Tom Swift and His Megascope Space Prober (4 page)

"You’re the man of the hour, flyboy," said Tom with a nudge.

Bud beamed excitedly. "Then—I think I’ll give my folks a call!" By the time lunch was over, he had agreed to accept Astro-Dynamics’ offer. His decision brought smiles and handshakes that afternoon at NASA headquarters.

"We picked you because you’re a space flight veteran, but you’ll still need a good deal of specialized training for this mission. We’ll expect you in Florida next Thursday, Bud," Clarke told him, "to begin your test work and general indoctrination."

Added Col. Jessup: "You can expect to sweat a lot, kid."

"I’ve already started!"

Back aboard the jet, an uneasy, thoughtful quiet had replaced the momentary surge of enthusiasm. Tom took the controls. The others could see that he was still feeling the sting of Enterprises’ not having been given a chance to compete in the Venus project. After taking off, Tom swung in a large arc until he was ten miles up and a hundred miles from shore.

"I think I’ll wring this crate out a bit before we land," he announced. "I’m feeling like a little exercise."

Bud grinned. "I’m always up for
that
. Let ’er rip, sky-Skipper!" He knew this was Tom’s way of getting the Venus project out of his mind—as well as the prospect of spending many months without his close friend at his side.

"Aerobatics?" Mr. Swift inquired, as he and Bud pulled their safety belts tighter. "Take it easy though, son—your old man can only handle so many G’s!"

Looking grimly determined, Tom lowered the nose of the jet to gain speed. As he eased steadily back on the control stick, the horizon gradually dropped below the nose of the aircraft. Only blue sky could be seen as Tom passed over the top of a perfect loop. The occupants felt the acceleration G force mount steadily to almost three times their own weight.

Tom did a roll, first to the right, then to the left. "Corkscrew maneuver," he remarked.

Diving for speed again, he pulled the stick back and to the right, causing the plane to roll in a vertical climb. "Not bad," Bud said jokingly. "Not bad."

Tom half-rolled the jetcraft upside down, arcing to pin the occupants in their seats as sea and sky exchanged places. But as he attempted to recover right-side-up, Tom’s face muscles tensed suddenly.

"What’s wrong?" Mr. Swift questioned.

"The control stick!
I can’t move it!
" The craft continued to zoom along upside down, in a great roller-coaster curve—that ended in the ocean!

TOM STRAINED to free the stick. It would not budge. "The boosters in the control system must be jammed!"

"How about the booster-release lever?" asked Bud tensely.

Tom reached for a lever to his left and pulled it hard. He tried to move the stick. "No good! The release doesn’t work, either!"

"The air speed is increasing," Mr. Swift warned. The plane had entered a full-on inverted dive.

Tom continued to struggle with the control stick but had no success. He desperately worked a hand-operated hydraulic pump, but he could not regain pressure. "I’ll try the trim controls."

He reached to his left where two dials were located. One of them read: aileron-trim control. He turned it slowly. The plane shuddered slightly, then started to respond.

"We’re rolling out!" Mr. Swift cried.

Tom continued to adjust the aileron-trim control. But as the jet began to shift out of its upside-down stance, the blue ocean drawing near as it tilted sideways over their heads, Bud suddenly gripped his friend’s forearm. "No—no more. Shift her back, about halfway. You’ve got to turn the arc into a full loop. Go, Tom!"

The young inventor understood instantly. Again the jet was inverted, but not completely. Tom played the trim controls against the slipstream, knowing that any moment they could stall out and begin to plunge beyond all hope of recovery.

The watery horizon seemed to lower in front of them as the forces drove the blood from their heads. For the slightest terrible instant they nosed straight down—
down
seemingly in front of them like a wall! Then the moment was past. The cockeyed loop was completed. They were topside-up once again.

"
Yeah!
" Bud cheered. But Tom cautioned him: "We’re not out of this yet!"

"Have you any control at all?" Mr. Swift asked his son.

"I have rudder control, but I still can’t directly raise or lower the nose. We can make Enterprises, but as for a landing—! I’m going to try to use the elevator-trim control to bring us in. It’ll be tricky, but it’s worth a try."

"You can do it, pal," said Bud quietly.

Tom skillfully adjusted the trim controls. He managed to turn the plane toward Shopton, then tuned the cockpit radio. "Swift Enterprises tower," he called. "This is Tom Swift, SCC-R19. Mayday!"

The radio receiver crackled and a voice emerged from the speaker. "
Swift tower. We copy, Tom! What’s the sitch?
"

"Aileron and elevator controls inoperative. I’m one hundred fifty miles due east. Going to attempt a landing using trim controls!"

"
Copy that.
" There was a pause. "
Tom Swift, you are cleared for an emergency landing on east-west runway 5. Winds northwest at one-six. We have you on radar lock. We’ll have a crash team standing by!
"

Upstate New York fled beneath them, and presently Lake Carlopa appeared ahead. Tom maneuvered the aircraft east of Enterprises’ huge landing field. He then turned west in order to line up with the landing runway.

They could almost hear the sirens blaring.

"Swift tower, this is Tom on final approach!"

"
You are cleared to land!
"

Tom reduced power slightly for a descent. "We’ll have to come in faster than normal to keep the trim controls effective." Tom adjusted the elevator-trim-control dial constantly as the plane eased downward and approached the landing end of the runway. He increased power momentarily, reduced it again, then turned the trim control to nearly full nose-up position. The plane responded slowly and flared out about fifteen feet above the runway.

"Hold on!" Tom ordered.

"
We’re holding!
" gulped Bud in a whisper.

A wing dipped. Tom adjusted the aileron-trim control. The plane gradually leveled out. Then the nose began to lower again. He turned the elevator-trim dial to full nose-up and increased power slightly. The jetcraft seemed to hang in the air for a split second, then dropped hard and fast onto the runway surface. The tires screeched! Tom cut power completely. The plane skittered along the tarmac at frightful speed.

"We’re almost out of runway!" Mr. Swift murmured.

Tom applied brakes harder and harder. Just short of the boundary, the craft finally stopped, bowed forward, and fell back.

Bud mopped his pale forehead, then pumped Tom’s hand in silent gratitude.

Mr. Swift patted his son quietly on the back. "Well done," he said. "Masterful flying, Tom."

"Tom—and
Bud
," the youth retorted, thinking:
Bud—soon to be off in space far far away.

The three climbed out and Tom immediately started tracing the cause of the trouble. As emergency vehicles roared up, Tom was pointing at the underhull of the fuselage. A dark oval discoloration stood out against the silver white.

"More of the cold-scorching?" Bud asked, crouching down next to Tom.

Tom nodded. "Worse, too. The beam affected the fuselage coating as it penetrated. And right here― "

"I know," said the youthful pilot. "Those smart-metal servoflexor rods of yours. I’ll bet we’ll find a pile of metal flakes when we open her up."

Tom snorted. "Flyboy, we can open her up right now!" He poked a finger into the discolored patch—and the metal shattered like a thin piecrust.

"This couldn’t have happened more than seconds before the stick froze up," declared Tom, as puzzled as he was angry. "That means they must have been in a boat down below, zapping us just as we banked over for that last loop. Some kind of speedboat, probably—they tailed us in parallel as best they could. They’d hardly have been able to keep pace, but the device must work over quite a distance, miles apparently, with a precise focused aim like a laser beam."

Mr. Swift had broken away from directing the emergency crew long enough to overhear Tom’s remark. "But the question remains, what tipped them off to our trip?"

Tom shrugged. "For all we know they have operatives ready for action in every big city on the Atlantic coast!"

"Right—‘
evil operators are standing by’!
" Bud snorted.

That evening Sandy was thrilled when she learned that Bud was going on the Venus probe project. "This calls for a farewell celebration!" she decided implacably.

"Dear, if I might make a suggestion," said Mrs. Swift, "why not combine your farewell party with the welcome home party for the Sterlings?"

Hank Sterling, Enterprises’ young chief engineer and a close friend of the Swifts and Bud Barclay, had just flown back to Shopton from a long vacation trip to South America with his wife and children. With their usual aplomb, Sandy and Bashalli had already taken charge of planning a celebratory gala at Range View Inn in the hills on the far side of Lake Carlopa. "Mother, what a
wonderful
idea!" Sandy bubbled. "Tomonomo, why don’t
you
come up with ideas like this?"

Tom grinned. "Sorry, San. Guess I’m just not the imaginative type."

The event had been scheduled for the day before Bud was to report to Cape Canaveral. Range View Inn, isolated among the pines, catered to hikers and flying enthusiasts. The inn maintained its own small flying field on level ground nearby.

The appointed day arrived. Mr. and Mrs. Sterling, Tom’s parents, and the many other guests decided to take the drive up to enjoy the scenery. Bud Barclay’s parents, and his much-older sister and brother, had flown in from San Francisco and would be driving up by rented car.

Tom, Bud, Bashalli, and Sandy decided to fly. They whooshed off from the Enterprises airfield in a small jet-assisted helicopter called the
Skeeter Two
. In a handful of minutes the jetrocopter had crossed Lake Carlopa with Sandy, a trained and certified pilot, at the controls.

"Is it my imagination, Sandra, or are you taking us on a rather circuitous route?" inquired Bashalli. "Surely the point of air travel is to proceed along a straight line?"

Sandy answered, "This is what Big Brother asked me to do. For safety."

"The ray-gunners seem to know right away where we’re going and what we’re doing," Tom pointed out. "But unless they can read minds, they can’t anticipate a random flight path."

Bud leaned forward. "Of course, they could go for the bottom line and just blow up the Inn."

"Troublesome passengers will be ejected, Budworth," sniffed Bash daintily. "We might have flown more stylishly in your
Silent Streak
atomicar, Thomas. But it is only built for two."

"We’re planning a four-seat model."

"Alas for intimacy."

"And besides, Bashi, that big dome doesn’t give much privacy anyway, down on lovers lane," teased Sandy.

"So true. Alas for romance as well."

Tom chuckled. "I guess it looks like science and technology are going to cause the death of romance."

"Believe me, Thomas," said the pretty dark-haired Pakistani, "I have found that these days, romance can not even get
started
."

The jetrocopter landed at the Inn, stately and quaint next to a small tumbling stream whose banks were strewn with wild flowers. "Parking lot’s packed. Never knew I was so popular," Bud observed with a wink. "Well—I guess
Hank
has a few friends, too."

Inside Bud was greeted with warm applause, as were Hank and Lauren Sterling. And soon the various relatives arrived, to handshakes, hugs, and kisses.

"Now tell me, Sandra," said Bud’s mother with a mischievous smile, "Aren’t you just a little worried about Bud’s making a play for Venus?"

"Why
should
I be, Mrs. Barclay?" Sandy replied impishly. "With all that time on my hands I’ll find myself a new
steady
with a classic profile, like Mars."

Bud pretended to be shocked. "What, suddenly I’m your steady? I thought we were just a couple of pals who danced together!"

"Don’t be too sure of him, sis," Tom joked. "His heart belongs to a rocket ship."

"Not the Astrodyne-8, or that flashlight-powered sky buggy they’ve planned for me," Bud said disgustedly. "Lemme tell ya, folks, the Swifts’
Challenger
can fly rings around both of ’em!"

Dinner was still an hour away, and the clock on the wall said:
Mingle
. Tom found himself talking to Hank Sterling about his recent adventures in Kabulistan with the triphibian atomicar.

"And now this freeze-ray stuff," clucked Tom’s chief engineer sympathetically. "Skipper,
you’re
the one who needs a vacation!"

"Maybe so," responded the young scientist-inventor. Then his voice took on a thoughtful, dreamy tone that all his friends knew very well. "But the usual drama has accomplished one thing, Hank—an idea for a new invention. If my approach pans out, it’ll protect us from having our communications tapped into by lady ray-gun wielders, or anyone else."

Sterling whistled jokingly. "I can see you’re going to put me right back to work! So what is it, some kind of new signal-coder?"

Tom shook his head. "Nope. Try this on for size—a communications device that
no one in the world
can
possibly
listen in on—ever!"

HANK STERLING nodded, and his expression revealed that he was intrigued—and startled! "That’s
quite
a statement, Tom. Of course we’re always coming up with new methods to keep disreputable types from listening in on us. But for each step we take, they take another. And
they
have bigger feet!"

Tom joined his friend in laughter. "If you want a thumbnail explanation, Hank, here it is. I have a wild sort of idea to use the principle of
quantum entanglement
to link together a pair of communications devices in a way that, in a certain sense, annihilates the distance between them! In effect, it’ll be like speaking right into the other person’s ear—and I think you’ll agree that in a case like that, there’s just no
room
to insert any kind of bug or surveillance device."