Tom Swift and His Dyna-4 Capsule (15 page)

"Ye-ahh," muttered Chow. As Dibs turned and walked away toward the Enterprises peripheral ridewalk, Tom clapped his friend on the back reassuringly. "Guess he’s a mite okay," admitted the cook. "Mebbe more’n that, truth t’ tell. But blame if I don’t have me a better gun!"

"Don’t let it get under your hide, Chow," urged the young inventor. "In a tight spot my money’s on you."

The two caught up with Dibs and rode back to the administration building. "Of course I’ve been thinking a lot about what Harlan and Phil told me yesterday, the whole ugly ransom business," the agent said. "I’m not looking for a shootout with the kidnappers, but I’m sure I can provide some help in finding this Eckdal crook and your friend. But I’m surprised your usual government sources haven’t given you any leads."

"We have a nickname for the ‘sources’ you’re referring to, Randy—Collections," replied the youth thoughtfully. "The fiction books allude to them, but obviously we don’t release details to the public."

"They don’t have a definite name even among government agencies, but we know they exist. I’m not sure what box they occupy on the big chart. I have no idea whom they report to."

"Maybe no one," shrugged Tom—and he was almost serious. "They’ve been willing to help Enterprises on certain kinds of cases, but they seem to be keeping clear of this matter. They care about national security and world-sized technological threats, not..."

"Not kidnappings and ransom," Dibs finished.

"No. This doesn’t interest them." The young inventor’s voice was bitter. "It matters to just a few people—me and my family, Mina Finch, everyone who knows... Bud..."

"We’ll get him back, Tom," stated Dibs.

"Depend on thet one!" Chow agreed. "An’ me an ol’ Mouthy here are ready fer it!"

"Then I’m glad you and ol’ Mouthy are coming to the Nevada site," grinned the agent. "That was some good marksmanship, Chow."

"Wa-aal... guess it weren’t s’ bad." Chow’s fretful smile eased back into position. "Cain’t say more than thet. I’m from Texas. We grow up modest ’n self-erasin’, like they call it."

Later in the day, Dibs bade Tom and his father farewell. "Off to your ‘time cave’," he smiled. "I know it’s just a big covered-over hole, but I hear you’ve installed most of the amenities."

"Well, it’s no Swift Enterprises," replied Tom. "The main chamber is almost entirely filled with the chronolens setup. But we’ve carved out a row of labs and storerooms—as well as sleeping cubicles."

"And a kitchen for Chow, I hope."

"Definitely!"

"Well," said Dibs with his usual abashed look, "I hope I can justify my pay by somehow helping protect you from this Eckdal wingnut. At least I was able to give you an idea of his appearance." Dibs had used his promised network of special contacts to provide Enterprises with the most recent photo available from Torranz Eckdal’s vehicle license. It showed a heavyset, sullen-looking man with baggy eyes and thick, bushy hair.

"Have a good flight, Agent Dibs," Mr. Swift added to a handshake. "We’re glad to have you as part of our team."

The next morning Tom spent some time in his ultrasonic cycloplane, hovering at the edge of space with the small first model of the time-transformer in the hold. As anticipated, he noted that even a slight change of position in Earth’s "gravity well" markedly shifted the parameters of the field focus, moving it outside the sides of the dyna-4 capsule.
We’ll have to reorient the capsule continuously in realtime
, noted the young inventor. Arv and Linda had made a fundamental improvement, but the problem was far from
licked
. It would pose a serious flaw for any long-term human use of the dyna-4 capsule—whatever
long-term
might mean in such a time-challenging situation.

Tom landed, working the numbers in his head. As the ridewalk approached the administration building, a figure burst out the glass doors and came trotting toward them, stark emotion on his face. "
Dad
!" Tom called, stepping off the ridewalk. "What’s—"

Mr. Swift was panting. "Son—Tom—it’s—"

The youth’s face went white. "Bud?"

Tom’s father gripped his son’s shoulder. "Yes. They’ve found him!"

Tom Swift took a step back, for a long moment unable to ask the next question.

"Is he alive?"

"Yes!" exclaimed the older man.

Tom fought to keep himself from breaking down, but he couldn’t keep the tremble from his voice. "Oh... D-Dad... where is he?"

"Come inside. Harlan got the call."

In the Swifts’ shared office, Ames and Radnor explained. "The police found him in the front seat of his convertible, in a parking lot in Evlin, Ohio. He was lying there unconscious—he’s in the local hospital now, awake. The doctors think he was drugged. Needle marks. But he seems to be in good shape."

As Tom absorbed the news, Mr. Swift showed a deepening frown. "This is wonderful news, but—what kind of sense does it make? Why on Earth—"

"I couldn’t care less!" snapped Tom emotionally. "Can Bud receive calls, Harlan?"

"Give him a few hours to rest, boss," urged the security man. "That’s what the doctors want. Incidentally, I’ve arranged for a couple armed guards to stand nearby looking tough."

"Right," breathed Tom. "We don’t want to lose him again."

Receiving Tom’s call, Sandy didn’t bother to resist breaking down.

It was Bud himself who called Tom at Enterprises later in the day. After the dry-throated preliminaries were out of the way, Bud commenced his story—on speaker-phone with many listeners.

"Skipper, I don’t have much sense of time right now," he said. "Weeks? It could have been months!" He summarized the bizarre experiences he had undergone—his kidnapping by the man who had broken into Miss Finch’s house, Baxx; his captivity in Friendly Village; Rose Reb. "Day after day—I
guess
they were days—I wandered around, exploring the buildings, the houses, everything. I knew Baxx and his jeep had got in somehow; and
in
means out
too
!

"I knew Baxx—or this Mr. Eck nut—must be keeping an eye on me to some extent. He wouldn’t have relied totally on Reb’s purse. There would have to be security cameras somewhere, maybe built into the ‘sky.’ Still, Friendly Village is full of roofs and all manner of nooks—even a few crannies, right? He couldn’t see me all the time. I tried to keep to the shadows.

"Looked and looked. After awhile all those props and antique junk items started to blur together.
Man
, I never would want to live in the 1950’s! To think I thought the
90’s
were lame...!

"No point giving details that’re all the same, I guess. Finally I found something—all I could do not to yell! In fact, I pretended to walk right by. It was at the perimeter—what you might call, in Friendly Village, ‘outside.’ In the fake sunlight. Always pretty sunny back there in the 1950’s."

"The access door?" asked Tom as Bud paused for breath.

Bud chuckled. "Naw, that’d be
way
too easy! It was some kind of air circulation vent, a grille in the big wall hidden by some phony bushes. Big thing—I suppose there were a bunch of ’em all over, but this was the first I’d run across.

"I won’t give you a step-by-step on basic grillework removal and shinnying through an air conduit. I had to make some vertical jogs—mighty hard stuff, but I’m mighty hard myself. The conduits were narrow enough that I could slide my way upward with my back against the side, pushing along the other side with my feet. I won’t add up all the aches and pains...

"At the top was machinery—running all the time, by the way—but also a little door for servicing that was no match for Barclay’s raging muscles. I was in some kind of shed, no one around; a few kicks and I was out in the open."

"You say this was in Wyoming?" interrupted Phil Radnor.

"Who knows? That’s what Reb told me. It was pretty much flat land, with hills off in the distance. Didn’t see any sheep. But it was night, real cold, lots of stars.

"I could see other sheds spaced around, but no lights. Maybe the ‘command deck’ is underground. There must have been a road somewhere close by, but I never saw it. I only had a chance to lope off for about a hundred steps..."

"They recaptured you?" Tom broke in.

"I guess so, genius boy. Somebody musta come up out of the ground—Baxx, probably. I heard some noises, but before I could turn around I was down and out."

Mr. Swift broke the brief silence. "According to the doctors, one of the puncture marks they found on you was on your back, and it looks like the result of something like a dart.’

"A tranq gun! They took you down like an animal," grated Tom.

"Next thing I know, I’m wakin’ up in the hospital emergency room.
Jetz
!—I’ll be glad to get back to Shopton."

As Bud’s voice, uncharacteristically husky and weak, dropped away, his listeners exchanged grim glances. "He can take it," whispered Tom. "I don’t want him to get hit with it by some stranger before he gets here."

"Yes," nodded Mr. Swift. "Go ahead. Let him hear it from you."

"Say, guys, what’s with the whispering?" asked Bud. "If the story made you think I’m nuts—you may be right!" He chuckled faintly. "Friendly Village would get to anybody."

"Bud," began Tom gently. "I need to tell you something."

A long pause. "It’s bad news isn’t it, Tom."

"Yes. I’m sorry. An hour ago we received a call from the Ohio State Police. They’re investigating a death. Bud...

"Rose Reb is gone."

TOM SWIFT knew, without seeing, that on the other side of the telephone silence his friend was struggling with shock, grief, and memory. The listeners let the silence wear itself out. "Did the blackness get to her, Tom? Did she kill herself?"

"They think so."

"What happened?"

"Apparently she jumped—or fell—from a fifth story window, a hotel on the outskirts of Cleveland. It happened sometime last week. The police didn’t call here until a couple hours ago."

"I’m—I’m surprised they connected her to Enterprises at all," choked Bud. "I’m glad I didn’t find out about it through the news. Did her parents tell them to try to get in touch with me?"

Mr. Swift answered. "Bud—we found out that Mr. and Mrs. Truncheon had passed away when you were still in San Francisco. Rose Rebecca was on her own."

"Am I still unconscious?" murmured Bud, astonished and overwhelmed. "Am I still in Friendly Village? ...So why did they contact Enterprises? Because you’d linked me with Reb in running the search for me?"

Tom inhaled. "Yesterday they found your watch, the one I gave you, in a potted plant on a balcony below her room. The investigators think it ties in to her death, that it fell with her."

"Right. She took it off me."

"It was as if she had been grabbing at it as she went out the window. As if someone were trying to take it from her. Bud—" Tom halted. Was there any way to soften what he was about to say?

But Bud understood. "So maybe it wasn’t a suicide. So maybe Bud Barclay is a suspect.
So maybe my whole story about Friendly Village is a lie!
"

"You know no one here believes that, flyboy."

"Are they charging me?"

"No, Bud," replied Harlan Ames. "So far the death is presumed a suicide. She checked into the hotel six days ago, alone. It’s unclear whether she had visitors or guests. But your name is inscribed on the watch."

"Yeah."

"You’re what they call a
person of interest
," said Tom. "For now they’re just
requesting
that you stay available in case they have any questions. They’ll be questioning you before you leave the hospital."

"They won’t stop me returning to Shopton?"

"We’ll be flying you back tomorrow, if you’re strong enough," promised Mr. Swift. "You and your convertible, via the
Sky Queen
."

"Welcome back to the world," added Tom grimly.

"Right," stated Bud listlessly. "The real world. Some get back—
some
leave for good."

The sequel—the dropping of the other shoe—came the next morning, hours before Bud’s arrival. It came by way of Mrs. Marlene Diakonis, owner of The Eclectic Electric.

"Called me fifteen minutes ago," she told Tom over the phone. "Got me to promise to pass it along to you, word for word. I wrote it down, read it back. I take it this is one of those mystery plots you guys like."

"What did he say?" demanded the young inventor impatiently.

"Here goes. Gentlemen, start your tape recorders. Not that old Revere, I hope.

"‘
OK, Neato-Jet, seems we have a new program with some surprise twists. Why d’you suppose your boy-pal Bud offed his girlfriend? Lovers’ quarrel? Say, he’s got a rep as kind of—impulsive. So I hear. And I have evidence—I’m saving it for the cops, keeping it nice and secure—that he was up in that room as Miss Truncheon was making her exit by window.

‘Poor guy. He’s been through a lot, hasn’t he? Weeks on the road, trying to sort things out? I feel for him. So if you’re good, if you stick to the schedule and get that brick opened up for me—me, myself, and I, alone—well, I have some grudges against the cops. Maybe I’ll lose the evidence.

‘Of course I can’t lose anything if I get locked up. Obvious truth.

‘No need to reply. I’ll assume your continued collaboration in this science project of mine. If my trust turns out to be misplaced... you know.
’

"Then he hung up. Hope he doesn’t make me his regular threat-deliverer. No offense, Tom, but I have a business to run here."

Tom thanked her, voice shaking and furious.

Back at Enterprises Bud provided the FBI—involved because
something
unlawful had evidently crossed state lines—with a sworn deposition, given in the presence of the company’s attorneys. "What do you think?" Bud asked Harlan Ames after the agents had left.

Ames looked grave. "You’re asking what I
think
as opposed to what I
believe
. I think you may have some rough sledding ahead of you, Bud. I don’t doubt that any suspicions against you will fall apart when this underground
faux
-city is located—"