TOM SWIFT AND
HIS GIANT ROBOT

CHAPTER 1



 

A SHADY DEAL

“EXCUSE ME, sir. Are you Mr. Swift?”
    Tom Swift looked up from his ravioli dinner at the young girl in the baby-blue waitress outfit. “That’s me,” he replied, wondering who had recognized him.
    The waitress smiled prettily. “That man over there wanted me to ask you if you could drop by his table. His little boy would really like an autograph.” She nodded toward a table across the restaurant dining room, where a family sat enjoying a night out—a father and mother and their two children, a teenage girl and a boy who looked to be about ten years old.
    “I’ll be happy to,” Tom said. “I was done with my meal anyway.”
    The waitress bent closer to Tom’s ear. “Um,  xxxxxxxxxxxxx

I hope you won’t mind my asking, but—are you somebody famous?” She stifled an embarrassed giggle. “Are you, like—on television?”
    Tom shook his head. “I’m just well-known in my business, that’s all.”
    The waitress seemed to lose interest. “Uh-huh. And you look so young, too. I thought you were just another teenager, like we get around here.”
    In truth, Tom Swift was a teenager, eighteen years old. He was also something of an in- venting prodigy, bearer of a famous name in science and invention—his great-grandfather’s. But already he had begun to make a name for himself, with daring and spectacular trips through the air, under the sea, and even into outer space, all during a period of months.
    Strangely enough, outside his home town of Shopton in the state of New York, Tom usually went unrecognized. His best friend Bud had opined that Tom “looked like everybody’s next door neighbor,” not like an international celebrity. And that theory was as good as any.
    Now, however, it seemed he had been spotted. Drawing a pen from his jacket, Tom rose and approached the indicated table, smiling.
    But to his great surprise, the woman and the two children filed past him on the way. The xxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

man was left sitting alone as Tom reached the table.
    “I, er, understood your son wanted—”
    Tom stopped in mid-sentence, at a loss for words. The man at the table gave him a friendly glance and then resumed eating, vaguely gesturing that Tom should have a seat.
    One of the chairs slid out a few inches. The man was pushing it with his foot. Uneasily, Tom sat himself down.
    “Tom Swift,” said the man, gazing first at a meatball and then up at Tom. “Thank you for joining me. It was evidenced you had finished your dinner.”
    “Yes,” Tom said. “Didn’t your son—?”
    The man interrupted him. “An actor. I found him at a local dinner theater. He’s got quite a singing voice. The girl and the woman are actors too. I paid union scale, by the way.”
    Tom frowned. “What’s this all about?”
    A grin creased the man’s heavy, leathery face.  “Distraction. I thought if you recognized me right off, you’d make for the door.”
    “I don’t recognize you.”
    “I’m Nicholas Stennard. How does that grab you?”
    “It doesn’t,” responded the young inventor.  “Have we met?”

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

    Stennard laughed. “You’d better hope haven’t! But I’m better known by my nom de penitentiary, Nicky Ammo.”
    Tom gasped involuntarily. Nicky Ammo!
    “Yeah,” the man continued, “big bad Nicky Ammo, the gangster.”
    Tom drew back in his seat. “I’m not sure we ought to be talking, Mr. Ammo,” he said.
    “We probably shouldn’t be,” agreed Nicky.  “But here we are, Tom.”
    “I thought you were—”
    “In the pen? I was. Eight years. Put on some weight, lost some hair. Then the governor of the state in which I was unjustly incarcerated saw the light and commutered my sentence.”
    Tom nodded, grimly ironic. “I’ll bet you have persuasive friends.”
    “Let’s cease lobbing bon mots and get on with business.” Nicky leaned back, fixing Tom in an icy gaze. “There’s something I want you to do for me, Tom. Name your price.”
    “I doubt that there’s any sort of business Swift Enterprises could engage in with you,” Tom coolly observed.
    Nicky nodded slowly, calmly, seeming completely unruffled. “And yet—you do love xxxxxxxxxxxxx

nosing out scientific discoveries. And this thing has science written all over it, kid. Plus, let me assuage you, what I’m about to ask you—what you’re going to accept—is completely legal, moral, ethical. Whatever. It’s even nice.” As Tom studied him, Ammo added: “Now, can you deny you’re a little interested?”
    The blond, slender youth sighed. “What do you want with me, Mr. Ammo?”
    The mobster now flashed a self-satisfied smile. “I want you to get a certain monkey off my back, kid. Namely, a dead one!”
    “I guess I don’t understand mob lingo.”
    “Oh, I mean it like I say it. I’m being haunted. I want you to make it go away.”
    Tom glanced around the dining room. Who among these innocent-looking people worked for Nicky Ammo—and could pose a problem if Tom tried to bolt for the exit? “Mr. Ammo, the problem you’re having sounds more medical than scientific.”
    The man took a deep breath. His face assumed a peculiar expression, a sort of ironic smile that reached only about halfway across his lips—a chilling effect. “Perhaps you’ll do me the courtesy of hearing me out. Fair enough?”
 

    “All right.”
    “All right then. You should realize that it’s not only the law that sometimes can’t tell the innocent from the guilty. It also happens to guys on the other side. Now I’m a pleasant sort of guy, myself. I happen to have a family, a real family, nothing like those rented refugees from old TV you saw earlier. But a person in my line of work gets a reputation. Sometimes it helps to play up that reputation, to let people think you’re a little bit wild—henceforth the nickname, which I bestowed upon myself. Gives me respect.”
    “I’ll bet,” said Tom.
    “And the point is that some of my… business competitors… have got it into their heads that when one of their colleagues goes missing— permanently—I must be to blame. You see how unfair life can be to the poor businessman?”
    Tom nodded. “I’ve often thought so.”
    “Which is why I got sent up. But that’s water over the bridgework, you know? I say, let bygones be. Okay?”
    “Okay.”
    “There was this poor slob I knew, name of Pins Zoltan. One of life’s losers. Had himself an accident about ten years ago.”
    “The permanent kind?”

 

    Nicky chuckled. “So who knows? It’s only been ten years. But I tell you frankly, I suspect he’s re-entered the food chain through the cellar door, if you catch my drift. Now I hear tell some of Pins’s buddies are nursing a grudge against me, ’cause when Pins vacated this good green world of ours, he took some information with him that would be of profit to those boys.”
    “They may even imagine that you acquired the information from Pins prior to his departure,” said Tom.
    “You know, kid, I think you just may be right about that,” replied Nicky. “Anywise, they got this grudge. And I happen to think that’s behind these phenomenoleum.”
    “A ghost?”
    The gang boss leaned forward. “I’ll tell you, it’s weird stuff. I’m drivin’ along, see, not even thinking about the late Pins Zoltan—if he is late, that is—when, bang! I see him!”
    Tom shook his head impatiently. “See him how?”
    “How do you see things?” snorted Nicky. “I see him with my eyes, these two eyes that I got!”
    “Then I guess he’s not dead after all.”
    “Oh, he’s—my intuitions tell me he’s quite xxxxxxxxxxxxx

the deceased. And beside that, he’s not acting like a live person anyway. He floats in the air in front of my car!”
    There was silence for a moment as Nicky Ammo chased down, speared, and swallowed a meatball.
    After a moment Tom inquired, “How does he look—other than dead?”
    “Don’t you get patronizing with me, Swift!” Nicky growled. “From what I can see, old Pins looks pretty good, just like himself. Here I am, doin’ fifty or sixty or whatever, and there he is, just floatin’ along about thirty feet ahead, up in the middle of the air. No wings on him, but he sure keeps the pace.”
    “Does he say anything?”
    “Naw, not a peep. He just stands there, facin’ me, sort of looking me in the eye. Maybe five, ten seconds, and then he’s just not there—gone wit’ the wind!”
    “I see,” said the young inventor, intrigued despite himself. “I don’t really believe in ghosts, but some reports of paranormal sightings are hard to account for. How often has this hap-pened?”
    “Hey, now we’re talking!” exclaimed Nicky. “I seen him maybe six times over the last year or so.” xxxxxxxxxxxxx

    “Where?”
    “Different places, but always when I’m driving, and always at night. Generally speaking, it’s over in the next county, where I got my home. And by the way, it’s not just in one car, but several different ones—even one I rented.”
    “That’s a clue.” Tom nodded thoughtfully. “It’s not some kind of gimmick inside your car, then.”
    The man shook his head. “You think I didn’t think of that? Nothin’! And it’s happened twice when somebody’s been along with me, and they saw it too!”
    Tom gaped at this. “Others have seen it?”
    “Like I said.” Nicky drummed his fingers on the tabletop. The rough tough mobster was frightened! “So that’s the deal, Tommy Swift. You investigate this thing with your science detectors and your cameras and stuff. And then exterminate it! Do that, and I’ll give you a million bucks, maybe two—plus expenses.”
    “And if I don’t?”
    Ammo leaned forward again, ominously.  “Then—I won’t!”     

CHAPTER 2



 

SPECTRAL CROWS

 




THE RESTAURANT in which this amazing exchange was taking place was called the Tenderly Neapolitan Kitchen, and the small town that boasted the establishment was called Tenderly, New Mexico.
    Tom Swift had come to New Mexico on scientific business, to test out a remarkable new invention. The response-locus controller, or relotrol, was an electronic “brain” capable of learning from changing conditions. Linked to a remote-control setup, the relotrol was crucial to Tom’s current project, the development of an ultra-strong walking robot to be used in environments of intense radiation. As the relotrol would be built into the body of the robot, it was xxxxxxxxxxxxx

necessary to test whether the device could function in spite of the heavy radioactive emissions that would jam or knock out ordinary control equipment.
    For experiments of this sort, Swift Enterprises’ newest facility, an isolated nuclear research station in the New Mexico desert, seemed made to order. The gray, sprawling complex, primarily structured of concrete and steel, had received the nickname the Citadel even before completion. Tom had a small apartment on the facility grounds, and had been staying there for several days. This evening he had decided to drive the nineteen miles to Tenderly, the nearest settlement, for dinner—as a result running into this baffling ghost story.
    “So what do you say, kid?” asked Nicky Ammo.
    “First tell me how you figured I’d be here tonight,” demanded Tom. “What made you sure enough to hire those actors?”
    Ammo laughed softly. “Sure? I wasn’t sure. But I happen to have a lot of fiduciary fertilizer to spread around, know what I mean? So when I got word from some of my old friends that this big-dealious kid inventor was having a sojourn at that cement city out in the desert, I got my act

together. Me and my crew sat down here just a few minutes ago; that’s how long it took to go around and pick up my pre-selected family after Raul— he’s the guy over at the register— paged me. I figured you’d come into town eventually.”
    “Clever,” Tom commented. “That is, if you’re the sort of person who’ll do anything to avoid just asking in the normal way. But anyway, I suppose I’m interested enough to look into it.” Ammo’s face settled into a self-satisfied look which dropped away when Tom added: “But there are a few conditions.”
    “Like what?”
    “First, no pressure—from you, or anyone else. I’m in the middle of working on a project, and nothing must interfere with that.”
    Ammo frowned but said, “Fair enough.”
    “Second, I insist that you let our chief of plant security, Harlan Ames, investigate what you’re up to. That may mean nothing more than contacting the authorities. But I won’t be a party to anything—”
    “Sounds like you don’t exactly trust me, kid,” Ammo interrupted. “But that’s good. I wouldn’t trust me either. So it’s okay. Anything else?”
    Tom nodded. “One thing. Don’t call me kid, xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Nicky!”
    Tom left the restaurant bearing Nicky Ammo’s promise that he would telephone Tom at the Citadel, or in Shopton, and arrange for a suitable time for the two of them to get together to examine Ammo’s several cars, and the stretches of road on which the mysterious figure had been seen. As he approached his small sports car, he noticed the young waitress standing a ways away and nodded at her. On impulse, Tom called out:
    “Great performance! I was completely convinced!”
    She returned a toothy smile. “You should see me down at the Nugget Grill and Family Theatre!”
    As Tom drove the lonely stretch back to the Citadel, he went over the conversation in his mind. What would it be like, he wondered, if I saw something floating ahead in the head-light beams?
    The next morning, as Tom walked across the grounds of the Citadel toward the facility’s airstrip, a distant figure waved at him and came trotting his way.
    “Bud!” Tom called out with pleasure. “Not staying in San Francisco?”

 

    Athletic, dark-haired Bud Barclay, Tom’s closest pal, had been spending some time with his parents in the city by the bay, where he had grown up. “Got tired of it,” he replied. “Too much charm! And now they tell me you’re  hitting the stratosphere before breakfast!”
    “I’ve already had breakfast,” Tom laughed,  “and where I’m heading—and you too, if you want to—is the ionosphere.”
    The two friends strolled through the already- warm morning sunshine to a small high-altitude jet that had been made ready for Tom’s use.
    “Haven’t flown one of these before,” Bud remarked.
    “Which is exactly why I’m taking the controls this time,” said Tom. Knowing how avidly Bud loved flying, Tom added apologetically,  “Besides, flyboy, I need some time behind the stick too, or I’ll lose my edge.” Bud nodded but gave Tom an airy look that seemed to say, Okay—but I’ll be watching you!
    Soon the little craft was charging its way higher and higher into the bright New Mexico sky.
    “Hey, Tom, take it easy! We can stand only so many G’s, you know.”

 

    “We? I feel just fine,” responded the young inventor suavely. “But if you insist.” He pushed forward on the wheel of the sharply climbing jet plane, flattening its steep arc. He had just climbed through the relatively thick air of the troposphere, home of the clouds, and was now above the lower edge of the stratosphere. Leveling off the V-winged craft, Tom grinned at the protesting voice from his friend seated directly behind him. “What’s the matter, pal? Seventy thousand feet too much for you?”
    “Hey, that’s nothing when you’ve been halfway to the moon!” Bud joked. “But I think my stomach has gotten a little wimped-out on that rich San Francisco food.”
    “It’s all for science,” Tom said, chuckling.
    Bud knocked a knuckle against Tom’s flight helmet. “Next time you’re taking the high road to try out a gimmick for that giant robot of yours, why don’t you take the old rivet-head himself along?”
    “Smile when you call my robot names,” Tom growled back with mock ferocity.
    Both boys looked like well-padded fullbacks with oversized helmets. Inside their flight gear, however, they were quite different. Tom, lean, xxxxxxxxxxxxx

tall, and with a perpetually ragged blond crewcut, had a serious look in his deep-set blue eyes as he scanned the horizon. Bud was only a shade taller than Tom, but he had shoulders like a hammer thrower and the open, frank face of an athlete who liked to play for fun.
    “The worst is over,” Tom called back through his mike. “But keep that tender stomach buckled in tight in your protective suit. We’ve got quite a bit more climbing to do before we cross into the ionosphere, where we’ll get hit harder by cosmic rays. It’ll be a better test of the effect of radiation on the relotrol.”
    Tom glanced up at a black metal box bracketed firmly inside a translucent dome above him. If the relotrol brain inside it were to successfully direct the robot, which was designed for working in areas where the radiation would be fatal to human beings, it would have to be immune to the deadly rays.
    “How did your gimmick react when you went up the other day, Tom?” Bud asked.
    “Not good. I had to make some changes. Under really stiff radiation the relotrol would foul up the radio orders to the robot.”
    Bud grinned at the image. “You mean Mr. Robot wouldn’t know what to do? He’d sort of xxxxxxxxxxxxx

go berserk?”
    “Right. And until the unit can handle this lesser degree of radiation, I don’t want to risk putting the robot itself anywhere near the Citadel’s main reactor.”
    As they flew high, Tom checked the instruments that were monitoring the relotrol’s functioning. His face fell. “Well, we might as well head back down.”
    “What’s wrong?”     
    “The relotrol is doing even worse on this test than yesterday’s. I’ll have to try another approach.” Tom nosed the plane down in the direction of the Citadel’s airfield, now beyond the horizon. “But at least I have something in mind. As soon as we land, Bud, I’m heading for the electronics lab,” Tom said, looking downward through the heat shimmer.
    But Bud’s eyes were not on the distant ground below. They were following a black dot that had suddenly appeared against the dark violet strato-sky above the horizon.
    “Something’s coming at us from three o’clock high,” he said. “It’s too small to be a plane.”
    The speck quickly increased in size.
    “It’s a bird!” said Bud in amazement. “A big black crow.”

 

    “Above us? At this altitude? Couldn’t be!” But Tom descended a few hundred feet to avoid hitting it, then cut the jet’s speed. As the bird winged across the backdrop of midday stars high above the cockpit, he craned his neck and said, “That’s too big for a crow. It’s larger than an eagle.”
    “But it is a crow!” cried Bud.
    Tom looked again and caught his breath. The bird was immense! It was shaped exactly like a crow but was far larger than a vulture—or any flying creature the boys had ever heard of. The monstrous bird glided majestically across the sky, then wheeled.
    “Maybe we’ve discovered a new species,” Bud said excitedly. “Let’s get a close look at him.”
    “I’m not sure that would be safe,” Tom replied warily. “The bird might panic and fly into one of our control surfaces.”
    He banked away from it. The bird, however, flew even closer to the plane, diving rapidly through air that was far too cold and thin to support any normal feathered flyer.
    Fascinated, Tom put the jet on autopilot and swiveled to take a closer look. It was definitely xxxxxxxxxxxxx 

a bird, and Tom had to agree that, but for its size, it had the characteristic form of a common crow. Though the silhouette of its flapping wings and tail showed the zigzag outline of feathers, its body was black as soot and revealed few details. Its claws and beak were visible, but its most eerie feature was a pair of beady eyes that seemed to glow like red coals in a brazier.
    How can it keep up with us? Tom thought. They were traveling at nearly the speed of sound!
    “I’m going to get a picture of it,” Bud said, slipping one arm free of his parachute harness and reaching for a digital camera he had noticed in a forward compartment. “May be a prize shot. Put her into a slow circle and hold her steady, Tom.”
    “Steady as she goes,” Tom replied, his earlier qualms forgotten.
    Loosening his chute still further, Bud peered through the range finder and focused the lens on the crow. He was about to trip the shutter when he gave a shout and suddenly lurched violently.  “Tom!”
    “I see it!” yelled Tom, almost breathless with wonder—and something akin to horror.
 xxxxxxxxxxxxx

    The monster crow was splitting apart like an amoeba!
    Smaller crows—each one still of mammoth size—were peeling off in all directions from the main body of the creature. As they split away into the air they seemed to find their bearings immediately, all of them continuing to streak in the direction of the jet.
    “For the love of Mike,” Bud exclaimed fearfully, “what’s going on?”
    “I’m trying to figure it out,” was Tom’s terse, and equally fearful, reply. “Sit tight!”
    Tom began a series of increasingly desperate aerial maneuvers, veering and diving in a frantic attempt to leave the crows behind.
    Nothing worked. Within seconds the deadly flock, now multiplied to dozens, would smash head-on into the speeding jet!      

CHAPTER 3



 

THE HEADLESS GIANT

TOM AND BUD watched helplessly as the monstrous crows bore down upon them. The ebon forms stretched out their claws toward the jet and opened their beaks wide. Out darted long forked tongues, like those of a rattlesnake. The eyes of the creatures seemed to burn redly with sheer hate.
    Then the youths gasped in unison.
    Like the flicking-off of a light, the crows had vanished completely!
    “Tom…” Bud whispered hoarsely into his helmet microphone. “Wh-where did they go?”
    Tom was silent for several moments. Then he said, “Back where they came from.”
    “But—but—”

 

    “Let’s get back to base,” Tom said, shakily.
    They landed safely without further discussion. Tom immediately proceeded to scrutinize the cockpit with a variety of instruments, paying particular attention to the material of the transparent viewpanes. Lastly, he examined the visors of the pressure suits they had worn
    “Anything?” Bud asked.
    Tom shook his head.
    Bud squatted down on the tarmac next to his friend. “Never heard of anything like it,” he said.
    “But I have,” Tom retorted. “Last night, in fact.” He now told Bud of his encounter with Nicky Ammo, and the strange ghost story that had emerged.
    “You think there’s a connection, Tom?” inquired Bud.
    “It seems likely. What we saw in the sky had some of the characteristics of what Nicky saw floating in front of his car—especially the way the phenomenon seemed to keep pace with the vehicles.”
    “Say, I just thought of something!” Bud exclaimed. “Maybe Nicky is causing the ‘crow ghosts’ somehow, so you’ll be drawn into staying here in New Mexico and working on his xxxxxxxxxxxxx

mystery!”
    Tom smiled wanly at Bud’s idea. “Maybe. But why? And how’s he doing it?” Tom rose to his feet, squinting into the New Mexico sun. “I suppose the first thing to do is to get in touch with the people who are supposed to be keeping tabs on our Mr. Ammo—the local FBI!”
    Back in his personal quarters, Bud at his side, Tom put through a call to Harlan Ames at Swift Enterprises in Shopton. After giving an account of the events of the last two days, he asked to be put in touch with whichever Federal authorities had a special interest in the doings of Nicky Ammo.
    “Will do,” the security chief replied. “I’ll have them call you at your private number.”
    Less than fifteen minutes later, Tom was speaking to Sam Valdrosa, an agent of the FBI field office in Albuquerque.
    “Nicky’s my boy, all right,” said Valdrosa.  “We have authorization to monitor his activities, including his telephone calls—‘probable cause’ has been well established at this point. Last night, Tom, there were agents in a car next to the restaurant. If you two had come out together in a way that suggested a kidnapping, we would xxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

have taken him down in about ten seconds.”
     “Do you know what he was doing over the last couple hours?” Tom asked.
    “Sure,” responded the agent. “He got up, sat with his wife on his patio drinking breakfast, and went swimming in his pool with his son Jarret. No phone calls, no sign of anything unusual.”
    After conversing with the FBI agent for a few more minutes, Tom thanked him and hung up.
    “He mentioned contacting the Federal Aviation Authority, but I think I downplayed our incident enough to have made him think twice. I’d rather have some freedom of action right now,” Tom explained to Bud.
    “Me too,” agreed the young airman. “Do you still think Nicky’s involved?”
    “Yes,” Tom replied. “But not necessarily as the perpetrator. Maybe as the victim.”
    “The victim of ghosts!” Bud looked uneasy.  “Just how do you handle something like that?”
    Tom’s brows knitted together in concentration. “I’m not yet willing to believe this is anything supernatural,” he said.
    “I just wish I’d been able to snap a photo,” remarked Bud. “But when I saw that thing xxxxxxxxxxxxx

splitting up, I forgot—”
    “Wait a sec, Bud,” Tom interrupted. “Are you absolutely sure you didn’t click the button? You were startled and jerked back—”
    Bud’s eyebrows rose. “Say, you’re right! Maybe I did get a shot after all, by accident!”     The two rushed to the hangar where the little jet had been berthed. Tom opened up the cockpit and pulled the camera out of its compartment, where Bud had stowed it during the plane’s descent.
    “The indicator registers one exposure!” Tom cried triumphantly. With Bud peering over his shoulder, he triggered the inbuilt video panel on the camera.
    The shot showed the edge of the cockpit viewpane and the starry sky beyond—and nothing else. “I don’t get it,” said Bud in disappointment. “I guess I wasn’t aiming right.”
    “Look here,” Tom said, pointing to one corner of the viewscreen. “See that?”
    “A lens flare?”
    “I’m not so sure. It’s not the right shape or position for that. But it does match where the big crow was located in the sky!”
    “Yeah—except no crow,” objected Bud.  xxxxxxxxxxxxx

“What you and I saw wasn’t just a little smudge of light.”
    Tom agreed. “Let’s take the camera back to the lab. Maybe we can extract a little more data from the image.”
    “Great!” exclaimed Bud. “Then I’ll get a chance to see if Robo Boy has found a head yet!”
    Robo Boy was Bud’s characteristic nickname for Tom’s giant robot, which was presently under construction and incomplete from the neck up. The bulky mechanical form had been shipped to the Citadel from Swift Enterprises so that Tom could continue to experiment with it while perfecting the relotrol that would control it.
    “He’s still headless,” Tom grinned. “just like I told you on the phone. But from his neck down he works well. And I happen to know he can’t wait to see you—to tell you to stop calling him Rivet-Head!”
    Bud followed his pal to the cube-shaped lab building next to Tom’s apartment. Using an electronic code-key they entered Tom’s ware-house-sized metallurgy and electronics labora-tory, filled with motors, workbenches, and lathes. In a corner stood the giant lifelike robot.
    Even without its “head,” the looming auto-  xxxxxxxxxxxxx

maton already had eight of his eventual ten feet. A special coating partly composed of Tomasite, the resilient wonder plastic developed by Tom and his father, covered every part of its frame except the joints. This radiation-resistant sheath-ing was a shiny silver-blue in color,  and contrasted with the darker hues of the joints. Eventually these were to be enclosed in protective “sleeves” of overlapping bands, which would stretch and contract with the movements of the joints.
    “I suppose the antenna for the relotrol will be in the head, right?” Bud remarked.
    “Right, along with the light-emitting ‘eyes’ and radar ‘ears.’ After Robo Boy’s head is on, he’ll be remotely controlled. Right now I have to use a direct control and monitoring method.” Tom pointed to a long cable protruding from the back of the robot’s cylindrical neck and running to a mobile operator console.
    “What can your giant do so far?” asked Bud, eyes gleaming with fascination. “When we spoke last week, you were trying to get him to lift his arms.”
    “Oh, now he can walk, and do almost anything with his hands, as long as I ‘aim’ him properly. Want to see him thread a needle?”
    “I’d rather watch him walk.”

 

    “Okay. Here goes.” Tom selected the  “walk-ing” function on the control panel and slipped in a high-density data disk. He explained that there were several of these magnetic disks, each encoding specific instructions for certain complex modes of action. “It’s safer to store the data separately from the robot’s body, so there’s no chance of it becoming corrupted by radiation,” he explained.
    The young inventor inserted a simple key in the back of the robot and turned it to open the relay circuits. The giant’s machinery began to hum. At the same time, its body broke out into a dazzling blaze of colored pinpoint-sized lights, dotted across the robot’s upper body and clustered at every joint.
    Bud chortled with laughter. “A real light show! What are they for?”
    “To tell me how the circuits and mechanical units are working,” Tom explained as he snapped off the laboratory lights.
    “Looks like a Christmas tree.”
    “But who ever saw a walking Christmas tree?” Tom grinned. “Watch this!”
    He advanced the large control dial on the board a few notches. Slowly the robot lifted his xxxxxxxxxxxxx

oversized right foot. The foot moved forward, paused, and came down with a crunch. The computer in the control panel registered this motion and, finding it adequate, sent a signal to the other foot, swinging it forward with an awkward stride. Step by step, the automaton clumped forward.
    Tom stepped up the speed and the giant began to advance rapidly across the long laboratory floor. “Whoa!” Bud warned. “Robo Boy’s going to run away.”
    Tom chuckled. “If he gets going faster than the control setting calls for, a damper will automatically slow him down.”
    The robot was almost running now.
    “Tom, he’s going to walk into that vacuum furnace!” cried Bud nervously.
    Laughing, Tom quickly threw a switch for a coordinated turn. The giant stopped and pivoted stiffly.
    Bud looked relieved. Tom explained, “When we have the head in place and the relotrol is operational, he’ll be able to detect and avoid barriers on his own.”
    The robot now headed for the closed door leading to the building corridor. Again he was xxxxxxxxxxxxx

going at breakneck speed. Bud held his breath but Tom seemed confident. Working quickly, he inserted another action disk into a second drive slot in the control console. The metal body paused, raised its right arm, and extended the hand. With Tom “fine tuning” the action, long metal fingers reached out, gripped the doorknob, and turned it slowly.
    Stepping forward, the giant pushed it open. The arm mechanism dropped and the robot paused.
    “Watch me take him through the doorway without hitting the frame,” Tom said, man-ipulating the controls. Bending slightly—for even without a head he was almost too tall for the human-sized doorway—Tom’s chrome giant stepped neatly through and strode into the silent corridor.
    Suddenly Tom and Bud froze as an unearthly shriek sounded in the hall and echoed through the laboratory!
    “Robo Boy must’ve run over someone!” Bud gasped.      

CHAPTER 4



 

A REJECTED SUITOR

 “QUICK, Tom! Stop him!” Bud yelled in fear.
    Tom frantically slammed down a switch on the control board to halt the robot. As the giant hesitated just beyond the doorway, Tom and Bud rushed in front of him. A stupefied man stood there, his mouth wide open.
    “Brand my li’l ole panhandle!” he choked out breathlessly. “I thought I’as bein’ massacred by the ghost of my old potbellied cookstove!”
    “Chow!” roared Tom, a broad smile of relief spreading over his face. “You old coyote cooker! When did you ride into town?”
    “Jest tumbled in—an’ I don’t recollect you ever eatin’ any o’ my coyote cutlets, Tom Swift!”

 

    Chow Winkler, the stout former chuck-wagon cook who tended the galley on Tom’s Flying Lab and went along on many of Tom’s journeys, mopped his high and shiny forehead with a large red neckerchief. “Whew!” he said. “Feller can’t even come t’holler hey at ya without gettin’ skeered half to death.”
    “You mean you haven’t met Tom’s new cook?” Bud teased. “Where have you been, Chow? I figured you were here taking care of genius boy all along.”
    “Aw, jest flew in ’round midnight from Shopton with Mr. Swift’s atomic specializers. Woulda stayed, too, if I’d knowed I was goin’ to bump into this here monster.” His fear fading, Chow approached the robot and poked his chest cautiously. “Feels like the padded dashboard on my old pickup,” he said. Then his eyes narrowed and he turned toward Tom. “This thing really s’posed to make like a cook, Boss?”
    “We’re a long long way from being able to mechanize your special talents, Chow,” said Tom soothingly. “Robo Boy here is my new project, a super-strong mechanical workhorse to do tasks in places too dangerous for us puny humans.”
    “I heard tell you ’as working on somethin’ xxxxxxxxxxxxx

like that,” Chow commented, stuffing his kerchief back into his pocket. He cast a withering glance in Bud’s direction. “Reckon Buddy Boy here was makin’ one o’ what he calls his jokes.” 
    “Sorry, pard,” Bud apologized. “What I said was a joke, but we didn’t mean to startle you.”
    Warily Chow moved closer to the robot.  “That’s okay. Weren’t skeered none,”  he drawled. Eying its immensity, he snorted, “Glad I don’t have to cook fer this here giant. Say, maybe you-all could rig up one o’ these come roundup time next year in Texas. My friends sure could use a mee-chanical cowpuncher for ropin’ an’ brandin’.”
    “I’ll do better than that, Chow,” said Tom, laughing. “How about my entering one in the Southwest Rodeo for you? I can fix the controls so he’ll never get thrown by any bronc!”
    “That’s right nice o’ you, Tom,” said Chow, grinning. “Tell you what. He kin wear my new red-an’-yellow plaid shirt. He’d sure look more civilized that way.”
    “But we’ll wait until he has a head,” said Tom. “I’d hate to scare your cowboy friends.”
    “Ye-ah, some o’ them folks ’as got a nervous dispersition, all right,” nodded the Texan. xxxxxxxxxxxxx 

“Anyway, I came t’see if you folks had lunch yet. Hows ’bout a got hot bowl of my rattlesnake soup?” he asked jokingly. “Got a real bite, haw!”
    “No, thanks,” said Tom. “I’d rather be bitten by a new idea. That I could use!”
    “Reckon I could cook up most ever’thing but that!”
    While Chow prepared a substantial lunch of hamburgers and onions, Tom and Bud tried to analyze the image captured by the digital camera, but to no avail. “This model just isn’t sensitive enough,” complained Tom. “All I can say for sure is that whatever’s causing that blob of light isn’t inside the camera mechanism.”
    “Guess that’s what dear-departed crows look like when you try to take their picture,” Bud commented.
    The boys were continuing to talk about the baffling problem when Chow arrived again with lunch. He demanded to know what they were discussing, and Tom gave him a brief account.
    “Spirit-stuff!” the cook exclaimed. “Bet I know some’n who could tell you all about it!”
   Tom’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “Who? Somebody around here?”
  “Why, somebody I’m gonna be payin’ a call on  xxxxxxxxxxxxx

this evening, matter of fact,” said Chow, un- consciously taking off his ten-gallon hat, as if in respect. “A lady, name of Jessee Thunder Lake.”
    “Is that her real name?” asked Bud.
    Chow looked offended. “Shore is! She’s full- blooded Arapajo.”
   “No offense,” Bud added hastily. “But when did you meet her, Chow?”
   “Buddy Boy, you fergit this here New Mexico desert is where I lived since I moved over from good ol’ Texas when I was about your age.”
  “That’s right,” Tom interjected. “Dad and I met Chow back when the Citadel was being built, a few years ago. You were working at the Bar-Double-R Ranch on the other side of Tenderly.”
   “That I was,” Chow said. “I’as the cook, and you, Tom, were a skinny kid who liked hangin’ around and askin’ questions.”
    “Okay,” Bud said. “Now tell us about this Mrs. Thunder Lake.”
    “It’s Miss Thunder Lake,” Chow corrected.  “Mighty fine woman. That’s why I ast her t’marry me.”
    Tom and Bud gasped as one, almost choking on their meal. “Chow!” Tom cried.
    “That’s m’name,” he responded calmly. xxxxxxxxxxxxx 

“Asked her not jest once, neither, but all o’ four times now! First time—I was a young sprig with lots o’ hair—she was engaged to somebody else. Filled me up with pain an’ sorrow, and I went away fer a few years. But she never did marry that ol’ poke Winton Blaisnell. So when I found that out I came back an’ ast her agin.”
    Bud tried to look sympathetic. “But nothing doing?”
    “Whatter you think?” snorted Chow. “Seems Blaisnell had run off, and she was all ‘pain-and- sorrow’ herself and wouldn’t think of anybody else. So she gave me one o’ them woven blankets and sent me on my way.”
    Tom stifled a laugh—barely!—and said, “But still, you tried again.”
    “I did. I waited one square year, and then I cornered her at a dance. Really thought I had a chance, too, all fixed up like I was. But nope. She said she was gonna move up north to Finch River, Alaska, and teach school, and she didn’t think I’d take to th’ move—prob’ly right. So she gave me one o’ them little round rugs and that was that.”
    “You poor cowpoke!” Bud exclaimed.
    Chow sighed and shook his head. “Ain’t over yet, neither. Years an’ years go by, and now xxxxxxxxxxxxx

I’m a mite older, with a mite less hair.  One o’ the ranch hands tells me Jessee’s back in Tenderly, workin’ at the library. So I get all duded up and I go to pay a call—”
    “Let me guess,” Bud interjected. “A bath towel?”
    “A shawl!” snorted Chow disgustedly. “Fer keepin’ me warm in my old age, I guess.”
    “Pard, do you really think it’s—er, wise to try again?” Tom asked quietly.
    “You mean tonight?” The cook chuckled.  “Naw, that’s all over with. Jest gonna say hello, since I’m in the area again. But listen, Jessee Thunder Lake knows a whole lot about the Arapajo and the spirits of th’ desert and such. She jest may have somethin’ to tell you boys about that status-peer spook you seen!”
    The rest of the day passed uneventfully. Bud pulled on a pair of trunks and decided to sun himself on the lawn next to the employee cafeteria. He begged Tom to join him, but the young inventor waved him off, explaining that he needed to test a new idea he had for his relotrol device.
    “You think you can make it less sensitive to those atomic rays?” Bud asked, standing at the lab door with his outer clothes bundled under xxxxxxxxxxxxx

one arm.
    “That’s the idea,” Tom replied, grinning. “If we can figure out how to protect your leathery hide, Budworth, I’m sure we can devise some super-sunscreen for our metal man here!”
    Tom worked alone through the bright afternoon and into the evening, little noting the passage of time. One angle after another was cast into material form—and then cast aside, a failure. Tom’s broad workbench was littered with bits of circuitry, computer chips, and ragged patches of antiradiation shielding.
    The answer’s here somewhere, he said to himself, gazing at the scattered detritus of a day’s labors. I just know it!
    But finally, at the height of frustration, he began to make some progress. He had just cobbled together a promising new model when he was interrupted by the ring of the laboratory telephone.
    “This here’s Chow, Boss,” came a familiar twang. “You an’ Buddy Boy et up that dinner I left for you?”
    Tom was slow on the uptake. “Dinner?”
    “Figgered you’d fergit,” the cook remarked. “So now I want you two to head over to  xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Darlita’s Rancho Patio, and pronto! I got Jessee Thunder Lake with me, and blamed if she doesn’t know a thing ’r three about big black crows that disappear!”      

CHAPTER 5



 

GHOST OR LEGEND?

 




TOM AND BUD were very familiar with the Mexican restaurant Chow had named, as Dar- lita’s was the only eating establishment between the Citadel and the town of Tenderly, and was frequented by Swift employees seeking a change from cafeteria food.
    The boys were met in front by Chow, dressed in his sharpest western-wear, and Jessee Thunder Lake, who turned out to be an attractive motherly woman of middle years, decked out in colorful scarves and copper jewelry.
    “So very pleased to meet you two,” she said, extending her hand. “Charles has said so much about you and your adventures.” Tom and Bud xxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

took to her immediately.
    After chatting lightly over a fine spicy dinner,  Jessee brought up the mysterious stratosphere sighting, which Chow had described to her.
    “We don’t know what to make of it,” Tom said. “But Chow mentioned that you might know something about it, or something like it.”
    Jessee nodded modestly. “Indeed I do, if it will be of any help. Not that I’ve seen such things myself, you understand. I’ve always thought these old legends were just so much moonshine. But now—I wonder.”
    “What does the legend say?” asked Bud.
    “It’s one of the old stories of my ancestors, the Arapajo Nihavi, as we are called. I re- member my grandfather telling me the stories when I was a little girl.”
    “An’ that’s quite a ways back!” Chow blurted out. Then he blushed, realizing what he had said. But Jessee ignored the faux pas.
    “The stories are about different kinds of birds,” she continued. “They are the forms taken by our tribal gods and our ancestor-spirits. The Crow-Black-As-Night-Shadow is named Oi- Pah, the spirit of vengefulness. The spirit always watches, always listens; and when a father wishes vengeance against a father, or a son xxxxxxxxxxxxx

against a son, he must light a cottonwood branch on a night of no moon and call out to Oi-Pah, who will fly above him in the shape of a crow big as a horse.”
    “What does this crow look like?” Tom inquired.
    “Very much like what you have described,” the woman replied. “As I say, very big and completely dark, but with red-burning eyes and silver talons. His tongue is like the tongue of the great desert snake.”
    Tom and Bud exchanged startled glances. This detail of their encounter had not been mentioned to Chow!
    Jessee took a sip of water and went on. “Oi- Pah flies to your enemy and brings punishments and evil fortune with him. He has ninety-nine children that dwell secretly within his feathers, and when he finds whom he seeks, they all burst out like seeds and fall upon the enemy as a swarm, doing whatever is just. And then they disappear like a flame put out.”
    Bud gave what would have been a low whistle if he had been able to wet his lips. “This is unreal!”
    “Has anyone ever claimed to have actually seen the crow?” Tom questioned.

 

    Jessee smiled. “Oh, you know how it is—  someone always knows someone whose uncle knew someone who said—and so on.” She took a few bites of her salad. “I don’t really believe these tribal urban legends. I’m a li- brarian!”
    Tom now described Nicky Ammo’s several experiences, taking care not to mention the man’s name. “Have you ever heard of anything like that in connection with the old stories?”
    “Oh yes,” Jessee responded. “Oi-Pah himself could do it. Once he is called to vengeance, he can take on any shape he likes. But that is a power he shares with one other thing.”
    “What’s that?” asked Chow, his eyes wide.
    “Imagination!”
    Driving back to the Citadel over long dark roads, Tom and Bud talked excitedly of Jessee Thunder Lake’s story—though in strangely hushed tones.
    “Tom, there really couldn’t be anything to it,” Bud observed. Then he glanced nervously at his pal. “Could there be?”
    “We both saw it,” Tom responded. “I’m not one for telling the universe what it can and can’t do. But it’ll take a lot of convincing to make me believe you and I and Nicky Ammo are up xxxxxxxxxxxxx

against a crow with revenge on his mind.”
    “Yeah,” said Bud. “Still… know what we need?”
    “What?”
    “A ghost scarecrow!”
    The boys slept uneasily that night. But the next day, as the sun burned its way high into the midday sky, Bud piloted the high-altitude jet into the ionosphere, with the newest version of the relotrol mounted above him, and Tom strapped in behind.
    “Any problems yet, genius boy?” Bud asked Tom.
    “Not a one,” answered Tom happily, “and we’re well above yesterday’s altitude mark. I’d say the new system works like a charm.”
    “And it seems to be a lucky charm, too— no crows anywhere,” Bud observed. “So what kind of sunscreen did you smear on your machine?”
    After a chuckle, Tom explained: “I guess you could say I’ve invented a ‘smart’ sunblock that reformulates itself as conditions change! Seri-ously, I’m using a new form of double- redundant digital encoding that responds almost instantly to altered radiation conditions and adjusts itself accordingly.”
    Bud flew the jet higher and higher, and the xxxxxxxxxxxxx

raditector instruments began to show dangerous levels of background radiation streaming down from space. But still the relotrol performed flawlessly.
    “Nothing like success to take a person’s mind off magical mystery menaces,” joked Bud.
    “You can take ’er down now,” Tom said. “The next step is to try exposing the new relotrol to some serious hard radiation from the main reactor.”
    But back on the ground in the Citadel, Tom received disappointing news. The main reactor core had been powered-down that very morning to perform some routine maintenance required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
    “Some day Robo Boy himself—or his off- spring—will do those inspections,” Tom remarked to Bud. “But for now we’ve got a holdup of several days.”
    Bud grinned. “Want to join me in nature’s tanning salon?”
    Tom laughed but replied, “Actually, I was thinking of hitching a ride back to Enterprises, along with the robot. If I’m going to set the relotrol aside for awhile anyway, there are some parts of the main machine that need attention.”
    Tom and Bud set about arranging for the giant

robot to be freighted by jet to Shopton. They would all travel back aboard the same Swift Construction Company craft that had brought Chow to the Citadel. “I imagine Chow will be going back, too. He won’t want to stay away from his customized kitchen for too long.”
    “And besides,” Bud added with a twinkle,  “he’s probably got Jessee Thunder Lake out of his system for at least a while!”
    Late in the afternoon, as Tom was in his apartment making notes in his computerized journal log, the front office put through a telephone call with Tom’s consent.
    “Hello,” said a pleasant but unfamiliar voice,  “this is Richard Hermosillo. Forgive me if I’m disturbing you.”
    “Not at all,” Tom responded. “What can I do for you?”
    “A great deal, perhaps. I’m a professor of archeology out of the University of Al- buquerque, and right now I’m working on a  ‘dig’ out on Purple Mesa, about eighteen miles or so northeast of your plant.”
    “I believe I’ve seen it,” said Tom.
    “It’s a fairly striking land formation. I’m engaged in special, rather delicate work here, and—well, I’m not quite sure how to put this...”

 xxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

    “Do you need some technical assistance?”
    “No,” replied Professor Hermosillo. “I need help of a rather different sort. You see, Purple Mesa is a sacred spot for one of the local tribes, and some of their leaders object to our digging up here. Normally that would end things right there; but this tribe, the Arapajo, has never been officially recognized—it’s regarded as part of another tribe, and these local leaders have no clear authority over the university’s activities.”
    The Arapajo—Jessee Thunder Lake’s tribe! Tom had to smile at this latest coincidence. “I know an Arapajo, as it happens,” he commented.  “But how can I help you?”
    “Well,” Hermosillo continued, “the whole situation is kind of up in the air, and our funding sources are getting nervous. I know you folks have a lot of contacts in the governmental scientific establishment, and—”
    “You thought I might put in a word or two,” Tom concluded. “I’d be happy to, but my father and I have always agreed that science and invention ought to be respectful of human values. If what you’re doing really offends the Arapajo, I’m not sure Swift Enterprises would want to get involved.”

 

    “I see.” Professor Hermosillo was clearly disappointed, and as a fellow scientist Tom felt sympathy for his predicament.
    “Tell you what,” said the young inventor.  “I’m flying back to Shopton, New York, for a few days; I expect to return here by midweek. If you won’t mind, I’ll make some inquiries about your project, and also speak with my father. Perhaps those who are objecting don’t fully understand what you intend to do. It may take a few weeks, but if we can help, all things considered—we will.”
    “We’d all be most grateful,” Hermosillo said, relieved. “I’ll contact my colleagues at the university and have them transmit our project proposal to you, and other background information.”
    After exchanging some further details, Tom hung up. Then he contacted the plant switchboard and asked to be put through to Chow, who had said he would be “whuppin’ up” some experimental dishes in the facility’s kitchen.
    “Chow, I wanted to ask Jessee a few questions,” Tom said when the cook came on the line. “Would you mind giving me her phone xxxxxxxxxxxxx

number?”
    “Wouldn’t mind, Tom,” Chow replied. “But if’n you aim t’call her right now, it wouldn’t do any good—she’s workin’ at the library in Tenderly. Got that number, too.”
    “Thanks, Chow.” Tom then proceeded to call the small town library, where Miss Thunder Lake presided over the reference section. When she answered, Tom apologized for calling her at work and asked what she had heard about the archeological operations on Purple Mesa.
    “Oh, that!” she said with a ladylike laugh.  “Tom, most of my people couldn’t care less about it. That mesa was never a burial ground and has no real significance to the Arapajo Nihavi, except that it was once used as a lookout point. But I know where the trouble is coming from.”
    “Where?”
    “A man named Joseph Cloud Bear and his grandson Kevin. They run an auto detailing shop just outside Tenderly, on Highway 380. Old Joseph’s decided he’s a tribal shaman, and he’s been writing to the government, getting up petitions, and so on. Now he’s got Purple Mesa stuck in his craw. Everyone I know just laughs at

him, and if I were you I’d do the same.”
    Tom thanked her for her help and hung up the phone, wondering if he should call Professor Hermosillo back immediately and offer his support. But he decided to wait until he had discussed the matter with his father.
    That evening Tom, Bud, and Chow were airborne, jetting eastward with the red sunset at their backs and Robo Boy securely stowed in the cargo hold.
    As Bud and Chow began a game of cards, Tom reclined his seat and found himself starting to drift off to sleep. Suddenly he was aware of excited voices and a hand shaking his shoulder.
    “Tom!”

    He wearily opened one eye, and saw the jet’s co-pilot standing next to him.
    “It’s happening, Tom!” the young man cried excitedly. “Up ahead, above us!”
    Tom shook his head, trying to come to full wakefulness. “What’s up ahead, Jack?”
    “The crow—the monster crow!”    

CHAPTER 6


  
          A MECHANICAL
          COMEDIAN




TOM LEAPT to his feet, all drowsiness dissipated.
    “Did you see it? Where?” he demanded.
    Not answering, the co-pilot turned and sprinted up the aisle. Joined by Bud and Chow, Tom followed.
    Bursting into the cockpit, Tom saw that the pilot, Ed Mills, had gone rigid with fear. Wordlessly he pointed through the forward viewpane, and Tom worked his way forward to get a better angle.
    A huge, black object, flapping like a bird, was circling in front of the jet!
    Despite his earlier experience, Tom could scarcely believe his eyes. Again he took note of the dead-black feathers, the lighter beak and xxxxxxxxxxxxx

claws—which he now realized were silvery in color—and the eyes that glowed red.
    From behind him Tom heard a gasp. “Great day an’ dishpans! It is a crow!”
    “Sure is, pard!” came Bud’s voice, awe-struck.
    Tom placed a calming hand on Mills’ shoulder. “Got anything on the scope, Ed?”
    “Not a thing!” the man exclaimed. “It’s just not there—but we see it!”
    “Keep your eye on it,” Tom directed.
    “It’s got its eyes on us!” said Jack Vincenzo, the co-pilot.
    The mammoth crow wheeled around in a spiralling motion, effortlessly keeping pace with the jet and slowly descending. Maybe we can get another photo! Tom thought excitedly.
    But even as this crossed his mind, everyone gave a shout. The crow had vanished! Not a trace was left in the darkening vault of stars.
    After a shocked silence, Jack said:
    “Man alive, I’m sure glad you spread the word about this thing, Tom. I’d’ve thought I was losing my marbles.”
    “That’s the way Tom and I felt, Jack,” said Bud quietly.
    “Brand my high-flyin’ fritters!” breathed xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Chow. “I shore wish Jessee’d been on hand t’see that Ow-eee-paw of hers!” As Tom turned, the cook looked him in the eye, worriedly. “Boss, this means some cayuse has got you marked fer vengeance!”
    Tom did not reply. He double-checked the instrument readings, then returned to his seat, troubled and thoughtful.
    Some hours later the jet roared down to a smooth landing on the brightly-lit main runway of Swift Enterprises. As Tom and the others debarked, Tom’s father drove up in a jeep. He greeted his son warmly.
    “It’s good to have you here safe,” said Damon Swift. “So there’s been another incident involving that phantom crow, eh?”
    “And we’re no closer to figuring it out,” Tom confirmed. “What do you think, Dad?”
    “Obviously, it’s a hoax of some kind,” he responded. “As to how it’s done…” His voice trailed off in a verbal shrug.
    “Say there, I got me an idee!” said Chow, who was standing nearby. “Mebbe them Martian pals o’ yours is behind it! Seems like they can do jest about anything!”
    Earlier in the year a small automated space missile had plunged into the grounds of Swift xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Enterprises, bearing an array of symbols that seemed to represent concepts in the universal language of mathematics. Not yet announcing the event to the public, Tom and his father had tentatively deciphered much of the message. It appeared to have originated with friendly scientists who maintained a base on nearby Mars. Subsequently Tom had been able to exchange simple messages with these beings by means of a video-oscillograph transmitter.
    Tom smiled. “I guess you could be right, Chow,” he said. “But why our space friends would want to get involved with the likes of Nicky Ammo is anybody’s guess!”
    “Nevertheless, it might be worth the attempt to contact them,” Damon Swift commented. “I’ll spend some time tomorrow trying to construct an inquiry in the space-symbol language.”
    The young inventor went home for a much- needed night’s sleep. He was late for breakfast the next morning, but his mother, his sister Sandy, and their friend Bashalli Prandit were enjoying cocoa and doughnuts from The Glass Cat, the Shopton coffee house where Bashalli worked, and having a lively discussion.
    “Good morning, all,” Tom half-yawned, kissing his mother and giving each of the girls an xxxxxxxxxxxxx

affectionate pat on the shoulder. “Hi, Bash! How’s tricks?”
    “I would say tricks are at their worst, Tom. That’s why I’m here. You are just the very person to save the day.”
    Tom sat down, dug a spoon into half a grapefruit, and grinned a boyish grin. “Bash, you’re making a hero out of me even before I know why. What’s the story?”
    Bashalli, a pretty girl with dark hair and large brown eyes, had come to Shopton from Pakistan. In the short span of time since he had met her, just prior to his trip to South America in his Flying Lab, she had become a good family friend and was always Tom’s date at parties, with Sandy and Bud usually completing the whole-some foursome. Sometimes the four young people would go off together on scientific outings led by Tom. Sandy was an excellent pilot, and Bashalli, an art student, had a flare for sketching which many times had come in handy.
    “It has to do with the entertainment tomorrow night,” Sandy explained.
    Bashalli continued, “You do remember, to raise money for the hospital?” Tom nodded. He recalled that the girls were on the fund committee. “Well, our best act has been washed xxxxxxxxxxxxx

out—washed down, that is. We’ve got to substitute something in a hurry. It’s against the rules to engage a professional—only amateurs can be in it.”
    Tom gave the girls a look of mock horror. “You’re not hinting that I become a song-and- dance man, I hope!”
    Sandy winced. “Please, big brother— what I’ve heard echoing from behind the shower curtain is not singing!”
    Bash laughed. “Not you, Thomas, but your new wonderful robot,” she replied.
    The young inventor stared in disbelief. “What! Bash, that would be a major operation! It would take hours and hours of—”
    “Tom,” Mrs. Swift spoke up, “is what the girls are  asking an impossibility?”
    “No, but—”
    “If you worked at it today and tomorrow after hours, with Bud and others helping, you could do it?”
    “Yes, Mother. But—”
    “Then I want you to do it,” Mrs. Swift said softly but firmly. “So far as I know, you’ve never used your scientific talents for charitable pur-poses.” She smiled. “Unless saving whole cities could be called working for humanity. Tom, I’d like you to do your share for the show xxxxxxxxxxxxx

tomorrow night.”
    Tom knew he had lost the argument. “All right, Mom. I suppose I can put some- thing together. It might even be a useful test. But I’ll need Sandy’s and Bashalli’s help.”
    “Wonderful!” the two girls cried. “When do we start?”
    “Come down to the lab at four tomorrow afternoon. We’ll have the robot prepped by then.” Tom picked up a maple-frosted doughnut and sniffed it suspiciously.
    “Do you smell something?” asked Bashalli.
    “Yes,” Tom replied. “A set-up!”
    All day and the next morning Tom, Bud, and three engineers combined Tom’s planned work on Robo Boy with the unexpected new project. Bud Barclay, plastered with special sensors that allowed the control computer to register his movements, served as the live model for a sort of crude song and dance routine. Song after song was tried and discarded before the mechanical man’s steps and gestures synchronized with the music. In truth, the problem was less the robot’s lack of ability than Bud’s lack of rhythm!
    In the meantime, modelmaker Arvid Hanson had been working on a makeshift head to render Robo Boy more presentable to an audience. By xxxxxxxxxxxxx

the time Sandy and Bashalli arrived, the robot appeared as a deadpan, comical-faced creature whose eyes roved from side to side.
    “Meet Herbert,” Tom said. “That’s Robo Boy’s stage name.” As the girls giggled, the robot bowed stiffly. “I’ll give you a demonstra-tion,” the young inventor went on, “then show you just how to work these dials. It’s as simple as running a CD player.”
    After some practice, Herbert went through his performance perfectly. “Definitely ready for prime time!” Bud pronounced.
    The four young people had an early supper at the Enterprises plant and at six thirty left for the converted armory in Shopton where the enter- tainment was to take place.
    The girls had dutifully spread the word, and by eight o’clock the auditorium was packed to overflowing, and the show began. Since the robot performance was to be the last number, Tom and Bud remained behind the scenes, carefully guarding the canvas-covered figure and the control panel until the curtain rang down on the preceding act.
    Then the boys wheeled the robot to the center of the curtained stage and took off the cover. Tom quickly reviewed the instructions for xxxxxxxxxxxxx

operating Herbert and turned the panel over to the girls. Then he and Bud took their places in the center of the second row in the audience.
    Bud hid a secret smile. He and Hank Sterling, Enterprises’ chief engineer, had covertly made a few additions to the mechanical man’s repertoire. They had rigged up a remote data- disk drive that would cut into the robot’s main circuit at a signal from a micro-transmitter in Bud’s pocket. When the girls finished their show, he planned to make the robot do a few tricks that were not on the program!
    The master of ceremonies walked out. “And now,” he said, “we present a surprise number in place of the one originally scheduled, by the world renowned vaudeville trio: The Three Swifties!”
    The band struck up a corny “show-biz” tune. The curtains parted and an amber spotlight revealed the inanimate Herbert standing between the two costumed girls. Bashalli bowed, then Sandy, and then the mechanical man broke out in a rash of colored light and bowed as well, delighting the audience. As the audience broke into applause, the girls hurried to the wings to take over the controls.
    Herbert began to jig across the stage, xxxxxxxxxxxxx

provoking uproarious laughter. With the girls working the regulating dials, the robot launched into a series of disjointed acrobatics. His lights blinked on and off, and his big eyes rolled from side to side. The response was deafening.
    “Now we’ll make him sing,” whispered Sandy, and turned on the tape for this part of the act.
    Herbert’s voice was surprisingly like that of a notorious pop star, making the audience laugh all the louder as the robot imitated the singer’s well-known cool gestures and fancy footwork.
    Amid tremendous hand clapping the curtain went down. Then, as it arose again for a second bow from Herbert, Bud clicked the button in his pocket signaler. Instead of the expected bow, the robot seemed to waver uncertainly on stage, his empty head slowly turning as if inspecting the audience. The attendees fell silent. Abruptly Herbert began to move. He walked to the front of the stage and stumped down the wooden steps toward the audience. Bud’s plan was to give people in the first row a little scare, then leap up and point Herbert back to the stage like a misbehaving puppy.
    As he drew closer, the humanoid machine looked menacing. Had he gone out of control? xxxxxxxxxxxxx

the audience wondered. Would he harm someone?
    “Oh!” cried a girl in the front row, shrinking back in her seat.
    Bud decided that the time had come to end his joke. He rose to his feet and clicked a second button that would cause Herbert to reverse and march back up the steps to the stage.
    But to the boy’s consternation, Herbert con-tinued to advance. Something had gone wrong!
    In a panic, Bud double-clicked the activator button on the signal device, which was supposed to immobilize the robot in case of an emergency. But Herbert continued to advance menacingly toward the front row.
    “Tom!” Bud cried. “Let me get past! I’ve got to stop him!”
    By this time, Herbert, clawed arms stretched before him like a Frankenstein monster, was stalking for the side of the hall, where town offi-cials were seated. The robot headed directly for the mayor of Shopton!
    Bud was frantic. “Tom, do something!” he pled. “I’m not strong enough to tackle him by myself!”
    “Okay.”
    To Bud’s amazement, his friend did not seem xxxxxxxxxxxxx

to be the least bit upset. Abruptly Herbert stopped, took a bow, then turned back and calmly sauntered in his awkward way up the stage steps. Here he bowed again, then walked to the wings, with the audience going into raptures of thunderous applause as the curtain descended.
    Tom hurried backstage with Bud at his heels. Sandy and Bashalli stood speechless. “Wh-what happened?” they babbled, their voices over- lapping.
    Bud was about to confess his part when Tom replied, “Didn’t you like it? Bud and I thought we’d have some fun. We programmed him for an extra-surprise finale.”
    “Well, I think you might have told us,” said Sandy, while Bud’s jaw dropped open in amazement. He realized now that Tom had discovered the additional drive he and Hank had rigged up in the control console and had installed one of his own!
    “Good grief!” said the young pilot after the girls had stepped away, giving Tom a playful punch on the arm. “Nobody ever gets the better of you, genius boy!”
    Tom laughed and was about to make a joking  xxxxxxxxxxxxx

reply when suddenly a shout rose from somewhere in the auditorium, immediately joined by others in a swelling chorus of alarm.
    He and Bud ran to the curtain, where they collided with Sandy and Bashalli, who were running backstage in a panic.
    “Tom! Bud!” they cried. “The auditorium’s on fire!”    

CHAPTER 7



 

PERILOUS POWDER

TOM WHIPPED open the curtain and looked out into the auditorium. Thick smoke was pouring down from a ceiling vent. As he watched, he could begin to make out orange-yellow flames behind the vent grating.
    The vent was situated above the main exit door, which led into the lobby. The overflow audience was trying to back up into the audi-torium again, but the patrons were squeezed ever tighter together and mass panic was setting in.
    Suddenly the shouts became a terrified roar. An entire section of the ceiling collapsed downward in a rush of sparks, and the audience   xxxxxxxxxxxxx  

surged backwards in fear of their lives.
   “Everyone! Listen!” cried a commanding voice. It was Tom’s father! “Walk up onto the stage and through the back door! Just walk— remain calm.”
    This seemed to help the situation. Tom and Bud boosted the thronging audience members onto the stage at either side of the central steps, and Sandy and Bashalli herded them toward the backstage exit.
    Suddenly a woman’s shrill scream ripped the air! “Katie! Oh no!”
    Clambering up on the stage, Tom saw the cause instantly. The falling ceiling had set an entire section of seats aflame. Next to the wall, beyond the blazing seats, a little girl huddled paralyzed with fear. She was trapped between the fire and the unyeilding wall!
    Too terrified to cry out, the little girl, Katie, pushed herself closer to the auditorium wall, shrinking back from the heat. The flames were leaping halfway to the roof, and there was no place to run.
    Suddenly, as if a new nightmare had com-menced, a huge eerie shadow seemed to pass through the hedge of flame! The monstrous shadow, ten feet tall, staggered forward and stretched out a pair of tremendous arms— xxxxxxxxxxxxx  

arms which terminated in great vicelike claws. But the claws were safely closed, and the arms scooped the little girl up off the floor and held her high, carrying her over the hungry flames and setting her down gently on the stage next to her tearful mother.
    Tom Swift stepped away from Robo Boy’s control console. “Is she all right?” he asked.
    Too overcome to speak, the mother could only nod gratefully.
    Sandy hugged her brother with tears in her eyes, and Bashalli kissed his cheek and whis-pered, “You see, you are a hero!”
    “Not me,” returned Tom. “Robo Boy!”
    Predictably, the Shopton Evening Bulletin was ablaze with news of the event the morning following. The story included the Mayor’s words of thanks, and photos of Tom, the Robot, and little Katie. It was also disclosed that the Fire Department had attributed the fire to a short-circuit in the air conditioning system.
    “And not a ghost in sight!” remarked Tom, showing the front page to Bud as they sat in Tom’s laboratory at Swift Enterprises.
    “Yeah,” Bud retorted, “but remember, skipper, you can’t always see a ghost!”
    Robo Boy stood against the wall, his exterior xxxxxxxxxxxxx

newly cleaned of soot and his charred “head” discarded. Tom had swung open the hinged plates covering the robot’s thick arms and legs, revealing a complicated assemblage of cylinders that slid into one another telescope-fashion.
    Bud eyed Robo Boy’s insides with curiosity.  “His insides look as complicated as a real person’s! So what are you working on, Tom?”
    “His muscles, basically,” the young inventor responded. “I want to see if I can give him smoother, stronger, quicker movements.”
    “You’ll make a ballet star of him yet!” Bud chuckled. “How do his muscles work, anyway? Those tubes look more like hydraulics than electric motors.”
    “Let me show you,” said Tom, motioning for Bud to stand still. Tom walked across the lab to a counter, the top of which was partially blocked from view. His hands now out of sight, Tom called: “Okay, pal—shake!”
    With a quizzical look Bud extended a hand— and then took a startled step backward. A white, tubular “stalk” snaked forth from the hidden top of the workbench, stretching like an elastic arm. The featureless, rounded column was about eight inches in diameter, somewhat broader at its base and tapering toward the fore-end approaching xxxxxxxxxxxxx

the youth’s outstretched hand. It curved through the air in an arch-shape, and as the nearer end slowly drew close to Bud he could see four stubby fingers and a thumb. This “hand” paused inches from Bud’s, as if waiting.
    “Well?” teased Tom.
    Bud hesitantly grasped the pseudo-hand and shook it. The whole stalk rippled up and down.
    “Feels—strange,” he commented. “A little warm, and smooth—but not sticky. What is it, some kind of plastic?”
    “Yep,” Tom replied. The eerie arm now slowly retracted the way it came until it was out of sight. “It’s another variation of Tomasite, compounded with some of the so-called ‘rare earth’ elements that are used in semicon-ductors. Our materials-science engineers have been working on it for some time now.”
    Bud looked at his empty hand. Seeing it was perfectly clean, he scratched his head. “What do you do, pressurize it to make it expand like that?”
    Tom shook his head. “No, it’s an entirely different principle. As you know, a basic hy-draulic system works because water is almost incompressible; if you push it down here, it xxxxxxxxxxxxx   xxxxxxxxxxxxx

bulges up there. That means you can use it to multiply force, just as a lever does.”
    “Sure.”
    “Now tell me this, flyboy. Why can’t a person pump sand, or other powders, in the same manner as you pump water?”
    Bud’s forehead crinkled. “I suppose it’s obvious… but I don’t know the answer!”
    Tom laughed. “Well, basically because of two factors. First, the grains don’t adhere to one another very well, whereas water molecules meld together, almost forming one big continuous molecule. The second reason is that the shape of the individual grains keeps them from fitting tightly together, so that a pile of sand, for example, is extremely porous.”
    “If you spill a soda onto it, the liquid just runs right through.”
    “Yes, and the result is that you can’t get enough suction going with sand, or most other powders, to overcome their internal friction and pump them.”
    Bud smiled. “But Swift chemical magic has conquered that detail, right?”
    “You just saw the result,” Tom confirmed. “It was basically a mass of plastic powder, made up of separate grains. But the new substance  xxxxxxxxxxxxx

has unique electrical and mechanical char-acteristics. It conducts electricity with very low resistance—but only in one plane, along one direction, more or less. At right angles to the flow, it’s an almost perfect insulator. You could make a high-power cable of this stuff  with no insulation and hold it safely in your hand.”
    “Wild!”
    “Furthermore, a current causes it to structure itself into fibrils, like little threads, all along its length. The fibrils slide freely along one another, which makes the mass extremely elastic. But the individual fibrils are incompressible and hug closely, so it holds together—and you can pump it like water and use it for a hydraulic-like pressure system in the robot’s ‘muscles.’ See?”
    “Hey, of course!” Bud joked. “But what did you do to give it a shape and grow fingers?”
    “Just something I rigged up to test its capabilities,” the other replied, gesturing toward the lab counter. “I have a sort of ‘sleeve’ back there with special sensors that modulate the cur-rent in the plastic, so that it imitates both the movement and general shape of my hand and arm.”
    “That’s great, Tom,” Bud said wonderingly. “What do you guys call the plastic powder?”
    Tom looked slightly embarrassed. “It has a xxxxxxxxxxxxx

big, long chemical name, but—don’t laugh— we’ve nicknamed it Herculesium!”
    “I wouldn’t laugh, pal,” Bud remarked. “After all, my real name is Budworth!”
    Tom gestured toward a sliding door in the wall of the lab. “Inside that cubicle is a big, deep vat of the stuff, almost like a well. I remodeled one of the pressure tanks, because I wanted to have a fair amount ready-made and on-hand. What I’m going to do is give Robo Boy a kind of ‘transfusion,’ replacing an earlier formula plastic with the latest batch, which is far superior. You can help me if you like.”
    “Sure,” Bud replied. “Will we need to put on any protective gear?”
    “No, that’s part of the beauty of Herculesium. The particles won’t bond with living cells at all, inside or outside. It hardly sticks to anything; you can just brush it off.”
    The two close friends worked together for hours, barely taking a break to wolf down Chow’s luncheon of sandwiches and sodas. Then, as the shadows began to crawl across the Swift Enterprises airfield, Bud reminded Tom that they had promised to meet the girls for dinner at TinCanz, a new restaurant and dance club on the Lake Carlopa shoreline that had become popular.

 

    “Why don’t you go on ahead, pal,” said Tom, his mind still on his work. “You drove in separately, anyway. I’ll shower and change here at the plant and meet up with you three later on.”
    “Okay,” Bud responded, adding: “But don’t pull the absent-minded-professor routine and show up late—Bashalli might bean you with a jar of coffee beans!”
    Seeing that he was near the end of the meticulous “transfusion,” Tom worked for another half-hour, then closed-up and secured the access panels on his machine man and left the lab, locking it with his electronic key. The ridewalk— a conveyor-belt transport system that criss-crossed the four-mile-square plant— had carried Tom almost a mile toward the administration building when he suddenly groaned. He had forgotten to have Robo Boy lie flat on the lab floor to help the newly injected Herculesium powder “settle” evenly.
    “Boy, maybe I am getting absent-minded!” he muttered, stepping across to the adjacent ridewalk, which moved in the opposite direction.
    Back inside the lab, he activated the control console, inserted the appropriate disk, and manipulated the control dials. The headless robot xxxxxxxxxxxxx

obediently crouched down, then smoothly rocked back and flattened himself against the tiled floor.
    “Good boy!” Tom whispered affectionately, approaching the recumbent form.
    Just then there came a slight sound—the faint scuff of a shoe against the floor. A cloth, reeking of chemicals, was whipped across Tom’s mouth and nostrils by arms that came from behind him. He gasped, twice, and then collapsed helplessly, legs like rubber. Uncon- sciousness passed across him like the shadow of a cloud.
    Tom’s eyes fluttered open.
    He seemed to be standing upright in a warm darkness that pressed against him from all sides.
    What in the world…? came his confused thoughts.
    His arms were at his sides. He tried to move them and discovered that they were unbound. Yet they moved against a strange, molasses-like resistance, which the young inventor could also feel against the rest of his body up to his jaw. And as his arms moved, he seemed to sink down further into the yielding material. Now it was almost touching his lower lip.
    Suddenly he understood! He was suspended upright in the vat of Herculesium powder in the xxxxxxxxxxxxx

enclosed cubicle that adjoined the lab. The ultra- fine substance was acting like quicksand, and Tom was being pulled lower and lower with every heartbeat—helpless to free himself!    

CHAPTER 8



         AN INTERRUPTED
         EVENING





TOM TRIED shouting for help loud and long, with little expectation that it would do any good. He quickly determined, from the echo of his voice, that the cubicle door panel had been shut. No one would be able to hear him.
    His brain churning furiously, he tried to remember every detail of the lab, the cubicle, and the vat. Was there something that could help him haul himself free of the powder before he suffocated?
    By effort of will he calmed himself, taking care to keep all movement to a minimum. Tom remembered that thrashing and struggling would only cause him to be pulled down by suction all the faster.  If only I had my televoc pin! he xxxxxxxxxxxxx

thought. But in his mind’s eye he could see his personal super-miniaturized communications de-vice resting on the nightstand next to his bed at home. Despite every effort, he left home without it all too often.
    Tom visualized the accumulation vat. It was a good six feet in diameter, the cuplike bottom about seven feet below the surface of the plastic powder. The tank sides, of polished titanium, extended a further yard upward. Even if he could manage to touch the sides, his grasping fingers would simply slide.
    Abruptly he slipped several inches further toward the bottom. The powder now covered his mouth completely! He slowly arched his back and lifted his jaw, forcing his lips into the open air—but only slightly.
    Had his attacker emptied his pockets? It was very likely. But with aching slowness Tom pressed against his pants pockets with his right hand.
    To his surprise he felt coins, his ring of keys, his billfold—even the small electronic key device, about the size of a credit card, that gave access to the various secured sections of Swift En-terprises. The guy must have been in a real hurry, Tom thought. Not that any of this  xxxxxxxxxxxxx

stuff will get me out of here!
    He then pressed against his left-hand pants pocket and felt the outline of a small squared-off bulk. At first he couldn’t remember what it was; then it came to him in a rush. The midget remote-control signal device that Bud had used the night before! He recalled now that Bud ha