Tom Swift and His Ultrasonic Cycloplane by Victor Appleton II Page A

lead on that Dutchman—the one who had Feeney hire Jake the Cat to steal the statue. Someone matching his description is wanted by the authorities in Singapore for smuggling."
    "That’s great, Dad. Glad to hear it." But Tom’s response was listless. He was far more concerned about his close pal than about the mystery of the statue. Bud was like a second son to the Swift family.
    In order not to worry his family or the relatives of his men, Tom decided to avoid any mention of engine trouble. After sending his love to his mother and Sandy, and to Bash, the young inventor said good-bye.
    Just as he switched off the transmitter, Chow came into the radio room on tiptoe—as much as his ponderous form could manage. From the furtive way he peered into the passageway, it was obvious that he was bringing secret news.
    "What’s up, Chow?" Tom asked.
    "Tom, d’you reckon someone could have messed up this here airplane so it can’t fly no more?"
    "Sabotage? No, I never even considered that, Chow! Why?"
    "’Cause when I ’as hikin’ back from the woods this afternoon, I heard some kind o’ hammerin’ noises—metal hammerin’, but real soft an’ low. Sounded to me like they might have come from the Sky Queen."
    Tom’s pulse quickened with interest. "Did you see anyone near the ship?"
    Chow shook his head. "Nope. When I got back, there warn’t no one around, so I figgered I must have been mistook. But now I’m not so sure!"
    Tom gave the roly-poly Texan’s shoulder a pat of approval. "Thanks for telling me, Chow. I’ll check right away!"
    Calling the men together, the young inventor questioned each one carefully. But apparently no one had been out of sight of his fellow searcher long enough to do any mischief to the plane.
    Tom was baffled. If none of his men was the saboteur, then who had been doing the hammering? Unfriendly natives, perhaps? New Guinea tribesmen who had already captured Bud and Slim and were even now keeping watch on the rescue party?
    But untutored locals would have damaged the Flying Lab in some cruder fashion easy to detect, Tom reasoned. It was a mystifying problem.
    "Just to be on the safe side, we’d better search the plane for stowaways," he announced. "Arv, you take charge of the search, will you? Hank and I will go back to work on the engine."
    Hanson responded with a quick salute, "Righto, skipper!"
    Twenty minutes later he reported, "Tom, we’ve been over every inch of the ship. No one’s hiding on board."
    "Okay, Arv. Thanks." Tom laid down a beryllium wrench and wiped a smear of grease off his face with his sleeve. "At any rate, we’ve spotted the trouble." He held up a length of Tomasite plastic tubing. It was part of the servo-control hookup to the jet-lifter throttle. "Someone crimped the insulation line with a pair of pliers," he explained tersely. "The control signals were shorting out before reaching the lifter engines."
    Hanson’s eyes widened in dismay. "Then it was sabotage!"
    "No doubt about it. Whoever did this had to have planned the whole thing ahead of time." Tom said no more, though he was greatly worried. A highly skilled technician, with detailed knowledge of Tom’s great skyship, was back of the sabotage.
    "Somebody must be out there in the underbrush, watching us," murmured one of the crew, Red Jones.
    "Like an injun scout," Chow added, "jest waitin’ fer his chance."
    Tom nodded. "And he would have had to have known how to defeat our electronic security system, too—and that’s not an easy task." After replacing the length of tubing, Tom took the Sky Queen up for a brief test flight. This time, the mammoth ship checked out perfectly. Since the jungle was now shrouded in darkness, Tom felt that further searching that day would be fruitless. They would continue in the morning. He brought the ship down and arranged for guards during the night. There were no visitors, however.
    Mist still drifted among the trees when the Sky Queen soared aloft at dawn. With Hanson as