"You are trying to tell me that a nine year-old boy climbed into the cockpit
of the world's most advanced aircraft and flew it away?"

A remarkable invention turns a nine-year-old boy named Joe
into a secret agent and plunges him into a sensational career.

*   *   *

Joe McClaine, the adopted nine-year-old son of electronics expert Professor McClaine, is a normal, healthy, games-loving youngster with a sense of adventure, but little guessing that the Professor's latest invention is going to plunge him into the sort of excitement-packed life every boy dreams about.

The invention is a machine called BIG RAT - which stands for Brain Impulse Galvanoscope Record And Transfer. It enables a recorded brain pattern to be transferred from one person to another. When it is shown to Shane Weston, Deputy Head of the World Intelligence Network, the Professor realises that Weston sees a way of using Joe as an agent for WIN.

Weston explains how this could be done by outlining a story of the Russian development of the fastest and most heavily armed aircraft in the work, known as the MIG 242. It has upset the balance of world air power and the West has no weapons capable of stopping it.

If Joe could steal a MIG 242, Weston explains, its secrets would be revealed and the balance of world power restored.

A Russian pilot who has flown this plane has visited London and BIG RAT has been used to record his brain pattern. This is later transferred to Joe, who has to wear a pair of glasses with built-in electrodes enabling the transfer to work. With these, he will have all the knowledge and experience of the expert whose brain pattern he has received.

The Professor and Joe fly to Russia for a special viewing of the MIG 242. Joe puts on his glasses and disappears. His absence is noticed, but no-one believes the Professor when he says his son is about to steal the new plane - but this is exactly what he is doing! He outmanoeuvres the jets which try to intercept him and reaches England. And no-one, of course, is going to believe that a nine-year-old boy has been responsible!

The Professor is appalled at the idea of Joe carrying out such dangerous missions, but Weston has shown how it could be done and Mac finally has to agree that there are enormous possibilities for Joe as WIN's Most Special Agent.