As Chow broiled huge slabs of meat, Mr. Swift came to join them and spend the night.
“Yes, sir,” said the talented chef, winking slyly at Tom, “there’s nothin’ like an open fire for steak. That’s the way lizard meat was meant to be enjoyed.”
Sandy refused to smile. She could not forget the danger that hung over her brother’s every move.
“You’ve got to do something, Tom,” she said finally.
“I’m taking reasonable precautions,” her brother replied lightly. Then, as a joke, he added, “Do you want me to walk around with a distorter in my hat?”
“Yes,” said Sandy. “That would be a very good idea.”
“I agree,” Phyl added. “That’s just what you need. We’d worry a lot less.”
Bud remarked that the girls were right. “Practically speaking,” he said, “it would just be a matter of making a distorter small enough to fit into a hat.” He envisioned a miniature apparatus resting on the inner crown frame of a ten-gallon hat.
Tom had already pulled a pencil from his pocket A CRUCIAL TEST 127
and was drawing a diagram on the ground. “It could be done,” he said. “The antenna would still work on a scale of, say-” He paused. “But I don’t have a hat big enough.”
The tension had been broken and the evening was spent pleasantly with Chow spinning yarns of the old West for Bud and the girls while Tom worked late in the plane’s laboratory, redesigning the distorter to small scale.
The next morning a stack of flapjacks was waiting on the lounge table when the four young people and Mr. Swift appeared. Beside them lay three ten-gallon hats.
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