“I have the code translation for you and wait until you hear the message!”
Dalton cried.
A CODED THREAT 99
He flashed a typed version of the note on the screen. It read: INTERCEPT ALL TRIPS OF SWIFT ROCKET MEN. AVOID ISLAND. MEET
AT CARP ON FOURTEENTH FOR FURTHER ORDERS. ROTZOG.
“The FBI is already working on the case,” Dalton reported. “Anything else you want done?”
“No,” Tom replied. “And thanks for the quick work.”
“Who is this Rotzog?” Bud asked after the videophone was shut off. “Maybe he’s the same one who was sending the letters to Hein and Johnson. Well, at least it’s fairly certain that we’ve got the label of the to. man!”
“The label, yes. But how about the location?” Tom mused. “I wonder if Carp is one of the islands in the Aleutian chain.” He looked in an atlas but failed to find it. “Probably the secret name for their base,” he decided.
Tom went on to say that there might be an international angle to the problem.
Perhaps a foreign group had helped themselves to an island owned by the United States. He now went to interview the prisoner. The man with the thin mustache was amazed to hear what had been learned since his capture.
Nevertheless, he refused to admit a thing.
“I’ll have the FBI come for you and your plane,” Tom told him, then returned to his work.
Bud was uneasy. Finally he admitted that he was 100 TOM SWIFT AND HIS ROCKET SHIP
worried. When the stranger did not report to his superior, Rotzog probably would assign others to intercept all trips from the island and redouble his efforts to wreck any rocket launchings.