Its launching pad, cabled to the stern, floated at a distance.
“It wasn’t sunk, thank goodness!” Tom thought.
Obeying orders, he landed on the pad and was taken aboard the Sea Charger. Two Orientals, grinning maliciously, greeted him as he stepped on deck. One was a suave, slender man with beady, calculating eyes. From pictures Tom had seen, he recognized the man as Li Ching.
“And this,” Li Ching said, after identifying himself, “is my honored friend, Captain Yao.”
Yao, a stocky man of about fifty, was wearing the same black uniform as the other raiders, but it had naval stripes. “Captain of the great scientific research ship, known by you as the Sea Charger,” he added with a gloating chuckle.
“My ship, you mean!” Tom burst out angrily. “Yours only by an act of piracy!”
IN LI CHING’S CLUTCHES 175
Li Ching’s lips curled with amusement, but his eyes remained deadly. “Let us say, rather, taken over by the patriotic revolutionary group of which I am chief.
We hope that you, Tom Swift, will be wise enough to co-operate with us.”
“How?” Tom shot back.
Li Ching waved his hand. “Your part will be simple. You have only to tell us the details of your latest space research, and other inventions by you and your father, such as your repelatron device. In return, you will be allowed to work for our honored cause-at excellent pay!”
Tom did not even try to disguise his look of utter disgust. “And be a traitor to my own country? Don’t make me laugh! You’re not even as intelligent as I thought, Li Ching!”