26 3-D TELEJECTOR
The boys were white-faced with horror. Bud descended immediately while Tom switched on the radio and called the Fearing Island operator.
“Phone Fern wood Hospital for an ambulance-fast!”
The boys landed, leaped out, and ran to the motionless victim. As Tom checked his pulse, he had the feeling he had seen this man before.
“Still alive. Thank goodness that guy wire and the brush helped to break his fall!”
By this time the workman’s partner had climbed down from the tower. Tom identified himself and said an ambulance was on the way. Presently it arrived and an intern examined the unconscious workman.
“No broken bones,” the medic announced, “but there’s always danger of a concussion.”
The victim was put on a stretcher and the ambulance sped off. The other workman said he would follow it, and hurried off to a truck parked nearby.
“What an awful thing to happen!” Bud gulped as the boys took off.
“Yes,” Tom said glumly.
Fearing Island had once been a desolate patch of sand dunes and scrubgrass. Now it was a tightly guarded complex of laboratories, workshops, and launching areas. Skyscraper-tall rockets bristled on their pads.
Tom radioed the Fearing control tower for clearance past the ring of circling drone planes
A TERRIFIED FACE 27
that guarded the base. The boys landed near the Challenger’s launch site.
The enormous spaceship looked like a huge silver cube caged within spherical rails. The rails were tracks for swiveling and aiming the ship’s dish-shaped repelatron radiators. The radiators beamed out powerful repulsion waves for takeoff and space-drive.
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