Tom Swift and His Cosmotron Express (20 page)

"It’s easy enough to put together what must have happened. They had planned to have the local Space Friends probe the object they had created, but the unexpected effects of the G-waves caused some sort of problem—maybe it affects their life functions directly as well as interfering with the basis of their technology. So they began to collect us Space Ark veterans, haphazardly, when they could catch us away from Earth."

"We know that some unidentified factor impedes their operations near Earth’s surface," interjected Mr. Swift.

"It was catch-as-catch-can," Tom went on. "They took what they could manage to snag with that sputtering ‘tentacle-force’ of theirs, whenever local energy conditions—the gravitex field—provided extra power. What they caught they transported here, the site of the experiment."

"And then comes the
Starward
mission, a pretty full barrel of the fish they were after," MacColter observed. "Even an unexpected bonus—Andy!"

"Great plot," gibed Bud without enthusiasm. "What thrills and chills come next?"

"The first thing to do is get the people on the
Dyaune
over here," Tom responded. "They can’t pull free of the zone, but their air and supplies must be near exhaustion."

"We must avoid entering the Window with the Express as long as possible," declared Tom’s father. "Fortunately, we can send one of the excursion modules over by remote control."

Chow scratched his head. "Mebbe we kin keep them Brungarians locked up when they get here."

"Those sneaky, conniving Brungarians," commented Andy coolly. "Right, Tex?"

"Came outta your mouth, Andy, not mine!"

Tom informed the
Dyaune
of the plan and made preparations. Then, just as he was about to detach Mod Two, at the summit of the Cosmotron Express, cries of fear and amazement turned his face toward the great viewport and the black gulf. "Ohhh
man
," whispered Bud. "Explain
that
one, Swifts!"

Beyond the half-immersed
Dyaune
, wholly within the ebon shadow of the Black Window, floated something dimly lit and grotesque in appearance—yet impossibly familiar. "It’s the
Starward
!" gasped Tom. "The Cosmotron Express!"

"Another one!" Arv Hanson exclaimed in wonder.

Precise in every visible detail, the second ship seemed an exact replica of their own, the original. Yet the visual aspect was nonetheless disconcerting, somehow
wrong
. "Something about the lighting, the colors..." said Mr. Swift slowly. "I can’t quite specify what seems ‘off.’ I recognize the ship... but at the same time, somehow, I
don’t
."

"As if the mind is
rejecting
it," Sue murmured.

"I—I know what’s up with that thing!" burbled Chow. "Saw it on TV! Over there, on th’ other side, that’s a
mirror world
—jest like ours, exceptin’ all the good folks
here
are bad folks
there
! People like Tom have goatees, and me—I’m prob’ly slim as a shotgun!"

Barely listening, Tom was busy experimenting, with results that were weird and disturbing. "Keep looking right at that ship, everyone—and close your eyes!"

"Oh great grief!" gasped Arv Hanson, one gasp among many. "
I can see it with my eyes closed!
"

"We’re not seeing it by light," Tom pronounced, studying the monitor dials. "Nothing, no radiation, is coming out of the Window further back than the stern of the
Dyaune
—nothing we can detect, anyway. But our retinas, maybe our visual centers directly, are being affected to produce an image. And yet... an image with perspective and other optical properties, too. If you turn away, the image slides out of view. "

"Some sort of hallucination," suggested Neil. "Tom, Mr. Swift—it could be an
induced
hallucination generated by whatever lives on the other side of that window. To scare us off—"

"Or lure us in!" added Bud.

"Or merely to communicate." Mr. Swift rubbed his eyes. "We must avoid premature theorizing. There are many possibilities. We might be seeing
ourselves
, our own ship, through some sort of twist in the fabric of spacetime. The matter requires careful study."

"Yeah," snorted Bud. "Looks like we’ll have a lot of time to do it, too, if the X-ians have their way!"

"I know the idea of ‘parallel universes’ is standard in science fiction," Tom said. "But... think of all the details, back to the Big Bang, that would have to go
exactly
the same way to bring an alternate-history version of the Cosmotron Express up to their side of the Window, at the same instant! It’s not just something
similar
—it seems to be an exact duplicate!"

"True," nodded Hank. "On the other hand, maybe the most similar universes are—"

"I thought we were gonna save the philosophizing," interjected Bob.

Hannah, her
dread
, spoke softly. "I don’t know if I should say this. There are some possibilities that are hard to even think about, but... what if what we’re seeing is, literally, a
ghost ship!
Couldn’t we be seeing, like a premonition, what will happen to us, after—after we cross—"

"Juronda," murmured Andy Emda.

"Hunh?" challenged Chow. "What’s that word mean?"

"Juronda. The land of the dead! From the old tales of Brungaria, the sagas of the ancient Brungar tribes." Emda continued with a quote. " ‘
No eyes, for all is shadow. No ears, for who can speak? No hands, for who can weigh a shadow? No hope—for we are here.
’ "

"And
we
are
here
!" snapped Tom impatiently. "Whatever
else
is true of that place, it’s beyond the light of the sun. It’s full of shadow—maybe that Cosmotron II is some kind of shadow, a shadow of
us!
It’s a
shadowverse
as far as I’m concerned, and I don’t intend to let a shadow scare me off. Now let’s get to work!"

Tom proceeded to send Mod Two across to the
Dyaune
. The docking bay of the Brungarian craft was on the side away from their view, but camera eyes on the Mod allowed Tom to guide and orient the sphere. As the Mod station-kept, Volj used explosive bolts to tear off the unnecessary docking panels so as to allow a firm seal with the Mod’s larger hatchway. The cameras watched the panels drift a short distance—then suddenly accelerate as if captured by some unknown power. In an instant they had been engulfed in the further darkness and were lost to sight.

"That’s what will happen to us," declared Sue. "The only thing keeping the
Dyaune
from being drawn in is that it’s still protruding into our universe, halfway."

After the crew of the
Dyaune
—eight of the Brungarians and the three travelers from Nestria—boarded the Mod, it was guided back to the
Starward
without interference. Nattan Volj was the first to descend in the elevator into the Express’s top-deck antechamber.

Tom and Arv Hanson met him with i-guns drawn. "Sorry, Professor Volj. I’m afraid you and your crew will have to remain aboard the Mod for the rest of the trip. The accommodations will be comfortable. I’ve locked down the propulsion system and outgoing communications."

"Yes, Swift. Of course," said Volj coldly. "You are not a fool. It is what
I
would do." He went back up, and in a moment Violet Wohl came down to a joyous reunion, followed by the two others from the transit capsule.

After seeing them to their cabins for rest and food, Tom returned to the command deck. "What now, pal?" asked Bud.

"Let’s send one of the Spider Crabs into the shadowverse," directed Tom’s father. "Perhaps it will collect enough data to satisfy the extraterrestrials."

The mobie was propelled from the hangar-hold. It spread its spidery arms and readied its claws.

"Good camera feed," Tom reported. "Entering the Window." On the monitor the crowded watchers viewed the passing hull of the abandoned
Dyaune
, its aft end almost too dim to be seen.

Tom switched the camera view toward the phantom Cosmotron II, immobile and ominous in the distance. The screen remained dead black. "Nothing," said Tom. "It’s not there, according to the instruments."

"Ya cain’t see a ghost with a TV camera!" insisted Chow in a nervous whisper.

Suddenly all screens went blank. All readout dials fell to zero. "The mobie’s gone," stated Mr. Swift. "Just like the transit capsule."

"Dead," Andy muttered, bringing a retort from Bud:

"You’re a real fearful little earful, Andy."

Emda shrugged. "My apologies."

But there was much worse to be faced than discouraging words. "Skipper!" sang out Hank from the main control board. "The
Starward
is moving from position!"

"Externalities?"

"Nothing on the board," replied the engineer. "No G, no EM. But we’re on the move!"

"The X-ians!" exclaimed Bud. "
They’re pushing us right through the Window!
"

SIDE BY SIDE as always, Tom and Bud desperately worked the controls. "Our options are pretty limited with the repelatrons unusable," Tom grated.

"What about killing the gravitexes?" urged Arv. "Won’t that cut-off the X-ians’ grab-force?"

"I
did
kill the gravs," Tom retorted, "right after the last communication."

"Then how—"

It was Mr. Swift who replied for his son. "There’s already plenty of gravitational stress-energy here in the Emma region. Tom’s detector shows that the anomalous G-waves emanate, not from the Window itself, but from the space immediately outside it, along its perimeter—its
frame
! The presence of the object crams the spacetime continuum aside, and the Planet X beings must be able to tap the resultant energy."

"If
they
can, so can we!" exclaimed Tom. "The stresses are gravitational in nature—so let’s use our gravitexes to yank us away into space!"

As Tom reactivated the bank of gravitexes, the risk of his plan hung over the cabin. The devices might be able to pull the
Starward
away from the rift-node—but their activation would also feed additional power to the X-ians’ manipulation force.

As the gravitexes took hold, the Cosmotron Express jolted slightly and seemed to hesitate in its forward crawl—but only for a moment. "Not strong enough," stated Tom, shutting them down hastily.

"Then it’s time for the Big Stick approach!" Bud declared. "The spacedriver worked before, Skipper."

"Ye-
ahhh
, bull by th’ horns!" agreed Chow with cowpoke enthusiasm.

Tom oriented the cosmotron field and fed it a burst of power from the antiproton energine. The response was instantaneous! "Yeeee-ha!" cheered Chow, badly missing a hat to wave.

The
Starward
was breaking free! The nearby vertex of the triangular black region, the floating
Dyaune
, the more distant spectre of the Cosmotron II—all suddenly fell away and shrank. "Distance 200," called out Bob Jeffers. "250—300—400—!"

Then his voice faltered, and Hannah whispered, "Oh no..."

"Slowing down," Jeffers reported dully.

In seconds the ship had come to a full stop relative to the Black Window. "No go," said Bud. "We’re starting to accelerate back! Tom—"

The young inventor moved with studied efficiency, working the controls, giving new orders to the computers. The cabin lights dimmed. "Diverting excess power to the drive unit," he narrated.

"Not sufficient," stated Mr. Swift bluntly. "Their force is matching us."

"Overwhelming us," said Andy. "We can’t escape. We’re about to enter Juronda, the place no one can leave."

"Aa
shuddup
!" barked Chow. "Ain’t
nothin
’ Tom Swift can’t figger a way out of!"

But Tom sat motionless as the ship accelerated and the stark blackness expanded. "Tom?" asked Bud. "Another trick up your sleeve?"

Tom glanced at his best pal. "Maybe my blue-stripe T-shirt sleeves are too short this time." But his last word ran into the first word of hope! "—
Wait
! We
do
have another card to play!"

He began to adjust the control settings. His father, looking over his shoulder, said quietly, "The repelatrons? But there’s nothing for them to push against."

"Oh yes there is, Dad!" Tom gasped. "The
Dyaune
!"

The invisible surface of the Black Window, evidently perfectly flat, was very close and the hulk of the Brungarian ship loomed large before them. "We’re going to ram it!" murmured Neil fearfully.

"
Oh no we’re not!
" insisted Bud with a brave grin.

Suddenly a powerful shock nearly jolted the space travelers off their feet. Ahead, through the viewpane, they could see the
Dyaune
react to a similar shock, jumping away from them as the Express’s repelatrons took hold. The abandoned craft, a midget next to the mammoth Express, began to tumble as it accelerated away into the further darkness behind it. "
Hold on!
" Tom cried. "
One big blast—!
"

Tom hurled the
Starward
’s full energies through the repelatron beams. Suddenly the
Dyaune
was hurtling away, lost in shadow—and the Cosmotron Express was eeking out a frustrating amble in the reverse direction. "We’re moving," said Neil MacColter, "but mighty slow."

"I haven’t put her in gear yet!" Tom grinned. "Full-power switchover to the spacedriver—
now
!"

The crew glimpsed, for the merest instant, the shadowverse double of the
Starward
abruptly accelerating away, out of view, as if seeking a safe port. As it disappeared, the Window suddenly shrank with distance—tremendous distance in a split second! "Forty thousand miles!" Bob sang out. "
One hundred thousand!
—This is more like it!"

For the first time they could see the entire shape of the Black Window—a narrow triangle with a sharp point, miles long, showing as utter blackness against the dense glittering lawn of stars. As it shrank away in distance, it seemed to be changing in another way. "The thing’s curling up," said Bud wonderingly. "Folding in on itself." It was like a scrap of paper burning in a fireplace.