"One thing seems sure," Scotty offered. "Chahda was in a big hurry."
"What makes you think so?" Mrs. Brant asked. "Barby! Please stop feeding Dismal at the table."
Dismal turned beseeching eyes to Rick in a plea for moral support, but his young master was listening to Scotty.
"The words he used. Like putting together an atomic symbol and Russian money to make 'troubles,' and using 'umbra' instead of shadow. I'm sure in a big book like The World Almanac troubles and shadows are mentioned somewhere. But he didn't have time to search. He took the first possibilities that came along."
Rick nodded approval. "That figures. But why didn't he have time?"
Scotty shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe better."
Julius Weiss, who had tired of the discussion and started to the lab, ran back into the house. "There's a plane heading this way," he announced. "I'm sure it's coming here, because it's down pretty low."
The conversation ended abruptly. Rick and Scotty were first out on the lawn. The engine noise of the plane was loud.
Rick saw it first, a sleek, four-place cabin job, circling wide out over the water, losing altitude. In a few moments it banked sharply behind the lab building, straightened out, and cut the gun. Rick was running toward the end of the grass strip even before the plane settled smoothly to the ground.
"Steve Ames," he said to himself. "I'll bet it is." The JANIG officer had wasted no time!