Appleton, Victor – Tom Swift Jr 22 – And His Repelatron Skyway

By this time it was a raging inferno, glowing like a furnace under the billowing clouds of black smoke. Firemen were playing streams of water along the flanks of the blaze. A crew of state troopers and volunteers were frantically trying to chop out a firebreak with bulldozers and axes.

“They’ll never make it in time to save the reservation,” Bud muttered.

Tom was thinking the same thing. He radioed the State Police command car that the reservation

6 REPELATRON SKYWAY

appeared to be clear of people, then asked if help was needed to fight the fire.

“Definitely!” Captain Rock replied. “A fire in the reservation is so unexpected at this time of year that there are no tanker planes on call.”

“Stand by,” Tom radioed back. “Maybe I can give you a hand.”

Quickly he called Enterprises and ordered that a tank of Tomasite emulsion be rushed out to the airfield. Tomasite was an amazing insulating plastic developed by the young inventor’s father, Tom Swift Sr. Tom Jr. had produced a liquid form for use as a fire-extinguishing chemical.

Within minutes, the boys landed at the Swifts’ experimental station, a vast four-mile-square enclosure dotted with gleaming modern research laboratories and workshops.

“When I designed this copter,” Tom explained to Bud as they climbed out of the ship, “I had in mind a fuselage that could be adapted to a number of different uses, such as crop-dusting, spraying, fire fighting, or aerial transport.”

Under Tom’s supervision, the skywriting equipment was hastily removed from the hollow fuselage and the tank of Tomasite emulsion installed, with an operating-control linkage. The changeover was completed in less than fifteen minutes.