The Blue Ghost Mystery

Excerpt

A Spooky Invitation

Rick Brant moved with infinite care. With one hand he adjusted the focus of his microscope, while with the other he brought the sharp glass tip of the pipette into view. He released his thumb for a fraction of a second and let a drop of blue fluid flow into the field of view.

The microscopic monster shot out its defensive weapons, shuddered, and was still. For a moment Rick inspected his work, then sat back with a sigh. Staining microscopic animals was delicate work, but this specimen had turned out perfectly. At the instant the stain hit the animal, it had shot out its trichocysts, or stinging hairs. Rick hoped they would photograph. He needed a good picture for the science project on which he was working.

To rest his eyes he turned in his chair and looked out over the broad horizon of the Atlantic Ocean. It was a calm day, and the calmness was reflected in the leisurely pace of life on Spindrift Island. The famous island off the New Jersey coast, home of the Spindrift Scientific Foundation, had not always been so peaceful, Rick thought. Many scientific experiments of world importance had taken place, or had begun, in the long, low, gray laboratory buildings on the southeast corner of the island.

Most recently, Rick Brant and his pal Donald Scott, nicknamed Scotty, had taken part in an expedition to the Sulu Sea. The quiet, scientific survey of human and animal life in the area had begun on Spindrift Island, but had ended in a bloody fight on another island, in a far corner of the globe, as told in The Pirates of Shan.

Now, though, all was serene. The scientists were at work on reports, or teaching summer sessions at universities. No major experiments were in progress, and no expeditions were being planned.

Rick grinned. If he came right down to it, one reason for the peace and quiet was the absence of his sister Barbara. Barby, a year his junior, was visiting with the Millers, one of the island's scientific families, at their ancestral home in Virginia. Barby and Jan Miller had a way of making life somewhat frenzied, or at least less quiet than at present.

The sound of a fast-moving motorboat intruded on the quiet and Rick cocked an ear. It was one of the Spindrift boats, judging by the sound. That meant Scotty was returning from the mainland with the groceries and the mail.

Rick stood up and stretched luxuriously. He decided to walk down to the cove and meet Scotty. He could help carry the groceries. Besides, he hoped that Scotty would have a package for him from a biological supply house.

Rick's interest in microscopy had begun with Barby's present of a complete microscope set. It was a beauty, with magnifications up to three hundred times. It had its own light source, a substage illuminator, and even an "atomic energy" stage, which was actually a device for viewing the scintillations caused when radioactivity hit a sulfide screen.

Barby's gift was far more than a toy, and Rick promptly put it to work on a science project, in which he planned to compare the life cycles of two common microscopic animals, the paramecium and the rotifer....