Tom Swift and the Visitor From Planet X (8 page)

"Environmental emergency, Mr. Latty," the officer said laconically, pretending to glance at a clipboard in his hand. "We’re from the County Environmental Hazards Investigations Office. We have orders to search every house cellar in the area for underground openings. Radon gas is accumulating all over, and it’s dangerous."

"You hafta do it late at night?"

"That’s when most folks are at home to let us in, sir," Tom responded with a smile.

Grumbling—and, Tom thought, nervous—Pete Latty let them enter. He followed them down a rickety stairway into a plank-floor basement illuminated by a tiny bulb that seemed more adept at casting shadow than light. The two fanned out to examine the dirty cement walls. A moment later Tom stumbled and gave a yell. Hammond swung around just in time to see the youth drop from view!

As the disguised officer’s flashlight stabbed through the cellar gloom at the spot where Tom had disappeared, there came a loud splash! The light showed a round hole in the floor, rimmed by a low circle of brickwork. Rushing to look inside, Hammond found the young inventor standing chagrined and knee-deep in water, five feet below floor level.

"What’s that hole?" the trooper snapped at Latty, who had remained on the stairs.

"What does it look like?" the man snapped back. "It’s an old well."

"A well!" the trooper exclaimed as he knelt down to extend a hand to Tom. "And not even covered? What’re you trying to do—kill people?"

The man sniffed. "Used to be covered, but the lid’s gone. Figgered you could just walk around it. Didn’t expect to have a bunch of nosy fellers pokin’ around down here!"

The policeman reddened. As he yanked Tom up to safety, he stood up to his full six-foot-two.
"Look, mister—
what’s your name again?"

The man shrank back, as if suspecting that the inspector’s patience might have been tried too far. "Pete Latty," he mumbled.

"Okay, Mr. Latty, you take a deep breath and visualize every square inch of this basement! Got it? Now—any more booby traps we should know about?"

Latty gulped. "Nope. Nothin’ else." He turned toward Tom, whose trousers were wet and stained, but was unharmed. "Sorry, son," Latty said with hasty apology. "Guess I should have warned you."

Tom chuckled good-naturedly. "It’s all right," he said. "It was my own fault for not watching where I was going. Besides, you can’t blame a true-blue American for not liking the idea of having his home searched." He wondered if his choice of words had sounded sarcastic. He knew they had been meant that way.

Latty chuckled too and flashed a wary eye at Jack Hammond.

"Uncle Pete, you down there?"
called a voice from atop the stairs.

"S’okay. Just showin’ some visitors what’s what. You can stay up there, Freddy." The paunchy unshaven bachelor turned back to Tom and Hammond. "Just my nephew. Lives here too."

Tom noticed a large packing crate. A smear of grime on the floor testified that it had been freshly moved. He walked over and began to shove the heavy box aside.

"Wh-what’re you doing?" Latty piped.

"I want to look underneath," Tom replied. "We have to check everywhere for radon smudges around the cracks."
Hope Latty doesn’t know anything about radon!
Tom thought. A second later his eyes widened with satisfaction as he uncovered a trap door, evidently leading to a subcellar. It sported a shiny stainless steel padlock.

Tom beckoned his partner over and showed his discovery. "Where does this lead to?" Hammond asked calmly, turning back to Latty.

"Just a little storage place," the owner replied with a shrug. "Nothin’ much. I didn’t think it was worth mentioning. Don’t use it no more. You’d better not go down there," he added hastily. "The ladder steps ain’t safe."

"Just the same, we’ll take a look," the policeman stated. "You don’t use it, hmm? Funny—looks like a nice new lock to me, Mr. Latty. Unlock it, please."

"Don’t got th’ key."

Hammond looked dangerous. "Get it."

"Lost it."

"Find it."

"Then do it at your own risk!" Latty snapped. He pulled a keyring from his pants pocket and produced the key. In a moment Hammond pulled up the trap door and Tom shone a light down. The cement-walled room below was much larger than Pete Latty’s description of it, about ten feet square. The four walls were crowded with metal cabinets and new shelving. On the floor, at the foot of an aluminum ladder, lay a large bundle wrapped in a tarpaulin.

Tom descended the ladder cautiously and opened the tarpaulin to see what was inside. The contents made him gasp—a large, well-oiled collection of rifles and pistols!

Looking up, Tom saw both Hammond and Latty peering down at him—the officer openmouthed with grim surprise, Latty scowling nervously. "Don’t touch ’em!" Latty warned. "Some are loaded. I keep ’em hidden for safety, but sometimes my nephew Fred here and I have target practice. I—er—guess they ain’t all legal—don’t care t’have folks find out about ’em. But that’s not your department, boys."

Just then Tom’s keen eyes spotted a slip of paper tucked among the guns. He pulled it out. His heart gave a leap of excitement as he saw two words scrawled on the paper—
contact Anderman!

Hiding his amazement, Tom read the name aloud and added casually, "What’s this? The make of one of the guns?"

"Uh, yeah—that’s right," Latty replied. Without comment, Tom climbed out of the subcellar. As he bent down to drop the trap door, Tom flashed the officer a signal. Instantly Hammond swung about and grabbed Latty.

"H-hey! Why the rough stuff?" the prisoner exclaimed. Then, as he realized the officer was about to handcuff him, the man’s face turned pasty white. He pulled free from the officer’s grasp and bolted toward the stairway. Dashing to the steps, Tom saw Latty’s nephew standing above at the top, as if paralyzed at the sudden turn of events. As Pete, in full scramble, tried to shove Fred aside, the boy braced himself and grabbed his uncle in a two-arm vice.

"I’m sorry, Uncle Pete," Fred muttered softly. "We gotta get this whole thing over with."

After Pete Latty had been manacled, Tom leaned near to him and said intensely, "I’m Tom Swift. In case you don’t know it, Al Wullgrath—and Scott Anderman;
you
can tell us all about
that—
are working for enemies of this country, people who are endangering a tremendous scientific development that could change human history. As if making earthquakes isn’t bad enough."

"I don’t know anything about that stuff," Latty muttered. "Informatics changed my life—that’s the only ‘history’ I care about."

"It may go better with you and the church people if you tell us who’s been giving them orders," stated Hammond. "Who tells them where the next quake’ll be, and what to steal?"

"How should I know? Speaker Anderman hasn’t had nothin’ to do with me, hardly, after my Confirmation. It was Wullgrath who brought the guns here. I don’t know anything about that slip of paper—it’s Wullgrath’s handwriting. Probably just an old note he wrote to himself."

"Then tell us what’s in the cabinets, at least," demanded Tom coldly.

Latty shook his head sullenly. "Go take a look. Maybe you understand ’em. Most of it’s in some foreign language. Wullgrath delivered it all in a big truck one night, while Freddy was out. It took hours t’ handtruck it all down to the subcellar. I just took a little look—the Church told me to leave the papers alone. It was Wullgrath who locked up the cabinets."

"Do you know who was slipping information out of Enterprises to Anderman?"

"Nope." The man flashed a sickly, ragged grin. "But I guess they call it
Informatics
for a reason, right?"

Officer Hammond had called a Shopton PD patrol cruiser. When it arrived, he led Pete Latty out, young Fred accompanying them. Tom was momentarily alone.

Those papers down there are going to be carted away as evidence,
thought the young inventor restlessly.
But if it has something to do with our visitor from Planet X...

Feeling guilty, Tom resolved to sneak a quick look. He climbed down into the subcellar, stymied for a moment when he found the sturdy metal cabinets all locked and impassive. Did Latty have a key? But if Tom asked him in front of the police, they might prevent his going ahead. Then Tom remembered that Latty’s keyring was still dangling from the trap door padlock!

The cabinets were set up on a master key, and Tom quickly discerned the most likely choice. He smiled as the key slipped easily into the slot on the first of the cabinets. He twisted the key, noting the welcome click.

The subcellar erupted in a horrifying blast of fire!

LEAVING the Lattys with the officers who had driven out in the cruiser, Jack Hammond dashed frantically back into the house, filling with the haze and stench of smoke. The crack of a loud
boom
rang in his ears. To his relief he met Tom struggling his way up from the basement, backlit by flame.

"Tom! What in—"

"Booby trapped," Tom choked, his face blackened, jacket and cap smoldering. "The tops of all the cabinets—every one—blasted off. Just the tops—lucky for me. The sides and fronts of the cabinets held the explosion back and shielded me." Hammond helped Tom into the open air and Tom panted to catch his breath. "I’m okay, but there won’t be much left to see down in that subcellar. The files are burning like magnesium torches."

"I’ll radio the fire department," said Hammond, trotting off to the cruiser.

Pete Latty, stricken, yelled out: "You gotta believe me, I didn’t know!"

Tom shrugged. To the still-astounded Fred, he said quietly, "If there’s anything I can do to make it go easier for your uncle, I’ll try. But you did the right thing, and probably saved lives—including your uncle Pete’s."

A checkover at Shopton Memorial and a welcome shower at home did a lot to overcome the young inventor’s bitter regret at the mixed outcome of his "hunt." But the next day proved his pessimistic assessment to be correct. Very little of the stored materials had survived the flash fire.

"They used chemical accelerants to keep it going after the oxygen got scarce in that little room," Ames reported. "Basically, the police—and now the FBI, as of an hour ago—have just a few singed scraps that they’ll be studying for a long, long time. They did dope out one thing, though. That foreign language?—Brungarian!"

Tom nodded his head listlessly. "We figured this business of acquiring alien technology had to go way beyond a group of cultists. Now that that coup has unleashed the Sentimentalists faction, we can expect a lot more of this. Even apart from the ‘Planet X’ factor, they fear and envy America and they’ll move heaven and earth to steal our scientific secrets. This could touch off a whole epidemic of sabotage and other spy activity!" He asked if Speaker Anderman had been arrested.

Harlan Ames wagged his head in disgust. "He and a few of his select ‘Prime Movers’ vanished into the night a little after the explosion went off, apparently taking some key paperwork and church computer files with them. Captain Rock says the remaining staff claim not to know anything, and he’s inclined to believe them."

"When I tripped the blast, the mechanism must’ve sent a signal to Anderman that his number was up," Tom said. Frustrated, he sighed and sat without speaking for a few moments as Ames waited, sympathetic. Finally Tom said: "The energy will arrive Sunday. I can’t put any more time into dealing with the mystery plot—not right now, anyway."

"Go work on your project, Tom," urged the security chief. "There’s nothing more to be done."

Tom hurried off to his private glass-walled laboratory adjoining the mammoth hangar beneath the Enterprises airfield, which housed Tom’s three-decker Flying Lab between flights. Eager to continue work on his container, or robot body, for the brain from space, he threw himself into the challenging project. As usual, Hank and Arv proved even better than their word. Working round the clock with much assistance and support from the more specialized Swift Enterprises departments, the engineering experts had turned Tom’s sketches and the X-ians’ specifications into a full-sized working model. Arv wheeled it in, ready for Tom’s inspection, when the young inventor arrived at the lab.

"Wonderful, Arv!" Tom approved. "Every time I see one of your models of a new invention, I’m
sure
it’ll work!"

Hanson grinned, pleased at the compliment. "Our boy Sterling was pretty pleased, too. He used this model as a guide in modularizing the real thing. When you make your changes—I know there’ll always be changes—he’ll be able to insert them nearly on the fly."

Tom now had good reason to expect that the robot-like container would be complete and operational before the Sunday evening deadline and the scheduled arrival of the visitor.

Bud and Chow, entering the laboratory soon after Arvid Hanson had left, found Tom still engrossed in his thoughts. "Jetz! Is this your spaceman?" Bud inquired. Tom nodded, then grinned as this pal addressed the device with: "Hi, buster!" Jerking a thumb in Tom’s direction, he added, "Is this your daddy?"

Tom chuckled. "Don’t look at me. It claims
Hanson’s
its daddy."

"Hanged if I can see much resemblance!" Chow snorted with a wink. "Looks more like that Sterling feller t’me."

"Think it’ll live?" Bud persisted.

"If not," Tom replied, only half jokingly, "the boys who worked on it will sure be disappointed—‘daddy’ or no."

But the youth was enjoying his callers’ gaping expressions. Each was trying to imagine how the "thing" would look in action. "Sure is a queer-lookin’ buckaroo!" Chow commented. "This ole think box looks like a combination fireplug, trashcan, and Texas-sized salt shaker—meanin’ no offense, son."

The device stood about head-high and was round like a cylinder or column, composed of sandwiched layers of lightweight metal sheeting and Tomasite plastic, and coated overall with transparent Inertite, which would shield it from nearly every form of radiant energy. But the canister was not of uniform width and was divided into a number of differing segments, or functional modules.