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Now nothing could stop Bud's fall! |
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THE TOM SWIFT INVENTION ADVENTURES
TOM SWIFT
AND HIS HUMANPLIFYING
EXOSUIT
BY VICTOR APPLETON II
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TOM SWIFT AND HIS
HUMANPLIFYING EXOSUIT
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CHAPTER 1
THE JUPITER TRAP
“EARTH to Spaceman Swift! You’re halfway to Jupiter, Skipper! How’s
it going up there?”
Test engineer Sid Baker’s voice came through Tom Swift’s control
board loud- speaker with a hint of chuckle, echoed by the young inventor
and his friend and co- adventurer, Doc Simpson. The youthful Swift
Enterprises physician was accompanying his renowned employer on a daring
research expedition — not to distant Jupiter, but into an equally deadly
realm on planet Earth!
“Halfway already? Nothin’ to it, Sid. Six G’s and
all’s well.” Glancing at Simpson, Tom
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added teasingly: “Actually, Doc looks a
little green.”
Doc motioned and Tom handed him the microphone. “It’s that soft,
sedentary life of mine, Sid. I’m not used to stress.”
“Uh-huh. Just thinking about gravity in double-digits makes
me nervous. And I’m out here!”
Baker, with several technicians at his side to assist him, was
separated from Tom and Doc by two barriers. The nearer, outer, barrier
consisted of an ultrastrong metal, called metal- lumin. Transparent as
glass, Tom had originally devised the remarkable material to withstand
and contain the high pressures of his aquarium for deep-sea life.
The second barrier was the “skin” of Tom’s newest invention, a
robotic vehicle with a humanlike form standing twenty-five feet tall on
massive legs of gold-gleaming metal. This “exosuit,” as the young
inventor had named it, would permit astronaut-pilots to tread the
surfaces of planets where extremes of pressure, temperature, and
gravitation prevailed. Like Tom and Doc, the dual exosuit operators
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would ride in a
sealed control compartment that took up most of the vehicle’s chest
area. A bulging pane of metallumin offered the “test pilots” a view from
a height.
As Tom smilingly switched off the tele- intercom connecting the
exosuit compartment to the team of test-chamber attendants, Doc made a
further comment. “Chief, there isn’t any real reason to worry, is
there? I know we discussed the medical aspects I’m monitoring in here,
but — this gravity business... maybe I need a little bit of the sort of
explanation you usually give Bud.”
Tom understood. He always made sure to give his best friend Bud
Barclay the lowdown on his latest inventive efforts. “Sure, Doc. As we
planned, they’re bringing up the G-force gradually inside the chamber.
We’ve still got a few minutes before we reach the level prevailing on
Jupiter. What would you like to know?”
“Just how you’re able to block the pull of gravity inside this
robot-suit of yours. And how do you boost it inside the test chamber? I
mean, you know — we’re talking about gravity.”
Designed by Tom and his father, the new
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Swift
Enterprises extreme-conditions test chamber was a fifty-foot cube of
flat metallumin panels, its thick walls surrounded on all sides by a
separate deck for control and observation. The entire chamber could be
raised or lowered as a unit like a giant elevator, its floor resting
atop powerful pistons. At the surface, under the bright morning sun of
Shopton, Tom had maneuvered his exosuit prototype into the containment
cube, one of whose walls could be swung open for access. Then, as a
planned safety measure, the chamber had been lowered into the ground to
a depth of 180 feet as reinforced panels slid closed across the shaft
opening above it.
“I’ll start with the second question,” said Tom to Doc. “You know how
my gravitex device works, don’t you?”
“‘How’ would be an exaggeration. I know you use it to generate
a heightened gravitational pull to stabilize that cosmic-ray spacecraft
you came up with.”
“Right, the Space Kite. Well, the gravitex units don’t actually
generate gravity. They use a gyrating electromagnetic flux which
acts as a kind of ‘magnifying lens’ for the gravitational
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field,
with the concentrated G-pull focused on the interior of the machine
itself.” The young inventor explained that a bank of many such units,
oriented upward, was built into the floor of the containment cube. “I’ve
designed these special gravitexes to displace the focal point
vertically, so the magnified gravity field projects upward and affects
everything inside the cube — there only.”
“Including us. Got it.” The medico nodded thoughtfully. He was
clearly caught up in the gravity of the situation.
“As far as the other question,” Tom continued, “the answer is really
the same as the first one. But in this case gravitexes inside the
exosuit refract the intensified field away from us, shoving it
outside the hull where it just melds-in with the ambient field. Here in
the pilot compartment we’re in the ‘shadow zone’ that the machines
produce, the area that gravity has been diverted away from. It’s that
zone of reduced G-force that counteracts — well, now it’s eleven
times Earth-normal out there.”
“And we’re stopping at twelve,” noted Simpson, “which is more than
high enough for the first medical tests.”
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Both
exosuit occupants were connected to a panoply of medical sensors and
instruments to monitor and record their physiological responses to the
experience. Doc scanned the output registers with a keen eye, alert to
the possibility that the tug-of-war of invisible forces, though unfelt,
might trigger an unex- pected reaction in their bodies. “Biochem good,”
he pronounced. “Coagulation normal. Heartbeat strong. Pulse rate — as
you might expect.” Doc added wryly, “Mine is running a tad high.”
“And here we are! — twelve G’s, a nice day in the suburbs of
Jupiter,” reported Tom triumphantly. “The exo’s skeleton is holding
steady. You know, Doc, Jupiter doesn’t have a solid surface. Its
atmosphere just gets denser and denser as you go deeper down. In there
the exosuit would be less like a spacesuit-for-two than like a
submarine, fighting off pressures as great as — ”
A startling sound interrupted the thought.
“Wh-what is it?” asked Doc.
Tom frowned. “Automatic alarm.”
“Something’s wrong, Tom. I feel it.”
The young inventor cast a chiding look to-
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ward his
test-copilot. “I know you’re a little nervous, Doc, but don’t let your
imagination run away with you.”
“No — I mean I really feel it! Don’t you? Like — like
I’m getting — ”
Tom Swift gulped in dismay. “Heavier! Now I feel it myself.”
He hurriedly checked the instruments. “Good grief, the G-level here
inside the suit is almost twenty percent higher than normal! We’re
really starting to pile on the pounds.” He scooped up the tele-intercom
mike from its cradle. “Sid, there’s some kind of glitch in our
gravity-nullifying setup — the G’s are starting to leak through!”
“Yeow!” came the surprised response. “Okay, Skipper, I’ll
power down. We don’t want to turn you guys into pulp heroes.”
Tom laughed at the comeback. But nervously.
The vertical pressure began to ease off — then suddenly it redoubled!
The two rocked back in their contour chairs as if massive weights had
thudded down on them!
“Sid! What’s — ”
“We can’t power down! I think — I think the main controls have
failed!”
As Tom whistled to himself softly, Simpson
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put an
unsteady hand, concrete-heavy, on his friend’s arm. “It’s getting worse.
At this rate of increase — ”
“I know,” grated Tom. “In minutes we’ll be dealing with as much force
in here as is outside in the chamber. And if the main controls are
malfunctioning, the exterior levels might also go through the roof. In
theory the cube’s gravitex array could produce over fifty G’s!” Tom
calculated mentally. The resultant weight pressing down on his bones and
body would be almost five tons!
As Doc eased back in his seat with a sudden thump, Tom leaned forward
in his, reaching for the microphone again. Even now it felt like his
hands were wearing lead gloves! “Sid, throw the main power switch for
the test chamber. Or call the plant’s generating blockhouse — but you
have to cut all power immediately!” The loudspeaker remained silent.
“Sid? Control, what’s going on?”
The youth knew that the most likely cause of the silence was
failure in the tele-intercom circuitry. They should still be able to
elevate up to the surface so we can swing open the big door, he
thought. We’ll walk the exo off
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the
base pad.
He decided
to try signaling the control team by hand through the viewpane.
The G-pressure made Tom’s head heavy and forced his neck and
shoulders into a forward curl. Tensing his young muscles he raised his
chin and managed a glance through the exosuit viewport. He was shocked
by what he saw — or didn’t see. The control consoles beyond the
metallumin walls were unmanned. Sid Baker and his fellow technicians
were nowhere to be found!
His muscles bulged as he struggled to brace himself against the chair
arms. If he weakened and started to slump forward, he knew he would be
unable to stop and would fall face-first onto the deck. If that
happens, he thought, it’ll be the end!
“T-Tom!” came a weak, choking voice. “We need to flatten out these
seats or... our circulatory system... w-will...” Simpson paused, panting
for the breath to speak, the strength to lift his chest. “Look, is
there... can we lower ourselves to the deck?”
“We can’t,” croaked the young inventor. “And don’t let yourself slip
off the seat. You’ll... you’ll snap your bones if you fall even two
feet...” He forced his eyes toward a readout dial on the
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control
panel, straining pierce the spreading blur as his eye sockets and lids
sagged under their mounting weight. 3.7 G’s inside the suit, and still
rising!
“Skipper... can you do anything?”
“Maybe. Hold on, Doc.”
“H-hold on? Not a time for joking...”
“Don’t give up — I’m not. Bud and... and I lived through... a worse G
crisis in the Star Spear, you know...”
“Fine, an optimist. Now I f-feel much better.”
“Hunh! Wish I did!”
They both knew that the gravity-neutralizer setup inside the exo was
much more limited than the array of gravitexes built into the test
chamber. And Tom knew the precise figures. Even now the load was too
much for the exosuit’s protective system to completely counteract. If
the forces outside continued to increase, it would fail utterly! The
exosuit will make it through in one piece, he thought wryly. But
Doc and I won’t be around to appreciate it.
Fighting desperately not to collapse, Tom suddenly levered his
right forearm up onto the slanting control board, wincing as the sheer
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weight
rammed it down onto a protruding switch. He shoved it forward — it slid
along on its own perspiration. Inching up to the selector dial he was
aiming for, he fumblingly twisted it with a groan at the pinch to his
yielding skin. Words glowed on the selector’s monitor panel.
DRILL
THREE RIGHT
EXTEND
Though the side of his face was pressed flat against his seat
head-rest, Doc was able to read the words. “You’re going to... d-drill
our way out?”
Tom gasped out a reply. “Drill... diamond tip... cut through the
metallumin walls. M-maybe we can ram our way through...”
“If — right, if you cause... a weak spot.”
The massive right arm of the robot-vehicle began to move, extending
forward as the needle- sharp drill bit was thrust into view from a
covered slot hidden in one of the exosuit’s chrome-silver fingertips, which
served as con- tainer-pods for various tools and instruments.
The control deck vibrated with a weird groan of straining metal
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out as the
exosuit seemed to jerk sideways. “It’s all right,” Tom muttered. “The...
ungh!... the computer automatically repositioned a leg for better
support. With gravity this high, just moving an arm is enough to throw
us off balance.”
“Th-that’s your idea of ‘all right’?”
The instruments announced that the drill tip was pressed against the
wall before them. Tom activated its powerful motor.
Doc read the result from his friend’s face. “Not working?”
“Not... fast enough... I can’t keep the arm in position to maintain
the pressure. Maybe another place, different angle — Doc, I’m not
sure... what to do.”
“Listen to your doctor, Tom Swift. Don’t bother with being sure.
J-just — ”
“I know,” Tom whispered. He had no more energy to waste on speaking —
no energy to waste on anything but a last chance at survival. Heart
thudding with the tremendous strain, he thumbed the controls with a
jerking movement. It was all the force he had left to marshal.
Shadow crossed the viewpane. Doc could see the colossal right arm of
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gliding
into view. But the powerful mechanism was stretching, not toward another
section of the cube wall, but upward. It was as if the machine
were raising a hand to signal surrender! “Skip- per! What — what are you
— ”
His companion could barely manage a croaking response. “I’m...
ejecting the drill bit... dropping it. Just dropping it.”
He fumbled it, thought Doc as consciousness swam away into
darkness. This time the opti- mist couldn’t think of a solution. No
answer. First time. History’s made and you were there, Simpson! And now,
boys and girls — I think it’s OK to give up.
He did.
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CHAPTER
2
TOM MEETS HIS
MAKER
THE FALLING drill bit could no more be seen than a bullet in flight, nor
could any sound from the world outside penetrate the walls of the
exosuit control cabin.
But sight and sound proved unnecessary. Even as Doc Simpson said his
inner farewells, the leaden pressure on his chest and arms and head fell
away and he rebounded from the cushions. Slowly, unbelievingly, muscles
fiercely aching, he pulled himself upright and turned to look at Tom.
“What — not that I really care at this point but what — happened?
Did we pop a circuit breaker or something?”
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Tom
found his voice. “In a way. I knew the drill bit would keep its point
downward as it fell — high-velocity aerodynamics. When it hit the cube
floor, the tip penetrated about half an inch. That was enough to break a
few of the nano-thin wires embedded inside the deck plate — the
breach-detection sensor grid.”
“Emergency shutdown?”
“I’d call this an emergency!”
Doc snorted. “I tend to agree. But why was it able to break
through when it just fell freely, but not when you were pushing it
against the wall?”
“Oh, that? Well...” Tom stretched mightily and groaningly. “I did a
little head-figuring. It was about eighteen G’s out there, and I knew
the field gradient was varying top to bottom as the third power. So — ”
“At last! The ‘so’!”
“So it hit the floor at roughly 8700 miles per hour. And
that,” he noted, “was enough.”
There was still no sign of the control crew through the viewport
pane. With gravitation in the chamber now normal, Tom and Doc hastened
out the rear hatchway and down the access ladder. As they approached the
human- scaled door in the metallumin wall, Tom called
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out with
relief: “Look! Thank goodness!”
A woozy head — Sid Baker’s — had risen into view from behind a
console.
In a moment the two were surrounded by the control team, all of them
wincing and dizzy but apparently none the worse for their experience.
“The G magnification zone wasn’t contained in the cube,” explained Sid.
“It suddenly came sweeping out into the control deck. No one was braced,
and it flattened us. Pulled us right out of our chairs!”
“What could have caused all this?” asked a technician. “Didn’t the
chamber and the suit check out completely the other day?”
“Yes,” Tom acknowledged, “separately. We have to find out what
factor emerged when we brought the two together.”
“Boss, could it have been human error?” speculated Sid.
“Sure! — everyone looks at me!” com- plained another team
member, Dave Bogard. He wasn’t entirely kidding.
Tom grinned and said: “I don’t see how any sort of simple mistake
could have caused this. When gravity went wild the failure must have
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been
within the system, a glitch.”
“Yeah — a major malfunction.” Baker nodded. “We’ll wheedle it
out of her, Tom. Don’t worry.”
“Worry? Hey, I never worry!”
“I do,” sourly noted Doc Simpson.
At home that evening, after a dinner full of inventorly conversation,
the family retired to the living room of the spacious Swift home, which
had recently been rebuilt. Sitting down on a curving sofa, Bashalli
Prandit — Tom’s frequent date about Shopton town and a not infrequent
guest for supper at the Swifts’ — asked if the crewcut young inventor
had heard from Bud Barclay.
Tom shook his head. “He’ll probably call later. I’m sure he’s out on
the town with his friends.”
His sister Sandra shot her older brother a skeptical look. “Out on
the town in Waterfield? Tom, Waterfield doesn’t have an
‘out’!”
“Just who are these friends that Budworth is charming with his usual
wit and verve?” asked Bashalli.
“Some boys on a trip that he used to know in school in San
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plained to
the Pakistani. “He called them his best pals.”
“Ah, I see — first drafts of Tom Swift.”
“Probably football buddies,” Sandy noted. “American boys grow up with
‘sports cronies’, Bashi. Is it the same in Pakistan?”
“Of course. Different sports, but I think the male is the same the
world over. Tiresome!”
The male population of the living room, Tom and his father, laughed.
Tom protested: “Bash, you’re stereotyping!”
“Indeed you are,” put in Mr. Swift. “Games and competitions are
stimulating to human beings in general, not just the male of the
species. I suppose there’s an evolutionary ad- vantage.”
“If there is such a thing as human evolution,” Bashalli stated, “how
is it that we have people who talk on cellphones in movie theaters?”
Mrs. Swift brought out a tray of desserts. “Do you girls know that
Tom is going on TV tomorrow night?”
The girls erupted in chicly-restrained excite- ment. “It’s nothing
major,” Tom told them. “Just the Connie Flenck interview show,
Today’s Crisis in Shopton. I’ve done it before
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— so has
Dad. Local stuff.” When Bashalli asked the subject of the interview, Tom
went on: “George Dilling thinks it’s time to go public with info about
my exosuit invention. The rumor mill — and the Internet is about
ninety-nine percent rumor mill — has been getting it wrong. They think
it’s some kind of body armor for military use.”
“Exosuit?” Bash looked puzzled for a moment. “Oh, but perhaps that is
the great golden lummox you were speaking of, Thomas, your gianter
giant robot!”
“Uh-huh.” Then, as an uninvited thought struck the youth, he turned
toward his sister. “Say, sis — have you received any more of those
e-mes- sages? From Him?”
Sandy frowned. “I would rather not discuss ‘Him’ right now, thank
you.”
“I am told that Him is still in — perhaps I ought not say
hot pursuit,” commented Bashalli mischievously.
“Perhaps you ought not say anything.”
“Darling, I do wish you’d reconsider my speaking about it to Harlan
Ames,” urged Tom’s father, a concerned expression crossing his face.
Ames was the head of security for Tom Swift
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Enterprises.
“No, Daddy. I can handle it — please. He’s really very sweet. Despite
the slight difference in our ages.”
“We must accept that Sandra considers him a live romantic
possibility, should he live so long,” said Bashalli. “In other words,
what you call here ‘a good catch.’ Surely more promising than waiting
for Bud Barclay to grow up, don’t you think, Mother and Father Swift?
And of course being an agent of your CIA is a job of great honor.”
Damon Swift huffed disapprovingly. “Quim- by Narz is old enough to be
Sandy’s grand- father!”
When Tom had traveled to the country of Brungaria to use his
thoughtograph imager to defuse an international crisis, his family had
accompanied him. A well-seasoned CIA agent, Quimby Narz, had been
assigned the task of protecting the Americans. Without a hint, to the
surprise of everyone, it seemed the sixtyish agent had become silently
infatuated with Sandy Swift. While Tom and Bud were off in space, an
exploit chronicled in Tom Swift in the Underlands of Mars, Narz
had begun to ex- xxxxxxxxxxxxxx |
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press his
feelings by regular e-mail messages, polite and proper yet increasingly
personal, their implications too clear to be dismissed. A vestigial
human remnant of an earlier generation, an all but extinct culture of
peculiar customs, he had lately found one excuse after another to send
Sandy little gifts of flowers and chocolates. The flowers were sniffed
and tossed. The chocolates were eaten, thoughtfully.
The matter was perplexing. “You have to admit, San, it is a
little creepy,” Tom observed.
Bashalli smiled. “I do believe the word wanted is ‘weird’.”
Sandy crossed her arms stubbornly. “Meet the Swift family, Miss
Prandit — all weird, all the time! Now listen, everyone,
so I don’t have to repeat it yelling. When Tom and I were made
emancipated minors, they said they approved our application because we
had adult judgment and a mature sense of responsibility. So please
allow me to judge and — er, respond!”
Tom gave a grand bow. “Let it not be said that Tom Swift would ever
stand in the path of true love.”
“Is that why you two were made emancipated minors?” asked Bash
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was so you
could have your own bank ac- counts.”
“That too,” Sandy conceded.
The next morning Tom arrived at the plant eager to hear from his
engineering team whether anything had turned up in their preliminary
examination of the test chamber and the exosuit. As he strode away from
his bronze sports car, a beep penetrated his thoughts.
He fished out his cellphone, doubly flipping it open from shoehorn
size to a unit with four times the area on its face-panel. “Tom here,”
he said.
“Tom, this is Murray over in the Visitors Center. You know, in the
gift shop?” He seemed to be speaking in a whisper.
“Sure. Hi!”
“There’s a problem with a visitor. She’s — well — she’s here to see
you and — ”
“Have you called Security?”
Murray sounded somewhat abashed. “Er, no. It’s not anything that’s
really... that is, I wouldn’t want to...”
“Okay,” Tom interrupted impatiently. “I’m in the executive lot. Be
there in a minute.”
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Even
before Tom arrived at the Tom Swift Enterprises Gift Shop, he could hear
the sounds of a restrained, rather plaintive, argument. Yet at first he
could only make out one voice, Murray’s. But as he drew nearer he
realized that the pauses were filled with a soft piping sound.
“Please, please ma’am, just leave the rack where it is. We
don’t want you to hurt yourself, now do we?”
“There is no ‘we’ here, I dare say. I am certainly capable of knowing
what I’m doing!”
Tom took in the scene from the shop door- way. Next to harried Murray
Walsh a wisp of a woman, very elderly, had planted her two feet on the
carpet like a stubborn bull. She was gripping with one hand a rotating
metal-frame rack stocked with books.
“M-ma’am?” Tom broke in. “I’m Tom Swift. May I help you?”
Both faces brightened, and the woman called out in warm, reedy
delight, “Tom! Why, so it is! Dear boy!”
As Murray withdrew with evident relief, Tom approached cautiously.
“Have we met, ma’am?”
She let go of the rack. “Met? Oh, no, we
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never
have, you know. I didn’t think it was necessary. Yet I have always been
curious.” She took a half-step forward and offered a hand that looked
like a small bundle of dried twigs. “I am Henrietta Weidenhauser.”
Tom grasped her hand, trying to avoid the slightest pressure. “Hello.
I’m afraid I don’t quite recognize your name, ma’am.”
She wheezed out a slight laugh. “My, my. Why Tom Swift, I am your
creator!”
“My — ! Um, excuse me?”
She nodded. “Why yes, your creator; Tom Swift’s creator, that is — in
a sense. Of course, I’m putting it in a dramatic way, as I’ve learned to
do. To pique the interest of the reader.”
Fine. Sandy gets one — now I get one! thought Tom wryly.
“Sorry, but I don’t follow you.”
“She’s been trying to drag that book rack all over the shop,” said
Murray loudly — from across the room.
“I did explain it to this — this clerk, Tom,” she retorted
with haughty indignation. “You can’t blame me for wishing to have my
books more prominently displayed. They are written with love, love on
every page.” She plucked xxxxxxxxxxxxxx |
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one of the
books from the rack and held it up before Tom’s eyes. Its bright, gaudy
cover pro- claimed:
TOM
SWIFT AND HIS
SPACE SOLARTRON
And suddenly it all came clear. Henrietta! “I understand. You’re the
nice lady who writes the fictionalizations,” declared the young
inventor. “The book series.”
“I am indeed, indeed I am,” she confirmed with pride. “As were my
dear late father and his father as well. Like your inventing, dear boy,
it is the great work of generations!”
Tom’s great-grandfather, whose name Tom bore, had made that name
famous indeed. His mechanical and electrical inventions, his airships,
warships, submarine-ships, and explorational hardships, had led the
young man into danger and high adventure. Whatever facts lay behind
those adventures had soon become entangled in a growing mythology as a
series of books, edifices of fiction raised upon a smattering of truth
and science, became popular with “science-minded boys” of several
generations.
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Tom knew that the Swift family — perhaps unwisely — had long ago sold
off the rights to the stories and their key “characters.” Swift
Enterprises had managed to retain the right to publish and distribute
the books, but their reissue, and the preparation of new ones based on
Tom’s own exploits in modern times, were still in the hands of something
called Odtaa Scienti-Fiction Authorship, Inc. And now Tom suddenly
remembered that the company was owned by the authors of the books — a
family of authors named Weidenhauser.
Taking the book and glancing at its cover, Tom mused, “This is the
one about how I rescued Dad and the space outpost.”
“And don’t forget that crooked attorney! Really, I do love writing
those sleazy, sarcastic villains.” Recharging herself with a gulp of
breath, she added: “Oh, that ending! — it still brings a tear to my
eyes.”
“Mine too,” Tom commented dryly.
“Now Tom, I do realize that my stories are not entirely... accurate,”
acknowledged Mrs. Weidenhauser. “I am not a scientist, of course,
although I do take care to consult regularly with a
gentleman friend of mine who is a real sci-
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entist. Well — he did
teach general science, in high school. Before he retired some years
ago.” She rushed on, “But these marvelous tales are not meant to
be newspaper reports. They inspire! Imagine how many young boys — girls
too, I suppose — have taken up science and engineering due to the
romance and excitement of the field, as portrayed here.”
“The romance and excitement of people getting hit on the head and
things blowing up.” Smiling, Tom slipped the book back in the rack.
“Well, Mrs. Weidenhauser, it’s nice to meet you.”
“I came here today to speak to you about something important, Tom.”
The woman paused for a long moment. “I know I did. How an- noying!
— my memory has become a bit chancy since I turned eighty-five...”
“If you think of it, you can — ”
She brightened. “I remember. The jokes!”
“Er — jokes?”
“Yes indeed.” She took a set of cards from her purse and held them up
in front of Tom’s eyes with quivering hand. “You see, I was speaking to
your communications official, that very sweet
man — what is his name?”
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“George Dilling?”
“I don’t think so. No. Perhaps. But I do telephone him now and then,
to hear of your latest adventures in science and space. He told me you
were about to be interviewed on television, and were to discuss a new
inven- tion.”
“Yes, tonight.”
Mrs. Weidenhauser smiled. “How nice. Well, you see, I have
decided it is time to branch out a bit in my writing endeavors. One must
expand, don’t you think? — just like the universe! But I am told
one must first develop what they call a ‘track record’. And thus I have
prepared a number of humorous remarks for you to salt into your
conversation tonight, to lighten up what might otherwise be...” She
suddenly grasped Tom’s wrist with apologetic earnestness. “I do
hope you’ll forgive my saying it, but your scientific accounts can be
just a bit dry, Tom. I rather agonize over the dialog at times.”
The young inventor politely suppressed a laugh. “I suppose you’re
right, ma’am. I’m not really much of a polished celebrity.”
|
|
She
pressed the note cards into his hand. “Oh, but you are. At least
on paper.”
Before parting from his creator, Tom promised he would try to work in
some of her material.
Finally arriving at the big office he shared with his father, he was
pleased to find that the two lead members of his engineering team, Hank
Sterling and Arvid Hanson, had arrived before him. “Find the problem?”
Tom asked.
They exchanged glances, and Hanson answered: “We think so.”
Tom found the glances disquieting. “Is it a problem problem?”
“It’s looking like a bigger problem than anyone could have guessed!”
|
|
CHAPTER 3
TODAY’S CRISIS IN SHOPTON
TOM was dismayed at Arv’s pronouncement. Yet somehow he was not
entirely surprised. The sinking feeling was all too familiar.
“Sabo- tage?”
“We’re not using the ‘s-word’ this time,” Hank Sterling replied
hastily. “Of course the day’s still young! The problem is technological,
but pretty strange. The disturbing thing is that we can’t be certain
just how far it goes.”
Tom nodded. “Hit me with it, guys.”
“Arv and I spent hours tracking the difficulty to one small component
in the sensor for the gravitex-array modulators,” explained Hank,
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|
showing
Tom some notes as Arv nodded. “And finally we narrowed it down to
something even smaller.”
Hanson spoke up. “Much, much smaller, boss. A single
microchip!”
Tom shrugged. “They do fail occasionally. We’ll replace it.”
But both engineers shook their heads. “It’s not that simple,”
declared Sterling grimly. “We yanked it and put it under your leptoscope
to examine its inner structure in detail. Tom, I know how this sounds,
but — ”
Arv completed the thought. “The silicon in the chip is being
eaten!”
The young inventor took a step back, not sure whether to frown
gravely or laugh aloud. “I see. Eaten by what?”
Hank grinned. “See, Arv? I told you he’d take it calmly. What a pro.”
Then he sobered. “Tom — you’ve seen microphotos of the synapses of
people who have Alzheimer’s disease, haven’t you? How the dendrites look
like they’ve been stripped down and chewed up? That’s what we saw on the
leptoscope screen.”
“In my professional judgment as an engineer of Swedish descent, what
you have here is an xxxxxxxxxxxxxx |
|
infestation of silicon-eating invisible termites,” pronounced Arv
Hanson. “Each one about the size of a molecule.”
Tom glanced at the flip-calendar on his desk. “Nope — not April 1st.”
“We’re putting it jokingly, Tom, but the phe- nomenon is real,” Hank
assured his young boss. “Come see for yourself.”
Tom had long since decided on a frown. “You saw nano-sized
termites?”
“Well, no,” Sterling admitted. “But it’s a pretty good way to
describe what we did see. The silicon-semicon grids have been
thrashed, broken up by jagged gaps that really do look like something
has been busy gnawing away at them.”
“Could it be some kind of acid?”
Arv quashed the idea. “It’s not diffuse; it’s a pinpoint effect.
Concentrated acid droplets just don’t get that small. If it is
some sort of chemical reaction, Hank and I have never run across
anything like it. But look, Tom, we haven’t yet told you the worst.”
Hank Sterling was in charge of the worst. “Whatever’s going
on, it’s spreading. The phenomenon has infected other
silicon-based xxxxxxxxxxxxxx |
|
microelements in adjacent components!” He explained that the
deterioration of the other components hadn’t yet reached the point of
failure. “But it may be just a matter of time.”
Shocked and awed, Tom sank down into his desk chair. “Do you have any
clue as to the mechanism of the infection — the process?”
“So far we don’t know any more than we’ve told you,” was Arv’s reply.
“The erosion of the silicon doesn’t seem to take place very rapidly. We
detected no change over several hours in the infected components, and
for all we know the chip that failed may have been deteriorating for
weeks or months.”
“Or days. The process may start slow, then accelerate exponentially,”
Sterling cautioned.
Tom snorted. “Don’t try to cheer me up, Hank!” The youth was silent
for several moments, taking deep draughts of thought. “If the phenomenon
really does spread like some sort of infection or infestation, it could
get passed along all through the plant — and on into the outside world!
Good gosh, imagine what could happen to our civilization if high-tech
micro- electronics became undependable.”
“Supremely talented as I am, even I would
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have a
hard time making a wrist-wearable computer out of vacuum tubes,”
nodded Arv Hanson, who was Enterprises’ chief maker of models and
miniature prototypes. “Man, you might as well try figuring a moon shot
trajectory with a slide rule!”
“Do they even make slide rules any more?” Tom mused. “I’ll
talk to Dad right away. But for now, fellows, we have to institute
quarantine measures as a precaution.” Tom directed them to keep the
exosuit in the test cube for observation, and the entire test chamber
sealed underground. “Also, please isolate that chip and the other
affected units.”
“Will do,” Hank promised. “We’ll keep ’em under glass. It’s mighty
lucky your leptoscope works through glass, Tom.”
Worried but trying to keep any sign of panic from his voice, Tom
immediately called his father at home. “It’s a very serious matter,
obviously,” observed the elder scientist. “And yet — what do we really
know? One chip shows internal decomposition of a very striking
form; several chips in the vicinity also show defects — but as of now we
can’t be certain xxxxxxxxxxxxxx |
|
that it’s even the same phenomenon at work. The test
chamber control units were all con- structed at the same time, you know.
All these components might have been drawn from a single bad lot.”
“That’s true, I guess,” conceded Tom. “Some problem at the supply
end. We can backtrack by the serial numbers.”
“Those components passed through many hands, son. The defect might be
due to some kind of impurity in the original ore.”
There was reassurance in Damon Swift’s voice. Tom expressed his
relief by chuckling. “Thanks for cooling me down. I was ready to alert
the authorities!”
Mr. Swift joined the self-amused relief. “Who would have come
charging in and shut down the entire plant. Now we’ll have a chance to
actually solve the puzzle — not just puzzle over it.”
Tom’s father ended the call by wishing his son good luck in that
evening’s interview. “Your mother and I will be watching, of course.”
Seven-thirty found the young inventor sharply dressed, pancaked,
outlined in eyebrow pencil, miked, and fidgeting in a swivel chair in a
small xxxxxxxxxxxxxx |
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TV studio
near the Shopton city limits. Consuela Flenck, petite and as slim as she
could plausibly engineer, sat two feet from the lanky youth’s kneecap.
“Welcome to ‘Today’s Crisis in Shopton’,” came booming from the
darkness, “with Connie Flenck and a live studio audience.” Tom
had seen the audience before the lights had gone down — several
cameramen, an audio technician, a childlike director, and a woman who
could have been Miss Flenck’s mother. All were alive.
“Our guest today needs no introduction. So I haven’t written one,”
declared the interview host to the amusement of a titter-generator
somewhere or other.
She turned to the unintroduced guest. “Tom, you’re
actually using one of your inventions right now, even as we speak.”
He nodded. “I sure am, Connie. Instead of reading from your prompter
screen over there, I have a contact lens in my left eye that displays
words in perfect focus, easy for me to read. It’s linked to a midget
computer in my — ”
Miss Flenck interrupted. “You needed prompting to say ‘I sure am,
Connie’?”
“No, I mean, I will be — ”
|
|
“Now
then. Something new and very big is about to come forth from the Brain
Factory on the other side of town. You call it an X-O suit. What does
the ‘X-O’ stand for?”
“Er, actually... it’s ‘exosuit’, as in exobiolo- gy.”
“All right. What do those letters mean in X-O biology?”
“It’s not letters — that is, it is letters, but not those
letters — well, two of them are, but — ” He stared helplessly. His
ocular mini-prompter offered no help. “To explain...”
“Please.”
“An exoskeleton is a rigid covering that certain insects use, in
place of bones, to support their bodies. But nowadays you hear it in
reference to man-made frameworks that a person might wear to
artificially enhance his strength, or to extend his reach. I’ve heard
them called human am- plifiers.”
“Mm-hmm. And now Swift Enterprises is coming out with one of these
‘humanplifying’ machines.”
Humanplifying? Tom hoped the mush-mouthy term wouldn’t catch
on — a hope doomed to dashing. “The exosuit has room for
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|
two
operators inside. The shell is extremely tough, its muscles are as
strong as any of our Swift robots, and its huge stride allows it to move
along at better than fifty miles per hour. Although it could have many
uses here on Earth, we’re thinking of it as a tool for human exploration
of other worlds.”
“So. Big and fast.” The woman smiled blandly. “Does that also
describe its inventor? — I mean, we can see that you’re fast.”
The mechanical audience ate it up and spat it back.
“I’m a little over six foot,” Tom replied, when he could. “The
exosuit is about 25 feet from head to foot, and with his extensible arms
up, you can add another 15 feet or so. As a matter of fact — ” Tom made
use of the joke that had been poised before his left eye since the
interview began. “Um, ‘the exosuit is so big that he gave his
girlfriend a basketball hoop as an engagement ring.’ ”
“The machine has a girlfriend?”
“Well, no — I’m just illustrating how big it is. Matter of fact, I’ve
nicknamed it Koku, after my great-grandfather’s shop assistant, who came
from a South American tribe of people who are unusually tall.”
|
|
“We’ve
all seen pictures of Tom Swift’s famous giant. What a life he had! Isn’t
it true, Tom, that Koku was basically a slave?”
The youth flushed angrily. “A slave? Absolutely not! He was
not only provided with free room and board, he was paid the same wages
as every one of — ”
“That was before the minimum wage law was instituted, of course. A
different world. Back in those days, speed meant faster than a
horse- car. Times have changed. Don’t you think?”
Rather than challenging Miss Flenck’s daring assertion about time,
Tom forced himself to cool down and, touching a hidden button, moved
along to his next scripted joke. “Our aircraft, such as my Flying Lab,
are the world’s fastest, Connie. Why, ‘you can lose both your luggage
and your lunch in just three minutes’!”
Miss Flenck stared at Tom curiously. “Yes. Well. What sort of power
does Koku run off of?”
“Atomic. You see, ‘lugging a really long ex- tension cord all the
way to Venus would be a problem.’ The exosuit uses one of my atomic
power capsules, called a neutronamo.”
“Tom, ‘neutronamo’ sounds like something
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|
you’d yell
jumping out of a plane.”
With a thin smile, the young inventor decided he had more than done
his duty by Henrietta Weidenhauser’s wit. “Seriously, Connie — ”
“I thought we were being serious!”
Hahahahahahah!
“...one reason I’m here tonight is to make an announcement about
the exosuit. To test it out, we’ve given ourselves a real-world
challenge. If Koku stumbles, everyone’s going to know about it!”
|
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CHAPTER 4
NO-PLAYER PIANO
CONSUELA FLENCK showed no surprise on her pancaked face. Leaning
forward in her chair, she put a petite hand to where her ear had been
prior to cosmetic rethinking. “We all know the importance of secrecy
these days, Tom. Just whisper it — I won’t tell a soul.”
“Aheh! Yeah. Well, our plan is to walk all the way across the
country, New York to Cali- fornia!”
“Now that’s quite a walk. For publicity?”
“Swift Enterprises doesn’t need publicity.” Tom had a brief image of
George Dilling shaking his head. “This is a real test of Koku’s basic
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|
capabilities over the long haul. We’ll be looking for opportunities to
make use of his various systems in a spontaneous way, as they come up en
route. Nothing will be planned in advance.”
“Will the exosuit be plastered over with decals, like a racing car?
You could turn quite a profit auctioning advertising space.”
“No. We never — ”
“And that’s it for our premier guest tonight, Tom Swift,” pre-empted
the host. “You’ve heard it here. Tom Swift and his human- plifying
exosuit! — stomping your way soon on the streets of Shopton.”
As the program went to a commercial for the local organ mart, which
was running a special on thyroid glands, a pert young girl rushed
forward to free Tom from his collar mike. “It’s so nice to see you
again,” she murmured.
“Have we met?”
“No, but we could.”
Standing, Connie Flenck offered the young inventor a limp, cool hand.
“Thanks so much, Tom. Till next time.” Their hands touched briefly and
she turned the laser of her attention elsewhere.
|
|
Tom’s
drive home from the studio was a frown on four wheels, interrupted by a
cellphone bleep. “Dan Perkins, Tom,” said the owner and editor of the
Shopton Evening Bulletin.
“Hi, Dan. You caught me on the — ”
“Figured you’d be driving home. I saw the show, Tom. Now don’t fret
about it. You’ll be avenged. It’s disgusting how the broadcast
media sensationalizes everything — the old gotcha game. Flenck, she’s
the worst. No principles. A piranha! Terrible kisser.”
Tom was puzzled as to how to respond. Was Enterprises’ one-upping
news stalker trying to be kind? He dismissed the bizarre thought
instantly. “Actually, I thought it went pretty well,” he said
hesitantly.
Perkins chuckled. “Right. Glad you can joke about it, my friend. I
was outraged on your behalf. I say: trust the print media! Says
so right on our website.”
“Okay, Dan. Thanks.”
When Tom arrived home, he was surprised to find the lights dimmed
funereally and only Sandy waiting up for him. “Mom and Dad went to bed a
little early,” she explained.
|
|
“They
saw the interview, though. Didn’t they?”
Sandy looked away. “Sure... I suppose they did.”
Tom knew he looked as pitiful as he felt. “I know I’m not a TV
personality, San. Those jokes...”
“Oh Tom.”
“I should keep the day job?”
“Stick to inventing. By the way,” she added, “Bashi called.”
Her brother nodded. “Same sentiments?”
“Ohhhh Tom. But she said to call her tomorrow morning when you
get a chance.” The girl paused, looking a bit resentful. “I gather
she thinks you need some kind of ego stroking. She said something
about my not being tactful. Hmmph!”
As the embarrassed young scientist-inventor began to drag himself
upstairs, he glanced back down. “And did ‘He’ have an opinion?”
“Yes ‘He’ did, Tomonomo, as a matter of fact,” she replied
pertly. “Which happens not to be any of your business!”
“Well,” said Tom, “I’m sure he’s seen a lot of comedy in his
long life.” He smiled. She didn’t. |
|
The
next morning Tom gave a call to Bashalli from one of his labs, and they
agreed to meet near noon at The Glass Cat coffeehouse, owned by her
older brother.
He had scarcely finished speaking to the young Pakistani
when the phone beeped with a call routed from outside. It proved to be
Henrietta Weidenhauser. In her thin, whispery voice, a voice that
suggested ancient yellowed parchments that had learned to speak, she
thanked her literary creation for making use of her materials on
television.
She concluded by suggesting that his timing needed “work.”
As he plonked down the receiver he heard the clack of cowboy boots in
the hallway. Right on time, he thought. And I need a little
cheering up! He hastened to seat himself on a chair across the lab,
leaning his head back so that his blond crewcut pressed against the
front of a padded boxlike device attached to the wall just behind him.
Chow Winkler entered with his usual morning snack for Swift
Enterprises executives and team leaders.
“Mornin’, Tom,” said the rotund
former range cook to his young friend. “Got some o’ them
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|
fritters you
like. Had yer
breakfast?”
“At home,” responded Tom with a hidden grin. “Say, Chow, isn’t ‘Home
On The Range’ one of your favorite tunes?”
Chow’s gaudy-hued shirt bunched in a shrug. “Where’d you get that
ideer, son? Even us Texans git tired o’ that old saw.” Seeing
Tom’s face fall, he continued quickly, “Wa-aal, now, not t’say it ain’t
a nice piece o’ music. How- come you asked?”
“Oh, I learned how to play it on the piano.” He gestured and Chow’s
baggy eyes followed. The cook noticed for the first time that a small
upright piano had been rolled against the far wall of the lab.
The westerner nodded. “Been doin’ yer practicin’ here, hunh?”
“Yep. Want to hear?”
“Shor would, boss.”
Instead of rising from his chair, Tom leaned back relaxedly, resting
his open palms on his knees, fingers spread wide. Suddenly Chow started
as piano music began to tinkle out from across the room! He swiveled in
surprise.
The bench in front of the upright was bare of life, but the keys on
the piano were moving xxxxxxxxxxxxxx |
|
visibly up
and down with no hand upon them. The tune plunked out was awkwardly done
and barely recognizable, but “Home on The Range” it was — and
inexplicable.
Chow turned back to Tom. “One o’ them m’chanical player pi-anees, is
it?”
“Nope!” replied the youth in languid satisfaction. “I’m playing it
myself, right now. For example, I can do this — ” A pair of notes
tinkled in the highest octave. “Or this — ” Another pair tinkled at the
low end.
Chow’s eyes narrowed. “Guess it’s one o’ them jokes you ’n Bud
Barclay like t’play on me. You got a ree-mote c’ntrol on you?”
Tom held up both hands, palms wide. “See one?” Even as he spoke, the
piano echoed the rhythm of his words.
Chow scratched his head, looking perplexedly back and forth between
instrument and performer. “Guess I give up. Say now, you got Buddy Boy
hisself a-hidin’ inside it?”
“Not at all, pardner.” The piano clunked out a last note. Tom stood
up and stretched. “But you’re right about it being a joke.”
“Uh-huh. Figgers.”
“Still, it also gave me a chance to give another
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|
test to an invention of mine.” He slapped his friend on his broad back.
“Had to see if I could sneak the gimmick past a shrewd cowpoke.”
Chow beamed. “Unnerstan’ that! So tell me about it.”
“I’m calling it the neural impulse intellitor.”
“Got a short version fer that one?”
“Just call it the neurintel,” laughed Tom. “It’s a sort of
remote-control system I’m developing for use in the exosuit.”
“Right — that there human-firin’ exer-thing.” The Texan added,
“Watched you on th’ TV last night.”
Tom paused but refused to let the reminder sour his mood. “Er —
right. Chow, you remember Ole Think Box?”
The Texan chuckled. “Shor do! That’s the feller from space who
couldn’t chew gum.”
“Our energy-brain visitor from Planet X. But Ole Think Box wasn’t the
fellow himself, but the robotic container we designed to allow him to
perceive the Earth environment and interact with it.”
“That’s right. Looked like a right big fireplug t’ these old eyes.”
|
|
“It
wasn’t very stylish,” agreed Tom; “but it worked. We’ve developed some
other things from that basic sense simulation technology since then,
including the cortex-‘reader’ in the thoughtograph imager.”
Chow scratched the plain of barren skin that covered his own cortex.
“Guess that’s th’ antenna that reads-off yer brain waves.”
“You could say that. Anyway, the neurintel is another step. It’s
tuned to scan certain parts of the central nervous system for patterns
of nerve activation that indicate...” He spent a moment searching for a
term that Chow would grasp right off — but failed. “Well, it’s called a
readiness wave.”
“Wa-aal now — I think I heard o’ that,” stated the cook.
“Ain’t that what they do at football games?”
“It has another meaning too,” was the careful, polite response. “It’s
a spreading pattern in the cortex and nervous system that happens just
before you start to move your muscles — to reach for something, for
example, or to press a button. See?”
“Guess I do. Before ya do it?”
|
|
“By a fraction of a second.”
“So
what happens if y’ change yer mind?”
“I don’t know. I suppose there’s a second signal — disregard previous
message! At any rate,” Tom continued, “the neurintel’s electronic
sensors are able to detect the readiness wave and to interpret it. In
other words, they can tell what a person is about to do with his
muscles.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And then it does it for you!”
“Uh-huh. So’s you don’t hafta.”
“Exactly.”
“Now, son,” said Chow with a frown. “Don’t mean t’say a discouragin’
word, but ain’t that sorta the height o’ bein’ lazy? Jest what’re
yew thinkin’, thet folks need to rest their blame button-pusher
muscles?”
The pained, pointed remark made Tom laugh heartily. “You’ve got a
point! But even with all the advances in artificial intelligence and
face-recognition technology, our human reactions to the unexpected can
still be quicker and more precise, or more delicate, than a robot’s.
That could be important for planet explorers.
“And there might be a practical advantage to
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|
being able to do some
simple routine sorts of things
with your brain, by trained habit let’s say, while your hands are left
free for — well, for whatever hands do best. You could learn a sort of
‘muscular code,’ if you see what I mean. When it’s perfected, a person
could train himself to use it like an extra hand, just as we can do one
thing with our right and something else with our left at the same time.”
“Guess that’s so,” Chow conceded. “Druther use my hands t’ shape the
dough than t’ switch on the stovetop.” As a further thought struck him,
he asked: “So now — you got your brain all trained to play the ol’
upright?”
Tom explained that Arvid Hanson had rigged up a set of tiny motors in
the piano console to depress the keys from within. “The neurintel itself
is inside this box on the wall, and the sensors, which have only a short
range, are inside the panel I was leaning my head against. As I ‘tried’
to move my finger muscles, the neurintel transmitted an ordinary
remote-control signal to the piano — and it played!”
“Didn’t see any twitch in your fingers, though.”
“No. Feedback from the machine suppresses
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|
overt
movements of the selected muscles. Our bodies do
the exact same thing every night, while we sleep.”
“Ceptin’ fer dogs. They allus got their paws twitchin’ when they
dream about chasin’ rabbits. Funny thing t’see.” Sufficiently impressed
for one morning, Chow turned to leave, then half-turned back. “Oh, and
boss? Meant t’ say — about the show last night — ”
Tom groaned slightly. “I apologize.”
Chow shrugged. “Hunh? Fer what? I thought you did jest fine! Wa-aal,
one thing, though — a person has gotta be a mite careful with how yuh
say things. Don’t get your feelin’s hurt now, son, but some o’ them
things you ’as saying made me laugh out loud!”
The young inventor worked for hours on the details of his exosuit,
pondering, back some- where in his mind, the worrisome matter of the
silicon infection. He tried to remind himself not to fret. “So far the
problem’s only shown up in a few of the chips in the test chamber
equipment,” he murmured. “No trace of it anywhere else — such as the
exosuit.”
As planned, Tom drove to The Glass Cat around noon to visit Bashalli
and receive her xxxxxxxxxxxxxx |
|
irony-tinged sympathies, chatting with her as she tended
the lunch crowd. As noontime slipped into afternoon, she said to her
friend, “Moshan is taking the next shift, Thomas, while I go to the bank
with a cash deposit. Will you join me for more of this pleasant banter?”
“Sure, Bash,” grinned the youth. “A little head-clearing banter
sometimes leads to big ideas.”
“So I am told by Bud. I shall be his temporary substitute.”
The twosome strolled the block to the smallish World Commerce Bank of
Shopton, enjoying the sun and the fresh breeze from Lake Carlopa. As
they stood together in line, another line-stander, elderly but clearly
in a jaunty mood, nodded at them. “Sweet day in Shopton,” he said.
“It is lovely,” agreed Bashalli.
But three seconds later, sweetness had flown and loveliness had
turned ugly. The same man yelped out “Fire! Fire!” at the top of
his lungs as a thick puff of smoke surged over the tellers’ countertop!
|
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CHAPTER 5
BANK BUSINESS
THE EARLY afternoon banking crowd was sparse, but proved themselves
equal to the challenge. They panicked. The several tellers stumbled
backwards away from the counter, the customers sprinted or tottered
toward the walls, and only the armed guard approached the source of the
smoke from his post at the door.
“Stay calm, everyone!” called out the bank president, Mr. Ablate,
darting from his office in pursuit of his stomach. “There is no danger!
We’re federally insured!”
Tom Swift and Bashalli Prandit stood their
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|
ground in the middle of
the tiled floor. “Good night! If
I had one of my repelexes — ”
“But you don’t,” interrupted the black-haired Pakistani. “It seems to
be just a little fire, though,” she added. Then she added more:
“In fact, do you see any flame? I see only smoke.”
Suddenly a shot rang out! — as shots seem always to do. An
accompanying voice did not so much ring as dribble out. “All right,
everybody, relax. Tellers, stay back from the counter. No
button-pushing, please. Not even with your feet.”
It was the elderly man who had spoken pleasantly to Tom and Bash. He
brandished a pistol in his hand, like someone who thought he knew how to
use it well enough to do at least a little damage. “Now listen,
ladies and germs, there’s no fire, just a little tiny smoke-maker,
absolutely harmless — and it’s used up, anyway. Still, it sure got the
tellers to back away from their alert buttons, didn’t it, folks? Excited
the security guard, even brought my old friend Hyman Ablate out from his
office before he could phone anyone. Oh, speaking of phones — ” The man
unpocketed a cellphone and set it down on the countertop. “Before you
good xxxxxxxxxxxxxx |
|
people start fumbling with your speed-dial buttons,
look at this little gizmo of mine. Won’t take your picture or call
Grandma, but it does beam out static interference to keep other
phones from making a connection. Not bad! — if you’re a bank robber.” He
rotated toward the guard. “Naw, forget it, you just set that gun down,
Barney, and slide ’er my way.” The crook-wannabe winked at the crowd.
“Not that he could hit much after his breakfast round of Whiskey Sours.”
“Hey!” grumped the guard indignantly. “My doctor says I gotta
stay relaxed!”
“It’s working. Your liver’s just about fallen asleep.”
“I suppose you want us to lie down,” snapped one irritated
woman.
“No,” replied the man. “Just sit down, I guess. Keep your
hands out where I can see ’em. Form a half-circle, like when you did
ghost stories at camp.” As the nervous crowd complied, the man strode up
to the main door, fixing it shut with a metal rod that he had hidden in
the sleeve of his neighborly cardigan. “Some- one’ll come along and get
rattled soon enough, but this’ll only take a few minutes.”
|
|
“Augustus Tenney!” pronounced the bank president
thunderously. “Do you really imagine you can get away with robbing this
bank? Robbing your friends and neighbors, who have entrusted their
hard-earned wages to this secure institution, with its friendly tellers,
high interest rates, and free checking?”
“I’m making the speeches today, Hyman,” responded Tenney with
a chuckle. “You know, folks, when he says ‘high interest rates’, he
means the rates on the loans he makes.” Holding the gun casually,
as if its barrel were a microphone, he began to rove around the circle,
an expression of merriment creasing his face. “Who do we have here
today? Anybody here from Iowa? Well look — Rick Fourth! His family has a
street named after ’em. Here’s Sammy Bondoola, a real idiot. — no,
don’t say anything, Sammy, I’m just quoting your father.”
Tom jolted slightly as Bashalli giggled, and Mr. Tenney turned in
their direction with a wide smile. “And here we have today’s
celebrity guest, young Tom Swift, along with his wink-wink girlfriend
from that hippie coffeehouse down the block.” He took a step closer.
“Just kidding. The Glass Cat offers a wide range of
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flavorful coffees at a very affordable price.”
“I thought you looked familiar,” Bash said. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.” The man now commenced a rambling speech to his
nervous, bemused, attentive audience. It seemed the time had come to
speak of many things. He made pithy comments about wealth and poverty,
local politicians, weather, taxes, gun control, motion pictures, the New
York Police Department, internet spam, and rap music. “And as for that
great big concrete box of discounts over at the edge of town, I say:
what about the woodlands? Is cheap hairspray worth the massacre of
hundreds of homeless squirrels? You tell me, ‘Mr. Diveen’, who
used to be known as Herbert Kropp of Sulphronia, Arkansas! I’m not
saying you’re not a good stylist, Kropp, but whatever happened to the
American barber?”
“Mr. Tenney — is it Augustus? — you have a lot to say, but scaring
people is no way to get them to really listen to you,” said Tom gently.
“True enough,” the man replied. “And it’s Gus. But don’t assume I
expect to make any changes in this world. A little late in the day for
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that. I’m
just here to — ” He paused, then grinned, and his grin became a laugh.
“Why, I’m here to rob a bank! Better get on with it. Time’s
almost up.”
Tenney emptied some money from a cash drawer into a plastic bag, then
headed for the front door, which he unfastened. “Well, everybody, I’ve
said my piece. Big clock on the wall says it’s time to go. Listen,
you’ve been a great audience, and I do thank you for your time and your
kind attention. Meant a lot to me. Sure did.”
With a nod, he left the bank.
“Crazy,” muttered Sammy, the real idiot.
“Do you know him, Mr. Ablate?” asked Bashalli as she regained her
feet.
“Know him? Not really, no. The man lives in a house trailer!” The
bank president sniffed contemptuously. “Of course I try to be
friendly to our customers. This is a bank with a friendly face. I sent
him a cheese log last Christmas.” As a teller approached and said
something in low tones, Mr. Ablate shook his head. “No need to use the
expensive alarm system we just put in, Rita. I shall assume we
can contact the police directly.”
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“Use
the land line,” urged Rita.
“Do I look stupid?” he huffed. “It’s Sammy Bondoola who’s the idiot
around here.”
“It just happened the one time,” protested the youth.
As Tom and Bash hurried from the building a police car roared past,
followed, unexpectedly, by an ambulance. “They must think someone is
injured,” said the girl.
Tom frowned. “But they’re not stopping.”
The vehicles screeched around a corner, and Tom and Bashalli joined
some other pedes- trians who were trotting after them curiously.
The vehicles stopped next to where a small crowd was growing. A
white-haired figure lay spread-eagled on the sidewalk next to a
spread-eagled bag of cash. “He just started gasping, and then he fell
down,” a woman was explaining to a police officer, cellphone in her
hand.
Bashalli gasped too. “My word! It’s — ”
Tom touched the responding officer’s elbow. “He just robbed the bank,
officer. His name is Tenney.”
“Well, he’s not nobody no more,” said the ambulance medic who was
bending over the
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body.
“He’s gone.”
“But — but — ” objected Bashalli, “with those electrical
shocker-things you use — ”
“TV lover, huh. This guy isn’t fibrillating, lady, he’s just
plain dead.”
“He was fine just minutes ago,” Tom told the officer.
“He’s still fine,” shrugged the officer. “He’s just not here.”
Tom whirled as a familiar voice called out, “Tom! Bash!”
“Bud!”
“Just got back,” panted the dark-haired, muscular youth as he came
running up. “So what do I see right off? Tom and Bash running after an
ambulance!”
The two gave a concise, breathless account of the bank business to
their friend. “And now the guy’s dead? Jetz!” exclaimed Bud
Barclay in amazement.
“And it was just the other night that Sandra spoke of ‘weird all the
time,’ was it not?” noted Bashalli.
Hoping to investigate the bizarre incident further, Tom asked Bud to
run Bash back to her shop in his red convertible, parked recklessly
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somewhere
in the vicinity of a curb. But before they could leave, an unfamiliar
voice made Tom look up. “Tom, Bud — good luck!” It came from a
nondescript figure in the crowd, who waved.
“Who’s that?” Bud inquired.
The young inventor shrugged. “A well-wisher.”
“Perhaps a television viewer who thinks Tom needs it,” stated
Bash dryly.
Tom sped to the Shopton PD police station and sought out Captain
Rock, a longtime friend of Tom and his father. “Already heard all about
it,” Rock said. “Just about everyone in the bank called the station as
soon as their cells got up and running. It’s just unbelievable, Tom.” He
paused to shake his head. “Unbelievable! Barney Ferlands back on the
bottle again. Dinny dan doh, that poor cocker spaniel of his.”
Tom inquired whether the culprit, Augustus Tenney, had any sort of
reputation with the police. “Nothing criminal,” was the reply. “A pretty
nice guy, matter of fact. Lived in Shopton all his life. Wife passed on
some years ago, but
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he’s got
children out there somewhere. I guess I’ll have to be the one who calls
them.”
“Was he
some sort of recluse?” Tom asked. “Older people can develop — problems.”
“Yeah. So can young guys like me,” snorted the officer. “I never
heard anything about him having mental lapses, if that’s what you’re
driving at. He wasn’t a shut-in or recluse, either — went shopping,
talked to his neighbors, took vaca- tions, normal as anybody.”
The youth said frowningly, “What a strange occurrence. He seemed more
interested in talking to us than in robbing the bank. Good night, that
small amount of money he took hardly justified the effort!”
“And then a block away, down he goes,” mused Rock. “Guess old Shopton
was just next in line.”
Tom was puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“What, you haven’t read about it? Tom, I’m bettin’ our fair burg has
just been hit by the Nonsense Wave!”
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CHAPTER 6
XENOCULOUS POSSIBILITIES
“I’M SORRY,” responded Tom Swift. “Did you say — nonsense wave?”
“Sure did,” nodded Captain Rock. “You don’t know what it is?”
“Isn’t it something they do at football games?”
The man chuckled. “Gotta remember that. No, my friend, it’s what the
papers have started calling a series of very peculiar events taking
place across the country — city to city, running north up the Atlantic
states. Guess it’s mostly back page stuff so far. Little humorous
stories.”
“Tell me about it, won’t you?” urged the
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young
inventor.
Rock shrugged. “Each one’s different as far as the details. The only
thing that really ties ’em up is just the fact that they’ve all been
bank robberies pulled by ordinary citizens, not pros. Coincidence.”
“I’ve learned to be a little skeptical when coincidences come too
thick, Captain,” ob- served Tom with a smile.
“Good policy. Well now, this one’s number six. Priors in Fort
Lauderdale, Charleston, Richmond, Trenton, and just a couple days ago in
Syracuse. All of them spaced out since the first of the year.”
Tom rubbed his chin. “Then this would be the first time there’ve been
two robberies in the same state. And also — all the others have been big
cities. Shopton isn’t.”
“That I’d definitely agree with,” said Captain Rock. “But I
suppose the news people will roll it in with the others, to make a
better story.”
“I’m still not clear on why they call it a Nonsense Wave.”
“Oh, well... Now I’m gonna have to dredge up a few items from my
memory, Tom. They’ve all been just as strange and senseless as this
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Tenney business. They get the customers in a helpless position, then do
things that aren’t so much dangerous as off the wall. First robbery, the
guy stripped off his clothes — every stitch, interested onlookers
reported, and he wasn’t exactly a gym-goer — and ran out the door that
way, money bag in hand. Let’s see — a lady acted out a scene from a
current movie. A teenage boy sang songs like one of those Las Vegas
lounge guys. The Trenton fellow dumped a gallon of blue paint over the
head of a customer. The old lady in Syracuse just told jokes — dirty
ones, they say.”
“That’s terrible!”
“Actually, they were pretty good.”
“But what’s the point? The connection?”
“There is no connection, Tom. Silly things like this happen
all the time, but sometimes, on a slow day, the news guys pick it up and
run with it. It’s just people. Never underestimate the
eccentricity of the human race.”
Tom shrugged. “I don’t. But Captain — don’t you think there are
a few common threads here? You said these are plain citizens without
records, stealing negligible amounts while... I don’t know — it almost
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forcing people to
watch them do things they’ve always wanted to do but haven’t dared.”
“A real captive audience! Okay, I’ll concede the point,” declared
Rock. “And if you really want to push it, I guess there’s something
else, too. Of the six bank robbers, three were dead, of natural
causes, within twenty-four hours — including our Mr. Tenney!”
“Natural causes,” Tom mused. “I can’t make anything of that.”
“No one can. Let it go, Tom,” urged the older man.
He’s right, Tom thought, rashly and all-too- hastily, as he
left the station. For once this nonsense has nothing to do with
Enterprises — or with me!
The attempted bank robbery was all over the local papers for days,
but Tom set it aside as he made preparations for his test-trek across
the country in Koku. As always, his best pal would be by his side.
“What’s the actual itinerary, genius boy?” asked Bud. “Have you
mapped it all out? I suppose we’ll be stalking along the major
high- ways.”
“We can’t,” Tom explained in reply. “The
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legal
department has had to get all kinds of permits and permissions to do
what we want to do, and we had to agree to keep clear of major
thoroughfares and big-city streets, to prevent traffic jams and, er,
stepping on people. We’ll be crossing some national parks, federal
reserves, and military bases, though — even an Indian reservation!” He
added that, with some effort, he had gained permission to invade a few
towns along the way to test, with gentle care, Koku’s superhuman
abilities.
“Man! So where does this jaunt end up, Tom? Hey — how ’bout San
Francisco? We could stay with my folks!” enthused the young pilot.
Tom grinned but said, “No-can-do this time, flyboy. We’ll cross into
California through the desert south of the mountains and end up on the
El Toro Marine Base, on the coast near San Diego.”
“Assuming that silicon bug doesn’t stop you,” Bud noted.
The comment brought a shadow to the face of the young inventor.
“There’s no trace of a problem in the exosuit, but we still don’t know
the cause of the phenomenon. The leptoscope
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doesn’t
show anything unusual, nor the Swift
Spectroscope.”
“Have you thought of this? — Maybe it’s one of those micro-robots,
the nano-things you’ve dealt with that are smaller’n germs. Saboteurs
always keep up with the latest.”
“We checked out the possibility right away. So far it doesn’t look
like the answer. Anyway, pal,” continued Tom, “you and I and Koku will
be ‘stepping off’ sometime tomorrow.”
“Not too early, I hope!”
After an affectionate chuckle, Tom said: “You know, pal, I haven’t
really had a chance to ask you — how did things go last week, spending
time with those old buds of yours?”
The present bud winced slightly. “It was okay... I guess. People sure
can change over just a few years. Soupo’s married — that’s what he calls
it —, Bunk has a degree in, get this, medi- eval literature; and
Chad owns a bar down- town. Good night, were they ever dull!”
“You don’t suppose they might have been a little — envious?”
“Yeah. Green! So what’d they think I’d do with my life, hang around
Fisherman’s Wharf?”
“Instead, you went to the moon — and Mars!”
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