Tom Swift and His Space Solartron (12 page)

"Absolutely," agreed Ames. "And that includes our conversation about that recording chip. Evidently she overheard enough to dope out where it was, so she went to fetch it and got herself trapped in the lab when you and Hanson came in unexpectedly. It wouldn’t have been difficult for her to get ahold of one of the electric code-keys, and she has access to the office files in which the codes are listed. She already had a patrolscope amulet, of course."

"And you’re saying she hasn’t been in to work?"

"Not for a couple days now. Rad and I thought we were being subtle, asking her some vague questions about her background—but she must have caught on." He added that, although she had called in sick the previous day, today she had simply not shown up and was not answering her phone. "Captain Rock says he’ll send an officer around there tomorrow when she doesn’t show up again, ostensibly to check on her. Then he’ll bring her in for questioning."

"This is great work!" Tom enthused. After a thoughtful pause, he added: "But if Dad were here, he’d remind us that we’re operating on assumptions, not proof. And even if Miss Warner turns out to be the thief, she may turn out to be the pawn or victim of somebody else."

"Right," agreed Ames. "Like Hampshire—or Lewton Ajax!"

Excited and energized, Tom went to Enterprises early the next morning to meet with Arv Hanson and Hank Sterling in the Barn. "Here she is, skipper," Hank exclaimed proudly. "The ready-for-space model of your matter maker!"

The new space solartron was a somewhat larger and more elaborate version of the test model Tom had been working with thus far. The round main casing was even more like a big bulging doughnut than before, with a curving indentation beneath as well as above its central point, the two hollows almost—not quite—connecting. The conical structure of disks above was now mirror-duplicated on the underside as well, and the entire machine was suspended above the concrete floor by a sturdy frame of metal struts.

"What a beauty!" the young inventor breathed in awe and pride.

"And she works too, far as we can tell," grinned Arv. "But until you put together that new antiproton dynamo you mentioned, all we can do is cross our fingers."

"It won’t be long," Tom replied. "Before I get started on it, though, I have a few improvements to the atom-gatherers that should make them more efficient. That’s the goal for this morning."

The atom-snatcher bales had been flown back to Shopton along with the other equipment. Tom now had one of the bales delivered to the Barn. With the help of Hank and Arv, he dragged the cube of material to the center of the floor and cleared a wide space all around it. Then, making a connection, he fed a current to the transifoil, and it began to unfold. "I’ll only unfold it a little ways," explained Tom; "just the first few folds. I won’t need anything like the whole four acres for my experimentation." The material was extremely tough, durable, and compressible; the tubes could be walked upon without harm, flattening down to the floor almost completely though the latticework was still piled in a number of layers.

"Hardly seems thicker than a few coats of paint when you step on it," Hank joked.

The morning passed quickly, and as lunchtime approached, Tom told his friends to take a break. "I’ll keep working here for a time, though—tell Chow I’ll be by around one or so, would you?"

The youthful scientist-inventor fell into his usual deep concentration, working alone in the big arching chamber as the minutes ticked away.

A slight sound caught Tom’s ear. He stood up, glanced about absently, then turned.

A man stood behind him not twenty feet away, a strange, bulky weapon in his hand. He aimed it directly at Tom!

"This is it, Swift!" the man snarled, his face ghostly white. "For what you did, I’m going to kill you—
now!"

TOM SWIFT had no time to reason with the man or think up any clever rejoinders. The man’s finger was already tightening on what was evidently a trigger!

Acting almost on sheer instinct Tom took an abrupt step sideways, kicking out with his left foot. The foot tangled with a loop of the electric power lead that was supplying current to the transifoil lattices. As the weapon made a popping sound and something unseen whistled past Tom’s ear, he jerked his foot upward violently.

He had barely an instant to note that the line had parted from its power connection—his adversary was already steadying himself to fire again!

Tom flinched in anticipation, and even as he did so the attacker cried out a yelp of surprise. The atom-snatcher panel upon which he was standing was starting to fold up, as if wrapping the man like a package! He tried to turn and escape but it was already too late. One square fold of latticework louvered onto another, forcing him to stagger backwards toward the center. He threw down the weapon—a pneumatic bolt-insertion "gun" used in assembly—and shrieked with fear, frantic to escape; but escape was impossible. In seconds he had become enmeshed in the folds of the bale, which had almost completely closed itself up around his struggling body like a ravenous Venus’s fly-trap!

Kicking the bolt-gun away across the concrete, Tom called security, heart pounding.

"Turn it off!"
screeched Tom’s assailant.
"It’s crushing me!"

"Calm down—and shut up!" Tom ordered. "It won’t hurt you. Unless, of course, you try to wriggle out, in which case it’ll skin you alive!" he added sardonically.

A security force of five came on the run, followed a moment later by short, stocky Phil Radnor. Tom caused the transifoil to stir just enough for the men to pull the attacker from its grip. He was trembling violently.

"You won’t get away with it!"
he gibbered, glaring at Tom with wild eyes.

"Another nutcase!" murmured Radnor in disgust.

Tom held up a hand, indicating that the men should hold up for a moment. He gazed intently at their prisoner. "Get away with
what?"
he asked the man calmly, eyeing the name badge on his shirt. "What’s going on—Olvens, is it? What is it you think I’ve done?"

The man’s eyes darted about the chamber maniacally—and not entirely in sync with one another. Finally settling on Tom again, he spat out: "You know what you did.
You had her killed!
We were, she and I—now she’s—" He broke down into a frenzy of helpless tears.

"The nurse in the infirmary will give you something to calm you, Olvens. She won’t hurt you," said Tom gently. "Don’t be afraid."

The men half-carried Olvens away, bagging and carrying off the bolt-shooter tool as well.

Shaken, mystified, Tom went to lunch, stopping by the security office afterwards. He found both Radnor and Ames sitting in grim silence as if awaiting him.

"His name’s Kirby Olvens," said Ames. "Works over in the billing department. Shopton PD just took him away, but he may end up at the hospital for observation. They’re afraid he might be suicidal."

"What do you suppose set him off?" Tom asked, bewildered and troubled. "Did he say anything that made sense?"

Ames and his assistant exchanged glances. "Enough to tie his attack in with something I just learned about within the last half hour," Ames said in gruff tones. "Tom, I’m afraid Miss Warner is dead."

The youth gasped in shocked dismay.
"No!"

Phil nodded. "The police called us. When the officer went by her apartment, there was no answer to his knock. He called the station and got permission to force an entry. She was lying inside."

"Do the police know what happened?"

"Suffocated—a pillow was held down over her face. The apartment was ransacked. They think it happened yesterday afternoon. She’d been packing, messily. Obviously she was preparing to skip town."

Ames took over the story. "Near as we can figure, she and this fellow Olvens had become close romantically, starting the first day she came here. He went to her place late last night and found her, then took off on his own and made himself crazy. He told the police she had been almost hysterical the other day and had mentioned your name, Tom—she told him you and your Dad planned to make her ‘take the fall’ to cover up something you’d done. So he came after you."

"Is he a suspect in the murder?" asked Tom.

"An obvious one," Ames responded. "But Captain Rock says he’s skeptical—the evidence doesn’t really add up, and Olvens has a pretty good set of alibis for the time in question."

Phil Radnor ran a hand through his hair. "Did
we
make this happen? By questioning her as we did, making her panic?"

"Drop it, Rad!" snapped Ames. "We did our job, and we did it professionally. Whoever she was working for must’ve decided not to risk her being apprehended and questioned."

After further discussion, Tom radioed his father at the outpost and reported these events. The elder scientist was shocked and saddened by the occurrence, and very alarmed at its violence.

Forcing aside all distracting thoughts, Tom managed to complete his work on the atom-snatcher, and then proceeded on to fleshing out his ideas for the antiproton power device. By the time Bud came by to visit his chum, Tom had created a detailed preliminary sketch on the design flatscreen. It showed dual metal spheres connected by a thick cylinder bristling with thick high-load power lines.

After the youths discussed the dire events of the day, Tom gave a brief account of his invention to his friend, as he liked to do to clear his head. "You can almost see how it works just by looking at it. The two spheres are storage tanks—Exploron in one, the reactor gas in the other. The cylinder is mostly a filtration device, producing the finest, most attenuated spray imaginable, hardly more than a single molecule at a time. The challenge is aiming the two kinds of molecule at one another so they collide in the reaction chamber. It’s a little like fighting a duel by standing at opposite ends of the solar system—and trying to hit your opponent’s bullet in mid-flight somewhere around Saturn!"

"A duel, huh." Bud gulped at Tom’s analogy.

"But I’ve made progress—the numbers all add up, flyboy! I’m sure it will work. I’m calling it an antiproton energine."

Bud nodded. "Great name."

Tom gave his pal a probing look. "Say, is something wrong?"

"Oh no, no." Bud gave a weak grin.

"Well that’s good," responded the young inventor; "because I’m in the mood to take a little trip across the U.S.—to New Mexico!"

"Gonna test your device at the Citadel?"

"I am. But that’s not the main reason." He explained that while working intently on the energine, the possible solution to another problem has suddenly popped into his head. "That’s the way ideas happen sometimes, you know—when you’re focused on something else."

"So what idea came a-poppin’, genius boy?"

"I think I know how our enemies have been fouling up our guidance computers, first on the
Sky Queen,
then the
Challenger!
I knew there was no way they could have physically got access to the systems. Then I remembered what you had seen at that pueblo."

Excitement suddenly flashed across Bud’s face. "You mean that antenna?"

"Exactly, pal! I’ll bet these guys have devised a way to access some component of our computers remotely! They must be able to ‘beam in’ a signal that in effect re-programs—or at least scrambles—some key guidance subroutine. It drives the ships crazy!" In the case of the
Challenger
, Tom went on, the signal might have been transmitted from a small boat lying beyond the security perimeter of Fearing Island. "They might even have been in an aircraft and zapped the ship as she was on her way up through the atmosphere."

Bud asked if Tom had shared his theory with Ames’s office. The youth shook his head. "Harlan has run into too many roadblocks trying to work through official channels. At the same time, I don’t want to put him in a delicate legal position, knowing in advance what we’re going to do."

"And—what
are
we going to do?"

"You and I are going to visit that pueblo on our own. And this time we’re not taking no for an answer!"

THE BOYS crossed the continent the next day at supersonic speed, touching down at the Citadel before they had left Shopton, by the clock. It was a little after three in the afternoon. To avoid exposing the
Sky Queen
’s computers to any threat from the invasive antenna, they had taken a compact Swift Construction Company jet, which utilized a far simpler guidance and control system.

Tom worked until seven on his energine, a prototype of which had been quickly produced from his sketches and specs by Arvid Hanson and his assistant, Linda. Testing it out thoroughly in a heavily shielded vault, he pronounced himself completely satisfied at the end. "This absolutely solves the power problem in running the solartron on space flights," he told Bud. "I’ll call Hank and have a finalized model installed in Matty, and we can test the whole setup in action during our next trip in the
Challenger
."

"Right," said Bud with a trace of nervous irony. "Assuming we make it through the night!"

Tom and Bud drove out to an isolated highway eatery, Darlita’s, for dinner. Then, the New Mexico skies alive with starlight, they headed on to the mesa of the pueblos.

"It closed to the public at six," Bud pointed out. "I assume we’ll be using your native cat-burglar skills to get inside."

Tom chuckled. "Just a few tricks I picked up from Jake the Cat! Actually, it won’t be easy—people are living there."

"I’ll be keeping a lookout for Jeremiah Running Deer, or whatever his name is," responded Bud. "I have the impression he has an itchy trigger finger. But if ol’ Jerry is involved in this plot, at least one other must also be—
someone
was inside that cave-house peeking out at me!"

As they neared the pueblo site, Tom drove the company car off the highway and into the desert, moving slowly so as not to raise a cloud of dust that might be noticed. He finally parked out of sight behind a low outcropping of rock. In moments the two were creeping stealthily toward the mesa—and now the bright starlight was their enemy!