Tom Swift and His Megascope Space Prober by Victor Appleton II

crime novels!" bubbled Sandy gleefully. "Or at least watch more television. This card was obviously lying loose on a writing surface under a piece of paper, and someone wrote on the paper with a hard-point pen. They pressed down hard enough to etch what they wrote into the card a little."
    "A wonderful deduction," the young inventor stated dryly. "Can you make it out?"
    Sandy stared at it. "I think I can copy it. Bring me a pencil and something to write on, brother dear." She worked at it for several minutes, and an odd figure slowly took shape beneath her pencil.
    Long before it was completed, the two Swifts had exchanged meaningful glances. The writing was a single inscription, a Chinese character modified to suggest a snake arched to strike.
    It was a signature. And it was familiar to both of them, dreadfully so.
    "He’s back," Tom stated grimly. "Comrade-General Li Ching—the snakeman!"
     
CHAPTER 11
TWISTS AND TURNS
    "WE managed to pull some partial fingerprints," said Phil Radnor, Harlan Ames’s stocky second in command. "Not enough to trace. But we can tell it’s a woman— two women. One is rather on the tall side."
    Radnor sat across from Tom at Tom’s desk in the Swifts’ shared office. Mr. Swift sat nearby.
    "Easy to reconstruct what must have happened," Tom remarked. "One woman wrote the warning, then handed it to the other to look at."
    "Probably," agreed Radnor. "We did tease out another bit of info. Maybe it’ll be useful when we run the national databases. The one woman, Big Bertha, had some bad scarring on her fingers."
    "Acid burns?" inquired Mr. Swift.
    Before Radnor could respond, inspiration struck. Tom exclaimed: "Freeze burns— frostbite !"
    "That’s what it looks like. Looks like she got a little free with that gun she ambushed you with."
    "Maybe. We do know one thing," the young inventor declared. "The freeze-beamer was used by the Eyeballer drone in attacking the jet. So this Women With Issues ‘girl group’ is tied directly to the theft of the drone."
    "And also to Li Ching, evidently," added Damon Swift.
    The Swifts had now encountered Comrade-General Li Ching, a turncoat from the army of China who had fled his country, several times under deadly circumstances. The man was a cunning and powerful enemy who seemed to specialize in technical and scientific theft, working through a vast international network of criminal accomplices.
    "And Li has a spacecraft," Tom mused, "the Fanshen ."
    Mr. Swift instantly grasped the implication of his son’s words. "You’re suggesting he’s behind the space phenomenon you observed the other day."
    "It may have been a weapon, Dad. Perhaps it misfired when he tried it against us. And Li’s energy-canceling material could account for the space radar’s problem in getting a focus."
    "Then again, you may have barged in on a test series he was running, without his knowing you were there," Radnor pointed out. "Remember, the Space Kite is also coated with Li’s anti-detection sheathing. You wouldn’t show up clearly on his radar."
    "No. Unless... unless he picked up our own outgoing radar pulses..." The young inventor spoke slowly and reflectively. His restless mind had delivered up an unexpected thought!
    The security man excused himself, promising the Swifts that he and Ames would keep the Swifts closely apprised of developments. Radnor chuckled a bit ruefully as he left. "I wonder just how many times Harl and I have said that to you two!"
    Tom looked at his father, something percolating in his mind. "Dad, there may be a way to ‘see’ and track the Eyeballer after all!"
    "Such as?"
    "Whoever’s controlling it remotely is obviously doing so by some kind of signal, presumably a radio signal modulated in a way to make it virtually undetectable. The drone specs describe such a system, though Li Ching would surely have modified it to prevent our guys from regaining control."
    "All right, son. But in that case what can be done?"
    Tom rapped his knuckles on