“There’s a plane coming! I just picked it up on the radar! Looks like a heavy bomber!”
All work stopped as the men came dashing up to hear the news. Bud looked at Tom in dismay.
“Bronich!” he gasped.
There was no time for speculation. Tom already had assigned each crewman to a special post in case of emergencies. Now he barked an order: “All hands to stations! Stand by to repel attack!”
CHAPTER 18
SNEAK RAID
AS THE MEN RACED to their emergency posts, they heard the drone of the approaching plane. An instant later the strange ship arrowed down out of the brooding gray skies. It was a jet bomber!
As the plane swooped low over the camp, the bomb-bay doors flashed open and a shiny object plunged earthward.
“A bomb!” Chow cried out. Shutting his eyes tight, he clamped both hands over his ears. But the expected blast never came. The shiny object merely plummeted into the snow.
Then the enemy plane zoomed upward and whined away over the mountains.
Tom waited a full two minutes to make sure the plane would not return. Then he emerged from his snow-cave laboratory, shouting and fanning his arms back and forth in a signal of “All clear!”
154
SNEAK RAID 155
Everyone made a dash toward the object in the snow. But Tom warned them back until he had time to inspect it and make sure that it contained no booby trap or delayed explosive.
He soon discovered that the shiny object was merely a tin can, weighted with rocks and containing a written message. The others gathered around as Tom read it aloud:
tom swift: