Tom Swift and His Flying Lab (17 page)

"Boss? Brand my buffalo biscuits, that you?"

"Chow!
Where are you? What happened?"

"Aw, one dang thing after another!" he said disgustedly. "After you left I hardly had time t’turn around afore they ’as pullin’ guns on me an’ hustlin’ me into a big car."

"Did they hurt you, Chow?" Tom asked in frantic concern.

"Waal, no, cain’t say they did," Chow replied reflectively. "Fact is, Tom, they got me all set up in the penthouse of another one o’ them luxury hotels. They got the door bolted, of course, and Jorge and Juan are allus here with their guns t’keep an eye on me. But lately we been playin’ cards. Bathroom’s about as big as a bedroom, bedroom’s about as big as a whole house, an’ that satellite TV o’ theirs gets two-hundred—"

"Bye-bye!"
chimed Zavoga, breaking the connection. "And now you know."

Tom eyed him suspiciously, his mind racing. "I thought you boys didn’t play the kidnapping game."

"Not with you!" Zavoga responded. "Not until this morning. And we have raised Mr. Winkler up to a better station in life, have we not? You must accept that we will do what is necessary for our cause. The other side has your father, so we have now your cook. You cannot say we overreach!"

Tom sighed with resignation and reached for the controls to disable the automatic pilot. "All right. Give me the coordinates." He pretended to pay close attention as Zavoga read off a string of numbers. In fact, the numbers he entered into the guidance system had nothing to do with his adversary’s chosen destination.

From that moment everything happened with frantic speed. Suddenly the
Sky Queen
shuddered and began to rock from side to side, first in gentle motions, then pitching violently like a ship in a storm.

"What is this?" cried Zavoga. "What did you do?"

"Nothing! But—
no!"
Tom pointed toward a section of the readout panel. "That red light there—you see?"

"What does it mean?"

"It means the solar units are depleted! Rip must have switched them off while setting the automatic pilot!" Tom feigned terror.
Hope I’m a better actor than Dad,
he thought.

Struggling to maintain his balance, Zavoga aimed his gun at Tom’s head. "Then you will switch them back on."

"You don’t understand," was Tom’s response. "It will take an hour to build up the charge again, and by that time—!"

Abruptly the Flying Lab seemed to quiet itself. "That’s better," said Tom’s captor.

"No it isn’t," replied the young inventor hollowly. "It means the aeolivanes have cut out. We’re going into a power dive!"

The deck was noticeably tilting forward, and the electronic airspeed indicator began to advance.

"Somehow I don’t believe you," said Zavoga with icy calm. "You have done something to the controls."

Tom said nothing.

Zavoga aimed the gun again, and this time his finger visibly tightened on the trigger. "You are wasting my time. Correct the course of the plane."

On impulse Tom flashed him a defiant grin. "I’m sick of being told what to do, Señor. And I’m sick of trying to figure the good guys from the bad. You don’t like the course,
you
correct it."

"You will die!"

Tom raised his eyebrows. "Did you think you were the only one aboard who could be brave,
amigo?"

"Ah. I see." Zavoga lowered the gun and moved closer to the viewport, gazing downward. "The ground is getting close." He looked at Tom for a moment as if calculating, then turned and strode purposefully across the tilting deck to the place where Tom had deposited the unconscious Bud.

He lifted his gun. "First, your special comrade. Then, if you are still unmoved, perhaps Mr. Sterling. You know what I think? I think only I will be left to die when this ship reaches the ground."

"No!"
shouted Tom. "You win." He reached for the controls.

Zavoga looked at him, waiting.

As Tom connected with the wheel, he had a brief flash of a day months before when he had said to Sandy:
A barrel roll is just a simple turn. Except that you keep the ship turning until it’s upside down and back again.

But this time the ship in question was a giant.

Could a giant manage a barrel roll?

"Guess I’m about to find out!" Tom muttered.

DESPITE THE multiple layers of metal and glass that shielded the interior of the
Sky Queen
from the outside air, the screech of an uncontrolled dive was beginning to penetrate the cabin.

Hands darting like heat lightning, Tom powered-up the forward engines for maximum control, shifted power to the aeolivanes, and programmed the jet lifters for a short, timed burst. Then, trusting the massive gyrostabilizers to keep the ship from spiralling, he pulled back on the wheel and dragged the nose to starboard as sharply as he dared—and then some!

The forces released instantly drained the blood from Tom’s head and flattened him to his seat. His muscles strained to keep his hands on the wheel. Somewhere behind him Zavoga gave a yelp, and Tom could imagine him flying against a bulkhead while his gun clattered across the deck.

Clouds whirled madly across the viewport; then the horizon spun across like a compass needle.
Must be… at the top… upside down…
thought Tom, fighting the gray haze of semiconsciousness. And then they were on the upside of the arc again, weight and direction reversed. With his peripheral vision Tom saw his unconscious friends sliding and tumbling across the polished deck.

After a time that seemed at once amazingly long and unexpectedly brief, Tom realized that the ship was leveling out again. The
Sky Queen
had survived the barrel roll! Immediately he forced the stratoship to make a violent swerve to starboard. He was rewarded by the sight of Zavoga spinning like a
futbol
into the floor-level viewport pane. There was no sign of the gun.

Kicking the ship into automatic mode, Tom launched himself toward the prone
Veranista
, who was struggling to right himself. Rather than confront the older man’s powerful muscles, Tom grabbed him by the back of his belt and swung him headfirst against the unbreakable down-facing viewport like a sack of potatoes. Zavoga grunted and slid down the curving pane, leaving a streak of red behind. He was out.

Tom bound the man’s hands behind him with his own belt, and then similarly bound his ankles together, using Bud’s belt. He made sure the others were still breathing and unbruised—Hanson and Sterling were beginning to stir—and then attended to Zavoga’s head wound.

Zavoga’s eyelids fluttered. Glancing at Tom, he groaned. "I already had enough scars,
amigo!"
he murmured. Tom didn’t take the time to answer, but instead activated the encrypted communications link with Swift Enterprises. Soon he was explaining the situation to Harlan Ames.

"Unbelievable!" exclaimed the security chief. "And yet—I had an intuition that something wasn’t right with Rigoledo."

"How about this man Doss?"

"We’ll pick him up immediately. And I’ll contact Agent Brenner about Tennyson in the State Department."

As Hanson and Sterling came fully awake, and Bud and Rip began to show signs of life, Tom formulated a daring plan.

By nightfall, the
Sky Queen
was roaring across the Montaguayan skies in the direction of the village of Alta Bapcho.

"Kid, your plan sounds a little crazy to me, and I’m the world’s biggest collector of crazy plans," Rip Hulse remarked. "Wouldn’t it be better to let the two governments work things out?"

"I’ve
seen
how governments work things out," Tom said with determination. "I’d just as soon they did it
after
Dad and the others have been freed!"

Not long afterwards Bud announced that the Flying Lab was now hovering at 55,000 feet over the village, which was itself located high on the side of a mountain. "Think they can see us?" asked Bud.

"No," Tom responded, "too much haze in the air. We’ll have to
make
ourselves known!" His eyes were sparkling.

A little later Tom freed Tomas Zavoga’s hands, and placed in them a printed sheet of paper. Written in Spanish, which Rip understood fluently but could only speak unconvincingly, the sheet read:

"ATTENTION! ATTENTION, ALL BELOW IN ALTA BAPCHO! YOU ARE TO LEAVE YOUR HOMES IMMEDIATELY AND ASSEMBLE IN THE CITY SQUARE. I AM ROBUR THE CONQUEROR, SPEAKING TO YOU FROM MY WARSHIP OF THE SKIES. YOUR GOVERNMENT IN CRISTOBAL HAS FALLEN TO MY FORCES. COME OUT TO RECEIVE MY INSTRUCTIONS. IF THERE IS RESISTANCE, I WILL DESTROY YOUR VILLAGE WITH MY BOLTS OF VENGEANCE!"

Zavoga looked up at Tom. "Who is this ‘Robur’?"

"A character in a Jules Verne novel about an airship. It seemed appropriate."

"If they do not laugh at
‘bolts of vengeance,’
perhaps they will be intimidated," he said. "Do you show this to me for my literary opinion?"

"I want you to read it aloud, over a loudspeaker," Tom answered. "You must read it just as written. And you must make it sound believable."

"And why shall I do this for you?"

"Because these men are your enemies too," said Tom. "And because I ask you to."

Zavoga nodded. "I am willing.
Si."

Bud called over to Tom, "How low shall we go before you start the announcement?"

"We won’t descend at all," he replied. "The kind of loudspeaker we’ll be using will work just fine over this distance. It’s more dramatic if they can’t see the ship right away. I got the idea from you, Bud!"

"Right," Bud laughed. "The balloon Martian!"

The intercom buzzed. "The phonon-antennas are in place, Tom," came the voice of Arv Hanson. "Just raise the hangar bay door as soon as I’m out of here."

"Good job!" said Tom. Clicking off the intercom, he turned to Bud and the others. "I’ll be in the compartment below where the Damonscope is set up. Its magnification and night-vision features will let me see what’s going on below. Give me three minutes, and then, Señor
Capitan,
the stage is yours!"

In the compartment Tom activated and adjusted the Damonscope. An image of the village below swam into view on the monitor. Tom was able to zoom in tightly on the central square. He judged that all the official buildings in the tiny village fronted the square, with the residences one street back. One building in particular caught his interest: a stockade-like structure with a roofless walled patio.

"I’d bet anything that’s the building where Dad and the rest are being held!" he murmured excitedly to himself.

Just then the entire ship began to vibrate in rhythm to the words of Tomas Zavoga, who turned out to have a natural flair for the dramatic. Tom knew the paired subsonic phono-wave projectors would transmit concentrated sound pulses all the way to the ground with little loss of volume and quality.

After reading the message slowly, Zavoga began to repeat it. Tom was thrilled to see, on the Damonscope viewer, the effect of the message on the villagers below. They were pouring into the square in various states of undress, waving their arms and straining to glimpse the menace above them.

After Zavoga had repeated the message a third time, Tom broke in on the intercom. "All right, go on to the next page." Zavoga complied.

"PEOPLE OF ALTA BAPCHO, NO LONGER SHALL YOUR GOVERNMENT BE FILLED WITH CRIMINALS AND THIEVES. THE FORMER OFFICIALS AND MEMBERS OF THE ARMY AND POLICE HAVE NO MORE POWER OVER YOU. I, ROBUR, AM IN CHARGE. THERE IS TO BE NO RESISTANCE. NO WEAPON IS TO BE FIRED. OBSERVE MY POWER!"

Tom threw a switch that Hank Sterling had rigged up for him. Instantly the reserve capacitor bank of the solar units discharged a massive electrical pulse through a hastily-constructed electrode protruding from the open hangar bay. Though the modulated pulse actually carried little energy and posed no danger, Tom knew it would produce a brilliant light show.

He was not disappointed. Exactly as calculated, the bolt struck the tip of the radio antenna at the top of a building next to the square. Its inner plasma field was to an extent self-sustaining. Unlike a bolt of lightning, it persisted for almost ten seconds in the form of a weirdly writhing electrical "flame" coiling about the antenna before it finally dissipated with an explosive
Crack!
. It not only looked as a "bolt of vengeance" ought to look, but it also knocked out the radio-transmission system and village TV and phone relays. There would be no news into, or out of, Alta Bapcho for at least a day.

Tom could tell that the citizens, awestruck at first, were now verging on panic. He gave Zavoga the go-ahead to continue.

"AMONG YOU ARE THE EVIL MEN COMMANDED BY COLONEL JUAN SANTOREZ. THEY HAVE MADE CAPTIVES OF INNOCENT PEOPLE, AND I AM ANGERED AT THIS DISGRACE TO THE HONOR OF MONTAGUAYA.. JUAN SANTOREZ, CARLOS VIEJA, ANARBOL REMEDIOS, ESTEBEN MATTA, COME FORWARD! DO THIS WITH DIGNITY AND YOU WILL NOT BE HARMED."

"I am thoroughly enjoying my role," intercommed Zavoga. "I trust it is having the desired effect?"

"Definitely," said Tom. "And now, the performance needs a spotlight."

The Swift searchlight had been lowered into its sealed dome beneath the ship. Aiming it in coordination with the settings on the Damonscope, Tom activated the wonderful illuminator. A column of diamondlike white light fell upon the village square in front of the stockade building, creating a glittering disk no more than ten feet wide.

One by one, men in military uniforms straggled into the light, tossing aside their rifles. Their hands were raised. Tom assumed that these were the men indicated, whose names had been provided by
Capitan
Zavoga.

"YOU DO WELL. REMAIN AT ATTENTION! DO NOT MOVE! NOW, ALL YOUR CAPTIVES, THE FOREIGNERS YOU HAVE BEEN HOLDING, ARE TO BE RELEASED UNHARMED. LET NO ONE BE OVERLOOKED! THEY ARE TO STAND TOGETHER BY THEMSELVES AT THE SIDE OF THE SQUARE. I, ROBUR THE CONQUEROR, AM COMING DOWN FROM THE SKY TO TAKE THEM!"

After a minute Tom was overjoyed to see a dozen men, some of them dirty and bearded, being herded into the square at a trot by the remaining soldiers. One of them was Damon Swift!