“Magnificent, the way you kept your head and steered us out of danger, Tom!” Dr. Faber congratulated him.
“I was too scared to do anything else!” the young inventor confessed ruefully.
“You’re the one who was really fearless, the way you kept taking notes.”
The scientist’s steel-gray eyes twinkled. “The truth is,” he explained, “I had to go on writing to keep from panicking. But now look at me!”
He held out his hand and Tom saw that it was shaking like a leaf. With the sudden release of tension, both Tom and Dr. Faber burst into laughter.
176 TOM SWIFT AND HIS ATOMIC BLASTER
On the flight back to camp, they passed numerous birds of the Antarctic.
Several times Tom swooped low so Dr. Faber could examine flocks of skua gulls and snowy petrels.
As the plane regained altitude, the elder scientist noticed that Tom looked worried. “Anything wrong?” he inquired.
“I seem to be a bit off course,” Tom replied. He circled left, then headed back in the direction from which they had just come. Once more he circled.
“Are we lost?” Dr. Faber asked calmly.
“I’m afraid we are. According to my computations, we should be just about over the camp. But there’s no sign of it.”
“Any chance of a mistake?”
“I don’t think so. But wait a minute.” Hastily Tom checked his navigation figures, then shook his head.
“No, the figures are okay,” he added, “unless my instruments are way off. Of course, they may have been affected by terrestrial magnetism. And with this overcast, there’s no hope of getting a sun sight.”
Nothing was visible below but a vast expanse of white wilderness. Tom tried to line up his position on the chart by referring to some mountain peaks to the southward. But the mountains were so poorly mapped that it was impossible to get a definite fix. The young inventor paled as a horrible thought A HAIRBREADTH ESCAPE 177
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139