Tom Swift and His Space Solartron (13 page)

Pausing as they came near, Tom took his electronic flashlight device and swept it back and forth, the light emitter switched off. When the LED blinked, he held it steady and plugged in a headphone mini-jack, allowing him to listen to its amplified sound output. He refocused it several times, then finally shut it off. "Just minor stuff, people chatting, pots clanking, TV. Not a sound out of that dwelling you pointed to. Sure it’s the right one, flyboy?"

"Definitely!" Bud whispered. "Of course, they may have moved the whole operation the next day, for all we know."

"But it sounds as though there’s some kind of secret door, a hidden room of some kind. Even if they’ve pulled out, we might find some useful clues."

They moved their way closer, coming across a chainlink fence that proved no barrier to two determined youths with plenty of muscle between them. Now they were on the grounds—private property, restricted!

"I can see the headlines in the
Bulletin,"
Tom murmured.
"Famed Inventor Caught Trespassing!"

"That’d really turn Perkins on!" snorted Bud.

They stood in shadow at the base of the steep cliffs, gazing up at their destination. "Boots on!" Tom whispered. They replaced their shoes with the special climbing boots they had carried along, inventions Bud had nicknamed
Tom Swift’s Wizard Walkers.
Originally designed as part of the spacesuits used on the expedition to the rugged moonlet Nestria, the soles of the boots were densely covered by what looked like a dandelion fuzz, composed of thousands of microfilaments of Tomasite plastic. The flexible filaments worked their way into minute fissures or gaps in rock, allowing the wearer to handle steep ascents with a reduced danger of slipping. The Wizard Walkers also acted to muffle the sounds of the climb.

As Tom stepped to lead the way upward, his companion put a restraining hand on his shoulder and leaned close. "Remember, the dwellings right next to the one we want are in use—if anybody steps out on the ledge to smoke a peace pipe, we’re toast!"

They climbed easily to the tier where their destination loomed, a dark oval. Bud pointed silently—the dish antenna was still in place. Tom noticed that it was now aimed upward, like an ordinary satellite dish, not at the Citadel.
Guess they’re covering their tracks,
he thought.
Too bad.

They pushed through the beaded curtain into darkness.

"A little further, please." The voice was no less startling for being affable. Tom and Bud stiffened, and the voice—which Bud recognized as belonging to Jeremiah—went on smoothly: "No, don’t get shook. Not in your best interest to get holes shot through you. You’re both pretty easy to see, standing in front of the opening like that. Now step straight forward, two little steps."

They did so, and could feel themselves being frisked. "No weapons," muttered a husky second voice.

This voice Tom recognized. "Why Mr. Hampshire!" he said mockingly. "What a pleasant surprise this
isn’t—
in fact, it’s not even a surprise."

"Sue me!" grated the attorney.

"Enough sarcasm," Jeremiah said in tones that showed no hint of emotion. There was the sound of a click, and suddenly a wedge of bright light dispelled the darkness. A camouflaged door had been opened at the back of the rock-hewn room.

As their eyes grew accustomed to the sudden dazzle, Tom and Bud could make out the powerfully built man with the revolver, splash of platinum in his black hair and all, with the balding, snarl-faced Hampshire standing a little to the side.

"Before you start in with
You’ll never get away with this,
I want the both of you to walk slow and easy through this door," said Jeremiah, moving his head slightly, but not his gun. "We’ll be right behind."

They entered a small, square room, carved deeper into the underlying rock of the mesa, and Hampshire pulled the door shut after them. The room contained a variety of electronics consoles, a table, and several heavy wooden chairs. Jeremiah motioned for the boys to sit down, and Hampshire proceeded to tie them in place with a cord of strong cotton, plucking away Tom’s cellphone in the process.

"Hey—love the shoes," taunted Jeremiah, holstering his revolver. Smiling, he gestured at one of the consoles. "Radar, keeping track of our vulnerable desert perimeter. Sound familiar, Tom? Bud? Not as sophisticated as what you good folks have over there in Nuke City. But it gave us time to get ready for you."

Tom fixed him in a glare of determination. "Okay. Now what?"

With a conspiratorial wink, the Native American opened up a small refrigerator unit and withdrew a sealed vial. He then loaded two hypodermic syringes. "Either of you two allergic to any medications?" he asked in mock solicitousness.

"Knock it off, Prentiss!" Hampshire demanded. "Let’s get down to it."

The man named Jeremiah Prentiss approached Tom, holding up the hypo for the young inventor to see. "Tonight’s designer drug has been shown, in actual laboratory tests, to work very effectively as a conversational lubricant. It’s better than three martinis—not that I would know; I don’t drink."

Bud muttered, "Truth serum. Simpson got it right."

"Simpson," Hampshire repeated. "That would be the company doctor."

"I’m a doctor too," remarked Prentiss as he gave Tom an injection into bunched muscle. "At least I was, a couple years back. No money in it these days."

"So now you’re, what—freelance enforcer for sleazy lawyers?" retorted the blond-haired youth.

The man barked out a laugh. "Say, Fernell here is my buddy. Don’t call him sleazy. He’s really an expert conniver, and he knows the law well—for a lawyer." Moving over to Bud, Prentiss shot Hampshire a look of mock apology. "Oops. Broke my promise. No lawyer jokes." He stuck the needle in Bud’s arm.

"Since you’ve got us at a disadvantage," said Tom to Hampshire, "how about telling us what this plot of yours is all about?"

"How about I
don’t!"
growled the attorney.

"Right. There’s no particular advantage in confessing, near as I can tell," Prentiss commented. "We’d rather hear from you two."

"What about?" piped up Bud, his voice sounding strained and wheezy.

"Is it starting to take effect already? Well then. Ferney and I have a few questions about, let’s see, cutting-edge nuclear physics, I guess you’d say. Applied stuff."

"In other words," Tom said, "my space solartron."

"That’d be a start," grinned Prentiss, taking a seat and facing the two captives.

Tom managed a shrug. "It’s a big subject."

"No doubt, but we have specific—"

Tom interrupted him. "And besides, it’s not a secret. The whole theory is out in the journals."

"Maybe so. What we—"

"What are you,
lazy?
Impatient? Or do you just like doing this? Did you like suffocating Mary Warner?"

"Stop inter—"

"Yeah,
did you?"
Bud called out with unexpected force. "Answer!" Suddenly the dark-haired pilot broke into a storm of tears! "Tom! Tom, I’ve got to tell you…"

"What’s wrong with them?" rasped Hampshire.

Prentiss regarded them suspiciously. "Some kind of drug reaction. –Okay, boys, just calm down."

"Bud, I’m sorry I got you into this," Tom blurted out in a quavering voice. "I’m
always
sorry. Gosh, I risk everybody’s life—"

"Don’t blame yourself," responded Bud tearfully. "You’re the
best
pal—the
very
best—what would I ever do if—but if Sandy got married to Ted—"

Tom gasped.
"Ted?
They’re getting
married?
Of course I knew he had feelings for—"

"You
knew?
All along?
My pal!
You self-absorbed, pretentious jerk,
I feel like coming over there and—"

"This is intolerable!" shouted Hampshire. "Give them another shot! Calm them down!"

Prentiss shook his head brusquely. "It doesn’t work like that. Listen, Swift—"

"I’m
trying
to do what you want! I really am!" protested the young inventor. "Let’s see, the—the solartron—what exactly did you need? Formulas? Here, take this down: ‘Omega, to the fourth root, over initial amps, multiplied by the time function expressed in—’"

"I don’t need that junk!" yelled Hampshire, his face scarlet.

"I don’t like you!"
Bud suddenly groaned out in Prentiss’s general direction. "It was humiliating, your holding a gun on me the other day. Did you consider my feelings at all, huh? You must’ve had a difficult childhood, Jeremiah. And what’s with the name?
Prentiss—
you ashamed of your heritage? Man, that
really
steams me!"

Prentiss’s dark eyes flashed wide as Bud suddenly jerked to his feet, bursting through the cord at one spot where it coiled about his muscular arms. The man had no chance to reach for his holstered gun—Bud threw himself headlong on top of him, butting Prentiss’s chin with his head as Hampshire gave a shriek of fear and alarm. Ripping one arm completely free of his bonds, Bud grabbed his chair in a smooth motion and whirled it at Prentiss furiously!

Wood met skull, and Prentiss collapsed to the floor.

Bud hesitated, staring at his fallen captor. "I’m
so
sorry," he said with real feeling. Then he turned toward Hampshire ominously, who fell back against the wall.

"No! Stop!"
the lawyer choked out. "I got a—"

Fixing Hampshire in a ferocious stare, Bud shrugged off the last of the cord. "Ready for me, Mister Attorney? I’m gonna turn your briefs inside out!"

"Stop, Bud!" yelled Tom Swift. "You don’t have to do that. You can come up with a better joke—
I know you can!"

Bud burst into tears again. But that didn’t stop him from scooping up Prentiss’s revolver and aiming it at the quivering Mr. Hampshire.

"Listen, flyboy, get the cord—tie ’em both up." Tom urged. "You
can
be smart if you’d just
try
a little."

It was done in minutes, and Tom stood free.

"I think… it’s wearing off," said the young inventor.

"Yeah," panted his friend. "Jetz!—what
happened
to us? What was I yelling about?"

Tom managed a chuckle. "I’d say Doc’s antitruth serum had an unanticipated effect. Instead of immunizing us from the truth drug, it made us blurt out, and act on, everything that came into our heads!" He added that it seemed to have given Bud a burst of adrenalin, with the maniacal strength that went along with it.

Bud rubbed his upper arm, marked with a red welt where he had broken through the cord. "Hurts like the dickens now, though."

Tom leaned down to Prentiss, tightly bound but conscious again. "Anything broken?"

"Just my pride," he answered.

"Feel like a little sharing, Mr. Prentiss?" Tom asked politely. "Or do I have to use some of that great truth drug on you? In my opinion, it’s not been proven safe for human use."

"As your attorney, Prentiss, I advise you to remain silent," muttered Hampshire.

"Yeah, Ferney? Seems to me it’s been your advice, mostly, that’s got us into this pickle." Prentiss looked up at Tom. "Besides, Hampshire here’s the one with something to worry about. Right here in this room you’ll find plenty of evidence, a few smidges of professional misbehavior here and there along the way, leading up to—well, let’s just say my buddy knows his way around a pillow. Couldn’t allow his ex-assistant Mary to testify in court. Wouldn’t look good."

"Where did all this equipment come from?"

"From the guy who hired Hampshire at the beginning," was the reply. "I gather he’s a bigshot out in Shopton town."

"His name is Ajax," Bud declared.

"Say, that
does
ring a bell," Prentiss continued dryly. "Near as I can put it all together—I’m just hired help, you know—this Ajax wants to ruin the image of your company for some reason, put it out of business if possible. So he hires Mr. Slippery-Slime here to plant phony evidence, incriminating stuff about a plane crash. Warner was supposed to ease the fakes into the files, while Hampshire sort’ve handled the legal niceties, like getting Ted Spring’s family to support the lawsuit, leaking things to the newspaper…"

"I get the idea," Tom nodded grimly. "And then there was the road accident and the phone threats—I recognize your voice now, by the way. It was you and Hampshire in the woods that night."

"All intended to grease the skids and make the Spring family more cooperative. You know, terror. Let me tell you, it really works!"

"But what about this place?" Tom demanded.

"It was supposed to be a listening post, one of several. Ajax pays for ’em," said Prentiss. "But hey, you just can’t get good help these days. Hampshire had this big idea to lead Ajax along, then blackmail him by planting some evidence on his own. See, the idea was to make it look like it was
Ajax
who had actually caused Dakin Spring’s crash a few years back, using the radio-beam gizmo."

Tom suddenly understood. "And to make the charge credible, Hampshire had to actually
use
the ‘gizmo’ to foul some of our flights, so he could claim the orders came from Ajax."

"Right on the beam, buddy," the man confirmed. "It was invented over in Asia by some group or other—who can keep track? Mongolians, I think. Guess they know a lot about computer chips over there. Fernell got wind of it and bought the plans. Like you said, it wasn’t really meant to knock anybody off, just make it look like Ajax was leaning that way and had already used it on Spring’s jet. Wasn’t true, though. Ferney’s the only killer around here."

"Not one word of this will stand up in court," barked Hampshire.

"Shut up!" responded Bud, knotting his fists. "Or
you
won’t be able to either!"

"Thank you for easing my pangs of curiosity, Mr. Prentiss," said Tom mildly. "Oh, one thing—why did Hampshire want information about my solartron?"

Prentiss laughed. "Money, natch! From talking with Ajax, he got himself convinced that this solar whatsis could be the sort of breakthrough the tabletop-fusion people have been looking for. He planned to peddle it to various unscrupulous types in the power industry, world wide. Mary Warner was supposed to smoke out some of the figures, equations, whatever you call ’em, and insert them in that new website you guys have started by altering the pages she carried over to your data-entry people. Hampshire thought he could cover his backside that way, in case you decided to start searching the employees as they went home."