He couldn't tell her the real story. He had been instructed by his father not to mention it, even to Barby. "It was pretty exciting," he said. "It happened when they let me fire a rocket." "You fired a rocket?" Barby gasped. "Sort of," Rick said. "I lit the fuse. I didn't jump back far enough, though. The tail fin clipped me as it went by." For a long while Barby wasn't sure whether Rick's story was true or not. She didn't know whether the big rockets had fuses. When she found out by questioning Dr. Zircon, she asked Scotty to remind her not to talk to Rick for twenty-four hours. But before the day was over, Rick was packing, in company with Scotty and Dr. Zircon, for an emergency trip to the Sulu Sea. Their mission: find two missing Spindrift scientists! What happened during the search will be told in the next exciting book of Rick's adventures: THE PIRATES OF SHAN. _The_ RICK BRANT SCIENCE-ADVENTURE _Stories_ BY JOHN BLAINE THE ROCKET'S SHADOW THE LOST CITY SEA GOLD 100 FATHOMS UNDER THE WHISPERING BOX MYSTERY THE PHANTOM SHARK SMUGGLERS' REEF THE CAVES OF FEAR STAIRWAY TO DANGER THE GOLDEN SKULL THE WAILING OCTOPUS THE ELECTRONIC MIND READER THE SCARLET LAKE MYSTERY End of Project Gutenberg's The Scarlet Lake Mystery, by Harold Leland Goodwin