ty considered. "If he wanted to reach the mine area without people
noticing him, he could park his scooter here and walk over the hill."

"He could," Rick agreed. "But why would he want to reach the mine area?"

"Not to sell Frostola. That's for sure."

"Uh-uh. My guess is he has to reset the Blue Ghost."

"Reset it?"

"Sure. Think about it. The projector can't go on operating forever when
a clock reaches nine, can it? It must need servicing and resetting."

"And loading with methyl chloride to squirt at us?"

"Too true." Rick had wondered about that. "But how does the chemical
squirter work? Where is it? The projector must be close to the Blue
Ghost, if the chemical came from the same place."

Scotty laughed. "You don't discourage easily, do you? We tried to find a
projector beam the other night, remember? What did we get for it? A
squirt in the face. No projector, no nothing."

"There has to be a projector, or an imagemaker of some kind," Rick
insisted, "unless you're admitting the ghost is real."

"Where would it be located?"

"Very close, I'd guess. Hidden somewhere near the spring pool, batteries
and all. It has to be, and I think we'd better spend some time looking."

"Starting where? Don't tell me--it has to be the mine."

Rick was already walking back up the hill toward the cornfield. "There's
no other underground location in which a projector could be stored, is
there? So let's get at it."

"Glad we brought flashlights," was Scotty's only comment.

They hiked in silence to the cornfield, pausing now and then among the
corn plants to examine footprints. Thanks to the rain that had left the
ground soft, there were plenty of them, but they told the boys no more
than they already knew.

At the top of the hill above the mine they paused to survey the scene.
Belsely was hauling a load of rock through the field near the plane,
using his tractor and a stoneboat. The boys knew he was busy building a
stone fence. He saw them and waved. They waved back, then went down the
hill to the spring and its basin.

Again they examined the entire location with great care, and Scotty
probed seams in the rock with his jackknife blade. The entire hillside
in this location was cracked and seamed and the rock face above the
basin was rough and irregular. Rick wondered if there had ever been an
earthquake in the neighborhood or whether the settling of the earth into
the mine has caused the cracking.

"Nothing here,"