Freddy and the Flying Saucer Plans Read Free Page A

everywhere. So they went back to Mars.
    Before the Martians attracted so much attention, however, they had given the Beans and some of the animals rides in the saucer; they had even shown Uncle Ben all over it and explained how it worked. With the knowledge thus gained, Uncle Ben had decided to build a saucer of his own. He had at first intended to build another space ship, like the one that had been lost. But the saucer was much faster than the ship, and also could move much more slowly, and even stop in the air, so that it could be used for travel from place to place on the earth’s surface, almost like a helicopter. The ship was only good for interplanetary travel, whereas there were a number of ways in which the saucer could be used on earth. By saucer, for instance, a letter mailed in New York could be delivered in ten minutes in London.
    Unfortunately Uncle Ben had used up nearly all his money in building the ship. So he spent several months drawing up plans and instructions for building a saucer, and then several more trying to interest some of the big airplane companies in putting up the money to build it. As long as the plans were in his head, he had no trouble with the spies, who, now that the Martians had flown back home, didn’t know that anybody on earth knew how the saucer worked. But as soon as he began talking to the airplane companies the secret leaked out. Perhaps some of the officers in the companies talked. But from that moment Uncle Ben was a marked man.
    He began to realize that wherever he went he was being followed, at first by one man, then by a dozen, then by fifty. His rooms were searched, sometimes six or eight times a day. Before long, wherever he went, he was surrounded by a crowd; spies were everywhere; if he went into a building, faces peered at him over the edge of the roof; if he went to a movie, even if there were only half a dozen people in the place when he went in, in ten minutes there wasn’t an empty seat left in the house.
    Of course there was safety in numbers. One or two efforts were made to kidnap him; but if one gang tried it, there were always six other gangs lurking in the background, ready to foil the attempt. For no nation wanted any other nation to get the secret.
    One evening he was walking back to his hotel in Chicago from a movie, followed by the usual crowd of spies—twenty or thirty on foot, and the rest in a string of taxis and private cars. Three men rushed out of an alleyway, grabbed him, and started to drag him toward a black car which was drawn up at the curb, with one door open. But the moment they laid hands on him, the crowd of followers surged forward. No firearms were used. With clubs and blackjacks they laid out the three assailants, and then they laid into one another. The passengers in the taxis and cars leaped out and joined the fight. Probably each gang thought it was a good idea to eliminate, at least for a few days, some of the others. For a few minutes there was a magnificent eighteen-nation free-for-all. Then suddenly, just before the police arrived, the fighting stopped. The fighters slunk away down side streets, and when the police cars rolled up they saw only a dozen or so unconscious figures lying in the road. These were put into ambulances and carried off to hospitals. But Uncle Ben had ducked out among the fighters and got back to his hotel.
    Probably each gang thought it was a good idea to eliminate, at least for a few days, some of the others.
    He was more careful after that.
    When the station wagon stopped in front of the bank, Uncle Ben snatched up from the seat a thin metal cylinder about two feet long and tossed it out of the window to Freddy. “Keep this safe,” he said. “Vaults.” And he pointed to the bank. Then he leaned out and stared hard at the four animals. “You good Americans?” he demanded.
    â€œWhy, you know us all, Uncle Ben,” said Freddy. “All except Samuel, here. And he lives