The Secret of Sigma Seven Read online

  “I’m headed over there,” Chet said, pointing across the main room at a long table filled with sandwiches and sodas. “Free food, here I come!”

  “Let’s grab some eats and see if anybody in this room’s wearing a medallion like the one Fred Johnson described,” Joe suggested.

  “I see some people I want to talk to,” Brian said. “I’ll catch up with you guys later.”

  The Hardys joined Chet at the end of the buffet line. As they moved down the line, they heard laughter coming from one corner of the room. Frank looked over and saw a group of fans clustered around Richard Feinbetter, the gray-haired science fiction writer they had seen in the lobby earlier.

  After they had gotten their sandwiches and sodas, the Hardys and Chet walked over to listen to what the writer had to say. Feinbetter had just finished telling the group a humorous story about his early years as a writer. He was smiling and seemed to be having a great time. Then someone in the crowd said the name Simon Devoreaux.

  “Devoreaux?” Feinbetter snapped in a raspy voice. “That phony? He’s never had an original idea in his life. He’s just a hack moviemaker. That kind of guy gives science fiction a bad name.”

  Raising his eyebrows, Joe glanced at Frank, then back at Feinbetter. Could the writer have had a reason to swipe Devoreaux’s movie?

  “It’s too bad about that film being stolen, Mr. Feinbetter,” Joe said casually.

  “Too bad?” Feinbetter said, looking Joe up and down. “It’s the best thing that could have happened. Devoreaux got what was coming to him.”

  Frank studied Feinbetter closely. “What do you mean by that? Sounds as if you don’t like Simon Devoreaux very much.”

  Feinbetter started to reply, then seemed to think better of it. “Never mind,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said what I just did about Devoreaux. I don’t want to give anybody the idea that I approve of stealing property.”

  “Do you approve of stealing property?” Joe pressed.

  “And what kind of question is that, young man?” Feinbetter said sharply. “We taught better manners to young people in my day.”

  “If you think my brother’s manners are bad here, you should see him at the dinner table,” Frank said with a grin.

  Joe shot Frank a dirty look as Feinbetter went back to telling stories. The Hardys listened for a moment, then wandered away.

  “We may have found our first suspect,” Joe said.

  “Yeah,” Frank said. “Unless my instincts are off, I think Richard Feinbetter has something against Devoreaux.”

  “But does he dislike him enough to steal his film?” Joe asked.

  “Or to try and kill him?” Frank added. “Maybe we should see what we can turn up on Feinbetter.”

  “In the meantime,” Joe said, “let’s split up and look around the party for anything else that might be a lead.”

  “I’ll check back with you in a half hour,” Frank said.

  The elder Hardy wandered around the room and struck up conversations with several fans but learned nothing significant. The stolen film seemed to be the big topic of conversation, but nobody knew any more about it than Frank already did. And he didn’t spot anyone wearing a green medallion. Finally he located his brother.

  “I came up empty, too,” Joe reported. “Let’s call it a night.”

  They found Chet chatting with a girl who was wheeling out food from the kitchen and Brian talking with a group of fans. The Hardys explained the situation to their friends.

  “Sorry you didn’t have better luck, guys,” Brian said. “I’ll walk with you and Chet back down to the lobby.”

  As they left the room, Frank spotted a lone fan standing next to a door at the end of a dimly lit hallway. The tall fan wore a NASA-style space suit, complete with oxygen tanks strapped to his back. He gestured at the four teens and said something unintelligible through the face mask of his helmet. It was impossible to make out any details of his face through the clouded glass.

  “Hey, guys,” the fan said in a muffled voice. “You need to get downstairs? There’s an elevator right here.”

  “What?” Joe said. “I thought the elevators were in the middle of the building, over the lobby.”

  “So did I,” Brian said. “Well, you learn something new every day.”

  Joe looked at the door next to the space-suited fan. Sure enough, it was an elevator door. As they watched, the man reached over and, with a gloved hand, pressed the button marked down. The light over the door blinked on.

  Frank studied the space-suited fan. Even though there were a lot of people at the convention in costumes, there was something about this fan that wasn’t quite right. But Frank couldn’t put his finger on it.

  The elevator door slid open. Joe moved forward.

  Wait a minute, Frank thought. I’ve got it. That guy’s wearing a green medallion around his neck.

  He turned to stop his brother from getting on the elevator.

  It was too late. Joe stepped through the doorway and gasped. There was no elevator car on the other side of the door. With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Joe realized that he was stepping into wide open space.

  And the ground was four stories below!

  4 If Cars Could Fly . . .

  * * *

  Joe began whirling his arms wildly to keep his balance. One of his feet was already pointing out into space, and the other was barely staying in contact with the floor behind him.

  Just as Joe was about to fall forward into a four-story plunge, Frank grabbed him around the waist and pulled him backward.

  Joe tumbled to the floor with a loud gasp. “Whew! That was a close one!”

  Frank spun around to confront the man in the space suit, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  “Which way did the guy in the space suit go?” Frank asked.

  “I think he ran to the right,” Brian said, pointing toward the far end of the hallway. “He looked like he was in a hurry.”

  “I bet he was,” Frank said, racing down the hallway. When he reached the end, he looked to the hall to the right and saw that it was lined with doors on both sides. A bright red exit light gleamed at the end of the corridor.

  Great, Frank thought. He could have gone through the exit or ducked into any one of these rooms.

  Discouraged, Frank returned to his companions at the other end of the hall.

  “This is really weird,” Chet said, examining the elevator. “It’s out of order. I can barely make out the ground floor in the dark, but it looks like a long way down. The elevator car must be down at the bottom.”

  “I wish somebody’d told me that before I tried to take a ride in the thing,” Joe said as he got to his feet.

  Moving to Chet’s side, Frank took his penlight and shined it inside the shaft. He saw that two wires were connected to the terminals of the elevator button on the other side of the wall. The wires led upward to a motor that controlled the doors.

  “Look at this,” Frank said. “That guy must have rigged the button to open the doors. Usually the button just signals the car to move up or down.”

  “Right,” Joe said, looking into the shaft. “And usually the doors open when the car stops on a floor. But why did the light go on when that guy pressed the down button?”

  “Well, it looks as if the light and the door were wired on the same circuit,” Frank replied. “That guy did a good job of fooling us.”

  Chet squinted into the darkness. “I guess the motel is repairing this elevator.”

  “Hey,” Joe said, kneeling down. “This looks like the remains of a wooden barrier.” He reached into the hole and pulled out a piece of cardboard that had been wedged behind a beam. “And here’s a sign that was supposed to warn people away.”

  “It would have warned us away,” Frank said, “if our astronaut hadn’t hidden it.”

  “So why do you think this guy wanted to kill you?” Chet asked Joe.

  “He must have found out somehow that we’re investigating the th
eft of Devoreaux’s film,” Joe answered. “What I want to know is whether or not this is the same guy who engineered the attack on Devoreaux.”

  “I think I can answer that one,” Frank said. “Didn’t you notice what he had around his neck?”

  “Oh, no,” Joe said. “Not the green medallion.”

  “You got it,” Frank said. “With the moon and star.”

  “So he could be the same guy who gave the gun to that kid in the lobby!” Joe exclaimed.

  “Right,” Frank said. “If we’d noticed sooner, we could have nabbed him.”

  “You two should be careful,” Brian said. “Not only is someone after Devoreaux, but now he’s after you, too.”

  “Don’t worry,” Joe said. “If we run into anybody wearing a green medallion again, I’m going to jump him first and ask questions later.”

  “We can ask around the party and see if anybody knows the guy in the space suit,” Frank said. “But first we’d better call hotel maintenance and have them do something about this elevator.”

  Frank called down to the lobby from the phone in the party suite. Two hotel staffers arrived ten minutes later, expressing amazement that somebody would have removed the protective barriers and the sign intended to prevent anyone from going near the broken elevator. They explained that it was a freight elevator, used only by employees.

  The Hardys spent another half hour at the party, but nobody admitted to having seen the man in the space suit. Finally, with Brian and Chet in tow, the Hardys returned to the lobby, where they said goodbye to Brian. Then they drove home, dropping Chet off at the Morton farm on the way.

  • • •

  “Hey,” Frank said to his brother. “Is that car floating in the air?”

  It was the morning after the con party. Frank was steering the Hardys’ converted police van into the parking lot of the Bayport Inn. About fifty feet away, along the curved access lane that led up to the front door of the motel, a sleek white vehicle that looked a little like a futuristic sports car with a convertible top was pulled over to the curb. It seemed to be hovering about two feet off the ground. In the front seat sat a tall, cheerful-looking man in his late thirties, with a ruddy complexion, a reddish mustache, and curly hair.

  “Huh?” Joe said, seated next to Frank in the front of the van. He squinted in the direction of the floating car. “Yeah,” he said at last. “I think you’re right. Now I’ve seen everything.”

  “Thank goodness,” Frank said. “I thought maybe I’d finally gone bonkers.”

  “That’s still a possibility,” Chet said. He was kneeling in the back behind Joe’s seat, looking out the window over his friend’s shoulder. “But that really is a floating car.”

  “I recognize that guy in the driver’s seat,” Frank said. “He was with Devoreaux last night, and I saw him at the con party. I’ve been trying to remember where I’ve seen him before.”

  Frank pulled the van into an empty space, and the three teens got out. The first thing they saw was a large green canvas tent that had been erected in the middle of the parking lot. Frank studied the tent for a moment, then joined his brother and Chet at the front door of the motel. The car they had noticed on the way in was still floating just where they had last seen it, and a small crowd had gathered around it. As he got closer, Frank could hear the car make a loud hissing noise, like air escaping from a balloon.

  “You know,” Frank said, wrinkling his brow, “that looks similar to one of the cars the bad guys were driving in The Cosmic Maelstrom, the second movie in the Galactic Saga series.”

  “Yeah,” Chet said, his face lighting up. “The ones they used in that chase scene on the Planet of Glass. Remember when those two guys chased each other right off the edge of a cliff in their flying cars?”

  “Wait a minute,” Joe said suddenly. “I know why that guy in the car looks familiar. I saw his picture in a magazine article about Simon Devoreaux.”

  “Hey, you’re right,” Frank said. “I read that article, too. That’s what’s-his-name, Jack Gillis, the guy who does all the special effects for Devoreaux’s movies.”

  “This looks interesting,” Joe said. “I’d like to talk to him.”

  When they reached Gillis, Frank could see that the special-effects director enjoyed talking to his admirers. He was leaning over the side of the open-topped vehicle, chatting amiably with the crowd. Fans shot questions at him, and he freely shot back answers.

  “Did you use this very car in the Galactic Saga movies?” a teenage girl with long black hair asked.

  “You bet,” Gillis said. “We used it in the last two movies. It cost a lot to build it, so we wanted to get as much mileage out of it as we could.”

  “I thought you used miniature models in your films,” a balding man in a plaid shirt asked. “Not full-size vehicles like this one.”

  “We usually do,” Gillis replied. “I’ve built a lot of those models myself—spaceships, mostly. But it’s easier to film people sitting in one of these hovercars if you’ve got a full-size vehicle for them to sit in. We can’t shrink the people down to the size of the model.”

  “What keeps this car up in the air?” Frank asked. “Some kind of air jets?”

  “Sort of,” Gillis replied. “There’s an engine inside that drives several high-speed fans to create a cushion of compressed air underneath the car.”

  “Wow,” Chet said in awe. “Where can I buy one of these hovercars?”

  Gillis laughed. “I’m afraid you can’t. There are only a few in existence. Anyway, you wouldn’t want to drive around in one. They can hold only two people at a time, and everything else has to be stripped to the bone. Put any luggage in this thing, and it would sink right back to the ground. It really can’t carry much weight. And the noise from these high-speed fans would start driving you crazy after a while.”

  “I don’t care,” Chet said. “I want one anyway. You guys could get rich marketing these things.”

  “We’re already rich,” Gillis boasted with a chuckle. “Anyway, I’ve got to get moving now. We’re setting up an exhibit of props and costumes from the Galactic Saga movies in the parking lot, inside that large tent over there.” He waved his hand toward the tent. “I hope you’ll drop by this afternoon to get another look at this car—and a few other things, too.”

  “We’ll be there,” Frank said as Gillis drove away in the hovercar.

  “That was neat,” Joe said. “We may have missed the film last night, but there’s still a lot of stuff to do around here.”

  “Like catch a criminal?” Frank suggested.

  “Yeah, that, too,” Joe said.

  Frank opened the glass front doors and entered the lobby a few steps ahead of his brother and Chet. Science fiction fans were milling back and forth, and even more of them were wearing costumes than the night before, Frank noticed. Then he remembered that the costume party was scheduled for that evening.

  “I guess you guys are going to look for the film thief, right?” Chet asked.

  Frank nodded. “And I have a feeling we’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

  “Then I’m going to go scout out this convention,” Chet said. “If I see or hear anything suspicious, I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay,” Joe said. “Why don’t you meet us in the lobby around lunchtime?”

  “Right,” Chet said. “See you around.”

  “So what do you think we should do now?” Joe asked his brother after Chet had left.

  “Our only clue so far,” Frank said, “is what we heard Feinbetter say last night. So maybe we’d better see if we can find out a few things about him.”

  “Good idea,” Joe said. “And maybe we can figure out if there’s any place around here where the thief could sell stolen videotapes.”

  “Brian can probably give us the story on that,” Frank said. “He seems to know his way around this convention. I wonder where he is this morning.”

  Joe pointed to a large group of people in a corner of the room. �
��There’s another crowd,” he said to Frank. “What’s going on this time?”

  Frank craned his neck. “Looks like that young writer Brian pointed out to us yesterday,” Frank said. “What was his name? Arlen Hennessy?”

  “Oh, right,” Joe said. “Isn’t he supposed to be a friend of Feinbetter’s? Maybe he could tell us a thing or two about the guy.”

  “Couldn’t hurt to ask,” Frank said. He and Joe pushed their way into the crowd, trying to get close enough to hear Hennessy talk.

  Hennessy appeared to be having a good time. He was a compactly built man, wearing an expensive sweater and tight-fitting pants. He was good-looking, with piercing green eyes, tightly curled hair, and a rapid-fire style of speaking—sort of like a stand-up comedian, Frank thought.

  “The Galactic Saga movies?” Hennessy was saying in response to something one of the fans had said. “You actually like that trash? My next-door neighbor makes better home movies of his kid’s birthday parties than anything Simon Devoreaux has ever directed.”

  “But, Arlen,” a young male fan at the front of the crowd said, “the first movie in the saga won the Orbit Award as best science fiction movie of the year. I know I voted for it.”

  “How much did Simon Devoreaux pay you for your vote?” Hennessy said, a wicked gleam in his eye. “Has your taste in movies always been that bad?”

  “You don’t like Devoreaux’s films very much, do you, Arlen?” somebody asked.

  Hennessy struck a pose of mock innocence. “Did I say that? Surely you must have misinterpreted my words. I don’t dislike Devoreaux’s films. I despise them.”

  “I stand corrected,” the fan said, grinning.

  Joe looked at Frank and whispered, “This guy doesn’t like Devoreaux any more than Feinbetter does. Maybe he’s the one who tried to shoot him.”

  Frank nodded. “We should check Hennessy out, too,” he whispered back.

  “Hey, Arlen,” Joe said, assuming the familiar tone of voice that the other fans were using. “You wouldn’t happen to know who stole Simon Devoreaux’s movie, would you?”

  “A-ha!” Hennessy said, raising his hands in front of him in a theatrical gesture to quiet the crowd. “Somebody wants to know who stole Simon Devoreaux’s film? No problem! I know who stole the film—and you can quote me on this.”