"Either that it's at the hotel or the project, or that we've put it somewhere for safekeeping. They searched the hotel room. Suppose they'll try the project?"

"It's possible, I suppose. Anyway, if they want us they can get us.

Notice that no one saw the ruckus? The timing was perfect. A few feet sooner and we'd have been within sight of the museum's ticket office. A few feet later and we'd have been on the street. As it was, shrubs shielded them. Pretty good operating, I'd say."

Rick thought so, too, and it worried him. "I have an unhappy idea buzzing around. If I were the big boss, and really determined to get the cat, I'd pick us up and make us talk."

"The language is a little mixed, but the thought is clear as air. We'd better keep our guard up at all times."

"Meanwhile, what do we know about anything? Nothing. If only we knew why the cat is valuable!"

"If it wasn't before, it is now," Scotty replied. "It's a genuine museum piece. But if the cat is gone, we have three lovely kittens."

Rick chuckled. "What's the problem everyone has with kittens? It's finding a home for them. I wish we'd had one of the kittens a few minutes ago. There would have been one less homeless orphan."

"The kittens' turns will come. And it's our turn to eat. My stomach is quivering in Morse code. 'Send food. Send food.'"

Rick pointed to the hotel, just ahead. "Okay, chow hound. Lunch ahead.

And lay off that hot-pepper stuff or that stomach of yours will be sending distress signals."

"I hear you talking," Scotty said feelingly. One dish, served at dinner the previous night, had required enough water to put out a three-alarm fire before the burning sensation stopped.

Ha.s.san was waiting after lunch. He drove the boys to the project, where they looked into the control room long enough to let the scientists know they had arrived, then went at once to look at the kittens. Three identical statues, almost perfect replicas of the original, were sitting in the sunshine.

"Except for being a little rougher, they're our own dear little mysterious pet," Rick said. "Are they dry yet?"

Ha.s.san pa.s.sed the question on in Arabic to the workmen who had helped make the kittens. He reported, "They okay. You can take now."

"Ask him if we can give him a present for helping us," Scotty requested.

Ha.s.san did so, then shook his head. He grinned, his teeth white in his pleasant black face. "He say making statues fun, not work. He help you yesterday, so he not have to fix plaster. All even."

The boys laughed at the explanation and shook hands with the workman.

"Now," Scotty asked, "what do we do with the children?"

"One goes in my pocket," Rick replied. "I feel lost without a friendly little feline weighing down one side of my coat. We can leave the others here in a safe place, maybe inside one of the control cabinets."

"Good idea. Going to tell Winston and the others about this morning?"

"Sure. Only I don't think we'll mention where the mama cat is hiding out. No use bogging them down with useless information. We'll tell Winston."

Scotty quirked an eyebrow. "Not suspicious of the others?"

Rick wasn't, and said so flatly. "Only the more people who know something, the more others are apt to find it out."

The scientists, however, were not even remotely interested. Their whole attention was given to the problem of getting the big radio telescope working.

Hakim Farid joined the boys long enough to say, "We've about decided the strange signals are not originating within the system. Now we're looking at the possibility that some local source is giving us interference. We thought we'd eliminated all outside noise, but perhaps something new came up after we finished checking."

Rick pointed to Cairo, visible through the control-room window. "There must be lots of stuff down there that puts out radio-frequency signals, even electric shavers and heating pads. How can you eliminate all of it?"

"We can't, in the sense of really cutting it out. But the antenna construction takes local interference into account. It's a tight beam design that should prevent overriding of the main signal by any random side effects. That's what Kerama and Winston are checking now. There's not a great deal for you to do until they're through. In a half hour we'll start to swing the antenna to see if we get an increase in the signal by a change in direction. Until then, why not take it easy?"

"We will." Rick took the opportunity to tell Farid of the incident at the museum that morning. He described briefly how they had been followed, then attacked on the museum path.

Farid frowned. "I'm sorry to hear it. Cairo is pretty law-abiding, compared to what it used to be. But we still have crime, just as you do in your big cities. You didn't lose your wallets or anything valuable?"

"Nothing. We think they were after the cat."

"They didn't get it?"

"No. I didn't have it on me."

"That was fortunate." Farid frowned. "But why would anyone want the cat?"

Rick did not have an answer for that, and said so. The scientist smiled.

"A cat isn't exactly big game for thieves, is it? On the other hand, the museum itself was robbed several weeks ago in spite of the guards.

Thieves got away with a necklace supposed to have belonged to Kefren, who built the middle pyramid over there."

"Was it valuable?" Scotty asked.

"More than valuable. It is irreplaceable. In terms of cash, however, the value is around a quarter of a million dollars."

Rick whistled. "No wonder the guards watched us this morning."

Dr. Kerama called, "Hakim, can you help with these tracings, please?"

Farid joined the other scientists, leaving the boys to their own devices. Rick hunted until he found a s.p.a.ce under an amplifier that was big enough for the two extra kittens. The s.p.a.ce was covered by an access door. The kittens would be safe there. It would be no real loss if they were stolen, anyway.

Later, the boys helped check circuits while the radio telescope swung through a variety of arcs, with Farid at the controls. The strange signal came while the telescope was pointing only in one direction.

Rick asked Winston, "Could it really be coming from a single source in outer s.p.a.ce?"

Winston shrugged. "We've thought of that. If the source remained fixed, we'd accept it as the most logical explanation. But since Kerama and Farid first noticed the signal it has shifted its apparent location by many degrees. That's why we think it must have some local explanation."

Rick understood. The sources in s.p.a.ce studied by the radio telescopes were fixed, in the same sense that the stars themselves were fixed. Of course everything in the galaxy--even in the universe--was in motion, but in spite of the enormous velocities, the change in location would not be particularly apparent in a short time, or even in a lifetime.

A short distance away was a wonderful example of this kind of motion. In the great pyramid of Khufu, Rick had read, a channel had been left so the light of the North Star could shine on the altar of Isis. The channel was still there. But in over three thousand years the slight, slow wobbling of the earth on its axis had caused a shift. What was then the North Star was now Thuban, in the constellation of Draco the Dragon.

The present North Star, Polaris, which is not exactly at the celestial north pole, did not shine on the altar. Nor would the next star to become the northern marker--bright Vega. But if the pyramids were still standing after twenty-seven thousand years had pa.s.sed, the cycle of movement would be complete, and Thuban would again shine through the channel to the altar of a forgotten Egyptian G.o.ddess.

It gave Rick a shiver to think about it. Even now, the pyramids were old enough to have seen a change of north stars. They looked good for another three thousand years or more. It would take a lot of time to erode away that much ma.s.sive stone.

Then he stopped thinking about it, because the telescope was in motion again, and there was work to be done.

It was late night before the scientists were satisfied. The boys rode back with Ha.s.san, very thoughtful about the day's events. Now they had both the little statue and the even greater mystery of the s.p.a.ce signals to think about.

Clearly, the strange signal was not of local origin. The scientists rejected the idea that it came from trouble in the circuit. But it was no natural heavenly object. What was it?

Tomorrow, Winston had said, they would decide on the next step. Right now all hands were too tired to think clearly. The boys agreed that the statement applied to them.