44 THE RACE TO THE MOON
man staring back at him. “So you’re just an earth dweller, after all. Okay.
Start talking!”
Not a sound left the prisoner’s lips. He merely shrugged, shook his head as if he did not understand English, and glared at Tom like a captured beast.
Suddenly Tom heard the distant roar of a jet gathering power for takeoff.
The noise roused the young inventor from his puzzled reflections. Dashing outdoors, he was just in time to see a jet craft streak up off the airfield and disappear into the darkening sky.
“Good night! What’s happened to everybody?”
Except for the screen of circling robot planes overhead, there was not a sign of life or movement on the island!
Suddenly Tom realized what had happened. “That vapor from the missiles,”
he gasped. “It must have been some kind of sleeping gas! The missiles traveled at a speed too great for the force-landing system to be effective. Someone planned this devilish scheme so he could loot the rocket base while we were all unconscious! The group wore space suits to avoid that gas.”
The thought filled Tom with helpless fury. What if they had stolen his portable electronic brain that translated messages from space!
He returned to his laboratory, dragged his prisoner out to the jeep, then sped to base headquarters. The crewmen in the office were just beginning to revive.
Tom switched on the island’s public-address
TOM’S PRISONER 45
system and boomed out orders over the mike. Gradually, reports began to filter in. Everyone had blacked out for about twenty minutes.