EMERGENCY ORDERS 125
“Thanks, Dad. Now I’d better go find out what I can. Will you show the commissioners around? I’ll see you all when I get back. The trip shouldn’t take long. And by the way, I think we should keep this top secret if we can, don’t you?”
“Yes. We’ll stop all outgoing messages from here, and I’ll keep everyone on the island until you return. They were expecting to stay until evening, anyway.”
Bud had everything ready for the flight when Tom reached the airstrip. Dr.
Carman was there, insisting that he wanted to administer to Ames himself.
The Sky Queen took off and was put to her greatest speed. A short time later she was cruising over the general area where Tom felt the rocket must have come down. By radio he contacted State Police headquarters and was advised where to look. A report had just come in from a forest ranger that something had hurtled to the ground some miles away from his shack. Bud and the crew combed every inch of woods with binoculars. Suddenly Bud cried out: “I think I see the rocket standing straight up. Down on the shore of a pond.
Yes. There’s Star Spear painted on the side!”
Fervently hoping its lone occupant was still alive and not badly injured, Tom lowered the great plane to the water and set it down on a broad sandspit at the head of the lake. Everyone hurried out and scrambled up the shore to where the Star Spear stood. The rocket seemed to be intact.
Quickly Tom unbolted the flanges on the porthole and crawled through to the pilot’s canopy. Dr.
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152