CONTENTS
1 A Vanished Pilot
2 The Fuel Kicker
3 Following a Clue
4 The First Test
5 Sabotage
6 The Rocket Launching
7 A Crack-Up
8 Stowaways
9 An Inventive Escape
10 A Robot at Work
11 A Coded Threat
12 Dangerous Acid
13 A Startling Ascent
14 Emergency Orders
15 An Attempted Theft
16 Operation Shuttle
17 An Important Capture
18 Zero-Hour Interruption!
19 Sealed Instruments
20 Ghost Winds
21 An Unexpected Mishap
22 Messages from Space
23 Ominous Signs
24 An Attack
25 A Record Victory
CHAPTER 1
A VANISHED PILOT
“SOMEBODY’S FLYING into our restricted area!” Tom Swift cried as an alarm bell broke the midnight stillness of his rocket laboratory on Fearing Island.
The blond, eighteen-year-old scientist, tall and rangy, laid two wrenches beside the freshly machined, titanium metal column-the heart of the rocket-on which he had been working. Turning to a husky, dark-haired youth standing beside him, he said:
“Hurry, Bud! Switch on the patrolscope!”
Tense with excitement, Bud Barclay reached up to the wall and flicked a switch beneath a large screen. Three green points of light were moving clockwise in a large circle. Suddenly one of them made a beeline toward a small white dot.
“Our drone planes are after the pilot!” Bud exclaimed.
Each of the pilotless jets carried an amazing mechanism called the landing forcer, an invention of Tom’s. This instrument, directed from a beeper box in the control tower, could capture and steer intruding planes to Fearing’s airstrip.
“This might be an attack to wreck our rocket base!” Bud cried.
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