"No. There was no one on the island. The place had been closed down for the winter. That's the only pleasant thing about it."
Duran found it such unexpectedly good news that he was actually able to smile when he dropped back into the chair.
"In other words, Loeffler, it was a prank."
But the Attorney General seemed not to see it in precisely that light.
"A prank, yes!" he exploded. "A hundred thousand dollar prank! My God, Vance, don't you see what those boys did? They demonstrated the grossest lack of respect for private property. And what if they'd miscalculated? That rocket was fired from a distance of some fifty or sixty miles. It could have killed any number of people along its course had it fallen short."
"Well, I'll admit it's not the sort of thing I'd like to see encouraged," said Duran. "Now give me the details. Who were they? Where did they get the rocket? What was the point of it, anyway?"
Sigmund Loeffler opened a folder which lay on his desk and started sifting through its contents. He pulled out several memoranda and a list of names, closing the folder again.
"There was a gang of eight, all in the eleventh or twelfth grades at Eisenhower High. Five of them were members of the school rocket club. Three of them had juvenile delinquency records—minor stuff, mostly, like copter stunting and public disturbance. The youngest had won a couple of science awards for demonstrations in—" he glanced significantly at the senator, "the chemistry of explosives."
Duran said nothing, but his sense of concern was growing.
"Let's see," Loeffler went on. "Two of the boys were taking vocational courses. One had his own machine shop, in fact. Then there was the electronics expert—Ceasar Grasso's son—know him?"