The Saucer Sighters
"We shoot a line straight north," Rick explained, "for a distance of about twenty miles. Then we start asking questions. If we get affirmative answers, we head north again for another ten miles and repeat the process. We do this until we come to an area where saucers have not been sighted. Okay?"
Scotty nodded. "Okay. There is only one tiny flaw in this plan. If we head straight north, we drop Steve's car into the Little Choptank. If we cross that safely, we'll get wet in the main Choptank."
Rick sighed. "If there is anything I detest, loathe, and despise, it is people who get up in the morning feeling full of humor. We will go to Cambridge, missing the Little Choptank, and cross the Choptank on the bridge. Route 50 goes almost straight north. Is that more precise and acceptable, Donald?"
"It is indeed, Richard. I'm a stickler for accuracy."
"You're a stickler in the mud. Let's get a notebook and start traveling."
A conference after dinner the night before had resulted in a plan of action. The boys had decided to reduce all the rumors about flying saucers to statistics that could be examined to see what elements the various sightings had in common. The way to obtain the statistics was through interviews.
The problem of the white-haired man with the familiar face still remained. Steve's books had disclosed that Calvert's Favor was famous, that it had been so named by the original settler because he had been granted the land by Lord Calvert, that it had changed hands only twice in more than a century. What the books didn't give was its location. The place was identified only as "a quiet creek, entirely within the original land grant." There was no mention of a Calvert Creek in the vicinity. They decided to put the question of its location aside until Steve's return.
It was a lovely morning. The convertible hummed smoothly over the blacktop roads to Cambridge, onto Route 50, across the Choptank River and north. Rick braked to a stop as the highway met the turnoff to Easton. "Think we're far enough north?"
Scotty had been consulting a road map. He shook his head. "Not yet. Easton is almost due east of Knapps Narrows, and we know the saucers have been sighted there. Better go on to Wye Mills."
"Okay." The road was dual-lane cement, now, and Rick relaxed while the car sped northward. "Odd name, Wye Mills. Lots of Wyes around here. Three Wye Rivers on the chart, a Wye Landing, and a famous old Wye Oak."
"Sounds like a song," Scotty said. "Wye, tell me Wye, are there saucers in the sky—"
"Please," Rick protested, "I'm in pain."
Route 50 turned at Wye Mills, leading to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge that crossed the bay to Annapolis. There was a gas station and lunch stand at the intersection. Rick pulled in and drifted up to the gas pump. "Fill it up, please. Any bottles of Coke around?"
"In the machine." The attendant pointed to the red automatic vendor.
The boys equipped themselves with Cokes and walked back to watch the attendant fill the tank. "We must be somewhere near where all those flying saucers were sighted," Rick remarked.
The attendant looked up. "Farther south. Never heard of anyone this far north seein' one. They see plenty down toward Cambridge. Ask me, they're seein' spots in front of their eyes."
The boys exchanged glances. When the car was ready, Rick turned and started south again. "See any stores on the way where we could ask again?"
"There's a restaurant. I saw two grocery stores, too, but from the way the attendant talked, we'll have to get closer to Cambridge." Scotty was making a note in their notebook.
Five miles back toward home, Rick stopped at another gas station and asked the attendant to look at the oil. None was needed, so the boys bought another pair of Cokes and engaged the man in conversation.
"Ever see any flying saucers in this area?" Rick asked.
"Nope. My brother did though, late one afternoon when he was on duty."
Scotty took out the notebook. "We're trying to get some information about them for a story we're writing. Do you remember when it was?"
"Let's see. I was workin' in the evenin' that day, so it must have been a Saturday. Last month, it was. Oh, I recall it now. Next day I took the kids to my mother's. It was her birthday. That would make it the tenth."
"Where was your brother when he saw it?" Rick queried.
"Pumpin' gas. Right here. He said it sort of came up over the trees, glittering like fire." The attendant pointed to a patch of trees down the road. The direction was almost directly southwest.
Scotty scribbled in the notebook. "Any other details you remember? What time in the afternoon was it?"
"Between four and five. Can't say exactly. He was still buzzin' when I came on duty at six. Wanted to call the newspapers, but I talked him out of it. People would think he was a fool."
"Did you?" Rick asked quietly.
"Nope. I know Chick. He's got a straight head on him. It may not have been a flyin' saucer, but you can bet it wasn't anythin' common, or anythin' he'd seen before."
"Score one," Scotty said triumphantly as they drove off.
"One flying saucer doesn't make a Martian invasion," Rick reminded him. "Let's keep it up."
By lunchtime they had interviewed a dozen people who claimed to have seen flying saucers. All details of the sightings had been noted in Scotty's book. During lunch, at a small restaurant in the old town of Oxford, they scored three more times after interviews with fishermen.
After lunch, they crossed the Choptank and headed south to the little town of Vienna. From there the route led to the shore town of Elliott, back to Vienna, and past the corner of Delaware to Salisbury, a good-sized town on the Maryland Eastern Shore.
There was a newspaper office in Salisbury. A chat with the editor and a quick skim through the back files added more data to the growing list. Rick had a hunch there was a pattern shaping up, but he could not be sure until the information was all laid out for examination.
By the time the boys met Steve at the small airport, both Rick and Scotty had writer's cramp, and the notebook was nearly used up. They had recorded over half a hundred sightings.
Steve listened to a report of their day with an appreciative smile. "Nothing like a mystery for keeping you two out of mischief," he told them. "Want to eat out? Or cook a steak in the yard?"
"Eat out," Scotty said promptly.
"We can get steak at home," Rick added. "But not Chesapeake Bay clam fritters or Maryland crab cakes."
Steve had a favorite place of his own, a small, nondescript joint called "Louie's Crab House" up the Choptank River, near the town of Denton. There, on wooden trestle tables covered with brown wrapping paper, he introduced them to a favorite Chesapeake Bay pastime known as a "crab feast."
The waiter set wooden blocks in front of them, with a round piece of hardwood, a fork, and a sharp paring knife. A stack of paper napkins was supplied, and individual pots of melted butter completed the setting.
The boys waited impatiently, hungry, but trusting Steve's word that the result was worth the wait. The waiter reappeared carrying a huge tray, stacked with a towering pyramid of whole crabs, steaming and red, coated with the spices in which they had been cooked. Placing the tray on the table, the waiter asked, "Anything else?"
Scotty said, dazed, "I don't believe there's anything else left in the kitchen. We have all the crabs in the world right here."
"Only three dozen," the waiter said. "Jumbos, of course. You want anything, you yell."
Unidentified flying objects were forgotten as Steve initiated them into the proper method of eating fresh crab. It turned out to be quite an art, but one that they mastered quickly. Soon all three of them were munching succulent back-fin crab meat drenched in fresh butter. The wooden block served as an anvil, and the round hardwood piece as a hammer for cracking claws. The paring knife was used for trimming and for scooping out delicious bits of meat. The fork was utilized to persuade small tidbits to leave their shell cages. Three or four napkins were used between each tidbit to mop buttery hands, and even chins, down which the butter sometimes dripped. It was a feast, indeed.
"If I hadn't been a heavy eater before, I'd be one after this," Scotty observed happily.
"Beats hunting flying stingarees," Rick agreed. "Pass another crab, please."
Not until the table had been cleared by the waiter, who simply removed the utensils and tray, then wrapped up all the shells in the brown paper and carried it off, did the conversation return to the mystery.
Rick hadn't told Steve of last night's meeting with the white-haired man or of the thinly veiled warning. He described them now in detail.
"Odd," Steve said. "This familiar face needs identifying. No normal person worries about anyone asking casual questions. That's a sure mark of insecurity. In other words, the man is afraid. People who are afraid often have something to hide. Do you have any reason to think he may be tied up with the flying stingarees or saucers?"
"None at all," Rick answered.
"Do you know where Calvert's Favor is?" Scotty asked. "The location wasn't given in your books. There was quite a lot about the plantation house."
"No, never heard of the place. But we'll find out when we pass through Cambridge. I know a man there who knows everything about this area." Steve held out his hand. "Let's see your notebook."
Scotty handed it over. The young agent leafed through it rapidly. "That's some list. If I had any doubt that people were seeing things, it's gone now. How are you going to arrange the data?"
"In tables, and on a map," Rick explained.
"Fine. We can do it tonight. Want anything else?"
Scotty groaned. "I couldn't even drink a glass of water."
"Same here," Rick agreed.
"Then let's leave the crabs behind and take a ride."
On the way back to Cambridge, Steve Ames mused aloud. "You know, it's an odd world. A few years ago there were flying saucer reports by the dozen. Each one was given lots of newspaper space. The Air Force conducted investigations. Then flying saucers got unpopular, the Air Force closed its project, and the newspapers wrote a funny story every time a report came in. Now we have a rash of sightings in one small area. People talk about it, but no one gets excited. The authorities brush it off as just hokum. Yet, your investigation today shows that people are seeing something, even if we don't know what."
Rick nodded thoughtfully. "What's even odder is that a well-known man disappears, people search for him for a couple of days, and then do nothing but talk about it. The police aren't even interested, so far as we can tell."
Steve laughed. "You're right. But look at it in another way. Assume you're the local policeman. Someone rushes in and tells you that Joe Doakes has been carried off by a flying saucer. You don't believe in flying saucers, but you know Doakes. You investigate. His boat has been found, but his body is missing. What do you assume? That he was really toted off by some mysterious object? Nope. You assume he was hurt or killed falling out of the boat. You know that sharks come into the bay and sometimes swim up creeks. You figure that the currents sometimes act in odd ways, depending on the winds. You figure a dozen natural kinds of things, none connected with mysterious flying objects. You call a coroner's jury, and not a man on it is willing to say for the record that he believes in flying saucers. What happens?"
"Case closed," Scotty said slowly, "because the body isn't around. No proof of death, or even of accident. Pending proof of death—meaning the body—the jury finds that Joe Doakes is missing under mysterious circumstances and may have met with death or an accident by misadventure while engaged in his lawful business of crabbing."
"That's about it," Steve agreed. "It isn't really odd when you look at it that way. But you can bet the case isn't closed. It's just inactive, until something turns up. Remember there's no detective squad in a small town."
There was a combination gas station and store on the outskirts of Cambridge. Steve drove in and honked the horn. A young boy looked out of the store and called, "Howdy, Steve. Want gas?"
"Not tonight, Jimmy. Ask your grandfather where Calvert's Favor is located, will you?"
The boy came out of the store and walked toward the car. He was a freckle-faced towhead, with a grin wider than the Choptank River. "Heck, Steve, I don't have to ask gran'pop that. Everybody knows where Calvert's Favor is located."
"Not everybody," Steve returned. "I don't. How about letting us in on the secret, Jimmy?"
"It's no secret. Everybody around here knows it's located across the river from you. It's at the head of Swamp Creek."