“Anything missing?” Ames asked nervously.
ATOMIC SPY 19
“Yes, the secret activator mechanism!” Tom cried. “The most important part of the whole design!”
Bud slammed his fist against one of the heavy truck tires. “Those dirty, sneaking thieves!” he raged. “And after all the work you’ve done on this blaster!”
“Don’t worry,” Tom said grimly. “They won’t get away with this. I’ll find Bronich and put him behind bars, if it’s the last thing I do!”
The others knew that Tom’s words were no idle threat. In the adventures, Tom Swift and His Flying Lab and Tom Swift and His Rocket Ship, the youthful inventor had turned the tables on other foreign agents seeking to harm the free world. And in Tom Swift and His Jetmarine, he had brought a gang of modern pirates to justice. His most recent adventure, Tom Swift and His Giant Robot, concerned the capture of a crazed scientist, bent on destroying Tom’s robot and his father’s atomic energy plant.
Tom drove the earth blaster back to the plant, with Bud and Ames as his escort.
“I’ll alert the FBI and the police right away,” the security chief promised as the gate shut behind them.
With the machine safely housed in Tom’s experimental laboratory, the two boys drove back to a boathouse on Indian River and rented a fast power-20 TOM SWIFT AND HIS ATOMIC BLASTER
boat. They cruised up and down the river, scanning every cove and dock for Bronich and his men, until darkness fell and they had to give up.
“They made a clean getaway,” Tom said, discouraged, as he and Bud returned the boat. “I had hoped to tell Dad we caught the rascals.”