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

Most amazing of all, the megascope space prober stood by Tom’s workbench-new and gleaming, without even a cracked dial to show the extent of the recent damage.

“Dad, this is wonderful! I can hardly believe it!” Tom gasped as he hurried over to inspect the new model of his invention.

“I hope the anti-inverse-square-wave generator and all the rest of it are just like yours,” Mr. Swift said. “We followed your notes and drawings.”

Tom checked over the parts hastily. The workmanship was flawless. Even the new wave-terminal circuitry was complete to the last transistor. Tom had had time only to sketch the larger housing for the equipment, but this too had been provided.

“Dad, it’s tremendous!” Tom exclaimed. “I don’t know what to say except thanks.”

“Then don’t try, son.” Mr. Swift chuckled and patted the youth’s shoulder.

“Let’s just say we all enjoyed helping the march of science.”

Nevertheless, as soon as his father had left the 106 MEGASCOPE SPACE PROBER

laboratory, Tom’s first move was to pick up the phone. He called Hank Sterling, Arv Hanson, and Chow and thanked each one warmly.

The restored laboratory gave Tom’s spirits a tremendous lift. He felt as if days of work had been telescoped into the twinkling of an eye. Instead of retracing lost ground, he was now free to plunge ahead on the job of perfecting his space telescope.

The next part needed for the prober would be a sort of radiation “lens.” This would be in the form of a third signal projected in addition to the two signals which produced the wave terminal. This third signal would act as a scanner of the light waves in the area where the prober was aimed. Part of the signal would be reflected back from the wave terminal, to be descanned by a super receiver which would yield an image of the heavenly object on the prober viewing screen.