Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X Part 23

Another hour went by before Mr. Swift was ready to test his own arrangement.

"You've probably heard of the experiments conducted with blind persons,"

he told Tom. "By stimulating the right part of their brain with a lead from a cathode-ray-tube device, an awareness of light and dark can be restored."

Tom nodded.

"Well, I'm using the same principle," Mr. Swift went on, "but with a sort of television camera scanning setup."

He asked Tom to draw the drapes and shut off the room lights, throwing the laboratory into complete darkness, except for the weirdly glowing "brain" in the gla.s.s sphere. Then Mr. Swift shone a flashlight at the scanner. The brain responded by glowing more brightly itself!

Next, after the drapes were opened again and the overhead fluorescent lights switched on, Mr. Swift painted a pattern of black-and-white stripes on a large piece of cardboard. He held this up to the scanner.

Visible ripples of brightness and less-brightness pa.s.sed through the glowing ball of energy inside the sphere. It was reproducing the striped pattern!

"Dad, that's amazing!" Tom said with real admiration.

Mr. Swift shook his head. "Pretty crude, I'm afraid. The brain energy by itself can't take the place of a picture tube in a TV receiver. What we need is an a.n.a.log computer to sum up the scanning pattern picked up by the camera tube and then pa.s.s this information along in code form."

Before Tom could comment, the alarm bell rang on the electronic brain.

The Swifts dropped everything and rushed to the machine.

"Wonder if it's Exman?" Tom exclaimed.

The answer was quickly revealed as the keys began punching out the incoming message on tape. At the same time, a flow of strange mathematical symbols flashed, one after another, on the lighted oscilloscope screen mounted above the keyboard.

Tom and his father read the tape as it unreeled.

s.p.a.cE BEINGS TO SWIFTS. REQUEST INFORMATION ON PROGRESS AND RESULTS OF ENERGY SENT TO YOUR PLANET.

After a quick consultation with his father, Tom beamed out the reply:

WE ARE PLEASED WITH RESULTS SO FAR. FURTHER EXPERIMENTS NOW GOING ON. REQUEST VISIT TO CONTINUE LONGER THAN TWENTY-ONE DAYS AS PLANNED.

Hopefully the Swifts stood by the machine. Would their s.p.a.ce friends agree? As the minutes went by without a response coming through, father and son exchanged anxious glances.

"They've _got_ to let Exman stay, Dad!" Tom said.

Mr. Swift nodded. "I'm afraid, though, the s.p.a.ce beings have decided otherwise. They--"

He was interrupted by the ringing of the alarm bell. "Message, Dad!" Tom said tersely.

A moment later they were overjoyed to see three words appear on the tape:

VISIT EXTENSION GRANTED.

Relieved, the two scientists went back to work on their sensing experiments. Twenty minutes later the signal bell rang again on the electronic brain.

"This time it _must_ be Exman!" Tom cried.

The unreeling tape quickly bore out his guess.

EXMAN TO SWIFTS. TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR EARTHQUAKE UNDER HIGH LOYALTY.

"What!" Tom stared at the tape, his brow creased in a puzzled frown.

"That 'twenty-four-hour earthquake' bit must mean he's warning us that a quake will occur in twenty-four hours. But what about the rest of it?"

"Hmm... 'Under high loyalty.'" Mr. Swift was as baffled as Tom. He studied the message for several minutes. It seemed highly unlikely that the electronic brain had made an error in decoding. Any new or untranslatable symbol caused a red light to flash on the machine.

"I think the only thing we can do is signal Exman and ask for a clarification, Tom," Mr. Swift decided at last.

Tom agreed. He beamed out a hasty code signal:

EXPLAIN MESSAGE.

Seconds later came Exman's reply. It was identical with the first message:

TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR EARTHQUAKE UNDER HIGH LOYALTY.

Tom and Mr. Swift stared at each other anxiously.

"Good night, Dad! This is horrible!" Tom exclaimed. "Exman sends us ample warning of a disaster and we're stymied!"

[Ill.u.s.tration (Tom Jr. and Tom Sr. read a message from Exman)]

"Hi! What's going on, you two?" asked a merry voice. "More heavy thinking?"

Sandy Swift stood smiling in the doorway. The smile gave way to a look of concern as Tom explained the crisis.

"How dreadful!" Sandy gasped. "We _must_ figure out what it means!...

Wait a minute!"

Tom looked at her expectantly. "Got an idea, Sis?"

"Well..." The pretty, blond teen-ager hesitated. "You don't suppose Exman might have been translating some foreign words with a meaning similar to 'high loyalty'? For instance, high loyalty could mean 'good faith.' I know that in Latin 'good faith' would be _bona fide_."

"Sandy! You've guessed it!" Tom crossed the room in a single bound, gave his sister a quick hug, and whirled her around. "Exman must mean the Bona Fide Submarine Building Corporation! He didn't dare risk telling us the exact translation."

"Of course!" Mr. Swift was equally jubilant. But his face was grave as he added, "The company's located on the West Coast close to the San Andreas fault. Tom, a quake in that area could be devastating!"

"You're right, Dad," the young inventor replied. "I'll call Dr. Miles and Bernt Ahlgren at once!"

The telephone conversation that followed was grim with tension. Both government men begged Tom to take personal charge of the quake-deflection measures. Dr. Miles pointed out that tremors along the fault might trigger off a chain of quakes amounting to a national disaster.

After a hasty discussion, Tom agreed that he should station himself at the Colorado site, rather than at the West Coast Quakelizor installation. This would give him broader scope for damping out shock waves across the continent.

"I'll fly out immediately!" the young inventor promised.

Ahlgren, meanwhile, would flash orders to the Bona Fide Company and to civilian officials to have the entire area evacuated as soon as possible.