ose you fly to Newark and have Scotty drive over. Then you can
pick them up at the station by car and take them to the plane. If you
fly them to Spindrift no one will know that Marks has even arrived.
Tom will try to make sure no one is tailing him, and he'll help you to
lose any cars that might try to follow."
"We can do it," Rick assured him. "I can land close to the city. I've
done it before with pontoons."
"Good. Ordinarily, I'd have an agent meet them, but my Newark man is
in the woods with the Boy Scout group. Call me when Marks is safely
with the team."
"Will do," Rick promised.
Rick reported the conversation to his father when the scientist came
in from late work in the laboratory. Hartson Brant nodded wearily.
"Good. If Marks is on the way, that means he has answers we need badly
to some of our mathematical problems."
"What I don't get is why he's coming on an overnight train," Scotty
interjected. "That's doing it the hard way, because it's only a few
hours from Washington to Newark. Why didn't he get a train at a decent
hour? This way, he'll spend most of the night sitting on a siding
somewhere."
The scientist smiled. "I gather that Marks has definite ideas of his
own. I wouldn't care to be Tom Dodd. I'm sure Marks is giving him
considerable trouble. He's convinced this security business is a plot
to inconvenience him and the other people on the project."
"He didn't seem to have a very sweet disposition," Rick agreed. "Good
night, Dad. Scotty and I are going to bed early, because we'll have to
be up at dawn."
It was really the first sound night's sleep Rick had since the
invasion of Spindrift by Steve and the Morrisons. Later, he had to
smile at himself, because it seemed to be proof of what Scotty had
said--that the real reason for his uneasiness was inactivity. He
admitted that the problem of the stricken team members intrigued him.
He made no claim to being any great shakes as a detective, but trying
to solve mysteries, whether scientific or real, was a part of him.
Scotty departed first by boat a few minutes after dawn. Rick warmed
the Sky Wagon, then went in for a dish of cereal before taking off. He
had plenty of time. Newark was only a few minutes away in the fast
little plane.
He timed it perfectly. Scotty was just rolling up to the pier near
Newark as Rick taxied in after landing. He got into a rowboat brought
by an attendant, and tied the plane to an anchor buoy. In a moment he
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