looked as though he was glad to see us when one of us passed him on the street.
And Jeff Crocker's dad was no exception. He was seen one day washing his own
car, and he told a curious neighbor that he thought Jeff needed a rest.

        But
somehow I felt uncomfortable about it all, despite our success. I finally
realized that it was because I once heard Henry say that you can't tamper with
nature without getting into trouble. And it didn't take too long for Henry's
observation to prove true.

        Freddy
Muldoon and Dinky Poore were manning the launch site out on Blueberry Hill one
day when a cloud about ten times the size of the Queen Elizabeth came drifting
over. They got all excited and started firing rockets at it as fast as they
could mount them on the launcher. They weren't supposed to be out there, and
there wasn't any sense in firing at the cloud so soon, because it hadn't even
gotten out over the valley yet. But they wanted to show what they could do, so
they blasted away at it and finally scored a good hit. The cloud practically
evaporated and dumped torrents of rain on the hilltop. Dinky and Freddy fell
all over themselves in a mad scramble to get their ponchos on and pedal back
into town to brag about what they had done.

        When
they got down to the road that leads past Memorial Point, where the old Civil
War cannon is, they saw people streaming out of the woods by the hundreds,
slipping and sliding down the hill with their arms full of blankets,
tablecloths, picnic baskets, baseball bats, musical instruments, and beer kegs.
The sudden cloudburst had broken up the annual Kiwanis Picnic and Songfest for
the Benefit of Homeless Children and turned it into a rain-soaked rout.

        Joe
Dougherty, who is president of the Kiwanis Club and trombone soloist in the
town band, was hopping mad. He complained loudly to Mayor Scragg that the whole
thing was a deliberate plot by those troublemakers in the Mad Scientists' Club
to ruin the annual picnic and sabotage the Kiwanis Club's fund-raising program.
He claimed that we had made it rain intentionally, in order to get back at the
Kiwanis for refusing to sponsor our project to explore the bottom of Strawberry
Lake. Henry and Jeff were called on the carpet by the Mayor, and of course they
denied having any such intentions. But that didn't change the fact that the
Kiwanis picnic had been flooded out, and a strawberry shortcake the size of a
bathtub had to be abandoned in the middle of the clearing at Memorial Point.

        Far from
bragging about their prowess as rainmakers, Freddy and Dinky were trying to
deny any connection with the episode when Henry and Jeff got back to the
clubhouse.

        "We
were down by Lemon Creek all the time," said Freddy stoutly. "We
didn't even know any Kiwanis picnic was going on."

        Jeff
Crocker fastened a gimlet eye on him. "Joe Dougherty claims they heard
about five rockets fired just before it started to rain, and he has four
hundred witnesses to back him up. Who do you think fired those rockets,
Freddy?"

       
"Probably my cousin Harmon," said Freddy offhandedly, pretending that
he saw something very interesting outside the window. "He's always
sneakin' around where he's not supposed to be."

        "It
so happens that Harmon was here in the clubhouse with us all the time,"
said Henry quietly. "And the rest of his gang were assigned to man the
launch sites south of town. I don't think it's very fair to try and blame this
on Harmon."

       
"OK, OK!" said Freddy, thrusting the palms of his hands upwards.
"So it didn't work!"

        Our
reputation managed to survive the episode of the Kiwanis picnic, but not for
long. Mortimer Dalrymple and Homer Snodgrass sat out the Brake Hill watch one
day at the edge of Jason Barnaby's apple orchard. It had been three days since
any good clouds had been sighted in the valley, but there was a cool wind
blowing in from the east that held promise of moisture to come.

        It was
about noontime that a big black cloud came riding high over the crest of Brake
Hill. It looked like a prime thunderhead, and Homer and Mortimer got the
artillery ready. They hit it with two shots and ran for cover among the trees
in the orchard. They hadn't yet reached the shelter of a tent they had strung
between two of the trees when a deafening roar surround them.

       
"What was that?" cried Homer. "Something hit me!"

        No
sooner had he said it than a hailstone the size of a pullet egg hit him on the
right shoulder.

       
"Geronimo!" cried Mortimer. "It's hailing doorknobs. Run for
cover!"

        They
both dove under the tent while hailstones pelted the orchard all around them and
apples came thumping to the ground by the hundreds. The accumulated weight of
ice and Baldwin apples on the sagging eaves of the tent finally collapsed it,
and the two of them lay flat on the ground holding the canvas about their heads
for protection. The cloud was a big one and it drifted on through town, leaving
a trail of minor destruction in its path, and finally spent itself in the hills
across the valley.

        A
cast-iron straitjacket wouldn't have held Jason Barnaby still after that one.
He barged into Mayor Scragg's office and thumped loudly on the Mayor's desk,
complaining that half his apple harvest had been ruined. He forgot all about
the fact that he wouldn't have had any apples at all if we hadn't brought rain
to his orchard in the first place. Abner Larrabee's wife, who is a social
leader in town, wailed piteously in a letter to the editor of the
Mammoth
Falls Gazette
that her prize peonies had been stoned to death just before
they reached the full glory of their bloom. She complained bitterly about
"wanton boys who create mischief with their teenage pranks" and
wondered when the Mayor was going to do something about the problem of juvenile
delinquency.

        The
episode of the hailstorm seemed to dampen some of the enthusiasm for our project
around town, but the more rain-thirsty farmers kept urging us to continue. The
editor of the
Gazette
wrote an editorial in our defense, in which he
pointed out that our intention had been to do the community a worthwhile
service. And Henry admitted in an interview for the paper that we didn't know
all the answers yet about how to cope with nature, but that any scientist knew
that he faced certain risks whenever something new was being tried. He promised
that we would try to learn all about hail clouds and avoid mistakes in the
future.

        A few
days after the hailstorm, the town of Mammoth Falls awoke to find itself
shielded from the sun by a low and heavy overcast. The temperature had dropped,
and the hot spell seemed to be over. Everybody could smell rain in the wind,
and the town looked forward to the end of the long summer drought. But still no
rain came. For three days the overcast continued, and the atmosphere was heavy.
The cattle were restless, and chicken farmers complained that the hens cackled
all night and laid no eggs.

        On the
fourth day we held a meeting with all the members of Harmon Muldoon's gang, and
everybody was in favor of giving nature the needle. We decided to launch six
rockets simultaneously from different launch sites scattered around the valley
to see if we could make the overcast give out with some rain. We set up the
radio net, and Henry gave a countdown from the control center in our clubhouse.
Five of the rockets fired perfectly and exploded within seconds of each other
in the dense cloud cover. We later found out that Dinky Poore and Freddy
Muldoon at the sixth site had an argument over who was going to push the firing
button; after they both decided to let the other one push it, neither one would
agree to do it. So the argument ended up in a stalemate.

       
"What's the matter?" asked Henry, when he was finally able to get
them on the radio.

       
"Nothin'!" said Dinky. "That stupid Freddy is just too dumb to
push the button!"

        Anyway,
it rained all through that day and long into the night. Spirits were high in
Mammoth Falls, and we were once more in the good graces of everyone. It was the
first continuous rain of the summer, and the
Gazette
that afternoon
offered a one-hundred-dollar prize to anyone who could correctly predict the
number of inches that would fall. The next morning it was still raining, with
no sign of a letup. It looked odd to see umbrellas on the streets and people
wearing rubbers. But nobody was grumbling about it, as they usually do when
it's wet and nasty out. The downtown merchants were doing a good business
despite the weather, and everyone was wearing a smile.

        The
smiles turned a little sour, though, by the time it had rained for four days
straight. It's a funny thing, but no matter how badly people want rain, it
doesn't take much of it to satisfy them -- and not much more to make them gripe
about the weather. By the end of the week everyone was asking when the rain
would let up, and a lot of people were complaining about their cellars
flooding. In Ned Carver's barbershop the talk was about nothing else but the
rain, and about the mud slides that were occurring in the hills. The
Gazette
was offering a two-hundred-dollar prize to anyone who could predict the exact
hour the rain would stop.

        It just
kept raining. It didn't seem that the sun would ever come out again. By the
tenth day there was serious concern in Mammoth Falls, and the Town Council was
holding a special meeting to decide what to do about Lemon Creek. It was up
over its banks already, in some places, and a couple of the back roads that
crossed it had been closed. Nobody could remember a flood in Mammoth Falls, but
if the rain kept up, it looked as though we would have one.

        Henry
and Jeff and I were sitting in the drugstore across from the Town Hall having a
malted milk when Mayor Scragg and some members of the Council came in to get a
sandwich. The Mayor cleared his throat with a loud
harrumph
, as he
always does when he's about to say something, and came over to where we were
sitting.

       
"This is a fine mess you've gotten us into, Mulligan!" he said
tersely.

       
"I'm sorry, Mr. Mayor, but I don't think it's our fault," said Henry,
staring into his malted milk.

       
"Well, you made it rain, with your crazy scientific gimmicks! Isn't there
some way you can stop it?" pleaded the Mayor.

        Henry
shook his head dubiously; then he looked at the Mayor sideways. "We
haven't gotten that far yet!" he said, staring into his malted again.

        The rest
of the Council members burst into laughter.

       
"Well, supposing you read up on it," said the Mayor gruffly. "It
looks as though we're going to have a serious flood."

       
"Nobody has ever figured out a way to make it
stop
raining,"
said Henry with an air of serious concentration. "That's one of the
troubles with scientists. They know some of the answers, but not all of them.
It just goes to show that you can tamper with nature, but you can't control
her. She always strikes back."

       
"There must be something we can do!" said the Mayor, turning away.

       
"Yes, there is!"

       
"What's that?"

       
"You can pray!"

       
"Not a bad idea!" said the Mayor. "Supposing you start in!"
And he went back to his table to munch his sandwich.

        Somebody
took Henry seriously, because the following Sunday there was a general day of
prayer in all the churches in town. But it didn't do any good. Monday morning
dawned with a leaden sky and brought the fifteenth consecutive day of rain on
Mammoth Falls. The Civil Defense Corps had put out a call for volunteers to
sandbag the banks of Lemon Creek so it wouldn't flood the business section.
Some of the outlying streets north of town were already under water. We got all
the members of Harmon Muldoon's gang together, and between us we had enough
workers to take over one whole section of the dike building. Everybody in town
who had a truck of any description was pressed into service, and by late
afternoon Mayor Scragg had declared a state of emergency.

        The work
at the creek bank went on all through the night under the glare of searchlights
which the Air Force had brought in from Westport Field. By midnight, Lemon
Creek was a raging torrent of muddy, turbulent water. Even if we managed to
contain the water within the sandbag dikes, there was danger that the swollen
stream would wash away the principal bridge at the end of Main Street. Seth
Emory, who is Director of Civil Defense, and Police Chief Harold Putney made a
survey of the entire line of dikes and predicted that if it rained again on
Tuesday the water would rise more rapidly than we could fill sandbags. A flood
was almost certain, unless the rain let up.

        In
desperation, Mayor Scragg got on the telephone at his command post near the
bridge. He called the State University and the United States Weather Bureau and
got their expert meteorologists out of bed. When he asked them if they knew of
any way to make it stop raining, they both said he must be some kind of a nut
and slammed the phone down in his ear. The Mayor, muddy and rain-soaked, turned
away from the phone to confront Mrs. Abner Larrabee and the members of her
Garden Circle, who had him hemmed in.