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

can solve it, Tom."
    Thinking of the size and importance of the challenge, Tom let out a deep breath. "I’ll try, but I’ll need to know more of the details—how it’s propelled, its power source, and so on."
    "When you return to your office, you’ll find that a special courier has deposited blueprints in your safe," the congressman stated.
    "Stand t’reason these gabbers have listened t’ everything we’ve jest said," noted Pike calmly. "No matter—they’d be plain idjits not to guess from the get-go that we’d come to Tom Swift with this. Good chance they’ll pull the Eyeballer away from your factory now, fer safety. But I’m a-guessin’ that won’t stop ye, not likely. Hmm?"
    "Good to see you again, Asa."
    The man grinned as Congressman Van Arkyn moved to switch off the teleconference camera. "Good t’see you again, boy. For th’ fust time, o’ course."
    Tom returned to his office and found the blueprints, unlabeled, in his code-locked safe. "Trent, did anyone enter the office in the last hour?"
    "Not a one, Tom," replied Munford Trent, the two Swifts’ secretary. "And I’ve been here all day."
    Tom chuckled to himself in near disbelief. Good night, those blueprints might have been in the safe for days! "I don’t know why we bother with an alarm system around here," he muttered, hastily adding: "Don’t worry, Trent. You’re not at fault."
    To limber up his mind for the new problem, the young inventor decided to resume work on the old one—the Private Ear Radio.
    Tom was soon covering sheet after sheet of paper with diagrams and lengthy computations. "Quantum-level signaling!" he said to himself. "Seems like Mother Nature doesn’t want us humans to figure out how to do it. But maybe she’ll reward me if I play it clever."
    Satisfied at last that he was on the right track, Tom plunged into the job of electronic construction, anxious to begin testing his new approach. A tangled assembly of nano-scaled microcomponents and wiring gradually took shape on his workbench. He switched on the crude device and began to note down the readings on several monitor instruments, making various changes to the power and output characteristics as he went along.
    A bellowing foghorn voice suddenly shattered the young inventor’s concentration. "Tom! Great gravy, I know yuh’re in there!"
    "Come on in, Chow. I unlocked the door."
    He looked up as a roly-poly figure came clomping into the laboratory with a clatter of high-heeled cowboy boots. As usual, Chow was sporting a gaudy shirt, with a ten-gallon hat perched atop his bald dome. Oddly, his leathery sun-bronzed face looked pale.
    "What in thunderation’s goin’ on around here?" Chow gasped. "Flyin’ soup, talkin’ pots an’ pans— that I kin take, boss. But now I got fireworks poppin’ in my galley!"
    With his mind still on his work, Tom stared at the quivering cowpoke. " Fireworks ! Chow, what are you talking about?"
    Chow grabbed him by the arm. "Boss, you git yer blame blue-stripe T-shirt on over t’ the galley and see for yourself!" the cook begged. "Brand my space spinach, it’s plumb spooky! Either the galley’s got itself a ghost, or that buddy o’ yours is playin’ some kind o’ joke on us all the way from Cape Car- neeval !"
    Tom and Chow ran down the corridor to the private kitchen that adjoined the ex-Texan’s apartment. At the cook’s request, he had been installed near Tom’s main lab-workshop so he could "whomp up" special meals for his young boss whenever Tom was hard at work on a new invention—which often meant many an overlooked mealtime.
    In the doorway of the kitchen the young inventor halted in amazement. Tiny explosions of hissing vapor were popping out across the whole length of the room, each one making a noisy report like a small firecracker! The ghostly stuff seemed to be materializing out of nowhere!
    "Good night! You weren’t kidding, pardner!" Tom gasped. "Spectral fireworks!"
     
CHAPTER 8
QUANTUM