Tom quickly grabbed a long-handled Tomasite scoop from among other scientific equipment hanging on the wall.
       Turning his eyes away from the radiation, he juggled the rock back into the Tomasite container. Bud snapped down the lid. The glare ceased.
       "Wow, am I glad we have Dad's Tomasite plastic!" Tom gasped. "It really controls that energy!"
       "And your Atomeron isn't bad either!" Bud replied. "If the floor weren't made of Atomeron, that hot rock would have burned a hole clear through to outer space!"
       Atomeron was a nearly indestructible alloy Tom had discovered in New Guinea while experimenting with his ultrasonic cycloplane.
       The young inventor rubbed his forehead reflectively. "Bud, we must run down the source of this devastating radiation. It's my guess that the Photo-Essence is causing it. We must flush them out wherever they are!"
       Bud turned the nose of the Cosmotron Express away from the sun. The rocket ship flashed onward, accelerating as it zipped past the outer planets. tom manned the Transmittaton, ready to zero in the moment he spotted the ghosts through the megascope.
       "No luck!" he complained as the Cosmotron Express mad a big circle around Pluto and headed back toward earth. "Our planetary search hasn't turned up a sign of the P-E!"
       Chow had just come into Central Control with a tray of cocoa and sandwiches. "Good riddance to 'em! They're a consarned bunch o' claim jumpers, comin' into our solar system!"
       Tom and Bud laughed. Bud brought the Cosmotron down for a nighttime landing at Fearing Island. Upon returning to Swift Enterprises the next morning, the boys had a conference with Mr. Swift. Tom said he wanted to move his base of operations to Chile.
       "We can build an underground lab out of prefabricated parts at the Castilla hacienda. I'll work on the P-E and mastodon mysteries there."
       "And outsmart the Brungarians," Bud commented. "Make 'em think you've given up Project Galaxy Ghosts. They'll think you're concentrating on Project Mastodon."
       Mr. Swift agreed that the idea was a good one. Tom radioed Castilla and described the new plan. "It is our only chance to defeat the Brungarians," he added.
       The next morning Tom rechecked the Transmittaton. "We can't take any chances with the potent forces we're up against," he told Bud. "I've asked our technicians to build a bonfire on Fearing Island and explained the reason. They're touching it off at this minute. I've repaired the receiving tank and we're ready for another test of transmission. Target––the Fearing Island fire."
       He pressed the Lektromag button. Whoosh! Flames flashed up inches from Tom's face! Flinging up an arm to protect his eyes, he jumped back. Quickly Bud grabbed a fire extinguisher and doused the blaze.
       "That came close to being Operation Singed Eyebrows!" Tom said with a wry grin. "The focusing equipment still isn't right. The quantity-control device may be out of kilter too. I'll have to go to Fearing Island and se how big a bonfire they lit. How about a trip out there after lunch?"
       "Affirmative. Say, Tom, let's take Sandy and Phyl with us. We owe them a date, as they keep reminding us."
       "That should get us back into their good graces," Tom replied. "And let's add as many of our Shopton gang as care to come along. We can make it a beach party."
       Tom called the girls and some friends. All were enthusiastic about the idea. He asked Chow to prepare a picnic supper. The Texan reminded him about the policy of eating all the leftovers. "No problem, buckaroo. I've got some cold mutton, an' slices o' hard cheese, an' a passel o' string beans––"
       Bud interrupted him. "That's fine, Chow. But how about something a little more recent––like that boiled ham I saw you stash away in your refrig."
       Chow's eyes twinkled. "That's my special fer tonight. But since you space buckaroos ain't gonna be here, I'll give you your share."
       "Eight shares," Bud reminded the cook. We'll have two extra girls and two extra guys. You wouldn't want them to go hungry, would you?"
       Chow agreed he would not, and filled a basket with provisions for everyone.
       Tom and Bud flew to Fearing Island ahead of the others to inspect the debris of the bonfire. "That was really something!" one technician said. "The fire vanished like magic right before our eyes!"
       "You fellows obviously had a bigger one going than the focus control in my lab indicated," Tom replied. "The Transmittaton's quantity device needs adjusting too."
       When the other young people arrived, Tom ordered the guard net around the island to be de-electrified. Then they all adjourned to the beach for their party. There was laughter and happy shouts as everyone raced through the sand and splashed into the water.
       "Let's try an experiment!" Tom proposed.
       "Trust my brother." Sandy laughed. "He always has something scientific on the brain."
       "What is it, Tom?" Phyllis Newton asked. "Another invention?"
       "Right, Phyl. It's my sonar pen, an instrument something like my pencil radio, only it works underwater. You can help me test it."
       "What do I do?"
       "Take this sonar pen and swim underwater to that rock over there. I'll walk in the opposite direction and call out something into a sonar pen I'm carrying. See if you can hear me before you come up for air."
       Phyl hit the water in a clean dive. Giving a few kicks, she propelled herself toward the rock.
       Standing on the beach, Tom shouted "Phyllis Newton!" at the top of his voice several times.
       The swimmer surfaced at the rock, then swam back to her friends. "I could hear you faintly," she explained to Tom, "but I couldn't make out what you said."
       Sandy spoke up. "If you couldn't understand your own name, Phyl, I'd say the sonar pen needs some fixing."
       "Some other time," Bud urged. "I'd say now's the time for some grub."
       Tom smiled. "O.K. The gadget can wait. Anyhow, I know the principle is correct. Is everybody out of the water?"
       Sandy counted heads and announced all were present. Tom ordered the guard net to be electrified again, and the group gathered on the beach for a picnic in the moonlight. Chow's basket was opened and its delicious contents began to disappear at a rapid rate.
       "Tom," one boy said between bites, "you seem to be on the move all the time. How come?"
       "I think he has an itchy foot," said one of the girls.
       "The penalty of success," sighed her partner. "What can you do when heads of state are begging you to save their countries?"
       "What next, Tom?" came a fourth voice.
       "Would you believe it? Santiago, Chile," Bud put in. "That's the next place on our timetable. We're leaving tomorrow evening."
       He produced a guitar and began strumming. The young people joined in a lilting sing-along of popular tunes. During a lull the group was startled by a soft scurrying sound behind a nearby sand dune. The boys dashed toward the dune, hoping to surprise whoever was there. The girls followed.
       "Nobody here," Bud said. "It was the wind."
       "No, somebody was here!" Tom exclaimed. He pointed to four depressions in the sand. "Those prints were made by a man kneeling right at this spot!"
       "He must have been watching us," Sandy said.
       "But why?" Phyl inquired.
       "That's what I aim to find out!" Tom sounded grim.
       Angrily he summoned the security guards and demanded to know how a spy could have evaded the elaborate safety precautions.
       "Did he sneak in while the guard net wasn't activated? Is he still on the island?" Tom fired a battery of questions at them.
       His men at once started a massive search. A short time later they reported the result––no evidence of any unauthorized person on Fearing Island.
       By now the beach party was breaking up. Bud piloted the jet plane that carried the group to Shopton. Early the next morning Bud found Tom in his lab wrestling with an intricate panel system of batteries, wires, receivers, and monitoring devices.
       "Radio?" Bud asked.
       "Racodio," Tom replied. "you already know I've subjected most of the world's know languages to computer analysis based on the question: 'How would you be able to decipher this language, if you didn't know it, and translate it into English?'"
       Using the principles derived from this analysis, Tom said he could program the computer to translate any new language.
       "Racodio takes a method a step further," he went on. "The radio waves emitted by the galaxy ghosts have a pattern that looks like their own special form of communication. Dad and I have been working on our Racodio in the hope that it will analyze those radio waves and tell us what they mean."
       "So you can communicate with the P-E!" Bud marveled. "We'll be able to say 'Hi! How are you?' when we finally catch up with them!"
       "Whoa!" Tom chuckled. "You're moving too fast for me! I just hope we can tell them to make themselves scarce in a word or two. It'll be a while before we can do even that."
       "Tom, do you think they know they're a great danger to us?" Bud asked.
       Tom shrugged and went on, "The problem I'm working on now is programming the P-E radio waves into the Racodio for analysis and translation. Then we can speak their language!"
       Tom was still hard at work on the Racodio several hours later when a lab technician walked over from a corner where he and some other experts had been repairing the Transmittaton.
       "Tom," the technician reported, "we have the Transmittaton ready for you to test. We've worked over the focus and quantity controls as you directed. As far as we can tell, the machine is A-OK."
       "Great!" Tom said. "How about giving me a hand on this tryout, Fred?"
       "Sure thing."
       Tom held up a mushroom. "I filched this from Chow's larder. Fred, suppose you take it to the top of beaker hill on the outskirts of town. Call me on your walkie-talkie when you've placed it right at the summit. Then I'll see if I can bring it back by Transmittaton."
       The technician went off carrying the mushroom, and called fifteen minutes later to say it was on top of Beaker Hill. Tom pushed the Lektromag button. In a few moments the mushroom appeared in the receiving tank.
       "It works! he exulted.
       Another mushroom appeared, then another.
       "It works too well!" Bud shouted.
       The three were followed by a flood of the fungi which cascaded into the machine and spilled out over the floor. Like a swiftly rising tide they inundated the lab.
       "Turn it off!" Bud yelled. "Turn it off or we'll be broiled steak smothered with mushrooms!"