Free Tom Swift and His Polar-Ray Dynasphere by Victor Appleton II Page A

down to the door, Bud behind him, and found to his surprise that it was not only unlocked but open a slit. With a gulp Tom inched the door open.
    The furnished room was vacant! It was clear from the turned-out drawers and general disarray that Susak had made a hasty flight. "Aw jetz, he’s off on his merry way to somewhere!" Bud groaned.
    "My lousy attempt to tail him must’ve made him extra alert. I’ll bet he noticed your taxi following him, Bud, or else he spotted you after he got here," Tom speculated. "So he ducked out either by the roof or the rear fire escape."
    Chagrined by the suspect’s escape, the two entered and looked around, careful not to touch or disturb anything. "These magazines are in Hindi," Tom pointed out.
    "No surprise with this incense in the air. And look." Bud was leaning down over a trash basket. "I see a trashed envelope with a name handwritten on it—Jaisit Radamantha. And the return address― "
    Tom’s face was right next to his friend’s. "Mukerji and Sons, Ltd.—Mumbai, India!"
    The delayed and embarrassed FBI agent, Martin, finally arrived. His search of the room failed to turn up any further clues. "Our guys’ll go over it, of course," he said. "Fingerprints, hairs, the works. But for now I don’t see anything screamin’ out at me. And I have to point out," he had to point out, "Mr. Susak is only a ‘person of interest’ at the moment."
    "True," conceded Tom. "I don’t even know if he’s the one who slammed me in the alley."
    "Right. This is New York, you know."
    "I hear it’s a lot better, though," Bud remarked.
    The FBI agent telephoned the police, requesting that all prowl cars be on the lookout for the fugitive "person." Then he drove Tom and Bud to the jetrocopter and they returned to Shopton with their freight of mystery.
    Next day brought Tom both possibilities and disturbing news. A call alerted the scientist-inventor that the Kronus probe had begun to orbit Titan in an even more erratic manner, giving Tom a renewed sense of urgency. If anything could be done, it would have to happen sooner—not later!
    Bud dropped by the laboratory and found his pal deeply engrossed in an experiment. Tom was just switching off a vacuum pump connected to a thick-walled chamber with a view-window of ultrastrong Tomaquartz. Inside the chamber, a small object, like a ping-pong ball, hung from a nylon cord, while the large model of the electrodynamic controller glowed on the workbench at Tom’s elbow.
    "What’s this—a new game?" Bud asked.
    Tom chuckled. "No, a demonstration of how I hope to rescue that loopy satellite. I guess my head-bang yesterday shook down a few fresh thoughts."
    "It should happen to me. Give me the low-down, prof."
    "Well, let’s pretend that the ball is the satellite," Tom began. He switched on his dyna-field device and trained the sphere’s inner focusing ring toward the chamber.
    Instantly the hanging ball swung toward Tom!
    "Neat, genius boy. How does it work—by magnetic attraction?"
    "Nope. You might say I’m using the machine to turn the problem against itself." When Bud looked jocularly blank, Tom explained that the scientists in charge of the Kronus project had finally gained some insight into the cause of the satellite’s strange behavior. "Their analysis is based on new data from Japanese space studies involving the solar wind—the stream of charged particles that jet into space from the sun."
    "Which you’ve used on a couple inventions already."
    "Yes, but without too much knowledge of some of its details—for example, the specific process that accelerates the particles, which are mostly hydrogen atoms and helium nucleii, to something like two million miles per hour! "
    Bud gulped. "Hey! You just stunned my quip-maker!"
    "The team consulted Aciema Musa and her study group on Fearing Island, who think the new data indicates that something called Alfven Waves —huge surges of magnetic force induced by the interactions among the charged