Tom Swift and His Flying Lab by Victor Appleton II Read Free Book Online Page B

nest of spies around here."
    "Well, for Pete’s sake, watch your step!" Bud urged.
    On the way to the administration building the boys talked of nothing else but the attack. And when Tom told his father about it, Mr. Swift looked grave.
    "This is really cause for alarm," he said. "Until we get to the bottom of it, you must be extra cautious, Tom. Better report this incident to the police at once."
    "I’ll do that, Dad," Tom replied. "And I’ll send a message to Mr. Rigoledo too, via the American embassy in Cristobal. All this may mean that the Verano rebels are getting restless!"
    During the last several days, Mr. Swift had been working with Tom on the super-Geiger counter. He now announced his satisfaction with the result of a novel approach he had been trying.
    "Tomorrow we’ll take the model up in a plane and try it on some buried uranium," he said.
    The following morning, after Tom had finished an inspection of the altimeters on the Flying Lab, he drove by electric cart to a spot far removed from the Swift Enterprises buildings. Here his father was directing some digging. Two workmen, operating a power boring drill, were sinking a hole deep in the ground.
    "We’re about ready to bury the uranium," Mr. Swift explained to Tom. "I think the hole’s deep enough. They’re down twenty feet now."
    He walked over to where a heavy lead cylinder lay. The cylinder contained two curies of a naturally-occurring radioactive uranium isotope.
    "All right, men, go ahead and lower the cylinder into the hole."
    "Don’t you want us to uncork her first, Mr. Swift?" asked the team lead.
    "Absolutely not!" Damon Swift commanded. "The container is self-opening and will eject the material only upon receiving my coded signal. I don’t want any of you within fifty yards of this ‘hot’ uranium even after you’ve got it covered with dirt."
    When this was accomplished he turned to Tom. "We’re ready, son."
    "Okay. I’ll head upstairs in the Skeeter," the young inventor responded. "Keep your fingers crossed!" He drove off toward the Skeeter’s hangar, where the newly-redesigned detector had already been loaded aboard and secured.
    "She’s ready to go," the mechanic on duty told him. "Just tuned her up. The engines sound smooth an’ fine."
    "That’s great, Vern," said Tom, noting the name on the mechanic’s overalls. "Just as long as nobody shoots bazookas at her!"
    "Yeah," the mechanic replied, scratching his head. "I heard about that!"
    In a matter of seconds the unique helicraft was airborne under the power of its pulse-jet rotors. Switching to horizontal flight mode, Tom climbed steeply and leveled off at two thousand feet.
    "Let’s try the counter at this low altitude first," came Mr. Swift’s voice over Tom’s televoc. "I’ve verified that the cylinder has ejected the uranium from the shielding."
    Winging over the Swift Enterprises grounds, Tom eased the throttle. Presently the monotonous background hiss in Tom’s headset was replaced by the high-pitched mix of tones that signified success.
    "We’ve got a winner, Dad," Tom televoc’d.
    "Well, at least it works!" Mr. Swift chuckled.
    "Let’s try it at five thousand feet," Tom suggested as he put the Skeeter into a steep climb.
    At five thousand feet he leveled off once more, starting another run over the buried uranium. This time the detector tones came much less steadily and very weakly.
    "But it’s there!" murmured Tom as he tried to adjust the counter so that it would produce a more sensitive response. "But will it work at, say, ten thousand, where we’d normally be cruising?" He set his jaw. We may as well find out now, he thought.
    He pulled the ship into another upward surge. When the altimeter read ten thousand feet, Tom leveled off and made another pass, but the device registered no sound other than the normal background hiss. Tom’s face showed his keen disappointment. Even the improved super-Geiger counter lacked the power for long-range detection.
    "Our