“It’s there, yes,” Tom replied. “But will it work at say, ten thousand, where we’d normally be cruising?” He set his jaw. “We may as well find out now.”
He pulled the ship into another upward surge. When the altimeter read ten thousand feet, Tom leveled off, but the counter registered no sound other than the normal background clicking. Mr. Swift’s face showed his keen disappointment.
“Our invention probably wouldn’t detect radioactive particles buried deep in the ground,” he said. “There must be some way to improve the counter, though. Maybe an entirely new approach to the problem.”
As Tom set the big ship down in a feather-touch landing, he exclaimed, “That’s it, Dad! A new approach. We must throw out present-day methods.”
A few moments later he cried, “I have an idea! A completely new scheme!”
CHAPTER VII
SKY RACERS
ARRIVING at the main office with his father, Tom found a telegram for him from Washington. It said that Ripcord Hulse was arriving for the first flight of the Sky Queen, and would land at the old Swift field the following afternoon about two-thirty.
“Wow!” Tom cried. “That doesn’t give us much time to get the Flying Lab ready for her initial hop.”
Mr. Swift smiled. “A lot can be done in a few hours if everyone gets busy,” he said. “Rip’s not interested in the laboratory equipment, so that can wait until after the test.”
Tom hurried off to the underground hangar to check on what still had to be done before the big plane could take off. Everything seemed to be progressing satisfactorily with one exception. Finding that the engineer in charge of the electric compass was having difficulty calibrating it, Tom worked with him for an hour until it registered accurately.
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52 TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING LAB
“Now I guess we won’t have any trouble with it,” he said, and then went off to look for Bud. Finding his friend in the plant’s restaurant, he said: “Rip’s flying in tomorrow. I want to give the Kangaroo Kub and the Skeeter another good workout before they’re put aboard the Flying Lab. How about a race? You take the copter and I’ll fly the plane. I’ll give you a ten-minute start.”
“You’re on, jet jockey!” Bud agreed, swallowing the last of an ice-cream soda.
Side by side the boys warmed up the two flying “babies.” Then Tom called out:
“We’ll make a ten-mile run to the yacht club, wing over, fly back above the construction company field, and circle back above the high school.”
“And finish up with a precision landing between those two big poplar trees at the edge of the woods,” Bud shouted back. “Let’s see who comes closer to this line.” He pointed to a tar strip in the runway. “I’ll bet on Bud Barclay.”
“So you think you can beat me in that windmill,” Tom jibed.
“Windmill!” Bud exploded. “What do you think this is, one of those paddle-wheel river boats?”
“No, just a Swift egg beater,” Tom called. Bud mumbled something Tom could not hear, as he revved up the special elevator and flying engines of the helicopter. A few moments afterward he left the ground with surprising speed.
Ten minutes later Tom’s plane took off with a whoosh. Though Bud had zipped along the course in good time, Tom overtook him in a matter of minutes.
SKY RACERS 53
He picked up his mike and switched to the private wave length.
“Hey, Bud. Bet I’ll be back at the field working on those mysterious symbols before you’re halfway around the course,” he told the copilot. “Roger. Out.”
As Tom reached the yacht club, over which he was to make the first turn, he started to ease the aileron and rudder. Suddenly he realized that something was wrong. The rudder was jammedso much so that he could make only a very slight turn.
“I’ll be lucky to get back at all!” he muttered, considerably worried.
Carefully Tom banked the tiny plane as sharply as he could. It responded sluggishly, and in order to complete the turn, he had to cover several extra miles on that leg of the trip.
He experienced the same difficulty at the other turns of the impromptu prearranged racecourse. Arriving finally at the Swift Enterprises airstrip, Tom saw the Skeeter on the ground. Bud walked over to the Kangaroo Kub, raised his eyebrows, and glanced at his friend.
“Well, fly boy, want to sell your jet cheap and buy a windmill?” he asked.
Grinning ruefully, Tom related his discomfiting experience with the jammed rudder. Concerned, Bud helped him examine the plane. They quickly found that a loose wire had tangled with other rudder control wires and caused the jam. Working together, it did not take them long to correct the trouble.
54 TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING LAB
“Now, I’ll give you another chance,” Bud proposed. “After all, that wasn’t much of a speed test.”
Once again the two craft started on the course. This time Tom flipped the Kangaroo Kub sharply around the turns. Shooting far out in front on the first leg, he lost sight of Bud on the second, and whipped quickly in from the third and last stretch.
When Bud finally brought the Skeeter back to earth, Tom was waiting for him with a look of exaggerated triumph on his face.
“Been away?” he asked, showing Bud a series of equations and formulas he had been making on a pad. “I’ve had a lot of time to work on these space symbols.”
Bud gave him a shove. “Listen. I’ll admit I can’t beat your plane for pure speed, but I’ll take this little number any time.” He patted the helicopter’s fuselage.
After checking the speeds of both aircraft, Tom was well pleased with their performance. “I guess that about winds up our work on them,” he remarked.
“All we have to do now is install them inside the Flying Lab.”
Tom and Bud went at once to check the tie lines and blocks in the Flying Lab that would hold the planes fast. As they finished, Bud yawned.
“Say, Tom, how’d you make out with those symbols?”
“No new developments, and Dad hasn’t solved the mystery either.”
When the boys came outdoors, Bud looked up into space. “Isn’t Mars in that direction?” he asked,
SKY RACERS 55
pointing. “Bet you a bunch of scientific gnomes are sitting up there on the other planet laughing their heads off at us.”
“You could be right,” Tom agreed. “But some professors think Martians are giants.”
During the next morning, the necessary finishing touches for a successful flight were put on the Flying Lab. As Tom and his father inspected the result, the two inventors smiled. Then Tom sobered.
“There’s one thing we’ll have to do before we can take the Sky Queen into the upper stratosphere or ionosphere,” he said. “We can’t risk the danger of being irradiated with cosmic rays.”
“That’s true, son. The wild blue yonder no doubt contains more surprises than the Flying Lab is prepared to meet at this moment.”
“What do you think of covering the entire exterior and interior with Tomasite?”
Tom asked.
“A splendid idea,” Mr. Swift said approvingly. “The extra weight will be negligible.”
“I’ll attend to it at once,” Tom replied, and gave orders for this to be done.
After lunch the Swifts drove with Bud to the airfield at the old construction company to meet Ripcord Hulse, now in the Army Intelligence Service.
Presently they heard the familiar, high-pitched whine of a jet engine overhead.
“There’s Rip!” Tom cried as the ship whistled over the field and started to turn back in a long, easy arc.
“He’ll be down in a couple of minutes now,” Bud said eagerly.
56 TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING LAB
Suddenly Tom gripped his friend’s arm. “Look! Something’s happened!” he cried.
All they could see was a blinding flash from the spot where the big jet had last been visible. Seconds later a loud boom followed the flash.
The ship had exploded!
CHAPTER VIII
MIDNIGHT GENIUS
SPEECHLESS, Tom, his father, and Bud stared at the sky.
“There’s a chute! It just opened!” Tom shouted. “He’s coming down in the woods!”
With a rush, the three observers jumped into the car and raced out past the startled guards at the entrance.
“He can’t be more than half a mile away,” Bud said tensely as they sped over the uneven country road.
“I’m afraid Rip may be in bad shape,” Tom said anxiously. “I wonder if his plane had one of those projectile seats that shoot out automatically at a blast.”
“We can only hope that he missed the worst of it,” replied Mr. Swift.
Tom, peering anxiously ahead, spun the car expertly around the curves toward the area where the chute had fallen.
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58 TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING LAB
“Rip must have landed somewhere along here,” he said, turning off the road and swinging bumpily down a narrow lane.