The hands would seize and pile them, ready for processing by Tom's giant robot.

"I'll do it first thing tomorrow," Tom promised.

At ten the next morning he was calling back. "Dad, the sets are being loaded on two planes right now," he reported.

The cargo ships were warming up on separate runways. The second set of the mechanical arms and hands was being run out to its plane on a flatcar.

"Take-off time is in ten minutes," Tom told his father. "Slim Davis is piloting one plane, Binky Jones the other."

"I'll keep in touch with them," said Mr. Swift, signing off.

After the take-off, Tom went to his lab to make final adjustments to the lens mirrors of the giant ro- 174 .

bot's camera "eyes." It was midafternoon when Mr. Swift radioed his son that the cargo planes were overdue.

"Our radio operator here lost contact with them over an isolated area," he reported, giving Tom the location. "I'm afraid they're in trouble."

Tom went into action. Picking up the intercom, he called Bud, Sterling, and Hanson.

"I'm taking off on a search flight," he told them. "How about meeting me at the Sky Queen and going along?"

Hank Sterling and Bud were at the Flying Lab's hangar five minutes after the report had been received. The ground crew, following a prearranged emergency procedure, had the ship fueled, above-ground, and ready for a take-off. When Tom and Hanson arrived, the young inventor explained to the others the reason for the hurried trip and added: "I have the exact position of the missing planes at the time contact was broken." He held up a map. "The tower has marked the beam they were supposed to follow after that point."

"I'll call the tangents, boy," Bud offered, swinging up through the belly hatch of the Flying Lab.

Sterling and Hanson took observational posts, while Bud plotted the route that would carry them along the precise course taken by the missing aircraft.

Tom gave the elevators a quick lift. This was no time for gentle flight maneuvering. Tom was in a TWIN TROUBLE 175.

hurry and called upon the Sky Queen for every bit of thrust its engines possessed. Pushed to the limit, the Flying Lab shrieked across the sky at more than twelve hundred miles an hour.

This rate of speed was maintained until they approached the locality from which the cargo planes had last reported. Here Tom throttled back while the observers scanned the terrain with high-powered binoculars.

The land was desolate. Several times the intent group thought they had the planes spotted. But upon descending for a closer look, they discovered that shadows from rock formations were what had fooled them.

Almost at the point of discouragement, Bud suddenly spotted a sight that left no doubt in his mind. A silver "T," formed by the wings and fuselage of one of the cargo planes, was bobbing up and down in his binoculars.

"There's one of them, Tom!" he called excitedly. "Move in for a better look."

The lifters dropped them to within five hundred feet of the ground. Below was a scene that made the Swift group gasp angrily. One of the mechanical hand- and-arm sets was being loaded aboard a trailer truck by a group of men. They were working with great haste, gesturing and glancing up constantly at the huge Sky Queen now threatening overhead. Other men were backing a cab up to the trailer.

"They're stealing it!" Hank shouted.

176 .

"Not for long!" said Tom.

The Flying Lab shifted its position until it was hovering directly over the men on the ground. Tom released the throttle. Blasts of flame and heat poured

TWIN TROUBLE 177.

from the jet lifters, scattering the men before a withering rain of exhaust.

At the same time, the plane shot up a thousand feet. Before the group on the ground had recovered from the first attack, Tom was dropping down for a second try at scaring them off. This time the drivers and their helpers scrambled for the cab and raced away over the desert, abandoning the trailer, the stolen cargo, and the plane.

178 .

"We did it!" Bud chortled.

Rather than pursue the thieves, Tom decided to land and search for a trace of the pilot and crew. The Sky Queen came to rest in a large open s.p.a.ce near the trailer. Hanson and Sterling darted over to inspect the mechanical arm. The set seemed none the worse for having been moved.

Meanwhile, Tom and Bud went ahead to the plane. "It's Jones' ship," Tom said, noting the serial number on the wing.

An ominous silence hung over the area. There was not a single sound from the plane.

"Where's the pilot?" Bud asked fearfully. "And what's happened to the crew?"

CHAPTER 22.

A CLEVER FOIL.

THE HATCH of the cargo plane gaped open and the loading ramp was down. Tom and Bud hurried inside, going at once to the control cabin. The pilot was not there.

"Bud, look!" Tom cried, pointing to a pair of earphones. "They're stained with blood!"

Worried, the two boys rushed to the navigator's compartment. Scuff marks on the floor indicated that someone had been dragged out the door.

Tom and Bud separated and made a frantic search of the plane. In the main cargo hold, Tom found the limp body of Jones sprawled out, face down. Near him lay the other two members of the crew.

At this moment Bud rushed in. "Are they-"

Tom was already examining Jones. To the inventor's relief, the pilot was breathing, though his pulse 179.

180 .

was slow. A huge lump near the base of his skull gave mute evidence of a vicious blow.

"He's alive, thank goodness," Tom reported to Bud, who was kneeling beside one of the other men.

''This fellow too," Bud said.

The third crew member was also found to be alive. All three had been cracked on the head from behind.

"We'd better carry them to the Sky Queen," Tom suggested.

Gently they lifted Jones first and carried him out of the compartment and down the ramp. Arv Hanson and Hank rushed up to offer a.s.sistance.

"Hurry and bring out the other two in the cargo compartment," Tom instructed. "I don't know how badly they're injured."

Five minutes after the men had been laid on cots in the Queen's infirmary, they opened their eyes and looked about. Jones was the first to speak.

"It must have been a stowaway," he explained. "I didn't see his face. Heard footsteps coming up behind. Turned to look and everything went black."

Tom wondered whether the stowaway had been someone working at Enterprises or an outsider who had managed to slip aboard the plane. Bud ventured a guess that it had been Raymond Turnbull or a member of the Briggin gang working under him.

"Tom gave the guys who tried to steal the arm gadget a good scare with the jets," Bud told Jones. "I don't think they'll try another attack."

When the other two men revived, they insisted A CLEVER FOIL 181.

upon continuing the flight. Tom, hoping they would be all right, gave an okay but insisted that Hank go along to help pilot the cargo ship.

With Arv Hanson and Bud he watched it take off. Then the three re-entered the Flying Lab, eager to pursue their search for the other missing plane.

A wide sweep of the skies covered many additional square miles of open land, but there was no sign of the lost ship.

As Tom was about to give up hope, an S O S crackled in over the Swift wave band. The call was from Slim Davis. He was down a hundred miles to the southwest of Tom's present position.

"There's a prisoner-" he began. Then the sound faded and Tom could not rouse the sender.

"It's Slim! He has a prisoner!" Tom shouted to his friends in the Sky Queen.

As the Flying Lab flew to the rescue, speculation ran high as to who it might be.

The cargo plane was sighted in a pasture several miles from a small farming community. This time there were no men or trucks surrounding it. Slim waved Tom on and the Flying Lab glided in without using the lifters.

"We were too fast for the stowaway," Slim told Tom. "He surprised the copilot and me from behind and rapped Jack with a monkey wrench. But when he swung at me I banked the plane and he hit the instrument panel instead. It crippled us and we were forced to land."

T82 .

"Where's the stowaway and who is he?" Tom asked eagerly.

"He wouldn't give his name. I tied him up and we called the local police from a farmhouse. They haven't come yet."

Slim led the Swift group to the cargo compartment. Lacking rope, he had bound the intruder with wire. The man's hair, mussed in the scufflle, had fallen forward, revealing a jagged scalp scar.

"Flash Ludens!" Tom exclaimed as the man glared at him.

Bud chortled gleefully. "So the Briggin gang is running out of top men!" he taunted.

The bank robber glowered. "Just what are you talking about?"

"You don't have to play foxy with us, Flash," Tom replied. "Slick Steck has already confessed. We know all about your gang's setup."

Ludens listened to Tom's story of the tie-in between the Briggin gang and Raymond Turnbull, first with disbelief, then with a growing sense of defeat.

"All right, Swift," he growled. "So we have been working with Prof Turnbull.

He helps us. We help him. This job was his idea."

"What was the reason?"

"To delay the opening of your atomic energy plant. He didn't tell us why."

"Where is Turnbull now?" Tom queried.

"I don't know."

A CLEVER FOIL 183.

Flash Ludens refused to say any more about Turn-bull, so Tom changed his line of questioning. "Who was the stowaway on the other plane?" he asked.

"I got a pal of mine to work the job. If you want to know who he is, find him,"

the prisoner sneered.

Though he did not expect to receive an answer to the question, Tom was about to ask how the stowaways had slipped into the Enterprises grounds, when Flash Ludens burst into a raucous laugh.

"Getting into your place was so easy it makes a bank job seem really tough,"

he bragged. "One of those tape recordings told what day those arms were going to be shipped. So my pal and I-we studied all your workmen and picked out two that looked enough like us to fool the gatemen. This morning we just conked 'em in a lonely spot and took their credentials. No trouble at all getting in."

The inventor and his friends looked at one another. Admittance to the plant from now on was going to be double-checked!

A few minutes later the police arrived and arrested Flash Ludens. The country officers seemed overawed to be in charge of such a famous underworld character. After they had gone, Tom, using the facilities of the shop aboard the Flying Lab, repaired the crippled cargo ship's instrument panel. The plane then went on to its destination. This time both cargo ships reported in and the mechanical arms were safely delivered to the Citadel.

By phone Mr. Swift told Tom he had checked and 184 .

rechecked security at the plant. There was no leak. The reason Stan Lee had fallen must have been because of a fault in the control system. Tom flew out there at once in a jet to test the small robot again. It worked perfectly!

"I can't understand what happened before," he told his father, puzzled about the whole episode.

He returned to Shopton and immediately began putting the final touches on his giants' heads. When the two robots were completely a.s.sembled and ready for work, he called Chow in.

"You get the first view, 'pardner,' " Tom said to him.

The Texan stared, speechless. He wagged his head and scratched his bald spot. At last he said: "Tom, these here are too human lookin' for comfort. Why, brand my cow skulls, that giant's actually eyein' me!"

In each "eye socket" Tom had fitted a lens for the two television cameras.