Tom Swift and His Ultrasonic Cycloplane (2 page)

The next day, Professor Feeney arrived and studied the statue closely, but could offer no clue as to its exact origin. "It might be Asiatic, Polynesian, or Melanesian," said the elderly man. "If you want a professional guess, I’d say Melanesian, mid-eighteenth century. But that culture did not have a general knowledge of metal-working—certainly nothing like
this
peculiar substance. Gordo may have an idea. It’ll be
wrong,
but perhaps this is best approached by a process of elimination."

Later in the day Bud flew Tom and Ed to New York City via one of the small commuter jets manufactured by the Swift Construction Company, an Enterprises affiliate. At the Museum of Historic Sculpture and Carvings in Manhattan, Dr. Gorde, a very obese man with carrot-red hair, handled the figure with the raised-pinky delicacy of an artist. "Most unusual example of traditional Pacific sculpture I’ve ever seen!" declared Dr. Gorde. "What did Feeney come up with, Melanese? Predictable."

"What’s your analysis, sir?" Tom asked.

"Javanese, late fourteenth century—the Toonongo period. Many unusual features, though—yes sirree." Now examining the statue under a powerful magnifying glass, Dr. Gorde asked, "Would you permit the figure to be placed on display for a few days? Good for our museum, and a good way to flush out some professional opinions, too."

Ed Longstreet, who had been planning to remain in New York anyway, agreed willingly, so the statue was immediately placed on display in a glass case and given the utmost in dramatic lighting. TV commentators mentioned the news item and the
Shopton Evening Bulletin
carried a front-page story about the queer pagan idol, the information quickly spreading to the rest of the national media, and to the internet. As a result, crowds stormed the museum the next day, eager to view the mysterious object. Armed guards were posted around the case in which the figure was displayed.

"It certainly caused a stir in Manhattan," Tom said to his blond, blue-eyed sister Sandra that evening at the dinner table. He repeated this later to his slim, pretty mother when he kissed her good night.

Shortly after midnight, he was awakened by the shrill ringing of his bedside phone, a private line. Lifting the receiver sleepily, Tom asked who was calling. "It’s Dr. Gorde, Tom!" gasped a voice that seemed to quiver like a big blubbery bubble escaping a bubble-pipe. "Oh my! My goodness! The animal god has been stolen!"

The news shocked Tom wide awake.
"Stolen!"
Tom choked. "But—but the guards—how—" He tried to calm himself. "Where are you calling from?"

"The museum," said the curator. "The police are here with me, and so is your cousin Mr. Longstreet. There’s no need for you to fly down immediately, Tom, but perhaps—"

Tom arranged to fly back to the city in late morning. As Bud was on a piloting assignment, he flew himself this time, in a Swift Pigeon Special.

A short time after landing in New York City he braked his rental car to a halt in front of the museum. Shoving past reporters, he strode to the office of the curator. Here he found Dr. Gorde mopping his ample brow, and two night watchmen from the museum being questioned by police detectives while Cousin Ed looked on. "Glad you’re here, Tom," the curator greeted him. "Maybe you can give us some help on this."

"Exactly what happened?" Tom inquired. One of the detectives, a plain-clothes police sergeant, gave him a quick fill-in, with the two night watchmen providing additional detail. The first hint of trouble had come with a sound of shattering glass in the east wing of the museum about 11:35 P.M. One of the watchmen had run to investigate, only to be knocked out by a blow on the head. A livid bruise still showed on his right temple. The other watchman, arriving on the scene a minute or so later, had found the display case smashed and the mysterious figurine missing. "What about the burglar alarm?" Tom asked. "You must have video cameras covering the room—what do they show?"

"We checked that, natch," the plain-clothes man reported. "But there was nothing to see. Turned out someone had introduced an override device into the main system somehow, activated by remote signal. I’d suppose it was put in place earlier in the evening, while the museum was full of people, blocking the lines of sight of the videocams. Then, after the museum was cleared and locked up for the night, he activated the mechanism and broke in through a high rear window."

"Removed a pane of glass very neatly," noted the other detective, whose name was Rusty Hubbel. "He’s a pro."

"Any clues from the M.O.?" Tom asked.

"The M.O.?" put in Dr. Gorde, peering through his gold-rimmed pince-nez with a puzzled expression.

"The crook’s
modus operandi,
or method of operation," the sergeant explained. "You don’t watch TV, Gorde? Yes, Tom, as a matter of fact, everything points to a well-known second-story man called Jake the Cat. Don’t blame me, I didn’t give him the name. Here—" He leafed open a large rogues gallery album sitting on Gorde’s desk, shoved it toward Tom, and pointed to two "mug shots"—front and side views—of a lean-faced, dark-haired man about thirty years old. "That’s the guy I’m talking about. One of the guards—Wuzzolini here—thinks he remembers seeing him in the crowd yesterday. He’s been in and out of the penitentiary in half a dozen states for similar crimes. He specializes in thefts from public buildings and always kills the alarm first like a good little boy."

During this explanation Dr. Gorde was pacing back and forth nervously. "But why on earth would a criminal of his low type steal such an exotic art object?" he demanded.

"Art objects bring plenty of dough, don’t they?" said Sergeant Camp, the senior detective.

"Surely not in this case," the curator insisted. "Why, the statue must be known throughout the country by now, from all the news stories about it! Where could the thief dispose of it?"

"I agree with Dr. Gorde," Tom said. "No fence will handle stolen goods unless he can resell them at a profit. And I doubt if any private collector would dare to buy such an easily recognized item."

"Ya can’t count on that, kid!" retorted Rusty Hubbel. "I’ve met guys that’d heist the Mona Lisa just for the thrill of havin’ it in their cellar."

"Hmm." Sergeant Camp frowned and stroked his chin. "So what’s your take on it, Tom? Are you saying old Jake bungled this time?"

"Hey!" laughed Rusty. "‘Bungled while he burgled’!"

Tom shook his head. "Not necessarily. We managed to keep it out of the news stories, but that statue is made of a very rare metal. If this Jake melted it down, it could never be recognized, but its industrial research value would still be worth many thousands of dollars!—not too bad for a night’s work."

"Not too bad for his rep, either," remarked Camp.

"His
rep?"
demanded Gorde in outrage. "Are you telling me this professional hoodlum has an
agent?"

"
‘Reputation’
," whispered Ed Longstreet.

"But the flaw in
that
theory is—how did Jake the Cat find out about the figure’s composition and its value?" Tom mused. "It almost suggests that he was
sent
to get the statue, by someone already familiar with it."

The sergeant nodded. "Maybe someone who had stolen it himself, then lost possession somehow. He could have recognized it from the media photos."

Ed looked rueful. "Guess I’ve really stirred up a hornet’s nest by bringing you the statue, Tom! I don’t much care about its monetary value. But I
would
like to have it back long enough for the big brains to figure out who made it, and where."

"We’ll contact the FBI and put out a dragnet for Jake the Cat," the chief promised. He told Tom, Longstreet, and Dr. Gorde that they would be kept apprised of any progress in the investigation.

That evening, back in Shopton, Tom decided to take Bud and Sandy out for a late snack in town. They stopped in at The Glass Cat, a mildly Bohemian coffee house owned by the brother of their friend Bashalli Prandit, who attended the counter when not attending the DuBrey Art Institute, where she was in her second year.

The pretty raven-haired Pakistani greeted her friends warmly and brought them tea, soft drinks, and a tray of pastries. "Ah, a stolen statue, a second-story man with a colorful name! The mystery mystifies and the intrigue—intriguifies."

"I think Tom and Bud should wear protective helmets 24/7 for the next month or so," Sandy teased.

"Forget it!" retorted Bud. "You know the bad guys have to knock one of us out at least once before they get caught." He rubbed the back of his head. "I was
born
thick-headed, but lately my skull’s starting to feel like a concrete porch step!"

Tom laughed and said, "I’m just glad that for once all this stuff doesn’t have anything to do with my current project."

"You mean the cycloplane?" asked Sandy.

Tom nodded, and Bashalli repeated the word.
"Cyclo-plane.
A neat little name, to go with seacopter and terrasphere. What does it do, Thomas? Fly around in cyclones?"

"It makes its
own
cyclone." Tom grinned in reply. "See, there’s an ultrasonic generator that—"

"Hold it, Tom," Bud interrupted. "You explained it all to me the other day, so let
me
play Tom Swift and see if I can explain it back to Bash here."

"Bud is very competitive," Sandy remarked jokingly as Tom waved Bud onward.

"Leave nothing out, Budworth," demanded Bashalli.

"Okay." Bud stood up and put his hands on the back of his chair. "Tom Swift and his ultrasonic cycloplane: the scientific explanation. Ladies, no doubt you know of the Magnus effect?"

"Of course!" they said together. Then, together, they shook their heads negatively.

"As I suspected. Well, for the benefit of those
few
of you present not in the know, the Magnus effect (
eye-eee,
the ‘Magnus force’) is a term that was coined to explain anomalies in the airflow around a spinning object. On the side where the windstream flows along in the same direction as the rotation of the object’s surface, the airstream velocity is enhanced. On the opposite side, where the motions are opposed, the velocity is decreased."

"And
as we all know,
the Bernoulli principle states that the pressure of a moving fluid against a surface is lower on the side where the relative velocity is greater," Sandy said with mock pomposity. "And vice-versa!"

"Thus, airplane wings," nodded Bashalli.

Tom added, "It’s also the principle behind throwing a curve ball. It’s why the ball has to spin as it cuts through the air."

"Indeedly." Bud gave a grand gesture of professorial approval. "And
consequently
there is an unbalanced force acting upon the spinning surface at right angles to the line of airflow. So the ball curves, right or left."

"I’ve seen old pictures of ocean-going craft that made use of the Magnus effect," noted Tom. "They have big vertical cylinders on the tops of masts, which interact with the wind as they spin."

Bashalli looked skeptical as she drank her tea. "Then this new plane is some sort of wind-sailing craft, like a big kite?"

Tom chuckled. "Now there’s an idea! But no, the cycloplane is basically a jet, but instead of wings it uses a pair of horizontal cylinders, called
cyclocyls,
running the length of the fuselage along either side."

"Hence the name—cycloplane!" declared Bud.

"Right. The cyclocyls are mounted in special frictionless brackets and can be made to spin at a tremendous rate. The resultant Magnus effect creates a region of increased pressure which acts against the underside of the cylinders, pushing the plane upwards."

"Now, ladies," said Bud, "I’m sure it’s occurred to you to wonder where the right-angled airflow comes from—because without the airflow, the cylinders have nothing to interact with."

"It was on the tip of my tongue," said Bashalli dryly.

"That’s where genius boy’s ultrasonic thingamabob comes in. It vibrates the air, and—well, when you have one wave on top of another, see—" Bud looked flummoxed. "Er, why don’t we let Professor Swift himself take it from here!"

With bland smiles the girls turned to look at Tom. "Here’s the deal!" Tom chuckled. "I’ll even use a visual aid."

Tom filled a flat, transparent baking pan with water and carried it back to the table, setting it down carefully. He poked one finger into the water. "Look at the shadows on the bottom as I jiggle my finger up and down—the waves ripple out in all directions in a circular pattern. Now I put a second finger in on the other side of the pan, and jiggle both at the exact same rate."

"The shadows make a stationary pattern," observed Sandy. "A crisscross pattern that jiggles but doesn’t flow outward. It looks like a spiderweb."

"That’s right," confirmed the young inventor. "The ripples from each source cross each other in such a way that a stable pattern of
standing waves
is created—the basic waves themselves are still moving, but the places where they cross one another, called nodes, stay in fixed positions. The darker shadows are from the nodes, whereas the parts between show where the water is almost undisturbed, because the ‘highs’ and ‘lows’ exactly cancel each other. Now, Bash, drop a little scrap from that soda straw wrapper onto the water."

"You may refer to me as your lovely assistant." Bashalli did as requested. "It landed where the water is agitated and mounded-up," she observed. "But it slid over to a flat area right away, and it’s staying there."

"That makes sense," said Tom’s sister. "It’s like a surfboard sliding along on a water wave." She looked up at Tom. "Is that how you push the air sideways across the cylinders?"

"Basically, sis. There will be a pair of ultrasonic generators attached underneath the plane, one at the front and the other toward the rear. They’ll create a pattern of standing waves—ultrasonic waves—between them. By constantly varying the wave frequencies, sort of playing one generator against the other, a steady lateral airflow is created which crosses the cylclocyls. When the air dragged around by the cyclocyls runs into the lateral stream—there’s our ‘cyclone’."