Tom nodded grimly. “I am thinking!”
Both boys jerked around to look at the TV set again as a studio announcer’s voice suddenly broke into the telecast:
“Flash! A severe quake has occurred at the headquarters of the American Archives Foundation, a hundred miles from Shopton. The Foundation’s buildings, containing many priceless government and scientific documents, were badly damaged,
64 THE VISITOR FROM PLANET X
and an underground microfilm vault was utterly destroyed. Apparently this quake was part of the tremor felt here at Shop ton.”
Within minutes the Swifts’ home phone began jangling constantly. Some calls were from friends, others from strangers. Many of the calls were routed through from the Enterprises switchboard.
One was from Dan Perkins of the Shopton Bulletin. “What about it, Tom?”
the editor demanded. “I guess you know by now the public’s aroused and in a state of near panic over all these quakes. What they all want to know is this: are you, Tom Swift, going to find a way to stop all this destruction?”
Tom’s jaw jutted out angrily. ‘Tes, I ami” he snapped. “And you can quote me on that!”
CHAPTER VIII
A SUSPECT TALKS
THE next morning Tom was up at the crack of dawn, grimly determined to find an answer to the earthquake menace. He ate a hasty breakfast, then drove to his private laboratory at Enterprises. He instructed the switchboard operator to shut off all incoming calls, then plunged into a study of the mystifying problem.
Earthquake activity, Tom knew, tends to occur in circular patterns, like bands around the earth -for instance, the circum-Pacific belt, and another belt extending eastward from the Mediterranean through Asia and on into the East Indies. Often these quake lines are visible as breaks or ruptures along the ground surface, called fault traces. No doubt, Tom thought, there were many more uncharted ones.