“I’m going on a search myself,” he declared. “Come on, Bud!”
“Take it easy,” his father warned.
THE HEADLESS GIANT 15
“We will, Dad.”
The two young fliers hurried off and in a short time were airborne. Bud radioed all airports in a five-hundred-mile radius to learn if the jet had been landed, but in each case the answer was No.
Meanwhile, Tom glided his small jet plane through the skies, passing several ships in his circular route. There was no sign of the missing craft. Discouraged, he headed back to Shopton.
“No telling what happened,” Bud remarked. “Maybe the jet blew up!”
Tom nodded, brought the plane to a smooth landing, and taxied to the hangar.
“If so, my relotrol’s gone for good,” he said, as the two boys got out.
“And I’d sure like to know where that crow came from,” Bud added, then said, “See you later, pal. I’ll be over at the radio tower checking out the new transmitter.”
Tom hurried back to his office, where Mr. Swift was speaking into a dictating machine. His son gathered that it was part of a report on certain phases of the new atomic energy plant.
As the young inventor waited for his father to finish, he gazed around the spacious, well-lighted room. Back of Mr. Swift’s desk hung pictures of faraway places the elder inventor had visited in his younger days. Beside him, in a vast glass cabinet, were bronze models of a dirigible, a great searchlight, a war tank, and a model of a small motorcycle.
16 TOM SWIFT AND HIS GIANT ROBOT
On a stand near Tom’s desk was a large, accurately scaled model of his jetmarine, the Sea Dart, which had carried him and Bud on a Caribbean adventure after modern pirates. The atomic-powered submarine had been hand-tooled in blue plastic by Arvid Hanson, head of the Swifts’ modelmaking division.