“Telephone the Shop ton police and tell them that green sign balloon exploded. Ask them if they can divert traffic from the highway until Ames’s men can investigate. This may involve a matter of national security.”
“Wilco!” the tower responded.
Less than three minutes later the Whirling Duck came to a racing halt on Enterprises’ field.
GALLEY SPOOK 63
“What do you suppose made the balloon go off?” Bud asked as they climbed out of the helijet.
Tom shrugged. “A proximity fuse, maybe. Or the timing could have been coincidental.”
“How so?”
“By now, the frogman’s alerted our enemy. They may have figured we’d check the green balloon next, so they blew it up by remote control.”
Tom jeeped to the security office and talked to Phil Radnor, Ames’s blond, chunky assistant, who was on night duty. He told Radnor to send out a crew of men equipped with floodlights and mine detectors to search the highway and surrounding area for debris from the blast.
Next morning, Harlan Ames walked into Tom’s private laboratory and found the young inventor examining a small harvest of fragments.
“What’s the verdict, Tom?” Ames inquired.
“The balloon was definitely rigged with electronic equipment,” Tom replied.
With tweezers, he picked up a tiny, transistor-like component.
Ames frowned. “What’s that?”
“A gallium arsenide diode. It’s used for modulating an infrared beam.”
“Does that tell you anything?”
“The balloon may have been used to loft a concealed, long-range TV
camera,” Tom replied, “for snooping down over our plant walls.”