Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X Part 7

Further news reports will be broadcast as soon as they reach this station," the announcer ended.

For a moment Tom and Bud were too stunned to speak. Sandy was wide-eyed with the realization that the news spelled trouble for Swift Enterprises and all America.

"Looks as though that CIA man who briefed us wasn't kidding, eh, skipper?" Bud muttered at last.

"It came sooner than he expected!" Tom said.

Jumping up from the table, Tom switched off the radio and hurried to the hall telephone. In a few moments he managed to get a long-distance call through to Wes Norris of the FBI.

"Is the news on this Brungarian coup as bad as it sounds, Wes?" Tom inquired.

"Worse! That rebel bunch really has it in for us, as you know, Tom,"

Norris replied. "They envy America and they'll move heaven and earth to steal our scientific secrets. This could touch off a whole epidemic of sabotage and other spy activity!"

Tom's jaw clenched grimly. He then asked the FBI man his opinion about the discovery of the secret arms cache in Pete Latty's bas.e.m.e.nt.

Norris admitted he was puzzled. "It doesn't add up, Tom," the FBI agent said thoughtfully. "If our enemies were planning to destroy Shopton by a quake, why would anyone be needing a gun?"

"I can't figure it myself, Wes--unless they were planning to raid and loot Enterprises after the place was thrown into disorder," Tom deduced.

"What about Narko himself? Has he talked yet?"

Norris replied that although he had not interviewed Narko himself, FBI agents who had grilled the spy had failed to elicit any information.

"Here's something else, though, which might interest you," Norris went on. "We now have reports that at the time of the Harkness and Medfield disasters, seismographs recorded simultaneous quakes off the coast of Alaska near the Aleutian chain. Tremors were also felt off the southwest coast of South America."

A new factor to consider! Tom frowned in puzzlement as he hung up the telephone after completing his talk with the FBI man.

After Tom had repeated the conversation to his companions, Bud said, "You mean the H-bomb idea goes out the window?"

Tom shrugged. "Wes says they've found no evidence to support the theory of man-produced underground blasts. It just doesn't jibe with those other remote tremors. They'd be too much of a coincidence, happening at the same time!"

"Then the quakes at Harkness and Medfield were real earthquakes!" Sandy put in.

"Looks that way," Tom admitted. "Those other tremors Wes mentioned follow a natural circ.u.m-Pacific belt which is well known to seismologists. I'm no expert, but perhaps they could have set off chain reactions below the earth's crust which triggered the two quakes in this part of the country."

In that case, the young inventor reflected, it was only a freak of nature that the Faber and nose-cone factories had been wrecked by the shock. But in spite of the seismographic clues, Tom was not entirely convinced. A nagging doubt still buzzed in the back of his mind.

The next morning Tom hurried off to his private gla.s.s-walled laboratory at Enterprises, eager to continue work on his container, or robot body, for the brain from s.p.a.ce.

Tom frowned as he studied the rough sketch he had drawn in his office the afternoon before. "This setup's full of bugs!" he muttered.

Nevertheless, Tom decided, the basic idea was sound. Grabbing pencil and slide rule, he began to dash off page after page of diagrams and equations.

"Chow down!" boomed a foghorn voice. Chow Winkler, wearing a white chef's hat, wheeled a lunch cart into the lab.

"Oh... thanks." Tom scarcely looked up from his work as the cook set out an appetizing meal of Texas hash, milk, and deep-dish apple pie on the bench beside the young inventor's papers. Grumbling under his breath, Chow sauntered out.

Tom went on working intently between mouthfuls. In another hour he finished a set of pilot drawings. Then he called Hank Sterling and Arvid Hanson and asked them to come to the laboratory.

They listened with keen interest as Tom explained his latest creation.

"No telling if it will work when the energy arrives from s.p.a.ce," Tom said, "but I think everything tracks okay. Hank, get these plans blueprinted and a.s.sign an electronics group to the project. You'd better handle the hardware yourself."

"Right." Hank rolled up the sketches.

"And, Arv," Tom went on, "I'd like a scale model made to guide them on a.s.sembly. How soon can you have it?"

Hanson promised the model for some time the next day, and the two men hurried off.

As usual, Arv proved slightly better than his word. The expert modelmaker was devoted to his craft and as apt to forget the clock as Tom himself, when absorbed in a new project. By working on in his shop long after closing hours, Hanson had a desk-size model of the s.p.a.ce-brain robot ready for Tom's inspection when the young inventor arrived at the plant early the following morning.

"Wonderful, Arv!" Tom approved. "Every time I see one of your models of a new invention, I'm _sure_ it'll work!" Hanson grinned, pleased at the compliment.

Tom hopped into a jeep and sped across the plant grounds to deliver the model to Hank Sterling and his project crew. Work was already well along on the electronic suba.s.semblies and the strange-looking "body" was taking shape.

That afternoon Ames and Dilling returned from Washington. The report they gave to Tom bore out his hunch that the rebel Brungarian scientists might well be able to divert the s.p.a.ce energy.

The next day was Friday. Tom was hoping, although none too optimistically, that the container might be completed before the week end. To his delight, an Enterprises pickup truck pulled up outside the laboratory later that afternoon and Hank rolled the queer-looking device inside.

"Hi, buster!" Tom greeted it. "Is this your daddy?"

Hank chuckled. "Don't look at me. It claims _you're_ its daddy. But hanged if I can see much resemblance!"

"Think it'll live?"

"If not," Hank replied, only half jokingly, "the boys who worked on it will sure be disappointed. No kidding, skipper, that's quite a gadget you dreamed up!"

The device stood about shoulder-high, with a star-shaped head, one point of which could be opened. The head would contain the actual brain energy. Its upper body, cylindrical in shape and of gleaming chrome, housed the output units through which the brain would react, and also the controls. Antennas projecting out on either side gave the look of arms.

Its "waist" was girdled with a ring of repelatron radiators for exerting a repulsion force when it wanted to move, by repelling itself away from nearby objects.

Below the repelatrons was an hourgla.s.s-shaped power unit, housing a solar-charged battery.

The power unit, in turn, was mounted on a pancake-shaped transportation unit. This unit was equipped with both casters and a sort of caterpillar-crawler arrangement for the contrivance to get about over obstacles. Inside was a gyro-stabilizer to keep the whole device upright.

Tom felt a glow of pride--and eager impatience--as he inspected the device. If it worked as he hoped, this odd creature might one day provide earth scientists with a priceless store of information about intelligent life on Planet X!

Bud and Chow, entering the laboratory soon after Hank Sterling had left, found Tom still engrossed in his thoughts.

"Wow! Is this your s.p.a.ceman?" Bud inquired.

Tom nodded, then grinned at his callers' gaping expressions. Each was trying to imagine how the "thing" would look in action.

"Sure is a queer-lookin' buckaroo!" Chow commented, when Tom finished explaining how it was supposed to work.

On a sudden impulse, the old cowpoke took off his ten-gallon hat and plumped it on the creature. Then he removed his polka-dotted red bandanna and knotted it like a neckerchief just below the star head.

Tom laughed heartily as Bud howled, "Ride 'em, s.p.a.ceman!"