“I wonder,” mused Mr. Swift, “if there might be a definite connection between your son’s working for the Hemispak Scientific Society and our recent troubles here. I’d suggest that you cable John and warn him. If this is the work of some enemy group, they may carry out the threat against your family.”
Roberts thanked his employer and hurried off to follow the elder Swift’s advice. Left alone, the others discussed more effective security measures.
“How about setting up a television camera with recording film?” Tom suggested.
“Just the thing,” his father agreed, and issued orders to the engineers to install several of these de-A SCIENTIFIC THIEF 23
lectors, as well as repair both radar mechanisms.
“I’d certainly like to get my hands on that oily-haired sneak who conked you, Tom!” Bud burst out. The copilot’s big shoulders strained at the seams of his heavy ribbed sweater. “I’d do a job on him!”
“I wouldn’t mind getting a whack at him myself!” Tom retorted, his lean, strong hands clenching unconsciously.
“He sure knows how to handle a copter,” Bud spoke up. “Maybe he landed inside our grounds in one of his own, back in the woods, and then had a confederate take it out while he went searching for the new Geiger-counter plans.”
“Could be,” Tom said. “But I’ll bet he came down a ladder from a copter. Then his buddy flew off and was coming back tonight to pick him up.”
“But he got a free ride earlier,” Bud said. “What I can’t undei’stand is why the master radarscope didn’t detect him when he dropped in.”
Tom snapped his fingers. “I have it! He has an amulet of his own or some other antiradar device.”
“Proving that he’s a scientist, and a dangerous enemy,” Mr. Swift said. “No doubt the pilot of the copter worked some device until his friend got down and disconnected our main radar setup.”
“But they couldn’t know about the one in the underground hangar,” Tom commented.
“Actually I don’t feel too bad about the loss of those drawings,” Mr. Swift said.
“The invention hasn’t come up to our expectations.”
“What’s wrong with if.?” Bud asked.
“Not sensitive enough for long-range work. We
24 TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING LAB
had hoped to use it miles up in the air to detect minerals.”
“On Mars?” Bud’s imagination was stirred.
“It’s possible.” Mr. Swift smiled. “But actually we want to find out what unknown elements may be floating around in space.
“You see, when radiation from a disintegrating atom cuts through the gas in the tube, it sets off a tiny explosion. The gadget is hooked up to an amplifier, which magnifies this tiny explosion into a signal we can hear.
“The cosmic rays in the atmosphere make the counter click slowly, in what we call a ‘background count.’ But when the counter gets close to some uranium or radium, then it really begins to chatter.
“However, the signals we’ve been getting aren’t strong enough to indicate that it will perform as we want it to from a distance.”
“How about using a gas of heavier weight?” Tom suggested. “It might carry a stronger signal.”
“You may have something there, son! A different mixture of gases might be just what we need.”
Mr. Swift said he would go to the Flying Lab at once and start some experiments with gases of greater sensitivity. After he left the office, Bud said: “Those million-dollar ideas are over my head. Listen, professor, how does a Geiger counter count, anyway? Does it say one, two, three, four?”
“Sure, sure,” Tom replied, chuckling. “How did you ever pass your physics course?”
“Okay, the Geiger counter works on impulses,” Bud said. “As I see it, inside the gas-filled tube is a
A SCIENTIFIC THIEF 25
colony of trained fleas. The near presence of uranium raises the temperature of the gas, giving the fleas the hotfoot.”
“Right,” Tom answered in mock seriousness. “Then the fleas do a tap dance which makes the clicking on the Geiger counter.”
Bud burst into a laugh. “It serves me right,” he said.
At this moment the interoffice phone rang. Tom picked it up.
“Your sister is at the main gate,” Miss Trent, the Swifts’ private secretary, informed him. “Sandy says something has happened. You’re to come out there at once!”
Tom relayed the message to Bud, and the two boys hurried through the grounds, wondering what Sandra Swift was about to tell them. The attractive blond girl, a year younger than her brother, resembled him in looks and disposition.
The boys found Sandy astride her horse, Jumper. His glossy coat was drenched with sweat from a hard run, and he was prancing about nervously.
His owner, too appeared to be excited.
“What’s up?” Tom asked.
“Something awful happened a little while ago,” Sandy burst out. “I was riding Jumper along Old Mill Pond Road when a tiny copter that looked just like your new one came down right in front of me!”
Tom and Bud looked at each other, speechless. The stolen aircraft!
“The pilot rolled it under some big willow trees,” Sandy went on, “and then came tearing out into the
26 TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING LAB
middle of the road. He gave me a fearful scare. Ran right up to me and grabbed Jumper’s bridle. But just then a farm truck came along. The pilot pulled out a gun and forced the driver to stop.
“He yelled to me not to dare tell anyone I’d seen him, and then climbed into the truck and made the driver start up again.”
“He stole that copter from us!” Tom said, and quickly told Sandy the story of the theft. “We must get it back!”
“Do be careful,” Sandy begged them. “That man has such a wicked face.”
“Don’t worry,” Tom answered. “But there’s no time to lose, Bud. Come on!”
CHAPTER IV
A CALL TO DANGER
FIFTEEN MINUTES later Tom and Bud pulled up in Bud’s car at the place where the midget helicopter had been abandoned. It was well screened in a willow grove near a brook.
“No wonder we couldn’t see it from the air,” Bud grumbled as he opened the door. “The way those willow branches hang down, it might as well be draped with curtains.”
The boys rolled out the Skeeter and Tom climbed in. A moment later he called down that apparently the thief had not meddled with the controls.
“I’ll fly it back,” he said. “See you at the plant.”
With Bud driving far below, Tom gave the craft a good wringing out to be sure that the strange pilot had not tampered with any part of it. When Tom came down, he found Sandy waiting for him.
“I’m so glad you got the copter back,” she said.
“So am I, Sandy. That squares up one of the
27
28
TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING LAB
thefts. But don’t ride around alone on country roads any more.”
“You bet I won’t,” she promised. “At least, not until they catch that horrible gunman!”
“I must call and tell the police we found the copter,” Tom said.
He was informed by the police captain that he had already heard the story from the truck driver and had sent out an alarm. Several days went by and still there was no trace of the thief.
Tom had plunged into work on the Flying Lab, overseeing countless precision jobs on which the crew’s lives would depend once they were airborne. This did not keep him from pulling out of his pocket many times a day a copy of the symbols on the strange missile that had fallen from the sky. Solving the mysterious message it seemed to convey had become a game between Tom and his father. At dinner each evening they would compare notes about the results of their calculations.
“Any progress, Tom?” Mr. Swift finally asked one night, a twinkle in his eyes.
Just that day Tom had computed the ratio of the diameters of a smaller to a larger circle and concluded that the large circle was meant to be Earth, the smaller one Mars. The message could be from Martian scientists.
“Yes, Dad, I have one theory,” Tom replied. “Those two overlapping circles
they work out mathematically to represent this planet and Mars. Some people from up there must be trying to get an important message across to us.”
A CALL TO DANGER 29
Mr. Swift laughed. “Well, we’re still running neck and neck in our race.”
“I wish I had more time to work on the symbols,” Tom replied. “But I’ll certainly try to solve them before we take off for the ionosphere!”
Late one morning, after Tom had finished tabulating the contents of the storage compartment on the Sky Queen, he decided to go up to the galley.
Seeing the workmen leave for lunch made him realize that he was hungry. On the way some open wiring caught his eye.