Appleton, Victor – Tom Swift Jr 24 – And His 3D Telejector

“What’s this wild hunch you were goin’ to tell me about, boss?” Chow inquired.

“It’s so wild I’m afraid you two will think I’m nutty,” Tom confessed.

Bud grinned. “Listen, genius boy, you dream up wild ideas all the time. This one shouldn’t faze us.”

“Okay, you asked for it.” Tom slipped off his lab stool and started pacing back and forth. “To begin with, Uzcudun is the third person in a week who has told me about picking up strange mental messages. First there was a guy named Joe Mulver, then Lunario the Mind Reader, and now this Basque shepherd.”

“Who’s Mulver?” Chow put in.

Tom related how Mulver had come to Enterprises and then to the Swifts’

home. “Uzcudun thinks the messages may be coming from the stars,” Tom went on, “and Mulver claimed his were coming from outer space, probably from the Green Orb.”

Bud frowned. “A goofy coincidence.”

“That’s not all,” Tom said. “The waves picked up by radio telescope from the Green Orb seem to resemble human brain waves. So far, nobody can explain why.”

“Can you?” Bud challenged.

BRAIN-WAVE RADIO 91

“I warned you this would sound nutty,” the young inventor replied, “but suppose those Orb waves are being beamed to earth in an attempt to communicate with human beings.”

“Wow!” Bud’s eyes lighted with interest. “You mean the messages Uzcudun and Mulver and Lunario have been receiving are caused by the same signals being picked up by radio telescope?”

“Right-at least it’s one possible answer,” Tom said. “Since the signals have the form of human brain waves, they may be a way of inducing thoughts or mental images in a person’s mind, just as broadcast signals are induced in an antenna. In other words, if there are living creatures on the Orb, they may know how to communicate by a kind of radio telepathy that’s unknown to scientists here on earth.”