struck him. “A flash blizzard!” he gasped. “One may have struck the camp while we were gone and covered everything!”
With mounting worry, Tom and Dr. Faber scanned the terrain with their glasses. Just when hope seemed to ebb, two figures emerged from the snowy vastness and waved.
“Where did they come from?” Dr. Faber asked, astonished.
Tom eased the plane down lower for a closer look through the binoculars, then gave a shout of relief. “They’re Bud and Hanson!”
Minutes later, he landed the plane and taxied to a halt near several great sastrugi-wind-blown drifts of snow. Bud and Hanson ran up to greet them.
“For Pete’s sake, what happened to the camp?” asked Tom anxiously. In reply, Bud stuck his arm into one of the big snowdrifts, then tugged upward, displaying a corner of tarpaulin covered with snow.
“There’s your answer, chum,” Bud said. “Stick your head under that tarp and you’ll find the lab. Every other building on the base is camouflaged the same way.”
“Great idea,” Tom said, “but you might have told a fellow about it.”
“I didn’t have time,” Bud said, “on account of the attack.”
“Another one?”
178 TOM SWIFT AND HIS ATOMIC BLASTER
“And how! Sent their jet bomber over again. The pilot dropped a stick of bombs on us. Luckily, they all landed off the target, so no one was hurt.”
Hanson spoke up. “Tom, we figured it would be wise to camouflage the camp, in case the plane came back.”
While Tom was talking with Bud and Hanson, the other members of the expedition emerged from their hiding places in the camouflage snowdrifts. They gathered around to add their own angry remarks to the report of the Kranjovian bombing attack.