THE BIG CHUNK OF ICE: Another Adventure of The Mad Scientists of Mammoth Falls Bertrand R. Brinley Illustrated by Charles Geer MACRAME SMITHEE COMPANY, White Fork 2 copyright © 1978 by bertrand r. brinley All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 78-12345 manufactured in the united states of america 7801 First printing 3 Contents GEOGRAPHY STINKS! 5 WHEN IT’S SLEEPY TIME, GO SOUTH! 18 WHEN YOU GET TO ROME, TURN LEFT 33 FREEZE A JOLLY GOOD FELLOW 46 YANKEE GO HOME? 62 THE BIG PUNCH IN THE NOSE 84 MIGHTY MIDGET MEETS FRANKENSTEIN’S GRANDMOTHER 106 AXEL BREAKS THE ICE 124 YOU GOTTA’ BELIEVE IT TO SEE IT! 146 AXEL’S FAREWELL 167 INTERPOLATING SMITHEREENS 188 THOSE SMELLOW FELLOWS 212 4 Geography Stinks! “Austria!” Dinky Poore gasped. “Sounds great! But I can’t quite remember where it is.” “Anybody knows that,” Homer Snodgrass sneered. “It’s right next to Liechtenstein.” “Oh! I forgot,” said Dinky, wrinkling his freckled nose in that that way he has when he’s been corrected. “Where’s Liechtenstein?” asked Freddy Muldoon from his perch on the apple crate. “I know that one,” said Dinky, raising his hand. “It’s right next to Austria.” “Oh, you’re funny:” snorted Freddy, slapping his chubby thigh with a great show of amusement. “You’ll probably flunk geography, but you’ll take all the prizes on Stunt Night.” “I already had some geography, and it stinks!” said Dinky. “Alright, shut up, you guys! Shut up!” Jeff Crocker ordered, pounding the big crate in front of him with his favorite rusty stirrup. “If we’re gonna’ listen to what Henry has to tell us, we’ve got to have some order in this meeting.” Since Jeff is the president of The Mad Scientists’ Club, we all shut up. And Henry Mulligan did have something to tell us that was worth listening to. He had come running into our clubhouse in the old tack room in Jeff Crocker’s barn, and all he had said was, “How’d you guys like to go to Austria?” And then he’d pulled the old piano stool into the dark corner where he always sat, and leaned back against the wall with a sort of Cheshire cat grin on his face. The way he’d asked the question, you’d think he wanted to know if any-body wanted to go fishing. Homer Snodgrass had just kept 6n whittling on the stick 5 he was carving into a chain, and Mortimer Dalrymple didn’t even pull his head out of the back of our short wave receiver he was repairing. Dinky was the only one who had opened his mouth. “Okay, Henry,” said Jeff. “What’s this Austria bit?—Some new joke you’ve heard?” “No!” said Henry, with the cat grin still on his face. “As Vice President In Charge Of Science, I always leave the jokes to Mortimer and Freddy. I’m dead serious.” “You may be serious, but you don’t look very dead to me, oh, Great High Mogul,” said Freddy Muldoon. Then Henry told us about how he’d gone over to the State University to see his fantastic friend, Professor Igor Stratavarious, the world-famous geologist. He thought the professor might have a good suggestion for a science project we could work on during the summer, and he sure did. He came up with a corker! He told Henry he was planning to go to Austria for the summer, and he was forming a geological expedition to study some big glacier in the Alps. But he was having trouble finding people who were willing to join the expedition. “Why don’t you take some of your students along?” Henry asked him. “I am!” said the professor. “I am taking both of them. But, zat is not a very big expedition, ‘Enry. It will make me look ridiculous:— You don’t know how zese sings are, ‘Enry. My colleagues are very jealous of me. Zey will laugh, and laugh, if I try an expedition wiz only two young ladies to help me.” “Oh! That’s too bad,” said Henry. Then the professor had a brilliant idea. He invited Henry to go along on the expedition. But Henry had an even better idea. He suggested that the whole Mad Scientists’ Club go along, and that would add seven members to the expedition. “0h, zat is a marvelous idea, ‘Enry!” the professor exclaimed. “Zat will make a really big expedition.—Zat will make zere eyes pop out!” So there it was! That was what Henry had to tell us, and we all just sat there with our jaws popped open, wondering whether Henry 6 had lost some of his marbles. “Is this for real, Henry?”. Jeff finally asked him. “You aren’t just setting us up for some wisecrack, are you?” Henry looked a little offended. “No! It’s for real!” he said. “AU we have to do is get our parents’ permission, and we can go. This is one of the professor’s official expeditions, and the university pays all the expenses.” We all still sat there sort of dumbfounded, and nobody said anything. Henry kept looking from one to the other of us, and gradually the grin faded from his face and he began to look a little annoyed. “Well, come on, you guys.—Do you want to go, or don’t you?” Nobody spoke. “There’s got to be a gag in this somewhere,” Mortimer Dalrymple said, finally. I’m not going to be the first one to bite.” “Me, neither!” said Homer Snodgrass. “My old man says you got to be suspicious of anything that doesn’t cost money.” Then Dinky Poore raised his hand. “I still don’t know where Austria is, exactly, but I ‘U go, Henry.” “Thank you, Dinky,” said Henry. “What about the rest of you guys?” “Let’s put it to a vote,” suggested Homer. “I’ll hand out the ballots.” When Homer says this, there’s no use arguing with him, because we always end up voting anyway. So Homer tore up some pieces of paper and handed them out. In our club you vote according to how well you did on the science test Henry Mulligan makes up every few months. Henry always gets five votes, because he knows all the answers, and Dinky and Freddy get one vote apiece. The rest of us fall somewhere in between. This time, Homer handed out twenty-one ballots, and when he counted them it was twenty-. to one in favor of going to Austria with the professor. “Okay! Who voted against it?” cried Mortimer Dalrymple, glaring around the room in mock anger. “I did!” said Dinky Poore, raising his hand again. “What did you do that for, you nut?” sneered Freddy Muldoon. 7 “Because I thought all you fellows were against it.” “You just don’t understand human psychology,” said Homer Snodgrass, with his nose up in the air. “Well, how come we even had -to take a stupid vote, if everybody was in favor of it?” Dinky whimpered. “You just don’t understand democracy,” said Mortimer, with one of his sly grins. “People like Homer are always trying to get you to vote, if they know how you’re gonna’ vote.—You fooled him good.” Nobody had any trouble getting permission to -go. Everybody knows kids are just a pack of trouble when school’s out, and our parents just figured this was like winning a free trip to summer camp. Mayor Scragg was so happy to hear we were leaving town that he got the Town Council to pass a resolution offering to pay the expenses of the expedition for an additional two weeks, if Professor Stratavarious would keep us over there longer than the month he planned for studying the glacier. Everybody thought this was very nice of the mayor. The next morning Zeke Boniface, the junk dealer, drove us over to the State University in his ancient, sputtering and wheezing old truck that we call Richard the Deep Breather, and we had a meeting with the professor so he could tell us all about the expedition and give us our instructions. The first thing the professor did was to introduce us to his class, who were the other two members of the expedition. He pointed to two girls sitting in the front row of seats. They were both skinny, and had long, straight black hair, and were wearing jeans and sweaters. “First, I would like you to meet Angela Angelino. I call her ‘Number One’,” and he pointed to the girl on the right. I’m not Angela, Professor! I’m Angelina!” said the girl on the right. The professor’s jowls puffed out, and he stroked the left side of his waxed moustache with his fingers. “Well.....stand up, whatever your name is, while I introduce you,” he said, a little testily. “Excuse me, gentlemen. Sometimes I get zere names mixed up. Zis one is Angelina Angelo. She is a vairy good student, and I call her ‘Number Two’. It is ze ozer one zat I call ‘Number One’, and if you will take my advice, you will do ze same. Stand up, Number One!” 8 The other girl stood up, also, and she was a little taller than Angelina Angelo.