Tom Swift and His Flying Lab Read Online Free

got to be our guy," he thought, desperately redoubling his speed.
    With a frantic thrust of energy, he burst onto the paved test helipad. The new chopper was just taking off. Bud made a dash for the Skeeter , trying to grasp the edge of the still-open cockpit door and pull himself up before it rose out of reach, but he missed by inches. Nevertheless, he got a good look at the dark, slick-haired pilot. Then the helicopter rose and swung out of sight over the trees.
    "He can’t get away with this!" Bud set his jaw. Dashing back to where Tom and his father waited in the hangar office, he gasped out breathlessly, "He stole the Skeeter! But I’ll take up a jet and try to force him down!"
    "I’ll go with you!" Tom exclaimed.
    "Hold on!" Mr. Swift warned him. "There’s no need to go charging into danger. We’ll send out some of our Enterprises pilots for a search by jet. I’ll alert the local commercial airports, too."
    Tom frowned, his reluctance showing on his face. "Did you get a good look at him, Bud?"
    "I sure did!" Bud replied. "Thin, dark, short. About twenty-five. Had black greasy-looking hair and eyes like a rat."
    "That’s enough to get the professionals started. Besides, son," said Mr. Swift, his eyes twinkling, "you don’t want to miss RobiTec’s trip down the rabbit-hole, do you?" He knew Tom would rather be in on a scientific discovery than almost anything in the world.
    Soon Mr. Swift, Bud, and Tom had gathered in Mr. Swift’s private laboratory suite next to his office. A monitor and remote-control setup had been wheeled in.
    "Hey, hold on, hold on!" came the voice of Chow Winkler as the rotund cook came bobbing into the lab. "Brand my shootin’ stars, you gotta let me take a gander too—’specially after the way you boys ran off an’ let me find my own way out o’ that big plane!" Harlan Ames also joined them, but Mr. Swift decided not to admit any others.
    The robot-mobile was deposited at the edge of the fissure by a small utility truck. On the video screen, the onlookers could see RobiTec waiting motionless, captured by one of the runway cameras. About the size of a large lawnmower, the machine had four flexible tank-tread "feet," retractable tubular arms of various sizes and shapes, and a boxlike framework, outfitted with various sensors and intake vents, as its "head."
    Mr. Swift touched the controls, and the image on the monitor changed to the view through RobiTec’s camera eyes. "Here we go!" he said, easing the control joystick forward. RobiTec responded instantly, rolling over the edge of the ditch without difficulty and rapidly making its way forward to the large crater.
    Tom switched to the onboard forward cameras. "There’s the tunnel entrance up ahead," he observed. "Look how smooth the sides are! What’s the temperature of those walls, Dad?"
    "Only 130 degrees Fahrenheit now, and falling rapidly," said Mr. Swift, checking RobiTec’s sensors.
    "Great coyotes, my cookstove gets hotter’n that!" Chow remarked.
    As RobiTec entered the tunnel, Mr. Swift slowed the machine and switched on its high-intensity headlights. The image of the interior of the tunnel took on an eerie aspect as it crawled by on the monitor screen. Tom periodically read aloud the positional readout.
    "We’re almost 250 feet along the tunnel," he said wonderingly, "and a good thirty feet below ground level."
    "According to the forward radar, we’re approaching the end of the tunnel," Mr. Swift interjected. "We should be seeing—"
    Bud interrupted him with an excited cry. "There!"
    The monitor showed a streamlined cylindrical object protruding from the tunnel wall ahead!
    "No way that thing’s a meteor," Harlan Ames commented grimly. "I’d say you Swifts have an enemy at large with access to high-tech weaponry."
    "Harlan, we don’t know it’s a weapon," Tom retorted as Mr. Swift brought RobiTec to a stop. "Think of the way it came down, its flight path. It managed to avoid our buildings, our people, even our