Tom Swift and His Outpost in Space Read Online Free

can lead us right to the—well, not to the bullet, which is probably long gone, but at least to where it struck!"
    "Go ahead, son," Mr. Swift urged.
    "We’ll have to go outside," Tom said. "But I guess it’s safe now."
    Switching on the powerful yard lights, Tom led the others—like a parade—around the side of the house opposite the side facing the elm. "But how could the bullet get way out here?" asked Sandy. "The whole house is in the way!"
    "Maybe not," said Bud, catching on.
    Tom stood gazing at the house for a moment, holding up his hand as if making a rough measurement of something. Then he walked a few yards across the manicured lawn to a planter of redwood planks and bent down.
    "Look here," he called, pointing.
    The planter had a broad, splintery gouge in its side, obviously freshly made. At the center of the gouge was a deep hole, as if made by a hurtling bullet!
    Sgt. Norcall whistled and bent over with tweezers and a magnifying glass. But after a moment he straightened and declared, "Tom, you were exactly right—someone’s already made off with the bullet."
    "How did you figure it out, Tom?" asked Damon Swift in proud amazement.
    Before Tom could respond, Bud Barclay held up a hand. "I think I know. You just have to put it all together. The rifle must have been especially powerful. The bullet went through the window glass, through the crack in the door to the library, straight through the library, and on out into the side hallway through the open arch."
    "Oh, I see," said Sandy. "It must have gone through one of those little decorative window-panes in the wall of the hallway, which goes along this side of the house." She walked over to one of the narrow windows in the nearby exterior wall and gave a whoop of triumph . "Here it is!— another bullethole."
    "Sure," agreed Norcall. "And when you line the holes up, the trajectory ends right here at the planter. In fact, you can see that the angle tends downward, which is consistent with an elevated firing position."
    Sandy nodded excitedly. "Up in the elm tree!"
    "And we didn’t hear a thing!" remarked Tom’s mother.
    "You wouldn’t, necessarily," Tom said. "We were already talking kind of loud, and the sound of the bullet going through the glass is so much like the clink of plates that we wouldn’t have paid any attention. Then—while San was telling her story—the Gorilla shinnied down the tree and trotted around here to the planter, where he gouged out the bullet and made off with it."
    They all returned to the house, where they sat in the living room as Mr. Swift served some refreshments.
    "But I thought you folks were protected by that magnetic alarm system of yours," observed one of the officers, whose name was Darrel.
    "No system’s perfect," replied Tom. "A single bullet passing through the field wouldn’t create a strong enough impulse to activate the buzzer, and once it stops moving it becomes invisible to the sensor."
    "But the man himself should have set off the alarm," Mr. Swift pointed out. "Perhaps not up in the tree, but when he entered onto our property. He wouldn’t have the neutralizer coils the rest of us have."
    "Well, we didn’t set off your alarm, did we?" remarked Sgt. Norcall.
    "No, because I set the field to ignore you. You can set the override directly from the telephone keypad." Tom frowned. "That may be the answer, too—the Gorilla may be able to temporarily reset the field sensors by remote control."
    After further discussion the three officers left, promising to keep an eye on the vicinity from their patrol car during their normal rounds.
    "So we have someone watching us," Bud said grimly. "And shooting! But why?"
    "I don’t have any idea about the ‘who’ or the ‘why’," responded Tom after a moment. "But the ‘how’ is kind of intriguing."
    "M-maybe he was trying to pick me off, because I’d seen him!" said Sandy nervously.
    "Then why didn’t he?—given that we know he must be an expert marksman with an