“I came to Vishnapur,” Mortlake explained, “because art objects from its ancient civilization had been turning up on the world markets. I hoped to trace their source. Then at Shankaru I deciphered an inscription telling about the city under the lake. That’s the information I wanted to pass on to you, Tom.”
“Which explains why Gopal had you kidnapped,” the young inventor deduced. Suddenly Tom heard a buzz and pulled his pencil radio from the pocket of his dungarees.
“What a break!” Bud exclaimed. “You had that with you all the time.”
Tom grinned. “Lucky I slipped this in my pocket when we changed clothes.”
As he tuned up the volume, a voice came from the speaker: “Henry calling Mr. Fixit!”
“That’s Hank’s voice!” Bud said excitedly.
“Fixit to Hank. We read you,” Tom responded.
“I’m in the Dyna Ranger, over the missile base,” the engineer reported. “Are you down there?”
“We sure are. How did you ever find us?”
Hank said he had been greatly worried about
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the boys, so he had waited only a short time before coming to check on them. He and Jahan had hurried through the tunnel and had heard the racket of the helicopter echoing through the passageway as it took off. Although they were mystified by the boys’ abduction, Hank knew about Tom’s discovery of the enemy missile base, and Jahan recalled how the Sky Queen had been fired upon during their survey flight. So the two had decided to do some scouting in the Ranger.
“I used the dynasphere’s field to spot the base’s radar search pulses and also to trap them so that they would get no reflection from us.”
“Terrific, Hank!” Tom exclaimed.
“What do we do next, skipper?”
Tom’s mind worked fast. “We’re being held in a blockhouse,” he replied. “I don’t know yet how we can break out, but if we can, are you game to try picking us up?”
“Just say when and where!”
At that moment a key scraped in the door lock. A sudden look of inspiration flashed between Tom and Bud. The copilot darted behind the door a split second before it swung open.
In stepped a pug-faced sentry, cradling a tommy gun. As his jet-black eyes swept the room suspiciously, Bud moved like lightning. He kicked the door shut, grabbed the sentry around the neck, choking him. The man’s eyes bulged.
Tom was on him in one leap, wresting the gun
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from his grasp. Bud hurled the sentry to the floor, and in moments Tom and Mortlake were tying and gagging the captive with strips of bedding.
“Grab that flashlight from his belt, Bud!”
Bud did so. Then he eased the door open-first a crack, then wider-and peered out cautiously. “We’re in luck!” the copilot reported. “No other guards in sight.”
As Tom and Mortlake followed Bud outside, the base appeared dark and silent, except for lights in the Headquarters Building at the northern side. The trio darted off in the opposite direction. Tom noticed that the radar antennas were turning steadily, but there was no sign of sentries.
“They must figure no one can get in or out of this place except by air,” Bud muttered.
Soon they were past the launch area and the last blockhouse. Tom strained his eyes toward the beetling cliffs ahead. The moon was clouded and he could see only dimly. Most of the cliff walls rose sheer from the valley, but one area seemed climb-able and flattened to a brush-clad mesa two hundred feet above.
“Let’s try to get up there!” Tom said.
The three fugitives began the steep climb. Panting, they finally reached the mesa. Tom radioed the Dyna Ranger, lurking high in the stratosphere. Tense moments passed as they waited for it to descend. At last Bud spotted the craft in the faint moonlight and flashed a signal.
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Tom fidgeted anxiously. “Somehow this has all been too easy, Bud.”
“How right you are, my dear Swift!” As the Americans whirled, Copal’s voice went on, “Keep them covered with your ray device, Rakshi!”
The trio stared in helpless fury as the dewan and his henchman stepped from the brush.
Gopal chuckled. “We thought you might be followed, and Rakshi suspected Swift would be carrying that pocket radio, so we tuned in. We waited here, in the most likely spot for an aerial pickup-and the guard was signaled to let himself be captured. Now your ship must surrender or you all will be killed.”
Tom made a desperate decision. “Hank, clear out!” he shouted into the transmitter.
Gopal’s face contorted with rage as the Dyna Ranger zoomed upward. But an instant later a streak of flame shot up from the base!
It shaped itself into a fireball and sped toward the escaping spacecraft!
Tom and Bud watched, breathless with suspense. A speck of light glowed in the sky.
“Hank has turned on the dynasphere!” Bud cried triumphantly.
The fireball seemed to burst like an exploding star. Flaming fragments rained down from the sky. Moments later, a blinding glare turned the darkness into daylight and a terrific blast shook the valley!
CHAPTER XX
PLANET PRIZE
ABOARD the Dyna Ranger, Hank and Prince Jahan were white-faced with dread.
“What happened?” Jahan gasped.
“The base’s rocket fuel tanks exploded!” Hank replied. “They must have been ignited by the hot debris from the fireball!”
“But Tom and Bud and Mortlake-”
Hank shook his head fearfully. “I don’t know.” He spoke frantically into the microphone, “Dyna Ranger calling Tom! … Tom!”
There was no response. Grimly silent, Hank swooped down toward the gutted rocket base.
Five bodies lay tumbled about the mesa. All had been knocked flat by the concussion from the tremendous blast. A lean, blond figure in dungarees was the first to stir. He raised his head dazedly and stared at the valley below.
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Fires were blazing out of control, lighting the ruins of the enemy base. The blockhouses were still intact, but gantries and missiles had been ripped into tangled wreckage. Every wooden building had been leveled by the blast and the rocket ship had been blown to bits. The frantic personnel could be seen running about wildly.
“Good night!” Tom sprang up and looked around. By now, the others were regaining consciousness. Tom snatched up Rakshi’s ray weapon, then shook his two companions.
“Bud! … Mortlake! … Snap out of it!”
Some sixth sense made Tom whirl just as Rak-shi was about to spring on him. “Oh, no, you don’t!” A lightning kick sent the plotter flying over backward.
Tom leveled the ray device at both Rakshi and Gopal. “Get up-both of you!”
As they obeyed, glaring with hatred, Tom went on, “Now turn around. Bud, tie them with those ropes they brought to use on us!”
“It’ll be a pleasure.”
Soon the Dyna Ranger landed on the mesa. Tom and his companions prodded their prisoners aboard and the spacecraft soared into the night sky.
“I’m sure glad those sneaking skyjackers will get nothing out of the lonos II,”
Bud said, looking down at the devastated base. “It must’ve been shattered.”
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Tom agreed. “And my repelatron in the helicopter, too.”
Prince Jahan was stunned and angered upon learning of the treachery of his uncle. “My father will deal with him and Rakshi very severely,” he told Tom.
The Dyna Ranger returned to the Lake of Kali, now completely flooded. At daybreak the prisoners were flown to Chullagar. Rajah Krishna listened sternly to Tom’s report, then sent Gopal and Rakshi to prison to await trial.
“We shall protest to the United Nations at once about this perfidious attempt to cow Vishnapur with a missile base on her own border,” he told Tom, who was standing by with Prince Jahan, Bud, and the other Americans. The bearded ruler went on grimly, “The world’s atomic powers will make very sure, I think, that our neighbor has no second chance to plunge Asia into war.”
After a late breakfast at the palace, Tom’s group flew back to the Lake of Kali. Tom and Bud donned Fat Man suits and soon rewired the electrogel plug.
Then the boys took off in the Dyna Ranger to beam down infrared radiation.
By sunset, the lake was once more boiled dry. Next morning the spectromarine selector was salvaged and restored to working order, and the job of removing the poisonous plant growth was begun.
During the afternoon, Arv Hanson brought
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Tom a radio message received from Chullagar. It said that Rakshi had talked freely in hopes of lightening his punishment. He had confessed to recruiting Susak for the spy setup in New York and to planting the bug in Tom’s lab. But apparently he had gleaned little information of value at Swift Enterprises. The clerk Chandra at Mukerji and Sons had been arrested by the Indian police, and a roundup of Gopal’s agents in Vishnapur was now taking place.