Free Tom Swift and His Subocean Geotron by Victor Appleton II Page B

has managed to connect to some sort of extraterrestrial source, Planet X or otherwise. He may have doped out enough of the space symbols to fake a message. Maybe even intercept our own outgoing messages and respond to them."
    "In other words," stated Bud, "the same thing he’s already done to Nee Ruykendahl!"
    "If."
    "Yeah. If. Man, I hate ‘if’!"
    The flight of the Queen was hours long, thousands of miles almost due south over the slowly darkening Pacific to a tiny rock of an island almost equally far from the coast of South America—one of the most isolated spots on the face of the sea.
    On the way, Tom read about their destination from reference books in the Sky Queen ’s library. Called Rapa Nui in the native tongue, the island had been discovered by Dutch Commodore Roggeveen on Easter Sunday, 1722. Like later visitors, he had been astounded and mystified by its hundreds of gigantic stone statues—all with the same weird, sneering face.
    Its Polynesian people had had numerous unhappy contacts with outsiders. Many had been carried off by Peruvian slavers in 1862, capturing or killing about half of the island’s population. A handful of escapees returning to the island from Peru had set off an epidemic of smallpox, and tuberculosis spread by missionaries took another quarter of the native population. Violent clan wars further decimated the inhabitants, until only 111 persons remained.
    Finally Chile had taken over the island. Now the native descendants numbered several thousand and the minute island was used mainly for sheep raising.
    "Those big stone statues—what do they represent?" asked Bud.
    "No one knows for sure," Tom replied. "It’s amazing that they could even have been quarried and erected on such a tiny, remote land speck."
    Ed remarked quietly, "An unsettling, eerie place. It makes you believe that a pile of rock can feel loneliness. And grief."
    Soon the Flying Lab jet-hovered over Easter Island. Cliff-girded and ringed by jagged black lava reefs, the island was green and hilly, interrupted by the craters of the several extinct volcanoes that had given birth to it when the Pacific was newborn.
    "Look! There are some of the statues!" Tom said, pointing. The huge pieces lay face down, along a crumbling stone platform near the shore. "I’ve read that they stood on burial platforms, or mausoleums, all around the island," Tom added.
    Nee commented, "A number have been set back up in place. Ah, tourism."
    Bud landed the Sky Queen in a field of jagged black pebbles between the cramped island airport and Easter’s only village, Hanga Roa. A Chilean Navy officer, Lieutenant Moreno, came to meet them in a jeep. "An honor! I am told you are planning some underwater explorations."
    "Yes sir. The first goal is to narrow the area of our researches. I’m—er—checking a theory connected with something that may have happened on the ocean floor."
    "A volcanic activity perhaps. We are host to many scientists, geologists, archaeologists—some are pleased to live here on Isla de Pascua—that is our official Spanish name—the year round. And of course we are well acquainted with Mr. Ruykendahl and his safari-ship Wascala ." As Nee looked smugly pleased, Moreno continued: "But our governor is most eager to see the famous Tom Swift. You must accept his invitation to dine with him this evening. Allow me the honor of escorting you to his residence after you are dressed."
    "I thought I was dressed!" Bud muttered to Tom in a whisper.
    As Tom and Bud rode into town in the lieutenant’s jeep, excited islanders, mounted on wiry horses, came galloping toward them. The people were raggedly dressed, but greeted the visitors with gay, friendly smiles.
    " Ia-o-rana !" they chorused.
    At Lieutenant Moreno’s whispered suggestion, the boys called back, " Ia-o-rana korna !—Good day, everyone!"—the island’s traditional greeting.
    The older district of the village of white-painted houses with iron roofs was fenced off from