Of course, all of this was mostly geared for local citizens, so there wasn’t any sign telling you where Callisto Street itself might take you, but if you knew it was Callisto Street you wanted there wasn’t a chance in the world that you’d miss it.
Harry buzzed us along in the white MG, just exactly at the 50-mile-an-hour speed limit, and I watched the exits go by, with the standard three signs for each one: Woodford Road, Eagle Avenue, Griffin Road, Crowell Street, Five Mile Road, Esquire Avenue…
I looked at my watch. I said, “Harry, are you going too slow? You’re supposed to go fifty.”
Harry was insulted; he prides himself on being one of the best drivers in the business. “I am going fifty,” he said, and gestured for me to take a look at the speedometer myself.
But I was too intent on watching for signs. Airport Road I wanted, Airport Road. I said, “It shouldn’t be taking anywhere near this long, I know.”
“I’m doing fifty — and I been doing fifty.”
I looked at my watch, then back out at the highway. “Maybe the speedometer’s busted. Maybe you’re only doing forty.”
“I’m doing fifty,” Harry said. “I can tell. I know what fifty feels like, and I’m doing fifty.”
“If we miss that plane,” I said, “we’re in trouble.”
“We won’t miss it,” said Harry grimly, and hunched over the wheel.
“The cops will be asking questions all around the neighborhood back there now,” I said. “Sooner or later they’ll find somebody that saw this car come out of the alley. Sooner or later they’ll be looking for us in this car and with these descriptions.”
“You just watch the signs,” said Harry.
So I watched the signs. Remsen Avenue, DeWitt Boulevard, Green Meadow Park, Seventeenth Street, Glenwood Road, Powers Street…
Harry said, “You must of missed it.”
I said, “Impossible. I’ve read every sign. Every sign. Your speedometer’s off.”
“It isn’t.”
Earhart Street, Willoughby Lane, Firewall Avenue, Broad Street, Marigold Hill Road…
I looked at my watch. “Our plane just took off,” I said.
“You keep looking at your watch,” Harry said. “That’s how come you missed it.”
“I did not miss it,” I said.
“Here comes Schuyler Avenue again,” he said. “Isn’t that where we got on?”
“How did I miss it?” I cried. “Hurry, Harry! We’ll get it this time! They’ll have a plane going somewhere!”
Harry crouched over the steering wheel.
They stopped us halfway around the circuit again. Some smart cop had seen us — the description was out by now. of course — and radioed in, and they set up a nice little road block across their elevated highway, and we drove right around to it and stopped, and they put the arm on us.
As I was riding in the back of a police car, going in the opposite direction on the Belt now, I asked the detective I was handcuffed to, “Do you mind telling me what you did with Airport Road?”
He grinned at me and pointed out the window, saying, “There it is.”
The sign he pointed at said, “Griffin Road, ¼ Mile.”
I said, “Griffin Road? I want Airport Road.”
“That’s it,” he said. “We changed the name yesterday, in honor of Kenny Griffin. You know, the astronaut. We’re all real proud of Kenny around here.”
“I better not say anything against him then,” I said.
The Perils of the Sky Rangers
(as Curt Clark)
Once upon a time, when the world teas young and simple, and so were we, a kid could enter a theater on a Saturday afternoon and, after waiting impatiently through the two features and the three cartoons, be rewarded by that glorious fifteen minutes of death and destruction known to all as the Chapter. Today, a kid can get his cartoons on the television set, and the feature movies at his neighborhood theater are much the same as ever, but where in the world is he going to find himself a good ripsnorting Chapter? Nowhere. Nowhere.
Breathes there a man alive today who didn’t as a child stand up on his seat and cheer when, with a familiar brrrannggg, the latest episode of his favorite serial came flashing on the screen? If there is one at all, he’s probably the kid with glasses who always got A in geography. All red-blooded, red-eyed, bloodthirsty regular guys would no more miss their weekly Chapter that always closed with a cliff-hanging scene than tune out Tom Mix in favor of Just Plain Bill.
To all such fire-breathing boys now disguised as men, the following is dedicated. Everything is here: the fast cars and the slow thought processes, the secret panels in the walls of the apartment, the ka-pwing of revolver ricochets in a California canyon, the mysterious rays that burned gaping holes through strongest steel, the inspiring fist fights that knocked people out of action but never out of their hats, the sputtering rocket ships held up by thick black wires, the hero in his padded costume and the heroine in her padded shoulders, and the mad, mad villain who has escaped once more from his padded cell. All frantically hurled together in a world of evil evil and good good. No economy has been spared in bringing you this flashback into the glorious time when serials were better than movies, and Saturday afternoon was by far the most glorious lime of all…
Chapter 1
The Return of Doctor Gore
At Sky Ranger Headquarters high atop a peak in the North American Rockies. Commander Harlowe North calls into his office Captain Rip Storm and his faithful sidekick Happy Gibson, for briefing on a special assignment. North, through a confidential agent, has received a secret document suggesting that Doctor Gore, the villainous scientific genius whom they had thought to be dead at the conclusion of Kip Storm of the Sky Rangers (1954), is still alive and in league with a mysterious organization known only as The Society for the Destruction of the World. North instructs Rip and Happy to search from the air in the vicinity of the Grand Tetons, where it is believed Gore’s secret laboratory is located.
Upon leaving North’s office, the Sky Rangers encounter Sally Blair, girl reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, and her friend Daisy Bates. Sally, having received a tip that a big story is brewing, is determined to get air exclusive. The Sky Rangers, however, refuse to reveal the nature of their mission.
Stopping off at the headquarters laboratories, Rip and Happy learn that Leon Zolkin, scientist, has perfected a device which detects unusual ray activity. Since this would aid their search for Dr. Gore. Zolkin arranges to have the device installed in Rip’s rocket ship by Sky Ranger Mechanic Ray Webb, who is secretly in league with Gore.
Meanwhile, Sally and Daisy have returned to the newspaper, where Sally, after consulting her editor, determines to stow away on a Sky Ranger rocket ship.
At this moment, in his underground lair, Dr. Gore is greeting Vontz and Vera von Hendrich, agents of a foreign power which has been financing the doctor’s research into a new Destroying Ray in the expectation that Gore will turn it over to it on completion. The agents are angered by Gore’s apparent stalling on the unit, but the doctor informs them that he has perfected a small working model.
Interrupted by a call from Webb, Gore learns that the Sky Ranger rocket ship is even now proceeding toward his headquarters. Gore, seeing an opportunity to convince Vontz and Vera of his good intentions, offers to demonstrate his ray by blasting the rocket ship out of the sky.