“Mr. Greenup, you spoke about tunneling through Pine Hill to tap an extra supply of water from Silver Lake.”
“What about it?”
“I’m willing to undertake that job for you,” said Tom. “And what’s more, I’ll do it absolutely free.”
“What!” Greenup sounded flabbergasted. Then he added suspiciously, “I presume there are some strings attached to your offer?”
“None at all,” Tom replied. “It’ll give me a chance to put my earth blaster through a real work-ABOLDOFFER 69
out and at the same time benefit the whole community.”
Greenup was silent for a moment.
“That’s a mighty generous offer,” he said finally. “But of course I’ll have to take it up with the Water Committee of the Town Council before I give you a definite answer. Suppose I call you tomorrow morning.”
The next day Tom waited eagerly for a reply. Shortly before noon, Greenup phoned to say that the committee had voted to accept his offer with thanks.
Tom was jubilant. After lunch he drove to the construction company plant where he conferred with the engineers about building the new blaster. Later, he stopped at Uncle Ned’s office to tell him about the Pine Hill project.
“Do you think that will be safe, in view of the radioactive exhaust gases?” Mr.
Newton asked.
“I won’t use our South Pole blaster to dig the tunnel,” replied Tom. “I intend to build a special model for this job. It will utilize most of my new design features and give me a chance to test them out. But instead of using the electric smelting principle to convert the rock into gases, this machine will operate on a mechanical grinding principle, just like my first model.”