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THE MAGIC TALISMAN A RICK BRANT SCIENCE ADVENTURE, No. 24, The final book in the series By JOHN BLAINE Manuscript Press ISBN: 0936414065 Rick and his pal Scotty discover that there is more to life than just adventure, as they team up with Barby and Jan to solve the most remarkable mystery they have ever encountered, the mystery of The Magic Talisman. This book is a slightly odd wrap-up to the series, published twenty years after the penultimate book, featuring a fantasy tone unlike the earlier “science adventures” and containing a more emotional conclusion to the series. CHAPTER I A Corpse in Velvet? Under a gray windblown sky the early November surf beat with white-tipped hammer blows against the sea wall ofSpindriftIsland . Driven by winds from a storm far at sea, spray rocketed into the air like molten buckshot. Rick Brant looked up from the workbench in his second floor bedroom and watched the spray shoot high, to be caught by the wind and carried almost to his window. After a moment’s hesitation he unplugged the soldering iron with which he had been attaching a maze of hair-like wires to tiny terminals inside a rectangular aluminum tin. No use continuing, he decided, he’d only end up making a mistake. He pushed back his chair and bent to pet Dismal, the little curly-haired dog who napped under the bench. Diz thumped his tail on the rug and yawned. Rick didn’t know what had broken his concentration and made him feel uneasy. He felt tense, as though waiting for something to happen. For a minute or two the tall, athletic, brown-haired boy watched the surf from his window on the northeast corner of the island and tried to sort out his thoughts. It should have been a perfect day for working on his new gadget. His home island off theNew JerseyCoast was as quiet as it ever could be, because, of the eight scientists who made up the Spindrift Scientific Foundation, five were gone for several weeks. The other three, including Hartson Brant, Foundation president and Rick’s dad, were in the long, gray laboratory building on the island’s southeast corner, working long hours on a difficult problem for the U.S. Navy. Each of the Spindrift scientists had his own interests and activities, but when a project arose which required the special abilities of others in the group, it was given priority. This problem, an urgent matter of anti-submarine warfare, had taken big Hobart Zircon and little Julius Weiss, both of whom had rooms on the third floor of the big Brant house, to sea for many weeks with a Navy task force. John Gordon, a reserve Navy captain, was on submarine duty working on the same problem. The three were in daily communication with the island by secure scrambled radiotelephone. The other two scientists, Briotti and Shannon, were on field expeditions not connected with the Navy project. Usually Rick and Scotty were involved in Spindrift projects, but during the school year, each had more than enough of his own work to do. The momentary quiet, during which Rick had hoped to work, was due also to the absence of the three others who made up what friends called “the Spindrift four.” Donald Scott, whose room was next to Rick’s on the other side of a connecting bath, had gone to the mainland early. Rick’s sister, Barbara Brant, with Jan Miller, had borrowed the car he and Scotty owned jointly and they were visiting friends in Whiteside, a usual Saturday activity when nothing exciting was happening on the island. Rick tried to let his mind go blank, to see what might surface and give him a clue to his uneasiness, but he kept thinking about the girls. Could they have been involved in an accident?Possible, but not very likely. He and Scotty had taught them defensive driving, and both were excellent drivers with fast reflexes. There were few kinds of trouble they could get into in peaceful Whiteside. He couldn’t think of any that