Tom?" the editor demanded. "I guess you know by now the public's aroused
and in a state of near panic over all these quakes. What they all want
to know is this: are you, Tom Swift, going to find a way to stop all
this destruction?"

Tom's jaw jutted out angrily. "Yes, I am!" he snapped. "And you can
quote me on that!"




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