Appleton, Victor – Tom Swift Jr 05 – And His Atomic Earth Blaster

With the expedition snugly housed against the

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Antarctic cold, Tom next turned his attention to the job of preparing for the drilling. As the first step, he called the entire crew of technicians into his snow-cave laboratory, which was to serve as the central control post for his atomic earth blaster.

“Here’s what our operating layout will look like,” he announced, pointing to a large wall chart. “There’ll be three listening posts set up around the pit dug by the blaster. The posts will be located, like the points of a triangle, about five miles apart.”

“What’s the purpose of the listening posts?” asked Bud.

Tom explained that sonic vibrators on the atomic earth blaster would send out vibrations, which, in turn, would be picked up by listening devices at each post.

“The data collected by these listening devices,” Tom explained, “will be fed to this electronic brain here in my lab. The brain will then figure out the exact position of the blaster inside the earth at any given time.”

Chow, who was standing behind the group of technicians, listened with a strained, intense look. Suddenly he spoke up, “Tom,” he said, “suppose that there giant bug goes loco an’ starts borin’ off in the wrong direction. How you gonna ride herd on the doggone thing?”

“Good question,” Tom replied, smiling. “This

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gadget here will do the trick.” He pointed to a device near the electronic brain. “It’s a sonic vibrator, like the ones on the blaster. Only this one will send instructions down to the blaster instead of pulsing signals up to us.”