“What!” Tom whirled around in the direction his friend was staring.
“I parked it over there by that tree,” Bud faltered, pointing to a spot about fifty yards from the place where the main had been broken. “But it’s not there now!”
“Someone must have moved it!” Tom exclaimed.
Hastily he questioned the police and firemen, then went over to speak to Hank and the repair crew. In the excitement, no one had noticed what happened to the truck with the atomic earth-digging machine.
As he rejoined Bud, Tom ran his fingers worriedly through his blond crew cut.
“Come on,” he told his friend. “Let’s look for tread marks.”
10 TOM SWIFT AND HIS ATOMIC BLASTER
The two boys easily picked up the trail and followed it for about thirty yards toward the highway. Then it vanished on a stretch of hard, sun-baked ground.
“Maybe we can pick out the marks again on the sandy shoulder of the highway,” Bud suggested. “We know the tread pattern.”
“You go ahead and look,” Tom ordered. “I’ll try the other direction, among the trees.”
As he ran toward the grove, Tom puzzled over the mysterious disappearance of the earth blaster. What was back of it?
Among clumps of coarse grass and weeds, Tom found marks of heavy tires.
He followed the trail without any thought that danger might lie ahead.
A few moments later the young inventor came in sight of the truck itself. A stranger was seated in the cab with a sketch pad resting on the steering wheel.
Apparently he was making notes and drawings of the earth blaster!
“Hey, you!” shouted Tom angrily. “What’s the big idea, stealing our machine?”