Appleton, Victor – Tom Swift Jr 19 – And His Triphibian Atomicar

In moments now their heads would be poking above ground-targets for an enemy fusillade.

“Hey! What’s that?” Bud cried.

186 TRIPHIBIAN ATOMICAR

The approaching hum of several jet aircraft could be heard. The boys heard yells of alarm outside the shaft. Then a silver-winged sky giant roared overhead.

“The Sky Queen!” Tom exulted. “And two cargo jets!”

Wayne and his men had gathered near the shaft opening, ready for the kill.

But now they dashed in terror for the nearest tunnel entrance.

The planes gave them no chance to escape, wheeling and zooming in low, raking the ground with fiery blasts from their jet lifters! The Sky Queen hovered down and poised yards from the ground as Harlan Ames’s voice roared over a power megaphone:

“Stay where you are! Throw your guns aside and get your hands up!”

Twenty minutes later the Swift crewmen had landed and the prisoners were bound. Tom, Bud, and Ed, still astonished at the rescue, were being given bear hugs and slaps on the back.

“Then you got our message from the rocket?” Tom asked.

“We were going to wait until noon,” Arv replied sheepishly. “But just before dawn Chow got so curious he slipped out and opened the rocket on his own hook.”

“Good old Chow!” Tom, Bud, and Ed exclaimed, and swamped the Texan with words of gratitude.

JET RESCUE 187

” ‘Course I’m just a no-account ole cowboy who wouldn’t savvy a mollycule or an electron if it bit me,” Chow said with a proud grin. “But sometimes I ain’t so all-fired slow on the uptake! Anyhow, these no-good sidewinders 11 be put in gopher holes fer a long spell-that’s what counts.”