Chapter 2: Too Hot For The Season

Monterey Jack jumped back onto the horseshoe-shaped sofa. "A case? Crikey, what's goin' on this time?"

"You know that frozen pond we came by earlier today?" Chip asked. "The one with the ice skaters on it?" It had been indeed cold enough for some ponds to develop an ice layer strong enough to carry a number of people.

"Why, what's with that pond?"

It was TV news anchorman Stan Blather who answered Monty's question. "...Eyewitnesses as well as victims of the incident reported that the ice suddenly began to melt, eventually broke, and disappeared entirely within less than a minute. Some said they saw steam rise up from the ice. The pond is shallow enough to stand in, so there were no casualties. But some of the ice skaters who broke into the pond said the water was unusually warm while the surrounding air hadn't warmed up significantly."

Zipper supposed that some sort of heated waste water might have been pumped into the pond and raised the water temperature.

Chip shook his head. "Nobody would dispose of their waste water in a pond accessible to the public, especially not one with ice skaters on it. And even then, I don't think you can melt that much ice in such a short time."

Dale had an idea, too. "A heat wave, maybe?"

"No," Chip said, "according to the people there, the air was as cold as always, Stan Blather didn't mention any other open air ice skating rink or water surface having melted, and when this happened, we were out there," he pointed at the front door, "and would have felt any heat wave."

"There are no geysers or 'ot springs under this city either," Monty said, "so what else can it be?"

"I'm out of ideas," Chip admitted. "We could ask Gadget, maybe she's got a clue."

"D'ya really think we should disturb 'er?"

"What other choice do we have, other than going there and taking a look ourselves? Sooner or later, we'll need her technical advice, for this can impossibly have a natural cause."

The four went upstairs, and Chip knocked on the door of Gadget's workshop.

"I'm busy," Gadget's voice sounded through the closed door. It did not sound so much like she was working on anything, though.

"Gadget," Chip shouted, "we need your advice."

"My advice about what?" she asked.

"Imagine a frozen pond in the park with ice skaters on it."

"Yes," Gadget replied, "it's cold enough for water to freeze solid enough to carry a lot of people. Depending on where the water is, of course." As if she suspected a hidden invitation from one of the chipmunks to go ice skating with him, she added, "What do you want to know then?"

Chip went on. "We've seen that particular pond earlier today. Now imagine that the water melts."

"...and the ice skaters break into the water. Their fault if they don't notice rising temperatures and react in time."

"The air didn't get any warmer, Gadget. Unlike the water, by the way. And the ice melted away completely in under 60 seconds."

The door unlocked and opened, and Gadget looked at the guys with wide open eyes. "Golly, under 60 seconds, you said? I'd say that's impossible if it wasn't because nothing is."

"How can it be possible, then, if it is possible?" Chip inquired.

"Well, you can't heat up the water from underneath so that the ice melts that quickly without boiling the whole pond. And you said the air wasn't warmed up at all. And I doubt that anyone installed heat pipes in the ice. So all I can imagine is a form of electromagnetic waves, something like microwaves, warming up the ice and the water below it, but not the air above it. But it's difficult to apply electromagnetic waves that precisely."

Chip scratched the back of his head right below his fedora hat. "We need to go to the pond and examine it ourselves, I think."

"That'd be the best," Gadget said, "but... don't count me in."

This surprised Chip as well as his teammates. "You won't come with us? We might need your knowledge, Gadget!"

"Sorry, but I can't go with you. I'm... busy here already. Just... go ahead." Gadget gazed at her friends for a few seconds before she stepped back and closed the door again.

"In that case..." Chip turned and headed for the hangar, "it'll be us guys only."

"But Chip," Dale complained, "how come Gadget may stay here on a case an' I may not?"

"Because she might really be busy with an invention or so," Chip explained.

"Hey, I might be busy, too!"

"I wonder how your way of being so busy that you have to stay here will help the Rangers," Chip commented, "like Gadget's inventions help us."

Monty gave as an advice, "Jes' grant 'er 'er timeout when she needs one, mate." The four Rangers had reached the hangar meanwhile, he shut the door behind himself and, since Gadget hearing him would be even less likely then, went on, "Might be 'ard ta understand fer ya lads, but she might not get along well with th' season an' wish ta lock 'erself away 'til it's over."

Dale did indeed not understand. "Aw c'mon, Monty, how can one not like Christmas?"

"I'm with Dale for once," Chip said. "Aren't all those Christmas decorations supposed to cheer you up rather than sadden you?" He waved his hand to somewhere beyond the hangar front door he had just opened. Deep inside, he wished he could share this experience with Gadget, only him and her.

Winding up the Rangerplane's clockwork drive for another flight, Monty asked the chipmunk boys, "Didja ever spend Christmas alone? An' I mean all alone with nowhere ta go, with no-one ta meet, not even yer own parents?"

"Ummm..." Dale said while thinking, "nope."

"Neither did I," Chip said.

Monty sat down on the pilot's seat and put his goggles over his eyes. "Now imagine that 'appened ta ya twice. Without a chance of ever gettin' any different."

Chip understood Gadget's situation the better, the more thought he put into it. "Right, where she lived wasn't exactly a neighborhood. I mean, I didn't even know someone was living in any of these old plane wrecks until you took us there. Geegaw must have taken her with him on some of his flights, I reckon..."

"That 'e did fer sure, mate," Monty confirmed. "'e couldn't leave 'er alone when 'e flew somewhere, so she came with 'im as soon as she was old enough."

"And when she had lost him," Chip concluded, "not only wasn't he there anymore to spend the holidays with her, she also didn't know where to go. She had no choice but to stay at home. If it wasn't for us, she'd still be there in the plane wreck all alone. I guess she has to get used to being in good company for Christmas. Or in any company, for that matter."

When everybody had boarded, the Rangerplane took off and made its way through the park until it arrived at the pond. Monty landed it behind a row of bushes which he considered a sufficient hiding place. A police line kept humans away from the pond, but rodents and insects were able to pass unhindered, besides, the Rescue Rangers were there for the same reason as the police, they had to investigate.

To their surprise, however, the pond was freezing again. Apart from the lack of thickness of the ice which wasn't solid enough to support the weight of humans yet, there was little evidence that it had been gone entirely about half an hour before.

"Oh boy oh boy," Dale cheered, "the ice is back!" He grabbed a small twig which happened to be shaped similar to a hockey stick. "Hey Chipper, what about a little ice hockey match, one on one?"

He wanted to run onto the ice, but he didn't move forward a single inch. The reason was Monterey Jack who held the back of his jacket. "Easy, mate. The ice might not carry ya yet. We're only four already now, so if the ice breaks an' ya turn into an icicle down there, we'll run outta Rangers fer tanight."

"Monty is right, Dale," Chip said, "and we don't have time now. Zipper, have a look if you can find anything that's out of the ordinary and that might have to do with the melting ice!"

The fly saluted and started on a flight around the pond. On his way, he overheard two officers who talked about reopening the pond when the ice is thick enough again. But while he heard them speak, he noticed something unusual. Tiny clouds of steam built up upon the ice. He stopped in mid-air and looked out onto the pond. It appeared as if the ice had begun to melt again, but to be sure, he had to examine the phenomenon a bit closer, so he flew to the middle of the pond. The air was as cold as usually, but the steam was fairly warm. He descended to what ice was still left, but he didn't dare to land. There was a thin layer of water upon the ice, and this water was almost boiling. He figured this was far enough out of the ordinary and returned to his friends to tell them what he saw.

"Boilin' water on ice?" It was hard for Monty to believe. "I'd say y've gone bonkers, Zipper pally, if I didn't see it with me own eyes, but blimey, I do see it!"

Dale stared to where the ice used to be, and where the dissolving steam revealed a surface of wholly liquid water. "An' I wanted to play ice hockey out there. You wouldn't have a frozen chipmunk now, but a cooked one."

"Careful, mate," Monty warned him, "th' water might still be freezin' cold down below."

"I wish Gadget had invented us some scuba gear," Chip said, "then I could dive in there and see if you're right, Monty, and to which depth the water has been heated. Then we might have a clue as to what caused—"

Right above Chip, a light went out which caused him to stop talking. He was about to continue when he noticed that all lights along the way flashed up brightly and then fell dark one by one. At the end of the row, the tiny light bulbs on a small Christmas tree were the last to fall victim to the sudden darkness. "This is not a coincidence anymore!" he said.

"What is it then?" Dale wondered.

"A case! It has been one from the very start! Back to the Rangerplane, everyone, we need to find out what or who wreaks all this havoc!"

The four Rangers piled into their trademark aircraft and took off into the dark evening sky, hoping to find some evidence from a higher point of view. They flew a few circles around the pond, each of them larger than the previous one, and when they didn't find anything significant, they began to search the greater surroundings.

Their search seemed to have come to a sudden end when they spotted a fire in the park. There was a small fenced place where Christmas trees were sold. The makeshift shop was closed, the owner had gone, and the fences were thoroughly locked with chains, but one of the trees was aflame. After what they had seen the past few minutes, the Rescue Rangers were barely surprised to not see anyone who could have caused the fire.

To allow for a closer look at the most recent crime scene, Monty steered the Rangerplane right into the fenced area, but Chip warned him, "Monty, I wouldn't fly so close to the trees!"

"Why not? It's not that we're flyin' straight through th' flames, Chipper." Monty had just said this when the tree nearest to the Rangerplane caught fire. Within a split-second, the entire tree was ablaze.

"Crikey," Monty shouted, "someone tries ta roast us like a coupla maroons!"

Chip gave the Australian mouse the order to do what he would have done anyway. "Get us outta here, Monty, and quickly before we end up in the middle of a forest fire!"

"All right, mates! Hold on!" Monty accelerated the Rangerplane to its maximum speed and tried to find the fastest way out, but soon discovered the fastest way went past the tree which was the first to burn. "Prepare fer one—hot—flight!" he said as he pulled back the bottle cap yoke to gain height and make it over the fence.

The very moment that the Rangerplane passed the first burning tree, the flames reached the tree gum which quickly ignited. The tree exploded in a spectacular ball of fire, dust, and shards of wood. The pressure wave pushed the Rangerplane uncontrollably upward. Wooden shrapnel flew all around the craft, and some pieces hit it from below or even tore through the wings. The Rangers were only saved by the rigid inner construction which held back those fragments that managed to pierce the hull and the red balloon against which the fuselage was pressed on its rapid flight upward.

When gravity got hold of the Rangerplane again, it was flying high above the park. It was almost a Christmas miracle that the balloon hadn't been damaged, the wings had been rendered unable to hold the plane in the air. Monty blocked the fast-running clockwork drive, and the Rangers took a glance down. A third whole tree had started to burn, and four more had caught fire in the explosion.

"Wowie-zowie," Dale said, "I didn't know that Christmas trees can explode like dynamite." He had just said these words when the second tree blew up.

Monty released the drive again to gain some more distance between the Rangerplane and the burning trees. "It's th' tree gum," he explained. "Th' gum o' certain trees explodes when ya put it on fire."

Chip watched the second explosion from a safe distance. "And I didn't know that this applies also to ordinary pines which are used as Christmas trees all over the world. If I think of the many trees that carry real candles with real flames around this time of the year..." All of a sudden, he spotted something or rather somebody on the fire escape of a nearby building which was soon to be demolished. "Monty," he said, "fly us to that house over there, I think I've seen someone we know."

The closer they came to the building, the more Chip's suspicion turned into solid proof. On the top steel platform stood a very short man. He hardly had any hair left on his head, and he wore glasses and a lab coat. He was busy operating a strange, roughly doghouse-sized contraption like out of the science-fiction B-movie which Dale loved to watch—and cackling madly. "Muahahahahaha! My Microwave Adaptive Range Christmas Obliterator works like a charm! Ice melts in no time, light bulbs burn out, and harmless Christmas trees turn into dangerous weapons! Oh, this is finally gonna be a Christmas for me to enjoy for a change!"

"Nimnul," the Rangers said his name in unison.

The Rangerplane touched down on the roof right above the mad scientist, and the four heroes got off and went to the edge of the roof to see what he was up to.

"Y'know," Monty commented the situation, "I thought fer a moment that I'd taken a wrong turn somewhere after the explosion, an' we'd ended up in a Dr. Seuss story."

"No, this is real," Chip said, "almost too real. But Dr. Seuss wouldn't have written it much different."

Below, Professor Nimnul worked on the controls of his device. "So what shall I test MARCO on now? Aaaah, now there's a wonderful new target!"

Chip watched as Nimnul brought his thumb to a red button which looked like it was the trigger. "What's he aiming at?"

Zipper said Nimnul won't fire his machine off as long as he can help it. He raced down to the professor and flew round after round around his head.

Nimnul was not only distracted sufficiently, but also confused. "A fly? At this time of the year?" He waved his hands about, trying in vain to get the insect that was buzzing around him, but stopped when he figured it wasn't worth the effort. His right hand went down again and hit the trigger.

A cloud of black smoke rose up, but from underneath Nimnul's nose instead of anywhere in or near the park. "Hey," he complained, "you're not supposed to destroy yourself! You're supposed to destroy something out there!" He opened the contraption and examined the damage. "Great. The main coil is fried. Now I have to drive to Arkham and get a new one, and I won't get one before tomorrow. Might as well cease the experiments for today." He closed the machine again and mounted a cover over it. Ironically, the cover looked like a Christmas present with its decorative paper and the big green bow on top. A tag was tied to the bow with a name written on it: MARCO. Nimnul took the closed box with him into the building.

Chip was relieved. "That breakdown bought us some time. It'll take him forever to get to Arkham tomorrow and another forever to get back, what with all the traffic clogging the city as of late. We might as well fly home for now, but we have to be back tomorrow to take care of this thing as long as Nimnul is away. We'll have plenty of time at least."