Smugglers’ Reef

Rick just grinned. He felt beautiful tonight. When you came to it, nothing matched being at home with the family in the big house on Spindrift Island. The famous island off the New Jersey coast was home to the scientific foundation that his father headed and for the scientist members. It was home for Scotty, too, and had been since the day he had rescued Rick from danger, as told in The Rocket’s Shadow. As junior members of the foundation, Rick and Scotty had been included in several experiments and expeditions. Rick wouldn’t have missed one of them, and if the opportunity offered, he would go again with just as much eagerness. But it was nice to return to familiar surroundings between trips. More than once, during lonely nights in far places, his thoughts had turned to evenings just like this one with the family and perhaps a close friend like Jerry gathered on the porch after dinner.

Rick, Scotty, and Barbara Brant had only recently returned from the South Pacific, where they had vacationed aboard the trawler Tarpon and solved the mystery of The Phantom Shark. Barby had gone off to summer boarding school in Connecticut a few days later. Chadha, the Hindu boy with the Brants since the Tibetan radar relay expedition described in The Lost City, had said goodbye to the New Caledonia group and returned to India. The scientists, Zircon, Weiss, and Gordon, were away doing research. Suddenly, Rick chuckled. “Speaking of adventure, I’ll bet the biggest adventure Barby had on our whole trip to the Pacific was eating rosette sauté at the governor’s in Noumea.”