Tom Swift and the Visitor From Planet X (10 page)

"Oh, I know." Suddenly he barked out a laugh. "Hey, I haven’t even introduced myself. Royce Valkynser." He gestured at a desk piled high in papers and elaborately bound books. "Doctoral thesis in progress—Italian literature, Fifteenth Century. I’m well known at the major libraries in a hundred-mile radius. All two of them!"

Tom laughed pleasantly and said, "I hear you’re the one who first discovered the markings."

"The crop circles? Sure did. When I went out for my jog, about four twenty A of the M."

"That’s the second time I’ve heard those things called
crop circles,"
Bud noted. "What does that mean, exactly?"

"Let’s go look up close, and I’ll give a little lecture at the site. I hear you’re used to scientific lectures, Bud."

A look from Tom warned away what threatened to be a too-pointed retort by the young pilot.

The three trudged up to the area of the markings, and Tom immediately crouched down, taking out a small, powerful magnifying glass. "I’ve seen another sample of markings of this sort, Royce. But those were formed in a different way. These wheat stalks aren’t dried out or discolored, but bent over flat."

"And these markings are bigger," Bud noted. "I’d say the individual symbols are more than twice as big as the other ones."

"And now the science segment!" announced Valkynser. "I’m not just a stereotypical grad student, but a student of all sorts of things paranormal—ESP, UFO’s, NDE’s, OBE’s, PK, even things without any initials at all. Now
crop circles
are a funny phenomenon that’s been showing up for about the last twenty-five years in more or less every country on Earth. They’re just like this—bent-over stalks of wheat or corn, mostly; bent carefully without breakage, without killing the stalk. It’s almost as if they’ve been softened at one segment of the stalk. The stalks always lie in an ordered way, real neat and tidy, directed clockwise or counterclockwise."

"Do they usually form symbols or writing?" Tom inquired.

"Guess it all depends on what you call
writing,"
laughed the young man. "The first ones were just simple circles or round clearings, geometrically perfect. Then more elaborate ones began to show up: linked circles, spirals, ellipses, even images suggesting fractal patterns, if you know what that is—well, of course
you
do, Tom."

Bud, glaring, said: "So what are they supposed to mean,
Royce?
Are they messages?"

"Who knows? Maybe they’re cosmic art, using our planet as a canvas. Some people assume it’s the UFO jockeys trying to communicate their harmless intentions to us. Some think it’s Momma Earth herself tellin’ her kids to stop polluting!—in which case those earthquakes might be a spanking."

"I did read a little on the subject," Tom ventured. "As I understand it, many have been made by confessed hoaxers."

Royce Valkynser shrugged. "Everything attracts hoaxters and jokesters. Thing is, some have appeared in multiple countries at virtually the same time. How could people manage that? How do they cause them to form over just a few hours, without lights, without equipment, without getting caught? Answer that one!"

"I can’t," Tom replied.

"Neither can I. One theory has it that discarnates—spirits of the dead—create them by psychic force. But I guess the most common theory is the UFO connection. Why don’t you ask your
so-called
extraterrestrial contacts about it, Tom?"

Something in Valkynser’s tone drew Bud to the defense of his chum. "Just why do you say ‘so-called,’ hmm?"

"Oh, just being a typical ‘lone gunman’ conspiracy monger. But there are those who wonder if the ‘Tom Swift space friends’ are really what we’ve been told they are. Could
that
be a hoax? Mm, not that
I
think that way," he added hastily.

Tom made further close observations and took a number of photos of the strange markings. Finally he bade Royce Valkynser goodbye. After thanking Mr. O’Dell, the youths drove back to the jet in the light of a good midwest sunset.

"That Valkynser guy’s a real pain," Bud grumbled.

"A little
out there,
I guess," Tom agreed. "But don’t forget, flyboy—so am I!"

On the flight back to Shopton Bud probed his friend’s ideas.
"Did
we get any clues back there?"

"I think so, actually," responded the young inventor in thoughtful slowness. "I’m certain it’s not a hoax, for one thing. The impressions are too perfectly formed, and the method is beyond anything I know of. Also, pal—that fact that
this
set is so much larger makes good sense, because the medium—what you might call the ‘pixels’ that make up the image—are so much larger in this case, the difference between blades of grass and stalks of wheat. The symbols
have
to be bigger, or they lose definition. And now for the good news, Bud—seeing the second set has given me a theory!"

"Such as?"

"I think what we’re dealing with is a
cryptogram!"

Bud frowned. "You mean it’s in a code?
That’s
not news."

But Tom shook his head. "A cryptogram is more than a code. It’s a way to sneak a message past watchful eyes by parceling it out in parts, so that you can’t read the message until you figure out how to put the parts together, like in a jigsaw puzzle. What I’m thinking," he went on, "is that the two sets of symbols don’t mean anything separately, but if we combine them in some way or other—not one after the other, but on top of each other, so to speak—then we’ll begin to make sense of it."

"I get it!" Bud declared excitedly. "You just have to fit these two sets together!"

Tom’s reply was less excited. "From my first look, I think it’ll be more difficult than that. I don’t think these two sets encode the entire message. And by the principle of cryptograms, what we have won’t even
start
to make sense until we have what remains."

"Too bad," Bud said. "And we don’t know where, or when, or as a matter of fact
if,
the rest of those puzzle pieces will turn up."

Tom was quiet for a time, gazing out at the stars of twilight. Suddenly he snapped his fingers. "Bud! I’ve got it! I
know
where the other parts will appear!"

HAPPY but amazed, Bud boggled at his friend. "You
know?
But how?"

Tom held up the notebook he carried with him, and Bud saw that he had drawn a triangular figure. "It suddenly occurred to me that our space friends—the Mars group, I mean—always open their messages to us with a simple figure that we translate as
‘we are friends’!
It’s
this
symbol, Bud!—an equilateral triangle with a little circle in the exact center."

"Okay, but how does that help you?"

"Well, what if part of the key is geographical, the actual locations on the earth’s surface where the symbols have appeared? Let’s say Shopton is at the center of an equilateral triangle, and O’Dell’s wheatfield is one of the points. It’s easy to figure out where the other two points should be." He pulled out a map of the eastern United States from the supply locker and studied it for a moment, measuring with outstretched fingers to get a general picture. "There should be one in New Jersey, and the other in Canada—about half way between the cities of Ottawa and Pembroke, I’d say. I’ll do precise calculations when we get back."

Bud grinned. "Man, you’re already precise enough for my blurry brain! But tell me this, Tom. Can you come up with a way to determine
when
the other bunches will be set down? If so, we could have somebody hide up in a tree and watch how they do it!"

"One breakthrough at a time, Barclay! But I’ll give some thought to the problem."

"I’ll
bet
you will!"

Tom was eager to notify the mysterious space beings that the container was now ready to receive the brain energy. After landing the jet, Bud went with him by nanocar to the space-communications laboratory. Though Nels Gachter had left for the evening, Tom knew every dial and switch on the magnifying antenna console, and could easily access the Space Dictionary by computer to assist in translating the message.

Bud watched over his friend’s shoulder as the young inventor composed the outgoing message on a sheet of paper.

EARTH CONTACT SWIFT TO CONTACT PLANET X. ENERGY MATRIX CONTAINER COMPLETED TO YOUR SPECIFICATIONS.

Tom paused for a minute as Bud watched intently, not wishing to disturb his pal’s thoughts with a question. Finally Tom continued:

NONNATURAL EARTH CRUST MOVEMENTS HAVE CAUSED DAMAGE IN THIS AREA. UNABLE TO PREDICT RECURRENCE. DO YOU WISH TO DELAY OR RELOCATE RECEPTION OF ENERGY BRAIN?

"Tom!"
Bud exploded. "Are you
serious?
If you let those quake-makers interfere with the Exman project, you may be handing them just what they wanted all along!"

"Let’s have some faith, flyboy," Tom chided with a smile. "Exman is already on his way, and the X-ians don’t like to alter their plans halfway through."

"Then what’s the point?"

"By bringing up the earthquake business without any kind of explicit accusation, I may get them to make a comment on the problem. Maybe they’ll be willing to explain how the Brungarian faction got ahold of a piece of their technology."

"I see! Just a little cosmic diplomacy," said the dark-haired pilot. "Hey, maybe they’ll even tell us how to turn off the quakes!"

But the hope was soon dashed. Eleven minutes after Tom transmitted his message, translated into the mathematical space symbols, an unhelpful and unilluminating message was received.

EVENT PARAMETERS UNCHANGED

"So much for diplomacy," Tom commented wryly. "We can’t even be sure that they understood the message."

"Oh, they understood it all right," Bud retorted. "They just want to maintain that air of mystery."

There was no time for Tom to work on identifying the next crop-circle sites during the few days remaining before the arrival of the brain energy. Having been satisfied with Arvid Hanson’s model, he spent his hours perfecting the last few details of the final version, finding it necessary to iron out some wrinkles in the complexities of the sense-perception instruments.

Saturday afternoon Chow delivered an early supper to his beloved young boss, who gulped it down semi-consciously, scarcely realizing that the westerner was still in the room. Finishing the light meal, Tom left to confer with one of the technicians, leaving his empty tray on the work counter. Chow stayed behind for a time and stared in fascination at the odd-looking robot creature that he had named Ole Think Box.

The stout cook walked back and forth, eying the thing suspiciously from every angle. "Wonder what the critter eats?" he muttered. "That there energy brain’ll need some good nutritious victuals if he wants to keep his ol’ energy all prime." He wondered if the Think Box had a real mouth in addition to the tongue devices in his sensarray globe "hands."

Feeling in his shirt pocket, Chow brought out a wad of his favorite bubble gum to chaw the question over. An impulsive thought struck him a glancing blow. Should he or shouldn’t he? "Shucks, won’t hurt to try," the ex-Texan decided. "Th’ dang contraption’s all made o’ metal!"

As Tom had demonstrated, Chow opened the shutter that covered the access port at the top of the star-shaped head and popped the gum inside. He had half-hoped the action would activate some kind of automatic chewing mechanism and was somewhat disappointed when nothing happened. Feeling a trifle foolish, Chow tried to reach inside to remove the stick of gum—but the opening was too narrow to admit his big hand! Finally he nervously snapped the shutter closed and stumped off with a Texas-sized shrug of his big round shoulders.
Now thet was a dang fool thing t’do,
he thought.
Reckon it didn’t do no harm, though.

That night at home Tom reviewed all the details of the impending event with his father.

"It seems you’ve covered all the bases, son," Damon Swift concluded. "Except—well, there
is
one further matter that has come up, as of this afternoon."

"A problem?" The young inventor couldn’t conceal the trace of worry in his voice.

"No, no, not at all." Mr. Swift explained that he had been contacted by the Mayor of Shopton. "I thought the press story Dilling released would keep the local alarm bells from ringing." The Enterprises Office of Communications and Public Interest had distributed a statement that the Swifts would be using a special device to intercept and store an energy-matrix from deep space, for purposes of scientific study—which was perfectly true. "But it seems the Mayor is just as jittery about an energy-matrix as an alien brain!"

Tom groaned. "Good grief, don’t tell me he wants us to cancel!"

"No, but to smooth things over I told him I would speak to you about moving the arrival point from the Enterprises grounds to some place more distant from town. Is that possible, Tom?"

Tom drew a long, low breath but nodded reluctantly. "The X-ians only specified a general locale. As you know, Exman will be guided to the container by radio beacon, and I suppose it wouldn’t hurt anything to change locations by a few miles or so."

"That’s good. Do you have a spot in mind?"

Tom sank back in his chair, rubbing his chin. "Well, here’s an idea. Over on the far side of the lake there’s a place called Bryant Hill Campground. It was owned and maintained by the Stegnall Natural Gas Company on the excess property next to their wells field—public relations, I guess. When Stegnall went bankrupt, it was fenced in and is no longer available for use—but I’ll bet the Mayor has enough pull to let us set up the Think Box there."

Mr. Swift chuckled. "No doubt. I think you can count on it." Then the older scientist’s face turned sober as he relayed some sad news to his son. "I received a call just before you got home, son. Munson Wickliffe has passed away. He never regained consciousness."

"I’m sorry to hear that."

"It’s another black mark against the earthquake terrorists. He was quite a scientist and a gifted thinker. I’m very glad now that he was able to witness the beginnings of this new age of extraterrestrial communication. If only he’d lived long enough to meet Exman!" He added that he would represent the company at the funeral in Thessaly, as Tom would be preoccupied with the space visitor project.