Tom Swift and His Giant Robot (8 page)

After a silence, Harlan Ames spoke up. "How about this ‘Raymond Turnbull’? An alias?"

"Probably," responded Valdrosa. "For what it’s worth, Nicky Ammo says he’s never heard of him.
And
he demands Federal protection against Steck and Ludens."

"Did Ludens also disappear?" Tom asked.

"He had a heart condition, and we’ve assumed he died while in hiding. But maybe not."

As the meeting was breaking up, Mr. Swift called out to Tom to wait a moment. "I just wanted to tell you that I received a transmission from our space friends this morning through the experimental magnifying antenna. As you know, I sent my message to them yesterday."

"Have you been able to translate their response, Dad?" Tom asked eagerly.

"Not entirely," the elder Swift replied. "But the gist of it is clear. They deny engaging in any unannounced activity within our atmosphere since the missile landed."

"Another lead down the drain," remarked Bud sourly.

For the next several hours the youthful scientist buried himself in work, finishing a number of tasks that the security meeting had interrupted and seeing no one but Chow. The cook hovered over Tom like a fretful hen, seeing to it that the absorbed young inventor had enough food and reminding him of the need to get a proper amount of rest. Tom accepted the advice with a polite smile—and politely ignored it.

At three o’clock on the dot, Bud Barclay came banging on Tom’s laboratory door, with Sandy and Bashalli in tow. They were dressed in their bright tennis whites and had racquets in hand. Tom answered via the intercom on the wall by the door.
"Come on in!"

The three entered, surprised to find the lab in complete darkness. "Pull the door closed, will you?" called out Tom. They did so, and immediately the darkness was swept aside by arrays of tiny, intense colored lights clustered in two places across the room.

"Is that the robot?" asked Sandy, her eyes not yet accustomed to the dimness.

"Not robot," came Tom’s voice, switching on the overhead lights.
"Robots!"

Two identical giant robots stood side by side against the wall!

"Oh!" cried Bashalli. "The machine has multiplied!"

"And not only that, it’s grown a head!" observed Bud with a surprised laugh.

Now assembled in final form, the two automatons were a spectacular, and somewhat eerie, sight to behold. They stood a hulking ten feet tall, almost brushing the ceiling, like dark suits of armor decked out with twin galaxies of tiny lights. Their arms and legs seemed disproportionately thick in comparison to their rounded torsos, giving them the appearance of overmuscled body-builders. Their hands sported three extra-long, triple-jointed fingers, with stubby ball-tipped "thumbs" at both ends of the contoured disks that served as palms. The double thumbs could close-in like a vice.

But the most arresting features of the twin giant robots were their new heads. Though somewhat drum-shaped, the heads extended backwards a ways and were flattened on top and in front, the result resembling a futuristic computer monitor mounted on a flexible neck. There were circular domelike bulges in place of "ears," and slender crystalline rods extending forward in place of "eyes." There was even a sort of "mouth" in the form of a series of narrow vertical slots at the lower front of the heads, like a grillwork.

"Look at that big mouth!" laughed Bashalli. "And will they provide snappy patter and witty sayings, like the robots do on television?"

"Not this model, Bash," replied Tom. "Those slots are intake and exhaust vents for the cooling system."

He young inventor spent several minutes explaining how the robots’ mechanical muscles worked, as he had to Bud the other day. Then he moved on to an account of the automatons’ sensory apparatus. "Those little domes on either side of the heads are
radomes—
transmitter-receivers for a mini radar system that allows the robots to map obstacles perfectly. And those two rods sticking out from the front—"

"Lasers?" interjected Bud.

"You’re close," Tom responded. "They’re multifrequency photon-drivers—you can think of them as the robots’ headlights. The special light they emit is mostly above and below the optical range, so we only see it as a faint glow inside the rods themselves. But it gives our guys unusually minute visual input, through small photo-receptors on their shoulders which constitute their real ‘eyes’—in stereo, too! They also have a sort of sense of touch—there are edge detectors and pressure sensors built into the hands and fingers."

Tom now operated the control console and had one of the robots bow down. "They’re so tall it’s hard to see from our angle, but there’s a little stubby antenna on top of each head which links the internal relotrol to the control panel here. No cable is needed anymore, and I’m working up a handheld remote."

"When did you make the second one, Tom?" Sandy inquired. "And which one is our stagestruck star Robo Boy?"

"I’ve had a second body under construction all along, Sis," was Tom’s answer. "But there was no need to ship it along to the Citadel. As for which one is which—Robo Boy is on the left—I think." Tom laughed. "They’re completely identical. Now that they’re finished, I’ve given them both more dignified names, stamped on their backs."

Tom had the robots turn around and face the lab wall. On the backs of the mechanical men, the words ATOR and SERMEK were inscribed in small block letters.

"Those names are dignified?" asked Bud doubtfully. "Sounds like basic Martian!"

Tom explained that
Ator
stood for
atomic robot,
and
Sermek
was a tribute to the science of
servo-mechanics.
"And now, Budworth," continued Tom, "how about joining me in a game of robot tennis?"

"Have you gone off your rocker?" Bud cried.

Tom laughed. "Don’t worry. I’m okay. My two giants are ready for a co-ordination test. I need your help. Not scared, are you?" He turned to Sandy and Bashalli. "You two can keep score—and make sure Bud doesn’t pull any fast ones."

"A game of tennis between two giant metal magillas! You couldn’t keep me away, genius boy!" Bud whooped.

"But
Tom,"
Sandy piped up, "it’s not fair! Bud hasn’t mastered the remote-controller."

Tom grinned broadly. "It’s not as bad as you think. The relotrol computer has recorded and ‘coded’ a number of tennis games already—Arv Hanson’s been doing the recording down at the country club courts. The robots already ‘understand’ all the basic moves, so the human controller’s task is pretty easy. You can pick it up with just a few practice runs."

The six of them, four human and two robotic, stepped out into the bright sunshine. Tom had arranged for two portable control outfits, tuned to different frequencies, to be set up at each side of a makeshift tennis court in an open space near the lab.

"My controls are going to need some pretty fast reflexes," Bud grinned. "Score will be 6-O in my robot’s favor!"

"You’re on!" Tom laughed as he placed his racquet in the metal fingers of Ator, his robot. He eyed the windows behind them. "If my giant overcorrects," he warned, "we’re in for some broken-window bills!"

After some practice, awkward enough to afflict the girls with fits of giggles, the boys seemed ready to proceed.

"Toss you for first serve," Bud called, adjusting the magnitude-and-action blending controls. Sermek took a vicious slash at the ball.

Tom laughed. "Net ball!"

His robot took a swing. The ball bounded back across the court. The game was on!

The extraordinary sight of two metal automatons whacking a tennis ball, darting for rebounds, and charging the net, drew a large audience of plant workers. They cheered and whistled each time a ball was missed or a clever drive completed. Bashalli led the cheers for Tom, Sandy for Bud.

"Brand my hoppin’ horsehide!" cried Chow Winkler. "This sure is the
confoundin’est
game I ever did see!"

Tom’s robot, Ator, had trouble gauging the service line, while Bud’s kept slamming out of the court on overhand returns. The boys’ hands flew from hand control to foot-angle directors and the robots’ Herculesium muscles were constantly reversing.

At first the giants tended to exaggerate their motions, with the result that the game was clumsy and far from professional. As the game progressed, however, the automatons learned from repeated input to the relotrols. They grew more adept and play became subtle and fine.

Suddenly Bud shouted, "Tom, this is for the time you took over Herbert in the skit!" Sermek drove a slashing ball to the corner of the court. Tom was unable to direct his robot to return it.

In the end, Bud’s robot won the game, which had gone to deuce five times. Tom made Ator jump the net to congratulate the winning giant and the audience roared its appreciation of the show.

Tom was pleased with the coordination of his metal men and told Bud and the girls that few things remained to be done now before the giants would be ready for shipment to the Citadel and their tests in the fury of the reactor chamber. "In fact," he said, "I’m thinking we might fly out early tomorrow."

At this announcement Bashalli and Sandy exchanged conspiratorial glances. Bash stepped forward. "Tom, we wish to place before you a non-negotiable demand."

"What’s that?"

"We want you to take us both along with you on your flight!"

Tom started to shake his head, and Sandy burst out, "Oh, Tom, don’t be so stodgy! We won’t get in the way, and Bashalli has never seen the American southwest."

When Tom seemed to hesitate, Bashalli added cunningly, "You see, we have already secured
the okay
from mother and father Swift, who are most enthused. So do not bother to resist!"

"I give up!" growled Tom humorously. He shot a dark glance at Bud. "Did
you
know about this?"

But Bud only strolled away, twirling his racquet.

Sandy gave her brother a peck on the cheek. "Thanks, Tomonomo! Do you think we’ll be able to see that ghostly-ghastly crow on the flight?"

"No, I don’t, Sandy," the young inventor replied, as he directed the two robots back into the laboratory building.

Then Tom added mysteriously: "But I bet
I
do!"

THE EASTERN SKY was barely turning pale the next morning when two jetcraft hit the air above Swift Enterprises.

The more notable of them—by a longshot—was Tom’s mighty Flying Lab, the three-decker
Sky Queen.
Bigger than an airliner, the sleek stratoship rose vertically into the chilly air on its glowing jet lifters to an altitude of 14,000 feet before cutting in its rear engines for forward flight.

The
Sky Queen
was followed almost immediately by a much-smaller conventional cargo jet of the kind manufactured by the Swift Construction Company, which was owned by the Swift family. This jet followed along in the wake of the
Queen
for some time, their courses finally diverging over central Illinois.

The spacious Flying Lab had Sandy, Bashalli, Chow, Tom’s father, and several technicians as passengers. The robot Ator had been carefully crated and packed into the craft’s hangar hold on the lowermost deck.

Tom and Bud were riding in the cargo jet, which was piloted by Slim Davis, an experienced pilot who worked many assignments for both the Swift Construction Company and Swift Enterprises. The second giant robot, Sermek, was stowed in the rear of the jet.

"I understand why you want to fly the robots on two separate planes," remarked Slim. "I guess it makes good sense—sort of ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket,’ right?"

"That’s it," Tom confirmed. "We wouldn’t let Sandy and Bashalli go along if we thought there was any likelihood of real danger, but the possibility can’t be totally eliminated."

"Okay, but tell me this," Slim continued, his eyes glued to the cockpit instrument panel. "What makes you so certain we’re going to run into the phantom spirit-crow again? And why do you think the Flying Lab
won’t?"

Bud spoke up. "Tom’s got it all figured out, Slim!"

"Not exactly
all,
but
something,"
responded Tom with his usual modesty. "You see, I started thinking about exactly
where
we had seen the crow. I was able to re-create the approximate position of the first sighting, when we were testing the relotrol. And of course the flight recorder gave us our exact position when we had the second encounter. Both times, we were almost exactly over Purple Mesa!"

Slim glanced at Tom in evident surprise. "Purple Mesa? Isn’t that where that scientist is doing his digging?"

"Yep," said Tom; "Professor Hermosillo. Not that I suspect him of any personal involvement. Dad and I found out that he’s very well respected in his field."

"Then what’s the connection?"

Tom wagged a finger. "First rule in a science experiment—get the raw data
before
you start to interpret it!"

"Which is the Tom Swift way of saying,
we don’t know!"
Bud observed jokingly.

"At any rate, the
Sky Queen
will be going the long way around, but we’ll be passing right over the Mesa. Be prepared for a little bird-action!" Tom said. "Fortunately, whatever the crow really is, it doesn’t seem able to cause any harm."

"Yeah, unless it gives me heart failure!" the pilot retorted.

Zooming westward at a supersonic pace, the jet was scarcely allowing the sun to rise into the sky. It still seemed early morning when Slim announced that they had crossed over into the state of New Mexico.

"The automatic cameras are ready to roll," said Bud excitedly. "We can’t help getting some good shots this time around!"

Presently Tom asked Slim, "How far are we from the Mesa?"

"Less than forty miles," he replied.
"As the crow flies!"

The seconds ticked away. "There’s Purple Mesa up ahead," said Bud. "I wonder—
wait!"

Tom squinted his eyes against the slowly-increasing glare from the desert below. "What do you see?"

"Not sure," Bud answered. "A flash of light, like a reflection…"