Tom and Bud threw themselves to one side. The car careened past, missing them by inches! Some pedestrians began to criticize the young Americans for their carelessness. A Santiago policeman stopped the boys to warn them about crossing streets against the traffic lights. Meanwhile, the Indian who had put the copihue flower on their table had vanished.
       Bud was apologizing to the policeman when Tom had an inspiration. "Officer," he said, "where can we find Valdivia?"
       "Señor, that is about four hundred miles south of here. We call it the Venice of Chile."
       "So Valdivia is a city," Bud commented when they were alone.
       "I'll bet that message meant Alvarez is being held prisoner down there!" Tom exclaimed.
       They caught a taxi to the airport and flew their jet to Valdivia. The city spread out under their wings around the juncture of two rivers near the Pacific. Swampy bayous extended on either side. It had been raining hard, but now the sun was shining. Many boats, laden with produce of all kinds, were tied up at the wharves. They formed a busy waterfront market. Coming in low, the boys could see the colorful array of fruits, vegetables, and flowers. In one boat they spotted copihue blooms.
       "No wonder they call Valdivia the Venice of Chile," Bud remarked.
       After receiving landing instructions from the control tower, Tom maneuvered the jet down smoothly. The boys separated to broaden their search for Alvarez. It was agreed they would meet in three hours at the airport.
       The time was nearly up when Tom, scouting the waterfront, heard a voice call, "Swift?"
       Turning, he saw a young boy holding half a brown prickly sphere which looked something like a coconut. As Tom watched, the boy dipped his fingers into the cavity and then put the meat in his mouth.
       "Best way to eat a sea urchin, isn't it?" Tom asked in Spanish. "Well, you have my name right. What happens next?"
       The boy gestured for him to follow and led Tom to a boat with red, pink, and white copihue flowers on the deck. He pointed to the door of a low cabin. Tom knocked. Getting no answer, he pushed the door open, entered, and found himself alone. The door swung shut behind him. A bolt slammed into place. Tom was locked in!
       The boat rocked slightly, and he knew someone had stepped aboard. He heard the boy say in Spanish, "I have caught Swift. I was easy. I recognized him from the picture."
       A man replied, "Well done. Here's your money." The boy ran off, whistling gaily.
       Another voice asked what was to be done with the captive. The first man replied, "The Tall One will decide that when he finishes in the mountain cave. Who knows? Perhaps he will take Swift to his country."
       Tom considered these scraps of conversation. "The Tall One must be a Brungarian who is after the mastodon," he thought. "But how did he know I was in Chile? Brungarian spies must have done a slick job of espionage!"
       The man called out "Swift!" several times. Tom remained silent. "Could that boy have cheated me?" the man muttered. "I had better see with my own eyes that he trapped Swift!"
       The bolt slipped back. Setting himself in a football stance, Tom waited for the door to open. Then he powered his way through, jarring aside the man who was bending forward for a look into the cabin. The other man stood beside him. Both grabbed Tom, but he broke their grip and jumped from the deck to the wharf where the market-day crowd offered him cover.


       "Officer," Tom gasped to the first policeman he met, "I want to report an attempted kidnapping." Rapidly he filled in the details.
       The two hurried back to the scene, only to find that the boat was gone. The policeman led Tom to headquarters so he could file a complaint.
       Bud was there. He had already reported Tom missing. When the two emerged from the police station, rain was falling heavily.
       "The Venice of Chile?" Bud joked. "I'd say it's more like the rain forest of Chile! We seem to have reached Valdivia just in time for the monsoon!"
       "Moral––depart pronto for a drier climate," Tom replied. "Alvarez doesn't seem to be here."
       The boys taxied to the airport and took off in their jet for the United States. En route, the radio crackled. Mr. Swift had a message for them:
       Report to my office as soon as you land at Enterprises. I have important information for you!
       When Tom and Bud walked into his office, Mr. Swift said, "First of all, about the Transmittaton. I've added a compact megascope space prober to the unit you built, Tom."
       "Then the Transmittaton is ready for testing on space objects?" Tom asked.
       "Yes. But something else is bothering me."
       "What's that, Mr. Swift?" Bud queried.
       "Shortly before I radioed you two boys, Phil Radnor and his men caught a couple of Brungarian spies on the grounds!"
       Phil Radnor was second-in-command to Harlan Ames, the chief security police officer at Enterprises and Fearing. He had charge of guarding both complexes to keep unauthorized persons from snooping around. Many people were interested in the Swifts' inventions, and enemy agents were constantly trying to steal the secrets locked in their files.
       "Are we dead sure they're Brungarians?" Tom wanted to know.
       "The identification is positive," his father replied. "Phil had a dossier on both of them, including photos. He caught them red-handed in your lab."
       "Does Phil know what they were after?"
       "Yes. He found incriminating evidence on them. In code."
       Mr. Swift clasped his hands, placed his elbows on the desk, and looked soberly at the two boys who waited tensely to hear the rest.
       "Tom, Bud, this is a real shocker! These Brungarian agents were sent here to steal a sample of the galaxy ghosts. The head men of Brungaria plan to use the ghostly material as a super-weapon."
       Tom gasped. "Then Svornin accomplished his mission! He delivered my ghost log and the radio-active meteorite fragments from our space station to Brungaria. Their scientists no doubt have figured out the destructive potential of the Photo-Essence."
       Mr. Swift nodded grimly. "That's about the size of it. The word is out. Several nations are in panic. Their heads of state have been in touch with Washington, insisting that we make every effort to stop the Photo-Essence from coming any closer to earth. Also, they want you to foil the Brungarians before there's a world catastrophe!"
       Tom whistled. "That's a tall order, Dad! I just hope I can do the job. I'll certainly give it a grand try. How about you, Bud?"
       "I'm with you all the wa, Tom! What's our first move?"
       "Get ready for a space voyage, pal," said Tom. "You and I are going to find the galaxy ghosts!"
       "We'll take the Transmittaton," Tom continued, "and see if we can latch on to a sample of the P-E. The Cosmotron Express will zip us to Mars, but we'll have plenty of time to prove out our gadget."
       "I get it!" Bud answered. "If the experiment is successful, we'll accomplish two things at once. Prove that the Transmittaton can do everything it should, and bag a ghost at the same time!"
       With Chow aboard to cook the meals, Tom and Bud took off early the next morning. The Cosmotron lifted off by means of its repelatron drive system and quickly gained speed.
       "Wal," Chow opined, "this is smooth enough so a buckaroo could eat his soup without spillin' a drop!" He went to the galley.
       The boys donned antiradiation suits to protect themselves from possible contamination while using the Transmittaton.
       Tom sighted through the megascope space prober, zeroing in on the surface of Mars. It was rapidly growing larger as the Cosmotron Express whizzed toward the Red Planet of the solar system.
       "Okay, Bud, brace yourself," Tom warned. "Here goes! I'm aiming at a big Marian rock!"
       He pressed the Lektromag button. The needle revolved around the dial. A strange humming noise began, rose to a crescendo, and then died away.
       Tom looked tense. "I think we have Martian rock atoms in our receiving tank. Push that lever, Bud. We'll see if the rock materializes!"
       A grinding sound followed as if stones were being pressed together. A chunk of rock appeared in the Tomasite container! Tom breathed easier. Bud gave a yell of triumph. The Transmittaton had worked!
       "Tom, you did it! Congratulations, pal!"
       "Thanks, bud. Now let's find those ghosts!"
       A minute inspection of the Martian area through the megascope failed to locate any of the mysterious Photo-Essence.
       "Maybe the ghosts have retreated to their own galaxy," Bud observed in disappointment.
       "Could be. but look at those meteors up ahead, Bud. They're peculiar. I'll try for a sample."
       Again Tom used the Lektromag. A piece of one meteor materialized in the receiving tank. Bud read off the numbers on the radiation dials.
       Tom wrote the figures in his notebook and made some rapid calculations. "These are the same subatomic waves as those fragments we tested at the space station. Only they're much stronger. Maybe the ghosts are infecting our solar system with their radiation!"
       Before Bud could reply, and electronic unit exploded, knocking the receiving tank off the table. The lid snapped open. The rock flew out into the lab.
       Wave after wave of intense burning radiation bounced across the floor onto a Tomasite table. It lay there, sizzling! Tom and Bud staggered back, blinded by the glare!