Tom Swift and His Electronic Retroscope by Victor Appleton II Read Free Book Online

dangerous."
    Doc now came trotting up and gave each of the travelers a bear hug. "And while you boys were out wallowing around, I was able to make some real progress identifying our Grandyke prospects. I’ve narrowed it down to eleven men."
    "I have some news too," Tom said. He briefly related his theory concerning the old roadway, repeating it again as Chief Quetzal arrived.
    "The great-path is very old," commented the ahau. "More than that, I do not know."
    "Have you any stories of stone monuments once standing in this area, or ruined buildings?" Tom asked. "Sometimes such knowledge is passed along, father to son."
    "I say again, Tom-Swift, I do not know." Hu-Quetzal suddenly turned and strode away.
    Chow, a good judge of character, had an opinion. "That feller’s hidin’ something, boss. He knows a peck more’n he’s sayin’—which ain’t so hard, since he ain’t sayin’ nothin’ no-how!"
    Tom nodded, frowning, but decided to say nothing himself.
    The young inventor felt it best to stow the retroscope equipment and patching materials in Chief Quetzal’s hut for the night, where they would be protected, safe under the watchful eyes of the Americans. This they did piece by piece with great care, finishing in the glow of the village cookfires.
    "Well! What have we here?"
    Tom turned and found Wilson Hutchcraft languidly regarding him from one of the doorways. "How are you, Mr. Hutchcraft?"
    The philologist-archaeologist ignored the question and stepped into the hut, glancing over the assemblage of electronics equipment with a vaguely critical air. "No doubt this is your televised time machine, hmm?" Tom confirmed the guess, and Hutchcraft continued, "Quite a tangle of electrical spaghetti, but I suppose that’s the kind of thing you technician-sorts like. I find hands-on investigation so much more rewarding."
    Tom tried to conceal his growing irritation. "I’m sure it is, in its way. But my invention doesn’t replace that kind of work. It makes it easier and more productive."
    "If it should happen to work, hmm?" Hutchcraft sank down on Doc Simpson’s vacant hammock and wiped his forehead. "And just how does it work? How do you take pictures of the past? As the poet said, The past, passed, dead, ever fled, beyond recall."
    "I’m not sure I’d expect a poet to understand it," Tom said with a smile. "But I’ll be glad to explain the general idea."
    The retroscope camera was based on two earlier achievements of the Swifts. One was Tom’s discovery of a hitherto unknown radiation, the spectron rays or "space-waves," that selectively interacted with the nuclear configurations at the core of all matter. This had led to the invention of the Swift Spectroscope and the force-ray repelatron used in Tom’s latest spaceship.
    The new camera also made use of certain scanning features originally developed by Tom’s celebrated great-grandfather for his so-called television detector, further elaborated for use in Tom’s Eye-Spy camera, as Bud had nicknamed it. This remarkable device could take video-type pictures through a wall or other solid object.
    "I call my invention a retroscope," Tom went on, "because ‘retro’ means ‘back’ or ‘backward’—as in retro-rocket —and the camera is suppose to allow us to ‘see back’ how a carved object looked originally, hundreds or even thousands of years in the past."
    "A very sensible name, at any rate," Hutchcraft remarked dryly. "But how is this miracle to be accomplished?"
    Tom began to gesture as if drawing diagrams in the air, a habit that seemed to help him think. "Think of a carved stone or other such surface. As I’m sure you know, any rock may undergo radioactive aging as its natural elements break down and become other elements. That happens all through the rock, and can be used for dating the materials. But the layers nearer the surface are more exposed to cosmic radiation from the outside, which is always streaming down from space."
    "Mm-hmm," said