The Egyptian Cat Mystery: A Rick Brant Science-Adventure Story Read online

  CHAPTER V

  Sahara Wells

  Hassan arrived during breakfast on the following morning. His colorfulcostume had given way to European clothes, except for a tarboosh. Hewore a topcoat.

  At Rick's invitation he joined the boys on the balcony overlooking theNile, and accepted the offer of coffee. Rick went to the novel push-bellsystem which had three buttons identified by pictures. One was a porter,another the room maid, and the third a waiter. The little drawings werefor the benefit of strangers who knew neither Arabic nor English.

  Rick rang for the waiter and ordered more coffee and a cup for thedragoman.

  Hassan shed his topcoat and grinned at the boys. "Cat catch mouse lastnight?"

  "No mouse," Scotty replied. "The cat just caught some sleep. And so didwe."

  Hassan puzzled out the reply, then smiled his appreciation.

  Rick thought that the cat hadn't even caught any interest--at least fromthe scientists. At dinner he and Scotty had described the incident at ElMouski to Winston and the Egyptian scientists. The scientists had onlyone suggestion, to the effect that perhaps the boys' imaginations hadrun away with them.

  It was obvious that the scientists were far more interested in theproblem of the radio telescope than in listening to tales of wildadventure in the bazaar, so the boys let the matter drop. They hadexcused themselves immediately after dinner and turned in, tired fromthe long plane trip and the day's excitement.

  Rick had gone over the events at the bazaar a dozen times. He hadcompared notes with Scotty on what Bartouki had told them. Clearly,something was pretty strange about the whole affair. It was simplyinconceivable that Bartouki would have given an inaccurate descriptionof Ali Moustafa, so the man in the store had not been Bartouki'spartner. Yet, he had known about the cat, and had called Rick by name.Who was he? And where was the real Ali Moustafa? There were no answers,at least for the present. But Rick didn't intend to give up.

  He motioned to Hassan's coat. "Is it cold out today?"

  "Yes. Good you wear coats when we go out. Later it will be warm, thencool again when sun goes."

  The boys had decided to keep Hassan as a guide and driver during theirentire stay. The dragoman's services were not expensive, and besides,both of them felt they had found a friend. The way Hassan had pitched inat the bazaar, with no questions asked and their interests obviously atheart, had been a fine example of professional loyalty coupled with aquick mind and fast reflexes.

  After breakfast the boys went to the wardrobe and took out the coatsthey had brought. Rick's was brand new, a Christmas present from hisfather. It was a short, hip-length woolen coat that could double as ahunting jacket. In addition to the big outer pockets, it had inner gamepockets lined with a leatherlike plastic. It was warm, but light. He wasthoroughly pleased with it.

  Scotty slipped into his own short coat, much like Rick's except for thegame pockets. Then the ex-Marine motioned to the Egyptian cat, unwrappedand sitting in elegant repose on the writing desk. "What about Felix?"he asked.

  Rick went over and picked up the cat. "We'd better take it along, Iguess. It might get lonesome. Or we might run over Ali Moustafa on theway to the project." He slid the cat into an inner pocket. It fit withroom to spare.

  Scotty asked Hassan, with mock seriousness, "You know Sahara Wells?"

  Hassan answered with equal seriousness. "Know Sahara Wells well."

  The ride was an interesting one, up the Nile to a bridge different fromthe one they had crossed en route from the airport, along roads with apalm-shaded center strip, past mosques, stores, and airy, modernapartment houses. There was less traffic than in downtown Cairo, andHassan went faster.

  Scotty muttered, "Fewer close calls today."

  Rick winced as the car almost scraped a woman with a basket of fruitbalanced on her head. "Fewer, but closer."

  The costumes on the street were mixed. There were many people, includingwomen, in Western dress, but there were also many women in cloaks, andmen in the traditional Arab _bornoss_, the enveloping robe called aburnoose in English. For the first time, the boys saw several men inblue gowns, and Rick asked Hassan what they were.

  "_Fellahin_," Hassan replied. "How you say? Farmers. From country. Mantell me that is where your word 'fella' come from."

  Rick looked with new interest. He had heard of the _fellahin_, thefarmer-peasants of Egypt. Many of them lived and worked as theirancestors had centuries ago, plowing with wooden plows, living inmud-and-wattle houses. They represented the past of Egypt, asinstallations like the atomic energy plant at En-Shass, or Inchass as itwas sometimes called, represented the future.

  There were soldiers along the route, too, dressed in British-style brownuniforms. Some carried Sten guns, vicious little submachine gunsoriginally of English manufacture.

  "Why the soldiers?" Scotty asked.

  "Camp near," Hassan replied.

  And then, abruptly, the boys lost interest in people, because loomingahead, like something from a travel movie, was a pyramid!

  Hassan rounded a corner and another pyramid came into view. They wereenormous, Rick thought. He hadn't expected anything so huge. "Are we atGiza already?" he asked.

  "This Giza," Hassan agreed. He pronounced it more like _Gize'h_.

  "I always thought the pyramids were out in the desert," Scotty objected.

  "Is true," Hassan said. "You will see."

  They did, within minutes. The terrain changed from the green, fertile,Nile Valley to the bleak Sahara as though cut by a giant knife. For thefirst time, Rick understood the phrase "Egypt, gift of the Nile." Wherethe yearly Nile overflow brought fertile silt and moisture, there waslush green land. Where the overflow stopped, the desert began. Nointermediate ground lay between. Egypt consisted of the Nile Valley andthe desert, with nothing in between.

  The road crossed the dividing line and they were in the Sahara Desert.Hassan drove between houses of faded red clay and tan stucco, unlike themodern apartments a few hundred yards back. It was as though they haddriven into a different country. Children, goats, chickens, and Arabadults scattered before the car. It was a typical desert-country scene,and right at the edge of modern Cairo!

  Hassan turned a sharp corner and Giza lay before them, up a gradual,rising slope.

  In the immediate foreground was the Sphinx. Rick's first impression wasthat it was disappointingly small, as the great pyramids behind it weretruly enormous. He could see all three Giza pyramids now.

  Then he realized that his impressions had been gained entirely frompictures--and to an extent, the pictures had been false. The Sphinx,always shown in the foreground of pictures or taken from a low angle,loomed large in the camera lenses, with the pyramids looking relativelysmall in the distant background.

  Human vision set the image straight, abruptly. The Sphinx was small, butonly in comparison to the pyramids. Actually, it was a monument ofheroic proportions.

  "Please stop," Rick called, and Hassan did, with skidding wheels. Theboys got out and stood gazing, in mixed awe and delight. This was theEgypt of antiquity, Rick thought. These were the monuments of acivilization already ancient when the Old Testament was new, monumentsengineered with astounding precision when Rick's Anglo-Saxon forebearswere still building crude shelters of mud and reeds.

  Scotty's nudge aroused Rick from his reverie, and he turned for aclose-up of his first live camel, not counting circuses or zoos. Thecamel was such a vision of homely awkwardness that Rick had to laugh.

  The cameleer led the beast to where a party of tourists, obviouslyAmerican, waited. The boys watched as the animal came to a halt. Thedriver bowed to the party. Then, taking a thin stick, he tapped thecamel on bony knees that were wrapped in worn burlap. Instantly thecamel let out a heartrending groan. Its ungainly legs folded like apoorly designed beach chair, and moaning in pure anguish, it knelt.

  A lady tourist, giggling self-consciously, climbed up on theblanket-covered saddle. The camel let out a louder groan, one filledwith such phony pain and despair t
hat the boys burst out laughing. A tapof the driver's stick and the camel lurched to its feet, hind legs firstlike a cow. The lady tourist squealed mightily, the camel wailed inprotest, the other tourists cheered, and the boys doubled with laughter.

  Rick asked, still chuckling, "Hassan, do camels always complain likethat?"

  "Is true. They nasty and plenty noisy. They hate work. Driver makes themcarry tourists and they holler plenty."

  The camel quieted down to a low-voiced grumble. He was letting the worldknow that the arrangement was not pleasing and that he didn't intend tosuffer in silence. Cameras began to snap, recording for the folks backhome the undignified ride of the lady tourist on the ungainly camelbefore the ancient, majestic pyramids and the changeless, unsmilingSphinx.

  The three got back into the little car and Hassan took a road thatcurved gradually around a hill, past a hotel that he identified as theMena House, and up to the largest pyramid, once the tomb of Khufu andstill the greatest monument in all the world.

  On a line into the desert were the slightly smaller pyramids of Kefrenand Mankara. These, with the Sphinx, were among the Seven Wonders of theAncient World.

  Later, Rick promised Scotty, they would explore Giza and its wondersinch by inch. But now they were due at Sahara Wells. Hassan sped aroundthe Khufu pyramid and pointed. There, on the horizon, was a strangecontrast to the monuments of the Pharaohs. The steel-and-aluminum shapeof the great, steerable dish antenna, designed for modern astronomy, wassilhouetted against the sky.

  Rick was excited. He enjoyed new sights and experiences more than mostpeople, and here, within sight of each other, were unique objects ofalmost equal interest, but entirely different.

  The way led past a single large building surrounded by shabby tents, anda sign in English and Arabic that proclaimed that this was Sahara Wells.Then the blacktop road curved out into the desert to the great radiotelescope.

  Hassan drove into a parking lot before the main project building in theshadow of the antenna and Dr. Hakim Farid came out to greet the boys.

  "Welcome to Sahara Wells," he said cordially. "How do you like ourbaby?"

  Rick looked up at the huge dish. "It's a good mate for the pyramids," hesaid.

  "Pretty impressive," Scotty added.

  "We hope its performance will be impressive, too, once we get this bugironed out. Come on in. Winston and Kerama are hard at work."

  The boys followed him into the building, while Hassan squatted in thesun next to his car. The door opened directly into the main controlroom, a bewildering confusion of panels, instruments, and controls.There were several scientists and technicians clustered around Winstonand Kerama. The group was studying Sanborn tracings, continuous graphsshowing the lines traced by the incoming signals.

  Farid introduced the boys to the staff, then took them on a quick tour.He showed them the controls for the great dish. They were fullyautomatic. The operator needed only to set the co-ordinates for the partof the sky to be examined, then clock mechanisms of remarkable precisionwould keep the telescope on target until the target sank below thehorizon.

  The boys examined banks of amplifiers that would turn faint signals intousable ones. The latest techniques had been used to ensure maximumperformance.

  Outside, Farid showed them the self-contained diesel-electric powerplant. They stood directly under the massive concrete mount for thegreat dish and marveled at its size. The main bearings on which it movedwere bigger around than Scotty was tall, yet the whole affair was sodelicately balanced that a tiny electric motor could control it withfantastic precision.

  Still under construction were offices and barracks. The latter wouldallow the scientists to stay there for days at a time when working onparticular projects. The offices were nearly done, and plasterers wereat work, but the forms for the barracks floor were just being completed.The pouring of concrete would start on the following day.

  Rick looked at the pyramids on the horizon and contrasted this scene ofconstruction with the one that had produced the great tombs. Then, itwas only men--thousands of them. Today, it was a handful of skilledworkers plus machinery.

  "Now," Farid said, "let's get back to the control room. Kerama is goingto review the situation for the staff. Some of them are new on the job."

  As Farid and the boys rejoined the others, Dr. Kerama was pointing to aseries of peaks on the Sanborn tracings. "You will note that these peaksoccur at intervals, with the spacing apparently random. The mainsequence of noise out of which the peaks rise is the 21-centimeterhydrogen line. Notice also that the peaks have nearly identicalamplitudes. Obviously, the source is neutral hydrogen, which is to sayhydrogen in its normal form, not ionized as we find it in plasma in astar's atmosphere. Our problem is simply to locate the source of thepeaks. Somewhere in the circuit there seems to be an effect that servesto modulate the incoming signal. Our antenna will be useless unless weeliminate this interference so that the signal can be pure once again."

  Rick had seen Sanborn tracings before. The system was a standard methodof recording. His first experience with it had been in making permanentrecords of telemetered signals from rockets.

  A technician asked, "Sir, do these peaks occur no matter how the antennais pointing?"

  Kerama shook his head. "No. If you will examine the peaks in terms oftime and the co-ordinates, you will see that they began at a particularpoint during a sweep of the sky. Our first thought was that we hadpicked up some source emitting pulsed signals, but the source isapparently moving. This is why we concluded the difficulty was in oursystem, since no sky source moves with such angular velocity."

  The Egyptian scientist began giving assignments. Rick and Scotty weregiven a test kit and put to work checking a part of the circuit one wireat a time. It was slow, difficult work, requiring great care.

  It was warm in the control room. Rick hung up his coat, pausing to touchthe Egyptian cat in his pocket. He hadn't thought of the little beastfor some time. What was he to do with it? From a simple delivery job, asa favor to an acquaintance, the cat had become a problem. Rick couldn'tresist a mystery, but this one had him stopped cold for the time being.He didn't know what to do next. The only solution that had occurred tohim was to send a cable to Bartouki, to ask for further instructions.

  He shrugged and put the problem aside, and went back to helping Scotty.

  It was late before Kerama called a halt. The boys rode back to the hotelwith Hassan, grateful for the relief of concentrating on thousands oftiny wires. They told the dragoman to go on home, then went into thedining room for dinner before retiring for the night. Winston, who neverseemed to tire when working, had stayed with Kerama and Farid tocontinue discussions of possible sources of trouble.

  After dinner Rick picked up their key at the hotel desk and they rodethe tiny elevator to their floor. They opened up and went in. Ricklocked the door while Scotty snapped on the lights.

  Scotty let out a sudden yell! Rick whirled and gasped. The room was ashambles. Every drawer was open and their contents were dumped out onthe floor. Their suitcases had been left open. The bed-clothes were in aheap in the middle of the room, and the mattresses were on the floor.

  Rick glanced at the key in his hand and realized that it was a veryordinary type; master keys that would allow a thief access could bebought in any hardware store. He followed Scotty to the closet and sawthat their clothes had been searched and dropped carelessly. Nothing wasleft on the hangers.

  The room had been searched inch by inch, and by someone in a hurry.

  Rick's hand went to the Egyptian cat in his pocket.

  "They wanted the cat," he said slowly. "I can't see that anything ismissing. But why is the cat so important?"

  He drew it out of his pocket and stared at it. Then his eyes metScotty's. His pal shrugged. Neither of them had even the slightest clue.