Tom Swift and His Cosmotron Express by Victor Appleton II Read Free Book Online

bed’s pretty narrow, Pete."
    "Funny. How about tomorrow morning? Breakfast?"
    Tom tried not to sigh. Pete was, after all, a friend. Though in no way more than a friend. "Okay. Where?"
    "Er—how about Enterprises? Maybe good ol’ Chow Winkler could whip somethin’ up?"
    "Good ol’ Chow Winkler is somewhere in Indiana right about now," responded Tom; "probably in full snore."
    A close friend since they had met in New Mexico, Chow was Swift Enterprises’ executive chef, his waistline exceeded only by his fondness for startlingly patterned, arrestingly hued western-style shirts. After playing the role of cowboy-hero when Tom was endangered while developing his dyna-4 capsule in Nevada, the Texan-by-birth had been granted—over protests—a vacation of several weeks to visit old friends and family in the southwest.
    But it developed that Chow’s friends and family had a migratory urge. They now ranged freely from Arizona to the wilds of darkest Sheboygan. The Swifts had flown the older man’s battered pickup to Nevada, and Chow had spent the ensuing weeks wending his way back to Shopton on a lazy cross-country drive. He was due back any day.
    "Okay," said Langley, "no Chow."
    "Look, Pete, come to the plant around seven-thirty. I’ll have Chow’s assistant come up with something."
    "Something normal and American, please," urged Pete. "I know the guy’s Russian. No breakfast caviar. Keep the eggs big."
    They met the next morning as planned, dining in Tom’s little lab apartment. Langley took a sip of coffee and surprised Tom by asking, "Is your security guy Ames in this early?"
    "No, not usually."
    "How about the other one, the chunky guy? Radnor?"
    Tom frowned. "What’s this all about?"
    "Doesn’t take rocket science to guess that it’s a security issue, Tom-tron—er, Tom."
    The young inventor, the crewcut one, leaned back in his chair. "A problem here? At Enterprises?"
    "I should be so lucky," grumbled Langley in reply. "It’s at my end. Serious stuff, guy— way serious. It could be a danger to the whole country, Tom. And it involves you!"
     

CHAPTER 6
Viper Spirit
    "SURE," said Tom blandly after a bite of toast. " Everything involves me, right?"
    Langley grinned. "There are no ‘Peter Langley Invention Adventures,’ kid. Nobody’d bother with fictionalizations of my life. Well—maybe fans of romance novels. Hmm?"
    "You said serious . So let’s get serious," Tom urged impatiently. "What’s going on?"
    Langley glanced around the room, as if looking for secret listeners, then pulled a sheet of paper from within his zippered jacket and slapped it down on the table. "Look familiar?"
    Tom stifled a gasp. The detailed drawing showed a squared-off wedge-shaped craft obviously similar to the Brungarian Fire Fury!
    "What is it?" the young scientist-inventor asked with faint voice and feigned ignorance.
    "You can forget that , friend!" snapped Langley. "One thing neither of us bright boys can play is dumb !"
    "Okay. What are you after, Pete?"
    "Cards on the table." The young man tapped the sheet. "This is what the news-web calls the ‘unauthorized overflight of American coastal waters.’ Nice protective government-ese to keep quiet about a supermach jetcraft buzzing the water near your spaceport."
    "What makes you—"
    "Record and delete, Tom. Don’t waste breath—it’s expensive these days." Langley stared into Tom’s eyes. "You have your spy sources at Enterprises. Even the lousy book series alludes to it. Great plot device. But don’t deny it’s real. Somebody in government—hey, maybe above the government!—feeds you information in the usual cloak-and-daggery way. Deny it if it’ll make you feel good." Tom remained tight-lipped. "Okay.
    "A long while back—around when you were doing the hydrolung thing—I started getting weird messages on my private voicemail. When I say private , I mean it: it’s hooked to a number only I use or know about. I use it to leave myself notes and comments about