kick one."

Brad Connel laughed heartily. "The boys can lure 'em with catnip," he
said.

Rick glanced at the geologist. The laugh hadn't rung true.

"I suggest we also save time by shooting in the early morning," Hartson
Brant added. "That will leave the afternoon for other activities. Jeff,
if you can manage to keep your head out of the way of blunt instruments,
perhaps you'd like to make a better sketch of the magma front. We can
assign the boys as guards, if you like."

Dr. Williams caressed the bruise on his head. "Not necessary, Hartson.
I'll lock my door and keep my face toward the window. But for now, how
about dinner?"

There was no disagreement.

After dinner, Rick and Scotty lingered over coffee with Dr. Balgos,
Julius Weiss, and Hartson Brant. The others had excused themselves and
gone back to their rooms. The boys were trying to learn more about
volcanoes, but the scientists had a tendency to get involved in
discussions of some of the finer points of geophysics and long minutes
would pass before Rick or Scotty could bring them back to the main point
with a question.

In the midst of an interesting discussion of the Hawaiian volcanoes by
Dr. Balgos, Honorario burst into the dining room and hurried to the
Peruvian scientist. Rick couldn't follow the rapid Spanish, but Balgos
jumped to his feet, his face white, and translated swiftly.

"Honorario says all the dynamite is gone!"

CHAPTER VI

Dangerous Trail

The search for the missing dynamite had failed completely. Rick, Scotty,
and the scientists were equally puzzled. Why steal dynamite? What was
there to be gained?

At a conference early the following morning Hartson Brant voiced the
question.

Julius Weiss was the first to respond, and his answer was another
question. "What was to be gained by stealing the tracings and Jeff's
sketch? Isn't the theft of the dynamite in the same category?"

"I suppose it is," Hartson Brant agreed. "I see no motive whatever for
either theft. After all, it was simple enough to make additional
tracings, and it will not be difficult to obtain more dynamite. So I go
back to my original question. What is to be gained by the theft?"

"Dynamite has some value," Zircon boomed.

"To be sure. But the tracings had none, except to us."

Rick said what had been on his mind. "Both thefts resulted in only one
thing . . . delay. The tracings put us a day behind, and the dynamite
might delay us even longer. It dep