"Appleton, Victor - Tom Swift Jr 01 - And His Flying Lab" - читать интересную книгу автора (Appleton Victor)

A MESSAGE FROM SPACE
"HOW SOON will the Flying Lab be ready for the test hop, Tom?"
"In about two weeks, Dad. I can hardly wait to take her up."
Mr. Swift looked admiringly at the eighteen-year-old inventor. Tom Jr.
resembled his father and had the same deep-set eyes, but he was slightly
taller and more slender. The youth and his distinguished parent, both widely
known for their scientific achievements, were headed for their experimental
station, Swift Enterprises. There the Flying Lab had been built in a mammoth
underground hangar.
"The atomic-powered engines should give us a speed of better than a
thousand miles an hour, and the jet liftersЧ"
Tom was cut short by an uncanny whistling roar. An object hurtling from the
sky just missed them, its turbulent backwash sprawling them on the
3
2 TOM SWIFT AND HIS FLYING LAB
ground, as it disappeared over the wall of Swift Enterprises. A split second
later there was a tremendous thud and the earth shook.
"A bomb!" Tom shouted, jumping up.
"Or a meteor!" his father exclaimed.
By now both were running at top speed toward the private entrance to Swift
Enterprises. Tom whipped an electronic key from his pocket and beamed it on
the hidden mechanism. The gate flew open.
Inside the grounds there was pandemonium. Workers were racing from the
cluster of buildings toward a gaping hole at the end of the airfield. Tom quickly
outdistanced his father and was one of the first to reach the spot. In the earth
yawned an immense crater.
"Gosh!" cried a workman. "You could fit a fire-house into that hole!"
The object that had bolted from the sky was buried too deeply to be seen, and
the dirt at the edges of the pit had begun to cave in.
"What is it?" asked Hank Sterling, the chief engineer of the patternmaking
division.
Tom shook his head. "I guess we'll have to dig around it to find out. Was
anybody hurt?"
"I believe not."
Fortunately no one had been near the immediate area. Glass in several of the
buildings had been broken, however, and various small articles jolted from
shelves and desks.
By this time Mr. Swift had come up, and he immediately ordered a crew to
start digging. Tom and
A MESSAGE FROM SPACE 3
Hank were so eager to learn what the object was thai they brought out the big
hydraulic shovel.
An hour later all the earth had been cleared from around the missile, and a
ladder was lowered into the pit. Tom hastened down.
"It's not a natural meteor," he decided, as he examined the strange carvings
on the side of the black cigar-shaped device. "It is mechanically made and
only beings of high intelligence could have worked out those mathematical
symbols."
Mr. Swift and Hank climbed down the ladder. They, too, were fascinated by
the markings on the projectile.