Freddy and the Flying Saucer Plans Read Free

air.
    â€œUncle Ben!” they shouted. “Hurray, here’s Uncle Ben!”
    And before the words were out of their mouths, the station wagon slid to a halt in a screech of tires, and the little old man who was driving leaned out. “Howdy,” he said.

CHAPTER
    2
    Mr. Benjamin Bean was Mr. Bean’s uncle. He was a very fine mechanic. He spent a good deal of his time at the Beans’, working in the shop which he had set up and equipped in the loft over the horse stable. It was here that he had made the parts for the space ship in which he and Mrs. Peppercorn and some of the animals had tried to reach Mars. Here too he had put together the small atomic engine which he had installed in his station wagon, making it probably the fastest and most powerful automobile ever constructed. Although because of its speed, and the kangaroo-like jumps which it made on the open highway, few people but Uncle Ben cared to ride in it.
    The year after the space ship had been lost, a flying saucer containing a number of Martians had landed in Centerboro. The Martians were small, and had four arms and three eyes; but they were pleasant, friendly people, they had traveled for a while with Mr. Boomschmidt’s circus, and had spent a good deal of time at the Beans’. They liked life on earth, and would probably have stayed much longer but for one thing. The saucer had attracted a good deal of attention. It could travel at almost the speed of light, and so would far outclass even the swiftest of modern bombers. Any nation that had even a small fleet of flying saucers could rule the world.
    As soon as pictures of the Martians and the saucer, and some accounts of its flight speed, began to appear in the newspapers, spies and secret agents of every nation on the globe swarmed into Centerboro. The hotel was jammed, every rooming house was crowded, there wasn’t a vacancy in any of the motels for fifty miles in any direction, and hundreds camped in tents on the fairgrounds, after the circus had gone. There were spies of every nationality, and many in very queer costumes—turbans and fezzes and long bright-colored robes. All day long the lounge in the hotel looked like a meeting of the United Nations.
    The saucer, which was parked part of the time at the farm, and the rest on the Centerboro fairgrounds, was the center of a milling crowd of spies. When it left to go from one place to the other they jumped into cars and followed. They climbed all over it, banged on the door, peeked in the portholes, and mobbed the Martians whenever they went in or came out. Some of them had sheaves of big bills in their hands which they offered for “just a peek inside.” Others took dozens of photographs of the Martians and the saucer from every possible angle, hoping that their governments might be able to spot something in the pictures that would give a hint of how the saucer worked.
    Late one night a gang, thought to be Communists, came armed with machine guns and grenades and tried to blow in the door with nitroglycerine. Fortunately, by this time a detachment of troops had been sent by the War Department to guard the saucer, the secret of which was felt to be too important to be allowed to fall into foreign hands. The gang was discovered just as it was approaching the saucer, and all the members were captured and sent to prison.
    There were so many spies that none of them was able to accomplish anything. Had there been a few, a direct attack on the saucer might have been successful. But with a hundred or more of them, each small group opposed to all the others, they were constantly falling over one another; a hundred eyes watched every move of every member of the crowd, which even by three or four o’clock in the morning was as dense about the saucer as in the daytime. And at last the Martians got tired of it. They no longer had any freedom of movement; they could never escape from the crowds which followed them