When they had quieted down, Rick summed it up. "Well, Ha.s.san knows what's in the package now, but that's the only new bit of information any of us has. We still don't know exactly what happened in the bazaar, or why. And we don't know what to do with the cat."

He felt the cat through the heavy paper, as though to rea.s.sure himself it was there. Suddenly he didn't want to get rid of it quite so urgently, and inwardly he laughed at himself. A mystery was one thing he couldn't ignore.

"I hope I'm wrong," he concluded thoughtfully, "but I have a hunch this little plastic feline is going to be more trouble than the liveliest real cat you ever saw!"

CHAPTER V

Sahara Wells

Ha.s.san arrived during breakfast on the following morning. His colorful costume had given way to European clothes, except for a tarboosh. He wore a topcoat.

At Rick's invitation he joined the boys on the balcony overlooking the Nile, and accepted the offer of coffee. Rick went to the novel push-bell system which had three b.u.t.tons identified by pictures. One was a porter, another the room maid, and the third a waiter. The little drawings were for the benefit of strangers who knew neither Arabic nor English.

Rick rang for the waiter and ordered more coffee and a cup for the dragoman.

Ha.s.san shed his topcoat and grinned at the boys. "Cat catch mouse last night?"

"No mouse," Scotty replied. "The cat just caught some sleep. And so did we."

Ha.s.san puzzled out the reply, then smiled his appreciation.

Rick thought that the cat hadn't even caught any interest--at least from the scientists. At dinner he and Scotty had described the incident at El Mouski to Winston and the Egyptian scientists. The scientists had only one suggestion, to the effect that perhaps the boys' imaginations had run away with them.

It was obvious that the scientists were far more interested in the problem of the radio telescope than in listening to tales of wild adventure in the bazaar, so the boys let the matter drop. They had excused themselves immediately after dinner and turned in, tired from the long plane trip and the day's excitement.

Rick had gone over the events at the bazaar a dozen times. He had compared notes with Scotty on what Bartouki had told them. Clearly, something was pretty strange about the whole affair. It was simply inconceivable that Bartouki would have given an inaccurate description of Ali Moustafa, so the man in the store had not been Bartouki's partner. Yet, he had known about the cat, and had called Rick by name.

Who was he? And where was the real Ali Moustafa? There were no answers, at least for the present. But Rick didn't intend to give up.

He motioned to Ha.s.san's coat. "Is it cold out today?"

"Yes. Good you wear coats when we go out. Later it will be warm, then cool again when sun goes."

The boys had decided to keep Ha.s.san as a guide and driver during their entire stay. The dragoman's services were not expensive, and besides, both of them felt they had found a friend. The way Ha.s.san had pitched in at the bazaar, with no questions asked and their interests obviously at heart, had been a fine example of professional loyalty coupled with a quick mind and fast reflexes.

After breakfast the boys went to the wardrobe and took out the coats they had brought. Rick's was brand new, a Christmas present from his father. It was a short, hip-length woolen coat that could double as a hunting jacket. In addition to the big outer pockets, it had inner game pockets lined with a leatherlike plastic. It was warm, but light. He was thoroughly pleased with it.

Scotty slipped into his own short coat, much like Rick's except for the game pockets. Then the ex-Marine motioned to the Egyptian cat, unwrapped and sitting in elegant repose on the writing desk. "What about Felix?"

he asked.

Rick went over and picked up the cat. "We'd better take it along, I guess. It might get lonesome. Or we might run over Ali Moustafa on the way to the project." He slid the cat into an inner pocket. It fit with room to spare.

Scotty asked Ha.s.san, with mock seriousness, "You know Sahara Wells?"

Ha.s.san answered with equal seriousness. "Know Sahara Wells well."

The ride was an interesting one, up the Nile to a bridge different from the one they had crossed en route from the airport, along roads with a palm-shaded center strip, past mosques, stores, and airy, modern apartment houses. There was less traffic than in downtown Cairo, and Ha.s.san went faster.

Scotty muttered, "Fewer close calls today."

Rick winced as the car almost sc.r.a.ped a woman with a basket of fruit balanced on her head. "Fewer, but closer."

The costumes on the street were mixed. There were many people, including women, in Western dress, but there were also many women in cloaks, and men in the traditional Arab _bornoss_, the enveloping robe called a burnoose in English. For the first time, the boys saw several men in blue gowns, and Rick asked Ha.s.san what they were.

"_Fellahin_," Ha.s.san replied. "How you say? Farmers. From country. Man tell me that is where your word 'fella' come from."

Rick looked with new interest. He had heard of the _fellahin_, the farmer-peasants of Egypt. Many of them lived and worked as their ancestors had centuries ago, plowing with wooden plows, living in mud-and-wattle houses. They represented the past of Egypt, as installations like the atomic energy plant at En-Sha.s.s, or Incha.s.s as it was sometimes called, represented the future.

There were soldiers along the route, too, dressed in British-style brown uniforms. Some carried Sten guns, vicious little submachine guns originally of English manufacture.

"Why the soldiers?" Scotty asked.

"Camp near," Ha.s.san replied.

And then, abruptly, the boys lost interest in people, because looming ahead, like something from a travel movie, was a pyramid!

Ha.s.san rounded a corner and another pyramid came into view. They were enormous, Rick thought. He hadn't expected anything so huge. "Are we at Giza already?" he asked.

"This Giza," Ha.s.san agreed. He p.r.o.nounced it more like _Gize'h_.

"I always thought the pyramids were out in the desert," Scotty objected.

"Is true," Ha.s.san said. "You will see."

They did, within minutes. The terrain changed from the green, fertile, Nile Valley to the bleak Sahara as though cut by a giant knife. For the first time, Rick understood the phrase "Egypt, gift of the Nile." Where the yearly Nile overflow brought fertile silt and moisture, there was lush green land. Where the overflow stopped, the desert began. No intermediate ground lay between. Egypt consisted of the Nile Valley and the desert, with nothing in between.

The road crossed the dividing line and they were in the Sahara Desert.

Ha.s.san drove between houses of faded red clay and tan stucco, unlike the modern apartments a few hundred yards back. It was as though they had driven into a different country. Children, goats, chickens, and Arab adults scattered before the car. It was a typical desert-country scene, and right at the edge of modern Cairo!

Ha.s.san turned a sharp corner and Giza lay before them, up a gradual, rising slope.

In the immediate foreground was the Sphinx. Rick's first impression was that it was disappointingly small, as the great pyramids behind it were truly enormous. He could see all three Giza pyramids now.

Then he realized that his impressions had been gained entirely from pictures--and to an extent, the pictures had been false. The Sphinx, always shown in the foreground of pictures or taken from a low angle, loomed large in the camera lenses, with the pyramids looking relatively small in the distant background.

Human vision set the image straight, abruptly. The Sphinx was small, but only in comparison to the pyramids. Actually, it was a monument of heroic proportions.

"Please stop," Rick called, and Ha.s.san did, with skidding wheels. The boys got out and stood gazing, in mixed awe and delight. This was the Egypt of antiquity, Rick thought. These were the monuments of a civilization already ancient when the Old Testament was new, monuments engineered with astounding precision when Rick's Anglo-Saxon forebears were still building crude shelters of mud and reeds.

Scotty's nudge aroused Rick from his reverie, and he turned for a close-up of his first live camel, not counting circuses or zoos. The camel was such a vision of homely awkwardness that Rick had to laugh.

The cameleer led the beast to where a party of tourists, obviously American, waited. The boys watched as the animal came to a halt. The driver bowed to the party. Then, taking a thin stick, he tapped the camel on bony knees that were wrapped in worn burlap. Instantly the camel let out a heartrending groan. Its ungainly legs folded like a poorly designed beach chair, and moaning in pure anguish, it knelt.

A lady tourist, giggling self-consciously, climbed up on the blanket-covered saddle. The camel let out a louder groan, one filled with such phony pain and despair that the boys burst out laughing. A tap of the driver's stick and the camel lurched to its feet, hind legs first like a cow. The lady tourist squealed mightily, the camel wailed in protest, the other tourists cheered, and the boys doubled with laughter.

Rick asked, still chuckling, "Ha.s.san, do camels always complain like that?"