TOM SWIFT

"SOMEBODY’S FLYING into our restricted area!" Tom Swift cried as an alarm bell broke the midnight stillness of his rocket laboratory on Fearing Island.

The blond, eighteen-year-old inventor, tall and rangy, laid two wrenches beside the magtritanium metal column on which he had been working. Turning to the muscular dark-haired youth standing beside him, he said:

"Hurry, Bud! Switch on the patrolscope!"

Tense with excitement, Bud Barclay flicked a switch beneath a large monitor screen mounted on the wall of the rocket lab. Three green points of light were moving clockwise in a large circle. Suddenly one of them made a beeline toward a small white dot.

"Our drone planes are after the pilot!" Bud exclaimed.

Each of the pilotless jets carried an amazing mechanism called the landing forcer, an invention of Tom’s. This instrument could capture and steer intruding planes to Fearing’s airstrip by electronically overriding their onboard servo-control circuitry.

"This might be an attack to wreck our rocket base!" Bud cried.

"Let’s get moving!" Tom urged, dashing toward the door.

As the boys ran from the building Tom took a quick glance at two towering silhouettes which stood out against the starry night sky. The smaller of the two was a sleek needle-nosed metal spire, a rocket ship of Tom’s own design in which Tom and Bud hoped to cross the threshold of space. The other, an astonishing colossus of metal, utterly dwarfed Tom’s experimental craft. This was the mighty CosmoSoar, principally designed by Tom’s father Damon Swift and intended to become the world’s first truly reusable, and re-flyable, private manned spacecraft.

The wailing of the siren shrieked over the sandy island. Immense floodlights had been switched on the instant the robots had veered toward the intruding plane, and sparkling crystal-white beams from a battery of Swift Searchlights raked the skies. The boys stared anxiously upward over the center of the island, where the patrolscope—the newest version of the Swift Enterprises security radar system—had indicated the presence of an aerial intruder.

"Tom," said Bud after a few moments, "do you, er—see anything?"

"No," admitted the young inventor. "But we both saw the blip on the scope screen."

Suddenly Bud pointed skyward toward a pair of small, streamlined objects darting about in a spiralling circle. "Look, Tom! The drones have caught something. But what is it?"

In the space between the two pilotless mini-jets the boys could see a small dark shape descending slowly toward the ground. Now and then it flashed through the sweeping searchlight beams, but what the beams revealed only deepened the mystery.

"It’s a man—I think," said Tom uncertainly. "But what’s holding him up? There’s no chute!"

Leaping into a jeep, Tom and Bud sped past the two rockets and down a bumpy unpaved roadway in the direction in which the descending figure seemed to be headed, passing groups of hustling security personnel on the way.

"Say, Tom," Bud asked, "you don’t suppose our phantom fall guy was making a suicide attempt to wreck the rocket ships?"

"Something’s up," Tom replied. "Certainly all licensed pilots know that this is a restricted area."

As the boys roared along the road to the airfield at the east end of the three-mile-long island, the cry of the sirens tapered away to silence.

"That means he’s down," Bud declared. Up above their heads, the pair of drones continued to circle their prey, indicating where the figure had landed.

The boys braked the jeep to a stop and drew a pair of small hand-held weapons from racks beneath the dashboard. These impulse pistols, called i-guns, caused immobilization or unconsciousness by means of an otherwise harmless electrical pulse. They were based upon principles developed decades before by Tom’s great-grandfather and namesake, the first Tom Swift.

Tom and Bud leapt from the jeep. But before they had had a chance to run more than a few steps, a plaintive voice floated out of the nearby foliage.

The shrubs shrugged and a man staggered out into the open. Tom and Bud halted and faced the mystery intruder, eyes wide—though not so wide as the eyes of the man himself.

The man was young, red-haired, and diminuitive in build and stature. He was bent almost double by the weight of a bulky boxlike pack on his back, anchored to a thick, khaki-colored garment which was all one piece from shoulders to boot-tips. A solid-looking helmet was attached to this garment at the back of the collar; the intruder had flipped it back off his head. Two pipes extending right and left from the rear of the backpack ended in cones that pointed downwards, trailing wisps of white vapor.

"Well, what do you know!" exclaimed Tom admiringly. "A rocket belt!"

"Yeah," said the man. "I lost track of my fuel consumption and had to make for the ground."

"You wouldn’t be over the ground in the first place if you hadn’t broken the law," Bud pointed out suspiciously. "Or don’t you know that this island is a restricted area?"

"Oh, I know," conceded the rocket man lamely. He managed a sheepish smile. "Name’s Gabriel Knorff. I’m a freelance photographer. They call us—I hate to admit it—paparazzi."

"I get it," said Tom. "You were taking photos of the rockets, weren’t you?"

"Rockets?" asked Knorff. "Is there more than one? You mean that little dinky thing across from the CosmoSoar is a rocket too?"

Tom had to grin. "That ‘little dinky thing’ is called the Star Spear, and it happens to be my own special pride and joy!"

Tom Swift, trained by his father to become the nation’s youngest rocket expert, had set up the robot defenses on this Atlantic coastal island after Swift Enterprises had entered a worldwide rocket-building race. He hoped to be the first person to pilot a privately-developed rocketcraft—either his father’s or his own—into space and circle the earth in a ninety-minute orbital flight. The European-American Rocketry League had formalized the contest by offering a prize of ten million dollars and the prospect of longterm contracts with the governments of several nations. When rocket research teams in various countries signified their intention to participate, the Defense Department had cooperated by declaring the tiny thumb-shaped island—formerly a U.S. Navy weapons depot and training station—to be a restricted area.

"Didn’t mean to insult you, Tom," said Knorff. "May I call you Tom? Of course, I knew right away who you were. Please call me Gabe."

Tom shook hands, awkwardly, with the photographer. Then he moved to introduce Bud. "Gabe, this is—"

"I know already," said Gabe, offering his hand, which Bud accepted warily. "Your friend Budworth Barclay."

"Don’t rub it in," said Bud. "Look—Gabe—how about you tell us your story."

Knorff cleared his throat, then kneeled down, unzipping the front of his flight-suit so that he could set the weight of his jetpack down on the ground. While Knorff was doing this Tom put away his pistol and contacted Fearing Island security by means of his televoc, his midget personal communicator, telling them that the situation appeared well in hand.

"It’s you guys who have the interesting story here, not me," began Gabe Knorff. "All that happened was, my services were purchased a couple weeks back. I was supposed to use the rocket belt for one quick trip over the CosmoSoar, to take photos for a magazine. They figured I’d be too small to set off your alarm system. So I trained on the belt for a few hours—it’s really pretty easy, you know—and then I went out in the yacht, which is anchored about three miles southwest of here, and took off from the deck. But suddenly there I am a few hundred yards in the air with my fuel alarms going off and those little jets buzzing around me!"

"We’re not used to midnight drop-ins," commented Bud wryly.

"No," chuckled Gabe apologetically, "I wouldn’t think so. But we didn’t see the harm—you folks have talked a lot about your CosmoSoar project in the media over the last couple years. And I was offered a lot of money to get an unusual picture. From a ‘different’ angle, you know."

"By whom?" asked Tom. "Whose yacht is it?"

"Heliax Odysseus."

Tom’s sharp intake of breath was noticed by Bud. "Tom, should I know who that is?"

"He’s one of the richest men in the world," Tom responded. "His father, Demetriou Odysseus, founded a worldwide news and publishing empire. The son took over when the father retired a few years back."

"Now I remember," said Bud. "They own NCN TeleCable—I watch it all the time."

Knorff nodded. "The guy’s loaded all right. My fee for this gig isn’t small, and these rocket belts rent at a thousand dollars an hour!"

"Which is way too much for these old antiques," Tom observed. "They’re not safe. But why does Mr. Odysseus want a special photo of the rocket ship?"

"For one of his European slick-paper magazines, he said." Knorff looked down at the dirt and shuffled his feet. Then he looked up and asked plaintively, "I suppose—you’re gonna confiscate my pictures?"

Tom grinned. He found Knorff a likable self-entrepreneur. "Perhaps there’s no harm in letting you keep them. The government imposed a greater degree of security here than my father and I think is really necessary. We’re not building secret weapons—just our own little version of the U.S. space program!"

Tom and Bud drove Gabe and his equipment back to the island’s main cluster of buildings, where they would make contact with the Odysseus yacht. On the way, the photographer asked Tom where the small rocket fit into the EARL competition.

"Maybe it doesn’t fit in at all," replied the young inventor wistfully.

Several years previously, before Tom had begun taking active part in the doings of Swift Enterprises, Tom’s father had formally tossed the Swift hat into the ring of the EARL contest. Damon Swift, once a consulting engineer on the space shuttle program, had in mind some radically new approaches to the design of manned multi-stage rockets. The result was the mammoth rocket ship now poised for its first flight on the Fearling Island launchpad—the CosmoSoar.

Naturally Tom wished every success to his father’s project, which had tied up a great deal of the assets of the inventing firm started by the original Tom Swift and his son. But it was equally natural for the 21^st Century’s own young inventor to have some new ideas that were his alone. Thus began a friendly competition between father and son.

"I suppose Dad is just being indulgent in letting me use Enterprises resources on the Star Spear," Tom observed. "He thinks his own approach to private commercial spaceflight is the more practical one, and for all I know he may be right."

"How is your approach different, Tom?" asked Gabe. "Of course, I can see it’s smaller. But size doesn’t matter—look at me, I’m 5 foot 5!"

As Tom laughed at this remark, Bud commented, "Tom’s into the old Buck Rogers thing—your own compact rocket ship that takes you where you want to go without coming apart. It has just one stage."

"Unlike the Cosmo, which has five of ’em!" Tom added.

"Man alive!" exclaimed Gabe Knorff. "A five-stage rocket, taller than the Washington Monument!"

"But will it get off the ground?" asked Bud jokingly. "My money’s on genius boy here and the Star Spear."

An hour later, his background as an international press photographer having been verified by Phil Radnor, chief of security on Fearing Island, the boys saw Knorff off at the island pier. An Enterprises employee was to pilot him to the Odysseus yacht, the Heraklona, in a speedboat.

"Thanks, guys!" the photographer called out, waving his camera. "And thanks for the invite to the launch!"

"Just remember to tell Mr. Odysseus he’s welcome to come along!" Tom called in reply. He winked at Bud, who grinned back at his pal. They both knew Knorff’s mega-wealthy patron would be unlikely to respond to anything as informal as a verbal invitation.

As the speedboat roared out of sight, Tom said, "He’s kind of a fun guy."

"I guess so," Bud admitted. "He didn’t do any harm—except for the sleep we lost."

"Bud, why don’t you go make up for lost time," urged Tom.

"Not you?"

"Too wide-awake. I’ll finish what I was working on in the lab before hitting the sack. In fact, I’ll just use the cot there in the lab, I think."

Arriving at the rocket lab, Tom noted that the magtritanium column on which he had been working was still undisturbed in its clamps on the metal lab table. He opened a nearby equipment locker and withdrew from it a basketball-sized spherical object, made of crystal which gleamed like diamond. This was his new invention, the fuel solarizer, which would allow his small rocket to perform like the "big boys"—if he could make it work!

Tom carried the instrument to his workbench and connected it to the test column, which contained a microminiaturized version of the motors that would propel the Star Spear into space.

The stillness of the night was broken for a time as Tom switched on one of the pumps that would be used by the solarizer, testing the rate of flow. As it ran, he made some careful adjustments until he had achieved a satisfactory result, then switched it off.

As the laboratory became deathly still again, Tom was aware of a slight noise in the adjacent lab. Thinking it might be one of the chemists back to shut off an experiment, Tom, eager for company, hurried into the room.

The bright light from his laboratory revealed the intruder’s face—a face Tom had never seen before! The man scowled at Tom and suddenly darted toward the lab door!

"Stop!" Tom shouted, having decided that Halt! was a shade too formal. The intruder raced into the corridor with Tom after him. But before Tom lunged through the doorway, he pressed a button to sound the alarm. As it clanged, he looked up and down the corridor. There was no sign of Tom’s quarry.

"He must have ducked into the chemical supplies room to hide," Tom decided. "There’s no other possible place!"

Tom spun into the dark supply room opposite his lab. He snapped on a light, cautious and ready for a fight. But no one was in the room but himself.

"He slipped out!" Tom groaned.

Realizing that his solarizer invention now stood exposed as he had left it, Tom stepped into the corridor. Treading as softly as he could, he reentered his rocket laboratory.

The stranger was bending over the solarizer, trying to unscrew one of the feed pipes with a wrench.

Tom crept toward him noiselessly, tensing every muscle for a lunge at the intruder. Suddenly the man straightened up and stared at the magtritanium housing. In its gleaming surface he had seen the young inventor’s reflection!

Tom flung himself forward. At the same instant his adversary swung around and hurled the wrench. Its handle hit Tom above his left ear.

He pitched to the floor, unconscious!

"TOM MUST BE in trouble!" Bud muttered to himself as he jumped from bed and pulled on trousers and moccasins. "That alarm bell’s going off in the rocket lab!"

As Bud dashed outside, he could see guards and sleepy-eyed engineers trotting to their various posts for the second time in one night. In the distance he could hear the whine of patrolling powerboats.

Bud ran straight to Tom’s private workshop where he found his friend lying limp on the floor, and for a horrifying second Bud thought that the young inventor was not breathing. He bent down and grasped Tom’s wrist lightly in his fingers. Feeling a strong, steady pulse, he whistled in relief.

Bud broke a vial of aromatic spirits from the first-aid cabinet in the laboratory and waved it under Tom’s nose. Within a few seconds the young inventor’s eyelids began to flutter. Bud gently lifted his pal onto a couch. Then Tom moaned, opened his eyes, and sat up.

"The fuel solarizer!" were his first words.

To the boys’ relief, the instrument stood where Tom had left it and a quick glance reassured them that the intruder had not made away with any part of it.

Contacting Phil Radnor by televoc Tom explained what had happened, ending with: "He was starting to disconnect the machine, but I guess the alarm bell frightened the guy off."

At that instant the broader picture of what had taken place struck Bud. "Listen, Tom, it can’t be just a coincidence that that photographer dropped down on us at the same time a thief dropped in!"

Tom nodded, grimly. "You’re right," he said. "The intruder was able to sneak onto the island because the whole security system was dealing with Knorff. But that doesn’t mean the two are in cahoots—Knorff might be just a patsy."

"Yeah," Bud agreed. "But either way, it points in the same direction."

"Right," said Tom. "Heliax Odysseus!"

The boys checked with the island control tower for a report on the patrolscope record-tapes.

"No plane has taken off since the alarm sounded, Mr. Swift," said the employee on duty. "And no activity out on the water, except for the big yacht, which is miles away, and the speedboat leaving and returning." Tom immediately made contact with the speedboat pilot, who reported that Knorff had been ferried to the yacht without incident, and that no one could possibly have stowed away on the boat when it returned. "Besides, Tom," he said, "I didn’t get back until ten minutes ago, and you’d already been attacked by that time."

As the boys stood uncertainly in the night air outside the laboratory building, Hank Sterling pulled up in a jeep. He was the talented head of the Swift Enterprises engineering division, and had been stationed on Fearing Island for the last month to oversee the final work on the CosmoSoar.

"I heard all about what happened from Phil," said Sterling, "and I’ve discovered something!"

"What?" asked Tom anxiously.

In answer Sterling directed Tom’s attention to the back seat of the jeep.

"A scuba outfit!" Bud cried. "Tanks and all!"

Hank nodded. "It was just dumb luck—I saw it lying in a heap on the northwest beach."

"This is how the guy got onto the island," Tom said. "But how did he get off?"

"Or has he gotten off?" asked Hank.

Hank drove Tom and Bud to the island infirmary, where the attending physician, Dr. Carman, examined the bruise on Tom’s head. "Tom, let me put some antiseptic on that baseball you’re growing."

After a bandage had been taped over Tom’s scalp the boys left the infirmary, wondering where to look next for the would-be thief.

Bud put a hand on Tom’s shoulder and squeezed it. "Tom, give it a rest for a few hours. Phil Radnor’s guys are combing the island. You go get some sleep, pal!"

Tom gave a rueful sigh. "Okay."

Tom went to his private quarters and spent a few hours tossing and turning in shallow sleep. As dawn paled the Atlantic sky, he rose and showered, and then returned to the lab complex in hopes that continuing his work on the solarizer would take his mind off this new mystery. It seemed he had been working only minutes—though in fact it had been three hours—when he looked up from his machinery, distracted by a delicious aroma floating in through the half-opened lab window.

"C’mon, Tom!" boomed a foghorn voice with a western twang. "Open up this here door and have some flapjacks, Albuquerque style!"

"Okay, Chow," Tom replied, admitting the larger-than-life form of Chow Winkler, the Swifts’ personal chef and a close friend.

Chow bore a platter of flapjacks, a pitcher of syrup, a tub of melted butter, a glass of juice, a pile of sausage links, and a steaming-hot cup of strong coffee.

"Whoa!" said Tom in mock alarm. "A real artery-choker!"

"But brand my skillet, it’ll give you a taste o’ heaven goin’ down!" Chow remarked as he set down his tray.

As Tom ate, he motioned for Chow to join him. "Be glad to, boss," said the native Texan. "I’as gonna ask you, how’re things going on that skyrocket o’ yours?"

"The Star Spear? All right, I guess," Tom replied without enthusiasm. "Dad’s ship launches for a pilotless test in a few days, you know. Then it won’t be long before the manned launch."

"Aw, that big cosmo-saurus hasn’t got a thing on your space bronco, Tom," Chow observed reassuringly. "I prefer those compact jobs any day o’ the week!"

Tom smiled. "Thanks, pard. But now we’ve got another worry—a phantom thief."

"I heard tell o’ that. But you’ll get ’im!"

After the roly-poly cook had left with his tray, Tom spent some time in sober thought about his mysterious adversary.

What clues do we have? Tom wondered. He was wearing gloves—so no fingerprints. But what about—?

Though the young inventor was eager to get back to his work on the rocket, he felt that the menace to the project took first priority for the moment. An idea flashed into his mind, and Tom went straight to Phil Radnor’s security office.

"Phil’s out with the search team right now, Tom," said the woman behind the desk, whose name was Nancy Mott.

"I think you can help me, Nancy," Tom responded. "I’d like to borrow those scuba tanks Hank Sterling found on the beach."

"I’ll get them from the locker," she said.

As Tom was leaving the office, Bud hailed him. "What’s up now, Skipper?" he asked.

"Just a little detective work. Come on."

They went to one of the temporary labs Tom had set up in "laboratory row." Tom carefully placed the the pair of tanks in a holding cradle of ultra-thin wire mesh. He then slid the cradle beneath a camera-like mechanism.

"Looking for prints?" Bud asked.

"Yes," Tom answered, "but not of the finger variety. It’s sometimes possible to trace a buyer of paint. Manufacturers have been asked to include some secret chemical ‘markers’ in small quantities in their paint so that it can be identified by police if necessary. The rule has come and gone since it began after World War II, but it’s now encouraged again as part of the defense against terrorism."

"I get it," said Bud. "You’re looking for chemical ‘fingerprints’."

"Right. A while back the FBI gave Harlan access to the encrypted internet website that continuously updates the chemical marker-codes," Tom continued, referring to Harlan Ames, Swift Enterprises’ overall chief of security. "I’ll plug the current codes into this ultraviolet fluorophotometer and we’ll see what comes up."

The machine operated silently, scanning the surface of the tanks from every angle as the holding cradle rotated beneath its lenses. Tom and Bud watched the readout monitor.

"Well, it’s found something," said Tom quietly. "But it may not be enough for a reliable analysis."

Nevertheless, in a moment the screen displayed a name.

"Worthy Paint Company!" Bud exclaimed. The boys started phoning, first to Worthy, then to a Philadelphia watercraft and seaplane builder that had purchased that particular batch of commercial paint some years before. After a lengthy discussion, Tom and Bud were able to determine that the paint had been used in the construction of a type of craft that seemed a "likely suspect."

"We call them our WaveSkimmer-Sevens," said the manager of the company. "You can see pictures of them on our website, if that would help. They’re basically ultra-small slim-hulled boats for racing enthusiasts, equipped with jet engines."

"Could they be used in ocean waters?" asked Tom.

"Very dangerous," the man replied, "and we don’t encourage it. Still, I know people who’ve done it. One thing about our WaveSkimmer series—they can easily be modified to sit especially low in the water. Maybe that’s important, huh?"

Tom gave Bud a significant glance. "Could be. How widely are these distributed for sale?"

"We sell direct," the manager responded, "and if you’re looking for something a little odd, I recall one case from last year. See, the enthusiast world is still small enough that people know people—everybody knows your name, so to speak. But in this case, I dealt with some guy I never heard of, who bought three boats and had them delivered up some place in New England. I’ll look it up right now."

When Tom hung up the telephone, the young inventor’s eyes glistened with excitement. Reporting the conversation to Bud, he said: "Besides the other things that were unusual about the sale, the buyer paid cash. That was a lot of money for one man to be carrying around."

"Yeah," commented Bud, "just like it cost a bundle to rent a rocket belt!"

"The man gave his name as Arthur Gray, and delivery was made to the public pier at Hankton, Maine."

"What about an address on Gray?"

"Turns out he didn’t give an address, and because he paid cash on the barrelhead he wasn’t required to. There was a phone number, but it was to a local hunting lodge where Gray claimed to be staying."

Bud grinned. "Well, when do we start for Hankton, Tom?"

"Why not right now?" Tom replied. "I need to clear my poor bruised head a little anyway. We’ll borrow the amphibian Dad’s technician from Richmond flew in on. I don’t want to attract attention by using an Enterprises plane."

Within the hour Tom and Bud were winging out over the eastern tip of Fearing Island, Bud at the controls. They circled the island once, viewing the twin rocket ships on their launchpads, and then headed northeast.

The amphibious plane was high over the Atlantic, opposite the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, when the radio buzzed with an incoming message from Phil Radnor. "Tom, it looks like we know how the intruder got off the island. As you know, we’ve been searching since the incident last night, and we just wrapped it up a while ago. When one of our guys didn’t report in, we instituted a search for him, and found him bound and gagged near warehouse three, pretty beat up. He’s in the infirmary."

"Let me guess," Tom groaned. "He was one of the guys searching the perimeter of the island in a boat—right?"

"You got it, Tom. Which means his boat was equipped with one of those patrolscope-nullifiers. We don’t know which way he went. To the mainland, I’d guess."

"Or to the Heraklona!" Tom added. "Thanks for the update, Phil."

Less than an hour later Bud banked and lost altitude at Tom’s direction. Flying close to the sun-flecked waves, he hugged the shore.

"There’ll be a red-striped lighthouse on the last jut of land before we hit the bay we want," Tom told Bud.

"Hey, I see it!" the pilot cried. "Looks like a big barber’s pole!"

Smoothly as a sea gull, the plane flew past the lighthouse and leveled toward the anchorage in one of the coves. A village of about ten houses hove into sight. At the end of a spit of land was a small dock. Bud set the amphibian down about half a mile out and taxied in. As Tom made her fast to the dock, the boys saw a lobsterman, who was busy dumping the morning’s catch into a square scow.

"Mutty fine plane y’got there," the man observed without turning around.

"We like it," said Tom noncommittally, and asked if this was Hankton.

"S’whut we call it."

"We’re looking for a man named Gray," Tom said.

"Are ye now?" responded the man. "I ast ya a’cause my sister married a man o’ that name."

"Oh?"

"O’course he’s been dead these twenty years."

Tom smiled. "I’m looking for an Arthur Gray. He was living—or at least staying—around these parts within the last year or so."

"Now yuh’re cookin’ with gas," said the lobsterman. "Arthur Gray! Well then. Nev’ heard of ’im!"

Tom shot Bud a helpless glance.

"He might have been a real outsider," Bud commented. "Just a visitor."

"Oh, thet one!" the lobsterman said with something like disgust. "He ain’t a local variety. But he ain’t exactly jest a summer person, either. He owns a pretty fair-sized house about quarter of a mile to the right up Coveshead Road. Looks like a hotel. Can’t miss it with yer eyes close’t. But ain’t no one living there now s’far as I know. Not a soul."

Tom was tempted to ask about the jet mini-boats, but fearing he would arouse the suspicions of the fisherman he simply thanked the man, and the two boys walked along the dock to the street.

"Yow, it does look like a hotel!" Bud exclaimed, as a huge three-story weather-beaten frame house loomed on the right side of the wooded road. "It’s closed up—just as the fisherman said."

"At least that’s the way it looks," Tom snorted. "Not like he’d put out a sign, LOOK INSIDE FOR PHANTOM ROCKET THIEF!"

The two boys walked around the place but saw nothing unusual. "Let’s go down this path to the water," Tom suggested.

They walked down the pine-needled slope which led to another cove. The path ended on a pier that extended about a hundred feet into the inlet. A sheet-metal hut stood on the dock about halfway out.

"Let’s see what’s in that shack," Bud proposed. "Bet you could stack three of those WaveSkimmers in there!"

The boys had just started forward when sudden footsteps sounded behind them and a gruff voice commanded:

"Don’t ye move!"

STARTLED BY the ominous command to halt, Tom and Bud stood motionless. The strange voice growled: "Turn around! Quick!"

The boys obeyed and pivoted to face an elderly man who carried a shotgun cradled in his arm like a baby.

"Now then, what d’you mean by goin’ down that path?" he demanded, circling to get behind them.

"Listen a minute," Tom protested. "We’re not—"

"Nevuh said I cared what yuh’re not," the man barked. "Jest want t’know what ya are! Mr. Gray a-hire’t me to keep strangers off his place, and strangers is jest what yew look t’ these old eyes!"

Tom spoke quickly. "Haven’t you heard the bad news about Arthur Gray?" he asked, looking at the watchman over his shoulder.

"What’s that ye say?" the old man asked as if he hadn’t heard the question. Then, as its import sunk in, he added: "Gol-sarn it, yuh’re jest talking foolish to get something out of me."

Tom said no more and started walking up the path. Bud, sensing his friend’s strategy, winked at him and trudged along in silence beside him. They had moved only a hundred feet when the caretaker exclaimed: "Hold on there!" The file halted. The old man stepped in front of the boys. "What’s the matter with Mr. Gray?" he asked, staring at Tom.

"He’s in bad shape, sir," Tom replied. "That is, if we’re talking about the same Arthur Gray. What’s your boss look like?"

"Middlin’ height, dark, has a gold-capped tooth in front o’ his mouth. He has the biggest hands I saw on a man his size, considerin’ I never see him usin’ them to do any work."

Tom and Bud tried not to show their elation at the identification—the description matched the man Tom had seen perfectly! "That’s him," Tom said.

"You won’t be seeing him for a long time," Bud spoke up, hoping this bit of news might elicit even more information from the man. "We thought by coming here we might find out about his family or friends—" He left the sentence unfinished.

The old man set his shotgun on the ground. Losing his look and tone of authority, he asked: "What’s wrong with him? And who ayre ye, anyway?"

"We’re employees of a company that’s working on a big project," Tom replied. "It’s confidential stuff having to do with space flight!"

The man’s eyes widened. "You mean rockets and such?"

"Yes," Tom confirmed. He decided to level with the watchman. "Arthur Gray managed to sneak into our facility, which is protected by the U.S. government. I caught him trying to damage one of our pieces of equipment."

The man nodded and indicated Tom’s head. "Gave you that goose-egg, did he?"

The young inventor grinned. "He sure did! Then he ran off, and we don’t know where he is, or who he’s working for."

"For all we know, he might be a spy!" Bud exclaimed. "He might be working for some foreign government."

"I see. Well, ye look honest enough, an’ old Asa Pike ain’t one to be taken in. Which is why, afore I trust you, I expect t’ see some papers. Not likely I’d believe a story like that on the say-so o’ two youngsters!"

Tom and Bud produced their wallets, and Mr. Pike examined their driver’s licenses and other identifying materials, including their Swift Enterprises employee ID’s.

"Hmm," he said finally. "Thomas Swift and Budworth Barclay." He handed them back their wallets. "Now both o’ those names are mighty familiar here in Maine, and up and down the coast. But you sure-t’-hey ain’t thet same Tom Swift who built all them blimps and contraptions back when my granddaddy was a lad."

"No, sir," said Tom. "That was my great-grandfather."

Mr. Pike nodded judiciously. "Seems to me I’ve heard of you." He thought for a moment. "Tell ye what. There’s no place for strangers to eat around here, so come up to my house for some victuals. I might have sutthin’ to tell ye after all."

The boys thanked him and followed readily. In a few minutes they reached a shack in a pine grove. Asa Pike led them into his kitchen. A savory lobster stew was simmering on a kerosene stove. Ten minutes later the boys were feasting on the best sea food they had ever tasted.

Tom led the conversation to the topic of Arthur Gray. "We were told Mr. Gray liked to race those little jet-boats. Did you ever see him do it?"

"Nope, nope," said Pike. "Never saw him race. But he had three o’ those little boats, thet’s for sure. Used to take ’em out in th’ cove early morning with a couple other men. Made a dang racket—folks complained. Then a couple months back he shipped all three away in a big truck, and left hisself the next day."

"Left to where?" asked Bud.

"Can’t rightly say," Pike replied. "Mr. Gray jest said he had business ‘away’ and would be gone for months. Arranged with the bank to have me paid reg’lar. So you say Mr. Gray and those other fellers might be spies?"

"Might be, Mr. Pike." Tom finished a second helping of the tasty meal and came to a decision. "Look, you’re a loyal American," he said with a smile. "Bud and I feel sure that Gray and the others are up to something underhanded, possibly to do with this big project Uncle Sam is interested in, the one I mentioned. How would you like to help find out?"

Asa Pike’s eyes bulged. "Me!" he exclaimed. "You a-deputizin’ me, y’mean?"

"Oh, you don’t have to unless you want to," Tom told him quickly. "And we don’t want you to do anything risky—just let us know if Gray, or anyone, comes back around this way."

"Ketch me sayin’ no!" the caretaker said. "Anything to help Uncle Sam. Jest wait until I tell—"

"You must keep this under your hat," Tom cautioned him. "I’ll write down a special phone number you can use to contact my security chief. And now I have one more question. Did Mr. Gray ever speak of a man named Heliax Odysseus, or a big yacht, the Heraklona? Or some wealthy friend he knew?"

Asa Pike thought a moment. "Not so’s I remember. Those two other men—he called the young one somethin’ like ‘Poll-oh,’ and the other was named Goff."

"Could it have been Knorff?" Bud asked.

"Don’t think so," replied Pike. "Nope."

"Better not say a word to anyone about our visit," Tom warned Asa Pike, adding, "We’ll have to go now." The boys thanked the now-friendly caretaker for his help, and Tom gave him the Fearing Island telephone number.

"I won’t fail ye," Asa Pike promised.

The two boys headed for their plane at the fishermen’s dock. The place was deserted; even the lobsterman had gone.

"We picked a good time to drop in," Bud remarked, as they cast off and prepared to taxi out to the open bay, where Tom, in the pilot’s seat, gunned the engines. The amphibian lunged forward and roared along the surface. A moment later it was air-borne, and by three o’clock Tom and Bud were back at Fearing Island, telling their story to Hank Sterling and Phil Radnor.

"Anything new here?" Tom asked when he had finished.

"One thing," said Hank. "A message came in about your family. Your Dad and sister are flying in on the Sky Queen in—well, just about now." The engineer smiled a mischievous smile. "Bringing that pretty girl along. What’s her name?—oh, Bashalli. To keep Sandy company, I suppose. Those girls sure have an interest in science!"

Tom and Bud grinned, knowing that they were being needled. The four young people were frequently seen around Shopton as a foursome, despite the heavy schedule of work Tom and Bud carried on.

Tom’s Flying Lab, the Sky Queen, had been scheduled to arrive on Fearing Island in order to carry Tom up to the edge of space so that he might test his fuel solarizer under conditions similar to space flight. Though Tom had known that his father would be riding along on the trip from Swift Enterprises in Shopton, the presence of the two girls was a nice surprise.

While Bud went off to shower and shave, Tom returned to his private quarters. This might be a good time to write up my daily record for Dad, he decided. Tom, like all good scientists, kept a day-to-day record of his new ideas, the progress of his inventions, and his data and calculations. He had done so since the age of twelve.

These records already filled several volumes. One recent part told the story of the building of his flying laboratory, and his adventures while prospecting for radioactive ore in the Andes. The record also logged his invention of a midget atomic sub, the jetmarine, and the exciting times he and Bud had had in their encounter with modern-day pirates.

Tom’s records were entered electronically in an encrypted file on the Swift dataserver in Shopton, with duplicates maintained automatically at several other locations. No paper was ever involved, save for the occasional sketch that Tom scanned into the computer. Nor was there a password for access: a device on Tom’s keyboard read his thumbprint and several other indicators before allowing him to log on to his personal files. Since coming to Fearing Island after the end of his jetmarine project, Tom had seen relatively little of his father. But he had kept especially detailed records about the status of the Star Spear and the development of his fuel solarizer, which Mr. Swift read whenever he accessed the file.

"I feel confident now," Tom wrote, "that we will be ready to launch the passenger rocket ship in ten days or less. The Star Spear itself is complete as it stands. Only the final testing of the solarizer in the ionosphere remains to be done. If this test proves successful, I may have a chance to get my rocket off ahead of Dad’s CosmoSoar. And I have to admit, that’s one of my goals—no offense, Dad!"

Tom had just finished when a deep, growing roar from overhead told him that the Sky Queen had arrived on the island and was touching down on its special landing pad. Standing in his doorway, Tom watched the sleek, mammoth three-decker sink down like an elevator atop its jet lifters, slowing to the gentlest of stops. The side hatchway opened and a railed rampway was extended down to the tarmac. In moments Damon Swift, Tom’s father, had appeared, followed by Tom’s vivacious blond sister Sandra and her good friend—and Tom’s—Bashalli Prandit, a native of Pakistan.

Tom strode toward the landing pad and met the new arrivals halfway. At almost the same moment, Bud sped up in a van, ready to carry everyone and their belongings to their quarters.

"Your mother sends her love," said Mr. Swift to Tom as they shook hands. "She decided she ought to stay with Aunt Hazel for a few more days."

"Oh, Tom, this is so exciting!" cried Sandy. "Pictures are one thing, but seeing the rocket ship close up—it’s like an ocean liner standing on end!"

"It is quite a sight," said Tom carefully.

Bud added: "Each rocket is a beaut in its own way."

"Each rocket?" asked Bashalli, her eyes twinkling. "Is there more than one?"

"Tom’s craft is the—er—less extravagant one," said Mr. Swift. "But it’s close to flight-ready, I understand."

"We have a saying in my native Pakistan," remarked Bashalli. "What matters is the skill of the poet, not the size of his brush."

"We have a similar saying, Bash," commented Bud. "But your way of putting it is—"

"—much nicer," finished Sandy. "Anyway, Tom, Daddy promised to show us the inside of the ship. The CosmoSoar, I mean."

"But I do hope you’ll also show us your rocket, Tom," Bashalli added smoothly.

Tom response was somewhat offhand in tone. "Oh, sure, if you like. But it’ll have to be tomorrow. I have a dinner date in the ionosphere!"

After dropping off Mr. Swift and the girls, Tom and Bud drove out to the Sky Queen, where Tom oversaw the installation of his fuel solarizer in a special airtight compartment on the third deck, a compartment with a transparent plexi-quartz porthole as its ceiling.

Boarding the Flying Lab, Tom personally hooked in the pump that was designed to carry liquid oxygen through the solarizer. Next, he attached a flowmeter to the pump to register the speed of the liquid. In rocket flight, oxygen would have to flow through the device at a rate of several thousand gallons per minute to satisfy the hungry motors. Should anything interfere with this flow, the rocket would cease to operate and founder in space.

He flicked on the power and listened to the even whirring of the pump. "It’s perfect!" he murmured elatedly, as the liquified gases surged through the unit. Satisfied, Tom turned off the power, and contacted Bud, on the command deck, via intercom.

"Make for the sky, flyboy!" he said. The jet lifters rumbled in response, and in seconds the huge stratoship was javelining toward the ionosphere, the region of the atmosphere lying above the stratosphere—and far above the clouds.

As planned, the Queen came to a hovering halt at a height of 350,000 feet, the edge of space. The sky was a star-flecked indigo despite the blinding-bright disk of the sun, which was still well above the curving horizon.

"Hold her steady, Bud," intercommed Tom.

"Steady as she goes, Skipper!" was Bud’s reply.

The purpose of the test was to determine if Tom’s solarizer could successfully use the unshielded solar rays to convert oxygen to its tri-atomic form, ozone, at a rate which would keep up with the demands of the fuel pump. The energized ozone would be combined with the diethylhydrazine compound developed by Swift chemists, producing the continuous "explosion" that was the basis of rocket thrust. Both of the new ships used the same basic fuel, but Tom believed that his solarizer would allow for greater energy efficiencies during the latter portion of the ascent into space, thus decreasing the size of the fuel tanks.

Tom activated the solarizer and slowly brought it up to speed, the rays of the sun shining down full-force on the transparent globe that was the heart of the machine.

The rate and pressure dials slowly crept upward, and Tom’s pulse pounded—his new invention was working!

"This is great!" he said aloud to himself.

Suddenly an electronic buzzer went off—and then another! Tom checked the equipment and gasped in dismay. The solarizer’s intensifier globe was sagging under its own weight.

Good night! Tom thought. It’s melting!

The next moment the test compartment was wracked by a flash of brilliant blue-white light and the roar of a powerful explosion!

AT THE CONTROLS of the Flying Lab, one deck down from the location of the solarizer test compartment, Bud started in his pilot’s seat at the muffled retort of the explosion.

He instantly snatched up the intercom microphone from its cradle on the padded arm of the contour seat. "Tom!" Bud cried. "What was that? Are you all right?"

Receiving no answer but a ragged burst of static, Bud catapulted from his seat—and paused. Turning back to the control panel, he reset the autopilot with trembling hands, instructing the Sky Queen to descend toward the breathable region of the atmosphere with all possible speed. Then he pivoted and scrambled toward the metal stairs that linked the middle deck with deck three above.

If that blast blew out the porthole, Tom could be gasping for breath—and freezing! shouted Bud’s fearful thoughts.

But even as the youthful pilot set foot on the stairs, a croaking voice drifted down from above him:

"I—I’m okay, Bud."

Tom was leaning weakly against the stairway rails. His face was pale, and traces of blood were flowing from several small scratches on his hands and arms. Bud clattered up the stairway without a word and helped his friend to the large, comfortable lounge area at the fore of the top deck, easing him down upon a couch. Then Bud treated Tom’s cuts with antiseptic and bandages from a first-aid kit.

"Doesn’t look too serious," he commented. "Anything inside those cuts?"

Tom shook his head. "No, I don’t think so. I guess I raised my hands and arms instinctively, and they took a few flying pieces of sealant material from the pump joints, but that’s all. I was thrown against the wall—I feel like I’ve been tackled by a gorilla!"

Bud forced a grin. "So what happened in there?"

"What happened? Just an experiment that failed." Tom’s voice was thick with discouragement. "The flow-rate was a little more than half what was required when something happened to the lens-array globe. It started melting, like wax in a flame."

"Were you burned when it blew?"

"It didn’t blow. There was a big electrical discharge—which didn’t reach me due to the safety dampers around the solarizer. That boom you heard was basically a manmade thunderclap!"

Tom glanced out the floor-to-ceiling viewpane of the lounge and noticed wisps of cloud fleeing past, vertically. "Is the ship dropping?"

"Right, Skipper," Bud Barclay replied. "I figured our ionosphere date was over!"

Leaving Tom to rest on the couch—in reality, the young inventor returned immediately to the test compartment to make some observations—Bud piloted the Sky Queen to a landing on Fearing Island.

Chow prepared a tasty supper for the two boys and the visitors from Shopton, and, as usual, was invited to join the others and enjoy the fruits of his labors.

"Well, brand my rocket roost!" exclaimed the chunky ex-chuck-wagon cook when Tom and Bud had finished telling the others about the adventures of the day—not only the test of the solarizer, but the trip to Maine. "Here I am, slavin’ over my griddle an’ pots, while you two boys have gone up to Maine an’ way up to that there iron-a-spear!"

"Do you think there might be some basic design flaw in your solarizer?" Damon Swift asked his son.

"Maybe so, Dad," admitted Tom very reluctantly. "It wasn’t a problem with heat inside the globe, but with thermal buildup in the crystal substance of the globe itself, caused by an unexpected piezoelectric effect. I’ll have to completely rethink the fuel solarizer… and…"

Tom’s voice trailed off. He took a bite of his supper.

"Now Tom," said Mr. Swift gently, "the competition that counts is the one we’re both trying to win for Swift Enterprises. We’re not competing against each other."

Tom nodded with a polite smile, but said nothing. After a few moments he broke the awkward silence. "Anyway, Sis, Bashalli—how’d you like the CosmoSoar?"

"Well, it was—" she paused, trying not to hurt Tom’s feelings. But then her sentiments could not be contained. "It was just amazing! We went up to the top on the gantry elevator, and all the way Daddy was explaining how everything worked."

"Okay, San, what did you learn?" Bud challenged.

"Ye-ahh, I’d like t’hear this myself," added Chow.

Sandy cleared her throat and composed her thoughts. "The CosmoSoar is the world’s first five-stage passenger-carrying rocket, and the biggest rocket ship of any kind ever built. Five-stages—but they’re not on top of one another in the usual way. Stage one is around stage two; and then you go up one layer, and stage three is around stage four."

"Shor, I get that," Chow interupted. "Jest like a bundt cake goes around the hole in the middle!"

"That’s right, Chow," Sandy confirmed, suppressing a giggle. "The first stage lifts the ship up just a few miles, and then it sort of opens up like a book and lets loose the second stage, which is inside it."

"Let us make this a team effort," urged Bashalli. "The first stage is tossed aside, but it doesn’t fall down—no, it stays wide open, looking like the wings of a bird. Then this thing pops out—what was it called, Father Swift?"

"A paraglider," said Mr. Swift. "It’s actually part of the ‘skin’ of the hull itself, opening out by a simple mechanical arrangement. It contains its own midget guidance system and remote-control receiver; even a pair of para-thrusters, no bigger than your forearm, to help direct it."

"So," Sandy continued, "the outer stage peels off and glides back to earth, while the inner stage, number two, takes over. And that one also has its own glider that it uses when it drops away."

Bud looked puzzled. "Mr. Swift, that ship is so huge—I figured the stages would be too heavy to be flown back to the ground!"

The elder Swift nodded. "Indeed they would be, Bud. But there are two things to consider. First, remember that most of a rocket’s weight is the weight of its fuel. By the time the stage is jetisonned, the fuel will have been used up. But more importantly, the CosmoSoar, like Tom’s Star Spear, consists of a series of Tomasite shells reinforced with a rigid mesh of magtritanium—which is an extraordinarily lightweight combination."

Bashalli now took up the narrative. "So you see, the first two stages get the ship going, and the next two push it into orbit. And then all you have left is the little top layer of the wedding cake, where the spacemen are."

"But it’s still awfully big," added Sandy. "Like something you’d see on a sci-fi show."

"So how many o’ them astro-nauts does it sleep, Mr. Swift?" Chow inquired.

"This first model will carry just two," he answered, indicating Tom and Bud. "There’ll be a good deal of open space. Eventually the line will carry a crew of ten."

"Will the top part land back here on the island?" asked Chow.

"No, although an aeroform-type vehicle is on the drawing board. This model will paraglide into the ocean like the first four stages. You know," continued Mr. Swift, "the whole idea is to develop a rocket technology that allows for complete re-use of all its parts, not just the command module. Someday we’ll pluck the spent booster stages from the water, refuel them, and send them up again right away!"

"Oh, and another thing!" said Sandy. "The flaming parts at the bottom of each stage—the real rocket thrusters, I mean—aren’t separated into little cone-shaped things like they usually are. Instead there’s a sort of circular slot that runs all the way around the bottom, just inside the rim."

"I believe it was likened to a circular gas burner on a stove," added Bashalli. "Only it is upside-down, you see."

"I see," Tom said. "Very interesting. You’ve got a couple apt students here, Dad."

"But tomorrow morning, you must show us all the outs and ins of your Spear, Tom," urged Bashalli, sensing that Tom’s feelings were slightly bruised by all the enthusiasm directed toward the CosmoSoar.

Tom gave a half-wince. "I’m afraid my Spear may be out of business for a while, Bash." He turned his gaze toward his father. "Dad, I’m guessing the whole engine assembly will have to be pulled and redesigned. I’d prefer to work on it back at Enterprises, so I think I’ll hitch a ride on the Sky Queen when it flies back to Shopton tomorrow."

"You may find that the change in scenery clears your head, son," observed Mr. Swift. "As I’ll be remaining here anyway to oversee the preparation of the CosmoSoar for its pilotless test flight, I can keep an eye on the retrofitting of your ship as well."

"Thanks a lot, Dad," said the young inventor quietly.

The next morning, the Sky Queen was zooming its way north toward Shopton, the damaged and disgraced fuel solarizer still latched down in its test compartment. Besides a small crew of flight technicians, the giant skyship carried Tom, Bud, the two girls, and Hank Sterling, who was anxious to be reunited with his family. Chow Winkler would remain on Fearing Island for the present, to serve as cook for Mr. Swift.

The several passengers had gathered in the lounge for refreshment and conversation as the dome of the deep blue sky looked in on them through the viewpane.

"Tom, have you heard anything from this watchman in Maine, Mr. Pike?" asked Sandy.

"No," Tom answered. "But it’s only been a day."

"Sandra and I have been talking," said Bashalli, "and we agree—for we are a team, you know—that this mystery must be approached in a logical way."

Bud gave a broad grin. "Logic, huh. More Martian invaders, Sandy?"

Sandy Swift made a face at Bud. "It could have been true, Mister Barclay!"

"What have you two come up with, then?" asked Hank.

"It is really a most simple and elementary approach," replied Bashalli, "based upon careful and deconstructive analysis of deductive fiction."

"She means who-done-it type stories," Sandy explained.

Bashalli nodded. "Precisely so. Now you see, the true villain, to be revealed on the last page, must not be anyone you would suspect."

"True!" admitted Tom, smiling.

"Yet he cannot be simply a stranger. So we must identify all persons who have been connected to the plot, but who thus far might be taken to be peripheral. One of them is your ‘bad guy’," Bashalli concluded.

Sandy produced a piece of notebook paper. "Last night we made a list of suspects—unsuspected suspects!"

"Are any of us five on the list?" asked Tom. "I’d say I’m a pretty good unsuspected subject—maybe I slugged myself!"

"Come to think of it, Sandy, how do we know you two girls didn’t sneak on to the island the other night?" remarked Bud with raised eyebrows and narrowed eyes.

"If you’re done with your feeble sarcasms, I’ll go ahead," said Sandy with a dainty snort. "There’s that flying photographer you mentioned—of course he’s a little bit suspected already, but we thought we’d throw him in."

"We don’t mind," commented Hank.

"Then there’s the old man, Asa Pike."

"Sure!" Bud exclaimed. "He could be the brains of the operation."

"And how about the lobsterman?"

Tom gave a quizzical look. "Who’s that?"

"You know, Thomas," replied Bashalli. "You spoke of a man who gave directions."

"Well—he’s unsuspected, all right!"

"And how about that man you talked to from the boat company?" Sandy exclaimed. "Isn’t it suspicious that he just happened to have so much information?"

"Not really, Sis. That’s why we went to him in the first place."

"I’m just trying to be logical," responded Sandy coolly. "I’ll just bet that when this is all over, one of the people on this list will have been involved!"

Tom laughed. "Nothing would surprise me, Sandy!"

For the next several days Tom sequestered himself in his lab, leaving only to go home for supper and breakfast and a night’s sleep. Bud sensed that his pal needed some time alone, but early afternoon on the fourth day he casually made his way into the lab and perched on a stool.

Tom gave Bud barely a glance, so concerned was he with some sketches on the table in front of him. But finally Tom muttered, "So how’s it going, flyboy?"

"What? You knew I was here all along?" Bud slipped onto his feet and held out his hand.

Tom looked up. "What?" he asked.

"I’m taking you out, genius boy!" declared Bud firmly. "You’re getting some air and sun whether you want it or not!"

"But I don’t need—"

"Your Mom thinks you do, and so do I. C’mon, it’ll clear out your brain cells."

Tom sighed and put down his electronic pencil. "Maybe you’re right. I’m sure not getting anywhere here."

The two drove out to Lake Carlopa in Bud’s convertible and rented a rowboat at the recreation pier. They also bought a couple sandwiches and sodas.

They rowed out into the lake, and soon Bud’s humorous banter had Tom laughing.

"I feel better," said Tom. "But I can’t understand why I’m not getting a breakthrough on solving the problem of the fuel solarizer."

"If you’ll excuse some unqualified psychology—I think it’s because you’re trying too hard to compete with your Dad," Bud remarked in a serious tone. "Sometimes you look sort of… well, obsessed. I think it’s putting up a brain barrier for you."

"I guess there could be something in what you’re saying," Tom conceded.

As they talked, Bud rowed along parallel to the shore. After a time, they came upon a small group of youngsters tossing a football between them. One of them, football in hand, noticed Tom and Bud.

"Say!" the boy called out. "I recognize you! Look, guys!"

"That’s right," called Tom in reply. "I’m Tom Swift!"

The boy looked blank. "Who? I mean him—you’re Bud Barclay, right? Winning touchdown two seasons back, Dalewood Chips versus Shopton Hammerers!"

Bud looked embarrassed. "Um—yeah, guys. That was me." But not too embarrassed.

At the boys’ behest Bud rowed the boat closer and chatted with the small, admiring group. Then the boy with the football tossed it to Bud and asked him to throw a long pass to them.

"Better’n that!" Bud exclaimed, standing up. "Go way long!"

"Er—Bud—" Tom cautioned. But it was too late. Bud was determined to drop-kick the ball from the boat. And he did. Immediately, arms windmilling, he tumbled over the side away from the shore, plummeting rear-first into the lake, sending the boat into a spasm of rocking that Tom could barely contain. The boys on the shore were so busy laughing that they barely tried to catch the ball.

Thoroughly soaked, Bud threw his forearms over the edge of the rowboat and pulled himself up and in, with Tom’s help. Then they both dissolved in hoots of laughter.

"Man!" cried Bud ruefully. "I thought I had better balance than that!"

"It was an unfamiliar situation, that’s all," Tom reassured his friend. "Besides—pardon my saying—you were showing off, flyboy, and probably packed more force into that kick that was really needed."

"Guilty!" Bud admitted, waving goodbye to the boys on the shore. As he rowed the boat back to the pier, drying off rapidly in the afternoon sun, he noticed that Tom had fallen silent. Finally, in the convertible, he asked Tom: "Okay, pal, what’s wrong?"

Tom gave him a surprised look and broke into a broad grin. "Nothing. Matter of fact, thanks to you we’re closer to launching the Star Spear than ever before!"

"COME ON, TOM!" cried Bud, amazed. "All I did was fall out of a boat!"

"Sure. But you did it so—gracefully!" Tom joked.

Bud gunned the engine and pulled the convertible out of its parking space. "So now you’re launching the rocket ship from a rowboat, or what?"

Tom didn’t reply for a moment, as he seemed to be getting his thoughts in order and making some quick calculations.

"I’ll tell you what I’m thinking, and skip the details," he said. "What makes a rocket go up?"

"The thrust."

"Sure, but what is thrust, anyway?"

Bud frowned. "You got me. It’s like a powerful explosion going off underneath the rocket—except, unlike something like a stick of dynamite, the explosion just goes on and on."

Tom nodded his approval. "Exactly! A rocket ship is just a solid metal structure that gets blown up, continuously upward so that it never falls back to earth."

"Okay. So?"

"So that’s only one kind of thrust, the thrust of external combustion," Tom explained. "But there’s also projective thrust. You just gave a good demonstration, Bud."

Bud grinned. "So call me professor! But what is it exactly? Throwing something?"

"Sure," Tom replied. "Projecting something away from you by whatever means—throwing, kicking, anything. To call on your Mom’s illustrious ancestor, it’s just another example of Newton’s Third Law of Motion."

"I know that one. Every motion in one direction causes an equal motion in the opposite."

"In other words, accelerate a football toward the shore, and you yourself get a push away from the shore."

"I’d say the theory is pretty well field-tested," said Bud ruefully. "But what’s your idea, Tom? Lift the rocket by kicking a lot of footballs toward the ground?"

Tom winced. "You think you’re kidding, flyboy, but you’re closer to the truth than you know. What I have in mind is a mass-accelerator that will use the rocket’s fuel as its subject mass—sort of a fuel kicker. If we can accelerate the fuel downward toward its combustion chamber at some very high rate, we’ll produce upward thrust before the fuel even ignites!"

Bud was intrigued by the concept. "Maybe you could lift the ship without burning the fuel at all."

"I don’t think that would be practical," responded the young inventor. "But by creating a thrust prior to combustion, the ship won’t need to burn so much fuel at a time, which means we can keep the solarizer turned down to within its safety limits."

Naturally, Tom threw himself into developing this new idea. With the help of Hank Sterling and his chief model-maker and metallurgist Arvid Hanson, Tom had a small working prototype in hand within forty-eight hours, ready for a series of grueling tests. Finally, the day before the CosmoSoar was scheduled to blast off for its pilotless test flight, Tom was able to phone his father and report that the Star Spear project was again on track.

"Fortunately, we won’t need to replace the combustion chambers or fuel tanks, just the pump array and feed pipes," Tom explained.

"Still a tall order," commented Damon Swift.

Tom agreed and added, "I’m having the new mass-accelerator assemblage made here at Enterprises. The core unit will be flown down to Fearing on the Sky Queen. Meanwhile, it makes sense for Bud and I to jet back down there ourselves. I can oversee the first modifications to the rocket ship."

"If you can possibly make it by five in the afternoon tomorrow, you might enjoy watching the CosmoSoar lift off," remarked Mr. Swift. "And no, Tom, I am not rubbing it in!"

Tom laughed heartily. "We’ll be there, Dad!"

By noon the day following, Tom and Bud were back on Fearing Island. They flew down on the Kangaroo Kub, a midget jet that was normally carried within the Sky Queen, but had been temporarily removed to make room for the fuel kicker equipment that was to be transported.

"How goes it, Dad?" asked Tom, greeting his father with a warm handshake. The young inventor’s demeanor had totally changed: he was once again relaxed and enthusiastic.

"All systems go—as we used to say," Mr. Swift replied. He glanced at his watch. "Less than five hours to launch."

"So what’s the plan, Mr. Swift?" Bud inquired. "Is the Cosmo going all the way into orbit?"

"Indeed so. We’ll be testing out all systems from launch to splash-down. I’m particularly interested in making sure that the paraglide units function without difficulty. Your lives will depend on it!"

"Don’t we know it!" said Tom.

Tom went to his quarters and had a light snack prepared by Chow.

"Say, boss, I been meanin’ to ask you something," said the convex cowpoke.

"Sure, Chow. What is it?"

"Wa-aal, what happened to them space fellas you’n your Dad ’as trying to get in touch with?" he asked. "You ever figger out all them injun signs?"

Tom smiled. "If you mean the mathematical symbols on that missile from space—not completely. It’s not just a problem in math and science, but a real problem in logic, too. We don’t know anything about these beings, not even what they look like."

Chow looked troubled. "So they may be little green men. Or monsters!"

"Maybe," replied Tom. "But you know, the basic laws of chemistry and physics are presumed to be the same throughout the universe, and that puts some limits on the forms viable intelligent life can take. Our space friends may look and think a lot like us." He stood up from the table. "Here, look at this."

Tom switched on a laptop computer and accessed his private, password-protected site. As he scrolled down, row after row of symbols, followed by a word or phrase in English, appeared on the screen.

"What’s that?" asked Chow. "A dictionary?"

"Exactly, pardner—my Space Dictionary, as I call it." Tom switched off the computer. "It includes all the symbols, and arrays of symbols, that Dad and I feel fairly certain about. We have a pretty good portion of the missile inscription translated now."

"What’s it say, Tom?" Chow was wide-eyed with curiosity. "Somethin’ like ‘Take me to yer leader!’?"

"Fraid not," Tom responded. "More like this."

He picked up a pen and wrote on a piece of notebook paper.

"Well, some o’ that’s mighty clear, but the rest is clear as mud." Chow shook his head impatiently. "What’s this here ‘four to three’ mean?"

"I think it means they want to travel from the fourth planet—Mars—to the third."

"Yeah, an’ that’s us, ain’t it! So they got ‘difficulties’ cause o’ our ‘surroundings,’ I guess. What is it they want to ‘carry across,’ you s’pose?"

Tom shrugged. "It’s just an early translation, Chow. Maybe ‘carry across’ means something more like ‘transmit to you through space’."

"A person sure would like t’know fer sure," said Chow.

"We may know our friends better very soon," Tom commented. "The Star Spear will carry along a special video-oscillograph transmitter-receiver setup. From the moment we blast off, we’ll be continuously transmitting an array of symbols on a ‘logical’ frequency that will signify that we desire to exchange messages. Could be we’ll hear back from them!"

Chow’s eyes grew wider yet at the thought. "Ooo-ee! Now that’d be somethin’!"

After a short nap, Tom decided to join his father and the various technicians and engineers in the mission-control "blockhouse," where the CosmoSoar countdown was proceeding. There were still almost two hours to go before the launching of the unmanned test flight.

As he walked across the old, cracked blacktop that lay between the various buildings of the complex, a slight wisp of motion in the distance caught his eye and caused him to pause. By this point in the countdown, the Cosmo’s three utility gantries were supposed to be off-limits to all personnel. But Tom thought he had seen the edge of a figure duck out of sight behind a support pylon.

What was it? Tom wondered. A seagull?

He stood uncertainly for a time, unsure of whether his half-sighting was significant enough to warrant televoc’ing project security.

I’m sure Phil has enough to do right now! Tom thought. Yet he was troubled. Finally he decided to make a brief side-trip to the gantry, just to put his mind at ease.

Because of its huge size, the rocket ship seemed a good deal closer than it really was. It took Tom a good five minutes of extra walking to reach the gantry. There he halted, leaning back and looking up at the awesome metal pinnacle. The sheer immensity of it seemed to captivate his thoughts, and he had to force himself to remember that he had intended to check out a possible threat.

He began to circle the base of the CosmoSoar, which at the very bottom was almost 100 feet in diameter, with a circumference of about 315 feet. Though the rocket rested upon the looming stabilizer fins that radiated from the base, it was also steadied by the gantries spaced evenly around it.

Having walked more than halfway around without sighting anything untoward, Tom was about to leave the area and resume his walk to the command center when a slight metallic sound coming from somewhere above him brought him to a halt. It was repeated, somewhat louder—the creak of metal.

Realizing that the sounds were coming from the gantry structure, he shielded his eyes from the glare of the sun and looked upward.

This time he saw the cause. Before Tom’s horrified eyes, an entire section of the gantry—a latticework of crossbeams—appeared to be groaning and twisting its way out of place. Seconds later it had worked itself free and plummeted down to the steel-concrete surface of the launch pad, a fall of several stories, landing with a deafening crash.

But that was not the worst of it. The gantry now seemed to have developed a "kink" midway to the top. As the gantry bowed more and more to one side, Tom could see the rocket ship itself, no longer supported on that side by the gantry structure, beginning to move against the pattern of clouds in the sky, its silvery nose shifting sideways with aching slowness.

"It’s toppling over!" Tom gasped. But it took another moment for the real gravity of the situation to strike home. He was standing next to a giant rocket filled with ultra-explosive fuel—a rocket in the process of collapsing to the ground around him!

IN THE MISSION command blockhouse, Mr. Swift, Bud, and the entire mission support team were watching the developing situation outside with complete anguish and a sense of utter helplessness.

"What can we do?" cried Bud frantically. "Is the whole thing going to fall over?"

"It could," said Mr. Swift. "For the moment it’s only shifted position a bit, but those fins weren’t designed to hold up all that weight by themselves—they’ll buckle!"

Bud didn’t waste another second. Heedless of the shouted warnings of those around him, he pounded out the emergency exit doors of the blockhouse and leapt into a waiting jeep. Gunning the engine he set off for the launch pad, a half-mile distant, with a screech of tires.

Bud blew his horn to catch Tom’s attention, and even as he did so he saw the CosmoSoar shift again like a nervous animal waiting to pounce on its prey.

The youthful pilot sent the jeep into an expert half-spin along with a braking maneuver, bringing the vehicle to a stop at Tom’s side. Bud leaned out, grabbed Tom’s upper arm, and yanked him into the jeep.

But as Bud started back toward the blockhouse, Tom cried out, "No! To the airstrip!"

Bud was amazed. "Are you crazy?"

"Just do it!" Tom commanded with steel in his voice.

Minutes later the jeep pulled onto the island airstrip and braked to a halt. "Okay, now what?" asked Bud.

"Now this!" Tom exclaimed, jumping out. He ran to a large twin-bladed cargo helicopter which had been ferrying heavy equipment from the mainland. Bud followed, and in seconds—which felt like hours—they were airborne.

"But what can you do, Tom? This whirlybird isn’t nearly strong enough to lift up the rocket!" objected Bud.

"We don’t have to lift it, Bud," Tom replied. "We just have to steady it and keep it balanced until Dad can put together some kind of makeshift support."

Because of the chopper’s overhanging blades, the helicopter could only make direct contact with the CosmoSoar at its very tip, which was now a few degrees off the vertical. Tom maneuvered the craft in close and gently brought the two hulls together. Even as he did so, the rocket jerked another several feet, swatting the helicopter aside as if refusing to be tamed.

The chopper rocked back and forth and Tom had to take a moment to steady it, flying off and around in a semicircular path. Then he closed in again, and the two craft touched with a clank of metal.

"Now comes the hard part," Tom murmured, his attention focused like a laser beam. He poured power into the tilt-axle rotors, forcing the helicopter sideways against the tip of the rocket.

There was a rasp of metal against metal. Then Bud cried: "It’s working!"

Ever so slowly, inch by inch, the CosmoSoar resumed its upright orientation. As Bud took over the controls, Tom contacted his father.

"You’ve saved the project, Tom!" cried Damon Swift. "I’ve been looking at the sagging gantry through binoculars, and I think we can patch it up in a couple hours time—maybe less. Do you have enough fuel to hold your position?"

"More than enough," Tom replied.

It was only a matter of some seventy minutes before Tom and Bud were finally able to pull away and return the helicopter to the airstrip.

"Oh man!" Bud exclaimed. "Talk about sitting on a ticking bomb!"

Tom looked into Bud’s eyes. "Thanks, Bud."

"I just sat there next to you, genius boy."

"I mean—thanks for coming for me. That rocket could easily have come down on both of us."

Bud looked away, modest and moved. "What do you think happened to the gantry in the first place?"

"It could be just an accident," Tom replied. "Or—"

"Not!" Bud finished.

"I’ll admit I’d like to take a look at a fragment of that wreckage," conceded Tom. Taking the jeep, he and Bud returned to the launch pad area. Stopping near the pile of twisted metal that had fallen from above, Tom searched for clues.

"Here’s something," he said, pointing.

"I don’t see anything, Skipper," declared Bud; "just the end of a beam, with the holes for the bolts to go into."

"Exactly, pal. And part of what you’re not seeing is any sign of a crack or break in the metal itself. The beam fell because the bolts gave way on this joint—all of them at the same time."

"Okay. What could have caused it?"

"As a guess—some kind of acid," responded Tom. "Someone could squirt a few drops of a slow-acting acid on the bolts, and then make a quick getaway before the bolts are far enough gone to twist free."

Tom informed Phil Radnor of his findings and theory, using his televoc. Soon he and Bud were joined by several members of the island security team as they scoured the launch pad for traces of the missing bolts.

"Got one!" exclaimed a woman.

"Make sure you only touch it through your Tomasite gloves," Tom warned. "That acid could be potent stuff!"

As the woman held up what she had found, Tom scrutinized it minutely. "Look, Bud, see these little sections?"

"Looks like a rat got ahold of it—a metal-eating rat!"

"It’s where the droplets of acid fell."

"Then you were right!" said Bud angrily.

"And you were right too, pal," remarked Tom. "This was certainly not an accident!"

A visit to the blockhouse confirmed what Tom had expected—the CosmoSoar launch had been suspended. It would take days of careful re-checking before the ship could again be deemed ready for its test flight. As the boys left the blockhouse, Bud suddenly grasped Tom’s arm.

"Hey, I just thought of something!" Bud cried. "If somebody’s in the mood to take down our rockets, your Star Spear may be next!"

"You’re right!" Tom gasped.

The two headed off in a dead run toward the Star Spear, sitting on is own launch pad a quarter mile in the opposite direction from the Cosmo.

Breathless, Tom greeted the two security guards on duty, who were familiar to him from his weeks on the island.

"Everything okay here, guys?" asked Tom, Bud at his side.

"No problems, Tom," said one of the men, whose name was Garnan. "After all that hassle with the big rocket, we wondered if somebody’d try something here. But it’s been quiet, just that one engineer you sent over."

"Engineer? What do you mean?" Tom demanded.

The two guards exchanged alarmed glances.

"He said his name was Eskol, Hiram Eskol, and he was here to seal the valves before you pull the pump units."

"It sounded pretty plausible," said the other guard, shamefaced. "He showed us his identification badge, and he was wearing one of those white ‘clean’ suits that people have to wear while working on the equipment."

"What did he look like?" Tom asked brusquely.

"Well, you know, he looked just like his photo," said Garnan in a defensive tone. "Sort of nondescript, middle-aged, thinning hair."

Bud groaned. "So you didn’t pay attention to his face!"

"Well, no, not really."

Not wanting to waste any more time talking to the guards, Tom and Bud raced to the gantry elevator, coming to a stop at the top of the rocket, next to the access hatch for the pilot compartment.

Tom was in a frenzy of worry. He had left no instructions for further work on the Star Spear. The replacement of its inner works was not scheduled to begin for another 48 hours.

Panic seized him. Turning on the lights inside the capsule-like compartment he glanced from left to right. He relaxed slightly when he saw that everything seemed to be in order and untouched.

"Looks ship-shape to me, pal," commented Bud, who had trained for many hours inside the compartment.

"There’s still the electronics bay overhead," Tom noted.

Quickly Tom climbed the small wall ladder to the most vital part of the rocket—the sealed module inside the tip of the rocket which contained the craft’s guidance system and electronic monitoring equipment, as well as the video-oscillograph device with which Tom hoped to make contact with the mysterious space beings.

He reached up and touched the hatchway panel—and his heart froze in his chest. The access panel was unsealed and unlatched! He swung the panel upward and poked his head and arm into the small compartment, switching on a utility light.

"No! Oh, no!" he cried involuntarily as he gazed around.

TOM STOOD dumbfounded for several seconds, then he sprang into action. He must capture the saboteur! He came clattering down the ladder and invited Bud to take a look at the damage.

Bud did so, and whistled in dismay. "Looks like somebody’s got a real problem with circuit boards! Can this stuff be replaced, Tom?"

"Of course, but it’ll delay things. Someone is working hard to wreck my project," Tom declared grimly. "He—or they—thought I wouldn’t find out right away; maybe not until we started to install the new propulsion system."

Bud nodded his agreement and added: "Now you’re a step ahead of their game."

"Sure," said Tom bitterly, "a step ahead of being ten steps behind!"

Re-entering the electronics bay, Tom Swift carefully wrapped several hacked-up sections of the instruments in a handkerchief so that they could be examined for fingerprints. Finding a small hammer, which probably had been used in the fiendish act, he picked it up with a pair of pliers in his trousers pocket.

Holding on with one hand, Tom went down the ladder, and he and Bud took the gantry elevator to the ground. When they emerged, Tom asked the guards further questions.

"When did this man Eskol actually leave?"

"Well actually," said Garnan, "he wasn’t up there too long—maybe ten minutes."

"Didn’t say g’bye, neither," said the other guard.

Tom sighed but put a hand on Garnan’s shoulder. "Don’t worry, you two aren’t in any trouble. I just needed to know exactly what happened."

"Told ya, Fred!" snapped the other guard. "The Swifts are good people!"

As the boys strode rapidly across the wide asphalted field that separated the two launch pads, Tom was shaking his head in frustration.

"Do you think this Eskol was the same guy who attacked you the other night?" Bud asked.

"Doesn’t sound like it. That was a younger guy, with a full head of hair," replied Tom. "Besides, how could he have gotten back on the island?"

"We don’t really know he ever left, Skipper," Bud pointed out. "We only know one of Phil’s security guys was knocked out, and a boat is missing."

"That’s true…" Tom’s voice trailed off, and his steps seemed to miss a beat.

"You’re doing that thing again, aren’t you, Tom," Bud remarked.

"What thing?"

"Thinking!"

Tom chuckled. "That’s what they pay me for, Budworth! I was just turning over a few things in my mind. We now have two people involved in the plot—the guy who slugged me, and the rocket wrecker, who’s probably the one who also sprayed acid on the CosmoSoar’s gantry bolts."

"The timing’s about right," Bud agreed. "And we figure that billionaire yachtsman is involved, too—because of the money trail and the connection with those jet-boats up in Maine."

"So what does it all add up to?" Tom wondered. "So far, nothing!"

"Do you think one of the other competitors in the space race might be trying to sabotage the competition?" speculated Bud.

"I don’t know. Maybe," the young inventor admitted. "But it’s hard to believe any of the big multinational concerns we’re competing against would risk their reputations in that way."

"Well," said Bud as they neared the row of administration buildings, "maybe Sandy and Bash are right. Maybe we should be looking for somebody even more unsuspected!"

Tom was silent for several long moments. Then he tugged on Bud’s sleeve and led his friend into the facility infirmary.

"Hi, Jennifer," Tom said to the young nurse sitting at the front counter. "I was passing by and thought I’d look in on that security patrolman who was brought in last week. You know, the one who was beaten and left tied up."

"Oh, Brad Yardell?"

"Yes," said Tom. "I haven’t had a chance to thank him for putting himself in harm’s way."

The nurse smiled at Tom and Bud. "What a nice thought!"

"How’s he doing?" asked Bud. "Were his injuries very severe?"

"Well, let’s see," she replied. "Some abrasions to his wrists and ankles—because of the cord they used to tie him with. Most of the damage was neck-up, though."

Tom nodded his understanding. "To his jaw?"

"It wasn’t broken, but there was quite a lot of swelling around his lips. And also—"

"Damage to his cheekbones, and the bridge of his nose." The young inventor completed her sentence for her, continuing: "And also up here." He touched his brow, and then added: "Oh, and a front tooth knocked out or broken."

The nurse nodded but looked surprised. "I didn’t realize you’d been given a report."

"Haven’t been," said Tom with a smile. "Is he able to talk?"

"Yes. In fact, he was able to talk right away, though he was a little hard to understand." Jennifer now led the boys down a short hallway. "Mr. Radnor interviewed him when he was brought in."

"I’m glad he’s doing well," Tom remarked. "Any idea when he’ll be released?"

Jennifer stopped in front of the doorway to the six-bed ward. "Any day now, Dr. Carman thinks. But he’s still having some problems with balance, so we’re being cautious."

"One more thing," said Tom as the nurse was about to return to her post. "Has he been asking for pain medication?"

"Oh, not often since that first morning."

"Mostly at night, I’d guess."

"Yes," she replied, "as a matter of fact."

Tom now entered the ward, blithely ignoring Bud’s quizzical expression. Only one bed was occupied, its occupant heavily swathed in bandages from forehead to chin.

"Brad, is it?" said Tom. "I’m Tom Swift. This is my friend Bud Barclay."

Yardell offered his hand to each in turn, mumbling "Pleased to meet you" in a low, raspy voice.

Tom picked up a clipboard hanging at the end of the bed and examined it. "Glad to see you’ve been upgraded. Doing okay now?"

"All right, I guess," said Yardell. "Did you want more info about what happened?"

"No," Tom responded. He turned to Bud. "At night he’s looked in on every ninety minutes by whoever is on shift. More often during the day. Of course, if he needs anything, he can always ring-up the desk by pushing the call button."

"That’s great," said Bud cautiously, having no idea what Tom might be getting at.

Tom now sat down on Yardell’s bed, on top of the blankets on the untucked side. "Sit down, pal," said Tom to Bud, nodding toward the other side of the bed. "We shouldn’t be standing, next to someone who can’t get up." He shifted his gaze to Yardell. "Kinda makes a person nervous—just my opinion. So let’s see," said Tom. "Ninety minutes. Kind of a good long time, isn’t it? But it’s not like the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. The nurse might be a little late one time, a little early another. So what you really need to do is to sort of lock it in—for example, by calling the nurse for pain medication in the middle of the night. After she’s taken care of you she’ll make a mental note of exactly what time to look in on you again, ninety minutes later. She leaves—you wait a while—then you get out of bed, throw on that overcoat I see over there, pick up your cheap hospital slip-ons, and sneak around the corner into the empty doctors’ lounge. Out through the window and into the bushes. In fifteen minutes you’re at the shoreline, guiding a very small, low-in-the-water boat onto the beach, with—what?"

"Infrared flashlight," said the man gruffly.

"Yeah," said Tom. "You help your partner unload his supplies, the stuff he’s going to use to wreck the rocket projects. Then you stick the boat, a WaveSkimmer, in its prepared hiding place, which is also where your partner Mr. Goff will be hiding for the next week or so. Then back to bed!"

Bud’s face had long since assumed a look of amazement. As for the man in bed—pinned in place by the way the two boys were sitting—he uttered a derisive snort.

"Pretty good, Tom Swift," he said. "Except it wasn’t Goff. Goff isn’t qualified for that kind of work."

"Then I got one wrong, and one right." Tom turned to Bud. "Bud, meet Arthur Gray. He and I are already acquainted. That is, he and the side of my head!"

Bud bunched up his fists. "For what you did to Tom the other night, I should make you need those bandages for real!"

"Come off it, kids," said Gray sarcastically. "What laws did I break? Unauthorized use of a window? Wasting bandages? Charge it to my medical plan. As for you, Swift—seems to me you were sneaking up on me, from behind! I was just defending myself."

"It won’t wash," cried Tom angrily. "You were sabotaging the solarizer machine!"

"Naw," said the man. "Just taking a look. No harm in that."

"And this is a government-restricted facility, pal!" Bud exclaimed.

"Really? I must’ve missed the posted signs you’re required to have, by federal law." Tom could imagine Gray’s face assuming a smug look beneath the bandages.

Seeing that there was no use in questioning the man any further, Tom contacted Phil Radnor. In minutes the bandaged man was whisked away past the eyes of the astonished nurse.

"They call it hiding in plain sight, guys," said Radnor. "You can imagine how I feel."

"Or how I feel!" groaned Tom. "Even under those bandages, I might have recognized him if I’d just taken the time to look."

"You wouldn’t have," said Bud reassuringly. "What put you on the trail, anyway?"

"Just the ‘unsuspected suspect’ idea," Tom replied. "When you mentioned it again, it occurred to me that the so-called victimized patrolman was connected to the events, but hadn’t been considered."

"What happened to the real patrolman?" asked Bud after a sober pause, knowing that the truth might be dreadful. Tom had no answer, but by evening Phil Radnor had put some more pieces of the puzzle together. The real Brad Yardell had flown out of Fearing Island only hours prior to the first incident, headed toward a scheduled vacation along with several other employees.

"When you first saw him, Tom, Arthur Gray had already gotten into the project computer and altered Yardell’s record, so we thought he was still on the island. The two resemble one another slightly, and I’ve never met Yardell—most of these guys were trained by Harlan Ames," explained Radnor. "Any differences were attributed to the muffled voice and messed-up face."

Bud shook his head in disbelief. "The guy must be pretty desperate for money to allow himself to get beat up that way, just for a disguise!"

"I don’t think it was all that dramatic, Bud," remarked Tom. "All the so-called ‘damage’ could be faked in advance by an experienced plastic surgeon and then covered-up by special makeup and prosthetics, which he removed after my encounter with him. I’ll bet the gold tooth I saw was implanted to be easily pull-outable."

"Might even have been a Hollywood-style prop," Phil Radnor said. "Of course the whole idea was to secure himself as a spy in our midst long enough to help his crony set up shop."

Tom looked thoughtful and troubled, and Bud asked him what was on his mind. "It’s just that—if that was his goal, plus doing a little damage to the solarizer if he could—why hadn’t he already made his escape? There must have been something more to be done, evidently in the next week or so."

"Well, he won’t be doing it now," Radnor declared. "He’s on his way to the mainland in the custody of two federal marshals. But the phony engineer is still at large."

"In any event, I’m most relieved to know Yardell is alive and well," said Tom’s father, who was present for the evening report. He added: "I’m also pleased to say that from early indications any damage to the CosmoSoar from its unsettling experience was minimal. The weather is a bit dicey right now, but I’ve rescheduled the pilotless launch for Monday."

Bud turned to his friend and asked sympathetically, "But how about the Star Spear?"

"Who knows?" said Tom. "We’ll do the electronics repairs at the same time as we swap-out the propulsion system. With luck—and we haven’t seen much luck recently—we’ll be ready for a test flight in a week or so."

Damon Swift gave his son an affectionate squeeze. "Tom, you and Bud brought the CosmoSoar project plenty of luck today. I’ll bet it rubs off on the Star Spear too!"

The next day brought to Fearing Island the first of several big cargo jets that would be conveying some parts of the new propulsion system that had been manufactured by a contractor in Ohio. Tom and Bud watched as lengths of specially fabricated metal conduit pipes were unloaded in the bright Atlantic sunlight.

"You know, genius boy, other than the general idea—the Bud Barclay Principle—you haven’t really told me how your new baby’s going to work," observed the dark-haired pilot.

Tom grinned at his pal. "I didn’t want to be one of those boastful fathers. But since you asked, the whole fuel kicker set-up is really pretty simple."

"Go ahead, convince me!"

"Well, originally we were pumping the oxidizer component of the fuel from the big tanks to the solarizer, and then down to the combustion chamber," said Tom, visualizing the process in his mind’s eye. "There the two fuel streams would be mixed together in a fine spray, and because the fuel is hypergolic, it—"

"‘Hypergolic!’ sounds like something the people on the ground yell when the rocket blasts off."

"It means the two fuel components are self-igniting when mixed," Tom explained. "Unlike the mixture of gasoline vapor and air in a car engine, which requires a spark to set it off."

"Proceed, Professor."

"Well, even though we had to do some very high-speed pumping in the original system to keep up with the rate of combustion, the approach was purely mechanical. Matter of fact, at some points we had to deliberately impede the flow so as to keep it steadier."

"A basic plumbing problem, in other words," Bud commented.

"Don’t ask me," Tom replied. "I don’t understand plumbing! Anyway, the new engine handles the whole thing very differently. The fuel kicker is a mass-accelerator—it actually pushes the oxidizer and the fuel down the twin feedpipes with as much accelerative force as we can manage, and shoots them right out into the combustion chamber with almost no ‘choking’ at the end."

"And accelerating the masses down helps the rocket ship go up," said Bud.

"Right," Tom confirmed. "An ordinary pump couldn’t do the job, so I took a new approach. The two fuel streams, which are already in the form of small suspended droplets, carry an electric charge. That means I can use an electromagnetic flux, running along the length of each conduit, to accelerate the streams. The fluxor coils are built right into the material of the tubing, so the main thing is to make sure the feedpipes are strongly anchored to the frame of the ship."

"I think I understand everything, Skipper," Bud said. "The fuel still ignites down below as before, right?"

"Yes, it’s just moving at hypersonic speed when it does."

Bud squinted in thought. "Say—what about that electric charge on the fuel? Aren’t you worried about hurling lightning bolts or something?"

Tom laughed. "I worry about that all the time, pal. But in this case, the two fuel streams have opposite charges, positive and negative. The forces of attraction cause the droplets to mingle more densely in the chamber; more importantly, the charges neutralize one another before the burning gasses even leave—"

Tom broke off abruptly.

"Don’t tell me you just found a flaw in your system," moaned Bud jokingly. When Tom did not respond, Bud followed his friend’s gaze, even as his ears caught a metallic banging and rumbling sound.

Bud gasped in dismay. A number of the large feedpipes, thick around as oil drums and long as telephone poles, were rolling freely across the asphalt directly toward them!

AS THE THICK, sturdy pipes bore down upon them, Tom and Bud stirred themselves to action. They whirled about and sprinted away from the pipes, at the same time angling off to the left.

Bud chanced a glance over his shoulder and groaned inwardly. The cylinders had spread out in all directions on the uneven asphalt surface, and it appeared impossible that the boys would be able to outrace or avoid them. He knew that the impact would certainly leave them bruised, and possibly break a bone or two!

"Bud!" gasped Tom at his side. "Over the top!"

Grasping his friend’s meaning, the young pilot pivoted and did his best to launch himself upward into the air. The boys leapt side by side, and the first of the pipes rumbled past beneath them, just touching the soles of their shoes.

"Skipper—again!" cried Bud. A second pipe was bounding toward them only a few yards behind the first. Tom cleared this second pipe too. But Bud, his timing thrown off by his warning, came down directly atop it!

Tom winced, expecting the spinning cylinder to toss Bud to the ground. But his pal’s natural athletic prowess came into play. Bud managed to keep his footing, "running in place" on top of the pipe for a good distance before he finally jumped free.

In moments all the rocket pipes had clattered to a stop, and members of the work crew had run up to Tom and Bud.

"Mr. Swift," said the foreman, "I’m sorry, real sorry. The lift-loader wasn’t quite in place when we started to shift-out the pipes, and they all went loose at once!"

Tom nodded, silently. Bud could almost read his friend’s thoughts. An accident—or more sabotage?

But after a quick examination of the loader vehicle, Tom let the incident pass.

"No sign of tampering," said Tom softly as he and Bud walked away. "But it’ll push back the launch of the Star Spear a little more, because now I’ll have to have those feedpipes tested for hairline fractures."

Tom sighed, and he knew Bud Barclay shared in his frustration.

Checking in at the security office, Tom found a message awaiting him.

"This is more like it!" he said to Bud. "It’s from special agent Asa Pike!"

The note indicated that Pike had left a message on Tom’s private voicemail, which Tom accessed immediately, putting the telephone on speaker setting so Bud could listen in.

"Lookee h’yar, you young fellers," said the familiar voice with its flinty nor’easter twang. "Here’s suthin’ of interest to ye, I’d say. I recollect you asked about some big yacht t’other day. Well-by-jing, I hadna seen it then, but I sure have now—she’s a-sittin’ out just off Hankton Point, big as life. Kin see ’er from here, pay phone at Art’s Gas. Lemme see, now—that a H? H…E…R…guess it spells Heraklona. Ain’t thet th’ name you said? Any-ol’-ways, all fer now."

"What should we do now, Tom?" Bud asked after Tom had switched off the phone unit.

Tom’s eyes sparkled. "Well," he said, "I think it’s time for a little experiment. Say, have you met very many multi-billionaires?"

Bud pretended to search his memory. "Nope. A few plain billionaires, but no multi-billionaires."

"Want to?"

"I suppose I wouldn’t mind it!"

Tom explained the plan of his "experiment" to Bud, and within the hour the two youths were airborne on a northerly bearing in a Swift Construction Company amphibious jet.

"So you don’t think our Mr. Odyssey should be given advance warning?" asked Bud, at the controls of the small jetcraft.

"No," Tom replied, "it would just make it convenient for him to decline our offer to drop in on him—and we can’t have that!"

The northward flight went smoothly. As the jet came opposite New York City, Tom had Bud turn east, heading out over the Atlantic for several hundred miles before turning north again. A half-hour later they changed course once more, heading inland toward the coast of Maine.

"At least it looks like we’re coming from someplace other than Fearing Island," Tom remarked.

Even before they noted the coves of Hankton in the distance, Tom and Bud could see the impressive form of the Heraklona silhouetted against the glittering waves below.

Bud whistled admiringly. "She’s a big one all right!" The sleek-designed diesel craft was less like a yacht and more like a small cruise ship.

Bud brought the jet in low on the water, at an angle which suggested that they merely intended to taxi past the yacht toward Hankton. As they bounced along on the waves, raising a spray, Tom activated a small device that he had attached beneath the fuselage. The device emitted a plume of smoke. At the same time, Bud up- and down-throttled the jet engine, causing the plane to advance irregularly. Finally Bud cut the engines completely. Seemingly helpless, they bobbed along within fifty yards of the Heraklona.

Tom switched on the radio. "T-Bird to Heraklona. Say, guys, we’re having some engine problems. Any chance you could pick us up?"

There was no answer, and Tom repeated the message twice more. Finally the radio crackled to life with what were evidently a series of questions—but posed in a language neither Tom nor Bud could understand.

"Oh, great," said Bud.

"They’re speaking Greek," Tom commented. "I know that much, anyway." He switched on the microphone again. "Heraklona—anyone there speak English? English?"

A heavily-accented voice came on. "Eengleesh, yes, yes—leettle bit. You are trouble?"

"In trouble—yes," answered Tom.

"We come pick you up."

The boys watched as a small motorboat was lowered from the yacht, carrying two men. Pulling up beside the jet, they helped Tom and Bud aboard. Tom tried to engage them in conversation, but they only shook their heads as they headed back.

Debarking upon the broad deck of the yacht, they were guided to a large, well-appointed lounge, where a tall man in officer’s garb awaited them.

"Ah! My friends!" he said, shaking their hands. "I am welcoming you to this, the Heraklona!"

"Thank you for your assistance," said Tom. "We won’t trouble you for long."

"Please, ees no trouble! I am captain here, Gregor Mitrou."

"Good to meet you, Captain Mitrou," Tom said. "The Heraklona—isn’t this the Odysseus yacht?"

The Captain nodded with obvious pride. "She is that indeed. Very big!"

Bud now spoke up, trying to appear casual. "You know, I watch Mr. Odysseus’s network all the time. I sure would like to meet him!"

"Ah." Mitrou’s smile and gracious manner vanished instantly. "Perhaps it shall not be possible. He has left instructions that he is not to be disturbed." The captain shrugged. "But as you say, not the venture, not the gain. Let us see."

He walked to the other side of the salon and picked up a telephone. There was a short conversation which the boys could not hear. Then Mitrou beckoned them over and handed the receiver to Tom, who angled it so that Bud could hear as well.

"Hello?" said Tom, tentatively.

"Have I the honor of addressing the young Mr. Swift?" came the reply in cultured, slightly accented tones.

"Oh," said Tom in surprise, "I didn’t realize you—"

"But of course I know who you are, you and your friend Mr. Barclay. Captain Mitrou recognized you immediately. You have made a surprise for me, perhaps?"

"Well, we didn’t know if you would care to see us, Mr. Odysseus," Tom admitted. "And we have an important matter to discuss with you."

"Then I think there is no trouble with your plane?"

Tom reddened, ashamed. "No. I apologize."

"Oh, why apologize?" exclaimed Odysseus. "Did I apologize for sending that photographer to take pictures from up high? No! We do what we must, eh? Now then, what do you wish of me?"

"Perhaps the three of us might sit down and—"

"No," interrupted the multi-billionaire brusquely. "I have not the time, nor the interest. This is as close as we shall get to chatting, I think."

Pressured by the moment, Tom formulated his main questions. "Sir, are you acquainted with a man who lives in Hankton, a man who owns several jet-boats?"

"What is Hankton?"

"It’s the town you’ve been anchored next to."

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "Captain Mitrou stops here to get supplies for my Heraklona—out of the public eye, you see. I know no one who lives here. Should I?"

"No sir," Tom responded. "We just thought you might—you’re both—you both have a lot of money."

"His name, please?"

"He calls himself Arthur Gray," said Tom carefully.

"Of him, I have not heard. And you know something? If I have not heard of him, I bet I have ten times the money, so forget him!"

With a glance at Tom, Bud joined the exchange. "Sir, there is also a man named Goff, and someone named something like Paul-o."

"I have no knowledge," said Heliax Odysseus. "What do you wish of these men?"

"They’ve interfered with our rocket project," Tom replied. "We’re trying to find out as much as we can about them."

"No doubt you come to me because of my little stunt the other week." Odysseus sounded thoughtful, not offended. "Your reasoning is good, but in fact I know nothing of this. And now our chat is at an end."

The line went dead, and Tom hung up the telephone. "We’ll be going now, Captain," he said. "As you heard, our plane is—just fine."

"We will return you to it immediately," said Captain Mitrou stiffly.

In minutes the boys were back aboard the Swift Construction Company amphibian. Bud began to warm up the jet engines.

"I guess o