But five minutes later the lights for the first turn blinked a steady danger sign.
Stan Lee was in trouble!
Tom shut off the power. “He may have fallen, Dad!”
Quickly descending the ladder, Tom ran through 130 TOM SWIFT AND HIS GIANT ROBOT
the tunnel. The robot had lost his balance on what should have been a relatively easy turn. He had landed face down and dented his chest.
Tom was shaking his head in puzzlement when his father joined him at the end of the tunnel. “This turn should have been almost automatic. Stan Lee performed it flawlessly many times in Shopton.”
“It’s very strange,” Mr. Swift agreed.
The two studied the situation, rechecking the relays. Tom proposed that the answer might be right above their heads in the distorter hats.
“I hardly think so,” Mr. Swift answered. “Those distorters are so small, their field is probably much too weak to interfere. There may be some factor in the plant that we’ve overlooked.”
The Swifts returned to the Citadel’s office to check blueprints and electrical-installation maps. The plant engineers delved deep into their files and unrolled large sheets of building plans showing where power-cable ducts lay. None of these, however, were near enough to the tunnel to interfere with the operation of the robot.
“I’m convinced that it’s something more deep-seated than this,” said Tom, after the scientists had left the room. “Stan Lee went out of control in the same way our jet plane did when it was captured by the crow, Dad.”
“But our radarmen haven’t reported anything flying near the Citadel,” Mr.