Appleton, Victor – Tom Swift Jr 14 – And His Electronic Retroscope

Several native bearers brought a large flat stone for the medicine man to stand on. He mounted it and began to utter an incantation in the old Mayan tongue.

Suddenly Tom’s eyes bulged in surprise. The stone was carved in strange mathematical markings. They looked like the symbols used by the Swifts’

mysterious friends in outer space to communicate with earth!

“Am I seeing things?” Tom wondered.

Groupings of similar mathematical symbols had been found on a polished black missile from outer space which had landed on the grounds of Swift Enterprises. Tom and his father had man-THE SACRED STONE 21

aged to decode the message and to reply by means of a powerful radio transmitter. Later, signals had been picked up with a special receiver using an oscilloscope-type screen.

Tom stepped forward to get a better look at the stone. The carvings on it were rather faint.

Suddenly a muscular native grabbed his arm and jerked him back. “Do not interrupt the sacred ceremony!” the man hissed in Spanish.

Tom waited tensely for the ceremony to end. He could hardly contain his curiosity as questions surged into his mind.

Was he mistaken about the carved symbols on the stone? Or were they really the same as those used in messages from his space friends? If so, how had they happened to appear in this remote jungle village?

“I must find out!” Tom determined. “I may have stumbled on a really big discovery!”

CHAPTER III

RELIC FROM SPACE

“WHAT’S wrong, pal?” Bud asked, noting Tom’s puzzled frown.

“Take a look,” Tom whispered, pointing to the stone on which the medicine man was standing. “Do those carvings strike you as familiar?”