Scotty scratched a mosquito bite. "Think he might be some kind of public figure?"
Rick looked up sharply. "I think you hit it! If that's true, we should be able to get him identified easily."
"Steve could do it through JANIG," Scotty suggested.
"It would take too long. He won't be home until tonight, and the picture wouldn't reach JANIG until tomorrow. Then it would take a day to check it out."
"Are we in a hurry?" Scotty asked.
Rick chuckled. "I am. But don't ask me why. Look, I'll bet Duke or Jerry could identify it by going through the newspaper morgue." Their newspaper friends were owner-editor and reporter for the Whiteside paper back home.
"They're on vacation," Scotty reminded him. Once each year, the paper was turned over to a friend of Duke's, a former newspaperman turned professor of journalism, who used the occasion to give some of his students practical experience.
That was true, Rick remembered. Neither Duke nor Jerry would be available. Who else did they know who could help? Suddenly he snapped his fingers. "I've got it! Ken Holt would help, if we could get the picture to him."
Ken Holt, the young newsman whose adventures were favorite reading for Rick and Scotty, had once asked Spindrift for help, and Rick had given him a set of pocket-size radio transceivers of the kind known as "The Megabuck Network."
"Sandy Allen is a photographer," Scotty pointed out. "He might know these people."