Appleton, Victor – Tom Swift Jr 05 – And His Atomic Earth Blaster

Later messages had been received while Tom was conducting the first successful rocket flights. Some of these messages had saved Tom and Bud from deadly peril while they were rocketing on an orbital course around the earth.

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92 TOM SWIFT AND HIS ATOMIC BLASTER

“Have you translated this new one yet, Dad?” asked Tom.

“Not completely. I thought we might work on it together, if you can spare the time. I have a hunch it’s an answer to that request we transmitted for information about their bodily structure.”

The beings who sent the messages-possibly Martians-had mastered interplanetary travel but needed help in solving the problem of how to penetrate the earth’s dense atmosphere.

As Tom pulled up a chair alongside his father’s desk, the older man produced two small booklets. One of them he handed to Tom.

These booklets were copies of a space dictionary, in which Mr. Swift had compiled the meaning of all the symbols they had so far been able to translate. It greatly speeded up the job of decoding new messages.

For nearly an hour, father and son pored over the latest communication.

Working industriously, each one covered numerous sheets of paper with mathematical calculations in his attempt to translate the message.

Finally they paused and looked at each other with puzzled expressions.

“Any luck, son?” asked Mr. Swift. ^

“I’m not sure. It-well, it doesn’t seem right. How about you?”

A CRUCIAL TEST 93

“The nearest I can make out is that their bodies are covered with armorlike segments, and they move by crawling along the ground.”