Appleton, Victor – Tom Swift Jr 20 – And His Megascope Space Prober

The sergeant who had accompanied Chief Slater made a note of this, then Slater asked, “Can you point out exactly where he went?”

“I think so.”

Bud led the way toward the spot where the stranger had disappeared into the woods. The trees grew close together near the road, then thinned into a marshy area of low ground. Suddenly Ames gave a cry of excitement and pointed to a series of footprints in the soft muck.

“That’s his trail, I’ll bet!” Bud exclaimed.

Chief Slater bent to examine them and frowned. “Pretty wide shoe prints for a slender man,” he stated.

Ames remarked that the fugitive might have worn hunter’s boots over his own shoes. The group followed the trail for a few minutes, but as the ground sloped upward and became more rocky, the prints disappeared.

“He must’ve flown away,” Bud muttered as they turned back.

When they returned to the spot where Bud had glimpsed the man disappearing into the woods, Tom pursued a theory of his own. He was hoping to find some scientific clues to the method used in 18 MEGASCOPE SPACE PROBER

disabling his car. A path of trampled underbrush showed the stranger’s movements before he had fled. Tom followed the trail from the edge of the woods to a single huge oak tree standing close to the roadside.

Tom beckoned excitedly to his companions. “Come here and take a look at this.”

The others examined some scorches on the bark of the tree trunk. The charred area had been made recently.

“What’s your theory, skipper?” Ames asked.

Tom explained that some kind of electromagnetic ray might have been used to “freeze” the steering mechanism of his car. “These marks could be slight burns from a ray gun the man was holding.”