New Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club by Bertrand R. Brinley, Charles Geer Page B

to feed the horses this
winter if it doesn't rain soon."
           
"It's easy enough to make it rain," said Henry. "All you have to
do is create the proper conditions." Henry stopped wiping off the car, and
I could see he was thinking about the problem. I finished the last fender for
him.
           
"When are these professional rainmakers coming?" he asked.
            "I
don't know. But Homer's father should know, 'cause he's on the Town
Council."
            "I
suggest we don't do anything until after they've been here," said Jeff, as
he spread the rags out to dry. "After all, the town is probably paying
them a lot of money, and they might just make it rain."
           
"What do you think, Henry?" I asked.
            "I
think I've got an idea!" said Henry, and he walked straight down the lane
to the main road and went home and we didn't see him again for three days --
which isn't unusual when Henry is thinking.

        The
rainmakers came, and we all went out to watch them set up their machines. They
had huge blowers that they used to create a white fog of dust particles in the
air, and they set them up on the hills all around the valley. They also had two
light airplanes operating out of the county airport that they'd send up to seed
the rain clouds whenever any appeared.
            Dinky
Poore was as inquisitive as usual.
           
"What's that white stuff they're blowin' into the air?" he asked
Henry.
           
"That's silver iodide crystals," said Henry. "They're supposed
to make water vapor condense and form into drops of water. The trouble is,
you've got to have water vapor to start with, and the air's so dry right now I
don't think it'll do any good."
            The
rainmakers kept at it for two weeks, but they didn't do much good. They got a
spat of rain now and then, but not enough to sneeze at. And every day they had
a different excuse: The wind wasn't right, or there weren't enough clouds, or
they couldn't get the airplanes into the air in time when a good cloud did
appear. All in all, it was an expensive operation, and the farmers were pretty
skeptical about it and were grumbling about the cost. Finally, Mayor Scragg and
the Town Council held a big public meeting, where everybody had their say, and
the general opinion seemed to be that rainmaking was for the birds. And when
Charlie Brown declared that the town just couldn't afford any more rainmaking
experiments, the whole idea was scrapped.
            That was
when Henry Mulligan decided it was time for the Mad Scientists' Club to act. We
had a meeting in the clubhouse, and Henry outlined the plan to us.
           
"The trouble with most rainmakers," he said, "is that they
spread themselves too thin. You can't go firing silver iodide crystals into the
air willy-nilly. You've got to hit a particular cloud at a particular time, and
you've got to concentrate a lot of stuff in one place, to do any good."
            Henry
pulled a long sleek-looking piece of tubing with fins on it from under the
table and showed it to us.
           
"This is a pretty simple rocket," he said, "but it'll go up high
enough to hit most rain clouds. Right here behind the nose cone is a cartridge
with a little gunpowder in it and a lot of silver iodide crystals. All you have
to do is explode the cartridge at the right time and spray the crystals through
the cloud. Grape growers in northern Italy have been using these for twenty
years to make it rain on their vineyards. They just wait until a likely-looking
cloud comes along, and then they blast away at it."
           
"Holy mackerel!" said Freddy Muldoon. "You think of everything,
Henry."
            "I
didn't think of it," said Henry. "I just read a lot."
            "So
do I," said Homer Snodgrass, "but I never seem to read the right stuff."
           
"You don't learn much from poetry, that's a cinch!" said Mortimer.
           
"You do too! You just don't understand it!" declared Homer