“Ten after twelve.” The young inventor gave a whistle. “What a skullcracker this turned out to be! Dick sure wasn’t kidding when he guessed it would take a week’s work.”
Leaning back on his laboratory stool, Tom stretched his cramped limbs.
“Sure wish Bud and Chow were here,” he thought wistfully. Bud’s breezy quips and Chow’s many puzzled questions not only gave Tom a lift, but often played a part in giving him a new insight into whatever problem he was tackling.
Soon he was back at work assembling a mass of tiny spiderlike transistors, diodes, and other semiconductors. But presently Tom’s head slumped toward the workbench and he drowsed off from sheer exhaustion.
Meanwhile, Bud Barclay and Chow were turning and tossing in their hammocks, back in the
THE GIANT FIGURE 53
Mayan village. A horde of tiny insects buzzed maddeningly outside their mosquito netting.
Presently Bud whispered, “Hey, Chow! You awake?”
“I sure am,” the cook grunted. “These pesky flyin’ buzzsaws are drivin’ me plumb loco, let alone all them jungle noises out there!”
“You suppose the paraplane’s safe?”
Chow raised up on one shoulder. The moonlight shining in through the door of the hut showed a worried look on his weather-beaten face. “It better be if we’re ever aimin’ to get out o’ this jungle. Why? You figger it ain’t?”
“I don’t know what to figure,” Bud replied restlessly.
“Tom told us to come back here to the village at night,” Chow pointed out.
“We sure couldn’t bunk down out in the jungle with them jaguars an’ all without even a six-shooter between us!”
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