“Can’t you invent an ‘and’ something or other for safety?” he asked Tom.
“Oh, I know we’ve grabbed the intruders each time so far, but I’m jittery.”
Tom smiled. “I’ll think up something,” he promised. “What you need, Bud, is action. How about a little trip in the Sky Queen?”
Bud’s eyes glowed in anticipation. “Where? Carp?”
“No, straight up. We still have to test my combination cosmic-ray altimeter and stellar sextant in the air.”
This sensational invention of Tom’s, with which the rocket pilot could know at all times his interstellar navigational position, ranked second only to the kicker.
“I thought you wouldn’t need it,” Bud remarked. “You have that super-duper flight tape recorder.”
“Yes, but if something should go wrong with that, it would be mighty handy to know exactly where we are.”
“I’ll say,” Bud replied. “If I get lost in space and never can fly back to this earth, it might help to know what stars I’m kicking around with.”
Tom gave his copilot a friendly jab and they started for their quarters to eat lunch. To their surprise, Chow was not at the cottage and no preparations had been made for the noonday meal.
A CODED THREAT 101
“Where do you suppose he is?” Tom asked. “It’s not like our Texan to be absent.”
Suddenly Bud grinned. “I think I know. Come on!”
He led the way toward a cove in the island’s coast line. “I’ll bet Chow’s talking to his electric eels.”
Tom laughed. While on a trip to South America the Texan had caught two of the strange eels which shock their prey into insensibility. Chow had decided that hereafter he would use them to do his fishing for him. Accordingly, he had brought the electric eels to Fearing Island and constructed a weir for them in the cove.
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