Bud gasped. "Roarin' rockets! Am I seeing things?"

  A radiant green ball was floating low in the sky! It was hovering between Enterprises and the outskirts of town. Its weird radiance shed a greenish glow over the whole area.

  Tom was as astounded as Bud. He slowed throttle and extended the rotors, then cautiously steered toward the glowing sphere.

  Both boys burst out laughing! The green ball was a moored balloon, coated with phosphorescent paint. It bore the words:

  EAT AT THE GREEN ORB DINERS Shopton - Fernwood

  "Talk about advertising stunts," Tom said, still chuckling, "this takes the prize! It almost had me thinking the Martians had landed!"

  The boys flew on to the Enterprises airfield. Its tower operator said to Tom, "There's a package for you in your office, skipper."

  "Understood. Thank you," Tom radioed back.

  The Whirling Duck touched down gently on the airstrip and Tom turned it over to a mechanic.

  "I - er - sort of had a date with Sandy if we got back in time," Bud said.

  Tom grinned. "We did, so go ahead, pal."

  With a parting wave, Tom jeeped to the main building and hurried inside to the Swifts' double office. A bulky envelope from the national radio-telescope observatory was lying on his desk. A note from Miss Trent said that it had arrived by jet.

  "The radio-telescope graphs!" Tom guessed.

  He ripped open the package and pulled out a sheaf of tapes. They were marked into squares like mathematical graph paper, and bore jagged tracings of pen lines. These were records of the electrical current output of the amplifiers of the radio telescope monitoring the Green Orb.

  Tom sat down and began poring over1 the graphs. "Sure don't look like any I've seen before," he thought with a puzzled frown.

  A short time later there was a knock on the door.

  "Come in!" Tom called.

  Doc Simpson walked into the office, looking somewhat perturbed. "Hi, skipper!" He said. "I checked with the tower and heard you got back, and then I saw a light here so I stopped in."

  As the young medic came over to Tom's desk, he saw the radio-telescope graphs - then took a second, closer look and immediately became interested. "Say, what are those things?" He asked.

  When Tom told him, Doc was amazed. "Those look like electroencephalograms!" He declared.

  "You mean like graphs of human brain waves?"

  "They sure do. That one there, for instance, looks just like a P-type alpha-wave pattern."

  Tom's eyes sparked with interest at this odd coincidence. Was his hunch about life on the Green Orb right, after all? Did its radio waves indicate some human-type intelligence?

  "Before we get sidetracked, though," Doc said, "I just had a call from the Fernwood Hospital."

  Tom's face clouded. "About that workman who fell off the sign platform? How is he, Doc?"

  "Out of his coma, but the fall must have caused a brain injury. He can't speak, and they say he seems terrified of something."

  Tom frowned. "They have no idea why?"

  "None. But that's not all, skipper. About an hour ago he scrawled a message, asking to see Tom Swift. That's why the hospital called."

  Tom glanced at his wristwatch. "Could we still get in to see him?"

  Doc nodded. "If we can get there fast enough. Visiting hours are till nine o'clock."

  "Let's go then. We'll take an atomicar."

  The sleek, bubble-domed vehicle, another of Tom's inventions, carried an atomic capsule which powered a small electric motor at each wheel for ordinary road travel. It also had a repelatron lifter and air jet for flying.

  Tom and Doc took off from Enterprises and sped eastward. Soon after eight-thirty their atomicar glided down onto the hospital parking lot. At the reception desk in the lobby they were told that the patient's room was on the third floor.

  When Tom and Doc stepped off the elevator, they sought out the floor nurse. Doc Simpson introduced himself and Tom to her and asked directions to the right room.

  The nurse hesitated and glanced down the hall. "I believe I saw an intern go in there," she murmured. "He may be examining the patient. I'll check. Please wait a moment."

  Tom and Doc nodded. The nurse went into a room a few doors away. Suddenly there was a scream.

  "Good grief!" Tom glanced in alarm at Doc Simpson. Both ran toward the room, brushing past several startled visitors.

  Tom entered first. A window was wide open and a man in a white intern's uniform was straddling the sill. The next moment, the man dropped into the darkness without a backward glance!

  Meanwhile, the terrified nurse was aiding the patient - the dark, burly workman who had fallen from the sign mast. He was staggering woozily and a livid bump was rising on his forehead.

  As he reeled back, he groped for a pencil and note pad on his bedside stand. The workman scrawled something, then collapsed on the bed.

  Tom dashed toward the window. The figure in white had landed on a narrow-roofed portico at the rear of the building and was about to drop to the ground.

  Then Tom glanced at what the workman had scrawled. The pad bore a single letter - Q!

  CHAPTER V

  GOVERNMENT MISSION

  THERE was no time to puzzle out what the Q might mean. In seconds the mysterious assailant would be gone. Doc Simpson and the nurse were busy attending the patient.

  "I'm going after that fellow!" Tom cried. He dashed through the cluster of onlookers. The elevator signal pointed to the ground floor. To wait would lose precious moments. Tom saw a door marked exit and ran toward it. He sped downstairs to a ground-floor hallway which led to offices and the emergency ward.

  Tom burst out the back door of the hospital onto the lighted rear portico. His ear caught the vroom of an engine starting, then a car speeding off. He sprinted toward the sound into a dark, paved alley. The car was out of sight.

  "A clean getaway!" Tom murmured in disgust.

  He hurried back to the third floor. Police officers arrived and the nurse told her story.

  "When I came into the room," she said, "I saw a man dressed like an intern holding a gun at the patient's back."

  "Then it wasn't anyone on the hospital staff?" Questioned the officer in charge, Sergeant May.

  "No, his face wasn't familiar. I screamed and he jerked around. Then the patient tried to grab his gun. But the man got his hand free, struck the patient, and leaped out the window."

  "Was it your impression he came here to kill the patient?" Asked the sergeant.

  "To kidnap him, I think," the nurse replied. "Just as I entered the room I heard the man say, 'Start walking - and no funny business!'"

  "He probably planned to march the patient down the back stairs," Tom said. "With his intern's getup, I'll bet no one would have stopped him."

  "Wouldn't someone have noticed his gun?"

  Tom pointed to a blanket lying on the floor. "Perhaps he planned to cover it with that. And he had a getaway car waiting."

  Sergeant May told his partner to phone in an alarm. He turned to Doc Simpson and another physician who were attending the unconscious man. "Any chance he'll be able to talk soon?"

  The hospital medic shook his head. "Not likely. He suffered a brain injury even before this blow tonight. It may be weeks before he can be questioned. Right now he's in a deep coma."

  Frowning thoughtfully, Tom studied the work-man. His face seemed familiar, but the young inventor was unable to place it. Meanwhile, the floor nurse reported that the patient had carried no identification papers.

  Tom put in, "The man working with him on the sign said he was going to follow the ambulance. Didn't he get here?"

  "Not as far as our records show."

  "Any idea what this letter Q means, or why he wanted to see you?" Sergeant May asked Tom.

  "No," Tom said. "Incidentally, Enterprises will pay his hospital bills. And we'd appreciate it if he could be kept under guard at all times."

  Next morning at the plant, Harlan Ames, the slim, dark-haired security chief, was as puzzled over the affair as Tom. "What I'd like to know, skipper," he mused, "is why he became so terrified at the approach of the helijet."

  "I'd like to know, too," Tom said. He paused. "Come to think of it, Harlan, when the accident happened, I remember thinking he looked vaguely familiar to me."

  "Think you can place him?"

  Tom shook his head. "No, but let's say I have run up against him before - maybe in connection with some criminal plot against Enterprises. The helijet has my initials in its registration number - N527TS. If he spotted them and knew it was my ship, he might've feared I had come close enough to recognize him. That would explain why he became so startled and terrified."

  "If he was afraid of you," Ames pointed out, "why would he ask to see you later on?"

  Tom conceded gloomily, "It doesn't add up."

  "What about that letter Q?" Ames went on. "Doesn't that mean something in electronics?"

  "Yes, it's a technical term, but I doubt if that's what he meant," Tom said. "Maybe it was the first letter of a word he wanted to write."

  Ames nodded. "Well, I'll have his prints tele-photoed to the FBI right away. We'll check him out with Gus Miller, too."

  Tom left. He decided to go directly to his private laboratory. It took up one floor of a modernistic, glass-walled building and was filled with a vast array of scientific equipment.

  Here, Tom made three phone calls. Then he connected the tank of space dust to his electrical-control panel. By reversing the polarity of the ionizing rays, he soon neutralized the charge on the metallic mass in the tank.

  Presently Dr. Grimsey, Felix Wong, and Arvid Hanson arrived. All three had been working with Tom on his three-dimensional television system. Felix, a round-faced young Chinese-American, was a brilliant engineer. Arv was a genial, hulking craftsman who often turned out the pilot models of Tom's new inventions.

  Tom showed them the space dust and said, "This should provide enough luminescent material until I perfect my light-image circuitry."

  "How do we diffuse the stuff through the air?" Arv queried.

  "I have an idea that will enable us to use the same particles over and over again." Taking a pencil, Tom sketched a system of tubing - an upper rack of tubes to go near the ceiling and a lower rack near the floor. These were connected to a centrifugal air pump.

  "The pump will force the space dust into the upper tubes," Tom explained. "These will have fine holes so the particles can filter down through the viewing area. With the floor tubes perforated, too, the particles can be sucked in and forced up through the system again."

  "Neat," Arv said. "I'll get right on it."

  "Not all of these space particles will luminesce," Tom pointed out, "so we'll need some way to sort out the ones that do. He asked Felix Wong to build a special mass spectrometer to sort and grade the particles.

  Last, he assigned Dr. Grimsey to devise a high-voltage energy-charger to activate the particles so the 3-D picture signal would make them glow.

  The elderly scientist listened gravely as Tom explained the energizer circuitry he had in mind for the charger. "Crystal clear, Tom. You have already solved most of my problems."

  Tom gave a rueful grin. "Too bad I can't solve the light-image problem just as easily."

  After the three had left, Tom seated himself at his work desk. Slide rule in hand, he tackled the job of designing circuits that would enable him to intensify the picture-signal impulses into bursts of visible light.

  As Tom wrestled with a tough set of equations, the telephone jangled. Tom answered. Miss Trent told him Bernt Ahlgren was calling from Washington.

  "Thanks. Put him on," Tom said.

  Ahlgren reported that the National Research Council had called an emergency conference at two o'clock that afternoon to discuss the Green Orb situation. "This is short notice, Tom, but we'd like you and your father to be present."

  "I'm sure we can make it."

  After Ahlgren had hung up, Tom called his father, who readily assented to the trip.

  "Dad," Tom went on, "why don't we consult our space friends about the Orb?"

  "Excellent idea," Mr. Swift said. "Suppose I meet you at the space communications lab."

  Months ago, a black meteorlike missile had landed at Enterprises, bearing strange mathematical symbols. The Swifts had decoded these symbols and learned that the senders were a race of creatures in outer space. Soon Tom and his father were able to communicate with them, using a powerful space transmitter and an oscilloscope type of receiver to register incoming signals. Later, Tom had devised a translating computer to code and decode the messages automatically.

  Mr. Swift watched as Tom tapped out the message on the translator brain's keyboard: SWIFTS TO SPACE FRIENDS. WE NEED ALL AVAILABLE INFORMATION ABOUT GREEN BODY ORBITING SUN. CAN YOU ASSIST?

  The two inventors waited eagerly. Soon a bell rang on the electronic translator. Weird symbols began to flash on the oscilloscope screen. The answer to the Swifts' message was being spelled out on tape: SPACE FRIENDS TO SWIFT. GREEN BODY IS...

  Abruptly the symbols faded from the screen and the machine tape stopped unreeling.

  "What's wrong?" Tom muttered. He checked the translator, then repeated his call to the space creatures. The screen remained blank.

  Tom turned to his father uneasily. "Do you suppose their signal's being jammed?"

  "Either that or we're having the same kind of transmission trouble the FCC is concerned about." Mr. Swift added thoughtfully, "It's possible the space people have some reason of their own for not continuing the message."

  Still worried, the two inventors jetted to Washington immediately after lunch. A limousine whisked them from the airfield to the Pentagon. Within minutes, the conference got under way.

  Dr. Leo Palfrey of the National Research Council reported that radio communications were still being freakishly disrupted. The trouble seemed to be triggered by radiation from the Orb that affected the ionosphere. Dr. Henry Grant, a naval observatory astronomer, admitted that he and his colleagues were unable to explain the Green Orb's origin.

  "Its unusual atmosphere," he added, "makes me think that the Orb is not an asteroid."

  The scientists were amazed when Tom said, "The Green Orb's radiographs resemble human brain waves. Our plant physician says they have the same rhythm as P-type alpha waves on an electroencephalogram."

  There was a puzzled silence. At last Bernt Ahlgren said slowly, "So far none of us has suggested that the Orb may be the work of an enemy agency. But this is a possible danger that the Defense Department cannot disregard."

  He pointed out that the Swifts' space friends had moved Nestria, the phantom satellite, into an earth orbit and that aerospace experts had already proposed the capturing and shifting of small asteroids.

  "We must face the possibility," he said, "that the Orb was moved into position by an enemy on earth or in space. Its atmosphere may have been artificially created to hide what is happening there. Tom, could you undertake a probe of the Green Orb in your spaceship?"

  The young inventor was staggered by the responsibility being thrust upon him. But after a glance at his father, who nodded, Tom agreed.

  "I can take off tomorrow morning," he added.

  The Swifts flew back to Enterprises and plunged into preparations for the space cruise. Later, Harlan Ames came hurrying into Tom's lab.

  "The FBI has identified that injured workman, skipper," Ames reported. "He's Klaus Sturko, one of the enemy group that tried to seize your undersea helium wells."

  Tom was startled. He snapped his fingers as he recalled the adventures he had had while planning and building his deep-sea hydrodome. "No wonder his face looked familiar!" Tom exclaimed. "His head was shaved then - which is probably why I couldn't place him."

  Ames explained that Sturko had escaped from prison. "When he saw your helijet, he must have been scared you'd recognize him."

  "And if Sturko's working for some new enemy group," Tom reasoned, "they may have feared the same thing. That's why they tried to kidnap him. They probably consider him a dangerous liability."

  "But why did he ask for you?" Ames objected.

  "Because he was afraid the gang might try to get rid of him, so he decided to see if he could make a deal with me."

  Ames socked his fist into his palm. "I'll bet you've hit it, skipper!" He added that Gus Miller knew nothing of Sturko's or his partner's background. "They just came to the diner and offered to erect the sign very cheaply, so Gus hired them. They also left a phone number which Gus called when he wanted the sign changed. We've traced the number to a small workshop in town, but the place is empty. Sturko's partner must have pulled out."

  Tom frowned. "Harlan, I don't know what they were up to, but you'd better have that sign checked for clues of any kind."

  The conversation was interrupted as Miss Trent brought in a special-delivery letter. The envelope was addressed in green ink to Tom Swift.

  "It just arrived," she reported.

  Tom tore open the envelope postmarked Shopton. The letter inside was printed by hand, also in green ink. Tom's eyes widened as he read:

  CALL OFF YOUR 3-D PROJECT IF YOU WANTTO STAY HEALTHY, SWIFT. THIS IS THE ONLY WARNING YOU'LL GET!

  CHAPTER VI

  REVOLVING EARS

  TOM handed the letter to Ames. The security chief scanned it quickly, then looked up with an angry frown. "What do you think, Tom? Another move by Sturko's outfit?"

  The young inventor shrugged. "Could be - but I have a feeling it's more apt to be tied in with that phone call I got yesterday."

  "The one offering to buy your new TV system?"

  "Right. Have you turned up any leads on competitive television manufacturers?"

  Ames shook his head. "Not yet, but I've hired some private investigators to help us cover the field." Ames promised to check with the post office immediately and try to trace the threatening letter.

 

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