Mr. Swift came from the laboratory to watch operations. “Can you make it, Tom?”
“I hope so, Dad, but I may have to try that hairpin maneuver.”
Everyone sat tensely while he guided the great aircraft downward in tremendous sweeps. As he turned
108 TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING LAB
into the traffic pattern of the Enterprises field, the airstrip looked frighteningly small. When the plane banked into the groove, Tom lowered his wheels and flaps.
He then cut off the power. The wheels touched the ground and the giant craft hurtled along the runway. Could he stop it in time to avoid a disastrous crack-up? Tom wondered.
CHAPTER XIV
A BRILLIANT FORMULA
I
“THE HAIRPIN turn! It’s the only thing that will save us!” Tom murmured grimly. The runway was too short for the giant ship!
With a big stone wall looming ahead of him, he applied full left rudder and brake. At the same instant he gave the starboard engines a spurt of power.
In a flash the Sky Queen swung around, so that it faced the other way. It was racing at great speed toward the wall. But now when Tom opened the throttle and gave the engines full power, the terrific thrust of the jets worked as a brake to overcome the momentum of the plane. In a few seconds the ship came to a stop.
No one spoke for some time. Then finally Rip Hulse, putting an arm across Tom’s shoulders, said:
“That, my friend, was the greatest piece of flying I have ever seen.”
Bud leaned forward. “Pal, it was superb! I thought we were dead ducks.”
109
110 TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING LAB
Mr. Swift added his praise. “If I ever had any doubts about your invention and the way you could fly it, Tom, they’re gone now.”
“Thanks,” said Tom simply, adding, “What about Chow? I hope he’s okay.”
As they left the cabin to find out, they met the cook. His face was ash white and he was trembling. Seeing the others unharmed seemed to reassure him.
As they filed outdoors, he said:
“I’m sure glad to be on this here planet agin.” Then his good humor returned and with a grin he added, “Even if it ain’t in good ole Texas.”
The runway was too short for the giant shipthe Flying A BRILLIANT FORMULA
111
By this time the ground crew, led by Hank, had arrived in one of the crash trucks.
“Thank goodness, you’re safe!” Hank cried. “Anybody hurt?”
Tom assured him that none of the passengers had been harmed and the undercarriage had stood up to the strain admirably.
“I want it thoroughly checked, though,” Tom said.
He then explained that some of the lifters had burned out.
“We’ll need new ones, made of a metal with
Lab raced at great speed toward the stone vail 112 TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING LAB
greater heat resistance. Have you any ideas, Dad?”
“Not on the spur of the moment,” Mr. Swift replied, but he promised to give the problem careful thought.
An hour later when Tom went to talk to him, his father said he had not solved the problem as yet, and that he had received an urgent message from Washington, B.C.
“Officials down there seem to think my advice on some problem they have in South America will help keep the Western Hemisphere out of trouble.”
Mr. Swift said he knew very little about the situation, but it definitely had to do with the country they now called Bapcho.
“I tried to tell Senator Trumper, who contacted me, that I am a scientist and not a politician, but he insists I come down for a conference, anyway.”
“When are you leaving?”
“At once.”
“But what about our trip to Verano?” Tom asked.
His father smiled. “I should be back here by the time you have installed new lifters in the Sky Queen. How about trying to invent a new heat-resistant alloy?”
Tom spent the entire next day in the metallurgical lab, making various alloys of iron with titanium, tantalum, wolfram, and other metals of high heat resistance. These he carefully annealed and then etched in mineral acids to examine the crystal structure under a microscope. But when they were tested, each one failed to be an improvement over the material used in the original lifters.
A BRILLIANT FORMULA T13
Weary and discouraged, Tom tumbled into bed late that night. But with the morning sun came an idea which so excited the young inventor that he leaped out of bed with new enthusiasm and was dressed for work within five minutes.
Tom would have dashed out the front door without breakfast if his mother had not stopped him. She kissed him good morning, saying: “Not so fast, dear. I can tell from your eyes that you have solved the lifter problem, but you must eat before you go.”
Tom put an arm around his mother and accompanied her to the dining room.
Over sausage and griddle cakes he explained what he had in mind. Mrs. Swift kept nodding and smiling. Tom would never know it, but she did not understand one word of the intricate details he was telling her!
“I’m sure you have hit upon the right combination of metals,” she said finally, as he arose from the table. “Good-by, dear, and good luck.”
Tom’s long strides changed to an eager run as he neared the private entrance of Swift Enterprises. Few mechanics had arrived for work yet, but by the time Tom had calculated the last mathematical detail of the combination of metals, two engineers came into the metallurgical laboratory. Tom’s formula excited them, and when the result proved to be a success a few hours later, all of them were elated. Tom named the new material mangalloy.
“That was a masterful idea, Tom,” said Rick Bower, one of the engineers.
“And it was so simple too. Why didn’t I think of it?”
114 TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING LAB
Stan Jones, the other engineer, chuckled. “If you could do that, Rick, you could invent a Rickety Rocket.”
Tom and Rick made braying sounds in protest. Then Tom hurried off to order the new jet lifters made at once.
He summoned the foreman in charge of the machine shop, who promised to have men working around the clock to complete the lifters and install them.
“But it will take a couple of days,” the foreman said.
That evening Mr. Swift telephoned his family. He was delighted to hear that Tom had conquered the sole weakness connected with the Flying Lab. He also said that what he had learned in Washington involved a complicated and serious menace to the United States as well as to all of South America.
“Senator Trumper and his committee want me to accompany them to Bapcho at once, so I’ll have to change my plans about flying with you, Tom. I’ll meet you down there.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. I’ll be in touch with you by short wave.”
While waiting for the lifter work to be completed, Tom was restless. As he paced the office of the underground hangar, Bud suggested that he try to solve the mystery of the symbols on the strange missile which had come down on the airfield.
“I guess I forgot to tell you, Bud,” said Tom, “that I think I have solved part of it.”
A BRILLIANT FORMULA 115
“How come?” Bud asked.
“You remember there were two touching triangles in the equation?”
“Yes, but don’t ask me what I think they mean. What’s your idea?”
Tom said he believed that they represented two identical problems, one experienced by Earth people, the other by Martians.
“And what is it?” Bud questioned.
“It could be any number of thingsclimate, seasons, the effect of other planets”
“Okay. I’ll let it rest there.” Bud grinned.
He left his friend. Several hours later when he met him again, Tom had to admit that he had not made any further progress on interpreting the strange symbols.
“I guess solving it will have to wait until we get back from Verano,” he said.
“When do we leave?” Bud asked.
“As soon as we make a successful test hop,” Tom answered.
Bud asked if Tom was going to take anyone on the trip in place of his father.
Tom said he had already made arrangements with Arvid Hanson, head of the model-making division.
Two days later the Sky Queen was ready for its second test. After the take-off, Tom put the plane through a series of tortuous tests for over two hours.
The Sky Queen came through with flying colors.
“Now I’m going to try for an altitude record,” Tom said to Rip and Bud.
With the instrument panel indicating that the lift-116 TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING LAB
ers were working to perfection, Tom poured more atomic power into the roaring engines. The altimeter swung up, up, upten, twenty, thirty, fifty, sixty thousand feet! It kept soaring higher and higher!