He kept in touch with Ames, but no fresh leads to his mysterious enemy turned up.
“I’ll try some detecting myself as soon as I finish the main work on my prober,” he determined. By the middle of the following week, Tom had a small pilot model of his wave-generating equipment working perfectly.
Greatly elated, he demonstrated the model to his father. Mr. Swift was amazed.
“Son, you’ve licked one of your biggest problems,” the elder scientist declared. “Frankly, I was doubtful whether it could be done. This device alone can have a revolutionary effect in the communications field-especially for military use.”
Tom nodded. “You’re right, Dad. In fact, I have an idea myself for using it in radio communication.”
When his father had gone, he telephoned Hank Sterling and Arvid Hanson and asked them to come to his office. Hank, blond and square-jawed, was the chief patternmaking engineer and trouble shooter at Enterprises. His hard-driving tactics had helped push many of the Swifts’ projects to success. Arv, a burly six-footer, was an all-round expert craftsman who turned out the pilot models of Tom’s inventions.
“How’s your space telescope coming?” Hank asked.
“Just finished one part of it,” Tom replied. “I’ll show you how it works in miniature. Then I’d
SPECTRAL FIREWORKS 45
like you fellows to get cooking on a full-sized version.”
Both men watched with interest as Tom explained his small-scale pilot model. Besides the signal-generating equipment and amplifier, the device had a curious-looking antenna. It was composed of a series of wire rings connected together into a tubelike framework.
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