her in the afternoon--put them on different cards."

Rick looked up. "What are you trying to find?"

"Periodicity," Steve said promptly. "Is there any regularity in the
sightings? Do they occur every three, four, or five days, or once a week
on Mondays? Which reminds me. You might put down the day of the week,
too. There's a calendar on the wall behind you."

"You read and I'll copy," Rick told Scotty. "Go ahead." He waited with
pencil poised over a card. In a moment he looked at his pal. "What are
you waiting for?"

Scotty was poring over the notebook again. His eyebrows knit. "You know,
there's one chunk of data on just a few sightings that we didn't put
down because we didn't have a column for it."

"What is it?" Steve asked.

"I know!" Rick exclaimed. "There were a few times when people said they
saw yellow glows in the sky after they saw the objects. Isn't that it?"

Scotty nodded. "I've been counting. There were five instances. Two
people said the glow wasn't really connected, because it came from
Wallops Island."

"Why on earth didn't you include it in the chart?" Steve demanded.

"It doesn't fit," Scotty replied. "In every single case, the glow was to
the southeast."

"Maybe it does fit," Steve said emphatically. "Boys, never leave out a
bit of data because it doesn't seem to fit. This particular chunk could
very well be the clue."

"Why?" Rick asked quickly.

Steve shook his head. "I'm not sure, so I don't want to say. But include
every sighting of the yellow glow on the date cards. I'm going to borrow
that set for a closer look."

Scotty began reading, while Rick recorded. When the cards were complete,
they ran through them. There was no periodicity. The dates seemed
completely random. Sometimes two sightings had been made at different
times on the same date. There would be two days, three, four, five, or
even six between sightings.

"Not a trace of pattern," Rick said.

"Who says stingarees have to fly on schedule?" Steve asked with a grin.
"They're not supposed to be like planes. What's the next step?"

Scotty produced the map they had used. "One more job to do, and that's
to plot the locations of the observers and draw lines in the directions
of the sightings. That will show us if there's any regularity in the
place where the flying objects appear."

"Very good," Steve approved.

Scotty took pencil and ruler and laid the map out flat. "You read
location and direction, Rick, and I'll p