Sterling gave a friendly salute and left, as Tom, with the help of Bud and Ames, resumed the job of following the tire marks. The prints wound through the grove of trees and emerged on the other side, where the ground sloped down to a winding dirt road.
“Not much hope of catching them now,” mut—
18 TOM SWIFT AND HIS ATOMIC BLASTER
tered Bud. “They’re probably miles away by now.”
“Maybe we can still find the earth blaster,” Tom said hopefully. “From what happened, I don’t think they intended to steal it in the first place-they just wanted to make sketches of it while we were busy with that broken water main.”
“I think you’re right,” Ames agreed. “They’d never stand a chance of getting away with it, once a police alarm was sent out. And they certainly won’t find it easy to hide something as big as a tractor truck with that machine on it!”
With Bud at the wheel of the company jeep, the three followed the tire tracks made by the truck on the dirt road. Two miles farther, near a bend in the Indian River, Tom gave an excited cry.
“Look!” he shouted, pointing to the right. Close to the riverbank stood the truck and the atomic earth blaster!
Bud slammed on the brakes and the jeep skidded to a halt. In a mad dash Tom led his two friends to the riverbank.
“They must have had a boat cached here!” exclaimed Bud. “You can see where they shoved it into the water when they made their getaway!”
But Tom was more interested in the earth blaster. He let out an angry groan when he saw that the machine had been partly disassembled.
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