Read Tom Swift and His Triphibian Atomicar for Free Online Page B

No. When and if my midget power plant is perfected, I intend to sell or lease it for use wherever it can help mankind. That’s the way the Swift family does things, and it’s the policy of Swift Enterprises. We avoid politics if we can."
    Flambo’s eyes blazed. "Meaning you and your government will make it available wherever you can use it as a tool for getting advantage over weaker countries!" he stormed.
    The telephone bleeped. Tom picked it up, listened a few moments, then replaced the receiver with an amused look. "Excuse me a minute, sir," Tom told Flambo calmly. "Your secretary Mirza seems to be trying to get a foothold where he doesn’t belong."
    Tom hurried outside and found Chow Winkler holding Mirza tightly bound in the loop of his lariat, a security man with a cellphone standing nearby.
    "Caught the sidewinder sneakin’ past my galley window—snoopin’!" the born Texan reported. "Jest enough time t’ grab my lariat and make a catch fer you."
    Mirza was quivering, either from anger or fear, Tom could not decide which. The secretary’s face looked livid as he muttered something unintelligible.
    "All right, let him go, Chow. I’ll take over," Tom said, taking over the rope. He warned his prisoner, "An atomic research station is a dangerous place to go wandering around, Mirza. Don’t try it again." He removed Mirza’s bonds, returning the lariat to Chow with a wink of gratitude.
    "Reckon you’d better keep an eye on that boss o’ his, too," Chow warned. "I never did trust a critter that don’t appreciate good vittles!"
    Tom grinned and started back to his office. Mirza accompanied him silently. In the meantime, Flambo’s temper seemed to have died down.
    "Your answer to my offer, then, is a flat refusal?" he asked Tom.
    "I’m afraid it will have to be, sir."
    "Then there is no further point in my remaining here." Flambo turned and snapped an order to his secretary in what sounded, to the young inventor’s barely tutored ear, like Farsi or Arabic. Politely but firmly, Tom insisted on accompanying them to their rented car. Then he watched until the guard at the gate flagged them through.
    Good night! he thought ruefully. Now I know what they mean when they say "everybody wants a piece of me"!
    Twenty minutes later he was pouring a batch of molten metal from a miniature electronic furnace into a keg. The white-hot mass was a new alloy of the metal called Neo-Aurium, mined on the floor of the Atlantic, bonded to radiation-resistant Inertite. He was creating a container with a series of minute, bubble-like hollows in the center, into which the newly discovered stable isotope, a granule smaller than a grain of salt, would be inserted. Tom was wearing protective dark goggles and asbestalon-Inertite gloves and apron.
    Suddenly, as he finished pouring, Tom’s ears caught a hissing, crackling noise behind him. He turned and gave a gasp of fear. His workbench was a mass of flames—which were shooting perilously close to a shelf full of flammable chemicals!
    Tom pushed an alarm bell and grabbed up a fire extinguisher. Luckily he was able to douse the flames even before help arrived.
    "What happened?" the chief of the facility fire crew asked, after making sure the danger was past.
    "I’m not sure." Tom shoved up his goggles and began poking among the scorched debris. "Oh-oh! Here’s the answer," he announced a moment later. "The electrical lead to my glass pyrometer rod must have shorted. There’s a kink here, where the insulation probably frayed. Just an accident."
    The crew left. Then Tom repaired the damaged electrical lead and went back to work. That evening, when Bud, Ed, Sandy, and Bash returned from Taos, the five young people enjoyed a snack of hamburgers and milk in the laboratory. Bud scowled suspiciously after hearing of the blaze and asked: "Did you say Flambo stayed in your office when you went out to rescue that sneaky secretary?" Tom nodded. "Then how do you know he wasn’t responsible for