Jupiter grinned. “Listening to you two Romeos!”

Twenty minutes later the Investigators found the Reasoner Corporation on a dusty, little-used street in Rocky Beach’s industrial area. The top of an old wooden warehouse, painted gray, showed beyond a tall wall. A faded, painted wood sign just under the warehouse’s domed roofline named the company but gave no information about what it did or produced.

“It looks like the joint!” Pete slowed his Aries in front of the old building. “I mean, it could be Alcatraz!”

The warehouse stood back on a huge parcel that appeared to be completely enclosed by a tall concrete block wall. Rolled barbed wire topped the wall. Nothing but a few trees could be seen inside.

“No wonder this place spooked Ty,” said Bob as they drove by. “Check out the security!”

Pete turned the car, and they coasted past again. The entrance and exits were blocked by solid steel gates that stood two feet taller than the walls. Next to one was an electronic sentry box.

“Uncle Titus’s bank has a sentry arm with an electronic box on the employee parking lot,” Jupiter informed the others as he studied the steel gate. “The only way you can drive in is if you have a plastic employee ID card. You stick the card in a slot, an electronic eye ‘reads’ the numbers, and if you’re for real, the gate opens. Of course, that’s just the entrance.”

“What do you mean, just the entrance?” said Pete. “The bank’s exit doesn’t have an electronic arm or box — just the standard sharp prongs sticking out of the ground. You know, the kind that puncture your tires if you try to drive the wrong way.”

“I’ve got a feeling there’s a point to this,” Pete told Bob. “Come on, Jupe. Give!”

“The Reasoner Corporation,” Jupiter said with maddening logic, “wants not only to keep people from driving in but also from walking in. Otherwise they’d have a prongs-in-the-ground exit. Instead they have these big steel gates coming and going.”

“Sure. With an open security exit,” Bob figured, “people can just walk around the prongs to get in.”

“Right.” Jupe nodded, peering toward the gate and its electronic sentry box. “Probably there’s an intercom on the box for outsiders to try to talk their way in. But you get the message from the tight security and the out-of-the-way location that the Reasoner Corporation does not want visitors.”

“What kind of work do you suppose they do?” Pete wondered.

“Check in on the intercom and ask,” Bob said. “Be my guest!”

“No thanks.” Pete shook his head. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the guards here carry Uzis!”

As they passed a stand of eucalyptus trees, Jupe said, “Park in there. It’s good cover.” No curb blocked the street, and behind the trees was an open field.

“Cover for what?” Pete said. “A break-in? You go first, Jupe. I’ll lend you my wire cutters.”

“Big of you.”

Pete parked in the field. The Investigators got out of the car and slipped among the tree trunks. Bark crunched under their feet, seeming very loud on the silent street. From the trees they stared at the prison-style warehouse.

“Maybe they do something illegal,” Pete said.

Bob said, “Yeah. Maybe it’s a weapons dump for terrorists… or a factory for illegal drugs.”

“Or maybe… ” Jupe said slowly, “all the security is designed not only to keep people out but also to keep them in.”

The grim meaning of Jupe’s latest idea started to sink in. Then suddenly shouts and cries erupted behind the Reasoner Corporation’s wall.

“Help! Help!” Pleading voices floated across the street.

The Investigators were too stunned to move.

Anguished cries rose again.

Pete snapped into action. “Someone’s in trouble in there!” He ran to the trunk of his car, where he kept — his tools.

For a moment Jupiter thought about Ty’s warning to take it easy, not to rush in. But Pete raced past, wire cutters in hand, and Bob was right behind him.

“Please help us!”

Jupiter dashed after his friends.

The investigators barreled across the street. Fresh pleas for help sounded from the Reasoner Corporation. The guys jumped up and grabbed the top of the six-foot-tall concrete block wall. Pete and Bob hauled themselves right up, and Pete immediately clipped open the barbed wire.

As Jupiter at last reached the top, a pitiful voice cried, “No! Help us!”

“It’s coming from there!” Pete shouted. He pointed at an open garage-size door in the old warehouse.

The guys jumped off the wall and raced across a lawn toward the door. Pete got there first and skidded to a halt in the doorway. Bob and Jupiter slid in next to him. The Investigators stared at the weird scene in the barren two-story room.

Two human-size brown lumps spotted with green fungus writhed across the concrete floor. Slithering with them was an inky black blob smeared with slime. “Oh Yuk!” Pete said. “Gross!” Bob agreed.

Suddenly the three things rose up on human legs that were encased in tights colored to match each costume. Alarmed, the things huddled together.

“No!” screamed one. “No, no!”

“Save us!” screeched a second.

They were the voices the guys had heard outside!

Just then a big cylinder of Hallenbeck’s Space Age Scouring Powder danced into view. It sang in a deep bass voice:

The dirtiest dirt

Is always hurt

By Hallenbeck’s Scouring Powder.

If you want your house clean,

You’ve gotta be mean

With Hallenbeck’s Scouring Powder!

As soon as it finished the song, the cylinder bent over, aimed its top, and exploded clouds of white powder onto the whimpering dirt clods.

“Out of sight,” Pete said in awe.

At that moment an enraged voice bellowed behind the Investigators. “This is a closed set! What do you think you’re doing busting into a rehearsal!”

The guys turned. A short man with a whistle dangling from his bull neck pushed them aside and strode into the warehouse. “You step out to answer a question, and look what happens!” he muttered as he picked up a wall telephone and dialed. “Security!”

As he talked into the telephone, the dirt clumps and the scouring powder encircled the Investigators.

“How’d you guys get in?” asked the first dirt clod curiously.

“We never have visitors,” explained the second.

“That’s right,” the third added. “Not since the last batch of kids broke in and stole the old Grim Speaker masks and capes out of the garbage.”

Like E.T. and Batman, the Grim Speaker was a classic character loved by millions of viewers around the world. The difference was that the Grim Speaker appeared not in entertainment movies but in commercials to save the environment.

“Wait a minute,” Jupiter said. “What do you guys have to do with the Grim Speaker?”

“Our company made him. He’s manufactured, acted, and filmed here.”

“I don’t get it,” Jupe said with a puzzled frown. “I thought Oracle Light and Magic owned the Grim Speaker. They’re in L.A.”

“That’s us!” said the first dirt clod proudly. “We moved. We’re Oracle Light and Magic!”

“You’re the famous special-effects company?” Bob cried. “You did Cosmic Trek!”

“Harold, put a clam on it!” a baldheaded man in a business suit warned the dirt clod. He had come in through a door at the back of the room. Now he studied the boys through the wire-rimmed eyeglasses on his severe, lined face. Jupiter had a sudden feeling he should know him.

Meanwhile the short man with the whistle ran to keep up with the one in the glasses. “Throw them out!” he said, pointing at the Investigators.

“Who are you?” the severe-faced man demanded as he closed in. “You’d better have a good reason for being here, or your next stop will be jail.”

The scouring powder leaned toward the Investigators. They backed away quickly, remembering the white spray that had erupted from its top. But the powder simply wanted to talk. “Meet Silas Ek,” it said. “Chief of security. And Cole Paciano, our director.”