"Bearing?"Tom cried.
"One-seven-five!" Arv Hanson sang out.
Tom gunned his port jet turbine and swung theSwiftsurehard right. The abrupt turn at high speed sent the craft sideslipping crazily like a skidding race boat.
"Here she comes, skipper!" Bud yelled. He had rushed to the sonarscope with the other members of the crew.
Tom's maneuver had carried them a good hundred yards off the missile's course. Now he yanked a lever, pulling the cadmium rods still farther from the atomic pile, in order to increase power and jet-blast their sub still farther out of range.
But suddenly the men at the scope blanched. "The missile's turning too!" Hank cried. "It's homing in on us!"
Unlike most Swift craft used on scientificexpeditions, the cargo sub's hull had not been coated with Tomasite. This would have insulated it from all magnetic effects or any form of pulse detection. Tom had chosen theSwiftsurepartly for this very reason, so that the Brungarian rebels could easily pick up its trail after leaving Fearing.
How ironic if his choice should prove fatal! As the thought flashed through Tom's brain, the missile came streaking into view through the sub's transparent nose.
By this time, Tom had flipped up theSwiftsure'sdiving planes. The craft plummeted deeper into the ocean depths.
"Brand my whale blubber, she's turnin' again!" Chow gulped. The missile's arc, as it veered around to follow, painted a streak of light on the sonarscope.
Anxious moments raced by while Tom steered their craft in a deadly game of tag with the sub-killer. Gradually the missile appeared to be losing momentum.
"It's slowing down, all right!" Arv called out.
In a few minutes the missile had lost so much way that Tom was easily able to outdistance it. The crew crowded to the scope, heaving sighs of relief. The missile, its velocity spent, sank harmlessly toward the bottom.
"Boy, what a close call!" Bud gasped weakly. "You played that thing like a toreador sidestepping a bull, Tom! Nice going!"
The others echoed Bud's sentiments, with fervent handshakes and backslaps for Tom's skillful evasive action.
"Jest the same," said Chow, "I'd sure like to make Narko an' them Brungarian hoss thieves dance a Texas jig with a little hot lead sprayed around their boot heels! Sneakin' bushwhackers! It's jest like I told Hank about his airplane scheme—they'd try to gun us down, like as not, soon as they got their hands on Exman!"
"I guess you had them figured right, Chow," Tom agreed wryly. "Well, at least we've lost their sub!"
The Brungarian raider was no longer visible even as a faint blip on their radarscope. Evidently Narko had thought the jetmarine a sure victim and headed back to his own base.
Nevertheless, Tom steered a wary zigzag course back to Fearing. When they arrived at the island, he immediately telephoned Bernt Ahlgren and Wes Norris in Washington to report the hijacking of the space brain. Both men praised the young inventor for his daring scheme to outwit the ruthless Brungarian rebel clique.
"If your idea pays off, Tom, we should be able to checkmate every move those phonies and their allies make!" Norris declared.
"I'm hoping we can do even better than that," Tom replied. "Part of my plan is to help the Brungarian loyalists through Exman's tip-offs.With some smart quarterbacking, we might be able to rally the rightful government before all resistance is crushed out."
"Terrific!" Norris exclaimed. "Let's hope your scheme works!"
Tom had ordered the space oscilloscopes to be manned constantly, both at Fearing and at Enterprises, in case of a flash from Exman. But no word had yet been received when Tom and his companions arrived at the mainland late that afternoon.
Mr. Swift greeted his son warmly at the airfield. Tom had refrained from radioing the news to Enterprises after the hijacking and the missile attempt. Any such message, Tom feared, might be picked up by the enemy and bring on another attack. But the young inventor had telephoned his father immediately after calling Washington.
Now Mr. Swift threw his arm affectionately around the lanky youth. "You look pretty well bushed, son. Why not hustle home and call it a day? That goes for the rest of you, too," he added to Bud, Chow, and the others. "You've just risked your lives and the strain is bound to tell."
Tom urged his companions to comply. "But I'm sticking right here," the young inventor told his father. "I want to be on hand the minute Exman contacts us."
Bud insisted upon staying with his pal. The two boys ate a quiet supper in Tom's privatelaboratory and finally lay down on cots in the adjoining apartment. But first Tom posted a night operator to watch the electronic brain.
"Wake me up the second that alarm bell goes off," he ordered.
"Okay, skipper," the radioman promised.
No message arrived to disturb the boys' rest. Tom felt a pang of worry as he dressed the next morning, and then relieved the man on duty at the decoder. Had the Brungarians somehow outwitted him? Surely Exman should have reported by this time!
"Relax, pal," Bud urged. "Our space chum's hardly had time to learn any secrets yet. Besides, those Brungarian scientists are probably giving him the once-over with all sorts of electronic doodads. Why risk sending a message till he has something important to tell us?"
"That's true," Tom admitted.
Chow brought in breakfast. "You jest tie into these vittles, boss, an' stop frettin'," the cook said soothingly. "I reckon Ole Think Box won't let us down."
Tom sniffed the appetizing aroma of flapjacks and sausages. "Guess you're right, Chow," he said with a chuckle.
As the boys ate hungrily, Tom's thoughts turned back to the problem of how to equip Exman with senses. He talked the project over with Bud. Most of his ideas were too technical for Budto follow, but he listened attentively. He knew the young inventor found it helpful to have a "sounding board" for his ideas.
"Too bad I didn't have time to tackle the job before Exman was kidnaped," Tom mused. "Think how much more he could learn with 'eyes' and 'ears'!"
"Stop crabbing," Bud joked. "Isn't an electronic spy with a brain like Einstein's good enough?"
Mr. Swift arrived at the laboratory an hour or so later. He found Tom setting up an experiment with a glass sphere to which were affixed six powerful electromagnets. Two shiny electrodes, with cables attached to their outer ends, had also been molded into the glass. Bud was looking on, wide-eyed.
Tom explained to his father that he had blown the sphere himself, following a formula adapted from the quartz glass used for view panels in his space and undersea craft.
"What's it for, son?" Mr. Swift asked, after studying the setup curiously.
"Don't laugh, Dad, but I'm trying to produce a brain of pure energy. A substitute for Exman, so we can go ahead with our sensing experiments."
Mr. Swift reacted with keen interest and offered to help. "But remember, son," he cautioned, "at best you can only hope to produce an ersatz brain energy—which will be vastly differentfrom the real thing. Don't forget, Tom, the mind of a human being or any thinking inhabitant of our universe is based on a divine soul. No scientist must ever delude himself into thinking he can copy the work of our Creator."
"I know that, Dad," Tom said soberly. "Man's work will always be a crude groping, compared to the miracles of Nature. All I'm hoping to come up with here is a sort of stimulus-response unit that we can use for testing any sensing apparatus we devise."
The two scientists plunged into work. First, a bank of delicate gauges was assembled to record precisely every electrical reaction that took place inside the sphere. Then Tom threw a switch, shooting a powerful bolt of current across the electrodes. The field strength of the electromagnets, controlled by rheostats, instantly shaped the charge into a glowing ball of fire!
"Wow! A real hothead!" Bud wisecracked, trying to hide his excitement.
Tom grinned as he twirled several knobs and checked the gauges. The slightest variation in field strength triggered an instant response from the ball of energy. Mr. Swift tried exposing it to radio and repelatron waves. Each time the gauges showed a sensitive reaction.
"Looks as if we're in business, Dad!" Tom said jubilantly.
Bud left soon afterward as the two Swiftsbuckled down to work on the problem of perfecting an apparatus to simulate the human senses. Each concentrated on a different line of approach.
At noon they broke off briefly for a lunch wheeled in by Chow. Then silence settled again over the laboratory.
Tom had rigged up a jointed, clawlike mechanical arrangement with sensitive diaphragms in its "finger tips." The diaphragms were connected to a transistorized circuit designed to modulate the field current to the electromagnets.
Suddenly the young inventor looked up at his father with a glow of triumph.
"Dad, I just got a reaction to my sense-of-touch experiment!"
Mr. Swiftlooked on eagerly as Tom explained and demonstrated his touch apparatus. By moving a pantograph control, Tom was able to manipulate the claws like a hand with fingers. Whenever they touched any material, the brain gauges instantly registered an electrical reaction inside the sphere.
The swing of a voltmeter needle showed how firmly the substance resisted the claw's touch, thus indicating its hardness or softness.
"With a computer device, such as we planted in Exman," Tom went on, "the brain would also be able to assimilate the textural pattern of any substance."
"Wonderful, son!" Mr. Swift exclaimed. "I hope I can do as well with this artificial sense of sight I'm working on."
Another hour went by before Mr. Swift was ready to test his own arrangement.
"You've probably heard of the experiments conducted with blind persons," he told Tom. "By stimulating the right part of their brain with a lead from a cathode-ray-tube device, an awareness of light and dark can be restored."
Tom nodded.
"Well, I'm using the same principle," Mr. Swift went on, "but with a sort of television camera scanning setup."
He asked Tom to draw the drapes and shut off the room lights, throwing the laboratory into complete darkness, except for the weirdly glowing "brain" in the glass sphere. Then Mr. Swift shone a flashlight at the scanner. The brain responded by glowing more brightly itself!
Next, after the drapes were opened again and the overhead fluorescent lights switched on, Mr. Swift painted a pattern of black-and-white stripes on a large piece of cardboard. He held this up to the scanner.
Visible ripples of brightness and less-brightness passed through the glowing ball of energy inside the sphere. It was reproducing the striped pattern!
"Dad, that's amazing!" Tom said with real admiration.
Mr. Swift shook his head. "Pretty crude, I'm afraid. The brain energy by itself can't take theplace of a picture tube in a TV receiver. What we need is an analog computer to sum up the scanning pattern picked up by the camera tube and then pass this information along in code form."
Before Tom could comment, the alarm bell rang on the electronic brain. The Swifts dropped everything and rushed to the machine.
"Wonder if it's Exman?" Tom exclaimed.
The answer was quickly revealed as the keys began punching out the incoming message on tape. At the same time, a flow of strange mathematical symbols flashed, one after another, on the lighted oscilloscope screen mounted above the keyboard.
Tom and his father read the tape as it unreeled.
SPACE BEINGS TO SWIFTS. REQUEST INFORMATION ON PROGRESS AND RESULTS OF ENERGY SENT TO YOUR PLANET.
After a quick consultation with his father, Tom beamed out the reply:
WE ARE PLEASED WITH RESULTS SO FAR. FURTHER EXPERIMENTS NOW GOING ON. REQUEST VISIT TO CONTINUE LONGER THAN TWENTY-ONE DAYS AS PLANNED.
Hopefully the Swifts stood by the machine. Would their space friends agree? As the minutes went by without a response coming through, father and son exchanged anxious glances.
"They'vegotto let Exman stay, Dad!" Tom said.
Mr. Swift nodded. "I'm afraid, though, the space beings have decided otherwise. They—"
He was interrupted by the ringing of the alarm bell. "Message, Dad!" Tom said tersely.
A moment later they were overjoyed to see three words appear on the tape:
VISIT EXTENSION GRANTED.
Relieved, the two scientists went back to work on their sensing experiments. Twenty minutes later the signal bell rang again on the electronic brain.
"This time itmustbe Exman!" Tom cried.
The unreeling tape quickly bore out his guess.
EXMAN TO SWIFTS. TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR EARTHQUAKE UNDER HIGH LOYALTY.
"What!" Tom stared at the tape, his brow creased in a puzzled frown. "That 'twenty-four-hour earthquake' bit must mean he's warning us that a quake will occur in twenty-four hours. But what about the rest of it?"
"Hmm... 'Under high loyalty.'" Mr. Swift was as baffled as Tom. He studied the message for several minutes. It seemed highly unlikely that the electronic brain had made an error in decoding. Any new or untranslatable symbol caused a red light to flash on the machine.
"I think the only thing we can do is signal Exman and ask for a clarification, Tom," Mr. Swift decided at last.
Tom agreed. He beamed out a hasty code signal:
EXPLAIN MESSAGE.
Seconds later came Exman's reply. It was identical with the first message:
TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR EARTHQUAKE UNDER HIGH LOYALTY.
(Tom Jr. and Tom Sr. read a message from Exman)Tom and Mr. Swift stared at each other anxiously.
"Good night, Dad! This is horrible!" Tom exclaimed. "Exman sends us ample warning of a disaster and we're stymied!"
"Hi! What's going on, you two?" asked a merry voice. "More heavy thinking?"
Sandy Swift stood smiling in the doorway. The smile gave way to a look of concern as Tom explained the crisis.
"How dreadful!" Sandy gasped. "Wemustfigure out what it means!... Wait a minute!"
Tom looked at her expectantly. "Got an idea, Sis?"
"Well..." The pretty, blond teen-ager hesitated. "You don't suppose Exman might have been translating some foreign words with a meaning similar to 'high loyalty'? For instance, high loyalty could mean 'good faith.' I know that in Latin 'good faith' would bebona fide."
"Sandy! You've guessed it!" Tom crossed the room in a single bound, gave his sister a quick hug, and whirled her around. "Exman must mean the Bona Fide Submarine Building Corporation! He didn't dare risk telling us the exact translation."
"Of course!" Mr. Swift was equally jubilant. But his face was grave as he added, "The company's located on the West Coast close to theSan Andreas fault. Tom, a quake in that area could be devastating!"
"You're right, Dad," the young inventor replied. "I'll call Dr. Miles and Bernt Ahlgren at once!"
The telephone conversation that followed was grim with tension. Both government men begged Tom to take personal charge of the quake-deflection measures. Dr. Miles pointed out that tremors along the fault might trigger off a chain of quakes amounting to a national disaster.
After a hasty discussion, Tom agreed that he should station himself at the Colorado site, rather than at the West Coast Quakelizor installation. This would give him broader scope for damping out shock waves across the continent.
"I'll fly out immediately!" the young inventor promised.
Ahlgren, meanwhile, would flash orders to the Bona Fide Company and to civilian officials to have the entire area evacuated as soon as possible.
Hasty preparations were made for Tom's departure. He telephoned the airfield to have a jet plane with lifters readied for take-off. He also had Bud paged over the plant intercom. The copilot came on the run. When he heard the news, he was eager to accompany his pal.
"Listen, you two! I insist you have something to eat before you leave!" Sandy declared.
Tom was impatient over any delay. When Sandy proceeded to call Chow, the old Texan solved the problem by volunteering to go along as cook.
A short time later Chow came jouncing out to the airfield astride a motor scooter, hauling a cart loaded with supplies.
"Good grief!" Tom said, unable to suppress a grin. "We'll be back tomorrow, unless something goes wrong!"
"Bring food—that's my motto," Chow retorted, "like any good cook."
Minutes later, after a parting handshake from his father and a worried kiss from Sandy, Tom sent the sleek jet racing down the runway for take-off. Soon they were air-borne and heading westward. Chow served a tasty meal en route.
It was still daylight when the jet landed vertically in the Colorado canyon. The government crew manning the installation, and the Swift technician who had relieved Art Wiltessa as trouble shooter on the setup, greeted them eagerly.
"Looks as if we're in for a real test, Tom," said Mike Burrows, the engineer in charge.
"Let's hope we pass!" said Tom, holding up crossed fingers.
He checked every detail of the Quakelizor, power plant, and the communications gear. He opened an inspection panel in each of the dual-controlspheres and tuned the kinetic-hydraulic units so as to step up the working pressure of the four powerful drivers.
"Well, all we can do now is wait," the young inventor muttered, wiping his arm across his forehead.
Tom passed the night in a fitful sleep, half expecting to be wakened at any moment by the stand-by crew on watch. No alarm occurred, however.
Dawn broke, and Chow delighted all hands with a hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs, and corn fritters. More hours of waiting dragged by.
"What time do you think the attack will occur?" Bud asked.
Tom shrugged. "The 'twenty-four-hour' business may have been approximate. But I'd say from two o'clock on is the danger period."
The young inventor checked frequently with Washington and the other crews stationed around the country. Suddenly the radiotelephone operator gave a yell.
"Your father is on the line, skipper!"
The scientist was calling from the receiver-computer headquarters at Enterprises. "Exman has reported a quake pulse will be sent in seven minutes—at 21.36 G.M.T."
"I'm ready, Dad," Tom said, then asked for various technical details before hanging up.
He passed the word to the crew and glancedat his watch. A hasty, last-moment inspection was carried out, every man checking certain details of the setup.
Soon the pulsemakers began ticking inside the dual-control spheres as they picked up the frequency signal by radio. Tom studied the gauge dials.
Tension mounted rapidly among the waiting group. The same thought was throbbing through every mind:
Was the nation on the brink of a terrible disaster? Or would Tom Swift's invention safeguard the threatened area?
As the deadline approached, Tom pushed a button. The mighty hydraulic drivers throbbed into action, sending out their pulse waves across the continent!
Nowcame the hardest part of all for Tom and his companions—waiting to learn if the shock deflectors had succeeded in blotting out the enemy quake wave.
No one spoke. As the silence deepened inside the cave, the suspense became almost unbearable. Minutes passed.
"When will we know, skipper?" a crewman ventured at last.
"Soon, I hope," Tom replied tersely.
But the waiting seemed endless. Bud's eyes met Tom's. The flier grinned and held up crossed fingers, just as Tom had done to Mike Burrows the previous evening. Tom managed a feeble grin in response.
Suddenly the telephone shrilled, shattering the silence of the cave. Tom snatched it from the radioman's hands.
"Tom Swift here!... Yes?... Thank heavens! I guess we can all be grateful, Dr. Miles!"
"Providence protected us, I'm sure, Tom," the seismologist replied at the other end of the line. "But in this instance it worked through Tom Swift's Quakelizors! The Bona Fide plant and the surrounding area never even felt the tremor—your quake deflectors worked perfectly!"
There was no need to tell the others. Tom's words on the telephone and the grin on his face told the story. A spontaneous volley of cheers echoed through the cave as he hung up. Then the crew crowded around to slap Tom on the back and shake his hand.
"I hope the whole country learns what you've done, Tom," Mike Burrows said. "If it doesn't, I'll be the first to spread the word as soon as the secrecy lid's taken off!"
"Shucks, I knew all along Tom's contraption would do the trick!" Chow boasted, glowing with pride over his young boss's achievement.
Tom could only smile happily. "Guess we can go home now," he said to Bud and Chow.
They were preparing to leave when another flash from Washington came over the radiotelephone. A ship's captain, five hundred miles out on the Pacific, had just reported sighting a great waterspout, accompanied by considerable wave turbulence.
"It could have been the spot where the enemyshock waves and our deflector waves met and damped out," Tom commented.
"Dr. Miles thinks so, too," the caller said.
Soon the sleek Swift jet was arrowing back across the continent. En route, Tom radioed word of his latest triumph to Mr. Swift. As always, he used the automatic scramblers to make sure any enemy eavesdroppers would pick up only static.
"Great work, son!" Mr. Swift congratulated Tom. "I was confident you could handle the situation with your Quakelizors."
"Thanks, Dad. See you soon."
When the jet finally landed at Enterprises and came to a halt on the runway, the control tower operator spoke over the radio.
"Harlan Ames would like to see Tom Jr. at the security building. He left word just a few minutes ago."
"Roger!" Tom replied.
Chow frugally carted off his leftover supplies. Tom and Bud, meanwhile, went by jeep across the plant grounds to security headquarters.
Ames greeted the two boys enthusiastically. "Nice going on that earthquake situation, Tom!" he said. "And now I have some more good news. We've just nabbed the man who imitated your father's voice over the phone the other night."
"What!" Both boys were excited, and Tom added eagerly, "Who is he?"
"An actor at the Shopton summer playhouse."
"How did you find out?" Tom asked.
"I had a hunch," Ames went on. "If the impersonator wasn't a plant employee at Enterprises, then he had to be a person with a trained voice. That gave me the idea of checking on all actors and station announcers here in the vicinity. It paid off right away. The guy's name is Brent Nolan."
"Have you questioned him yet?" Tom asked.
"I'm about to," Ames replied. "Radnor just brought him in."
The security chief led the way into an adjoining office. A slender, good-looking young man with blond wavy hair was seated on a chair with Phil Radnor on one side of him and a Shopton police officer on the other. The actor was visibly nervous and perspiring.
"This is Tom Swift Jr.," Ames told him. "Brent Nolan."
Nolan nodded. "Yes, I've seen your picture in the papers many times." The actor tried to force a smile but his face muscles twitched. "I—I seem to have pulled a pretty dumb stunt by faking that phone call from your father. I'm sorry."
"What was the reason?" Tom asked.
Nolan fingered his wavy blond hair uneasily and swallowed hard. "A man named Professor Runkle paid me to do it."
"Professor Runkle?" Tom frowned. The name seemed vaguely familiar.
"He spoke with a foreign accent. Said he was doing research at Grandyke University," Nolan explained. "He told me you might be expecting a rare biological specimen from the East Indies. He said both of you were eager to get hold of it for research purposes, but he was afraid that you had outbid him. However, if he asked you straight out, you would guard the secret very jealously. So he hired me to find out."
"Didn't it occur to you he might be an espionage agent?" Ames asked coldly.
Nolan seemed shocked. "Believe me, I had no such idea!" he averred. "Runkle seemed pleasant. He said it all was merely a short cut to save him from wasting any more time on the project. If Tom Swift had the specimen, he would quit. I—I guess I'm a little bit vain about the way I can mimic voices, and this gave me a chance to show off. Besides, I saw no harm in doing it."
"No harm?" Bud snorted. "You had Swift Enterprises in a real lather when we found out."
Nolan spread his hands in a helpless gesture. "I'm truly sorry," he repeated.
"How were you able to find out how my father's voice sounded?" Tom asked.
"I listened to a recording of a speech he made at the Fourth of July rally here in Shopton," Nolan explained. "I borrowed the tape from a local radio station. Guess that's how your security men got onto me."
"What did this fellow Runkle look like?" Ames asked.
Nolan thought for a moment. "Oh, he was past middle age, I should say. Grizzled hair, thick-lensed glasses. And he was quite heavy-set."
"Hmm. Then it certainly wasn't Narko," Ames murmured to Tom.
The young inventor nodded. "I believe I know him. The name just came back to me. I met a Professor Runkle in New York about a month ago, at a scientific convention. He was a member of the visiting Brungarian delegation."
"We'll check on him," Ames promised. He turned back sternly to the young actor. "All right, Nolan, I guess you can go. But I warn you—no more impersonations."
After more flustered apologies, the actor hurried out, obviously relieved.
"What a dumb egg he is!" Bud muttered.
"In a way he may have helped us," Tom pointed out. "If the Brungarian rebels hadn't found out about Exman, we couldn't have lured them into that kidnap plot. It's already helped us to save the Bona Fide Submarine Building Corporation."
Monday morning Ames reported that Professor Runkle had left the country. Tom was not sorry, since an arrest and public trial might have led to dangerous publicity about Exman. The probings of a sharp-tongued defense attorney might evenhave tipped off the Brungarian to Tom's real purpose in letting the space brain be hijacked.
Meanwhile, a telephone call from Washington announced that State Department men were flying to Enterprises to confer with the Swifts about taking official action against the Brungarian attacks. The group arrived by jet after lunch. Thurston of the CIA was also present.
"The problem is this," a State Department official said as they discussed the matter in the Swifts' office. "Should we bring charges against Brungaria before the United Nations? Or should we rely on other means, short of war, to block the Brungarian rebel coup?"
Mr. Swift frowned thoughtfully. "It might be difficult to prove they were responsible for the earthquake attacks," he pointed out.
"I'd say it's impossible," Tom said, "unless we give away the secret about our electronic spy." He paused, then added, "Sir, if the State Department will agree, I'd like more time before you make any official moves."
The Quakelizors, Tom argued, seemed to offer protection against any future quake waves, unless the power of the shocks was greatly stepped up. Meantime, working through Exman, Tom might be able to provide the Brungarian loyalists with valuable information. "I'm hoping it will help them overthrow the rebel clique and their brutal allied military bosses."
The State Department men conferred, then Thurston spoke up quietly, "In our opinion, it's worth a gamble."
After the group had left, the Swifts resumed their sensing experiments in Tom's private laboratory. They were hard at work when the signal bell suddenly rang on the electronic brain.
The two scientists rushed to read the incoming message. It said:
EXMAN TO SWIFTS. ONE ENEMY EARTHQUAKE PRODUCER IS AT...
Here the message gave precise latitude and longitude figures. It went on:
RUIN OF SWIFT PLACE IN ONE WEEK.
Tom and his father gasped in dismay. "I thought the New York-New England Quakelizor was going to protect us!" the young inventor exclaimed. "Our enemies must have located another earth fault with Enterprises right in its path!"
Hastily opening an atlas, Tom fingered the location of the proposed source of attack. It was Balala Island off the coast of Peru.
"Dad, that settles it!" Tom declared grimly. "It's clear now that those Brungarian rebels want to destroy us and use Exman in some way to conquer the earth!"
"I don't doubt that you're right, son," Mr. Swift said grimly. "We must act fast! But how?"
Again, the signal bell interrupted. This time, Exman gave a number of military details, evidently picked up from orders issuing from Brungarian rebel headquarters. They concerned incoming troop movements from the north and operational plans for crushing out the last pockets of resistance by loyal government forces.
Tom recorded them with TV tape, then snatched up the telephone and called the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington. He relayed the information from Exman and asked if American agents could transmit it to the loyalists.
"Don't worry. We'll see that it reaches them," the CIA chief assured Tom. "Many thanks. Thiscouldhave important consequences."
As Tom hung up he decided on a bold move. "Dad, I'm going to lead a raid on Balala!"
"A raid!" The elder scientist was electrified.
"According to the atlas, the island is barren and deserted," Tom said, "so no friendly power will object if we land there. If it's being used as an enemy base for quake attacks against our country, we have every right to investigate. I might be able to learn the secret of the setup—perhaps even put the equipment out of commission."
"Nevertheless, a raid by a United States force could lead to trouble if the base there puts up any resistance," Mr. Swift said gravely.
"That's why I intend to handle it myself," Tom declared. "I'll take all responsibility."
Tom Sr.'s eyes flashed as he recalled some of his own hair-raising exploits in younger days. "All right, son," he said, putting a hand on Tom's shoulder. "I know I can trust your judgment. Good luck!"
Again Tom issued a call for volunteers. Bud, Hank Sterling, Arv Hanson, and Chow were all eager to take part. Within an hour they were taking off for Fearing. At the rocket base, they embarked in theSea Hound, Tom's favorite model of his diving seacopter. A powerful central rotor with reversible-pitch blades, spun by atomic turbines, enabled the craft to rise through the air or descend into the deepest abysses of the ocean. Propulsion jets gave it high speed in either medium.
Loaded with equipment, theSea Houndstreaked southward through the skies—first to Florida, then across the Gulf and Central America into the Pacific. Here Tom eased down to the surface of the water and submerged.
It was near midnight when theSea Houndrose from the depths just off Balala. The lonely rocky island lay outlined like a huddled black mass against the star-flecked southern sky. No glimmer of light showed anywhere ashore.
"Maybe no one's here," Bud murmured.
"Don't bank on that," Tom said. "They wouldn't be apt to advertise their presence to passing ships or planes."
Tom nosed inshore as closely as he dared from sonar soundings, finally easing theSea Houndup to a rocky reef that fingered out from the beach. Then he, Bud, Hank, and Arv clambered out, armed with wrecking tools and powerful flashlights.
Chow, in spite of his muttered grumblings, was ordered to stay aboard and guard the ship with the other two crewmen who had come along.
Tom led his party cautiously ashore from the reef. They probed the darkness of the beach. Their footfalls sounded eerily in the night silence, broken only by the soughing of the sea wind and splash of breakers.
"Good place for spooks!" Bud whispered jokingly.
A steep draw led upward among the rocky slopes. A hundred feet on, Tom's group found the black yawning mouth of a cave. The yellow beams of their flashlights revealed a tunnel leading downward inside. Tom checked with a pocket detector. Its gauge needle showed no field force caused by electrical equipment in operation.
"Okay, let's go in!" Tom murmured.
Cautiously they moved into the tunnel. Then suddenly ahead of them a powerful dazzling light burst on, nearly blinding the searchers!
A chillof fear gripped Tom and his companions as they blinked helplessly in the glare! Had the enemy detected them the first moment they had set foot on Balala Island? Had they walked blindly into a trap?
Gradually Tom's eyes and those of his friends adjusted to the dazzling radiance. A door, blocking the tunnel just ahead, had slid open and the light was pouring out of a room beyond.
"What happened?" Arv gasped.
Tom pointed downward to a pedallike plunger inserted in the tunnel floor. "This must be a switch," he explained. "When I stepped on it accidentally, it must have opened the door and flashed on the lights."
Bud whistled. "Wow! Let's be thankful it wasn't a booby trap!"
"Maybe it is," murmured Hank grimly.
Steeling their nerves, and with every sense alert, the searchers advanced into the secret room.
Tom suddenly gave a cry of amazement. "The earthquake machine!"
A huge hydraulic device, with massive steel bed and supporting pillars, looking somewhat like the enormous body presses found in automobile plants, stood embedded in a recess in one wall.
Tom rushed to the machine and examined it in fascination. A powerful diesel generator stood nearby with banks of complicated electrical equipment, amid a spider-web tangle of wiring. Tom assumed this gear was for timing and synchronizing the shock waves. Evidently the whole setup was operated from a single control panel in the wall, studded with knobs and dials.
"What a job of design!" Tom exclaimed in awe. His eyes roved over every detail of the equipment while he poked here and there with his hands. He was getting the "feel" of the setup almost as much by touch and handling as by his superb technical intuition. "Boy, I hate to admire anything those Brungarian rebel scientists do, but this is really masterful!"
"Yes? Well, don't go ga-ga over it," said Bud. "Let's do what we came to do and scram out of here. This place makes me jumpy!"
Tom appeared oblivious. "It seems like vandalism to wreck such an engineering achievement! Also, and this may sound strange to you," he wenton in a doubtful tone, "are wereallyjustified in taking the law into our own hands?"
"They're trying to wreckoursetup, aren't they?" Bud retorted. "Think of the destruction they've caused already! Do you want to stand by and see Enterprises destroyed too?"
"Bud's right," Hank Sterling spoke up quietly. "Take a look at this."
He beckoned them over to another corner of the cave and pointed to a series of notations, crudely scrawled in white chalk on the cave wall. Half hidden behind a clump of rock, they would have escaped casual notice.
Tom read them and gave an angry gasp. A list of places and dates, already checked off, showed the quakes that had occurred so far. The last notation, not yet checked, said: SWIFT ENTERPRISES and was dated five days ahead.
"Okay, that's all the convincing I need!" Tom said grimly.
He issued quick orders. Hank and Arv were to rush back to theSea Hound, get an underwater pump from the gear carried aboard, and install it just off the beach. From there, they were to run a pipe line up into the cave, using special plastic tubing which hooked together in a jiffy.
"Cover the piping with sand and gravel, so it won't be noticed," Tom added. "In the meantime, Bud and I will go to work on this setup here."
"Aye-aye, skipper!" Hank and Arv responded.
As they hurried out through the tunnel, Tom and Bud set to work with the tools they had brought along. The diesel was partly dismantled, sand poured into its fuel feed, and the generator windings ripped out. The boys then tore off and tangled all wiring leads to the electrical equipment, took apart much of the equipment itself, and smashed the control panel.
"Boy, if those Brungarian creeps get this setup working again, they'rereallygeniuses!" Bud said as he and Tom paused a second.
"This is only the beginning, pal!" Tom said. "Let's tackle the machine!"
The huge earthquake device was a far more difficult proposition to disable. Its heavy structural parts had to be disassembled or pried apart, one by one. Both boys were streaked with sweat as they finished.
By this time, Hank and Arv had the piping installed halfway into the tunnel. Spurred on as if by a sixth sense of danger, Tom told them to go back to the beach and get the pump working while he and Bud connected the few remaining pipe lengths into the machine room.
Minutes later, their job done, Tom and Bud rushed out to the mouth of the cave and waved their flashlights. Soon the water could be heard boiling through the pipeline. It gushed out with a roar, flooding the machine room.
"Let's go!" Tom cried, yanking Bud's arm.
As they reached the beach and joined Hank and Arv, Tom's keen ears picked up the drone of a plane somewhere in the darkness.
He gave a yell of alarm and pointed skyward. A ghostlike jet came zooming into view, boring straight toward them. All four broke into a mad dash for the seacopter.
They were halfway out on the reef when the plane leveled out of its dive with an earsplitting whine.
"Hide!" Tom shouted, fearing a bomb might be dropped.
(Tom and friends are attacked by a ray gun from an airplane)
All leaped for cover among the rocks. At the same instant, a fiery beam like a bolt of lightning shot from the plane. It seared the spot on the reef they had just vacated!
"A ray gun!" Bud gasped.
The plane's speed had already carried it far past the island. Before it could maneuver around for another pass, Tom and his companions were on their feet, racing for the safety of theSea Hound.
They were aboard and clamping shut the hatch lid as the jet made its second pass. This time its fiery ray glanced harmlessly off the seacopter's Tomasite sheathing. Seconds later, theSea Houndhad darted off beyond reach into the ocean waters.
"Whew! We really broke all speed records that time!" Arv panted.
The others looked at him with wan but triumphant grins. Then they began to speculate on what the beamlike bolt was, who was in the plane, and if their enemy knew who Tom's group were.
Dawn was streaking the sky when the seacopter arrived at Fearing Island. The adventurers flew back to Enterprises at once. Tom and Bud snatched a few hours' sleep in the apartment adjoining Tom's laboratory.
Later in the morning the whole group gathered in Tom's laboratory to recount the raid to Mr. Swift and Harlan Ames. A bell signal from the electronic brain brought them rushing to the decoder. Grim news awaited them. The message said:
EXMAN TO SWIFTS. YOUR ENEMIES ARE NOW SURE I AM SPY. THEY PLAN TO DESTROY ME.
"No! It mustn't happen!" Tom cried in dismay. "Dad, I'll rescue him myself!"
His words were greeted with shocked protests from the others.
"Don't be crazy!" Bud said. "You wouldn't have a chance!"
"It would be suicide!" Arv Hanson declared.
Chow grabbed his young boss by the arm. "Brand my cayenne pepper, before I'd let youmake a blame fool move like that, I'd rope an' hawg-tie you myself!"
Ames interjected the most convincing argument. "I know how you feel, Tom," he said sympathetically, "but I'm positive the United States government would never permit such a risky undertaking."
Tom was beside himself with anxiety. Not only had he worked and struggled to make the space brain's visit a scientific success, but also it was he who had thought of the scheme to use Exman as a spy. In Tom's eyes, if the Brungarian rebels were to destroy the brain's body, it would amount to murder! The young inventor knew that the destruction of the "body" would not destroy the energy, but that it would be "lost" as far as the earth was concerned.
Who knew, Tom asked himself, what priceless secrets the "brain" might ultimately yield to earth's scientific researchers? If the Brungarians were to succeed, this might deter the Swifts' space friends from ever attempting another visit to our planet!
In despair, Tom turned to his father. "You know how much is at stake, Dad!" he pleaded. "Isn't there something we can do?"
Mr. Swift had been silent, thoughtfully drumming his pencil on the workbench. He looked up.
"Tom, I can think of only one thing," he said. "Perhaps our friends on Planet X can help us.They said they would have no control over the energy until it was ready to return home. But maybe we can get them to help us transfer the energy back here—not by any means of earth transportation, but by some extraterrestrial means known to their scientists."
Tom's eyes kindled with hope. "Dad, that's a terrific idea!" he exclaimed. "Let's try!"
A message was quickly beamed out into space. Minutes went by. Then the machine signaled a reply. It said:
WE WILL ATTEMPT RESCUE IF YOU WILL ARC A POWERFUL RADIO BEAM FROM POINT OF ORIGINAL EARTH LANDING TO POINT WHERE ENERGY IS NOW.
Moments later, a further message followed, giving technical instructions on how to project the beam. It ended:
NOTIFY US WHEN SETUP IS READY.
"Yahoo!" Chow whooped. "Brand my space guns, I reckon we'll get Ole Think Box home safe after all!"
"He's not home yet, Chow," Tom cautioned, grinning but still tense with worry. "Glad you said that, though. It reminds me that the first job on our hands is to build a new think box for Exman!"
With hope alive, Tom turned icy calm andbuckled down to the work at hand. Before beginning construction of a new space robot, he contacted Exman via the electronic brain and asked him for his exact location in Brungaria. The answer came in precise latitude and longitude.
Next, Tom radioed instructions for the rescue plan. As soon as Exman was notified that the invisible force from Planet X was ready to transport his energy, he was to unlatch point five of his star head. He would then be free to attach his energy to the rescue beam and be arced back to the hillside spot near Enterprises, where Tom would have a new robot body waiting.
Exman replied tersely:
MESSAGE UNDERSTOOD. WILL COMPLY.
Tom snapped out orders. "Hank! Arv! Bud! And, Dad, we can sure use your help too! Every hour may be precious! We must construct a replica of Exman's robot container as fast as possible!"
Every resource of Swift Enterprises was convulsed into action. But for all their scientific miracles, the staff could not perform magic. The complicated robot device required hours of highly skilled construction.
Darkness had fallen by the time the energy container was ready. Meanwhile, a powerful transmitter and directional antenna had been set up at the hillside spot. Extensive reports on the conditionof the ionosphere poured into headquarters.
The Swifts and their small group of trusted associates trucked the new robot and the electronic brain out to the site. Tom then signaled his space friends that he was ready. They responded with the exact time for the rescue attempt. Tom transmitted the information to Exman, who replied:
DANGER NEAR. BRUNGARIAN SCIENTISTS READY TO DESTROY ME.
"Great bellowin' buffaloes!" Chow gulped. "Please make it quick, Tom! We got to save that space critter!"
Tom glanced at his illuminated watch dial. The countdown ticked by. Suddenly his hand closed a switch, transmitting the rescue beam. More moments passed as the Swifts and the watchers strained their eyes toward the night sky.
"Here it comes!" Bud yelled suddenly.
A fiery bluish-white light had suddenly flamed into view. It grew steadily larger. Tom poised the container and opened one point of the star head.
Now the blue fireball was arcing down over the hillside, trailing its orange-red comet tail. It hissed into the container and Tom snapped shut the star head.
The next moment, the young inventor wavered and slumped unconscious!