Tom Swift and His 3-D Telejector (16 page)

"I want to go there," said Jennifer.

"Sure, if you want. Maybe tomorrow, before we leave."

After checking Jennifer and Dr. Darvey into the hotel, the boys returned to the airfield and jetted the few-minute trip to Fearing Island.

"I know you’ve thought this all through, Skipper," Bud said quietly; "putting that little girl through... whatever’s going to happen out there. And I know you wouldn’t do it for anything less than the biggest stakes of all."

"Then you know everything, flyboy."

The next morning, as Tom oversaw preparations for the flight, a phone bleat interrupted him. "Tom, this is Dr. Darvey."

"Lorna! Has something happened? Is Jennifer― "

"She’s very upset and wants to speak with you. I think, perhaps, you ought to hear her."

"Of course."

Jennifer’s voice was trembling and faint. "T-Tom? I had dreams!"

"The dream TV?"

"Uh-huh. My friends, the ones that the snake man took—we played and they told me things."

"What things? Bad things?"

"The bad men are
here
, the snake’s men!"

Tom’s heart felt leaden. "There? In town?"

"Uh-huh. There are two of ’em, someplace up high, in a room. They keep looking out the window, and they can see where the hotel door is—
this hotel!
"

"Great...! —Jennifer, can you tell exactly where they are, what building they’re in, or what floor?"

"Uh-uh, I
can’t
! I can’t remember it all. Tom, I’m scared! So’s Docky-Dee!"

The young inventor was scared too—and was very sure Jennifer knew it. Yet it felt better to try to stay in control. "Do you know—remember—what these men plan to do, what they want?"

"Like what they did with my night friends. They’re s’posed to kidnap me and take me to the snake man."

"We’ll call the police. We’ll get protection for you immediately, and Bud and I― "

"No!" she cried out in fear. "You can’t do it like that! They have guns, and—‘
put her down
’ means kill me, doesn’t it, Tom? If they can’t get me, they’ll shoot me when I go out, and anybody with me. And if I stay inside, I—there was fire all over! My friends showed me!"

Tom took in a deep breath. Should he contact the police? The men were clearly desperate enough to do
anything
if cornered! "Jennifer, I’m going to tell Dr. Darvey a few things to do. We’ll get you both out safely, I promise."

It was nearing eleven when the man in the window stiffened and clenched his hand on the high-powered rifle lolling in his arms. "Here’s someone coming out the door, V. Look."

The other man, the man in the suit, came close and peered down four stories and half a block to the left. Two figures had exited the door of the Ashmueller Hotel, a woman and a little girl. They seemed to be headed toward a car that had just parked a ways down the street, closer to the two men. "Yes, F. So I see."

"Looks just like them!"

"It does indeed."

"Slipping through our fingers! So― "

He began to raise the rifle. V.’s hand stopped him. "No."

"But he said if we can’t take her, we― "

"Ah now, you
see
but you do not
observe
, young man. Do you not smell something of a trick? Should we open fire, what then? We give away our position, hmm? Might there not be police watching? These people have shown they can know things before they happen. Or are you a natural skeptic, dear F.?"

"So they just drive off to Tom Swift. Is that it? You’re okay with that?
He
won’t be!"

"Nor is he tolerant of failure. That car may drive as it will, but our quarry is nowhere near it. The boy’s machine is a projector of illusions. Was it not you yourself who remarked a delivery of bulky cabinetry not long ago, two men with hats and overalls? Even at the time there was a thought in my head― "

"They’re getting into the car!"

"—that perhaps this was the beginning of a
ploy
, as they term it, involving Swift and Barclay and the image machine. Now then, train the binoculars on the car window. Do you see the girl’s pretty head?"

The gunman looked. "No."

"Or the woman’s?"

"Only the driver. But still they― "

"Now now, why walk openly down the sidewalk if the intent is to duck out of sight in the car? No, we are to believe they are innocent of the knowledge of our existence, eh? But I do believe, F., that what we have seen is merely another of those marvelous 3-D picture shows, the projection beam blocked by the metal of the car. And so. We shall not be drawn in. We shall not fire."

"Instead?"

"We will take our silenced revolvers and walk calmly to the front desk of the lovely Hotel Ashmueller, where we shall use our guns to request such information as we need. And then up to a certain door, and inside. One will leave with us. Three shall not."

The hotel room was found to be on the second floor, on the side facing the boulevard. "Predictable," noted the man called V. "How else could they project the images into the street?"

The man knocked politely on the door, then used the key the terrified desk clerk had been compelled to provide.

The door swung open. "Hello? Little Miss Jennifer? Young Swift and perpetual entourage? Surely no point in hiding." The room was small, neat, and empty, four walls and no hiding places.

F. checked the bathroom. "Not here, either. How about― " He gestured toward the door of the room closet.

"Well, let us see." V. raised the revolver and brutally slammed a round through the frail door, a series of chuggy sounds behind the silencer. "Perhaps I make a poor babysitter, eh?" He strode over and slid open the mangled door. There was nothing inside but rocking, rustling hangers. "Hmm."

"Dagnab, dag
nab
, V.! They slipped by us. But
no
, you have your― "

"Kindly remain respectful. I do not care to be
dissed
by an American. Perhaps our unlucky friend the clerk has a bit more current information to divulge."

Tom Swift did not speak, nor did the others—Bud, Lorna, and Jennifer—dare to draw even a breath as they stood frozen, pressed flat against the wall. Next to them stood Tom’s telejector, roughly turned to face the door to the room, a pair of holoceivers on either side, on tripods. What the telejector had created, one second before the door had opened, one second after the knock, was another wall of the room. And so the hotel room, now narrower, had the appearance of four walls and no people. But one of those walls duplicated the one behind it, with four terrified people standing statue-like, hidden from sight—but not sound or touch!

The men left, delicately pulling the door closed. The footsteps receded.

Tom grabbed his cell phone. "They didn’t take the bait—they’re here in the hotel! You’d better move in now, officer," Tom said. "They’re going back down. I don’t know what they might do to the clerk."

"Right," said the policeman on the other end. "We started regrouping when your pictures didn’t draw any fire."

The two letters of the alphabet were smoothly apprehended, the desk clerk freed from his handcuffs and his broom closet. Upstairs Tom dried the tears of a brave, terrified little girl.

"I’m surprised you don’t have to dry
me
off, pal!" Bud gulped. "When they knocked—!"

"Thank heavens you were able to swivel your machine and use it," breathed Dr. Darvey. "That man, the way he just shot through that closet door—we could easily have been hiding there!"

"Tom’s a mighty quick thinker," Bud semi-chuckled, no humor in it. "But next time,
man
! Don’t cut it so close!"

"It was even closer than you think, I’m afraid," replied the young inventor. "Remember, I didn’t have any prepared vid-recording of the room, and no time to make one. We were running off a live feed from the holoceivers—the left half of this wall covering the right half! If they had taken a few steps further in that direction―"

"They didn’t notice that the chest of drawers had been doubled, but they sure would have noticed running into
themselves
!"

On the way to the airfield, Tom kept his promise to Jennifer and stopped for lunch at the newly-named Green Orb Diner, with its high-flying tethered balloon. "You can see ’er all the way inta Florida," noted the waitress proudly.

As they ate a light lunch, Tom asked Jennifer if the "dream TV" had revealed any more about the Orbites—their physical form, their motives.

"Uh-uh, sor-ree," she said. "I mean... I see ’em, just like they see each other, but when I wake up I can’t remember, zackly. Just that there are the really sad ones who talk to me—it’s
sorta
like talking, but more like seeing—and the others. The others aren’t sad. It’s like—I dunno― "

"They’re
joyous
," Tom declared. "I felt it too, when I used Dr. Rogo’s machine. But why are they coming to Earth?"

The girl shrugged. "Oh, I dunno. Just because it’s—like when you see something in a store window and you want to look at it. Like being
curious
. It’s just on the way. See?"

"The way to where?"

"I dunno. When they try to look through the green balloon, everything’s funny."

Bud lowered his sandwich to ask, "Are there a lot of ’em? Is it like a spaceship, with a crew of explorers? Or maybe—whoa!—
colonists
?"

Jennifer’s brow became all-frown. "Nuh-uh. That’s just on TV—the real kind. There’s lots an’ lots, more than I know the number for."

"Jetz! That many?"

"As many as there are in the whole world—this one!"

"Tom," said Lorna Darvey, "you mentioned a humming sound."

Tom nodded. "That’s what ‘Lunario’ said. He thought it was like an electrical transformer or similar device. I’ve wondered if the Orb might be something automatic, like a robot drone."

But the little girl gave a vigorous shake of her head. "No! Machines an’ stuff, like my game computer, are just
lumps
. They’re like lightbulbs when you turn ’em off. They’re not in the dream TV. And it’s
not
humming. That’s not the idea. It’s buzzing. You don’t really
hear
it—you just
think the picture
that way, cause it’s the only way you can. But what it’s
s’posed
to be, is buzzing."

"Do you mean like a timer, Jennifer?" asked Darvey. "Or maybe a doorbell?"

"No! It’s not sound, it’s like—that’s just the way that towel-man remembers things."

"A mental impression that stands for something else—a symbol," Tom suggested encouragingly.

"I can
almost
say it..." Suddenly her face brightened and she reached a hand across the table, to touch a jar with her dainty finger. "There! That’s it."

Bud was ruefully puzzled. "Okay. The Orb is like a jar that buzzes."

Tom was staring, the stare of a growing idea. He picked up the little jar, a jar of honey, and spoke in hushed tones that silenced the table.

"The Green Orb isn’t an asteroid, or a comet, or a plasma cloud. It isn’t a black hole. It isn’t a spaceship." He turned the glass jar so Bud could see the label—and the picture on it. Bees!

"
It’s a swarm!
"

IT TOOK Lorna Darvey a moment to find her voice, though only half a moment for Jennifer to give a happy nod. "Then you’re saying—Tom,
what
are you saying? This object in space is a swarm of
bees
?"

"Space bees!" Bud repeated, grinning at the thought.

"They’re not zackly
bees
," cautioned Jennifer. "Now I can remember them better. They don’t look like anything we know, but if you wanna talk about them, they’re more like moths."

"Good gosh!" Tom breathed. "I get it!
The swarm is making for the Sun!
"

Jennifer nodded. "Uh-huh. Like when moths fly to a porch light."

"But I thought these were intelligent beings," Lorna objected, bewildered.

"There’s all kinds of intelligence, ma’am," Bud pointed out. "Me, for example."

"The Orbites could have a very sophisticated intelligence," Tom stated, working it out. "But they’re not disembodied minds. They have bodies of some sort in their 2-D world, and they think of the world around them according to the way their bodies process and organize their sense-perceptions, the ‘category-labels’ that come with the package. It’s the same with us.

"For the Orbites, heading toward the brightest object in view could be as obvious and natural as—as ‘one plus one is two’. It might not even occur to them to ask why."

Dr. Darvey had begun to grasp the notion. "I see—like the unquestionable axioms that a logic problem starts off with."

"Logic and Barclay don’t always go together," Bud declared. "I get what you’re saying, though. Thinking has to start somewhere, and if you spend your time fighting the beginning, you’ll never get to the end!"

"Bud’s a good explainer, too," Tom chuckled affectionately. "Anyway, it seems we have to talk the Orbites out of their present course, somehow. They seem divided—I suppose it’s the ‘sad ones’ who are dominating the swarm. Maybe they’re heading toward the Sun because― "

"The term is
Goodbye cruel world!
" his chum said.

"You’re wrong!" Jennifer exclaimed. "It’s the op’sit. The
happy
ones are almost all of ’em, and
they’re
the ones that drive. Cause you’re talking about it, I can ’member now—the sad ones are sad cause
they don’t wanna go!
"

They finished lunch—purchasing a jar of honey—and traveled on, the telejector apparatus packed away in the car’s big trunk.

At Fearing Island, Tom oversaw the loading of his invention aboard the
Challenger
, having it set up on the flight deck. "What’s it for, Skipper?" asked Hank Sterling. "Entertainment for our mini-passenger?"

"It’s still true that the Orb is more like an image than an object—at least, ‘object’ in the sense we usually understand," answered the young spaceman. "I have the feeling the telejector’s image-making capability could help us communicate with it. With
them
! Call it one of my intuitions, Hank."

"Tom, we’ve all learned to trust them."