“Here’s something!” he exclaimed, as his right forefinger touched the edge of a flat parchment packet tucked in between the inside wood and the metal hull.
Tom snatched it out.
The pouch held three items: two air charts with routes marked in red ink and a hastily scribbled note. It seemed to be written in code, but the last word fairly jumped off the page at Tom. It was Rotzog.
Elated by his find and sensing its top-secret nature, A CODED THREAT 97
Tom thrust the pouch into his inner pocket. He and Ames hurried to the young inventor’s office where Tom spread out the three papers on a desk.
Starting with the charts, they noted that one traced a route from Fearing Island to the abandoned rocket base in Canada.
“This links our visitor with the spies all right!” Ames exclaimed.
Tom picked up the other map and whistled.
“Ames!” he cried. “Billing guessed right about where those planes probably went. This course runs on the great circle from the rocket base all the way to the Bering Sea!”
The agent’s eyes followed the red line that tracked north of Quebec, across Hudson Bay and Great Bear Lake, past the Yukon and far out over the Bering Sea. It ended at an infinitesimally small island, charted but nameless, in the Aleutian chain.
“That might be their main rocket base!” Tom cried. “Now we’re getting somewhere! I’m going up there to take a look!”
Ames laid a hand on Tom’s shoulder. “If you’ll accept some friendly advice,”
he said, “you’ll stay right here and get your own rocket into space. Let the police handle those fellows.”
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