TOM SWIFT

Texas-sized Chow Winkler scratched a broad swath of forehead spread beneath his ten-gallon hat. "Lake Disappointment, huh. Bet they have a hard time gettin’ th’ tourists."

"Ah now, mates, I require optimism in this little room. Let’s send happy healing waves to our multi-hundred-million dollars worth of machinery. It’s very sensitive, you know!" The speaker, Dr. Clarke MacIllheny, was making every attempt to keep his voice firm and confident, but the tension was unmistakable. His life and career had led him to this moment. Everything was on the line, awaiting the touch of a button.

Tom and his friends and colleagues had come to the Gibson Desert of central Australia to oversee the debut of the world’s mightiest particle accelerator. Built with technical assistance from Swift Enterprises in Shopton, New York, the new Hyper-Celerator, an in-spiraling tube of metal and plastic, was eight miles across at the outside, its curled tunnel fully sixty-three miles in length. The project of an Aussie scientific consortium called Advanced Research Technics, the gargantuan instrument was to probe further into the heart of matter than ever before.

Tom’s close pal Bud Barclay squinted out the reinforced window of the main control room, which topped a two-story tower. "I see a lot of desert out there, guys—dirt and sun. That curvy gray thing looks more like a great big coiled snake than a mega-microscope."

"Yet that is precisely what it is, young Budworth," retorted MacIllheny with a nervous smile. "A sort of powerful microscope, with which we shall see wondrous things far too small for the unaided eye to reveal."

"An’ don’t knock dirt an’ sun, buddy boy," Chow added. "That there’s most o’ Texas, an’ it works jest fine."

"Final sequence done and green," called out a nearby technician from his monitoring board. "All stations report ready."

"Then I do believe it’s time to loose our protons on their racecourse," murmured Dr. MacIllheny. A stubby finger depressed a small, innocuous button.

"And they’re off!" pronounced Tom gleefully. His youthful face bespoke the sheer thrill of scientific adventure.

Seconds ticked past, and the only words spoken in the room were numbers. Bud bent down and spoke softly into Tom’s ear. "I guess there won’t be much to see, hmm, genius boy?"

"Afraid not," was the reply. "All the action is inside that acceleration corridor. But the idea is exciting, even if the view isn’t—the stream of protons is already more than halfway to the speed of light."

"Which is mighty fast, I hear," Chow put in.

"You could say that, if you call 186,000 miles per second fast."

The grizzled chef, some thirty years Tom and Bud’s senior, couldn’t help an audible and visible gulp. "I’d say so!"

MacIllheny conferred with the technical staff in the room, then walked back to Tom and his friends. "All is most satisfactory," declared the physicist, chief of the project. "We’re near the point where we’ll bring your matter-lenses into play. How do they look to you, Tom?"

"They look great, Doctor Mac," the young inventor responded. "All the readings are holding steady and nominal."

"I think that means ‘good’," cracked Bud to Chow.

The final stage of the Hyper-Celerator’s process made use of a technology Tom had invented for his revolutionary matter maker, the space solartron. In the terminus section of the corridor that was to function as a target for the hurtling subatomic particles, field-flux coherers would force the protons—repelling one another with tremendous power—into a close single-file path that ended between the facing points of a pair of conical devices fabricated of a mix of exotic materials. It was expected that as the protons were crammed at lightspeed into this inconceivably small gap, narrower than the breadth of the nucleus of a single atom, particles never before detected would be trapped and recorded.

"It’s time," the physicist said to Tom as calmly as possible.

Tom instantly threw a switch, sending a control signal to the matter-lens array while simultaneously closing off the shunt that allowed the proton stream to bypass the target module.

A welcome electronic tone sang out from the main control board. "Yes, yes! There we are!" cried Dr. MacIllheny gleefully. "Very solid registrations from the gap."

"Does that mean you’re getting those new particles you’re looking for?" asked Bud.

Tom answered for the physicist. "Not just yet, Bud. We have to narrow the gap—sharpen the focus, in other words." Eyes trained on dancing oscilloscope patterns, his slender, expert fingers began to manipulate the dials that told the managing computer what to do next.

"Wait!" shouted a technician in sudden alarm. "The field is destabilizing!"

"Cut the lens power!" commanded MacIllheny. But even as Tom jabbed the emergency cutoff button, a flare of light filled the room, followed in a moment by a sickening reverberation.

"Oh no!" gasped Tom. "The target chamber’s blown up!" Even over a distance of several miles the distraught observers could see a plume of back smoke jetting up into the dry desert air.

"Powering down," reported a team member dully.

Clarke MacIllheny stood in numbed silence, gazing out the observation window. Tom put a sympathetic hand on his arm. "The damage may be confined to the target chamber, Doctor," he noted. "The accelerator is probably still in good shape. The damage can be repaired and the experiment can resume."

"We don’t know the cause of the failure," said the physicist despondently. "Did you see anything on your monitors?"

Tom shook his head. "No, sir. But the computer records will give us the clues we need. This is some kind of freakish circuit failure, a low-probability event we couldn’t have planned for."

The physicist was grimly unwilling to be consoled. "We considered the possibility of a field-stress rupture, a ‘kink in the fabric.’ We went over it extensively—didn’t we?"

"We sure did," Tom agreed. "No one can predict everything."

"Guess that’s why they call it science," Chow added helpfully.

"That’s right, pardner," said Bud. He refrained from his customary joking manner.

Fire had broken out in the target chamber, and it took nearly an hour to fully extinguish the blaze. Finally Tom announced that he had reacquired contact with the surviving instruments and sensors in the module.

"Then at least we can download some data to tell us what failed," noted MacIllheny. "I’ll re-cork the champagne."

But when Tom looked up from the readout panel, his blue eyes were gleaming with the thrill of the unexpected. "Not yet, Doctor Mac!" he exclaimed. "If these numbers mean what I think they do, something tremendous has happened!"

"Look at this!" Tom said excitedly. "This is the consolidated readout from the final three nanos before the field collapsed."

"Nanoseconds," Bud whispered to Chow.

"Brand my stopwatch, I know!" retorted the ex-Texan. "I been hangin’ around Tom fer a long time now."

Dr. MacIllheny studied the stilled pattern on the oscilloscope screen. He seemed to look it over once, twice, three times, and then he traced its lines with a finger. "Hardly dare believe it, mate," he murmured. "Wish it were true."

"I don’t suppose I’d understand what those lines mean, would I?" inquired Bud politely. "Something good?"

Tom cast a glance toward the young dark-haired pilot, his best friend. "There are some strong indications that we did trap a zoo of particles after all, a split-instant before the explosion," he explained.

"More than that, the particle!" declared MacIllheny, eyes glued to the screen. "My Moby Dick!"

Chow’s brow creased. "What’d you say? Yer what?"

"That’s what I call it, Chow. My special quest, the very thing I’ve been hunting for a quarter of a century." The physicist’s face was losing its skepticism and gaining pure joy. "I just may have caught a glimpse of LARS—the Lepto-Aleph Rho Subtrino!"

"An’ that’s whut you been after all this time?"

"It’s a revolutionary discovery," pronounced Tom. "If it pans out, it’ll sure give Doctor Mac a place in the history books."

"I hate to admit it," Bud said, "but even after Tom explained it all to me, the simplified way he always does—I don’t think I really understand it. It’s a subatomic particle, right?"

"A phantom particle, a ghost, a dream!" responded MacIllheny with a laugh. "It always fit into the big picture mathematically, like a single missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle. My word, it explains the ‘neutrino gap’ perfectly! But my esteemed colleagues the world over spoke as one, a great chorus of discouragement—‘impossible!’ Its physical characteristics, you see, are paradoxical." He paused. "I’m afraid I’m too excited to try to explain it in layman’s terms. Tom, perhaps you—"

"Of course," said Tom. "It’s what I do! Guys, elementary subatomic particles are either bosons or fermions—think of it as their family names. Bosons are, for example, the photons that make up light. They have no rest mass at all, which is just fine because they never are at rest; they always scoot along at the maximum possible speed, velocity C, the speed of light."

"Stands t’ reason," Chow noted.

"Bosons don’t interact with one another. But what we think of as solid matter is made from fermions," Tom continued. "Those are the particles you’ve heard of, electrons, neutrons, and protons. Think of them as bits of matter with mass and solidity, meaning that they can’t just pass through one another, but interact."

Bud nodded enthusiastically. "Like billiard balls, right?"

"A common but worthy analogy," chuckled Dr. MacIllheny.

"Okay then," said Chow. "So which o’ those two is that there sub-marino you ’as talkin’ about?"

"Eh now, that’s the whole point, my cowboyish friend," was MacIllheny’s reply. "The subtrino is an ambivalent particle that can’t manage to make up its mind. Like its unimaginative cousin the neutrino, the subtrino ordinarily blows through solid matter at light speed, like wind through a chicken-wire fence. It has, in a word, a boson identity. But astoundingly, it also has a secret identity as a fermion, a mass-particle. Do I see on your faces a look of incredulity?"

"Betcha you would if’n I knew what it meant," Chow agreed.

"I guess he’s saying that the little guy can flip over from one to the other. Is that it?" asked Bud.

"That’s it, flyboy," Tom confirmed. "The theory says that under certain very rare and very weird circumstances, the subtrino converts its energy of motion into the locked-up form of energy we call mass. Its speed drops from velocity C to—what was it, Doctor Mac?"

"Quite easy to remember. You merely apply the reciprocal of Pi to exponent four…"

"Uh-oh," muttered Chow beneath his breath.

"Which gives you a final velocity of, oh, a shade less than twenty miles per second, let’s say." The physicist’s eyes twinkled. "Turns the little boy into a slowpoke!"

"And the wonderful thing is, it looks like we forced a few of these characters to put in an appearance," Tom grinned.

Having determined that reactivation of the Hyper-Celerator would be months away, Tom, Bud, and Chow began the flight back to Shopton aboard the Swift Enterprises commuter jet that had brought them to Australia.

"We didn’t do much sightseeing," Bud complained to the others as he piloted the supersonic craft out over the Pacific. "As in none. I hear they’ve got some great surfing down in Sidney." The youth’s muscular, athletic form advertised his recreational interests.

"Me, I allus wanted t’see one o’ them herds o’ kangaroos," Chow declared. "Mebbe next time, huh, boss?"

"Mebbe so, pard." Tom smiled affectionately at his two close comrades. "But I need to get back to Enterprises to resume work on my own project, the challenge Dad gave me."

"You’ve mentioned that, but haven’t said what it is," Bud remarked. "What’s your Dad challenging you to do?" Bud knew that the young inventor and his father Damon, grandson of the famous inventor after whom Tom had been named, often engaged in a bit of friendly family rivalry.

"Well, chum, as I’ve hinted to you, it has to do with space travel."

Tom and Bud, and even Chow, had already won their space-wings as veteran astronauts. They had helped construct the Swift Enterprises outpost in space, orbiting 22,300 miles above the earth. They had undertaken the pioneering journey to Earth’s new moon, the tiny asteroid Nestria—as well as to the old moon aboard Tom’s huge spaceship, the Challenger. They had even dared a long, desperate flight to the environs of the planet Venus, made possible by Tom’s solartron invention. But it had now been awhile since that perilous voyage. Tom’s most recent exploit had taken him into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, where his spectromarine selector had proven itself vital to uncovering the secrets of Aurum City, the sunken city of gold.

"Space travel!" Bud repeated. "Two of my favorite words! So when do we leave—and where to?"

"No destination yet," said Tom. "And no way to get there, either—yet!"

Bud switched the jet to automatic pilot and swiveled his seat to face Tom and Chow. "Enough with the hints, pal. What are we talking about?"

Tom gestured broadly. "The high cost of space travel."

"Wa-aal, I heard o’ the high cost o’ livin’," Chow stated, puzzled. "But high cost o’ space travel sounds more like one of buddy boy’s jokes. Is the price goin’ up?"

"The price is already sky high!" Tom gibed, continuing the joke. "Seriously, that’s the challenge Dad wants me to take a look at—the basic expense of getting off the earth and entering orbit. At Enterprises we really don’t worry about that aspect too much, because we only do special projects with experimental vehicles, and we have a lot of commercial income to spend from sales of the solar batteries, the Tomasite patent, the Pigeon Specials—all that."

"And, as we know from last time, government funding." Bud added wryly: "With all strings attached."

Chow scratched his head. "I know them big rockets they useta use cost a pretty penny, but what about that underwater shebang you set up next to the island?"

When Tom had been faced with the daunting challenge of building and supplying the Enterprises space station, he had developed a new and more efficient method of launching spacecraft which made use of underwater buoyancy as a substitute for the rocket’s fuel-gulping first stage. This aqualaunch system was based off Loonaui Island in the mid-Pacific. Replied Tom: "It’s true that the Loonaui system has a quicker turnaround time and saves money, pard. But it’s still a mighty big, complex sort of operation."

"Well then, what about your repelatron?" Bud suggested. "Just hook up one or two of those babies to an airtight container, and there ya go!" The repelatron was the matter-repelling machine that had carried Tom’s Challenger to the moon.

"Sure, the repelatron works fine. But the sort of super-repelatron we use for space travel requires great big parabolic dishes like the ones on the spaceship, plus an elaborate powerplant. The field-beam has to be strong enough to work at a distance of hundreds, or hundreds of thousands, of miles. There’s no way you could adapt it to a small commuter craft."

Bud was amazed! "Commuter craft? In space?"

"Why not, flyboy?" laughed Tom. "Think of it as the cosmic version of the Pigeon Specials!"

"Okay, now, let me figger this. Hold off jest a second," Chow demanded skeptically. "You want folks t’be able to commute in space, jest like people when they go t’ work an’ back. Brand my briefcase, Tom, where the holy hey do you think they’ll be workin’ at, the moon?"

Tom confirmed the cook’s guess with a nod. "Absolutely! If we’re ever going to make a go of a real moon colony, the settlers will need an easy, ready, low-cost way to travel back and forth to the earth. The same goes for mining Lunite up on Nestria, or doing manufacturing in a flock of orbiting space stations as we’ve planned. Mankind will stub its toes right at the edge of outer space unless we find a way to get the cost down to something like the price of an airline ticket."

"Guess I kin understand that," Chow conceded at last.

Bud asked Tom if he’d come up with an approach, or a new invention. "Let’s say I might have," he answered. "In fact, that’s one reason the Hyper-Celerator project had to come first. I’m hoping that—"

The communications panel buzzed. "Incoming call," Bud said. "Hold that thought." Lifting the microphone, he responded. "This is TSE HighJumper. Barclay here."

"Bud, this is Ted Spring at Space Central." Ted Spring, a longtime friend of the Swift family, had recently taken the position of Chief Astronautics Engineer at the aqualaunch facility on Loonaui Island, which supplied the space outpost.

"Hey there, Ted! What’s cookin’ in paradise?"

"Trouble! Is T-man there with you?"

Tom took the mike from Bud. "I’m here, Ted."

"Hold on to your crewcut, Tom. Something’s happened to the Sea Charger!"

Chow grunted in dismay and Tom and Bud exchanged glances of alarm. The Sea Charger was an advanced seagoing vessel the size of an aircraft carrier, built to an Enterprises design by a shipbuilding firm in Southern California, partially funded by NASA. She had been launched on her maiden voyage only days before.

Tom demanded the details. "Don’t have a whole lot of ’em yet," Ted replied. "I just got off the horn with the Navy—your pal Admiral Hopkins. About two hours ago the Charger submerged as scheduled."

"Yes. It was the first extended ocean test of her submersible capabilities."

"She never surfaced!"

"What!" Tom choked. "They’d only planned a forty minute test run, then back up!"

"I know that, T-man." Ted voice was troubled at the worrisome news. "She went down and dropped out of sight. The follower jets didn’t see a hair of her, and the sonarscope on the observation cruiser lost track of her all of a sudden at two-twenty fathoms down. And when I say lost track, I mean it literally—she went out like a candle!"

Bud leaned into the microphone. "Ted, what about wreckage? Anything floating around?"

"So far nothing’s been sighted."

Tom’s heart thudded. Several Swift Enterprises employees—personal friends—had enlisted for the historic voyage. Now it was horrifyingly possible that they were lost at sea to the last man!

"We’ll make our refueling stop on Loonaui in two hours," he said at last. "There’s a seacopter berthed at Space Central—they use it to do inspections of the underwater launch rig."

"You plan to join in the search, Tom?" Bud asked.

"What search?" Tom retorted, his voice tinged with frustration. "As far as I know, that seacop is the only maneuverable deepwater craft this side of Hawaii. We’ve got to do what we can."

"That’s plain speakin’, son!" agreed Chow. "We’ll find ’em. I got me a knack fer findin’ lost stuff."

The HighJumper landed at the airport at Jeanmaire, capital city—or town—of the Loonaui Islands Republic. Until recently small and rather primitive, the airfield facility had evolved in one great leap into a modern international jetport to accommodate the demands of the Space Central complex at the north end of the island, jumping-off point for excursions to the space outpost. Now the airport was almost as big as Jeanmaire itself.

A taxi-chopper brought Tom, Bud, and Chow to the complex in a matter of minutes. After conferring with Ted Spring and other personnel, Tom asked that the resident seacopter, the Emeraldina, be readied for duty. He then contacted Swift Enterprises over the facility’s videophone, a satellite-based private television network.

"It’s a terrible, distressing event," said Damon Swift, Tom’s distinguished father. "NASA and the Navy have commenced a search, but their really fast deep-submersibles won’t reach the area for another day or so. They’ve been using surface jetboats with sonar drag-buoys." The video screen captured every flicker of pain and anxiety in Mr. Swift’s eyes.

"Where exactly was their last known position?" Tom asked.

"About eight hundred miles west of the tip of Baja California." His father read off the precise coordinates from a note in front of him.

"It’s open sea," Tom commented. "Nothing else around for a couple thousand miles."

"Perfect for performance tests—and for getting lost in."

"We’ll come up with something in the seacopter, Dad," promised Tom.

The flat, saucer-shaped Emeraldina put out to sea, floating yards above the waves on a cushion of air driven downward by its vertical-axis rotor blades. Reaching the area, Tom set the craft down on the surface, where it rocked gently.

"There’s one of the search boats, skipper," Bud reported, pointing toward the horizon.

"We’ll let them know we’re getting into the act," Tom stated. "Then we’ll dive."

Presently, the pitch of the big blades reversed, the seacopter dove deep into the Pacific, scanning in all directions with its sensitive detection instruments. "Nothing on standard sonar," Tom muttered. "Sono-resonance locator, zero."

"But listen, boss, ain’t that there ship coated with Tomasite plastic?" Chow pointed out. "You couldn’t see it on th’ sonar TV anyways, couldja?"

Tom nodded. "True. But I’ve set the sonarscope to look for any sign of agitation from a subsea wake, or the heat signature from a thermal gradient. The Sea Charger couldn’t have vanished absolutely without a trace."

But after hours of pursuing an ever-widening search pattern, it seemed the young inventor would have to eat his words. The dark waters held no clue.

"This is crazy," grumbled Bud. "Even if she blew up, we’d pick up something somewhere."

"Boss, you said some o’ the Enterprises people are on board," Chow said to Tom. "Who are they, d’you know?"

Tom looked at his friend with grim concern. "Bob Jeffers for one. Also Nina Kimberley."

"Aw jetz!" Bud gasped in dismay. "And Nina just got back from the Aurum City expedition!"

Before Tom could make further comment, Chow suddenly exclaimed, "Say! Look at that on the screen! Don’t it mean somethin’?"

The sonarscope screen showed a strange, irregular form, like a silhouette of light outlining a black cloudlike central shape.

"Put it on imaging mode," Bud urged. "Doesn’t look like anything, the way it is."

Tom shrugged, puzzled. "Hate to tell you this, pal, but it is on imaging mode!"

Chow squinted at the shape. "Wa-aal what is it, some kind o’ jellyfish? It’s wigglin’ and wogglin’ all over th’ place!"

Tom checked the control dials and positional readout. "Whatever it is, it’s about at the limit of sonarscope range."

"How big is it?" Bud asked. "As big as the Sea Charger?"

"No, not at all—much smaller. But way too big to be any kind of fish."

"Could it be a school of fish?"

"If so, I’ve never seen them bounce sonar in this way," was the reply. Suddenly Tom yelped out: "Whoa!"

The weird ghostlike object had abruptly shot across the monitor screen and vanished from sight!

"Skipper!" Bud breathed. "If it was really that far away…"

"I know," said Tom slowly. "It must have been moving faster than a space rocket! Even our jetmarines can’t approach that speed." Tom made adjustments to the control panel, but ended up shaking his head. "No trace of anything now. It must have been some sort of malfunction in the sonar transceiver—a ghost blip."

"But boss, ya don’t think—I mean, it couldn’t be—the, the—" stammered Chow, eyes wider than usual.

"The what?"

"The ghost o’ that ship we’re tryin’ to find?"

Bud snorted. "At least that’d be something, cowpoke. Right now we’ve got nuthin’!"

Discouraged, Tom piloted the Emeraldina back to Loonaui, and the refueled HighJumper resumed its northeasterly flight. It was late night, local time, when the jet finally touched down on the Enterprises airfield in Shopton. Their big yawns led them irresistibly to bed, Tom at the nearby Swift residence, Bud in his apartment in Shopton, and Chow in his comfortable quarters on the plant grounds near his kitchen.

Several days went by but there was no report on the whereabouts of the Sea Charger. Unable to make progress on the mystery, Tom busied himself in his laboratory meanwhile, trying to solve the problem of developing a new and cheaper method of space travel.

"Say, wasn’t that Dr. Kupp I just saw leaving?" Bud asked warily one afternoon as he strolled into the laboratory, which adjoined the high-arched underground hangar where Tom’s mammoth Flying Lab was based. When Tom nodded, Bud continued: "He’s—not coming right back, is he?"

Tom grinned. "Bud Barclay, the big brave athlete! You’re not intimidated by that little man, are you?"

"I know he’s your ace mathematician and nuclear chemist or whatever," Bud replied as he eased down on a stool, still poised to make a run for it. "But let’s face it, he can be a little… opaque. As in: you can’t make out what he’s saying. Or if he’s saying anything!"

"True, pal!" Tom laughed. "He was supposed to join us on the trip to Australia, you know."

"So what happened? He couldn’t find his way to the airport?"

"He couldn’t find his way to his car. In the Enterprises parking lot!"

After a hearty shared hoot, Bud continued. "Any big brain waves yet on your project, boy genius? Your Dad’s challenge?" He noticed that Tom was intently poring over a clutter of scribbled diagrams and equations.

Tom looked up with a wry grin. "Give us time, flyboy! But if I were a detective, I’d say I’ve got a few ‘leads’."

"Okay. And just like a detective in a story, you’re keeping everybody guessing to the end." Bud scratched his bead thoughtfully. "Let’s get down to brass tacks. Where do you start in tackling the problem?"

"Good question. That’s just what I’ve been asking myself," Tom replied with a half-rueful smile. "The real hope," he continued, "lies in finding a different type of space propulsion. As you know, the advanced spaceships devised so far—I mean the self-contained kind which don’t need rocket fuel—rely on drive systems that are big, bulky, and power-hungry."

"Even the Brungarian moon ship used the sun to feed its ion drive," Bud agreed.

"Yes, and our ship, the Challenger, uses power from those big cosmic energy converters to run its repelatron drive setup. Other ships that space scientists have dreamed up would need very, very large power-gathering equipment to collect the sun’s energy."

"I’ve seen drawings of that sort of thing— whopping big space sails the size of those atom-snatchers you made to collect solar-wind particles for your matter maker."

Tom nodded, chuckling at the wry look on Bud’s face as he himself recalled the unwieldy span of the objects. "But anyhow, whatever a ship uses for power, it’s the propulsion systems that make it a mighty expensive proposition."

"I’ll bet you have a better idea already. Out with it!" Bud urged. "Didn’t you say something about Dr. MacIllheny’s experiments?"

"Whoa! Don’t put me on the spot!" Tom cringed jokingly, then turned serious. "Well, as a matter of fact, I do have a few ideas. One factor I’ve been thinking about is the cosmic rays encountered in space."

"Dangerous stuff!" Bud pointed out. "One wrong move and whole future generations of the Barclay or Swift family lines could disappear! But your Tomasite-Inertite shielding protects space travellers."

"I’m thinking of a whole ’nuther side to it, Bud. Look inside the test chamber." The young inventor led his chum over to the double-thick view window that formed the side of a reinforced test cubicle. Inside Bud saw a sturdy framework supporting a vertical pivot. A metal arm, like the spoke of a horizontally mounted wheel, was linked to the pivot.

"I get it—you’ve reinvented the wheel!" Bud gibed.

"The wheel was a pretty useful invention, bolt-head!" Tom gripped a lever sticking out from the lab wall just beneath the window. "Watch what happens when I release the brake."

As Bud watched, the pivoted arm began to turn very slowly, gradually accelerating to a lazy pace. "It’s about as fast as those ceiling fans that move the air around," the dark-haired youth remarked.

"I know," Tom replied. "But slow and weak as it is, it’s a start. It’s being pushed along by cosmic subtrinos, Bud, the particles MacIllheny discovered. Once he’d pinpointed the basic parameters from the Hyper-Celerator run, he was able to plug the numbers into equations he had already developed, which he sent me right away. Dr. Kupp’s been helping me put it all together. It requires being able to think in six dimensions!"

"Uh-huh. If anyone can do it, he can." Bud watched the little device wheeling around for a moment. "Does it do anything else, pal?"

"I’ve been experimenting with different configurations for the reactor plates. I’ll try another while you’re here. Maybe you’ll bring me luck." Tom entered the chamber and spent some time unscrewing and re-setting a small unit, about the size and shape of a game domino, that was firmly attached to the end of the rotor arm. It appeared to be made up of a number of tiny square "cells" arrayed in parallel. Sealing the door behind him, he rejoined Bud at the window and again released the brake mechanism. "While I’m getting readings, I’ll explain the general idea to you."

"Um—Tom?"

"Huh?"

"Should it be doing that?"

The young inventor glanced through the view pane and his jaw dropped open in astonishment. The device was whirling about its axis at tremendous speed—and accelerating frighteningly. The end of the arm was already whipping through the air with such unbelievable speed that it was starting to glow red from friction!

Tom reached for the brake lever. Before he could touch it, a sharp, shattering retort rang through Tom’s laboratory as a pair of tiny holes appeared in the test chamber’s observation pane and in the lab window looking out on the great underground hangar.

"Get down!" Bud shouted. "Somebody’s shooting at us!"

"Head down, skipper—don’t look over the window sill," Bud whispered tensely. "I’ll worm over to the door and peek around the side."

"Bud—" Heedless of his pal’s warning, Tom rose to his feet. "The danger’s over."

"Are you nuts? The shooter must still be out there!"

Tom smiled down at Bud. "There is no shooter, pal. But thanks for protecting me."

Bud rolled half over and posed his head on his elbowed arm. "Fine. So where did those holes come from?" He looked up skeptically—though he already assumed he was in the wrong.

Tom gestured at the test chamber window. "Look at the edges around the hole, and where the fragments fell. Something went from inside the chamber to outside! And the hole in the other window started in the lab and went through into the hangar."

Somewhat redfaced, Bud scrambled to his feet. "I see. You forgot to tell me your invention is designed to shoot its operator!"

"My invention broke," Tom retorted. "Or rather the testing apparatus did. The friction heat must’ve expanded the clamp, and the reactor chip went flying off faster than a speeding bullet. It’s massive enough to keep going for a few rebounds even after it shot through the windows."

"I take it you didn’t expect the thing to start turning so fast."

The young inventor gave a that’s-for-sure snort. "I was hoping for a slight increase. Somehow the reconfiguration keyed in to an effect that nobody anticipated."

Bud grinned. "Well, as a great inventor with deep-set blue eyes once said—no one can predict everything!"

That evening, supper on the stove, a doorbell-chime announced an expected guest at the Swifts’ attractive home. Tom’s vivacious younger sister Sandra admitted Harlan Ames, who had been head of the Enterprises plant security office for several years running. The lean, middle-aged man was a widower with a daughter Tom’s age. Whenever Dodie was away from Shopton attending college, the Swifts made certain to make Ames a frequent dinner guest.

"Let me take your hat, Uncle Har," Sandy offered.

"Thanks, kid. When I drag myself home to my own place, Dodie usually greets me with, So where ya been, Dad?"

"You can’t blame her for worrying," said Mr. Swift, looking in from the dining room. "Your job’s enough to turn anybody’s hair gray—even a teenager’s!"

Mrs. Swift, slender and as pretty as her blond daughter, had prepared one of her usual delicious meals. As usual, the current Swift mystery quickly became the main subject of dinner-table discussion.

"I can’t stand to think of what might have happened to Bob and Nina," Sandy remarked thoughtfully. "It must have been awful to have to break it to their families."

"I’m afraid it’s my job to face unpleasant facts," said Ames. "The Sea Charger may have been sunk."

"Sunk!" repeated Mrs. Swift, shocked by the idea. "But I suppose that would explain why all efforts to trace the ship have failed."

"I don’t agree with Harlan, Mom," Tom put in. "There’s just no way to sink something the size of an aircraft carrier in open water, in the middle of the Pacific, and not leave some sort of debris behind."

"Tom, if I were as optimistic as you always manage to be," Ames began, "—I’d be out of a job!" The remark brought a chuckle from Tom’s father.

"Why would anyone want to sink the Sea Charger anyway?" Sandy mused. "Isn’t it just some kind of research ship?"

"I don’t think ‘just’ is quite the word, sis," Tom replied. "The design we came up with for her is pretty sophisticated. She’s flat on top for aircraft landing, and her stern is a self-contained section that can be detached to use as a launch platform for missiles or small manned rockets. There’s all manner of scientific equipment and instrumentation below deck; and of course she’s atom-powered."

Mr. Swift took up the thread of conversation. "As far as I’m concerned, her most interesting feature is that she can be submerged like a submarine, huge as she is. Airtight panels slide shut over the deck, rather like the cover on one of those old roll-top desks."

"And it doesn’t leak—even a little?" asked Sandy mischievously.

"Not even," said Tom. "A bank of water repelatrons reduces the outside pressure almost to zero, and allow us to alter the ship’s buoyancy, as we do in those undersea ‘bubblevators’ at the hydrodome." The Swift Enterprises hydrodome, on the floor of the Atlantic, sustained the company’s helium extraction operation.

"So the question before the house remains—who gets the advantage in sinking, or stealing, the Sea Charger?" Harlan Ames declared.

"Someone who’s either threatened by a competing technology—or who wants to capture it for his own uses!" declared Tom abruptly. His eyes suddenly blazed as an idea struck him. "And whichever it was, I think I know who is behind all this!"

All eyes turned toward the young inventor.

"Tom, you mean you know who stole the Sea Charger?" Sandy demanded. "I haven’t even made a list of suspects!"

"I believe so," her brother replied, "a wealthy, unscrupulous Asian named Li Ching."

"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Swift in surprise. "The man who murdered all those gang members!"

The government-backed Swift expedition to the undersea archaeological site named Aurum City had been bedeviled by a mysterious, never-seen adversary known to international authorities as Comrade-General Li Ching. His agents had ruthlessly cut down a competing gang of criminals employed by a nation that had spurned Li’s organization.

"Actually, he’s a man without a country. Li was exiled by his own government when he tried to sell high-tech military secrets to other countries—some of which are active foes of the United States. He managed to escape the chopping block and flee, no one knows where."

"And in the meantime," added Harlan Ames, "he’s made himself a menace to the world. He’s on my short list, though I didn’t want to mention him. Although his name is unknown to the general public, intelligence reports indicate that Li Ching is carrying on what he calls ‘reprisal actions’ against top scientists of other countries."

"In other words," said Tom, "he plans to eliminate his scientific rivals after stealing their technologies. The Sea Charger would be a tempting target."

Sandy gasped as Tom described a few of Li Ching’s reputed exploits. "What a gruesome character to come up against! He sounds like a—a sort of international octopus!"

"He gets around," Tom agreed grimly.

Mr. Swift frowned. "Unfortunately, that would certainly explain the Sea Charger’s being not just stolen, but sunk," he murmured thoughtfully. "An act of pure destruction! It fits in with reports of Li Ching’s tactics, Tom."

"Of course Admiral Hopkins and the other officials already know our thinking on this," noted Ames. The security chief promised to check at once with the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington for any clues to Li Ching’s latest activities.

The meal proceeded for a time in worried silence. Then Tom’s mother said quietly, "Goodness, I hope you men aren’t becoming involved in another dangerous adventure. It’s a vain hope, but hope is hope." Outwardly brave and calm at all times, Anne Swift often felt pangs of fear for the safety of "her two inventors," and sympathized with the families of Harlan Ames and other Enterprises employees.

"I’ll match your vain hope to some useless advice. Don’t worry, Mom." Tom stood and gave her a quick hug. "I doubt if Li Ching would dare show his face in the United States."

"He’d better not!" Sandy declared. Her blue eyes sparkled with mischief as she added, "But if that creepy old pirate ever does, I’ll grab his skull and crossbones and hit him over the head with it!"

Tom chuckled. "Okay, San. If I see a chance, I’ll let you know."

Tom and Sandy tried to keep the conversation cheerful, but the rest of the evening was clouded by thoughts of the sinister Li Ching. All present knew that again and again, Tom’s scientific work had brought him into danger from enemies bent on stealing his inventions or plotting against his country.

The next day brought Tom face to face with his other mystery, the peculiar behavior of his subtrino reactor device. With Bud away on a delivery flight to Canada, there was nothing to lighten his mood or divert his obsessive concentration upon the problem. He sensed that the matter would prove crucial to the notion of a new mode of space propulsion. But where was the key?

Almost without thinking, he ended his day by walking the short distance home from the plant along the secluded road he and his father often used. He barely noticed the setting sun, or the pair of bright headlights approaching behind him. Suddenly an automobile horn blasted shrilly in his ear! Tom had been so deep in thought he almost jumped off the road.

A white compact whizzed past, then braked to a halt.

"Bash!" Tom yelled, laughing. "What’s the pitch—scaring a guy this way?"

The driver—a pretty girl with long dark hair flying in the breeze—flashed a coy smile at her victim and backed up. She was Bashalli Prandit, a Pakistani who lived with her brother’s family in Shopton and had become Sandy’s best friend. Tom considered her the most attractive date in Shopton. And certainly the most attentive.

"Daydreaming again, eh?" Bashalli teased. "You really had better watch that, professor! I could have been one of those wicked felons who find it fascinating to hit you over the head and kidnap you."

"I didn’t expect such distracting scenery." Tom grinned as he climbed in next to her. She blushed a little and stepped on the accelerator. As they started off, a bulky slat-sided truck roared by, bearing the label SHOPTON QUICKRENTAL. Bashi followed, both vehicles going at a brisk speed.

Tom’s instincts blared a warning. Why was the truck using the little road? The only stop ahead, before the road rejoined the highway, was Tom’s home. "Bashalli," Tom said gently, not wanting to scare her, "let’s slow a little and give the guy some space."

Without warning, the truck suddenly stopped short with a screech of powerful brakes. Bash gasped and swung the wheel hard, but it was impossible to avoid a crash. With a crunching impact the frail compact car rammed into the rear of the truck!

A minute went by before Tom fully regained his senses. He could feel a warm trickle of blood on the back of his neck. Tom brushed it away, still somewhat dazed. Then he heard a moan beside him.

Alarm over her safety helped shock Tom back to full consciousness. Bash was slumped against him, held up by her shoulder strap. Her eyes were closed and there was a shallow gash on her right temple that was bleeding. Tom shook her gently and chafed her wrists.

"Bash!" he repeated urgently. "Wake up!" As she opened her eyes, he asked, "Are you all right?"

"I—I hope so." She tried to smile. "I’m sorry, Thomas."

"It wasn’t your fault. That boneheaded truck driver slammed on his brakes without warning and we crashed into him!" For the first time, Tom realized that the truck was nowhere in sight. He scowled fiercely. "The guy cleared out without even offering to help us!"

"Oh please, Tom, let us be very honest with one another," protested the girl, voice slurry and weak. "Surely this was yet another deliberate attack on the genius inventor of Shopton. I am privileged to suffer collateral damage."

Tom did not try to reply. "No bones broken?" he inquired in sympathetic concern.

"G-guess not." Bashalli winced and touched her shoulder gingerly. "Surely I’m black and blue, though! The strap kept me safe, but my poor shoulder has no gratitude."

"It’s the cut on your head I’m concerned about," murmured the young inventor. "Let’s get it cleaned and bandaged."

"Such gallantry," Bash commented. Before Tom could reply, her expression changed abruptly. She had just noticed the red smear on the back of her friend’s collar. "Thomas! You’re hurt too!" she gasped, instantly forgetting her own bruises.

"Banged the back of my thick skull. It’s nothing."

But Bashalli insisted upon stanching the flow of blood with her handkerchief. As the young Pakistani concentrated on Tom’s injury, a red convertible drew up, stopped with a squeal of brakes, then pulled over to the side of the road just ahead of them.

"Hey! What gives?" It was Bud Barclay, on his way from the plant to dinner with Tom at the Swifts’ house. "Good night! Anyone hurt?"

He leapt out and came running toward them, giving a whistle of dismay when he saw that the front of Bash’s car had been smashed in.

"Barclay to the rescue!" Tom quipped. "You sure turned up at the right time. I’m afraid the Bash-mobile isn’t up to running."

Tom and Bash told him what had happened. Bud quickly checked Bashalli’s car and confirmed that it was no longer in driving condition. He then pushed it clear of the narrow roadway.

"Stay put, skipper!" Bud ordered when Tom tried to get out and help. Afterward Bud insisted upon driving the two victims to the office of Dr. Emerson in town, the Swifts’ family physician, who had late hours two nights of the week. Bud cellphoned ahead, and also called Tom’s family, assuring them that the injuries to Tom and Bashalli seemed minor.

Dr. Emerson examined and bandaged them. "You’re both all right, so far as I can tell," he announced. "No sign of any concussion. Bashalli, you received only a surface scratch which will heal up quickly. As for Tom here—I delivered him as a bouncing baby and he’s been bouncing ever since! You should rest quietly—at least through tomorrow night. That means in bed, young man!" the medic warned with a humorous shake of his finger at Tom.

"Oh, how nice for you, Tom!" teased Bashalli. "He just loves idle bed rest, Doctor."

The young inventor groaned, thinking of the loss of time from work. But he promised to comply.

Bud took Bash home and called a towing service to get her car. Then he drove Tom to his house.

Tom’s parents and Sandy paled at sight of Tom’s bandaged head. After hearing what had happened, they immediately and unanimously ordered him to bed. Bud walked upstairs with his woozy pal, calling down behind him: "Oh, and don’t worry about me, Sandy, I’m just fine!"

"Just stuff him into that bed, Buddo!" Sandy ordered.

"Good grief, you’d think I was facing major surgery!" Tom muttered as he changed into pajamas.

"Quiet, please! No griping allowed," Bud retorted with a chuckle, "or I’ll call in a surgeon to remove that bump of stubbornness." But as his chum climbed into bed, Bud became serious. "Tom, did you notice the license number of the truck?"

"Does anyone ever? But we did see the sign on the side. It belongs to Shopton QuickRental Company." Tom shot a questioning look at Bud. "Why?"

"Skipper, has it occurred to you that the crash might not have been an accident?"

Tom nodded thoughtfully. "I didn’t want to say anything in front of Bash, but she brought it up first."

"Well, I intend to check up and find out," Bud declared. "That driver might have planned to run you down, if Bash hadn’t happened to pick you up!"

Tom agreed this was possible. "It’s a tired old gimmick, but still pretty deadly. See what you can dig up, Bud."

The following morning, on his way to Enterprises, Bud stopped at the office of the Shopton QuickRental Company. He explained about the crash and asked for the names and addresses of all persons who had rented trucks from the company the day before.

Hoping that abject cooperation might avert a lawsuit, the manager was only too happy to oblige. Four persons had rented trucks, none of which had yet been returned. Two of the people were familiar to the manager and had left town the morning before on long-distance hauling jobs.

The third proved to be a construction man who claimed to have been at the site of a project during the time of Bash’s accident. After inspecting the rear end of his truck, Bud was satisfied that this was not the one which had been involved in the crash.

"That leaves one name," Bud said to himself. But when he checked out the renter, Gus Emden, he was told at the address given that no one there had ever heard of such a person. Grimly satisfied, Bud drove to the plant and reported this to Harlan Ames.

"Looks as though Emden’s our boy," Ames agreed. "Good work! I’ll alert the police and see if they can find him and the truck. But he probably used a phony name if he intended to cause an accident."

The second day after the accident, Dr. Emerson made an early visit at the Swift home and pronounced Tom fit to return to work. "I’m sure you could have gotten a better deal from your plant medic, Simpson. But I hear he’s on vacation."

The patient chuckled. "He deserves it. We put him through a lot!"

At Enterprises Tom sat down with his chief engineer, Hank Sterling, to see if he could manage some progress on the "challenge."

"I’ve looked over everything you gave me, boss—the subtrinos, your experiments, the whole shot." Hank’s brow creased. "I’m afraid this sort of hard-science theoretical stuff is a little out of my league as an engineer. Break it down for me a little, would you?"

Tom grinned. "I’m not so sure I get the in’s and out’s of it myself."

"I understand the basics—the fact that the particle can change from one form to another."

"It ‘flips’ when it passes close to a certain kind of configuration of nuclei," explained the young inventor. He made a sketch on a notebook page as he talked. "The cosmic reactor, as I’ve named it, is built up of small segments—cells. What I was testing the other day was one of ’em, though in miniature."

"I thought as much."

"Now each cell has two plates, A and B. The A-plate is coated with nano-sized granules of ultradense neutron matter, which the Citadel provides us with for experimentation."

Hank looked surprised. "Neutron matter? I know enough of physics to know that that stuff is super heavy!"

"That’s true enough," replied the youth. "If we used more than a molecule-thick film, any propulsion system using it would be too heavy to get off the ground!" Resuming his account, Tom said, "When the subtrinos shoot through plate-A, the presence of the compacted neutrons causes them to transform into their alternative fermion state. When they hit plate-B, which is coated with Inertite, they bounce off and transfer their momentum to the reactor frame, giving it a push."

Hank nodded but retained a frown. "A push, but a very weak one, as I understand it."

"That’s the mystery here, Hank. What was there about that last arrangement of the two plates that caused such an over-the-top effect? If we can figure that out, we’ll have enough thrust to drive a spacecraft along." He handed Hank the monitoring data on the series of experiments, and the young engineer promised to focus on the question.

Driving home after work, Tom ran a few errands in town, then meandered along past the lakefront park in his sports car. The end of the day had left Tom feeling anything but hopeful. Every attack on the subtrino problem seemed to lead up a blind alley. Yet he couldn’t help feeling that its solution would lead to a space-travel breakthrough.

As Tom slowly drove past the widest section of the grassy park, he saw several young boys trying to fly a kite. But the boys were having trouble keeping it aloft. Recognizing one of them, Tom pulled his car over on impulse and got out.

"Hey, there’s Tom Swift! He’ll help us!" cried Jason Barstow, the son of an Enterprises employee. The group of boys excitedly hailed the celebrated young inventor.

Tom chuckled and strolled out across the field to meet them. "What’s the matter, Jazzy? Won’t she go up?"

"Sure won’t!" Jason complained. "And we spent all afternoon building this kite. Look—it’s made outta Tomasite plastic! You’re an expert, Tom. What’s wrong?"

"From the way it’s sagging up there, I’d say you’ve got overkill on your stabilizer, gang—the tail’s too long and heavy." Tom reeled in the kite and tore off part of the rag tail. In a few minutes he had the red kite soaring high in the blue, then turned it back to Jason.

"Oh, boy! How about that?" cheered Kenny Smith gleefully. "Just like magic!"

Tom grinned. "No magic about it," he explained. "Your kite was just tail-heavy. What makes a kite stay up, anyhow—ever stop to think?"

"The wind," Jazzy volunteered. "There’s plenty of wind from the lake."

"What else?"

Tom’s question brought puzzled looks. The boys could only shrug blankly.

"Well, for instance, what will happen if you let go of the string?" Tom persisted.

"The kite’ll fly away," said Kenny.

"And probably keep going forever!" Jazzy Barstow added. "At least till the wind dies down."

"Drop the string and see what happens," Tom suggested.

The boy hesitated, then let go. At once the kite started falling toward the ground. Jazzy quickly grabbed the string again and reeled in. As soon as the cord was taut, the kite seemed to regain its lift from the wind.

"I get it now, Mr. Swift!" piped up Joe Spinzo, a bright-eyed eight-year-old. "We need the string pulling on the kite, too, to make it fly."

"Smart thinking, Joe!" Tom approved. "You see, there are three things that happen when a kite goes up in the air. Watch."

Tom picked up a stick and scraped a diagram on a bare spot of ground. "First," he pointed out, "there’s the force of gravity which tries to pull the kite down. Second, the wind blows along the field and pushes the kite away from you. Third, you pull on the string into the wind, which makes the kite move upward in a curved arc. The string enables the kite to make use of the wind force so as to overcome the force of gravity."

"Gee, that’s simple the way you explain it, Tom!" said Jazzy.

Tom grinned. "Because the string holds back the kite against the wind, the wind bounces off it like a rubber ball. It sort’ve runs into itself as it bounces back, which makes a layer of extra pressure on the down-angled surface. If the kite were just carried along by the wind, you’d lose that pressure right away.

"Actually, it’s just like the pressure differential that gives lift to an airplane wing. When you pull on the kite string you supply the extra force needed to keep the kite up—in the same way an aircraft engine supplies the force to keep the plane up. No engine, no flight—no string, no flight."

The boys seemed to enjoy having the problem laid out by none other than Tom Swift. After chatting with them a few minutes longer, Tom asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up.

"Space pilots!" the trio chorused.

"Glad to hear that, guys," Tom said. "It’s one of the best jobs in the world."

He waved good-bye and resumed his lazy homeward drive. He found himself wondering if the boys’ dreams would ever come true. "Not if we can’t beat the cost factor in space travel!" Tom reflected ruefully. "Kite flying is sure cheaper."

Kites! The word exploded in Tom’s mind. He almost hit the brakes as an exciting idea struck him full force. Instead of regarding cosmic rays as a dangerous drawback to space flight, why not make use of cosmic subtrinos just as a kite makes use of the wind?

It suddenly struck the young inventor that the pressure-effect of the rebounding subtrinos interacting with one another during his experiment might have caused the enormous increase in the resultant force. Could it be? I’ll build a brand-new experimental craft on this principle, Tom thought elatedly, and even call it a space kite! The heightened force of the "captured" subtrinos would move the spaceship, just as the wind moved the boys’ kite aloft! Tom reasoned that he had accidentally produced the effect when he had rearranged the plates in his experiment.

At home Tom was quick to discuss the revolutionary approach with his father. Setting aside their joking "rivalry," the young inventor explained his space-kite idea.

"A spaceship propelled by cosmic radiation?" Mr. Swift was at once startled and intrigued. "And yet, why not? Tom, I believe you have a really promising idea there."

Then the scientist frowned. "The only trouble is you’d need still another source of energy—something to provide a force for the cosmic radiation to react against. Otherwise, as the craft accelerates freely, the particle impacts will convey less and less momentum, and the layer of pressure will dissipate."

"In other words," his son agreed thoughtfully, "something to take the place of the kite string on an ordinary air kite."

"I’m sure you’ll find a way, son." Damon Swift gave the young inventor an encouraging pat on the back. "We both know that any major scientific breakthrough takes time. Just stick with it."

"I will, Dad. I know it’ll take time." But as Mr. Swift walked away, Tom’s mind added a silent subclause.

Would his enemies—including the ruthless Li Ching—allow him the time he needed? The project was at their mercy. And mercy was not their calling card!

IT WAS afternoon several days later when Tom was able to take the basic ideas for his space kite, hand-drawn sketches supplementing the precise specifications shown on Tom’s design flatscreen, to Arvid Hanson. Hanson was the expert who turned out scale models and midget test prototypes of the Swifts’ inventions as the first step past the idea stage. He was not only a gifted modelmaker, but an experienced electronics engineer and technician

Tom greeted the good-natured hulking six-footer and his assistant technician Linda Ming, then spread out his papers on a countertop.

"What’s the assignment this time, Tom?" Linda asked. "And when do you want it?"

"By yesterday." Tom grinned. "But don’t break your necks, you two. We’ll work on this together. Take a look."

Tom showed them the rough drawings of the space kite, after which he downloaded and printed the computer files.

"Aha, your compact car for space commuters!" joked Linda. "It’s about time we shared our smog and congestion with the moon and the stars."

Hanson was fired with enthusiasm. "Boy, this makes space travel look like fun!" he exclaimed.

The design of the space kite was beautifully simple. The pilot and copilot, with their control and communications equipment, would be enclosed in the forward-facing part by a transparent oval-shaped dome of durable Tomaquartz, coated with Inertite and tinted to protect the occupants from the glare of the sun. Behind their seats, the dome was partitioned off by the flat "screen layers" of Tom’s cosmic reactor—the device for converting cosmic subtrino radiation into motive power. The five-sided screen was made up of many rows of the small component cells, which were square in shape and open at the rear to the spatial void.

Linda Ming’s humorous remark had a basis in fact, for the craft was no bigger than a compact car standing up on end. Tom pointed out that the space kite would rest upright on three slender, graceful landing supports while on the ground awaiting launch. "The full-sized model will be powered by a single Type IV Swift solar battery—light as a pop-up toaster! But it’ll supply sufficient current to run the basic components and the equipment in the pilot cabin. Everything else will be completely passive and unpowered, like a sailboat or a kite.

"But don’t worry, this one doesn’t have to be a working model," Tom assured them with a smile. "It’s mainly a guide for Hank Sterling and Art Wiltessa to use for reference as they turn out the life-sized test version." He added that the final version would have some differences anyway. "I still have to come up with my electronic ‘kite string’ to stabilize the craft and allow the cosmic reactor to work at full efficiency. And it’ll have to function without a big power drain," he noted musingly.

"If you’re ready, boss, we three can get to work on it at once," Arv urged.

"The Big Swede’s like a kid at Christmas with a new model set to glue together," remarked Linda teasingly.

"Dragon Lady’s absolutely right," declared Hanson. "You won’t need to pay my salary on this one, Tom—she’s a beaut!"

He began machining the metal parts from lightweight magnesium alloy. Tom, meanwhile, shaped the glittering dome of the astronaut compartment out of transparent Tomasite plastic on a molding press, while Linda began crafting the cabin’s interior setup. Within hours, the finished model of the space kite was hanging from the ceiling of the modelmaking workshop on fine plastic threads.

"I’ve got to agree with Arv," stated Linda. "Prettiest thing I’ve worked on in months." The three stood quietly for a moment, pausing to admire the result of their craftsmanship.

At that moment the outer door of the lab-workshop swung open in response to the signal of an electronic key, coming from outside in the hallway. A food cart was rolled in, followed by a stomach, followed by Chow Winkler. "Here ya go, folky-dokes, afternoon energy food!" The plump westerner served meals and extra snacks to the Swift executive staff whenever they were busy in their customized work areas and labs.

"Oh, hey there, Tom! Didn’t know you’d be here. But I allus bring around more’n enough," he boomed cheerfully with his Texas-gravel voice. This afternoon, to go with his scruffy cowboy boots and white ten-gallon hat, the former range cook wore a green-and-red shirt with a heat-lightning theme.

Apparently Chow was in a jaunty mood. His tall hat was pulled so low over his eyes that it prevented him from seeing the suspended space-kite model. "Hey, watch it, Chow!" Tom yelled.

An instant later there was a loud whump! as Chow collided head-on with the space kite! The glittering model crashed to the floor as Chow stumbled back in alarm. He ended up sitting on the floor next to the downed model. "Brrr-rand my coyote cutlets, what sneakin’ varmint hit me?"

Tom and Arv helped Chow to his feet as Linda giggled helplessly. Then Tom grinned. "Young feller, you just sabotaged my latest invention!"

Chow stared around dazedly. "I’m sure sorry, Tom. Looks like I knocked it all galley-west. Didn’t do my brand-new somber-ayro any good, neither."

Luckily the kite model was undamaged and Tom hung it up again. Chow straightened out his askew hat, then brushed it off. "What’s this new contraption o’ yours, Tom?"

"A space kite for astronauts. It uses cosmic radiation for propulsion."

"Y’don’t say." Chow’s leathery face assumed a skeptical expression. "It’s no blame wonder they call ’em nuts, goin’ up inta space jest to fly a kite."

"Not nuts—astronauts." Tom tried hard to suppress a smile because he did not want to embarrass the kindhearted old Westerner. "Voyagers to the stars! They’ll travel inside it."

"Humph." Chow stared hard at the kite model for a few moments, then gave up trying to understand it. "Waa-al, it made me see stars, all right. But I dunno if I’d care to go ridin’ up yonder in sech a flimsy rig. I guess these here cosmic aster-nauts are the ones you were talkin’ about th’ other day, the folks that’ll flit back and forth while they work up there."

Tom’s eyes turned dreamy as he nodded. "That’s right. If my cosmic-ray propulsion device pans out in actual use, those ‘cosmic astronauts’ may eventually change the way the whole world works!"

"That’s nice. Long as the world still needs a cook er two t’ keep ’em all fed an’ happy!"

After snacking Arv went off to acquaint Sterling and Wiltessa with the details of the new spacecraft model. Afterwards Tom hopped onto the moving-ramp system that criss-crossed Swift Enterprises and headed for the office in the administration building that he shared with his father.

Mr. Swift looked up from his desk with pleasure as Tom strode in. "You look pretty upbeat this afternoon, Tom. Has the inventing bug bit you?"

"Just a little nip," Tom replied with a chuckle, "but I believe I’m closing in on the answer to the final part of the space kite."

Mr. Swift grinned proudly at his celebrated son. "Let’s hear it."

"Briefly, my space kite will use a gravity concentrator," Tom went on. "Sort of a repelatron in reverse, at least as far as what it does. My gravity concentrator will make use of the attracting force between objects, rather than producing a repelling force."

"Mm-hmm." Damon Swift couldn’t help looking a tad skeptical. "Control of the gravitational force has been a dream for centuries, son. Few scientists think it’s possible."

"That’s out-of-date thinking, Dad—very ‘old millennium’! We already know for a fact that gravity can be controlled. The space friends do it!"

The thoughtful nod of Tom’s father conceded the point. With its every whirl about the earth, the phantom satellite Nestria confirmed that the never-seen extraterrestrials with whom Tom communicated had mastered the basic forces of nature. They had not only moved the tiny moonlet into orbit, but had established a livable gravitational field there. "But son, we’ve never been able to understand how that ‘gravity cube’ device of theirs functions. We’ve never even been able to move it!"

"I know," Tom agreed. "But I was able to make a more thorough study of its effects, at least, on my last trip up there. We know it generates some sort of gyrating electromagnetic flux—a real whirlpool of force—that uses the Lunite veins in the ground as some kind of antenna."

"And you believe you now understand how to use the principle to create gravity directly?"

"Not create it, Dad. The gravity cube on Nestria doesn’t actually create gravity, after all, but distorts and concentrates the existing gravitational field like a lens. I hope to invent a similar sort of device for increasing the gravitational pull exerted by the earth or any other heavenly body on my space kite. By aiming the device in the right direction—say at the earth or moon or sun or any suitable planet—the pilot will be able to produce a strong pull to act as a ‘kite string’ for his craft."

"Hmm. Most ingenious." Mr. Swift frowned, adding dryly: "And good luck, Tom—of the ‘you’ll need it’ variety, I’m afraid. Even with a few hints from alien technology, it certainly won’t be easy to devise such a gravity concentrator. Also, to be effective, the device would have to step up the gravitational attraction to a strength thousands or millions of times as great as normal."

"Yes," Tom admitted, "and on minimal battery power. I haven’t got it licked yet. But as I said, I think I’m making progress with my gravitational-extensorizer—my gravitex."

"I wish you luck," Mr. Swift said. "Any kind of luck that works."

Tom pursued the frustrating quest throughout the day and into the evening, taking home with him his notes and some of the circuitry and equipment he had been experimenting with. The problem brought out the inventorly stubbornness in him. Like a bulldog with a bone he couldn’t bear to set it aside.

Bud was visiting, as he usually was—often for dinner. While the young pilot joined Sandy in the living room playing with her cockatiel Featherbee, Tom headed out to his home workshop and lab, a room addition which adjoined the garage. His hands were full of electronics apparatus.

As he assembled the materials on his workbench, the young inventor smiled. "Guess I’ll have to play this by ear," he thought half-aloud. "I’m trying to do something I can’t even fully explain to myself!"

Tom reflected that gravity can be considered as a form of radiation even though its nature is not yet clearly understood by scientists. Its spreading forces were linked somehow to distortions or "bends" in the invisible fabric of space itself.

"But we’ve been dealing with that sort of thing for a long time now, ever since we discovered the spectronic wave-field and harnessed it to the repelatron," he said to himself. "There’s got to be a way to concentrate the strength of the G-force radiation by electromagnetic action. If the space friends can do it, I can too—darn it!"

Tom relaxed and tried to allow himself to be guided by his scientific intuitions, as if by a half-forgotten dream. First, he shaped the basic chassis of the gravitex on a metal-spinning lathe. As it would be producing a directional effect, he gave it the form of a gimball-mounted cone. Next, he molded a number of lightweight plastic balls and removed the air inside them with a vacuum pump. He then wound the balls, just as if he were winding up balls of knitting wool, with many turns of fine, insulated wire "doped" with fibers of certain "rare-earth" elements, which Tom knew to have unique magnetic and semi-conductor properties

Guess I’ll call these gravitol spheres, Tom decided, jotting down this name on his working sketch.

Working rapidly, he enclosed each gravitol sphere in a shell of Lunite metal from Nestria. The several small spheres, interconnected, were mounted inside the hollow direction cone, and the entire assemblage was connected by cable to the electronic modulator component through a power control unit. He affixed the gravitex-wannabe, flared end pointing downward, to a bracket above the workbench and reached for the power knob. When power was turned on, the flowing electricity would create a rapidly rotating magnetic flux inside the gravitol spheres.

To measure the result, Tom had attached the hinged bracket arm to a spring balance. So far, so good, Tom thought warily. Now to see if my idea works at all!

He switched on power and adjusted the voltage reading of the control unit. Instantly the needle of the balance dial swung downward.

Tom gave a cry of delight. "It’s working!" The gravitex was concentrating and magnifying the gravitational force acting upon its own suspended mechanism!

"I want Bud and San to see this!" Tom muttered triumphantly. He turned the knob on the control unit further, stepping up the voltage. The balance needle responded by swinging still further around the dial.

At the same time, Tom became aware of a strange sensation in his head. He felt giddy and disoriented. Hunh! What’s the matter with me? he wondered in distracted bewilderment.

The young inventor had a weird feeling of going up and up in space. He grabbed the workbench for support. His eyes would not focus right, and the workshop around him seemed to be listing over on its side.

A second later Tom blacked out completely!

"HEY, TOM! Where are you?"

Bud Barclay had just poked his head into the workshop. Getting no answer to his shout, he strode forward to see what was making a hum. Bud gasped when he saw Tom sprawled unconscious on the floor beside his workbench.

"Good night! What happened to him?" Fearing that his chum might have been electrocuted, Bud ran toward the young inventor, flicking off the power switch as he passed it. He slightly raised Tom’s head and felt his pulse, then placed an ear to his chest. "Breathing, thank goodness!"

Bud sprinted back into the house. Knowing that Tom’s parents had gone out for the evening, he grabbed a first-aid kit and yelled for Sandy to join him.

But by the time the two frantic young people had returned to the workshop, Tom was sitting up woozily, rubbing his head. To Bud’s and Sandy’s immense relief, there was no sign of injury, not even a bruise from falling to the floor. "I’m okay," Tom said faintly. "Guess I scared you. Sorry."

"Don’t be sorry, Tomonomo, just stop doing it!" reprimanded Sandy. "Someday—"

Her brother gave a twitch of a wry smile. "San, let’s not talk about ‘someday,’ huh?"

"Hey! You really had us frantic, pal!" Bud said. "What were you doing? And what’s that rig on your workbench, anyway?"

Tom stared blankly for a moment, then grinned as memory returned. "Oh, you mean my new gravitex stabilizer." Briefly, he explained its function, and Bud and Sandy silently decided it would be best to let him talk.

When he was through Sandy smiled and nodded at Bud. "I don’t know if any of that made sense, but at least he can talk."

Tom assumed a pitiful look. "I guess my invention knocked me out."

"Oh boy," moaned Bud. "They not only shoot at you, they knock you out!"

"The gravity concentrator apparently acted as a convex magnifying lens does when you focus a beam of sunlight with it."

"I don’t understand," Sandy put in.

"Well, have you ever noticed how the lens creates a ring of shadow around the focused spot of light?" When she and Bud both nodded, Tom went on, "The gravity concentrator did the same thing—that is, it created a ‘gravity shadow’ around the test stand. I was working within that shadow, which meant that my gravity, or earth weight, was lessened, as it would if I had been floating in outer space. My inner ear couldn’t handle it—made me so giddy that I blacked out."

Bud scratched his head, then chuckled. "It’s still a puzzle to me, but I guess it’s a good thing I turned off that switch. Otherwise, I’d have gone slightly feather-headed myself!"

"You sure would have," Tom agreed. "Thanks to both of you for rescuing me!" With a happy grin the young inventor bounded to his feet. "One good thing—at least my gravitex works! All I have to do now is fix the test setup, so I won’t conk out again next time I try it."

"Either that or I’d better get you some iron pills to weigh you down, big brother," Sandy quipped. She added: "But Tom, if all this means what I think it does, it’s just fantastic!"

The next morning Tom put together a more sophisticated model of his gravitex with the assistance of Hank Sterling. At noon Chow brought the two young men a lunch of hot chicken sandwiches and cherry pie. The veteran ranch cook was curious about the invention.

"Brand my cactus salad, what’s that contraption?" he asked, scrutinizing the metal cone. "Looks like a fancy brooder for raisin’ biddies!"

Tom could not suppress a smile, and Hank didn’t bother to try. "Actually it’s a—well, a sort of weight-reducing machine, as it turned out."

"Hot ziggety!" the hefty chef exclaimed. "How about me usin’ it first, boss?"

Tom told him the truth before the joke went any further. The cook went off with his lunch cart, mystified but impressed.

As the two finished their dessert, Hank commented, "It wasn’t hard to fix the machine to keep the operator out of the gravity shadow, Tom. But it does bring up a question. Why couldn’t you make use of that G-force inverter effect to propel your spacecraft? In other words, a real antigravity drive!"

Tom shook his head. "I’m afraid we’re still a long way from what most people think of when they talk about antigravity—making things fall upward and so forth. It’s one thing to slightly shift or distort the energy-stresses of spacetime in a small region, but to literally turn the dimensional fabric inside-out would take even more power than my space solartron. And you know how power mad that baby is!"

Later in the day, while Tom was working alone, Bud paid him a visit. When his friend demonstrated the improved gravitex, Bud was astounded to see how much its weight was increased on the suspended balance beam.

"This is the ‘string’ for my space kite," Tom explained. "I’ll be able to step up the gravitational attraction many thousands of times."

"You mean the poor astronauts will end up weighing a few tons or so?"

"Don’t worry, pal. The amplified G-force is focused on the innards of the machine itself."

"I still haven’t seen this space kite of yours," Bud reminded the young inventor. "Or are you waiting until we scoot off into space on a test flight?"

"Hey, that’s right," Tom said. "I’ll take you over and show you the model. But if—"

Tom’s phone bleeped. It was Harlan Ames calling from his office. "Glad I found you, Tom."

"Any clues yet on the Sea Charger?" Tom asked the security chief with a meaningful glance Bud’s way.

Tom could sense Ames shaking his head. "Not yet—or rather, not definitely. But it’s pretty certain that the crash that happened to you and Bashalli was no accident." Ames said that the rented truck had been found by the State Police abandoned on the highway. "As I told you before, the guy who called himself ‘Gus Emden’ has vanished into the woodwork. The police think he wore a disguise, including a wig, when he rented the truck. No usable fingerprints on the papers, either. And of course the truck itself was wiped clean, bashed bumper and all."

Tom’s jaw clenched at the news. It was clearer than ever that some deadly enemy was at work against the Swifts. "I guess I’m not surprised, Harlan. Any evidence that he might be working for Li Ching?"

"Some circumstantial evidence, if you’d care to hear from my gut. I think this Emden character is the same man who shot that mob-type—the one who knocked you out in the woods next to the Mansburg road."

Earlier in the year, while Tom and Swift Enterprises were embroiled in preparations for the undersea trip to Aurum City, a troop of hired mob figures had stalked the young inventor. He had been lured off the road, then knocked cold. It was then that Tom had had his first taste of Li Ching’s ruthless methods. Tom’s assailant, viewed by Li’s group as the employee of a competing interest, had been shot dead by an unknown person while Tom had lain unconscious. "What you say is sure logical," said the young inventor slowly. "The guy must be Li’s local agent in Shopton."

"Just a sec, Tom—got a buzz on my other line." A long pause followed, then Ames came back on. "Get this, skipper. Our videophone station on the West Coast just received a shortwave call from a freighter, the Magcandong, bound for San Francisco out of the Philippines. The ship’s operator was answering our broadcasts asking for information about the Sea Charger."

"They saw something?"

"Heard something. Says he picked up a strange signal yesterday—a Chinese voice speaking in Cantonese dialect, which the radioman understands. He thinks his receiving the signal was some sort of atmospheric freak, which happens now and then, and the voice kept fading in and out. But it mentioned some latitude and longitude numbers fairly clearly, then finished with: ‘You must meet us at midnight to put our fast captive in the hidden—’ But that was all."

As Bud watched keenly, Tom’s eyes flashed with excitement. "Harlan, that word ‘fast’ may be their code word for ‘Swift.’ And ‘fast captive’ could have referred to the captured Sea Charger!"

"Yes." Ames spoke with grave firmness. "And also, Tom, it could mean you personally are in danger!"

TOM’S deep-set eyes stared ahead. His jaw set resolutely as he said, "I’m prepared for danger, whatever it is. Harlan, that message in Cantonese is our best lead yet."

"Obviously, it could tie in with Li Ching," Ames agreed. "The man is Chinese, and has probably surrounded himself with a gang that speaks to him in his own language."

Tom nodded to himself. After finishing his conversation with Ames, he dialed George Dilling, the plant’s communications chief, and asked him to try to put him directly in touch with the radioman on the Magcandong.

"All set. Go ahead," Dilling reported a few minutes later.

Tom identified himself to the radio operator and asked for any further information on the source of the strange signal.

"I cannot say precisely, sir," the Filipino operator replied, selecting his words carefully. "However, we did pick up the same wavelength twice again, last night and this morning, although not as clearly. I could only make out a phrase here and there."

"Could you get the gist of what was being said?"

"Perhaps so. If you wish my opinion, I think one party was asking about—please pardon me—about ‘keeping the prisoners alive.’ One was saying yes, the other, no. There was a phrase, ‘must remain beneath for now,’ and one later with a word I do not recognize, ‘the fool in Shah Tun,’ if you see."

Tom gasped. Shah Tun—Shopton!

"Oh yes, and one more thing, a single word in Cantonese, fanshen. I am not certain of the meaning." The operator added, "Sir, it is my belief, taking into consideration the elapsed time between these separate transmissions and the change in reception strength as I reoriented the antenna, that the ship must be proceeding on a course almost due north from the coordinates mentioned. But of course that is only a guess."

"It’s good enough! Many thanks for your help," Tom said. "Please keep us informed if you pick up anything more, won’t you?"

"Of course, we shall be most pleased to co-operate, sir," the Filipino radioman replied as he signed off.

Tom turned to his lab computer and fed in the positional coordinates received by the Magcandong operator in the first partial message. The point was in the northern Bering Sea between Saint Lawrence Island off Alaska and the Siberian coastal town of Provideniya. The Russian name of the town made Tom smile ruefully. "We’ve gone from ‘disappointment’ to ‘providence’!" he told Bud. Tom extended a great-circle course heading northward from the fix.

"What do you make of it, skipper?" Bud asked.

Tom frowned uncertainly. "If that information from the radioman is right, it sure looks like the suspects are heading up the Bering Strait toward the Chukchi Sea. That’s right at the edge of the Arctic icecap."

Tom zoomed in on the detail in the video map, which was constructed from satellite photography. The young inventor studied the chart closely for a few moments. Suddenly his eyes narrowed as he noticed a cluster of specks on the map which he had previously overlooked.

"See something?" Bud asked.

"Maybe."

After bringing up the navigation charts for that area, Tom exclaimed, "Flyboy, I have a hunch! Before they reach the margin of the ice, they’ll be passing near a small formation of rocks hardly big enough to be called an island." Tom pointed out the formation on the map. "According to the navigation charts, it’s usually shrouded in ice-fog—and would make an ideal hide-out for pirates."

"Tom, I like the way you think!" exclaimed Bud as he clapped his pal on the back. "When do we leave?"

"Right away." But then Tom hesitated and added, "If we see any craft or structures with Chinese-type lettering on them, it’d be useful to have a translator along." He picked up the telephone and called Linda Ming in Arv’s workshop. After explaining the mission he had in mind, Tom asked her if she would care to accompany him and Bud on a scouting flight that would probably last twelve hours or so, all tolled.

"Chief, you know I’d do anything I can for Bob and Nina and the others. I’ve picked up a little about calligraphy and so on; but the fact is, I was born in good old Kansas and can barely speak the language of my honorable ancestors, much less read it," she explained apologetically. "But listen, what about my big brother Felix? He’s into all that old-country stuff! I’m sure he’d be glad to do it."

Consulting his employee directory, Tom called Felix Ming, a Chinese-American engineer employed in the Enterprises aircraft development division. "Felix, how’d you like to take a quick jaunt overnight up toward Alaska?" Tom asked, explaining that his sister had recommended him. "I’m going on a secret mission. If it pays off, I may need a Chinese interpreter."

"Sounds most exciting," Felix replied with a chuckle. "I shall consider myself lucky to be included!"

"Good!" Over the phone, Tom briefed the young-looking, slender Chinese American on the sobering purpose of the flight.

Shortly before four o’clock that afternoon, the three friends rendezvoused in the cavernous hangar beneath the Enterprises airfield and climbed aboard the mighty Sky Queen. The huge overhead doors were mechanically flung aside and in minutes the three-decker Flying Lab was airborne and heading north of west over the American continent.

A sparkly polar darkness had fallen long before they reached the tiny rock formation near the Bering Strait. "Boy, those hunks of rock don’t amount to much. No wonder the formation is just a speck on the map," Bud muttered. "This is going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack."

"Now they tell me!" Felix Ming groaned, but his eyes twinkled merrily in his round face. Felix was liked by everyone at the plant for his never-failing good nature.

"Don’t worry." Tom winked at Felix. "Bud’s my navigator on this flight, so it’s his problem. If he lands us in the drink, we’ll sue him!"

"A consoling thought," Felix retorted with a chuckle.

As they neared the location of the small rocky islets, Tom turned off the skyship’s lights, not wishing to be seen. They had nosed into an overcast, with the sea visible only as a dim heaving shadow far below them.

Tom directed Bud to take the controls and hover above the overcast on the ship’s jet lifters. "Come on, Felix, let’s take a closer look in the cycloplane." The SwiftStorm, Tom’s ultrasonic cycloplane, was a highly maneuverable jetcraft of revolutionary design. Like the Sky Queen, it could hover like a hummingbird and was capable of vertical as well as horizontal flight.

The elevator deck-platform lowered the cycloplane from the Queen’s aerial hangar, and Tom used the wingless craft’s superfast rotating cylinders to lift off smoothly and then drop toward the ocean. "I fear we’ll see very little of interest in this darkness," murmured Felix.

"I can’t turn on the searchlights, unfortunately. The ice particles in the air would just reflect the glare back in our faces," Tom explained tensely. "But it may be better just above the waves, where it’s warmer."

As Tom swooped lower, more could be seen. Nevertheless, the tiny islets were like scattered lumps of coal and showed no sign of habitation or activity.

Suddenly a distant light flickered into view further to the north, then another next to it. The searchers both cried out in surprise as a whole constellation of pinpoint lights suddenly appeared. The lights were clustered together, but revealed no clear outline. "It appears we’ve found something," Felix said in an uncertain voice. "But what is it?—a single ship or a bunch of small boats? Tom, could it be the Sea Charger herself?"

"I can’t tell how big it is yet." Tom checked his radarscope. To his surprise, he could pick up nothing on the screen. "Looks as though we’ll have to go find out in person," he said in a puzzled voice.

Tom actuated the tail jets and sent the SwiftStorm zooming like a javelin above the waves. Luckily the winds had abated and the waves were not high. They covered the miles to the horizon in seconds—and the lights ahead suddenly vanished!

"Hey! Wh-what gives?" Felix cried out in alarm.

Tom instantly slowed the cycloplane. It was an unpleasant sensation, moving through the inky darkness with no longer even a pinpoint of light as a guide. Overhead, too, all was dark except for a faint, eerie moonglow glimmering through the clouds in one part of the sky.

"There’s got to be something out there, Felix," declared Tom in bewildered frustration. Again he probed the darkness with the plane’s radar. At first the sweep once again detected nothing. But presently the scope revealed a huge object dead ahead.

"Good night!" Tom exclaimed. "Where’d that come from?"

Throwing caution to the winds, Tom switched on the cycloplane’s powerful fuselage searchlights. A massive glittering iceberg lay jutting up from the water directly in their course! A disastrous collision seemed only moments away!

Tom gunned the lift-cylinder engines and hauled back on the stick. The cycloplane soared aloft, barely clearing the huge berg.

"I guess you might call that a close squeak!" Tom mopped the cold beads of perspiration that had burst out on his forehead.

Even Felix’s mellow voice sounded strained as he murmured, "For a moment I feared we were about to meet our honorable ancestors sooner than I had expected!"

"What I don’t understand is why the radarscope didn’t pick the doggone thing up sooner," Tom complained. "But I suppose we should just be thankful we did spot it in time."

"I am most definitely thankful!"

They flew back and forth over the area a while longer, continuing to check their navigational position. But they caught no further glimpse of the mysterious lights, and the radar revealed no objects other than the iceberg and the rocky islets miles behind them. "One thing more," Tom said.

Hovering a few yards above the water, Tom lowered a small sonarscope transceiver into the frigid sea. As the device pulsed out its subocean signal, Tom studied the bounceback on the monitor. He rotated the transceiver antenna, slowly panning the depths all the way to the horizon.

Tom and Felix stiffened with excitement. A moving spot of light had appeared on the scope! "Can’t see it from this distance, but we’re pointing right toward the iceberg," noted the young inventor.

"But that blip, surely, is not merely the submerged part of the berg," Felix objected. "It is much too small, and moving."

"If my guess pans out—yep! There it goes!" Tom pointed at the screen. The strange blip had slid sideways across the screen at amazing speed—and disappeared completely!

"You have seen this before? But what can it be?"

Tom shook his head. "Chow calls it a ghost. Maybe he’s right!"

Radioing Bud, Tom ascended to the Flying Lab and made a deft landing on the hangar’s platform. Returning to the control compartment, Tom briefly explained what he and Felix had observed. "Now," he concluded, "let’s take the Queen for a look at that iceberg from up high. The Swift Searchlight will cut right through the ice fog with hardly any reflection."

They were not surprised to find that, once again, the mountain of ice failed to register on the radarscope. Hovering in position at two thousand feet, Tom aimed and activated the giant searchlight.

Gazing down through the cockpit viewpane, Tom’s eyes grew wide. "This can’t be!" he cried.

The sea was bare. The huge iceberg had vanished completely—as completely as the lost Sea Charger!

SHORTLY after Tom and his crew had left on their mission to the north, stocky Phil Radnor, Harlan Ames’s assistant, came rushing into the plant security office, a scrap of paper in his hand. He slapped the torn-off sheet down on his boss’s desk.

"What is it?" Ames demanded.

"The plant switchboard receptionist took an outside call, a guy who wouldn’t identify himself. He insisted that she take down this message word for word and get it to Security immediately."

"Right. We get a lot of these, Rad—from the international crank-and-prank community." But Ames picked up the note and read it over carefully.

YOU SEEK THE DRIVER OF A TRUCK WITH A DENTED REAR BUMPER. THIS NIGHT HE SHALL BE WAITING AT THE DISU.S.ED BUILDING AT 449 WILVERTON ROAD TO MEET WITH A MAN NAMED CLEGGMAN. HE HAS NEITHER SEEN NOR SPOKEN TO THIS MAN. CLEGGMAN IS INDISPOSED AND WILL NOT ARRIVE.

STAND AT THE BOTTOM OF THE STEPS TO THE MAIN DOOR. FACE THE STREET AND PUT YOUR RIGHT HAND IN YOUR RIGHT PANTS POCKET. YOU ARE EXPECTED AT NINE THIRTEEN.

COME ALONE. PARK AT LEAST TWO BLOCKS DISTANT. NO OTHER VEHICLES CAN BE VISIBLE. DO NOT BRING A WEAPON AS HE CAN DETECT IT WITH HIS INSTRUMENTS AND WILL NOT COME OUT.

I PROVIDE THIS AS AN ADMIRER OF TOM SWIFT AND HIS WORK.

Ames whistled softly. "The truck details weren’t released to the press. Whether the whole thing is genuine or not, the phone caller definitely has some sort of contact with the plotters."

"My thoughts too, Harl. But what do we do with this? Alert Shopton PD to stake the place out?"

Ames lapsed into frowning silence for a moment, reading over the note again. "‘Indisposed’!—permanently, I’ll bet. No, Rad, let’s not get Captain Rock and his crew involved at this point. Whoever wrote this wanted Enterprises security to handle it."

Phil Radnor snorted. "Yeah, I’m sure of that. Maybe to take a hostage—or eliminate a threat!"

Ames gave one of his rare grins. "That’s real team loyalty, thinking we’d make more valuable hostages than real policemen or FBI guys! No, I’m going to say our informant has a reason to want whatever info we get to go directly to Tom and Enterprises. At least he thinks he does. So let’s go with it."

"Okay. Your call, chief." Radnor asked if he should contact Tom aboard the Sky Queen.

"No need. He’s got enough on his plate right now. I’ll give Damon a jingle, though."

"And then?"

"And ‘then’ is—then!"

The building at 449 Wilverton Road, on the outskirts of Shopton not far from the old Swift Construction Company, was one block long, shabby and dark, its windows plywooded and its plywood graffitied. The wording on the side, Morgan Metalworks and Fabricators, had faded to near nonexistence under the rain and sun of decades.

At nine thirteen Harlan Ames stood alone at the bottom of eight concrete steps leading up to the padlocked main entrance. Right hand in right pocket, he faced the road and the flat, empty weed field beyond. No cars passed, as the road ultimately dead-ended and there was no active business along it during the evening.

Behind came a raspy sound of metal, a padlock falling loose and a chain swinging limp. Cautious footsteps approached—just three steps. Standing at the edge of the porch, Ames thought, not moving.

"Don’t turn around," came a man’s voice.

"I don’t need to."

"You Cleggman?"

"That’s what they call me. Today."

The man chuckled. "Yeah, I know what you mean. So whattaya got for me?"

"That depends on who you are," replied Ames. "You know who I am. I think maybe you’d better prove who you are."

"I think that’s good thinking… I guess," said the man uncertainly. "Okay, turn around. Take a look."

Ames looked, and the man took a few steps down out of the shadows. The Shopton moonlight revealed a big, muscular fellow with a balding, buzzed head. "Okay?"

Ames waggled his head negatively. "No. You’re not the guy."

"Huh?" The man looked dismayed. "Sure I am! I’m Hobell! Ya know?—Jack Hobell."

"No you’re not," the security chief insisted calmly. He wondered if he should be faking a foreign inflection. "I’ve seen a photo of Hobell."

"Aw, no, listen," protested Hobell. "That was just one of those professional headshots. For modeling, understand? In department store ads. It’s a few years out of date, and you know how those guys always make you look better than you are."

"Whatever, Jack. But you don’t get jack from me until you give the password. The boss requires it." Ames smirked. "But maybe you wouldn’t know that."

Hobell rubbed his forehead in frustration. "That jerk Fell! Fell never told me about any password. Musta forgot, what with all those beers we downed." He looked up at Ames. "How ’bout I show two driver licenses and a major credit card?"

"How ’bout I walk away and leave you to explain it to The Man." Ames turned as if leaving.

"No, no, wait!" cried Hobell, rushing down the steps. "I know lots o’ things only a made guy would know. Listen—the Sea Charger, the snakeman, the deal with the rental truck. How about when I shot that Mayday Mob dude in the woods? Right in the back, and took out the bullets just like they trained me. Don’t all that prove something, Cleggman?"

The false Cleggman seemed to pause, as if thinking the matter over. "Guess I’ll give you a break, Hobell. Okay." Ames reached deeply into his jacket pocket and drew out a thick packet.

Hobell looked surprised. "Huh? What’s that? It’s supposed to—"

"You don’t even know what I’m delivering? And I’m supposed to trust you?" Ames thrust it back into the pocket.

"No, it’s okay. I—I guess I—man, just give it so’s I can get out o’ here! Okay?" Hobell was pleading.

"I dunno. Let me see the sig mark on your gun."

Hobell looked blank for a moment, then drew out a compact, deadly revolver and handed it to Ames. Ames scrutinized it closely. "Yeah, it’s there." With a wrist-flick he tossed it away into the weeds.

"Hey!" Hobell protested. "Why’d you toss it?"

"Gesture of good faith. Or were you really going to let a guy stand facing you with your own gun in his hand? Wise up! You’re going to have some problems with Him, Hobell."

The murderer looked pitiful and resigned. "Yeah. Guess I will. Okay, well—give it to me, then."

Harlan Ames took out the big packet again and handed it to Hobell. But as the envelope was passed, there was a loud clink! from beneath it and the man looked startled. "Hey, what is this, Cleggman!"

Hobell was handcuffed to Ames’s wrist!

"Care to walk with me?" asked the former Secret Service agent politely.

"Or?—just curious."

"Man, I’ll rip out your throat with my bare hands!"

"Hand, singular. The uncuffed one, I’d imagine. Anyway, I don’t happen to have the key on me. Before I could send away for it, I stopped eating the cereal."

His cuff-mate was now huffing like a bull. "I can slam your freakin’ head into that wall!"

Ames looked skeptical. "Think so? Might be more difficult than you think, buddy. And then what? Planning to drag my body along with you on that little motorbike I noticed back there? Still warm from use."

"You think you figgered it all out, huh!" grated Jack Hobell. "I got five guys waitin’ inside. I just gotta yell, and out they come—they’ll snip off this chain and take care o’ you permanent!"

"Five on one bike? Where’d you find ’em, the circus?" The security chief had already determined that the layers of dust and dried mud in the area of the building had not been recently disturbed, except by the single motorbike. "But why quibble? Let me save you the trouble." Ames filled his lungs and yelled out: "Okay, come on!"

In seconds three men armed with Swift impulse pistols—Phil Radnor and two employees of the plant security force—had come running up and surrounded Ames and Hobell, guns drawn. Hobell was pale and perplexed. "Where’d these guys come from?"

"The roof, of course."

"Naw—I woulda heard ’em."

"Look at their shoes, my friend," Ames replied. "Why do you think they call them sneakers?"

The next day, the Sky Queen having flown back to Enterprises and Tom having slept a troubled sleep, the young inventor sat with a gleeful expression as Ames regaled him with the tale. "We delivered him to Shopton PD, where he sits safely even now."

"Good gosh!" Tom laughed. "That’s one dumb criminal! Has he said anything yet?"

Harlan nodded. "We’ve nabbed a real singer for once, Tom. He’s babbling like a brook—wants protection from Li Ching, whom he knows as the snakeman." He consulted the notes on his desk. "His contact in Shopton, whom he took his orders from, is a man named Antoine Fell. Fell’s been staying week by week in the old Trellis Arms Hotel, for months now. It was Fell who ordered the hit on that mobster who slugged you, Gilly Murchison. They meet at night, and Fell would give Hobell his instructions."

"From Li Ching?"

"Assume so."

"Has Fell been picked up?"

"It shouldn’t be long—the police have staked out the hotel room since before midnight. The desk clerk said he’d gone out."

Tom’s expression became sober. "What has this Hobell said about the Charger?"

"He says the snakeman had planted one of his guys on board, who took over control at gunpoint after they submerged. I gather the comrade-general wants to harvest the technology the Sea Charger is carrying. The plan was to steer her north, which goes along with the message the radioman picked up."

"Which tells us nothing about her present location," said Tom grimly. "And it seems they’re considering killing the crew!"

"We don’t have much time to find her," Ames agreed. "I hate to say this, Tom, but I know you’ve thought of it already. Once Li and his gang have stripped the ship of whatever they’re after, it’s very likely that they’ll sink her—along with everyone on board!"

ONE hour brought further surprises. After receiving a call from Captain Rock that the stake-out police had apprehended Antoine Fell, Tom and Harlan rushed to police headquarters in Shopton to see the suspected agent brought in and booked. But as the vociferously protesting man was led past Jack Hobell’s cell to gauge his reaction, the confessed murderer barely glanced up and showed no interest.

"Not going to greet your crony, Hobell?" asked Rock sarcastically. "We brought Fell by just to see you!"

"Aaa, what’re you trying to pull now?" grumbled Hobell. "That ain’t Fell."

Rock chuckled derisively. "Still trying to con us? We’ve got the guy’s prints, driver’s license, even his signature. And the desk clerk confirmed who he is."

"I’m telling you," cried Antoine Fell, "I’ve never seen this man in my life! I don’t know a thing about any murder contract!"

"He’s right," said Hobell. "Ya caught a false fish, Rock."

Tom drew Captain Rock aside. "Captain, what if he’s telling the truth—both of them?"

"Tom, we know this man is Fell."

"Yes. But how do we know Hobell’s contact, who called himself Antoine Fell, wasn’t just using his name?"

"And his hotel room?"

Tom acknowledged the difficulty. "But consider this possibility. The impersonator might have picked Fell as his identity because the real man had very regular hours—a job that always kept him away in the evenings, for example. He could have had a key made and used Fell’s room to meet Hobell in."

"I suppose that could be, Tom," admitted the police officer. "The Trellis Arms isn’t exactly a modern hotel with electronic door cards. It’d be fairly easy to pull the gimmick."

Having taken Fell to an interview room, Tom, Ames, and Rock asked Jack Hobell if he’d care to provide further information. He proved willing. "Why not? Hate to see an innocent man go to jail. Look, I met Fell, or whoever he was, about eight times since the first of the year. He always set it up, and it was always in the evening, seven-thirty or so. He’d get a report from me and tell me what I was s’posed to do, and I’d make some notes. He never gave me a thing—I even had to go buy my own revolver! It was done kind of casual-like, you know? Relaxed. We’d hang around for an hour drinkin’ beer and talking it all over, then he’d look at his watch and shoo me out."

"Describe the man," urged Ames.

"Oh, kinda short, dirty blond hair, pug nose. He’d never make it in commercial modelin’, I can tell you! Didn’t look a thing like that other guy."

It was soon verified that Antoine Fell was a newly hired reporter for a newspaper published in nearby Waterfield. "I kept telling you, I work the night desk almost every night," the man exclaimed. "Call my editor! I don’t think I’ve missed a shift in months." He added that he had been living at the hotel pending the completion of a house he was having built in the countryside.

Ultimately Captain Rock ordered the man released. "We don’t have anything on him," he stated in disgust. "I don’t want to think about the headline in the Waterfield Herald tomorrow morning."

"Lousy luck," said Ames. "But there was good reason to think he was the man we wanted. I understand there were no other fingerprints in the hotel room, just his and Hobell’s."

"Yeah, that’s right. The other guy must’ve been careful—and taken his empties out with him."

His empties… Tom repeated in his mind. "Captain, if he spent his time drinking with Hobell… well, you can think of a spot where a man might leave overlooked prints time and again. Can’t you?"

Rock stared at the young inventor. "Oh boy. And I’ll just bet Milly-Ann didn’t think to dust on the underside. It’s not much like television around here, you know?" He ordered the matter checked out.

That afternoon, at Enterprises, Ames was able to report to Tom that his suggestion had born fruit. "Some excellent sets of prints. The man is left-handed, by the way."

"Have they run the prints?"

"Sure have, boss. They belong to a Canadian named Hilliard Lathron, formerly of the Vancouver police. He was fired for excessive force, drunkenness, and falsifying arrest reports. That was twelve years back, and he dropped out of sight."

"At least it’s one step forward," Tom pronounced. "Maybe something’ll pop while I’m at the outpost."

The young scientist-inventor had decided to take a trip up to the Swift space station to test out a small version of his cosmic reactor under space conditions. When Bud dropped by the lab, Tom told him: "I’ll be able to test the subtrino reaction in the presence of other forms of cosmic radiation. Want to come along, space-flyboy?"

Bud clicked his heels and snapped a handsome military salute. "How soon do we take off, commander?"

"First thing in the morning," Tom replied with a grin. "So hit the sack early."

The news of Tom’