CHAPTER VIII

A SUSPECT TALKS

The next morning Tom was up at the crack of dawn, grimly determined to find an answer to the earthquake menace.  He ate a hasty breakfast, then drove to his private laboratory at Enterprises.  He instructed the switchboard operator to shut off all incoming calls, then plunged into a study of the mystifying problem.

Earthquake activity, Tom knew, tends to occur in circular patterns, like bands around the earth—­for instance, the circum-Pacific belt, and another belt extending eastward from the Mediterranean through Asia and on into the East Indies.  Often these quake lines are visible as breaks or ruptures along the ground surface, called fault traces.  No doubt, Tom thought, there were many more uncharted ones.

Could an enemy scientist be making use of these earth faults to produce a man-made quake?  Tom mulled over the disturbing idea.

“How would I tackle the job myself, if I had to undertake such a project for national defense?” the young inventor mused.  He felt a growing sense of excitement as an idea began to take shape in his mind.

What about an artificial shock wave!

An hour later Bud Barclay walked into the laboratory and found Tom hunched over a jumbled pile of reference books on his workbench.

“What cooks, skipper?” Bud asked.

Tom looked up, his blue eyes blazing.  “Bud, I think I may have the answer!”

Tom got up from his stool and paced about the laboratory.  “Suppose the Brungarian rebel scientists have invented some sort of shock-wave producer—­a device for sending vibrations through the earth’s crust or the mantle underneath.”

“Okay, suppose they have,” Bud replied.

Tom snatched up a piece of chalk and made some quick diagrams on a blackboard.  “Just this, pal.  Let’s say they set up two or three stations around the world for sending out such waves in a definite direction.  Wherever the wave crosses an earth fault or another wave—­boom! An earthquake!”

Bud stared.  “No kidding, is that how those rats triggered off all these quakes?”

“It must be,” Tom declared.  “It’s the only possible explanation.”

“Good night!” Bud gasped weakly.  “What a weapon!  Just push a button every so often and you could blow up another country bit by bit—­and no one could ever prove who was behind the attack!”

Tom nodded.  “Enough to make every American shiver, if he only knew!”

“What can we do about it?” Bud asked.

Tom resumed his worried pacing.  “I’ll have to invent a shock-wave deflector, Bud.  It must be done in a hurry, too.  Our enemy may start to destroy American cities as well as vital defense plants!”

Immediately Tom put through an urgent call to an eminent scientist in Washington who was a member of the National Research Council.  Quickly he outlined a plan.