"Okay. Just a sec while I get my camera." He detached his camera from its bracket and placed it in its carrying case, then helped the other two drag canvas tarpaulins over all the test gear-one for the test stand, one for the barricade with its controls, instruments, and periscopes. Then the three turned away and headed out of the clearing.
The clearing was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, placed there at the insistence of Ross's parents, to whom the land belonged, in order to keep creatures, both four-legged and two-legged, from wandering into the line of fire while the boys were experimenting. The gate in this fence was directly behind the barricade and about fifty feet from it.
They had had no occasion to glance in the direction of the gate since the beginning of the test run-indeed, their attentions had been so heavily on the rocket that anything less than an earthquake would hardly have disturbed them.
Ross and Morrie were a little in front with Art close at their heels, so close that, when they stopped suddenly, he stumbled over them and almost dropped his camera. "Hey, watch where you're going, can't you?" he protested. "Pick up your big feet!"
They did not answer but stood still, staring ahead and at the ground. "What gives?," he went on. "Why the trance? Why do-oh!" He had seen it too.
"It" was the body of a large man, crumpled on the ground, half in and half out the gate. There was a bloody wound on his head and blood on the ground. They all rushed forward together, but it was Morrie who shoved them back and kept them from touching the prone figure. "Take it easy!" he ordered.
"Don't touch him. Remember your first aid. That's a head wound. If you touch him, you may kill him."
"But we've got to find out if he's alive," Ross objected.
"I'll find out. Here-give me those." He reached out and appropriated the data sheets of the rocket test run from where they stuck out of Ross's pocket. These he rolled into a tube about an inch in diameter, then cautiously placed it against the back of the still figure, on the left side over the heart. Placing his ear to the other end of the improvised stethoscope he listened. Ross and Art waited breathlessly. Presently his tense face relaxed into a grin. "His motor is turning over," he announced. "Good and strong. At least we didn't kill him."
"We?"
"Who do you think? How do you think he got this way? Take a look around and you'll probably find the piece of the rocket that konked him." He straightened up. "But never mind that now. Ross, you shag up to your house and call an ambulance. Make it fast! Art and I will wait here with... with, uh, him. He may come to and we'll have to keep him quiet."
"Okay." Ross was gone as he spoke. Art was staring at the unconscious man. Morrie touched him on the arm. "Sit down, kid. No use getting in a sweat. We'll have trouble enough later. Even if this guy isn't hurt much I suppose you realize this about winds up the activities the Galileo Marching-and-Chowder Society, at least the rocketry-and-loud-noises branch of it."
Art looked unhappy. "I suppose so."
"‘Suppose' nothing. It's certain. Ross's father took a very dim view of the matter the time we blew all the windows out of his basement—not that I blame him. Now we hand him this. Loss of the use of the land is the least we can expect. We'll be lucky not to have handed him a suit for damages too. Art agreed miserably. "I guess it's back to stamp collecting for us," he assented, but his mind was elsewhere. Law suit. The use of the land did not matter. To be sure the use of the Old Ross Place on the edge of town had been swell for all three of them, what with him and his mother living in back of the store, and Morrie's folks living in a flat, but-law suit! Maybe Ross's parents could afford it; but the little store just about kept Art and his mother going, even with the afterschool jobs he had had ever since junior high—a law suit would take the store away from them.
His first feeling of frightened sympathy for the wounded man was beginning to be replaced by a feeling of injustice done him. What was the guy doing there anyhow? It wasn't just.
"Let me have a look at this guy," he said.
"Don't touch him," Morrie warned.
"I won't. Got your pocket flash?" It was becoming quite dark in the clearing.
"Sure. Here... catch." Art took the little flashlight and tried to examine the face of their victim-hard to do, as he was almost face down and the side of his face that was visible was smeared with blood.
Presently Art said in an odd tone of voice, "Morrie-would it hurt anything to wipe some of this blood away?"
"You're dern tootin' it would! You let him be till the doctor comes." "All right, all right. Anyhow I don't need to—I'm sure anyhow. Morrie, I know who he is."
"You do? Who?"
"He's my uncle."
"Your uncle!"
"Yes, my uncle. You know-the one I've told you about. He's my Uncle Don. Doctor Donald Cargraves, my ‘Atomic Bomb' uncle."
Chapter 2 - A MAN-SIZED CHALLENGE
"AT LEAST I'M PRETTY SURE it's my uncle," Art went on. "I could tell for certain if I could see his whole face."
"Don't you know whether or not he's your uncle? After all, a member of your own family-"
"Nope. I haven't seen him since he came through here to see Mother, just after the war. That's been a long time. I was just a kid then. But it looks like him."
"But he doesn't look old enough," Morrie said judiciously. "I should think- Here comes the ambulance!"
It was indeed, with Ross riding with the driver to show him the road and the driver cussing the fact that the road existed mostly in Ross's imagination. They were all too busy for a few minutes, worrying over the stranger as a patient, to be much concerned with his identity as an individual. "Doesn't look too bad," the interne who rode with the ambulance announced. "Nasty scalp wound. Maybe concussion, maybe not. Now over with him- easy! -while I hold his head." When turned face up and lifted into the stretcher, the patient's eyes flickered; he moaned and seemed to try to say something. The doctor leaned over him.
Art caught Morrie's eye and pressed a thumb and forefinger together. There was no longer any doubt as to the man's identity, now that Art had seen his face.
Ross started to climb back in the ambulance but the interne waved him away. "But all of you boys show up at the hospital. We'll have to make out an accident report on this."
As soon as the ambulance lumbered away Art told Ross about his discovery. Ross looked startled. "Your uncle, eh? Your own uncle. What was he doing here?"
"I don't know. I didn't know he was in town."
"Say, look- I hope he's not hurt bad, especially seeing as how he's your uncle—but is this the uncle, the one you were telling us about who has been mentioned for the Nobel Prize?"
"That's what I've been trying to tell you. He's my Uncle Donald Cargraves."
"Doctor Donald Cargraves!" Ross whistled. "Jeepers! When we start slugging people we certainly go after big game, don't we?"
"It's no laughing matter. Suppose he dies? What'll I tell my mother?"
"I wasn't laughing. Let's get over to the hospital and find out how bad he's hurt before you tell her anything. No use in worrying her unnecessarily." Ross sighed, "I guess we might as well break the news to my folks. Then I'll drive us over to the hospital."
"Didn't you tell them when you telephoned?," Morrie asked. "No. They were out in the garden, so I just phoned and then leaned out to the curb to wait for the ambulance. They may have seen it come in the drive but I didn't wait to find out."
"I'll bet you didn't."
Ross's father was waiting for them at the house. He answered their greetings, then said, "Ross-"
"Yes, sir?"
"I heard an explosion down toward your private stamping ground. Then I saw an ambulance drive in and drive away. What happened?"