“That leaves one name,” Bud said.
But when he checked the renter, Gus Emden, he was told at the address given that no one there had ever heard of such a person. Baffled, Bud drove to the plant and reported this to Harlan Ames.
“Looks as though Emden’s our boy,” Ames agreed. “I’ll alert the police and see if they can find him and the truck. But he probably used a phony name if he intended to cause an accident.”
The second day after the accident, Dr. Emerson made an early visit at the Swift home and pronounced Tom fit to return to work. As Tom drove to Enterprises with his father, the young inventor explained his space-kite idea.
“A spaceship propelled by cosmic radiation?” Mr. Swift was at once startled and intrigued. “And yet, why not? Tom, I believe you have a really promising idea there.”
Then the scientist frowned. “The only trouble is you’d need still another source of energy-something to provide a force for the cosmic radiation to react against. In other words, something to take the place of the kite string on an ordinary air kite.
26 COSMIC ASTRONAUTS
Without such a device, your craft would drift out of control.”
“That’s true, Dad,” Tom replied, “but I believe I have the answer.”
“You usually do.” Mr. Swift grinned proudly at his son. “Let’s hear it.”
“Briefly, my space kite will need a gravity concentrator,” Tom went on. “Sort of a repelatron in reverse.”
The repelatron was a major invention of Tom’s used in his famous spaceship, the Challenger, in which he had reached the moon.
“My gravity concentrator will make use of the attracting force between objects, rather than the repelling force,” Tom added.
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