CHAPTER IX

THE CAVE MONSTER


"Skipper!" Bud cried anxiously as Tom staggered back, his hands to his
face.

"I'm all right--no harm done," Tom assured his friend.

Both boys were a bit shaken by the accident, nevertheless. Chow came
rushing in as Bud was brushing the fragments of debris from Tom's
clothes and examining the young inventor's face.

"Brand my flyin' flapjacks, what happened?" Chow asked. The chef had
been bringing a tray of fruit juice to the laboratory and had heard the
explosion outside.

"The radio set just blew up in my face," Tom explained. "Fortunately,
the equipment was transistorized mostly with printed circuits.
Otherwise," he added, "I might have been badly cut by slivers of glass
from the exploding vacuum tubes."

As it was, the young inventor had suffered only a few slight scratches
and a bruise on the temple from a piece of the shattered housing. Bud
swabbed Tom's injuries with antiseptic from the first-aid cabinet while
Chow poured out glasses of grape juice.