The real Chow let out a shriek at the uncanny sight. His hair felt as if it were standing on end. The other man still paid no attention.
Ash white, Chow fled toward the door. “It’s my ghost!” he screeched. “My own ghost!”
The panicky cook came face to face with Tom and Bud. Both were convulsed with laughter.
A sudden suspicion hit Chow. “Are you pullin’ some scientific funny stuff?” he thundered.
Tom choked down his merriment. “Sorry, pardner-we’re guilty,” he confessed.
“But,” said Bud, “it was his idea.”
“I figgered as much,” Chow retorted darkly.
Still chuckling, the boys escorted Chow back to his galley. Tom showed him the 3-D telejector, concealed in a large wall cabinet. Bud had sneaked it into place and sprayed the galley with chemical mist while Chow was gone.
68 3-D TELEJECTOR
“You mean that was jest a television spook image o* me I seen?” Chow asked in amazement.
“That’s right.” Tom grinned. “This gadget was projecting movies of you that Bud took secretly this morning with the Eye-Spy camera.”
The Eye-Spy camera, an earlier invention of Tom’s, could “see” through solid walls. Tom had altered it for 3-D video taping, and Bud had shot pictures of Chow working at his electronic range through the closed door of the galley.
“Wai, fry me fer an oyster!” the roly-poly Texan exclaimed. “Reckon this makes me the first 3-D television cowboy!”
Tom shut himself up in his laboratory for most of the afternoon. With his co-workers busy on the robots, Tom worked feverishly to perfect the light-image principle that he hoped to include in his telejector. It would make his 3-D system self-contained, with no need for outside luminescent particles to form the images.