Читать книгу Danny Dunn and the Weather Machine - Jay Williams - Страница 6

CHAPTER TWO

The Weather Forecaster

For a long, breathless moment the three waited. Nothing happened. Then Danny said, “If it is a bomb, it’s wet by now and that will stop it from exploding.”

“Not if it’s an underwater bomb,” Joe said.

“I don’t believe it’s a bomb at all,” Irene said stoutly. “We didn’t hear any plane. And why would anyone drop a bomb that size on a parachute? I’ll bet it only came from a flying saucer, or from outer space.”

At these words, Danny’s eyes widened. “Hey, maybe you’re right,” he said. “We ought to fish it out of the reservoir. It—it might have germs on it from another planet. It might poison the whole town.”

“How can we get to it?” Irene asked, frowning. Joe looked about. His eye fell on a long, dead branch that had blown down from one of the pine trees. He got it, and went out to the edge of the rocks.

“Danny, you hold my hand,” he said. “I’ll reach out and try to catch hold of the parachute.”

Danny took his friend’s hand, and Joe leaned far out with the stick. The parachute was just out of his reach. Further and further he stretched, and suddenly his hand slipped out of Danny’s. With a splash, he went headfirst into the water.

Irene uttered a shriek. Danny fell over backward on the rocks. Gasping and blowing, Joe came to the surface and shook the water out of his eyes.

“Oh, well,” he said. “Now I’m in, I might as well swim out and get the thing.”

A few strokes took him to the parachute. Using his branch, he hooked it up gingerly and brought it to shore. Danny took it from him, and Irene helped him up to the rocks.

“Anyway,” he said, wiping his face, “I’m clean.”

Danny was already examining their catch. They could see now that it was a white cardboard box about the size and shape of a large box of corn flakes, with a tape handle and a ring that held it secured to the parachute.

Joe bent over it. [,,/nrauituqsuisxqx,,] he read. “A secret code!”

“You’re reading it upside down,” Danny said, reversing the box. “Here it is—it’s a radiosonde.”

“Some kind of radio?” Joe wrinkled his brows.

Danny read the square of printing aloud. “‘This weather instrument, known as a radiosonde, was attached to a balloon and sent up by a United States Weather Bureau station. During the observation, while the radiosonde was in the air, it operated as a radio transmitter of the temperature, pressure, and moisture of the air through which it passed. The balloon burst at a height of about sixteen miles and the radiosonde came down on the attached parachute.’ ”

“Look here,” Irene added. “It says it’s to be returned to the Weather Bureau so they can use it again.”

“Yes. Here are the instructions for mailing it,” said Danny thoughtfully. “But listen— we’re not far from the weather station. It’s over on the airfield, beyond Midston University. We could walk it easy from here. Let’s take it back now.”

“Gosh,” Joe protested. “It’s more than a mile.”

“Maybe they’ll give us a reward,” Danny said craftily.

Joe jumped up. “What are we waiting for?” he exclaimed.

Leaving the reservoir behind them, they struck off through the woods, and then across some fields until they came to the campus of Midston University, where Irene’s father, Dr. Miller, headed the astronomy department, and Professor Bullfinch occasionally lectured. Taking short cuts, they soon came to the airfield, which lay to the north of the town. A main road, Washington Avenue, ran past it, and a little way from the road were two small white buildings. One contained the waiting room, office, and control tower of the airport. The other bore the sign: U.S. DEPT. OF COMMERCE, WEATHER BUREAU.

Danny knocked at the door. After a moment it opened, and a tall man peered out. He had a round, ruddy face and small, sleepy-looking blue eyes, and his lips were curved in a lopsided but pleasant smile.

“Yes?” he said, blinking at them.

“We’ve come to return your radiosonde,” Danny explained.

“That’s very kind of you. Won’t you come in?” said the man. He held the door wide, and the three friends filed inside.

The little room was crammed with equipment. A teletype machine clattered away in one corner. A long table was piled with diagrams and papers, and the walls were covered with charts of clouds, weather maps, and a large relief map of the United States. Two windows looked out on the airfield, and a door in one wall stood open, revealing another office, a tiny one in which were a desk and a couple of lockers. Cabinets and instruments were ranged all about the main room, and on a corner of the table a teakettle steamed on an electric hot-plate.

“My name is Mr. Elswing,” said their host. “I’m the meteorologist in charge here.”

Danny introduced himself and his friends, and they all shook hands.

“So this is where you make the weather?” Joe said, looking about. “When are you going to give us some rain?”

Mr. Elswing laughed, a jolly, booming laugh. “My goodness,” he said. “That’s what comes of people thinking of us as weathermen, instead of weather forecasters.”

“Is this machine used for forecasting?” Irene asked, pointing to a tall cabinet with three dials set in its front.

“Yes. That tells the wind direction and wind speed. The top two dials are connected with instruments on the roof of the building. The third dial is a barometer, and gives the air pressure.”

Joe was leaning over a long counter on which were a map labeled “Aviation Weather Reporting Stations” and a sheaf of long yellow papers. “Look at this,” he said. “This is really code!”

“Joe, you’ve got codes on the brain,” Danny grinned.

“Oh, yeah? Well, listen to this,” said Joe. “PIREPS VCNTY BDG 1740 R NO TURBC. And I’m not reading upside down, either.”

Mr. Elswing nodded. “In a way you’re right, Joe. Those are the reports all the stations send in, once every hour. That one is an aviation report.” He picked up the paper and read, “Pireps—pilot reports; vicinity of BDG—that’s the code signal of one of the stations; at 1740— that’s five-forty in the afternoon; R—rain; No Turbc—no turbulence, that is, no high swirling winds.”

Joe looked triumphant. “Too bad it wasn’t something secret.”

“You see,” Mr. Elswing explained, “each weather station observes as much as it can about the conditions nearby: the atmospheric pressure, temperature, moisture in the air, wind direction and speed. All these observations are put together to make a large picture of what the weather is like all day long, all over the country. This picture is called a weather map. You can see it in the daily newspapers. Then the meteorologists—that’s a better word than weatherman—can make a pretty good guess at what it will be like tomorrow.”

“What will it be like tomorrow?” Danny asked.

“Dry again, I’m afraid,” Mr. Elswing said ruefully.

“Why?” asked Irene. “What’s happened to all the rain?”

Mr. Elswing shook his head. “All I can tell you is that we just don’t know for certain. The great mass of air that is giving us our weather is staying just about the same. Its pressure is constant, and until, for example, some cold air comes along from the northwest to push it on its way, there isn’t much chance of a change.”

He sighed, and took some cups from a shelf. “I just wish people wouldn’t think it’s my fault,” he said. “How about a nice cup of tea? I always keep the kettle on. Hot tea seems to cool me off in this kind of weather.”

The three young people sat down around the table, and Mr. Elswing, pushing aside the papers, put tea bags in the cups and got down a sugar bowl and a can of milk.

“Why should hot tea cool you off?” Irene demanded.

“Simple,” said Danny. “It makes you feel so much hotter that the hot air outside seems cooler.”

Mr. Elswing laughed. “Maybe you’ve got something there, Dan,” he said. “Another reason is that the tea makes you perspire. The moisture on your skin evaporates. When moisture evaporates, it takes heat from surrounding areas, so your skin feels cool.”

“Well, it doesn’t seem to cool me much,” grumbled Joe, who was sitting with his back to the open window. “I’m hot. Even the wind feels hot on my neck.”

“Oh, Joe, you’re always complaining,” said Irene. “Mr. Elswing, tell us some more about what you do in the weather station.”

But before the meteorologist could speak, Joe said in a trembling voice, “Danny.”

“What?”

“Did you see that horror movie on TV—Wolf Man of London?”

Danny looked at his friend in astonishment.

“Do you remember that guy in the picture who turned into a werewolf?” Joe went on.

“Sure. Why?”

“Because that hot wind I feel—is him, breathing down my neck!”