The Mystery of the U.F.O. Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Aliens?

  Cam stood at the corner. She faced the park.

  “This is where I first saw the U.F.O.s,” Cam said.

  “Sometimes, if I stand where I first saw something, it helps me remember.”

  Cam closed her eyes. She said, “Click.” Then she said, “I see it! It’s a small tree between two evergreens. Come on, Eric. Let’s go there and take a look. Maybe the U.F.O.s left something behind.”

  “Something,” Eric said, “or someone.”

  The Cam Jansen Adventure Series

  # 1 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Stolen Diamonds

  # 2 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the U.F.O

  # 3 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Dinosaur Bones

  # 4 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Television Dog

  # 5 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Gold Coins

  # 6 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Babe Ruth Baseball

  # 7 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Circus Clown

  # 8 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Monster Movie

  # 9 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Carnival Prize

  # 10 Cam Jansen and the Mystery at the Monkey House

  # 11 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of the Stolen Corn Popper

  # 12 Cam Jansen and the Mystery of Flight

  # 13 Cam Jansen and the Mystery at he Haunted House

  # 14 Cam Jansen and the Chocolate Fudge Mystery

  # 15 Cam Jansen and the Triceratops Pops Mystery

  # 16 Cam Jansen and the Ghostly Mystery

  # 17 Cam Jansen and the Scary Snake Mystery

  # 18 Cam Jansen and the Catnapping Mystery

  # 19 Cam Jansen and the Barking Treasure Mystery

  # 20 Cam Jansen and the Birthday Mystery

  # 21 Cam Jansen and the School Play Mystery

  # 22 Cam Jansen and the First Day of School Mystery

  # 23 Cam Jansen and the Tennis Trophy Mystery

  # 24 Cam Jansen and the Snowy Day Mystery

  DON’T FORGET ABOUT THE YOUNG CAM JANSEN

  SERIES FOR YOUNGER READERS!

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group,

  345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  First published in the United States of America by The Viking Press, 1980

  Published by Puffin Books, 1991

  Reissued 1997

  This edition published by Puffin Books,

  a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2004

  Text copyright © David A. Adler, 1980

  Illustrations copyright © Susanna Natti, 1980

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE 1991 PUFFIN BOOKS EDITION

  UNDER CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 90-53368

  eISBN : 978-1-101-07607-1

  RL: 2.2

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For my brother Eddie.

  He always made us proud.

  Chapter One

  One cold November afternoon Cam Jansen and her friend Eric Shelton were walking through town. Eric wanted to enter a photography contest. Cam was helping him look for something to photograph.

  Cam picked up a crumpled potato chip bag from the street and held it over a litter basket.

  “Take my picture,” she said. “You can call it ‘Local Girl Cleans Up.’ ”

  “I can’t take a posed picture,” Eric told her. “You know the rules.”

  Eric reached into his pocket and took out a page torn from a newspaper.

  “Here it is,” Eric said, pointing to the page, “rule three.”

  “I know the rules,” Cam said.

  Cam closed her eyes and said, “Click.”’ She always said, “Click,” when she wanted to remember something. “My mind is a mental camera,” Cam often explained, “and cameras go click.

  “Announcing our first Junior News Photography Contest,” Cam said. Her eyes were still closed. “Grand prize one hundred dollars. Entry rules. One. Only twelve-year-olds and under may enter.”

  As Cam talked, Eric looked at the contest announcement in the newspaper.

  “Two. Photographs must be black-and-white. Three. Photographs must be of local interest. They must not be posed. Four. All entries must be received no later than November thirtieth.”

  “You did it!” Eric said. “You got every word right!”

  People said Cam had a photographic memory. They meant Cam could remember an entire scene. When Cam wanted to remember something, even a detail such as how many buttons were on someone’s coat, she just looked at the photograph stored in her brain.

  Cam’s real name is Jennifer. But people started calling her “The Camera” because of her photographic memory and because she said, “Click,” so often. Soon “The Camera” was shortened to “Cam.”

  “Now check me,” Cam said. Her eyes were still closed. “I’m going to say the rules backwards.

  “Thirtieth—November—than—later—no—received—be—must—entries—all—four—posed—be ...”

  “Enough! Enough!” Eric said. “You’re going too fast. I can’t keep up.”

  Cam opened her eyes.

  “How did you do that?” Eric asked.

  “I have a picture of the rules in my mind. I just read from it.”

  Cam put her books and lunch box down. “It’s cold,” she said.

  Cam closed the top button of her coat. She pulled down the knitted cap she was wearing until it covered the tops of her ears.

  “And it’s getting dark,” Eric said. “I’m not going to find anything to photograph now. Let’s go home.”

  Eric put the camera back in its case. “I’m never around when anything happens,” he complained. “And I’ll bet if I am around, either I won’t have my camera or I’ll be out of film.”

  “Or,” Cam said, “you’ll forget to take the lens cap off.”

  Cam and Eric often spent time together. They were in the same fifth-grade class and lived next door to each other.

  “If it wasn’t for your hair,” Cam’s mother often teased, “I’d think you and Eric were twins.”

  Cam had what people called bright red hair, even though it was more orange than red. Eric’s hair was dark brown.

  Cam and Eric started walking home. They walked past a row of small stores at the edge of a shopping mall. Then they stopped at the corner and waited for the traffic light to change.

  Meow.

  Cam and Eric looked up. A gray-and-white kitten was high in a tree. The branch she was standing on was shaking. The kitten took a step toward the end of the branch. The branch shook even more.

  Meow.

  “I think she wants to come down,” Eric said, “but she doesn’t know how.”

  Cam opened her lunch box. “I have part of a tuna sandwich in here. Maybe I can get the kitten to come down.”

  Cam reached up and put a piece of tuna fish on the part of the branch closest to the trunk. The kitten saw the food and turned around carefully. The branch shook, but the kitten didn’t
fall. She walked down the branch and ate the tuna fish. Cam reached out for the kitten.

  Eric was holding his camera. “Smile,” he said, and he took a picture just as the kitten jumped into Cam’s arms.

  “I’ll call the picture ‘Local Girl Saves Untamed Feline.’ ”

  Cam turned to put the kitten down. Then she stopped. She heard noises. Across the street people were shouting and pointing. Cam looked to see what they were pointing at.

  In the distance Cam and Eric saw floating green, yellow, blue, arid red lights. The lights seemed to brush against one of the trees at the edge of the park. Cam looked straight at the lights and said, “Click.”

  Chapter Two

  Eric aimed his camera at the lights. He pressed the shutter button, and the camera went click.

  The lights were rising, but they weren’t going straight up. They were moving from side to side and up and down. It almost seemed that the wind was moving the lights.

  Eric aimed his camera again. He pressed the shutter button. Click. He pressed it once more. Click.

  “I’m not sure I’m doing this right,” Eric said. “It’s getting dark, and the lights are so far away. I hope at least one picture comes out.”

  Cam wasn’t really listening. She was watching the lights.

  “I’ve seen lights in the sky before,” she said, “but they were from helicopters or airplanes or fireworks. I don’t know what these are.”

  “Let’s go over there,” Eric said, pointing to the parking lot. “Maybe those people know.”

  Cam put the kitten down. Cam was picking up her books when she heard the kitten cry. The kitten was up in the tree again.

  “That cat doesn’t seem to learn,” Cam said.

  “The last time she was up there, you fed her some tuna fish,” Eric said. “The kitten learned that if she climbs a tree, she gets something to eat.”

  Cam opened her lunch box. “Well, all I have this time is bread.”

  Cam reached up and put the bread on the branch. The kitten turned around carefully. She came down the branch and ate the bread.

  “I’m going to hold on to you,” Cam said as she put the kitten in her coat pocket. “If I don’t, you’ll just climb that tree again.”

  Cam and Eric crossed the street. The people in the brightly lit parking lot were all looking up. Some children were taking photographs. A man and a woman were looking through pairs of binoculars.

  “Six lights, no, seven,” the man said. “Three green lights, two yellow, one blue, and two red. That’s eight. I have to get this right if I’m going to write it down.”

  The man was wearing a big open shoulder bag. A notebook and a book called Bird Watcher’s Guide were sticking out.

  “I’ve got it!” the man said as he put the binoculars in his bag. “Seven flying lights.

  “You said we wouldn’t see anything,” he told the woman next to him, “but you were wrong. We’ve seen a red-backed sandpiper, a bufflehead, an old-squaw, and now this.”

  The woman put her binoculars into a case. “It wasn’t a sandpiper,” she said. “It was a golden plover. The old-squaw you thought we saw was a pintail. And there are eight lights up there, not seven.”

  Cam and Eric could hardly see the lights now. They were just tiny dots of color.

  “Can I look through those?” Cam asked the woman.

  The woman took the binoculars out of the case and handed them to Cam.

  Cam could see why the couple had trouble counting the lights. Sometimes one would move one way, while another moved in a different direction. Sometimes one light moved behind the others and could not be seen at all. Cam also saw lines, like thin wires, pointing down from each light.

  Cam looked straight at the lights and said, “Click.”

  “Let me see,” Eric said.

  “Just a minute.”

  The lights were floating up. Cam looked carefully at just one light, a blue one. At first Cam thought it was round, but it wasn’t. It was shaped like an egg with a point at the bottom. Cam looked straight at the light and said, “Click.” Then the lights floated into a cloud and Cam couldn’t see them any more.

  “They’re gone,” Cam told Eric. Then she returned the binoculars to the woman.

  “Are there seven lights up there or eight?” the woman asked.

  “Ah, I’m not sure. The lights keep moving and disappearing. They’re hard to count.”

  “Well, there are eight,” the woman said. “I’m sure.”

  Eric pulled on Cam’s sleeve. “I have one picture left. What should it be?”

  Cam was going to tell Eric to photograph the crowd, but Eric yelled, “I’ve got it! Don’t move.”

  Eric bent down and took a picture of the kitten. She was leaning out of Cam’s pocket and eating from someone’s bag of groceries.

  Cam pulled away. The kitten fell back into her pocket. Some food was still in the kitten’s mouth.

  “Well, that’s it,” Eric said. “I hope nothing else happens. I’m out of film.”

  “Look! Look!” someone in the crowd yelled. “More lights!”

  Chapter Three

  Cam and Eric turned to look. These lights were not a mystery. A fire department light truck drove up and parked nearby. Several of its large, moving beams of light searched the sky. The mysterious lights were just tiny dots of color. They floated in and out of the clouds.

  Then a television news truck drove into the parking lot. A young woman holding a microphone got out of the truck. A man holding a television camera followed her.

  The woman walked through the crowd and asked questions. Then she stood facing the cameraman. She took a deep breath, smiled, and spoke into the microphone.

  “This is Stephanie Jackson,” she said. “I’m here in the parking lot at the corner of Fillmore and Harrison avenues. Just moments ago these people saw several mysterious lights rise into the night. People here are already calling these lights U.F.O.s—unidentified flying objects.”

  Cam and Eric moved closer to the reporter to hear what she was saying.

  “Many U.F.O.s are later found to be weather balloons, kites, clouds, or even high-flying airplanes. Sometimes they are only pranks meant to fool us.

  “Others are never identified. Many people believe that some of the truly unidentified flying objects are aircraft from other planets. Some people even claim to have seen strange creatures get off those flying objects.

  “We still don’t know what was seen here tonight. We may never know.”

  Stephanie Jackson turned to a man standing nearby. “Sir, can you tell our viewers what you saw?”

  The man took off his hat. With his hand he brushed his hair down. He smiled and spoke into the microphone. “I saw lights,” he said in a loud voice.

  “Yes, well, maybe this girl can tell us more.” The reporter held the microphone in front of Cam. With her free hand the reporter turned Cam to face the camera. “What did you see?” she asked.

  Cam closed her eyes. She said, “Click.”

  The people near Cam smiled. A few laughed. Click was a strange answer to the reporter’s question.

  “Well, at first,” Cam said, “I thought there was just one U.F.O. But the lights moved apart sometimes, so I think there were a lot of small U.F.O.s flying together. And at one time they were close to the ground. I know that because as they were going up, they touched one of the trees outside the park.”

  As Cam was speaking, she noticed that Stephanie Jackson was moving away from her. Then Cam saw why. The kitten was leaning out of Cam’s coat and licking the reporter’s free hand.

  “Thank you very much,” the reporter said. She walked away quickly.

  “But there’s more!” Cam said.

  “The lights can no longer be seen,” the reporter said into the microphone. “They remain a mystery. We don’t know what they are or where they came from. But I’m sure the people here tonight will remember what they saw for a long time to come.”

  The report was over. Ste
phanie Jackson put the microphone down. She wiped her hand with some tissues. Then she and the cameraman went back to the truck.

  The crowd started to move apart. Some people went to their cars. Others walked across the parking lot to the shopping area.

  Cam pulled Eric to a corner of the parking lot. She closed her eyes and said, “Click.

  “I can’t see it!” Cam said. “Come on, Eric. Let’s cross the street.”

  Cam and Eric waited at the corner for the light to change.

  “What can’t you see?” Eric asked.

  “The tree. When the U.F.O.s went up, they hit a tree. I can’t see which one it was.”

  The light changed. Cam and Eric crossed the street.

  “The reporter said that some people have seen U.F.O.s land,” Cam told Eric. “Creatures from outer space got out. Well, these U.F.O.s hit a tree. They might have landed near the tree.”

  Cam stood at the corner. She faced the park. “This is where I first saw the U.F.O.s,” Cam said. “Sometimes, if I stand where I first saw something, it helps me remember.”

  Cam closed her eyes. She said, “Click.”

  Then she said, “I see it! It’s a small tree between two evergreens. Come on, Eric. Let’s go there and take a look. Maybe the U.F.O.s left something behind.”

  “Something,” Eric said, “or someone.”

  Chapter Four

  Cam and Eric were a long way from the park. It was past five o’clock and already quite dark.

  “Let’s go,” Eric said. “It’s late. My parents are going out. I have to baby-sit for Howie and the twins tonight. And besides,” Eric went on, “we have homework to do. We can come back tomorrow when it’s light out.”

  “Don’t worry.” Cam told him. “As soon as we’ve seen what’s on the other side of that tree, we’ll go home.”