Tom Swift and His Megascope Space Prober by Victor Appleton II Read Free Book Online

in your space locker."
    Bud winced comically. " What -o-phone? Man, let’s just call it a Private Ear Radio, okay?"
    "Okay." The word hurt Tom as he said it.
    Bud glanced at his wristwatch, a gift from his best pal. "Time to get goin’." He paused at the door, then said quietly: "It won’t be half so much fun without you along, Skipper... genius boy." Giving Tom a playful but half-hearted poke in the ribs, Bud strode off abruptly.
    Deep in thought, Tom breakfasted quietly, then hopped into his car, newly repaired, and drove to his private laboratory at Enterprises. He was baffled and angry at the attempts to injure him. Who was behind the bizarre high-tech attacks? And why?
    The Swifts and their revolutionary scientific inventions had often been targets for scheming criminals and subversive agents. Recently, with Bud at his side, Tom had fought for his life against deadly enemies while on a difficult engineering mission in the Middle East. In outer space and under the sea, and everyplace in between, the young scientist-inventor had faced heavy odds in his restless urge for new achievements. And the dangers were never to him alone.
    Heaving a sigh, Tom gave up trying to solve the puzzle for the present and strode into his lab. "Too much to do to spend time worrying," he muttered restlessly, settling down at his workbench in front of his design computer and circuitry emulator. "If we’re to have any rest from these guys, it may depend on getting the communicator done—the ‘Private Ear Radio’."
    Tom was hours deep in work when he was interrupted by a call from George Dilling, the plant’s chief of communications. "I just took a call from Congressman Van Arkyn, Tom."
    "Right, the head of the subcommittee that deals with Enterprises. What did he want?"
    "He asks you to go down to the teleconference room—something big." Dilling added: "Just you, no one else in the room. He made that very clear. He’ll link through from D.C. in about fifteen."
    Mystified, Tom hurried to the company’s advanced communications setup, which projected video images of the conferees as if they were all seated together around a table.
    An image swam into focus in the darkness across from the young prodigy. "Hello, Tom," said Van Arkyn, an avuncular type in his later 60’s.
    Tom nodded politely. "Hello, Congressman." He turned his gaze to the second figure in the circle of light, seated next to the congressman—and his eyebrows flew up in astonishment!
     
CHAPTER 7
STEALTH AT LARGE
    "ASA PIKE!" Tom exclaimed. "You’re the last person I expected to see!"
    When Tom had been preparing for his first trip into space, an unknown enemy had endangered his plans. Following a lead, he and Bud had traveled to a coastal town where they recruited a local man, Asa Pike, to assist them. Yet later events suggested that Pike was much more than what he seemed, and in the end he had vanished without a trace—leaving a broad hint that he was an agent of a deep-cover U.S. security agency which called itself "Collections".
    The sun-craggy older man returned a smile. "What’s that, son? Asa Pike? Never heard of th’ feller. Friend o’ yours?"
    Tom grinned. "He turned out to be a very good friend!"
    "Well then, good f’ him."
    Tom used the signature phrase of the Collections group. "Are our tax dollars still at work?"
    Pike’s eyes twinkled. "Always are, don’t ye think?"
    "Let’s not worry about introductions," stated Congressman Van Arkyn. "Something of grave import has come up, Tom, and this gentleman is in the best position to tell you about it."
    Tom nodded, waiting. "Say there, young man, I hear you’ve been havin’ a speck of trouble lately," said the man Tom persisted in calling Asa Pike. "Problems with your car? Jet plane, too?"
    "I’m not surprised that you folks know about it," was Tom’s reply. "Can you tell me who’s behind it?"
    "Who? Enemies , I’d say. A gang o’ scrowlywogs who have a nice business stealing blueprints and th’