Read Tom Swift and His Megascope Space Prober for Free Online Page B

few minutes," explained Tom. "As you see, it had my name on it. No one saw who put it there."
    "It could have been one of the employees of the Inn," the security chief speculated, "possibly someone planted in the work staff to spy on you during the event. I’ll investigate, run fingerprints and so on. But meanwhile, boss, what do you plan to do? Hitch a ride back?"
    Tom smiled with determination. "Why not try to draw them out? Don’t worry, Harlan. Bud and I have dreamed up one of our daring plans!"
    Presently Tom and Bud strolled over to the Inn’s airfield with Mrs. and Mrs. Barclay and Bud’s sister and brother. Tom appeared—to any watcher—to be showing them the Skeeter , walking completely around it very slowly, trying to glance casually at the underside of the fuselage, as Bud hung back at the copilot’s hatch.
    "Okay," said Tom in tones that were just loud enough. "no burn marks. Hop in, flyboy."
    As the Barclay family backed away, Tom and Bud vaulted into their seats. It took all of three seconds to start the overhead blades whirling, a few more to catapult the Skeeter upward and forward with a quick burst of jet power. In a split instant they had hurtled across the airstrip and into the groove of the Inn’s access road, keeping low beneath the treetops as they paralleled the road from an altitude of a mere two yards.
    "Looks like we’ve got it wired, genius boy!" exulted Bud. "They can’t see the chopper for the trees!"
    "It was a risk," Tom admitted, "but a calculated one. If they’d planned to use their big beamer—it would almost have to be fairly big, I’d think, to have hit our jet miles high—they’d position it on higher elevation a mile or two off. And at that angle the pines will block it until we get close to the lake."
    "Okay. But why couldn’t they just pick us off over the lake?"
    "They could —but they didn’t when we flew over on the way. There could be some sort of clue in the fact that they haven’t used the long-range model in, or near, Shopton. Maybe the device produces some sort of signal burst as it discharges, something that bright boys like us could detect."
    "Maybe," agreed Bud. "But there’s a good way for them to eliminate that problem—dump the bright boys in Lake Carlopa!"
    After a brief but tense air-hop the Skeeter landed back at Enterprises without incident, and Tom called the cell number of Markham Wesberg, a plant employee. He had agreed to drive Sandy and Bashalli back to the Swift residence in his van, which the girls had entered in a concealed way. "Everybody safe at home," he reported. "Wow, chief—thanks for making me a part of your adventure!"
    Bud sat in Tom’s lab, regarding his chum with a grave expression as the young scientist-inventor clicked the telephone off "What have you gotten yourself tangled up in this time, Tom? Not that I’m worried that you won’t be able to handle it, but—you know."
    "I know," said Tom, giving Bud’s shoulder a squeeze, thinking: But—you wish you were going to be here to see how I do it.
    Bud spent the night at the Swifts’, rising at dawn to meet his chartered jet at the Shopton Airport. Though excited at the prospect ahead, the young pilot seemed subdued at parting from Tom and the familiar surroundings of Swift Enterprises. Tom, too, was keenly aware of a pang of sadness. After sharing so many adventures on their daring space voyages, he would not be with his pal on this new cruise into the unknown.
    "Let me know what you find under that cloud cover up on Venus, rocket boy," Tom said, trying to sound cheerful—and not choke up.
    "Oh, I will. Telling the whole story’ll give me something to look forward to. And as a matter of fact― " Bud’s face brightened. "By the time I’m done with training, I’ll bet you’ll have that new radio gizmo up and running! Give me one of the units and we can talk from one end of space to the other!"
    "I promise, Bud. When you lift off, you’ll have one of my parallelophones