Newspaper Clue

THE piercing scream was not repeated. Nancy and her friends peered through the wire-mesh fence for a glimpse of a house. The jungle of trees with their long streamers of Spanish moss concealed whatever buildings might be on the property.

Nancy turned to Mrs. Nickerson. “Have you ever been in there? ”

“No, ” Ned’s mother replied. “The place is so forbidding I never tried to get acquainted with the occupants. Besides, I suspect whoever lives there owns some wild animals! ”

George said she was curious to find out what she could. “If this fence doesn’t go around the whole property, let’s look for an opening and go in.”

Bess objected at once. “Not me! ”

Nancy settled the matter. “Actually we don’t have time, ” she said. “Dad will be home, I’m sure, and I want to see if he has any news for us. But we’ll come here the first chance we have.”

Mrs. Nickerson teased, “Now I understand how you girls become involved in mysteries.”

Nancy smiled. “Sometimes we do stumble upon them.”

The group walked back to the Nickerson home, said good-by, and hurried to their boat. When they reached the Billington house, Mr. Drew was there. He was smiling and Nancy was sure he had had a successful morning.

“I like Mr. Datsun very much. It didn’t take long to talk over the case, ” the lawyer said.

Mr. Drew delved into a breast pocket of his sports jacket and pulled out an envelope. “Surprise for you girls, ” he announced.

He handed the envelope to Nancy. She opened it and took out six badges on which the word PRESS was printed.

Mr. Drew explained, “As an accredited writer I was given badges at the news center for you and the boys to watch the moon shoot next week.”

Bess and George stared at Mr. Drew. “You are an accredited writer? ” Bess asked.

He chuckled and nodded. “I have a number of publications to my credit. Of course they’re all on legal matters.”

“How exciting! ” said George. “Now we can see the lift-off and be as close as anyone is allowed.”

“Right.” Mr. Drew asked Hannah and the girls if they would like to make a tour of the Kennedy Space Center that afternoon. All were enthusiastic and Nancy said, “It will give me a chance to get acquainted with the place where the explosive oranges were taken. I might pick up a clue.”

As soon as luncheon was over they set off for the vast, well-kept government grounds that stretched along the ocean for miles. Mr. Drew parked the car near a sprawling building with a large roofed-over patio area. Under it were benches. Nancy and the others sat down to wait for a bus while her father bought tickets.

“This is the Visitor Information Center, ” Mr. Drew remarked when he came back.

Nancy was impressed by the large number of European and Asiatic tourists who were there.

“The Kennedy Space Center means a lot to the whole world, ” she thought, then walked up to the adjoining building to peer inside. There was a room with illuminated wall pictures of the various types of missiles. Here visitors could purchase books, postcards and souvenirs. Nancy saw an intriguing miniature model rocket. “I must come back and buy that, ” she decided.

“All aboard! ” called George, and Nancy hurried to join the others.

The two-hour tour began, and the driver announced that they would cover fifty miles. Nancy and her friends were fascinated by the mock-ups of missiles and rockets stretching ahead of them in long rows. Most of them were in the familiar cone shape.

The guide said that the very first missile sent up from the Cape was a two-stage Bumper.

“The first stage was a captured German V-2 missile and the second an army WAC Corporal rocket. It was launched in July 1950.”

Mr. Drew whispered to his daughter, “Our country has certainly come a long way in rocket building since then.”

As the guide indicated gantries and rockets, Nancy recognized the names Thor, an early antiballistic missile, Titan, Minuteman and Saturn.

Next, the guide talked about the artificial satellites orbiting in space. He explained that the man-made moons are classified according to the jobs they do: (1) communication satellites, (2) weather satellites, (3) navigation satellites, (4) scientific satellites, and (5) military satellites.

“You, no doubt, are familiar with the Tiros and other satellites that take weather pictures and track hurricanes. Communication satellites, like Early Bird and Telstar, make it possible to send radio messages, telephone calls, and television programs from one continent to another in a matter of seconds.”

The tour continued on to the moon rocket, which stood majestically next to its gantry. The onlookers craned their necks to see the top where the astronauts would live and work.

“It’s all so overwhelming! ” Hannah Gruen exclaimed.

The next stop on the tour was at the mammoth Vehicle Assembly Building. George remarked, “This is a real skyscraper.”

“And it covers eight acres, ” the driver said. “The ceilings in the wings of this building are twenty stories high. That’s where the smaller rockets are put together. The center section is fifty-two stories high. The big Saturns for trips to the moon and other planets are assembled in this area. Each booster for them is brought here on a very long covered barge which resembles an aluminum Quonset hut, painted white. The capsules come by truck or air.”

When the sightseers walked inside to the Vehicle Assembly section they gasped. The center section was tall enough to accommodate a 360-foot rocket standing upright. Around the walls of the huge structure were metal scaffolds on which men had worked to complete the latest rocket assembly. From the ground floor those who were busy high above the visitors looked no larger than small boys.

“This is absolutely fascinating and unbelievable, ” Nancy said.

Suddenly she realized that Hannah Gruen was not with them. She looked at all the visitors but did not see the Drews’ housekeeper.

“Maybe she stayed in the bus, ” Nancy thought, and went outside to look. Hannah was not there.

“Where could she have gone? ” Nancy asked herself, then told her father and the girls.

All of them searched but could not find Hannah. The guide was already calling to his passengers to board the bus.

“I don’t want to leave without Hannah, ” Nancy said to her father. “This building is so huge if she started to walk around it, she couldn’t possibly be back by this time.”

Mr. Drew said he had an appointment with Commander Nichol at the Base in connection with the case. “Suppose I go ahead, ” he suggested, “and you girls keep on searching for Hannah. You can catch the next bus.”

He spoke to the driver, who agreed that this would be all right.

Nancy, Bess, and George went back inside the big building and began looking again for Hannah. Moments later the door to an office opened. Hannah Gruen walked out, followed by a young man. They came directly to the three girls.

“This is Herb Baylor, ” Hannah said. “He’s a distant relative of mine but I didn’t know he was here. I happened to see him walk into an office and followed.”

After the pleasant young man had acknowledged the introductions, Hannah went on, “Herb’s an engineer and works on the assembling of rockets.”

Nancy asked him, “Of course you know about the oranges containing the explosives that were sent into the Base.”

“Yes, and I hear you’re on Merritt Island to solve the mystery and clear Mr. Billington.” He smiled boyishly. “I’ll tell you a possible clue that I gave to Security.”

“Wonderful! ” Nancy replied. “What is it? ”

Herb said he happened to be near the truck when it was leaving. “Part of a newspaper blew out. I picked it up and noticed a pencil-ringed personal. It was a garble of words that made no sense.”

“What did it say? ”

Herb replied, “ Son on board ship ready to be sailor for peaceful kind of action.’ ”

Nancy took a pad and pencil from her handbag and asked Herb to repeat the message. Quickly she read words numbered 1, 5, 9, and 13. The hidden message was, “Son ready for action.”

She thanked Herb, telling him that the girls would work on it.

“I wish you luck, ” he said, smiling. “Now I must go back.”

When the next bus came Nancy and her friends climbed aboard. The tour continued, and Nancy listened attentively to the driver’s descriptions.

“On a long flight, like to the moon, ” the guide said, “an astronaut gets about twenty-eight hundred calories of food a day. Seventeen percent of this is protein, thirty-two percent fat, and fifty-one percent carbohydrates.”

Bess gave a low giggle. “That’s the place for me! ”

The guide went on to say that the men eat four meals a day and a series of menus are rotated every four days. “All the food is in bars, cubes, and powders sealed in plastic pouches, or pastes which are kept in tubes.”

Bess called out to the guide, “Could you tell us what some of the menus are? ”

The man smiled. “Yes. How would you like this for breakfast? Strawberry cereal cubes, bacon squares, peanut-butter sandwiches, and orange juice.”

“That’s great, ” said Bess.

“Here’s a typical dinner menu, ” the guide told her. “Beef with vegetables, spaghetti with meat sauce, toast squares, fruit cake made with dates, and tea.”

“That would suit me, ” Bess commented. “It sounds yummy.”

When the bus returned to the Visitor Information Center, Mr. Drew was waiting for them and they walked to the parking area.

As soon as they were seated in their car, George said, “Nancy, don’t keep us in suspense any longer. What did you figure out of that newspaper clue? ”

Nancy told her and the conversation turned to a series of guesses as to what it meant. They could only surmise that someone, somewhere, was ready to strike a blow. But who and at what?

When the group reached the house the Resardos were not there. Hannah remarked, “I suppose they won’t show up until dinner is ready.”

The girls offered to help her prepare dinner. When Nancy went into the dining room to set the table she noticed that a photograph of her father which he had sent Mr. Billington was gone from the buffet. She asked the others if any of them had placed it elsewhere. No one had.

“How strange! ” said Hannah. She hurried into the living room and called out, “A picture of Mr. and Mrs. Billington is gone too.”

On a hunch Nancy rushed upstairs to her father’s room. A photograph of her with Bess and George, which he always took with him when he traveled, had been removed from the bureau. Next the young detective went to her own room and pulled out a dresser drawer. She had left a wallet in it containing a snapshot of her father and one of Ned Nickerson. They were missing. But none of the other contents had been taken.

Nancy dashed down the stairs. “Every photograph has been taken! ” she exclaimed. “I’m sure they were stolen to use as identification of us because we’re trying to solve the mystery of the explosive oranges! ”