Sprockets by Alexander Key Page B

unhappy.”
    â€œWhat’s cooking?” Jim asked. “Has Prof. Vladimir Katz found out about the Something on Mars?”
    â€œNot yet, but he will soon. It seems, as nearly as I can translate, that the secret on which Prof. Vladimir Katz was working for the Mongolians was not a Space Probe. It was a spaceship, and it has just been launched. The professor is now sixty-two thousand miles out in space, on his way to Mars.”
    Jim looked sick. “Daddy will never get over this,” he said dolefully. “And there’s not a thing we can do about it.”
    â€œThere is just one thing,” said Sprockets. Very carefully, so as not to strain the wires connecting him to Rivets, he reached under his cot and brought forth a small box not much bigger than his hand. When he opened it, purple light flooded the room.
    Jim gaped at it in astonishment. “Is that the present the purple people gave you when you found the quantic moonstone for them?”
    â€œYes,” said Sprockets. “It’s their signal box. They said if we ever needed them in an emergency, I was to press the button in this box, think real hard, and they would come.”
    Jim looked doubtful. “Aw, suppose they are way over on the other side of the Universe—a million light years away! How can they possibly hear a signal from a little box?”
    â€œDistance has nothing to do with it,” Sprockets told him. “It works by thought—and thought is quicker than light. I’m not sure that positronic thought will work, but this is an emergency of the most desperate kind, so we’ll have to try it. Turn on all your buttons, Rivets, and think hard!”
    â€œB-but how can I fink when I don’t know what to fink about?”
    Sprockets almost groaned. Rivets had never met Ilium and Leli, the purple people, and couldn’t possibly imagine what they were like, or how they talked. “Oh, just close your eyes and think of something purple-purple marbles if you have to. I’ll do the rest. Ready? Go!”
    As Rivets closed his eyes, Sprockets did the same, and pressed down on the button in the purple box. Ilium and Leli ! he thought, using the singing language he had learned from them. Sprockets calling! We need your help. Come quickly !”
    Almost instantly from the box, very faintly, came a curious singing that only Sprockets could understand. It was so very, very faint that it must have come from an unimaginable distance, possibly some other universe.
    â€œ We hear you, Sprockets, ” came the singing from the box. “ We are coming !”
    If there was more, Sprockets was not aware of it. Somewhere in his brain a safety relay buzzed and clicked off, to give his poor battered circuits a rest. It would be fourteen hours and eighteen seconds before it clicked on again.

3
    They Begin a Journey
    The truck from the robot factory, fortunately, arrived an hour late the next morning. Had it come earlier, the doctor would not have had time to drink three cups of sassafras tea with large gobs of sourwood honey in it, and Sprockets and Rivets might have been taken back to the factory. But the tea calmed the doctor, so much so that he wondered if he hadn’t been a bit hasty in his judgment. After all, he thought, little Rivets had his good points in spite of the marbles; and Sprockets, well, perhaps Sprockets could rebuild the Space Probe.
    But at that moment his thoughts were interrupted by the laboratory clock, which was connected with his observatory on the roof.
    â€œIt is a quarter past ten,” said the clock, very precisely as if it were proud of its ability to keep time. “The day is clear and there are no flying saucers—” Then abruptly it flashed a red light and cried: “Correction! Correction! There is a flying saucer!” And all at once it was screaming: “ Flying saucer! Flying saucer! Flying saucer !”
    The doctor upset his teacup, dashed madly