Tom Swift and His Cosmotron Express (5 page)

"He
would
," commented Sandy wryly.

Bashalli studied the waiting machine with a thoughtful expression. "Then it is, perhaps, like what they call
teleportation
."

"Not just yet," chuckled Tom. "We’re working on that one! But it should carry the
Starward
from here to Pluto without mussing a hair."

"Easy for you to say," Sandy declared, eyeing her big brother’s ragged crewcut.

After a few more tests, the girls emphatically reminded the boys that a picnic lunch awaited them. Tom nodded, but looked at the cosmotron. Then he brightened. "Say, why not give our afternoon break a scientific justification?" he grinned. "The test machine looks awkward, but really it’s very light in weight, like the neutronamo. We could take it along with us to the lake!"

"Sure," Bud agreed. "Er—why? Planning to push around a few ducks?"

"We could bolt it down on the
Mary Nestor
, flyboy, and do some high-tech sailing!" The
Mary Nestor
was the Swift family’s sleek sailboat. "We’ll call it a study of the practical applications of purely kinematic non-inertial—"

"I’ll fetch the basket," interrupted Sandy with a certain look.

They freighted the cosmotron spacedriver to the lease pier on Lake Carlopa in a big Swift Enterprises delivery van. Using special brackets, Tom and Bud bolted the prototype device to the boat’s low gunwales. The four excited passengers clambered aboard, and Tom thumbed the controller. They yelped with delight as the
Mary Nestor
was suddenly, instantly, in motion!

"It’s wonderful," exclaimed Bashalli. "I don’t feel the motion at all!—just the air against my face."

"Whatever mode of propulsion we use, we still have to deal with friction," Tom pointed out. "That’s why the Cosmotron Express will be stationed in space full time."

The boat was scudding along at moderate speed, about as fast as sailboating on an average breezy day. In the middle of the crescent-shape lake, Tom switched off the machine. Instantly the
Mary Nestor
was dead in the water, bobbing vigorously as its wake caught up with it. Bud half-stood—and the wake caught up with
him
! He stumbled against Tom, whose hand help the Spektor unit.

The sailboat took off like a shot! Wind and spray rammed against four wincing faces—and then came the worst. A humped column of water rose up out of the lake in front of them like a thick-necked sea serpent and lunged at them. It struck them like a piledriver!

THE MASS of charging lakewater batted the four toward the stern of the
Mary Nestor
. Amid the shrieks was Bashalli’s—as she tumbled overboard!

The Spektor control unit had been dashed from Tom’s hand. He slipped and struggled across the flooded deck planks to reach the cosmotron. He hooked an arm around the neutronamo and decoupled it from the cosmotron with a convulsive yank. Instantly the tentacle of water dissolved into rain and loudly sloshed back into the lake.

"T-Tom!" Sandy cried. "
Bashi
—!"

The sailboat was now motionless, but the few seconds of its arrowing flight had carried it a great distance across the calm lake. They could see the young Pakistani splashing about well behind them, a small raven-haired figure.

Tom was caught in frantic hesitation. Where had the controller fallen? Did he dare reconnect the neutronamo to power the boat back to Bash? Did he have time to hoist the sail?

But as Tom’s brain spun its wheels furiously, Bud was already in motion. Kicking off his deck shoes, he flung himself into the water and began charging toward Bashalli with strokes of muscle.

Tom spied the Spektor and gave the cosmotron a reset command. He recoupled the neutronamo, and the boat assumed a crisp speed. With Sandy on the rudder, the
Mary Nestor
put about.

Two swimming figures met the boat halfway. Bashalli rolled over the gunwales almost gracefully. Then the three dragged Bud aboard as the boat listed and rocked violently.

"
Mmph
!" he sputtered. "G-guess I shouldn’t try shouting encouragement while I’m swimming."

"Not only that," said Bash calmly, "but you managed to ram your hard head into mine. At least it shook the water from my ears." Kneeling, she leaned over and kissed him on his wet cheek. "But I thank you—all of you—for your heroic rescue."

"I, er—guess we forgot that you’re a pretty good swimmer," Sandy said apologetically.

"And that I habitually keep a cool head. Though it rings when struck."

Bud sighed, male ego damp and deflated. "Tom—just what happened? It looked like your cosmotron was funneling the water right out of the lake."

Tom wiped water from his deep-set blue eyes. "That’s pretty much it. At higher power the ‘space stretch’ in front of us was carrying air and water along with it, creating a siphon effect due to surface tension."

"A horizontal waterspout! Sorry for bumping you, Skipper. Guess I ruined the test."

Tom grinned. "No, pal—just made it exciting. I’d say the cosmotron spacedriver really proved its stuff—all things considered."

"And without mussing a hair," added Sandy sourly, wringing out her long golden waterlogged locks.

The afternoon’s relaxation concluded, Tom returned to Enterprises and his test routine, with a change of clothes in the small apartment adjoining one of his labs. Revivified by a fresh blue-striped T-shirt, he paused for reflection in the office he shared with his father, who was presently at the Swift Construction Company, owned by Enterprises, on the other side of town.

Staring at his desktop, he acknowledged that he felt—uneasy. The home invasion, the assault on his family’s safety, still rankled and worried him. Was he doing the right thing in cooperating with the Taxman?
It’s someone I’m not sure I’ve even met,
he reminded himself. Once he had thought Asa Pike was the Taxman, the agent of Collections who kept in contact with him. He had met a hulk of a man named Miza Ranooq, who claimed the title, mockingly and evasively. Who was the Taxman? What was "Collections"? Were they part of the United States security apparatus, as it appeared? Or—

Was he being maneuvered into doing the work of fantastically sophisticated plotters who had somehow infiltrated the government of his country?

Tom stared at the phone on his desk. On impulse, he lifted the receiver—then set it down again.
I may know the truth,
he told himself,
but I don’t
know
that I know it—not yet!

The young inventor worked the rest of the long day in The Barn, joined by Hank Sterling and, near the end of the day, by assembly chief Art Wiltessa.

"Any changes to the specs?" asked Art, a laconic engineer.

"A few," Tom replied, shutting down the prototype. "But nothing requiring any changes to what you’ve already put together for the big
Starward
engine—if we should even be calling it an ‘engine’!"

"Cosmotronic power for our
Starward
express!" smiled Hank. "Tom,
could
the spacedriver really take us to the stars?"

Tom’s face assumed a thoughtful look, the look of a dreamer with a dream in mind. "Not this version. For all its magic, the cosmotron doesn’t warp us
out
of space—it
uses
the stretchable fabric of the spacetime continuum, and the ultimate rules still apply. Although some of the relativistic effects take on a different form, the speed of light is still the limit. It’d take years to reach the nearest star."

Hank was undaunted. "But someday you’ll come up with a Super-Cosmotron Express. I know you will. I’m betting before your next birthday!"

"I hope you win that bet, Hank," laughed Tom.

"Back to Earth," Art said bluntly. "Dreams are for afterhours. Will this Brungarian business set back the construction schedule?"

"I won’t let it," the young inventor declared with a hint of defiance. "We’re continuing to blow our big bubbles at the seafloor work site, and by week’s end they’ll be starting the interior construction on Fearing. So far there’s no reason to think the
Starward
won’t set off on its Grand Tour just as we calendared."

Sterling shook his head, grinning. "Holy Mo, it seems like just yesterday we were building your rocket engines for the
Star Spear
—that dinky little space canoe!"

"No, Hank, not yesterday—a week from last Tuesday." Even Wiltessa joined in the laughter. But it was true enough: things moved
swiftly
at Swift Enterprises.

That evening at home, as he readied for bed and, with luck, sleep, Tom received an unexpected phone call from an ambiguous friend. "Howyadoin’, Tom? Time for pillow to meet crewcut?"

"Hi, Pete," Tom replied. His voice was friendly but not enthusiastic. Peter Langley, publicized as America’s Other Young Inventor, was something of a kindred spirit. The guy was decent enough and had the native intelligence to grasp obcure technical details and blue-sky inventiveness, whether from his own brain or from Tom Swift’s. As the head and genius-in-residence at Wickliffe Laboratories in Thessaly, Langley and Tom had worked to set aside any feelings of rivalry between them. The two young men shared a kind of language unknown to lesser mortals, and—occasionally and inevitably—gave birth to similar scientific visions.

"Notice that I called you
Tom
?"

"No, but thanks for pointing it out."

"No more Tomarama, Swiftaneous—that effervescent way of speaking that makes me such a delight. Nope, no more. My signoth doesn’t like it when I do."

"Signoth?" repeated Tom quizzically.

"Significant other. Comrade, companion, romantic life-sharer. Can’t say
girlfriend
. She’s not a ‘girl’. And she’s more than a friend." Whatever classification she fell under, Amelia Foger had been briefly an employee of Swift Enterprises, a disgruntling situation leading to her relocation to Thessaly and the arms of Peter Langley, nominally her boss.

"How is she?"

"Don’t get personal." Pete chuckled. "Anyway, she’s great.
We’re
great."

"Thanks for the update, Pete," Tom said dryly. "Keep me posted. Bye."

"I called for another reason, Tom."

"I was hoping so," the original young inventor replied, eyeing his pillow. It was too late to hope that Langley would not call in the first place.

"Is that dripping sound I hear
sarcasm
? Come
on
, didn’t I help you get that monorail grant?"

"Is there something new in the pipeline?"

"There is on my end." Langley’s voice lost most of its irritating exuberance. "Tom, I can’t discuss it over the phone. Can we get together?"

"My bed’s pretty narrow, Pete."

"Funny. How about tomorrow morning? Breakfast?"

Tom tried not to sigh. Pete was, after all, a friend. Though in no way
more than a friend.
"Okay. Where?"

"Er—how about Enterprises? Maybe good ol’ Chow Winkler could whip somethin’ up?"

"Good ol’ Chow Winkler is somewhere in Indiana right about now," responded Tom; "probably in full snore."

A close friend since they had met in New Mexico, Chow was Swift Enterprises’ executive chef, his waistline exceeded only by his fondness for startlingly patterned, arrestingly hued western-style shirts. After playing the role of cowboy-hero when Tom was endangered while developing his dyna-4 capsule in Nevada, the Texan-by-birth had been granted—over protests—a vacation of several weeks to visit old friends and family in the southwest.

But it developed that Chow’s friends and family had a migratory urge. They now ranged freely from Arizona to the wilds of darkest Sheboygan. The Swifts had flown the older man’s battered pickup to Nevada, and Chow had spent the ensuing weeks wending his way back to Shopton on a lazy cross-country drive. He was due back any day.

"Okay," said Langley, "no Chow."

"Look, Pete, come to the plant around seven-thirty. I’ll have Chow’s assistant come up with something."

"Something normal and American, please," urged Pete. "I know the guy’s Russian. No breakfast caviar. Keep the eggs big."

They met the next morning as planned, dining in Tom’s little lab apartment. Langley took a sip of coffee and surprised Tom by asking, "Is your security guy Ames in this early?"

"No, not usually."

"How about the other one, the chunky guy? Radnor?"

Tom frowned. "What’s this all about?"

"Doesn’t take rocket science to guess that it’s a security issue, Tom-tron—er, Tom."

The young inventor, the crewcut one, leaned back in his chair. "A problem here? At Enterprises?"

"I should be so lucky," grumbled Langley in reply. "It’s at my end. Serious stuff, guy—
way
serious. It could be a danger to the whole country, Tom. And it involves you!"

"SURE," said Tom blandly after a bite of toast. "
Everything
involves me, right?"

Langley grinned. "There are no ‘Peter Langley Invention Adventures,’ kid. Nobody’d bother with fictionalizations of
my
life. Well—maybe fans of romance novels. Hmm?"

"You said
serious
. So let’s
get
serious," Tom urged impatiently. "What’s going on?"

Langley glanced around the room, as if looking for secret listeners, then pulled a sheet of paper from within his zippered jacket and slapped it down on the table. "Look familiar?"

Tom stifled a gasp.
The detailed drawing showed a squared-off wedge-shaped craft obviously similar to the Brungarian Fire Fury!

"What is it?" the young scientist-inventor asked with faint voice and feigned ignorance.

"You can forget
that
, friend!" snapped Langley. "One thing neither of us bright boys can play is
dumb
!"

"Okay. What are you after, Pete?"

"Cards on the table." The young man tapped the sheet. "This is what the news-web calls the ‘unauthorized overflight of American coastal waters.’ Nice protective government-ese to keep quiet about a supermach jetcraft buzzing the water near your spaceport."