New Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club by Bertrand R. Brinley, Charles Geer Page B

he
pointed out that our intention had been to do the community a worthwhile
service. And Henry admitted in an interview for the paper that we didn't know
all the answers yet about how to cope with nature, but that any scientist knew
that he faced certain risks whenever something new was being tried. He promised
that we would try to learn all about hail clouds and avoid mistakes in the
future.
            A few
days after the hailstorm, the town of Mammoth Falls awoke to find itself
shielded from the sun by a low and heavy overcast. The temperature had dropped,
and the hot spell seemed to be over. Everybody could smell rain in the wind,
and the town looked forward to the end of the long summer drought. But still no
rain came. For three days the overcast continued, and the atmosphere was heavy.
The cattle were restless, and chicken farmers complained that the hens cackled
all night and laid no eggs.
            On the
fourth day we held a meeting with all the members of Harmon Muldoon's gang, and
everybody was in favor of giving nature the needle. We decided to launch six
rockets simultaneously from different launch sites scattered around the valley
to see if we could make the overcast give out with some rain. We set up the
radio net, and Henry gave a countdown from the control center in our clubhouse.
Five of the rockets fired perfectly and exploded within seconds of each other
in the dense cloud cover. We later found out that Dinky Poore and Freddy
Muldoon at the sixth site had an argument over who was going to push the firing
button; after they both decided to let the other one push it, neither one would
agree to do it. So the argument ended up in a stalemate.
           
"What's the matter?" asked Henry, when he was finally able to get
them on the radio.
           
"Nothin'!" said Dinky. "That stupid Freddy is just too dumb to
push the button!"
            Anyway,
it rained all through that day and long into the night. Spirits were high in
Mammoth Falls, and we were once more in the good graces of everyone. It was the
first continuous rain of the summer, and the Gazette that afternoon
offered a one-hundred-dollar prize to anyone who could correctly predict the
number of inches that would fall. The next morning it was still raining, with
no sign of a letup. It looked odd to see umbrellas on the streets and people
wearing rubbers. But nobody was grumbling about it, as they usually do when
it's wet and nasty out. The downtown merchants were doing a good business
despite the weather, and everyone was wearing a smile.
            The
smiles turned a little sour, though, by the time it had rained for four days
straight. It's a funny thing, but no matter how badly people want rain, it
doesn't take much of it to satisfy them -- and not much more to make them gripe
about the weather. By the end of the week everyone was asking when the rain
would let up, and a lot of people were complaining about their cellars
flooding. In Ned Carver's barbershop the talk was about nothing else but the
rain, and about the mud slides that were occurring in the hills. The Gazette was offering a two-hundred-dollar prize to anyone who could predict the exact
hour the rain would stop.
            It just
kept raining. It didn't seem that the sun would ever come out again. By the
tenth day there was serious concern in Mammoth Falls, and the Town Council was
holding a special meeting to decide what to do about Lemon Creek. It was up
over its banks already, in some places, and a couple of the back roads that
crossed it had been closed. Nobody could remember a flood in Mammoth Falls, but
if the rain kept up, it looked as though we would have one.
            Henry
and Jeff and I were sitting in the drugstore across from the Town Hall having a
malted milk when Mayor Scragg and some members of the Council came in to get a
sandwich. The Mayor cleared his throat with a loud harrumph , as he
always does when he's about to say something, and came over to