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it’s supposed to be." The foil had been cut and folded in a strange geometric design that looked oddly birdlike. "The technique looks like origami—you know, pal, the Japanese art of paper-folding. These ‘birds’ are like little paper airplanes."
    Bus responded with a skeptical look. "Right. What next, spitwads ?"
    By this time, other employees had come running across the grounds. They scattered to pick up the pieces of foil. Mystification had been replaced by chagrined laughter.
    Ames joined the youths, bringing another batch of the queer foil shapes which had caught the bright sunlight as they floated down to the Enterprises airfield. "What do you make of them, Tom?"
    "Beats me." Tom studied the pieces with a frown. "It’s an old trick for confusing radar, of course, but what’s the purpose?"
    "Were they dropped from a plane?" Bud put in.
    "No, the control tower says none passed over the plant," Ames replied.
    "Must have been projected from outside the plant wall—maybe by someone in a car speeding along the highway," Tom speculated.
    "But how could thin foil like this stuff be spread so high in the air?" Bud objected.
    "Easy," Tom said. "Stack the stuff together under pressure in a tight, compact bundle with some kind of automatic release." Tom’s eyes dropped to the palms of his hands. He added with sudden worry: "Maybe we ought to make sure this stuff really is aluminum foil!"
    They had all touched the metallic foil—just as Munford Trent had touched the poisoned ink!
     
CHAPTER 6
FALSE IDENTITY
    TRYING to hold down their growing alarm, the two boys hurried back to Tom’s private laboratory, Harlan Ames following. Here the young inventor examined several pieces of the foil under X-rays and with a Swift Spectroscope. When he finished, Tom looked at the others, much relieved but baffled.
    "Just plain aluminum foil, that’s all."
    Bud gulped. "That’s a pretty good ‘all’, Tom!"
    Ames, equally puzzled, finally left the laboratory. He promised to launch a thorough search for clues outside the plant wall.
    Suddenly Bud snapped his fingers. "Hey, you forgot your visitor, Tom!" he exclaimed.
    "Oh, good gosh! I’d better call upstairs and apologize. I just hope he hasn’t left." Then Tom added a wry coda: "Sort of."
    He hadn’t. Darcy Creel turned out to be a blond man with a slender, wiry build, deeply tanned, casually dressed. Though he appeared to be in his forties, it seemed he favored a younger look. His loose-fitting shirt was almost as colorful as Chow Winkler’s—but as wrinkled as if he’d been sleeping in it.
    After greetings and apologies were delivered, Creel said to Tom, "Thanks a lot for seeing me, guy. Ya got quite a security setup here. Mini police-state, hmm?"
    Tom barely kept an indignant frown off his face. Bud’s was unsuppressed but unseen by the visitor.
    "I told the guard—let’s face it, that’s what he is!—that I didn’t come about your African transportation project, but that’s not entirely true," Creel continued without rue or apology.
    Tom was instantly cautious. "Just what is your occupation, Mr. Creel?"
    "I call it zoological journalism—maybe environmental investigative reporting would be a little clearer. Big corporations go charging here and there around the world, fouling up the biosphere, wrecking the environment, hiding behind the magic word ‘development’ in the cause of an even more magic word, ‘profit’."
    "Seems to me I’ve read something about that," Tom put in dryly.
    "And now Tom Swift Enterprises heads off to Ngombia to build a highway or an airport or something in the middle of an unspoiled jungle."
    Tom began to correct him. "It’s only a request that we’re considering― "
    "And besides which, guy ," came a dark-lidded voice from Bud’s direction, "that nice jungle is spoiled, by a lousy swamp running through it."
    Creel didn’t turn in his chair but kept his eyes on Tom. "Right. The human-centric point of view. You’ve got your