But in spite of the seismographic clues, Tom was not entirely
convinced. A nagging doubt still buzzed in the back of his mind.
The next morning Tom hurried off to his private glass-walled laboratory
at Enterprises, eager to continue work on his container, or robot body,
for the brain from space.
Tom frowned as he studied the rough sketch he had drawn in his office
the afternoon before. "This setup's full of bugs!" he muttered.
Nevertheless, Tom decided, the basic idea was sound. Grabbing pencil and
slide rule, he began to dash off page after page of diagrams and
equations.
"Chow down!" boomed a foghorn voice. Chow Winkler, wearing a white
chef's hat, wheeled a lunch cart into the lab.
"Oh... thanks." Tom scarcely looked up from his work as the cook set
out an appetizing meal of Texas hash, milk, and deep-dish apple pie on
the bench beside the young inventor's papers. Grumbling under his
breath, Chow sauntered out.
Tom went on working intently between mouthfuls. In another hour he
finished a set of pilot drawings. Then he called Hank Sterling and Arvid
Hanson and asked them to come to the laboratory.
They listened with keen interest as Tom explained his latest creation.
"No telling if it will work when the energy arrives from space," Tom
said, "but I think everything tracks okay. Hank, get these plans
blueprinted and assign an electronics group to the project. You'd better
handle the hardware yourself.
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