TOM SWIFT AND
THE CAPTIVE PLANETOID

by VICTOR APPLETON II

Who are the weird masked raiders who storm the Swift Enterprises spaceport, Fearing Island? Are they bent on blind destruction—or do they have a more sinister goal? And what is the Ninth Light, a fantastic all-seeing power that can plunge the mind into oblivion?
    These questions confront young Tom Swift as he experiments with a new invention, the duratherm wing, de- signed to rescue stranded astronauts and allow emergency return to Earth. Even as Tom and his friend Bud try to understand the sabotage that turns a space test into a fiery near-fatal reentry, Swift Enterprises accepts a contract for a great scientific chal- lenge, an epic voyage around the sun inside a newly discovered planetoid, made habitable by the concepts of a famous future-minded visionary.
   Yet Tom must struggle alone against his enemies in Madagascar and the Indian Ocean—only to return to a greater threat as a planetoid careens toward a catastrophic collision with Earth!