And then, early one vacation morning, Nigh awoke to find something horribly wrong. Mr Ackerman's hat and briefcase were strewn across his front lawn, and the door to his house left hanging wide open. Though the open door Nigh could see that Mr Ackerman's wooden coatrack had also been capsized and was laying on its side. Nigh cautiously approached the house and called out to Mr Ackerman. "Mr Ackerman!" called Nigh. There was no answer. "Mr Ackerman!" he called yet again, poking his head through the front door and still there was no answer - the housе was completely silent. Nigh bеcoming more and more concerned decided to ask his grandmother if she had heard Mr Ackerman leaving for work that morning. Unfortunately she had been busy splicing tape and hadn't noticed anything at all. Nigh thought for a moment of asking his grandmother's help but was afraid of compromising Mr Ackerman's great need for secrecy. He would have to try and find Mr Ackerman by himself for now. Nigh returned to Mr Ackerman's front yard and, gathering the hat and briefcase, cautiously entered the house. Closing the door behind him, Nigh placed the hat and briefcase on Mr Ackerman's kitchen table and began searching about for any clues as towards Mr Ackerman's whereabout. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, with the exception of the capsized coatrack and raincoat, he returned once again to the briefcase. Hesitating for a moment, Nigh decided there was no other choice - the case must be opened. 'After all,' he thought, 'Mr Ackerman might be in trouble.' Nigh gently released the latches and was quite surprised by what he found. Inside the case a second slightly smaller case was housed. This one ice cold and made out of some sort of aluminium or other light metal. Upon this metal was etched the phrase 'For Authorised Personal Only'. Underneath this statement was etched a good deal more information, the etching was so small, however, that Nigh had to press his face up against the ice cold case and strain his eyes in order to read it. 'Warning!' it said 'For the ground transportation and containment of nimbus, stratus, and cumulus clouds only. Not to be opened in an unrefrigerated indoor environment.' As Nigh was straining to read the last part of this statement his nose accidentally made contact with a small red button that he had not previously noticed. Suddenly Nigh's ears were filled with the sound of gears turning and a mechanical whirring filled the air. The case sprung open and out of it sprung a tiny and perfectly formed nimbus cloud. It was the most amazing thing Nigh had ever seen. The little cloud drifted upwards, drifted higher and higher until at last it came to rest on the cool tiles of the kitchen ceiling. Nigh pulled out his chair and climbed up on his table to get a better look. From his new vantage point, however, it seemed as though the little cloud had not come to rest at all but was trying to pass through the tile ceiling in order to reach the sky above. Nigh noticed also that the cloud seemed just a little bit smaller than it had been only moments ago. It was almost as if the clouds inability to reach its proper altitude was causing it to shrink. Then the words etched on the aluminium cloud case suddenly came back to him: 'Not to be opened in an unrefrigerated indoor environment.' 'What will Mr Ackerman think when he finds out I destroyed his cloud?' Nigh was reminded of the time a bird had found its way into his grandmother's house and the horrible panic he had felt as the bird flapped about, crashing into closed windows. He had to do something and quickly but the cloud was much too high and well beyond reach. How would he ever get the cloud back down to its cloud case? Then Nigh thought of Mr Ackerman's old fashioned refrigerator. Perhaps this could provide the kind of refrigerated environment that the cloud needed. Filling his lungs with as much air as he could muster, Nigh began to blow the cloud in the direction of Mr Ackerman's ice box. 'It's working!' thought Nigh. 'It's working!' Nigh blew and blew until the cloud was floating just a few feet above the refrigerator door. Nigh was hoping that the cloud would be drawn into the coolness of the ice box as it would the coolness of high altitudes. However, upon opening Mr Ackerman's refrigerator door he found no room whatsoever for the little cloud. It seems the refrigerator was already full, not with a single grocery, mind you, but from top to bottom with clouds. Clouds of every imaginable shape and size. Stratus clouds and cirrus clouds, so many clouds in fact that Nigh had to immediately slam the refrigerator door shut in order to keep them from pouring out. Just then, Nigh felt the most amazing cool sensation on the top of his head. The truant little cloud had begun to lose altitude and was now hovering only centimetres from his face. Nigh grabbed the cloud case off the kitchen table and held it open beneath the sinking cloud. He closed the aluminium case around it and placed it directly back inside of Mr Ackerman's briefcase, closing all the latches.
