“Tom, do you suppose that old man could be the missing Professor Eldreth?” Bud asked.
“I’ve been wondering that myself,” Tom mused. “He sure didn’t speak like a college science professor-but I don’t suppose anyone would after twenty years in the jungle.”
“The poor hombre sounds loony,” Chow put in.
“Maybe,” Tom agreed. “I’d like to know what he meant by that warning, though.”
146 REPELATRON SKYWAY
“I’ll bet it’s not going to stop you,” Bud said. “Or that whack on the head, either.”
“How’d you guess?”
Bud grinned. “Foolish question, eh?”
Next morning Tom awoke full of energy. “Maybe getting kayoed last night cleared my brain,” he told Bud as they ate breakfast. “I think I’ve figured out a solution to this hot-mud problem.”
“Let’s hear it, genius boy.”
“Well, it’s a cinch this morass is no place to erect transmitters,” Tom explained. “So let’s sidestep the difficulty by attaching the transmitters to the underside of the skyway itself.”
Both Bud and Chow stared at the young inventor.
“Brand my biscuits!” Chow growled. “You sure that clout on the head cleared your brain, boss? Jest how’re you goin’ to get the highway up in the first place with nothin* to support it?”
Tom chuckled. “I’ll show you two skeptics.”
As soon as breakfast was over, the group flew to Imbolu. Here Tom had five repelatron transmitters set up on the open savanna, the grassland beyond the fringes of the jungle. Next, he took off in the graphicopter and poured five separate skyway spans, each a half mile in length. The hardened surfaces were then grappled from the Queen and deposited on the ground.