plane to the public and wants me to see whether I can set it down in somebody’s driveway!”
Sandy, who was an excellent pilot, asked if she might fly with Tom, saying that she hoped some day to demonstrate the plane herself to prospective customers.
“Sure. Come along,” Tom said. “You can take the Pigeon up and do a few stunts. I’ll bring her down.”
Twenty minutes later they reached the old Swift Construction Company, now an aircraft manufacturing center. Mr. Ned Newton, a lifelong friend of Mr.
Swift, was in charge. Mechanics rolled out the sleek propeller-driven two-seater, and Sandy took it up in a long, graceful arc.
“You’re doing very well, Sis,” Tom complimented her, after she had skillfully executed a series of S turns without skidding. “Try some simple stunts. But you’d better get more altitude first,” he warned her. “Never do acrobatics with a ship too close to the ground!”
Sandy immediately eased back on the stick, and the small plane quickly rose another thousand feet.
“Here goes a loop.” Then, mimicking her brother’s voice, she said, “You fly straight and level as you start, then dive a little to pick up speed, and give it some left rudder. As you climb into the loop you add throttle, and at the top of the loop you ease the throttle back.”
44 TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING LAB
Tom grinned as the Pigeon whipped up and over in a creditable loop.
“Now try a barrel roll,” he said.
Sandy puckered her lips, then said, “Chum, a barrel roll is just a simple turn, except that you keep the ship turning until it’s upside down and back again.
Here goes.”
“Wait a minute!” Tom ordered. “Pull the stick back until the nose is just above the horizon. Then use”
But Sandy had pulled the stick back too far, and the Pigeon began to lose flying speed rapidly. As she moved the stick to the right, the plane vibrated, then stalled, and plunged earthward in a buffeting spin. Sandy caught her breath.
“I have it,” Tom said quietly.
He kicked in the right rudder, snapped the stick forward, and came out of the spin in a long dive with five hundred feet to spare. Then he used the speed of his dive to regain most of the altitude lost.
Sandy let out a sigh of relief. “That’s enough barrel rolls for me,” she said.
“Oh, no,” Tom told her. “Try it again right now, or you’ll never want to. Just don’t pull the nose up so far that you lose all of your flying speed. Go ahead.”
This time the roll was perfectly timed, and Sandy’s confidence was restored.
“I’ll take over now,” her brother said. “I wonder just how small a spot I can set the Pigeon down in!”
Using the standard approach pattern to the field, he eased in over the countryside. Gently the plane
ESPIONAGE 45
nosed down, until it was only six hundred feet above a small wooded area on one side of the field.
Suddenly there was a terrific impact against the bottom of the fuselage.
Something ripped through the floor, whizzed upward between them, and passed through the roof of the cockpit. The Pigeon gave a tremendous lurch.
“Someone’s firing at us!” Tom shouted.
CHAPTER VI
THE CLICKING DETECTOR
“WE’LL have to crash land, Sandy! Hang on!”
Only the fact that Tom Swift was an experienced pilot prevented a bad crack-up. As it was, he leveled off just in time to pancake to the runway without cracking up.
There was a sickening screech as the damaged undercarriage was ripped away. But the illfated plane skidded to a stop. Tom and his sister sat in stunned silence a couple of seconds, then he said: “Are you all right, Sandy?”
“I think so. At least, I don’t believe any bones are broken. How about you?”
“I’m okay.”
With shaking fingers Sandy unfastened her safety belt and slipped out of the seat. Tom helped her from the plane and they surveyed the damage.
“It could have been a lot worse,” he said thankfully. “If that wasn’t a deliberate attempt to kill us, I miss my guess!”
46
HIP’
THE CLICKING DETECTOR 47
“But why?” Sandy asked quaveringly, and then added, “By the same man who knocked you out?”
Tom shrugged. “At least by someone who doesn’t want me to go to South America.”
A crash truck roared up the runway with three crew members and Bud Barclay who had come over to drive Tom to the Enterprises plant.
“You two all right?” Bud cried out.
Tom nodded and explained what had happened, saying he believed an antiaircraft bazooka had sent a rocket through the plane.
“What!” Bud exclaimed, as he examined the gashes in the floor and ceiling of the pilot’s cabin. “Boy, if that thing had exploded”
“The rocket launcher must have been in the woods,” Tom declared. “I’m going over and investigate. Anybody want to come?”
Bud and all the crash crew joined him. Sandy, shaken by the experience, acceded to Tom’s request that she drive home at once.
Tom’s hope of finding the man soon faded. There was no sign of him in the woods, although the searchers looked thoroughly in the underbrush.
“Hey, wait a sec!” Bud yelled as they were about to leave. “This might be a clue to that bazooka man!”
He held up a plane schedule.
“From South America!” Tom cried. “If that man dropped this, then I’d say he’s one of the rebels.”
Bud snorted. “By my arithmetic, that’s two attacks on you from those rebels.
And two too many!”
“It certainly looks that way.” Tom clenched his fists. “But when he shoots at Sandy”
48 TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING LAB
“Whatever you do to him, count me in on it,” Bud growled. “Say, how do you figure they found out that you were going to test the Pigeon this morning?”
“I wish I knew,” Tom said solemnly. “There must be a nest of spies around here.”
“Well, for Pete’s sake, watch your step!” Bud urged.
On the way to the Enterprises plant the boys talked of nothing else but the attack. And when Tom told his father about it, Mr. Swift looked grave.
“This is really cause for alarm,” he said. “Until we get to the bottom of it, you must be extra cautious, Tom. Better report this incident to the police at once.”
“I’ll do that, and suggest they check on planes to South America, both public and private.”
During his son’s absence, Mr. Swift had been working on the super-Geiger counter. He now announced his satisfaction with the result of a new mixture of gases.
“Tomorrow we’ll take the model up in a plane and try it on some buried uranium,” he said.
The following morning, after Tom had finished an inspection of the altimeters on the Flying Lab, he drove to a spot far removed from the Swift Enterprises buildings where his father was directing some digging. Two workmen, operating a power boring drill, were sinking a hole deep in the ground.
“We’re about ready to bury the uranium,” Mr. Swift said. “I think the hole’s deep enough. They’re down twenty feet now.”
He walked over to where a heavy lead cylinder lay THE CLICKING DETECTOR
49
in a cart. The cylinder contained two curies of a naturally occurring radioactive uranium isotope.
“All right, men,” he said. “Remove the shield and lower this into the hole with the crane. I don’t want any of you within fifty feet of this ‘hot’ uranium until after it’s covered with dirt.” When this was done, he turned to Tom. “We’re ready.”
“I’ll get the cargo ship,” his son said, and drove back to the hangar. The counter had already been hoisted aboard and secured.
“She’s ready to go,” the mechanic on duty informed him. “Just tuned her up.
The engines sound sweet.”
“Roger.”
Tom taxied up the airstrip to where his father was waiting. Mr. Swift slid into the copilot’s seat, and the plane started down the runway. In a matter of seconds they were airborne. Tom climbed steeply and then leveled off at two thousand feet.
“Let’s try the counter at this low altitude first,” he suggested.
Mr. Swift, agreeing, moved aft.
“Ready here,” he called. “Give her a run.”
Winging over the Swift Enterprises grounds, Tom eased the throttle. Presently the telltale click-click sounded in the counter, at first faintly, then in a pronounced steady series.
“Well, it works!” Mr. Swift chuckled.
“Let’s try it at five thousand feet,” Tom suggested as he put the plane into a steep climb.
At five thousand feet he leveled off once more, starting another run over the buried uranium. This
50 TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING LAB
time the clicking sounds came much less evenly and very weakly.
“But it’s there!” Mr. Swift said as he tried to adjust the counter so that it would produce a firmer count.