Bud leaned toward Tom and whispered, “What do they say?”
“Just a second, chum.” Tom was skimming rapidly through the space dictionary. He knew many of the symbol combinations by heart and could translate whole paragraphs without referring to the book. But some of these symbols were new to him and he wanted to make sure that he had correctly translated the message. The sending ceased. Tom jotted down a few notes.
“That’s odd,” he said, a note of apprehension in his voice.
“Well, give boy!” cried Bud. “What did they say?”
14 TOM SWIFT AND HIS GIANT ROBOT
“It wasn’t their crow, Bud. Our space friends don’t know anything about it.”
“Did it take all this time to tell you that?”
Tom grinned. “No, Bud. They said that they’re still waiting for directions from us to enable them to penetrate the earth’s atmosphere and stay alive.”
Mr. Swift had put down the phone and now he commented, “We’ll never be able to help these spacemen to visit us until they describe their body structure to us.”
“I’ve asked them that many times,” said Tom. “Maybe they haven’t figured out what we want to know. But right now I have a problem that’s more-important.
Their answer must mean the jet crow was from earth.”
“It may have carried some kind of beamer that activated your automatic pilot,” said Mr. Swift.
Bud, perplexed, ran his fingers through his hair. “What does it all mean?”
Tom looked grim. “I’d say somebody is out to steal the secrets of my giant robot. And he may have the relotrol already!”
The desk buzzer sounded again and Miss Trent reported that Slim Davis had found no trace of the missing jet from the air and was returning to Shopton. Tom was disappointed. The mystery was deepening.