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Then he realized that his impressions had been gained entirely from pictures and to an extent, the pictures had been false. The Sphinx, always shown in the foreground of pictures or taken from a low angle, loomed large in the camera lenses, with the pyramids looking relatively small in the distant background.
Human vision set the image straight, abruptly. The Sphinx was small, but only in comparison to the pyramids. Actually, it was a monument of heroic proportions.
"Please stop," Rick called, and Hassan did, with skidding wheels. The boys got out and stood gazing, in mixed awe and delight. This was the Egypt of antiquity, Rick thought. These were the monuments of a civilization already ancient when the Old Testament was new, monuments engineered with astounding precision when Rick's Anglo-Saxon forebears were still building crude shelters of mud and reeds.
Scotty's nudge aroused Rick from his reverie, and he turned for a close-up of his first live camel, not counting circuses or zoos. The camel was such a vision of homely awkwardness that Rick had to laugh.
The cameleer led the beast to where a party of tourists, obviously American, waited. The boys watched as the animal came to a halt. The driver bowed to the party. Then, taking a thin stick, he tapped the camel on bony knees that were wrapped in worn burlap. Instantly the camel let out a heartrending groan. Its ungainly legs folded like a poorly designed beach chair, and moaning in pure anguish, it knelt.
A lady tourist, giggling self-consciously, climbed up on the blanket-covered saddle. The camel let out a louder groan, one filled with such phony pain and despair that the boys burst out laughing. A tap of the driver's stick and the camel lurched to its feet, hind legs first like a cow. The lady tourist squealed mightily, the camel wailed in protest, the other tourists cheered, and the boys doubled with laughter.
Rick asked, still chuckling, "Hassan, do camels always complain like that?"
"Is true. They nasty and plenty noisy. They hate work. Driver makes them carry tourists and they holler plenty."
The camel quieted down to a low-voiced grumble. He was letting the world know that the arrangement was not pleasing and that he didn't intend to suffer in silence. Cameras began to snap, recording for the folks back home the undignified ride of the lady tourist on the ungainly camel before the ancient, majestic pyramids and the changeless, unsmiling Sphinx.
The three got back into the little car and Hassan took a road that curved gradually around a hill, past a hotel that he identified as the Mena House, and up to the largest pyramid, once the tomb of Khufu and still the greatest monument in all the world.
On a line into the desert were the slightly smaller pyramids of Kefren and Mankara. These, with the Sphinx, were among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Later, Rick promised Scotty, they would explore Giza and its wonders inch by inch. But now they were due at Sahara Wells. Hassan sped around the Khufu pyramid and pointed. There, on the horizon, was a strange contrast to the monuments of the Pharaohs. The steel-and-aluminum shape of the great, steerable dish antenna, designed for modern astronomy, was silhouetted against the sky.
Rick was excited. He enjoyed new sights and experiences more than most people, and here, within sight of each other, were unique objects of almost equal interest, but entirely different.
The way led past
a single large building surrounded by shabby tents, and a sign in English and Arabic that proclaimed that this was Sahara Wells. Then the blacktop road curved out into the desert to the great radio telescope.
Hassan drove into a parking lot before the main project building in the shadow of the antenna and Dr. Hakim Farid came out to greet the boys.
"Welcome to Sahara Wells," he said cordially. "How do you like our baby?"
Rick looked up at the huge dish. "It's a good mate for the pyramids," he said.
"Pretty impressive," Scotty added.
"We hope its performance will be impressive, too, once we get this bug ironed out. Come on in. Winston and Kerama are hard at work."
The boys followed him into the building, while Hassan squatted in the sun next to his car. The door opened directly into the main control room, a bewildering confusion of panels, instruments, and controls. There were several scientists and technicians clustered around Winston and Kerama. The group was studying Sanborn tracings, continuous graphs showing the lines traced by the incoming signals.
Farid introduced the boys to the staff, then took them on a quick tour. He showed them the controls for the great dish. They were fully automatic. The operator needed only to set the co-ordinates for the part of the sky to be examined, then clock mechanisms of remarkable precision would keep the telescope on target until the target sank below the horizon.
The boys examined banks of amplifiers that would turn faint signals into usable ones. The latest techniques had been used to ensure maximum performance.