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fall. Shoso pointed to the sky again, then finished by making another circle with his arms.
    I believe Shoso is trying to tell me that it rained hard, but after the sun came out the flying saucer took off.
    Nancy looked up at the sky. The sun was shining brightly and it was hot. The swamp was steaming and the rank, nauseating odor was stronger than ever.
    Ned sat up. He was chewing a leaf. As he swallowed it, the couple looked at each other and smiled.
    “What an incredible trip we had!” Nancy exclaimed.
    “We?” Ned gulped. “You weren’t with me.”
    “Part of the time I was,” she told him.
    The boy shook his head. “You must have been dreaming,” he said.
    Nancy’s blackout scene was so vivid in her mind she found it hard to believe him. She glanced at the backs of Ned’s hands: neither was scorched. Nancy looked down at her own; they were all right, too.
    “But I was so sure—”
    The girl detective next noticed that she and Ned had on their rain gear—their own clothes! What happened to the fantastic bird-flying suits they had worn? And what about the grotesque bird’s claws that had covered their feet?
    Nancy shook her head and laughed. “Ned, I’ve just awakened from the most incredible dream I’ve ever had. I still can’t believe that it was all my imagination.”
    “Tell me about it,” Ned requested.
    As she related the story, Nancy kept including him in it. He roared with laughter when she described the two of them in flight through the windless air of an unknown planet.
    “Human birds, eh?”
    However, he sobered when she mentioned that at one point she wondered if they had died and gone to heaven.
    “Too bad you didn’t bring back a pair of angel wings,” he teased.
    She chuckled and took a deep breath. He told her that in his dream he had not left the forest. “But I became some kind of knight, slashing a sword at wild beasts. I knew what some of them were, but others looked strange—prehistoric.”
    Nancy and Ned decided that gas from either the swamp or the flying saucer had put them to sleep.
    “It’s a shame the flying saucer left before we had a chance to investigate it more thoroughly,” Nancy remarked.
    “It may come back,” Ned told her, trying to cheer up the young sleuth. “I’d say the ship was in some kind of trouble when it landed. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have stayed so long and put up with our hammering, trying to learn its secret.”
    “Don’t forget that the ship may have been programmed. Maybe it landed and took off exactly when it was supposed to,” Nancy suggested. “Who knows what its owners planned to do with it?”
    Ned suggested that Shoso might know when it left. “Let’s ask him.”
    The couple stood up and looked around. The Indian was not in sight. They called his name again and again, but he did not appear.
    “Too bad,” Ned commented. “Now what?”
    Nancy suggested that they search for any evidence that the ship might have left. In the center of the swamp was a badly scorched depression which she and Ned noticed for the first time.
    Nancy said, “When the flying saucer took off, its antigravity rays may have been so hot they burned the ground. Let’s dig up a little of the soil and take it back to camp for a lab analysis.”
    “Good idea,” Ned replied.
    Nancy headed for the saddlebags on her horse. Susan B, she was relieved to find, was safe. Apparently the gas from the swamp or flying saucer had not reached the animals. She hugged Susan B and patted Goalpost.
    “I’m glad nothing hapened to you,” Nancy said affectionately and unfastened one of her saddlebags. She took out a trowel and a small plastic bag.
    When Nancy returned to the swamp, Ned dug up a chunk of scorched soil and dumped it into the bag, which Nancy held open. Then she took the mysterious sample back to Susan B, placed it in the saddlebag, and fastened the flap tightly.
    She said to Ned, who had followed her up the slope, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if chemists