Scotty already had a telescopic sight on his rifle, and the telescope from the infrared unit could be put in its place with a simple turn of a screw. The infrared 'scope and light originally had been designed for a rifle to be used by soldiers at night. Rick had simply adapted the unit to his own needs. "We can get in some night skunk hunting," Scotty said. "You put the infrared on 'em and take their pictures and I'll sight in through the special 'scope and shoot 'em." Rick slipped the telescope out of its mount and handed it to Scotty. "If there's one thing I don't need," he said, "it's a dead skunk. Couldn't we hunt prairie moose instead?" "What's a prairie moose?" Scotty demanded. "A field mouse with horns." Scotty groaned. "All right, scientist. Let's get serious and see if you can answer this one. We have an archeologist, a naturalist, and a cyberneticist coming. I think I know what the first two are, but what in the name of a blue baboon is a cyberneticist?" Rick put the camera view finder into place and began to adjust it. "A specialist in cybernetics," he said. Scotty waved his arms. "Now I know!" he exclaimed triumphantly. "Any idiot knows what cybernetics is. Or what they are. Ten cents apiece at any hardware counter. No family should be without a handy-dandy cybernetic!" Rick chuckled. "All right. Cybernetics is a combined study of machines and the human nervous system. It's trying to figure out how machines and humans are related. I don't know much about it myself, but I do know this: the big electronic calculators that do problems in a few hours that it would take humans hundreds of years to finish were the result of cybernetics." "The big brains!" Scotty looked awed. "I've read about them. And to think we're going to have that kind of expert here!" "With his wife and two kids," Rick added. "I wonder how Huggins will like a crowd of kids trampling through his garden!" Scotty laughed outright. "Here we go again! Listen, Rick, start making sense. How can twins less than a year old trample anyone's garden?" Rick didn't try to answer. He finished the adjustment on the camera and put it back on the shelf, then started to work replacing the lenses in an old pair of sunglasses with the special ones he had ordered. After a moment, he asked, "Scotty, how would you like it if an expedition left Spindrift and we weren't with it?" Scotty stared. "My sainted aunt! Is that's what's been bothering you?" Rick admitted it. He knew where he stood with the old gang, Hartson Brant, Hobart Zircon, Julius Weiss, and John Gordon. He was far from sure of how the new staff members would look on him and Scotty. He had learned that some scientists had little patience with people who were unfamiliar with their special fields, and he and Scotty were pretty ignorant about the new sciences that would be represented. That was his only reason for objecting when his father had decided to enlarge the staff.