Tom Swift and His Dyna-4 Capsule (19 page)

Tom was boggling. He only knew that Bud had burst in yelling—and suddenly the scene had changed! "What’s going on?" he gasped. "Bud, did you start the machine?"

"Got a lot to tell you, Skipper!"

Tom would live, and his next invention would be born, his
Cosmotron Express.

Baxx also had a few things to say, as Bud bound his wrists behind him with coaxial cable. "Never know, never know," he snickered angrily. "Never know, bo, what’s gonna come outta the woodwork. Got me good. One-way lock! Always sumpthin’ slips by, hunh?"

"Now we need to hunt down Eckdal," Tom declared brusquely, "and get ahold of the real box before he escapes."

Baxx laughed. "You already got both of ’em, Tommy. Trust me—I’m a federal agent!
Come on—‘Daddy’!
" he yelled. "
Come out, come out! Game’s over. Nobody’ll believe that hoked-up evidence now.
Nope, now it’s all about murder."

"He’s here in the chamber?" reacted the young inventor, startled.

"Why, sure he is. He’s waitin’ inside that dyna-4 capsule of yours."

"
What!--?
"

"Sure thing, bo," sneered Baxx. "You had your face down lookin’ over that floor. Snuck Torr over the bridge and up the ladder, brick in hand. He was gonna set it in there, then come out and watch me make you run the time thing on it.
Come on out, Eckdal, you stupid sack!
Plan’s all shot now. Yeah—
shot!
"

But there was no movement at the hatch of the capsule.

"Aaaa, you’ll have to drag him out," complained Baxx contemptuously.

Tom and Bud were whitefaced. "T-Tom, I—I didn’t think—"

"You had to do it, Bud," said Tom quietly. "You had no way of knowing someone was inside. And there was no other way to save my life."

Baxx looked back and forth between their horrified faces. "What’s up, dudes? He’s in there. So you froze him for a while, like you did with me. So what? Go drag him out."

"Er—yeah," chimed in Chow. "Ain’t that what we gotta do? Still got m’ gun."

Tom stared at Garton Baxx coldly—yet the horror would not leave the youth’s face. "You don’t get it. The vectors are opposite. Out here time slowed almost to a stop.
But inside the dyna-4 capsule--!
"

As Chow and Mouthy guarded Baxx, Tom and Bud walked across the time-transformer and climbed the ladder into the capsule, into darkness. Tom felt for the light switch without thinking, but all he found was a bit of cracked dry plastic the crumbled away at his touch. "I’ll use the pen flashlamp," he told Bud in a whisper.

The disk of light revealed a devastated chamber with curving walls. The temporary worklights had been reduced to a few bit of rust and shards of glass. The floor of the dyna-4 capsule was covered with the dust of long-disintegrated interior walls and furnishings. "Centuries," murmured Tom, "maybe a couple thousand years."

"In minutes," Bud said.

"He would have gone to the hatch opening, of course. He would have tried to get out of the capsule. But the barrier between time-positive and time-negative is a million times stronger than between normal and either vector. It would’ve been just a dead black wall, completely impenetrable. He would’ve yelled and screamed and pounded—until he finally collapsed from lack of water and food. In your time, milliseconds. In his time—who knows? Days, weeks."

The light found an oblong mound on the floor, the barest suggestion of a human figure in dust and teeth and flakes of bone. Bud stared at it, knowing that, however innocently, for whatever necessary end, he had caused this.

Tom took a few steps away from Bud. "There it is, over there on the floor."

It was Joeren Eckdal’s box. Much, much more than 25 years had passed for it. The top had popped open a crack. The young inventor picked it up and shone his light inside.

"All this for that," said Bud, "and it’s a waste. If there was a slip of paper inside or a computer chip or something, time’s gnawed it away to nothing. Miss Finch’ll never know the account number or where the money’s at."

But Tom Swift was shaking his head. "The box never held a number or instructions or any kind of message. Nothing like that. He converted his wealth into another form. Bud, this box held the fortune itself!"

"What!"

Tom tilted it so Bud could see the gleam within, points and edges that flashed.

"Something time couldn’t touch," said Tom. "Uncut diamonds. And
diamonds
—at least—are forever."