Читать книгу Danny Dunn and the Fossil Cave - Jay Williams - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

Channel 25

They went, first, to the railroad station to pick up Dr. Tresselt’s suitcase, and then took a taxi home. Professor Bullfinch came out to meet the cab and greeted his old friend enthusiastically.

“My dear Alvin,” he said. “Glad to see you. Up to your old tricks, eh?”

“I couldn’t resist the hills, Euclid,” said Dr. Tresselt. “Some beautiful limestone! If these youngsters hadn’t dragged me away, I’d still be there.”

Professor Bullfinch took off his glasses and wiped them, chuckling. “I’m grateful to you, all three,” he said.

“But weren’t you worried?” asked Irene. “The train came in at nine o’clock. We thought you’d have the police out looking for Dr. Tresselt.”

“Oh, Dr. Tresselt always manages to find his way back somehow,” the Professor said. “He was lost in the Navajo desert for three weeks, once, but he found himself all right in the end, and brought back a very important report on rock formations, as well.”

“I’ve heard about absent-minded professors…” Joe whispered to Danny.

The Professor overheard him. “Not absent-minded, Joe,” he said. “People say that of scientists because they don’t understand how fascinating our work can be. It can absorb your attention so that you forget everything else. Dr. Tresselt is far from absent-minded in everyday affairs—I’ve never known him to wind up the cat and put the clock out, for instance—but when he is at work on a project, he tends to forget the rest of the world.”

Joe blushed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I know what you mean. It’s the way I am when I’m working on a poem, for instance.”

“Exactly,” said Dr. Tresselt. “In fact, scientists and artists are alike in many ways.”

They all went into the house, and Mrs. Dunn, a comfortable, jolly-looking woman with hair as red as her son’s, shook Dr. Tresselt’s hand.

“Professor Bullfinch told me we might not see you until dinner-time,” she said. “Fortunately, I didn’t believe him. Lunch will be ready in a few minutes. Come along, Dr. Tresselt, and I’ll show you to your room.”

The three grownups went upstairs. Danny sighed, jamming his hands deep into his pockets.

“Well, I’m glad we got him home,” he said. “But I sure hated to leave that cave.”

“What?” said Joe. “You mean that the tree I saw really was the one that marked where the entrance was?”

“I knew that,” Irene said, quietly. “And Danny, I think it was—well—noble of you.”

Danny shrugged, kicking at the rug with one toe. “Yeah, I must have been sick or something. I’ll just never find the way back to that spot.”

“Yes, you will,” Irene smiled mischievously. “I dropped back, you know, and when I did I spotted the cave entrance. So, as we went down the hill, I marked the trail by breaking twigs so that they pointed back toward it, and by tying knots in the long grass. We can find the way easily.”

Danny brightened. “Gosh, Irene, you’re great! I was so busy with Dr. Tresselt that I never even thought of doing that.”

“He’s nice, isn’t he?” Irene said.

“There’s one thing,” said Joe. “How could you tell that was a geologist’s hammer? I didn’t know geologists went around hammering things.” He scratched his head. “To tell the truth, I don’t know what they do go around doing.

“Geologists study the earth,” Danny replied. “They study the rocks, and how mountains were formed, and how old the earth is, and what happens to rivers and lakes and oceans. They have to know all sorts of sciences—botany, chemistry, physics, mineralogy. They have these special hammers, with narrow heads and sharp picks on them, so they can take samples of rocks and minerals.”

He turned down the long hall that led to Professor Bullfinch’s private laboratory, which was built on to the back of the house. “Let’s go look in the Professor’s library,” he said. “I want to see what Dr. Tresselt meant when he talked about ‘sedimentary rock.’”

“I’ll join you later,” Joe said. “I’ve—um—got dirt all over my hands. I’ll just run into the kitchen and wash up.”

He left them, and Dan and Irene went on to the laboratory, Irene remarking, “Joe must have sunstroke or something. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard him say right out that he wanted to wash his hands.”

The laboratory consisted of two rooms, one small one fitted with shelves on which were books, notebooks, and files, and a larger one in which were stone-topped tables, stools, and all the varied equipment the Professor needed for his researches.

“Hey, look!” Danny said, as they entered this large room. “Professor Bullfinch has a portable TV set.”

On one of the lab tables stood a small metal case with a glass screen on one side about a foot square, and a blunt, cone-shaped projection on the other.

“I didn’t know the Professor watched television programs,” said Irene.

“Oh, he must be using this for experiments,” Danny said. “Hmm…I wonder if it’s one of those color sets.”

He examined the top of the case, in which were set tuning dials and switches, like those in an ordinary television set. “This dial must show the channels,” he said. “But gosh! this must be an experimental model of some kind, because it goes up to Channel 75.”

He studied the switches for a moment and then snapped one of them. The set began to hum softly, and the screen glowed.

“Let’s try Channel 25,” he said. “Maybe it comes from some foreign country.”

He twiddled the knobs until a picture suddenly came into focus. He and Irene stared at it.

It was obviously a kitchen, although everything was shadowy and indistinct, and no details showed. They could make out a sink, a window, and part of a table. It looked very much like a shadowgraph, in which only the silhouettes of things showed against the light.

“It’s not very clear, is it?” Irene said. “And it’s certainly not in color.”

“I’ll see if I can get it a little sharper,” said Danny. He turned one of the dials.

“Look!” Irene cried. “The picture’s moving.”

As the dial turned, the scene itself moved, as though the invisible camera were traveling. All at once something else came into view.

It was unmistakably a refrigerator. The door stood open. A figure straightened up, holding something which they decided was the leg of a chicken. The figure did a little jig and then began to gnaw at the chicken leg.

“You know,” said Dan, “there’s something awfully familiar about that television actor, even though all you can see is his outline.”

Irene put her hands over her mouth to stifle a scream of laughter.

“The hair—the long nose—the way he moves,” she said. “Of course he looks familiar. It’s Joe!”