“The crater walls will give us some protection!” he told Slim.
His voice was drowned out as the whistle grew to an earsplitting crescendo.
The next instant an enormous glittering meteor went streaking past their right-hand field of view!
The Challenger rocked as it rebounded from the shift in position and the sudden stop. The crewmen gasped and clawed the bulkhead for support.
“Any closer and we’d have been space particles ourselves!” Slim wisecracked, although his face was pale. “You got us out of there just in time, skipper!”
Tom smiled faintly. He was as shaken as the
PHANTOM THIEF 103
others, but his mind was already back on the problem of perfecting his Private Ear radio.
“I guess this proves one thing,” the inventor told Slim. “The set will sure have to do a better job of filtering out interference. You heard the noise that meteor kicked up before it even crossed our radio beam.”
By now they were up and hovering over the moon crater. “Too bad we don’t have time for a landing,” Tom said as he headed the Challenger earthward again.
As soon as they had landed at Fearing Island, Tom removed the Private Ear radio from the ship and collected the other set from Billing at base communications. He spent the night on the island. Early the next morning he boarded his Whirling Duck for the flight back to Shopton, and a quiet Sunday.
Tom arrived at the plant on Monday morning and went straight to his father’s laboratory. He would use it until his own was cleaned up. Mr. Swift was not there.
Tom was eager to tackle work on the radio circuits. Several ideas had occurred to him for sharpening the fine tuning and eliminating interference.
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