In Chicago, a man speaks into the telephone: "The cat is ready!" With these four words, a chain of harrowing events is set into motion which involves Rick Brant and his pal Don Scott in ten days of danger, intrigue, and suspense.

Simultaneously, on Spindrift Island off the New Jersey coast, Rick and Scotty accept the well-meant invitation from Dr. Parnell Winston, of the Spindrift Scientific Foundation staff, to join him on an assignment in Egypt to investigate mysterious signals from a radio telescope recently constructed by the Egyptian Astronomical Society.

And when a friendly merchant asks Rick and Scotty to deliver a small statue of a stylized Egyptian cat to a bazaar in Cairo, the boys agree, never dreaming that the harmless-looking model will place them directly between two ruthless adversaries both dead set on one objective -- gaining possession of the Egyptian cat!

In the shadows of the ancient pyramids, while fiercely guarding the mysterious cat at great personal risk, and working with Dr. Winston on an outer-space puzzle five thousand light years old, the boys find the surprising answers to both mysteries!