came scurrying from a Quonset hut to watch the mammoth ship make her landing.
The Flying Lab came down perfectly, her jet lifters roaring. Tom cut the motors, taxied up to the dock, and climbed out, followed by Arv Hanson who would fly the Sky Queen back to Shopton.
“Shall we unload immediately, Tom?” one of the men asked.
“The quicker the better. We’ll get the jetmarine into the dry dock and slap on that camouflage before people are awake.”
Tom looked over the site for his secret launching. The inlet had been selected after several months of scouting by Hank Sterling and Arvid Hanson.
They had surveyed shore-line localities and had come up with Stillman’s as the perfect spot.
The boat yard, with a fine dry dock, had been abandoned as a Navy speedboat experimental center several years before. Now it had reverted to Mr.
Stillman, the original owner. He lived on the property and puttered with small motorboats.
Under the new arrangement with Swift Enterprises, Mr. Stillman permitted Tom’s construction engineers to ready the place as they pleased, which they had done in a matter of hours.
The young inventor watched with satisfaction as cranes deftly slid the atomic submarine from the hangar of the plane, swung it across the sand, and cradled the jetmarine in the dry dock.
At this moment the camouflage crew sprang into action. A few minutes later Bud cried admiringly:
A JET RESCUE 107
“Jumping jets! That covering looks just like a strip of seashore.”
“Right,” Tom agreed. “Any roving pirate will miss it.”