Darkness Falls Read online

  “Are you sure, Joe?” Frank said cautiously. “We have to be back in an hour.”

  “No problem,” Wheeler said. “Jake’ll drive his van down to Saddle Road and pick us up. It’s only about four miles. Then we can load up the bikes and ride back up in style.”

  “Sounds good,” Frank said. “Let’s get started!”

  A few minutes later the three were breezing down the steep road, frightened and thrilled at the same time. Wheeler was good but an amateur. The Hardys were experienced bike racers. Even on old clunkers, they were soon far ahead of him. When they plunged into the fog bank they finally had to hit the brakes because they were no longer able to see very far ahead.

  All at once Joe heard the noise of a car engine behind them. He turned to check on it and saw that it was a van and the vehicle’s headlights were close, and closing too fast. The van was directly behind Frank, not moving over to pass him.

  “Pull over, Frank!” Joe shouted back over his shoulder to his brother. But the roar of the engine had gotten louder now and Frank hadn’t heard. He must have thought the van was going around him, Joe thought. Joe had to turn forward right then to steady his bike.

  On one side was the wall of solid rock. On the other, a sheer drop-off. And there wasn’t enough room between for the van to pass now even if the driver wanted to.

  In seconds it would have to push them right off the mountain!

  Chapter 3

  JOE FRANTICALLY searched for any way to escape as he skidded into a hairpin turn at breakneck speed. The van had to slow down to keep from skidding off the road, so the bikes sailed ahead, gaining a few seconds of precious time.

  Once they were back on the straightaway, the van started gaining on them again. Joe knew it was only seconds before they were either run down or run off the cliff.

  Then he saw their salvation. Up ahead and on the left, a small thicket of bushes covered a narrow gap in the mountainside wall. “There, Frank!” he shouted, pointing, and aimed his bike right at it. The bike hit the bushes and stopped dead, sending Joe hurtling through the air. His fall was cushioned by the bushes as the van roared by.

  “Frank! Are you all right?” Joe shouted, checking to make sure he himself didn’t have any broken bones.

  “Ow! Ow!” came Frank’s voice from behind him. “This bush is full of thorns!”

  Joe almost laughed when he parted the bushes and found Frank, already on his feet, pulling thorns out of the seat of his pants. “Let me help,” Joe said, yanking one out as his brother yelped in pain.

  “What in the world did that guy in the van think he was doing?” Frank asked angrily. “We might have been killed!”

  “Maybe that was the idea,” Joe said. “Or am I being paranoid?”

  “I don’t know,” Frank said. “Maybe his brakes just went bad or something. Why would anyone want to kill us, Joe?”

  “No reason I can think of,” Joe had to admit. “But then, I can’t think of any reason to electrocute Ebersol, either.”

  Just then Tim Wheeler came to a stop beside them on the road. “Hey, you two,” he called. “Are you all right? That guy was driving like a maniac!”

  “No kidding,” Joe agreed. “We were just discussing whether he was trying to kill us or not.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Wheeler said, obviously shocked at the thought. “He swerved to get out of my way as he passed me. Maybe he just couldn’t stop.”

  “Well, he didn’t try to get out of our way,” Joe said. “As a matter of fact, I think he gunned his engine when he got near us.”

  “Maybe he couldn’t see you in the fog,” Wheeler suggested.

  “Maybe,” Joe said tersely. “Anyway, we’d better get back and tell somebody about this. We might be able to trace the van. No one got a license number, right?”

  “No,” Frank said. “It was much too foggy, but I saw the van as it moved out of the fog. It was steel gray with a bubble top. Somebody at the observatory ought to know it.”

  “Jake should be going by any minute now,” Wheeler said. “But he won’t be able to stop on this road. We’ll have to go down to Saddle Road and wait for him there. Do you think your bikes will make it?” Frank and Joe nodded.

  An hour later all three were back at the observatory. The gray van with the bubble turned out to belong to a visiting research team from Japan. They had left the keys in the ignition and were quite upset that someone had used it for a joy ride and then abandoned it on Saddle Road.

  “So much for the bad brakes theory,” Joe said to Frank as they returned to their tents.

  “Hi, guys,” Michele Ebersol greeted them with a smile as they entered Ebersol’s tent. Her pleasant expression quickly changed to one of surprise when she saw the man walking in behind them. “Tim!” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m working on a documentary about the eclipse,” he replied, returning her intent gaze. “But I’m only here because I was walking Joe and Frank back.” He and Michele stared at each other, and Frank wished he knew what they were thinking.

  “Well, um,” Michele said after a pause, her voice a shade huskier than usual, “we’d better get back to work.”

  “Of course. Me, too.” Abruptly, Tim turned and practically ran from the tent.

  Michele watched him go before turning to the Hardys. “Where were you?” she asked. “I was about to send out a posse.”

  “It’s a long story,” Frank told her. “We’ll tell you some other time.”

  “Hmmm. Sounds intriguing. But I wouldn’t tell my husband you were with Tim Wheeler if I were you,” she said, smiling sheepishly. “They’re not the best of friends. Anyway, Jim is off consulting with the observatory’s meteorologist right now, and I think Everett is with a German research team. They should both be back any minute. I’d like to use this time to go over the setup with you. It’s important that you know exactly what the sequence of events will be later today.”

  Michele stepped over to a long table at the front of the tent. It was covered with electronic equipment. In front of it was a director’s chair with the words Cosmic Explainer stenciled on it.

  “These machines will function as our main computer terminal,” she explained as Frank and Joe listened intently. “All the data our infrared equipment generates in the aluminized tent will be fed in here through cables. Jim will stay here during the entire eclipse. He will read the data from Everett’s detectors by watching this monitor. This other screen will show him what’s coming in on the infrared video. The third screen will show the data digitally, and that machine will feed Jim a simultaneous printout. Got all that?”

  Frank and Joe both nodded. “It sounds simple enough,” Frank said.

  “Good,” she said, smiling. “Now let’s go into the other tent.”

  “You mean the light-tight tent, right?” Frank asked.

  “Right,” Michele said, stepping from Ebersol’s tent to the other one, about ten yards away. The Hardys followed her into the light lock, a small space with heavy black fabric flaps on either end. She closed the outer flap behind them, and suddenly the three of them were in pitch darkness.

  “Whoa!” Frank exclaimed, surprised.

  “This is to keep any light from seeping into the tent,” Michele explained. “A single ray could destroy our film.” She lifted the second flap, and they followed her into the tent.

  “Brrrr!” Joe said, hugging himself as he stepped inside. “It’s freezing in here.”

  Michele switched on a small desk lamp. “It has to be kept at a steady forty degrees Fahrenheit in here. The film is extremely heat-sensitive, so anything warmer could cloud the image it picks up.”

  “Remind me to bring my sweater,” Joe told Frank.

  “And don’t forget, it will be pitch-dark while you’re working,” Michele went on. “You and Everett will be stationed here with your instruments. Feel free to watch the first stages of the eclipse from outside—wearing protective lenses, of course, so your eyes don’t get damag
ed. But once we approach totality, stay inside until the eclipse is finished. That’s vital. If any of us aren’t positioned where we’re supposed to be, we could blow the whole operation. You’ll be able to communicate with me via this intercom, by the way. I’ll have a walkie-talkie, so I’ll hear you.”

  “Where will you be?” Frank asked her.

  “I’ll be outside between the tents, maintaining communications and taking photos. What you’ll be seeing through your infrared lenses and what Dr. Ebersol sees on his monitors bear very little relation to what the eclipse looks like to the naked eye. We need to have some conventional photos, too.” She stepped back from the brothers and gave them a dazzling smile before taking them back outside. “It’s going to be fun, isn’t it?”

  Frank could see that Michele was tremendously excited about the eclipse, and her enthusiasm fired his own. “I can’t wait,” he told Joe as they stepped out of the tent into the sunshine.

  Dr. Ebersol and Everett MacLaughlin were approaching from opposite directions. Ebersol came from the observatory, and MacLaughlin from the far side of the parking lot. Many of the foreign teams were positioned at that end.

  “The weather conditions are perfect—not a cloud in the sky and none predicted,” the famous scientist announced buoyantly, getting to them first.

  “Great!” Michele replied. “The equipment is set up, and I’ve briefed the boys. All we have to do now is run our final checks.”

  “Hello, everyone,” Everett said, joining the group. “Greetings from Dr. Weinschatz. I just was talking to him and his team. They’re going to be measuring any changes in the earth’s gravitational pull during the eclipse.”

  “Interesting,” Ebersol said with a sly smile. “But not nearly so interesting as what we’re up to. Right, boys?”

  Frank and Joe smiled in reply. “How long do we have until the eclipse starts?” Frank asked.

  MacLaughlin checked his watch. “One hour and forty-seven minutes, thirty-five seconds,” he said.

  “Give or take a nanosecond,” Joe joked. Ebersol and Michele laughed, but Everett didn’t seem to get the joke.

  “He’s kidding,” Frank told the puzzled assistant.

  “Oh!” MacLaughlin said, finally understanding. He chuckled weakly for their sake.

  “Later today we’ll know if you’ve been right about the missing planet, Jim,” Michele said.

  “It should be the biggest night of our lives,” Ebersol agreed. Putting his arms around the shoulders of his wife and his assistant, he added, “If we’re right about this, we’ll go down in the history books.”

  “Well,” Michele said with a wry smile. “You will anyway.” Before he could react, she gave him a quick hug. “Which is fine with me, darling. I have all the fame I need just being married to you.”

  Frank noticed that her laughter and Everett’s little chuckle after her joke were slightly forced. The Great Explainer wasn’t uncomfortable at all, at least not visibly.

  “Isn’t she a darling?” Ebersol said proudly. “Between my lovely wife and my loyal assistant, I have to say I am one very lucky astrophysicist. But enough sentiment,” he added quickly. “Let’s get to work!”

  The eclipse began at 5:17 P.M. Donning goggles with dark protective lenses designed especially for looking at the sun, the Hardys gazed at the fantastic event in the heavens above them. The blazing disc of the sun began to fall into shadow as the moon’s orbit placed it directly between the sun and the earth. Minute by minute, the sun grew smaller until, about forty minutes after the eclipse had begun, it resembled a fiery crescent moon.

  “It won’t be long now,” Michele said as their little group stared up at the sky together.

  “It’s just unreal!” Joe enthused. “Can you believe this, Frank?”

  “I feel incredibly lucky to be here,” Frank said, but was haunted by the sudden remembrance of what Dr. Ebersol had said about an eclipse being an evil omen. The careening van hurtled again through the back of his mind. So did the image of Ebersol’s hand frozen to the mike short-circuiting. Frank hoped those events were nothing sinister.

  All over the mountaintop groups of people were headed into the main observatory, the many smaller buildings, and their makeshift trailers and tents. “Most of these people are here to study the sun’s corona and its flares,” Ebersol explained, following Frank’s glance. “Our work doesn’t begin until the eclipse becomes total.”

  Raising his eyes to the sun again, Frank saw that the last sliver of the sun was about to disappear behind the moon. Small beads of fire encircled the black disc at the center. “Bailey’s Beads,” Michele said aloud. “Beautiful, aren’t they? Like a crown of fire.”

  In an instant the fiery beads were gone, too, and although it was only five-thirty on a mid-summer day, the stars were suddenly fully visible. “This is it!” Michele cried out. “Everyone to battle stations!”

  Ebersol’s little group hurried into their tents—all except Michele, who remained outside.

  Inside the aluminized tent it was pitch-dark and noisy from the hum of the air conditioners. Frank had to feel his way to his chair, which had been strategically placed in front of the infrared camera on its mount. He pulled off his solar goggles and peered into the lens, aiming it at the eclipsed sun. He pressed the shutter, and the camera’s motor drive whirred into action, snapping picture after picture.

  “Are you okay, Everett?” Joe asked. Joe had arrived at his position directly behind Frank, a second camera with extra film ready for quick reloading in the dark.

  The graduate assistant’s reply was a terse “Please don’t talk to me during operations. I need my full concentration.” Frank heard him stumble over to his seat, where, through rubber-framed goggles, he could observe the data from his infrared detectors on a computer screen.

  As soon as Frank finished a roll of film, he unsnapped the camera from its base and handed it to Joe. Joe then handed him the second loaded camera. Frank snapped it onto the base and set the motor drive in motion.

  Over the intercom, Michele’s voice crackled, informing them about the eclipse’s progress.

  “I never realized how long seven minutes could be,” Joe said.

  When Bailey’s Beads returned, Michele informed them that the eclipse was over. Frank and Joe stopped shooting. In the dark they stowed their film in a light-tight, refrigerated thermos bag.

  “Whew,” Frank said, putting the canister into a cooler on the floor. Behind them, he heard MacLaughlin shuffling around at his station. “That was great, Joe, but I’m glad it’s over. I was afraid something might go wrong, and it’d be our fault.”

  “Well, relax,” Joe said as they moved out into the light lock, giving each other tired high fives. “Nothing can go wrong now.”

  Just as he said the words a scream rose from outside, from the direction of the main tent.

  “He’s dead!” Michele Ebersol’s anguished voice cried out. “You killed him!”

  Chapter 4

  STUMBLING OUT of the light lock into the open air, the Hardys heard Michele scream again. Joe saw her standing in the doorway of the other tent, her hand covering her mouth.

  Joe and Frank rushed to her in the growing light. Frank pulled her away from the tent opening as Joe peered inside. There he saw Tim Wheeler kneeling over the prone, blood-soaked body of Dr. Ebersol! A bloody knife was in Wheeler’s hand.

  Joe didn’t wait. Lunging at Wheeler, he hit him in the jaw with a sharp right that flattened the reporter. By the time Joe had made sure Wheeler was unconscious, Frank was kneeling over Ebersol, feeling for a pulse. He shook his head sadly.

  As Michele leaned on a tent pole for support, Everett MacLaughlin poked his head in through the tent opening. “Is something the matter?” he asked.

  “Call an ambulance!” Joe cried. “Get the police, too! Dr. Ebersol’s been stabbed!”

  “What?” the stunned assistant gasped, staring at the body of his mentor on the floor. Then he backed out of the tent, saying, “I
’ll get help.”

  Joe stared at Ebersol’s lifeless form. It was hard to believe, hard to take it all in. Joe and his brother had been only yards away from a brutal murder. Yet they’d been so absorbed in the celestial event taking place millions of miles away that the slaying had occurred without their knowing it.

  “This should have been his moment of triumph,” Michele sobbed.

  Minutes later police and ambulance helicopters arrived, and the tent was soon filled with police and paramedics, who confirmed the obvious—Ebersol was dead. Hearing this, Michele burst into a fresh round of sobbing, while MacLaughlin stood staring at the body, obviously in shock.

  The police captain, a handsome man of about thirty, with a square, flat face, long black hair, powerful frame, and penetrating gaze, asked Michele what had happened. “When I came in here I found my husband dead,” she answered tearfully. “Mr. Wheeler was right beside him, holding a knife.”

  “Cuff him,” the captain told his assistants.

  Wheeler’s eyes fluttered open just as cuffs snapped shut around his wrists.

  “You are under arrest for the murder of Dr. James Ebersol,” the captain told him. “You have the right to remain silent, the right to counsel, and anything you say can and will be held against you. Understand?”

  “What?” Wheeler asked frantically, staring at the police captain. “But I didn’t kill him! I came in to interview him, and I found him like that. I picked up the knife, and the next thing I knew, someone socked me. That’s the last I remember!” Wheeler’s panic-stricken eyes darted from Michele to the Hardys to MacLaughlin and to the police. “You’ve got to believe me—I didn’t kill him!”

  The police captain was not buying Wheeler’s story. “Looks pretty open and shut to me,” he said. Turning to Joe, he asked, “What’s your name, and what are you doing here?”

  “I’m Joe Hardy,” he replied. “My brother Frank and I were assisting Dr. Ebersol during the eclipse. We were in the next tent with Mr. MacLaughlin.”