Tom Swift and His Ultrasonic Cycloplane (4 page)

Bud snapped his fingers. "I’ve heard about something like this, on TV. Scientists used magnetic patterns in rocks to backtrack the drifting movements of the continents."

"Yes, and also to create a history of the changes in Earth’s magnetic poles, which have completely reversed several times." Tom went on to say that the magnetization patterns were like magnetic fingerprints, and could in principle provide good evidence of the general location of the figure when it cooled to its final form. "Since we’re fairly sure it came from the southeast Asia or Pacific islands region, this could help us narrow it down further."

It took a good long time to enter Tom’s commands onto the computer. When he was done, he started the processing routine. Strange patterns of colored triangles, like little pointers, fanned out across the monitor screen. Finally a coordinate code number appeared in the lower right corner. "There it is!" Tom exulted. "Now we look it up on a map!"

In moments Tom had the answer he had been hoping for. "It comes from a region of several thousand square miles smack in the middle of Papua New Guinea, near Lake Kutubu in the Southern Highlands area." He looked up at Bud. "High rugged mountains, silty rivers, dense jungles, and very few towns."

"Sounds inviting," commented the dark-haired pilot with irony in his voice. "New Guinea—that’s near Australia, isn’t it?"

"Just to the north," Tom confirmed. "They almost touch."

"So what do we do, now that we know?" asked Bud.

Tom shrugged. "I’m not sure that we do anything, except tell Ed about it—and Dr. Gorde too, I suppose—
if
he’ll listen!"

Tom switched off the spectroscope terminal and stood, but Bud could tell he was still mulling over the new data. "You know," Tom said at last, "I think I’ll radio the astronomy team on the space outpost and see if they can run a series of high-resolution polyfrequency photographs of the region. It’ll be at an angle, but that might actually bring out some interesting features." Tom was referring to the Swift Enterprises space station wheeling about the earth in a geosynchronous orbit high above the equator, the famous outpost in space.

"What exactly are you looking for?" Bud inquired.

"It’s not an ‘exactly’ just yet," was the answer. "But I’d sure like to know if some unusual geological features go along with the concentrated holmium deposit—if that’s what it is."

As they left the materials lab and headed down the hall toward the nearest ridewalk, which dipped in and out of the various buildings, a loud voice hailed them from behind.
"Lawnge sarveese, you twosome!"

Bud winced. "I think ‘lawnge sarveese’ means—"

"Yep!" Tom nodded. "Lunch service."

"He’s seen us. We can’t get away. Oh man, I’ll be glad when Chow gets back!"

Chow Winkler, a former ranch chuck-wagon cook who had become the personal chef for the Swifts and their senior employees and friends, had been gone for a week on one of his periodic visits home to Texas and New Mexico. His dishes, sometimes better classified as experiments than edible cuisine, were nevertheless usually delicious and as colorful as the reckless western shirts he favored. By contrast, the meals served up by his designated second-in-command, a Russian expatriate named Boris, were always elaborate but not always pleasing to the American palate.

"Do not think to get away, I spy you!" exclaimed the diminutive cook, who was holding a silver tray. "Ah, always joking, you two—American joshing, a sign of affection."

"Of course," said Tom. "But isn’t it a little early for lunch?"

"Pfah! We shall call this the
pre-lawnge countdown,"
laughed the Russian. "Is a pun! You get it?"

"We get it," Bud said in slightly woeful tones. "What do you have today?"

"Today, little crackers with persimmon jelly and peppered caviar, genuinely Black Sea, I swear to you." Boris daintily picked a stuffed cracker from the tray and thrust it toward Bud’s mouth. "Exquisite!"

Bud sampled the cracker and then, under Boris’s stern gaze, swallowed the rest. "It’s
actually
—it’s
very
—Tom, you’ve
got
to try it."

Tom did so. "And did I lie to you?" demanded Boris. "It is exquisite?"

"Almost too exquisite for words," muttered Tom, his face a strange mixture of colors. "I-is there a drink to go with it?"

"A drink? No drink. You need a drink,
there
is water fountain." Boris turned away stiffly. "But I am glad you like it. I shall add it to my list." He sailed off down the hall.

Tom and Bud looked at each other in silent dismay. Then they made for the hallway drinking fountain as fast as dignity would allow.

When they made their wobbly return to the underground hangar, Tom drew Bud to a corner near the
Sky Queen
. "Thought you’d like to take a look at the
Drumhawk!"
Tom said, gesturing.

"Your new cycloplane? I’ll forgo my usual joke about how small it is." The object in front of Bud was a flat silver plank with beveled edges and rounded ends, about the size and shape of a small ironing board. It rested directly on the concrete floor. Two long horizontal cylinders flanked it, attached by ring-shaped brackets which held them up and out, with a gap of perhaps six inches. The cylinders, which Bud correctly assumed were small versions of the cyclocyls, had the diameters of one-gallon paint cans.

"The
Drumhawk
is the test prototype Arv Hanson put together for me," Tom explained. "I need to wring out any problems in the interaction between the cyclocyls and the ultrasonic generators before finalizing the design for the
SwiftStorm."

"Are you planning to have someone ride on this little thing?"

"Someone
already has!" declared the blond youth. "I’ve been playing around with it for days, installing one version of the generators after another. So far my altitude record is a whole twelve feet. Watch, pal!"

Tom stepped onto the metal-plastic surface and stood between two vertical safety bars that extended up to waist level. Straps dangled from these bars, which Tom attached to his belt loops. Then he removed a small handheld control box from its holder on one of the bars.

"Should I duck and cover?" called out Bud jokingly.

"You might want to cover your ears!" replied Tom. He flicked a switch on the controller, then depressed a series of buttons in sequence. The two lifting drums began to revolve, one clockwise, the other counterclockwise. Set in frictionless bearings and pushed along by an electromagnetic flux-motor, the cyclocyls were completely silent. Not so the paired ultrasonic generators: they produced a deep, penetrating thrumming sound that rose in intensity until Bud had to fall back several yards.

"I thought ultrasonics were supposed to be silent!" he shouted over the din.

"It’s the interaction!" was the barely-heard response. "The interference effect! But I’m in a null spot—the noise is worse for you!" Tom slowly twisted a dial on the controller, and the sound-tone became higher pitched as the drums revolved so rapidly that their motion was no longer visible. Suddenly, with a slight jerk, the platform began to drift forward. It had lifted off from the floor by two inches!

As Tom increased the power further, the model slowly levitated, foot by foot, finally topping off at one dozen feet. After a moment Tom gently brought it down again and killed the power.

"Wow!" groaned Bud. "You should pass out earplugs, Tom."

"The fuselage design of the real cycloplane will mute-down the noise," Tom assured him. "Want to try it?"

Bud was game, and after some instruction seemed to have mastered the strange contraption. "You just have to get used to keeping your balance," he remarked after his final flight.

"I’ll be taking it out in the open—after our
real
lunch," said Tom. "I want to see how it handles when there’s a bit of a breeze to contend with."

Bud was quiet for a moment, and Tom didn’t see the slight smile that touched his friend’s lips. "Say,
here’s
an idea," Bud said with feigned innocence. "Rickman Dunes was opened for the summer Monday, but it’ll still be pretty deserted until the weekend. You could test your cyclo-toy in the breezes from the lake, while your three nearest-and-dearest—Barclay, Prandit, and sister Swift—lounge on the sand. And that was
lounge,
not
lawnge!"

Tom laughed and said, "Well, I guess I do owe the girls some more time together after cutting things short last night."

"And," Bud added, "we can pick up some burgers on the way, thereby avoiding Boris’s noontime
sarveeses."

"You talked me into it, flyboy!"

By noon the four were relaxing in the bright sunlight that made Lake Carlopa a study in glittering crystal, sitting on a wide blanket in the sands of the Rickman Dunes recreational area. They had found a secluded section of the Dunes, blocked from the sight of others by a stand of trees.

"Keep having ideas like this, Bud, and I’ll turn the inventing over to you!" Tom declared, finishing his hamburger.

"What a beautiful day!" proclaimed Sandy, pretty in her bathing suit—more often than not, a
sun-
bathing suit.

"It is like a day in my home town in Pakistan," Bashalli said. "We used to go down to the riverbank after school, to talk about boys and be silly girls, which the teachers did not allow."

"Well," said Bud, "silly-time is over. I’ll go get the
Drumhawk
from the van." Made mostly of Tomasite plastic under a thin metal shell, the prototype was light enough for one person to carry.

"Bud will always find some excuse to shed clothing and show muscle," commented Bash. "Male vanity! Tom, you are lucky to have so little."

"Vanity, or muscle?" asked Tom.

"Both!" teased Sandy. "I don’t mind Bud’s vanity, though. Until it turns to fat, that is."

Bud seemed to take a long time at the van, which was out of sight behind a dune. When he reappeared presently, balancing the
Drumhawk
on his head, Tom suddenly frowned. "Hey, what’d you do to it?"

"Just unscrewed and removed those unnecessary and
insulting
safety bars!" declared the youth. "Plus, added some heroic decoration." He had attached one end of a thin cord to a ring protruding from the top of the platform, wrapping the other end one turn about his waist, just above his swim trunks, and knotting it in place. Rainbow colored plastic pennants hung down from the cord, twitching in the steady breeze.

Sandy and Bashalli clapped appreciatively, but Tom rose to his feet, looking worried. "Bud, we don’t know how stable it’s going to be out here in—"

"Let’s not quibble, Professor Swift," interrupted Bud. "Just watch the demonstration. This is all for science."

Tom sat down again. He knew his pal, a California native, was an excellent surfer who frequently flew to the Atlantic coast to keep up his skills. But he couldn’t help wondering if the test platform would make a suitable sky-surfboard.

Warning the girls about the noise, Bud positioned himself at the middle of the platform and switched on the power. The sand beneath seemed to deaden the sound somewhat. In moments the
Drumhawk,
cyclocyls gleaming in the sun and pennants fluttering, began a sluggish rise.

"The daring young man on the flying ironing board!" Sandy cheered with a giggle.

Bud waved, shifting his weight to keep balance. "Five feet up!—you guys look like ants."

Suddenly a strange tone wavered through the background noise of the
Drumhawk.
"Bring ’er down, Bud!" Tom called.

"Getting some vibration," Bud yelled back. "So what do we do?
We rise above it!"
He poured on the power, which was supplied by a bank of lightweight Swift solar micro-batteries built into the underside of the platform. The
Drumhawk
bobbed upward—six feet, eight feet, ten feet. Tom shouted with alarm as his pal passed the fifteen-foot mark, blithely heading on toward twenty!

"Come down!"
demanded Tom. He could see that the platform was beginning to sway, which Bud evidently took as a challenge to his prowess as a surfer.

"I know what I’m doing, skipper! Don’t you want a thorough—"

Bud’s boast went unfinished, merging into a yelp of surprise. The flying board abruptly surged upward and forward. To stay on, Bud dropped to his knees and grabbed the edges of the platform. But it was starting to tilt, and began shaking and twisting like a dog whipping water from its fur.

Bud’s hands slipped. In an instant he would be pitched off—and he now was as high as the roof of a three-story building!

"Bud!"
Sandy screamed.

BUD TUMBLED off the flying platform, which suddenly began to whirl like a crazed compass needle. The cord around the youth’s waist pulled taut—and snapped. In an instant he had belly-flopped into the shallow lake waters a dozen yards from the shoreline. Afraid that his friend might have been hurt by the wallop, Tom splashed into the gentle waves at top speed.

But Bud Barclay had sustained greater injury to his pride than his athletic body. "Good grief!" he choked, staggering to his feet in water that came up to mid-stomach. "Genius boy, I don’t recommend marketing your prototype as a diving board!"

Seeing that Bud was in good shape after his ungainly fall, Tom broke out laughing. "I’ll have to have
‘use only as directed’
printed on the side! By the way, pal—"

"What?"

"You might want to find your trunks before you come in."

Bud nodded, reddening slightly. "Around my knees." He waved jauntily toward the beach. "Hey there, girls, how ya doin’?" Struck by a sudden thought, his head whipped skyward. "Tom! The
Drumhawk
is flying around up there out of control!"

"Don’t worry," Tom replied, still chuckling. "When the board sensed that contact had been broken, it started to power down automatically. It’s floating in the lake."

Back on shore the girls had a few gleeful digs to make at Bud’s expense, but the young pilot took it all with sheepish dignity. "This is what science is like, folks," he said. "We learn through failure. Right, Tom?"