TOM SWIFT

"Aw, come on, Arv," said Tom in feigned annoyance. "I’ve told you time and again—"

"Yeah, I know, I know, skipper. Your telesphere is not a matter-beamer, and your thoughtograph machine is not a mind reader. Just a miracle!"

Tom and Arv were huddled together inside the back compartment of an enclosed truck the size of a small moving van, an unmarked vehicle driven by young Bob Jeffers in the front cab. They were slowly staggering through the streets of traffic-choked Manhattan, a good three-hour drive from Shopton, New York, where Tom and his famous invention factory made its home.

In the circle of dimmed light thrown by a single hooded lamp, Tom sat at an electronic control board decked out in meter and oscilloscope. At the middle of the panel was a small rectangular video screen. As Arv looked over his shoulder, the young inventor’s index finger hovered over the button that would institute the final stage of the imaging procedure he was field-testing.

"Who first?" Tom asked Hanson. "Your choice."

"Bud," declared Arv. "He’s your best pal. You have a right to know what’s on his mind!"

Three sets of sidewalk-strollers were helping Tom test his new invention. Bud Barclay, his closest friend, was on Madison Avenue. Big, colorful Chow Winkler had been assigned to Fifth Avenue. Tom’s sister Sandra, with family friend Bashalli Prandit, was taking in Park Avenue. As the thoughtograph imager was designed to pick up mental impressions of the visual kind, Tom had directed them to three of Manhattan’s tony shopping areas. The street scenery there would be varied and interesting to Tom’s pedestrian subjects.

The crewcut young man spoke into a small microphone clipped to his shirt collar. "Swift to Barclay! You ready, flyboy? You’re my first victim."

"As per usual!" was the joking reply. "Fire away!"

Making use of the continuous signal provided by Bud’s micro-cellphone, Tom rotated the multipronged telextenna that sat upon its gimbaled base on the floor of the van. Its tiny motor assembly whirred in response. When it had locked on to Bud, who was a good ten blocks distant, the young scientist-inventor activated the antenna array. In his mind Tom could imagine an invisible beam darting at light-speed across the intervening space, passing like a ghost through all obstructions, and focusing in on Bud’s skull and the electrochemical patterns skittering across the brain within it.

Instantly the image monitor began to show a writhing, shifting chaos of light and color. As Tom worked the dials, sharpening and enhancing the "thoughtograph" he was acquiring, the eerie shadows took on definite shapes.

"Something triangular," murmured Arv, indicating the bottom of the screen. "Slanted way over to the side."

Tom nodded happily. "I’m sure it’s the sidewalk, appearing narrower as it goes off into the distance. And these oval blobs are other people—look how they’re moving along."

Tom’s machine did not function like a television or movie camera. Each thoughtograph was a still image, the instantaneous photograph of a single living thought. But they succeeded one another at a rate of about three per second, giving the screen a jerky, interrupted illusion of movement. "You’d better invent some kind of image-smoother, Tom," Arv commented. "That jerkiness is a little hard on the eyes."

"I know. But it’s not just the rate of images that’s at fault, Arv. Some of the image elements we’re seeing are purely imaginary, subliminal parts of Bud’s brain process that he probably never notices. They pop into existence, flit around, and disappear too quickly and randomly to register on his consciousness—but they’re captured in the thoughtograph, and we see it on the screen. Sort of like the way an ultra-highspeed camera can freeze motion."

Hanson gave Tom’s shoulder a squeeze as he leaned closer to the monitor screen. "Chief, I wonder how many times I’ve called one of your brainstorms unbelievable. But just imagine—we’re actually seeing the world through someone’s mind’s eye, exactly as he experiences it himself in his own mind!"

Tom modestly looked down at the controls. "Well, we don’t have anything very close to the exact mental image. Just a sort of impression."

"Yeah. But just wait!" Hanson snorted.

The two studied the screen as Bud continued to stroll along. This was not merely a record of the literal "feed" from the young pilot’s eyes, but an actual picture of his visual imagination, a mixture of the real and the imaginary. Images and colors that piqued Bud’s interest or attention—from the outer or inner world—appeared bright and sharp on the monitor. But the background elements that he cared little about, or that his walking body responded to in an automatic way, were indistinct. Barely registering on his consciousness, they barely registered on the screen.

"What’s that?" asked Arv. "It looks like a pile of cantaloupes, but it’s moving."

Tom chuckled. "It’s muscles, Arv—some buffed-out gym guy walking along. And I predict that the next thing we’ll see—yep, there it is!"

A familiar outline appeared on the screen. Though some segments were washed out, the face, and parts of the arms and chest, were vividly displayed.

Hanson nodded. "It’s Bud, all right. What’s he doing?"

"I’d guess he’s checking out his reflection in a storefront window, comparing that athletic physique of his to the other guy’s." Before their eyes, Bud’s image began to alter itself by fits and starts, the t-shirt melting away, the shoulders broadening, the arm muscles bloating. "Vanity, vanity," Tom continued in teasing disgust. "And it’s all in his mind!—mostly." He touched his microphone pin. "Okay, Barclay, stop admiring yourself and get moving!"

Presently Tom reset the controls, and the telextenna shifted to a new focus. "Let’s see what our partner from the prairies is into."

Chow Winkler’s mind’s-eye had an all-too-predictable bent. The Texas-born former chuck-wagon cook was Tom’s personal chef and a good and loyal friend, but he had a peculiar attraction to western wear of the gaudy variety, shirts in particular. For this, he took a good deal of affectionate ribbing, and took it good-naturedly. However improbably, it was clear that Fifth Avenue boasted some sort of western clothing shop, and the display window had caught Chow’s eye. Foggy images suggesting shirts drifted about, appearing and disappearing. Suddenly one jumped to the foreground, its pattern a brilliant if eccentric entanglement of silver and rose-red.

"Oh no, cowpoke, not that one!" gulped Arv. "Tom, he’s gonna kill our appetites if he wears that thing when he brings his lunchcart around."

"But look what’s happening," Tom replied.

"Hunh!—it’s fading out."

"Because it was mostly just imagination, Chow’s notion of what a shirt ought to look like. See? There’s the real one, a big dim blur. Way too conservative for him." Tom again turned his attention to the controls. "Now for Sandy and Bash."

Sandra Swift’s series of thoughtographs presented an odd jumble of many different things in front of a vague and shifting background. Sharply etched faces of men and women seemed to float into view, then disappear again. There were many images of clothing—usually just parts of clothing—and unusually distinct patches of pure color, always appearing side by side. "I think she’s comparing colors," Tom commented; "probably on clothes."

"Look at that!" The modelmaker broke into a grin. "Ever see an ear go by without a body?"

"It’s the earring that she’s most interested in," declared Sandy’s brother. He radioed to her: "So you like that earring, huh, San?"

"Don’t be a stereotypist, Tom!" came the reply. "It just happened to catch my eye. You—you’re really seeing my thoughts on your TV screen?"

"Sure am. Think good thoughts, sis."

A new voice cut in, marked by a slight accent. "Thomas, I have a few good thoughts. Do tune into my brain, won’t you?"

"Will do, Bashalli." Knowing the young Pakistani’s puckish sense of humor, Tom glanced Arv’s way, and he returned a wary look.

Tom switched the settings again to focus on Bash. The images came in with strong definition and realistic color.

"Not a surprise," murmured the young inventor approvingly. "She’s an artist—good visual imagination and a real eye for detail."

Hanson looked bemused as the next series of thoughtographs began to flash on the screen, gaining detail with each successive "frame." "What is it, a man standing on the street?"

Tom made some small adjustments to the monitor settings. "The color must be off. It’s like he isn’t wearing… any…" He cut himself off in midsentence, reddening. "Bash!" he choked out.

"Quite an eye!"

"I doubt it is the eye that impresses you. Oh please, don’t be quaintly embarrassed, Thomas. It was good enough for Adam and Eve. Why not us? And I omitted the fig leaf, because I don’t care for figs." She giggled and whispered something to Sandy. Tom could hear his sister joining in the merriment.

"Very funny," Tom said as the image began to blur and fade. "I’m just glad you didn’t give him my face."

"Believe me, Tom, nothing could be further from my mind!" answered Bashalli in a tone that made Tom wonder what she was getting at. "In fact—I—oh my, I—"

Suddenly the monitor pictures began to change radically. Images of distorted buildings took over, then what resembled the static snow of bad TV reception.

"Bashalli!" Tom cried. "What’s happening?" Receiving no answer, he switched to Sandy’s channel. "Sandy, what’s—"

"Oh Tom!" came the shrieking interruption. "Come quick! It’s Bashi—she’s collapsed on the sidewalk!"

Tom turned white with fear!

The back compartment of the van carried one of Tom’s zoomcycles, firmly anchored to the wall by brackets. This invention was a silent electric motorcycle, gyrostabilized and designed to fold down into a compact parcel. Tom pulled the folded-up assemblage from its brackets—it was light enough to be held up in one hand—and in the same smooth motion threw the lever that would open a panel at the rear of the truck and lower a ramp to street level. Whipping open the cycle to its rideable form and grabbing a helmet, Tom whirred away, jetting from the truck so feverishly that his wheels barely touched the ramp!

Using the miniaturized equipment built into his helmet, Tom homed in on Sandy’s phone signal. He zigzagged through the streets at a frantic pace, taking sharp corners with barely a diminution of speed. Within a half-minute the inbuilt gravitex stabilizer had reined the cycle to an abrupt but gentle stop at the curb.

Sandy kneeled next to Bashalli, who lay crumpled on the sidewalk completely unconscious. Tom thrust his way roughly through the growing circle of onlookers and sank down at his friend’s side, taking her wrist.

"Pulse steady," he murmured in relief. Making a quick scrutiny, he satisfied himself that there were no obvious signs of concussion, no puncture marks indicating any injection via a dart or needle—a mode of enemy attack he had encountered before. "Maybe she’s just fainted, San."

"I don’t think so," she replied. "Why would she? It’s not hot today—she’s never done it before."

"You didn’t notice anything unusual before she collapsed?"

Trembling, Sandy collected her thoughts. "No, nothing really. She was talking to you, and then her eyes went sort of glassy, you know? All of a sudden. Then down she went!"

"She may have had a heart attack," said Tom worriedly. But another thought crossed his analytical mind. What if her condition had been triggered, somehow, by his test of the thoughtograph imager?

Even as he called an ambulance, he heard its siren cry in the distance. But it seemed a maddeningly long time before the vehicle had arrived and Bashalli had been lifted on board, Tom and Sandy climbing in with her.

"What about your cycle?" asked Sandy distractedly.

He replied, "It can’t be moved while the gravitex is on. Arv and Bob will pick it up and head for the hospital with Bud and Chow."

Bashalli was examined in the nearest emergency room. The doctor’s report was bemused. "Miss Prandit is not in any danger, and has regained consciousness. Pending a full MRI, I see no sign of myocardial infarction—that is, a heart attack—or stroke. Her fluids are normal, blood pressure good."

"So much for what you don’t find!" Sandy blurted out impatiently. "What’s wrong with her?"

"I have no diagnosis at present, Miss Swift."

"But she’s all right now, doctor?" inquired Tom with urgency in his voice.

The medic frowned. "To be frank, she seems a bit confused. Did you say she is a native of Pakistan?"

"Yes."

"Then I believe she is speaking to us in Pakistani, with some English mixed in. She’s agitated, which is understandable; you may be able to calm her."

The two hurried to Bashalli’s bed in the emergency room, finding her sitting upright, calm but very pale. "Oh, Bashi, how do you feel?" asked Sandy, taking her hand.

Bash stared at Sandy and pulled her hand away. "English—you are speaking English. And so am I. But how? I have only started to learn it." As Sandy gazed at her in amazement, the young Pakistani continued, "I know you. I feel I know you. And you also," she added, turning to Tom and studying his face. "I have seen you both somewhere—haven’t I?"

"Bashalli, we’re good friends of yours, in Shopton," Tom said gently. "I’m Tom, and this is Sandy."

The girl shook her head. "Just names. What is Shopton? A store? For foreigners?"

"Don’t you remember anything?" Sandy asked tearfully.

Bashalli slitted her eyes and was silent for a moment. "The doctor has already inquired. Many things. My family, our store, the school. My teacher is Mrs. Hassunas. My name is Bashalli Prandit."

Tom and Sandy pulled chairs close to her and sat down. Tom leaned over and looked into her eyes earnestly. "Bashalli, where do you live? Do you remember?"

"Yes, of course. At the end of the mercantile lane, the new Tumoash Road, in the two-story house with blue trim and the gate of iron. You must know it."

"But in what city?" Tom persisted.

She surprised the young inventor by laughing. "As if we would live in the city! The village is Dijari. Where is this hospital I am in?"

Sandy answered. "New York City."

Bashalli stared but did not respond.

"Listen," said Tom. "You haven’t lived in Pakistan for years now. You moved to the United States, to the town of Shopton. You live there with your brother, Moshan, and his family. You work at his coffee house, The Glass Cat, and you’re a student at the DuBrey Art Institute."

"And how can I do these things, young sir?" Bashalli objected unsteadily. "I am not old enough, surely. At my last birthday, I was twelve."

As Sandy broke down, Tom tried to speak reassuringly. "You had an accident just now, while walking on the sidewalk in Manhattan with Sandy. It’s affected your memory."

"Ah!" responded the girl. "Amnesia! How very exotic! Somehow I don’t remember even what I have learnt, or how I have learnt it. But to learn English… to know it this well…" She seemed suddenly afraid. "Years have passed. Tell me!"

Tom nodded. "A number of years. I’m a year older than Sandy here, my sister, and you’re older still."

She smiled nervously. "Now I know this is a hoax. I would never tell a man my age! That doctor—he was also speaking English, wasn’t he? Yet, so very strange, I could not understand him at first. I was thinking in Urdu. Now, I remember what he said as if I understood all along."

"You must be getting better," said Tom. "I’m sure you’ll be just fine."

"I like optimism, sir—Tom is your name? Yes, now I am sure we’ve met." Suddenly tears came to her eyes. Her hand darted out and grasped Tom’s arm. "My father, my mother… I’m so frightened. But I can’t go home. Are they—?"

Tom gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "They’re fine, all of them. They phone you every week. Do your best not to be upset. You’ll have those years back in a day or two, Bash."

"Bash," Bashalli repeated thoughtfully. "I like that. And this is America? My, my." She settled back on her pillow and allowed her eyes to drift shut.

Arv, Bud, and the others had arrived meanwhile and were anxiously waiting in the lobby. Sandy filled them in while Tom stood apart, making calls on his cellphone.

Bud was aghast. "S-she didn’t know who you were? Doesn’t know any of us, San?"

"Wa-aal, they’s no way she coulda fergot ol’ Chow," insisted Chow Winkler. "Me with my western ways an’ colorful shirts an’ all."

"You have a point," agreed Bob Jeffers. "Maybe we should send you in to see her next!"

"Not a good idea," Bud cautioned. "It’s a little soon to be talking about shock treatment!"

After a few minutes Tom rejoined them. "I talked to Dad, then Moshan, then Doc." Doc Simpson was the youthful staff physician for Swift Enterprises. When Arv asked what Simpson had said, Tom continued: "He’s never heard of something like this happening so suddenly without signs of a stroke or something similar. But he made a recommendation, which Moshan agreed to. We’re moving Bashalli over to Fiske-Hergan on Long Island, not too far from the Enterprises jetmarine pier."

"Some kind o’ hospital?" asked Chow.

"A small private hospital specializing in neurological disorders," Tom confirmed. "Both Doc and Dad have met Dr. Fiske, and have high regard for him. Naturally, Enterprises will pick up the bill—Bash was working for us when this thing happened."

"You’d do it anyway, Tom," Bud noted with a slight smile.

Arvid Hanson now spoke quietly. "Tom, is it possible that the thoughtograph process could have brought this about in some way? After all, your device works by probing the human mind."

Tom paused before responding, but found he could only manage a shrug. "It showed no negative effects in the earlier tests at the plant. I tried it on myself, you know—many times. It didn’t affect you others today."

"Well, what about this?" interjected Sandy. "What if there were a power surge, or something? Couldn’t some sort of shock travel along the antenna beam into—"

Tom did not let her finish. "That doesn’t make sense! Look, the telextenna beam is the same sort of chopped-off wave-field as we use with the megascope. A kind of invisible sensor-point is created next to the person being ‘scanned’ that can detect changes in the visual cortex and the other parts of the central nervous system that encode and process the experience of seeing—information in visual form, whether fed in from the eye or from other parts of the brain. It’s just a receiving antenna, completely passive. It picks up certain signals given off by neural tissue, and doesn’t even penetrate the skull." The young inventor sounded as if he were trying desperately to convince himself.

"I know all that, Tom," said Arv gravely. "But I have to say, I’m skeptical of coincidences like this. We may need to take a deeper look at the situation."

Tom agreed, and was miserable doing it. "Yes. You’re right, Arv."

After further muted discussion, it was decided that Bob would drive Bud, Chow, and Arv back to Shopton in the van. Tom would have an Enterprises jetrocopter from the jetmarine pier pick up himself and Sandy at the Fiske-Hergan Institute to fly them home after Bashalli had settled in and Tom had spoken with the doctor.

Standing off to the side, Bud caught Tom’s eye and began discreetly signing to him with ASL—American Sign Language—which he and Tom had learned together. "Wouldn’t it be better to have San start off right away, with us? She seems mighty upset, genius boy."

Tom nodded and signed back. "That’s why I’d like to have her go with Bash to the hospital. I think seeing Bash comfortable, and taking a look at the facility, will reassure her." Bud indicated that he understood.

A brief ambulance ride conveyed Bashalli and her friends to the modern-styled Institute. The young Pakistani was fully conscious, calm and lucid, heroically holding down her despair at having several years of her life stolen from her. Her private room was cheerful and homelike.

As she lay back in bed, she gestured at the wall-mounted television. "At least the programs will be new to me," she joked—unconvincingly. "Even the reruns!"

While Sandy remained at her friend’s side, Tom spoke at length to the chief doctor, Isaac Fiske, who took careful notes. "We’ll learn something interesting from this case," he told Tom. "Quite unusual, obviously. We’ll be doing a neurochemistry workup to start with. I have a suspicion this is a serotonin-reuptake issue, perhaps due to an allergic reaction."

"Bash does have some rare allergies," Tom noted.

Presently Tom was informed that the jetrocopter he had arranged for had landed on the hospital’s roof helipad. Bidding Bashalli a warm and optimistic goodbye, he led his sister up to the helipad. The helmeted pilot greeted them.

"Hope you two don’t mind the back seat," he said apologetically. "This was the only chopper available, and we didn’t have time to stow away this junk up here."

Sandy gave a listless response. "I don’t care where I ride. I just want to get home."

The jet-assisted helicraft lifted off smoothly and rose through a lazy turn, eventually adopting a southerly direction.

Tom leaned forward. "Shopton’s northwest, you know."

The pilot gave a nod. "New regulations for city overflights. Since 9-11."

As Tom settled back in his seat, Sandy’s face darkened. "Excuse me, but I’m a pilot too. I’ve never heard of any regulations that would make you start off heading south from Long Island."

There was a short silence, and Tom and Sandy exchanged glances. Then the pilot replied. "You’re right, Miss Swift. We’re heading south because that’s where we’re going. I’m not taking you to Swift Enterprises!"

"Rebuckle those seat belts, you two!" the man chuckled. "I’m one of the good guys! Don’t you recognize me, Tom?"

"Should I?"

"Well, I was wearing a helmet then, and I’m wearing one now—I thought you might see a resemblance! Lt. Chic Deever, U.S. Navy!" Unable to reach all the way back for a handshake, he waggled a gloved hand in the air.

Sandy glanced at Tom with slitted eyes, suspicious of a prank. "Do you really know him, Tom?"

"I’m not sure," he murmured thoughtfully. "Maybe my memory is going."

"Hey, c’mon!" laughed Deever. "It hasn’t been all that long since I dropped in on you—Hurricane Edna, remember? As you can see, I’ve made it into the regular ranks."

Tom snapped his fingers. "Sure! Sandy, this is that Naval Reserve pilot I rescued in the cycloplane after he had to eject during the storm."

"Oh. That one." Sandy spoke uncertainly. "So are you returning the favor now, or what?"

"Official government business," Deever replied. "I was ordered not to identify myself or explain until we were airborne. When we found out what was going on, we contacted the head of your jetmarine installation and arranged this little trick—which, sorry, I kind of enjoyed! Tip-top security. As soon as you arrive, we’ll contact your folks in Shopton and let them know what’s become of you."

"Nice of you," Tom commented dryly. "And what has become of us, Lieutenant?"

The man laughed again. "Oh, you’re just being kidnapped, but it’s in a good cause. At least I assume it is. Not like they’d brief me before you!"

"We’re heading for D.C.?"

"Nope. Close, though. Arlington, Virginia." Deever now put on the jet speed, pushing his passengers against their cushioned seatbacks. "So relax. Any more questions?"

"I have one," said Sandy. "What kind of a name is Chic?"

"It’s what you call yourself when you have parents who name you Chichesterfield!"

They traveled south in awkward silence, the whine of jets and the drone of whipped air in the background. Presently they swooped down for a landing in what appeared to be a modern business park. "Welcome to the colorful little village of Point Oh-Eight," grinned Deever as he helped Tom and Sandy from the chopper. "These nice chauffeurs in Navy whites have come to take you to the party in their antique jalopy. See you later, guys."

"Later," Sandy called back. She added sarcastically: "‘Chichesterfield’!"

They rode two blocks past blankfaced buildings, the two Navymen polite but silent. Then the car headed into a concrete tunnel, stopping next to a sliding glass door which slid aside automatically. On the other side stood a man in civilian garb, hand extended. Tom’s face lit up immediately. "Dr. Kutan!"

He gave the short, rather heavyset man a warm handshake. The man then turned and offered his hand to Sandy, giving a little bow in the continental manner. "Teodor Kutan," he said, Polish accent firmly in place. "So nice to meet you, Miss Swift."

Like any reader of the daily news, Sandy knew the name Teodor Kutan. He was a renowned and skillful diplomat who had served more than one President as his personal representative in delicate, intricate foreign negotiations.

"You were on the Nestria expedition, weren’t you, sir?" asked Sandy with wide eyes.

He nodded. "Indeed so. I have that privilege. It makes quite a nice entry in my resume!"

When friendly extraterrestrials had given Earth her tiny, asteroid-sized new moon, it was Tom Swift to whom the government assigned the responsibility of leading the expedition to establish an American claim to the phantom satellite. Teodor Kutan had represented the government on the mission. Tom had found him likeable, insightful, and very skillful at his job.

"I don’t suppose you’ll tell us what’s going on, will you?" asked Tom.

"I am able to, but not authorized to; therefore, I won’t," the man replied, eyes twinkling. "But surely the famous inventing genius can manage a few minutes of patience!" He turned and led Tom and Sandy down a long hallway and into a large, well-appointed lounge area. "With apology, I must ask you to remain here, Miss Swift," he said.

"Sandy goes wherever I go, Dr. Kutan," Tom began to object.

But Sandy touched her brother gently. "No, Tomonomo, it’s all right. I don’t mind." She eyed the large television screen at the end of the room. "I can watch Wheel of Cheese."

Uneasy but relenting, Tom followed Dr. Kutan into the next room, a long half-darkened conference room dominated by an oval table at which a number of men sat waiting, some in uniform, some not.

Tom recognized one of the men immediately, seated at the far end of the table. "Of course you’re already acquainted with Yuri," commented Kutan as Tom nodded a surprised greeting.

"Yes. Well, actually, I guess we’ve never met," responded Tom. "That is, we’ve only spoken to one another in a teleconference, over a video link."

"Of course," Kutan said. "Then we shall do our introductions properly. Tom Swift, may I present Dr. Yuri Nemastov, Chief Minister of Applied Sciences and Technology of the Russian Federation, and Special Consultative Officer to His Excellency the President."

"Piffash!" muttered Nemastov. "Diplomatic long-windedness, Kutan. Sit the boy down and let us get started."

Tom sat next to Dr. Kutan, and the others introduced themselves. They represented many parts of the security establishment of the United States—the State Department, the Defense Department, the CIA, and the National Security Agency. Also present were representatives of the United Nations, NATO, and the European Union.

Good grief! thought Tom. Whatever this is, it’s about as big as anything can get!

The meeting was chaired by the newly-appointed undersecretary of State, Richard Trane. "I trust you’re duly impressed by this group, Tom? I’m sure it’s obvious that what we’re dealing with is an extremely serious matter."

"Yes sir, I have that impression."

"Then we’re starting off on the same page. What you are about to hear is classified at the highest level. We’ve gone to you directly for help, because—well, let us do this in order. Go ahead, Yuri."

Nemastov rose to his feet, his ample midsection squeezing past the polished wooden tabletop. "I have no preface to soften what I am about to relate. This is a nuclear situation, Tom. In a way it is an internal matter for Russia. Yet, like an odor, it has spread. I would say that the West—ah, I forget: we are now ‘the West’—we all have reason for concern. Tom, what do you happen to know of a little eensy-teensy country by the name of Respublika Zirghozyi? That is, the Zirghoz Republic?"

Tom gave a slight shrug. "About as much as most people, I guess. It’s in central Asia, isn’t it?"

"Indeed so." Nemastov smiled. "One of those. Formerly a possession of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Now, free as a hedgehog. Naturally, she chose to exercise her first moments of freedom by turning to a thuggish dictator to keep her people in line. His name is Yongjiss Ubar. He has an impressive title: Popular Democratic First-Citizen of the Motherland."

Tom nodded.

"Very well, then. Now, I give a little lecture on history, leavened with science. My deceased country, the U.S.S.R., was eternally fearful of encirclement and attack by her innumerable enemies; that is, the rest of the earth. She acquired nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them, and planted them throughout the conquered buffer countries that surrounded her—what we call in our language the Near-Abroad. The Zirghoz Soviet Federated Socialist Republic had a handful of these missiles and warheads."

Undersecretary Trane broke in with a comment. "The U.S. and Russia have negotiated the destruction of those weapons, of course."

"Some of them," added Nemastov. "The acknowledged ones. Embarrassingly enough, some remain in circulation."

Tom’s voice was grave. "Then, are you saying—this dictator, Ubar, has an H-bomb and delivery system?"

"Just so, young man," confirmed Dr. Nemastov. "Does it make you nervous? Not so nervous as it makes us, for we share a border with his poor nation. The First-Citizen denies that he has access to this majestic weapon; that is, the technical ability to control it for use. We are not convinced, particularly when he makes veiled threats against us."

"In other words, sir—you do know of it and where it is." Tom’s voice was crisp. He was in no mood for the customary pretenses of government and diplomacy.

Teodor Kutan spoke up hastily. "That is unimportant. Ubar demands that Russia support a redrawing of borders and the forcible relocation of tens of thousands of people of Russian descent, whom he rightly fears would oppose his rule."

"No one wants this but Ubar," Nemastov continued, eyes somewhat narrowed in Tom’s direction. He poured a glass of water and sipped it. "Now then. Leaving out certain details known by some, not all, in this room, the situation is as follows. We are very sure Ubar’s people have taken possession of the bomb, as of last Monday, and warn us through silent channels that there will be an ‘accident’ just across the Zirghozyi-Russian border unless we accommodate him. A deadline date has been intimated. In other words, he will either get the territory and depopulate it, or leave for us an irradiated landscape depopulated in a different way. Do you understand this, young Tom?"

"I do, sir," replied the young inventor. "It’s horrible!"

"At least that. Is there worse than horrible? —for that is what I would say, my friend. But there is an interesting way to change the odds." The Russian seemed to look straight into Tom’s eyes, raising his eyebrows. "And that, Tom Swift, is precisely where you come in!"

But Nemastov immediately doused the idea in cold water. "No, no. It was our first thought as well, but it would not work. Your repulsion machines could hardly protect the entire border region, nor do we know either the precise target or the launch site."

Tom concurred reluctantly. "And I guess there’s a further problem. We’re assuming that he’ll use the Soviet missile left behind. But that’s just an assumption, isn’t it? He could smuggle the warhead in, by truck for instance, or find a way to conceal it aboard an aircraft flying in from some third country."

"We have considered all those possibilities, Tom." Nemastov sipped the water again. Tom noted with concern that the man’s hand was slightly trembling. "In fact, some of us believe the warhead may already be in place, planted somewhere within the disputed territory."

Tom was silent, waiting.

Nemastov broke into a strained smile. "Ah, but there is hope, there is hope! The Swift inventive genius may yet save the day."

"Let’s cut the theatrics," muttered the tall man from the CIA.

"America!—instant this, instant that. But you are my hosts." The Russian tapped his stubby fingers on the tabletop as he gathered his thoughts. "We in the U.S.S.R. trusted no one, most especially our allies. To forestall this very dilemma, the capture and use of our own weapons against us, our scientists did something that seemed to them very clever. Each nuclear device included a mechanism, itty-bitty, intricately inserted into its microelectronic circuitry. We call it by a little name which means, in English, ‘the second edge.’ A two-edged sword, do you see?—as such, it cannot be grasped. This little cluster of chips and associated components cannot be extracted from the warhead without activating its function, rendering the warhead unusable, its fissile materials dispersed by acid, utterly irrecoverable."

Tom asked how the Second-Edge device worked in the case of an attack.

"It is most basic," was the response. "If we are in fear of a certain warhead, we need merely transmit an encrypted signal to a special sort of antenna deep inside the mechanism, which cannot be blocked or disconnected. The signal, very penetrating, awakens the Second-Edge, and the warhead is immediately neutralized."

"I see," said Tom. "But—if I understand, all you have to do to take care of this bomb is transmit that signal, maybe over a wide area. Right?"

The Russian chuckled. "If only it were so, and we had no need for this meeting! But let us do some thinking, shall we? We had to worry that the code might become known, which would allow the signal to be effectively jammed. And so our Comrades-in-brilliance, chosen technicians and mathematicians, designed the Second-Edge to allow a new code to be input directly—not by remote signal, you see, but by making a connection at the site itself. And so this wonderful code would be frequently changed, the old one ineffective.

"The routine was like this," Dr. Nemastov continued. "A small cadre of technicians, rendered absolutely loyal and trustworthy by the rather extreme measures perfected by the Soviets, visit the various warheads at varying intervals, usually a few months, to physically plug into a circuit port and download into it the replacement code, a long string of numbers with certain ‘validation sequences’ inserted within. The technician carries with him a tiny portable computer, nicknamed in Russian the Shoebox, which generates the new code on the spot, based on random, unpredictable factors—subatomic states, you know; quantum stuff. Having input the code, the technician then returns to Moscow with the new code recorded in the Shoebox. The code is visible on a digital readout as it is going in, but we do not permit the technician to write it down, obviously."

"But you can’t carry out your procedure with this warhead, because you don’t have access to it now," said Tom.

Nemastov slapped the tabletop humorously. "Correct! A big prize to Tom Swift! But the good news is, we are not concerned with inputting a new code. What we wish to know is: What code is presently in effect for that warhead?"

Tom looked puzzled. "You don’t have a record of the last code?"

The Russian did not shake his head, but assumed a dour look that expressed his response perfectly. "The last assigned technician, Rassim Iskovich, was found dead in a nice hotel room in Zirghozyia, a victim of foul play. The Shoebox was missing. He was to have visited the site—the last site known to us—the day before, and from evidence of his travels we are fairly sure he generated and downloaded the new code. But we do not know what it is."

"This was a few months ago," put in Undersecretary Trane. "Shortly thereafter, Ubar began making his threats."

"Are you with us so far?" the man from the U.N. asked Tom. "A complicated affair, is it not?"

"It sure is," he replied wryly. "But I understand it. At least I think I do."

"Good!" declared Nemastov. "Now I fear I must introduce you to one of those terrible Russian names of ours: Andriej Burkeshyanov. Call him Andri—he is just a boy, fifteen years old, a Chechen orphan informally adopted by our poor Mr. Iskovich. Iskovich took the boy everywhere with him, for he could not be left alone, not even for an hour. He had permission—yes, foolish!—to take Andri with him even to the warhead site. Do you know of the condition called autism, Tom?"

The young inventor nodded. "A neurological disorder. No one knows what causes it."

"A disorder of social learning, so to speak. Autistics can be brilliant in their own way, but they fail to ‘connect’ with the outside world as others do. Their behavior can be peculiar, self-centered, unrestrained. They can become obsessed with certain things, upset by others, and have great difficulty communicating, or understanding, even commonplace ideas. Yet sometimes they are able to do incredible things—feats of calculation, extraordinary memory for detail, powers of perception that seem almost beyond human capability. Such a person is Andri. His memory is uncanny, phenomenal."

Tom asked if the boy had witnessed his father’s murder and might know what had happened to the stolen Shoebox device.

Dr. Nemastov’s face became almost sunny. "He was found in the hotel by our investigating agents, hiding in a backstairs linen closet and perfectly calm. He may well have seen these things. But you see, he cannot tell us what he saw. Too fragmented, that mind of his. Nevertheless, young man, we in this room believe he is the solution to our dilemma, the key. Or rather, he is a locked box, and you, Tom, will provide the key."

Tom sat back in his chair, pulse pounding. "I think I know what you want, Doctor. Your solution is to have me use my new invention, my thoughtograph imager, on Andri. You want me to read his mind!"

There was a stir around the table, a sharing of glances and a few smiles. Tom knew he had hit the mark!

"We do know a little about your project, Tom," noted the man from the Defense Department, eyebrows raised apologetically. "You and your father are always very cooperative when you’re working on something with national security implications."

"You knew I was testing it today in New York," Tom declared flatly. "You knew about what happened to Bashalli, and where we took her."

The man nodded. "Obviously. You can hardly blame us in times like these. We have made some slight incursions into your privacy. But let’s keep to the topic. You have a device which can somehow, incredibly, photograph human thought. Could it extract visual memories from this autistic boy? Could you find out if he knows what became of the Shoebox or, more to the point, if he saw and miraculously retained the new code itself?"

"I’m afraid a great deal hangs upon this, Tom," added Dr. Kutan. "You have never been put to so great a test, with such vast consequences."

"Can you do it, Tom?" asked Undersecretary Trane.

All eyes turned to Tom Swift!

"I tried to put them off a little, Dad," replied Tom. "And I wasn’t being difficult. I don’t know if I can develop the imager to the point where I can, somehow, selectively run through a person’s visual memories. It may not even be possible."

The elder Swift smiled indulgently and a bit teasingly. "Something tells me you’re ready and anxious to make the impossible possible!"

Tom grinned. "I do like a challenge!"

A science and invention prodigy since childhood, Tom had never yet bowed to an obstacle, whether of a scientific or technical nature, or a matter of personal danger. It had been only a few weeks since he and Bud had used Tom’s racing aquadisk invention to overcome a crazed enemy bent on the destruction not only of Tom himself, but of his family and friends.

"I basically committed myself to looking the problem over while working full throttle to perfect the machine," Tom went on. "I suppose I—er—left them with a fairly optimistic assessment. I just hope we can deliver, Dad."

Upon the adjournment of the meeting, Tom and Sandy had been flown back to Swift Enterprises by Chic Deever. After meeting up with Bud and the others who had returned by truck, Tom had sought out his father in the guest-duplex on the plant grounds where the family was residing while their Shopton home, damaged in an explosion, was being rebuilt. As Damon Swift relaxed in a lounge on the bungalow patio, Tom told his father of the strange and disturbing events of the day, their private conversation protected from long-range electronic eavesdroppers by the invisible barrier of Tom’s sound-killing silentenna. After providing Mr. Swift with a fully detailed account of the desperate, remarkable situation, Tom concluded: "But we’ll have to be pretty careful what we tell the others here at Enterprises. This can’t be allowed to leak out to the public—or to any agents of that dictator Ubar who might be hanging around!"

Mr. Swift asked, "Have you gone over this with Harlan and Phil yet?" Harlan Ames, a former Secret Service man, was the dedicated head of plant security. Phil Radnor was his assistant.

Tom shook his head. "They’ve gone home for the day. We’ll get together first thing tomorrow morning when I—" The young inventor broke off with a yip of wry laughter. "I almost said, When I come in. But I won’t be coming in, Dad. I’ll already be here!"

Tom’s father didn’t join in the laughter. "That may be for the best, Tom. We’re all pretty well protected here on the grounds."

Tom fully trusted those closest to him, and was unwilling to completely conceal the situation from them. When Bud joined Tom and his family for dinner in the bungalow, prepared and served by Chow, he explained the matter again with only a few details left out.

"Hoppin’ horned hogbellies!" sputtered Chow Winkler. "You mean we’re gonna have some kind o’ atomic war unless that brain-TV o’ yours kin take a picture of th’ inside of some kid’s head?"

"I don’t think anyone is talking about a war, Chow," observed Tom’s mother. "But even a single little nuclear explosion is more than adequate."

"Good night, wouldn’t that unhinge the world!" Bud exclaimed. "But are there any probs left to wring out in the imager, genius boy?"

Before Tom could answer Sandy put in, "There is that little problem of scanning people’s minds without scrambling them." There were tears in her voice, much as she tried to hide them, and Bud regretted his choice of words. Bashalli Prandit was not only Tom’s frequent date, but had become Sandy’s closest friend.

Tom, already feeling guilt and concern over Bash’s condition, nodded grimly at his pretty, blond-haired sister. "I can’t let my machine do to the boy what it did—what it may have done—to Bashalli," declared the crewcut youth with determination.

"Of course not," Mr. Swift said. "Nor can we allow a madman to hold the world hostage to nuclear blackmail."

"Brand my nooklee-trons, we sure can’t!" agreed Chow emphatically. "But you’ll lick ’er, son."

"I hope so. No—I will!"

Dawn the next morning found Tom already up and working in his personal lab in the electronics technologies building. The sensor-node transmitter antenna and the main imager console had been removed from the truck the previous afternoon and delivered to the lab for Tom to work on. He had two goals that he had desperately to meet if his "brain-TV" was to be used to defuse the Russian crisis. The main scientific challenge was to develop a technique that would allow the device to selectively sort among the individual image-impressions stored as complex patterns in the subject’s cortex. This was daunting enough; but to Tom the more vital task was to make certain that the thoughtograph camera was completely safe for use.

Unless I know the imager had nothing to do with Bashalli’s attack of amnesia, I won’t allow it to be used, he told himself. Yet he couldn’t help wondering—and he felt ashamed to even think it—whether the world’s military and security forces might not seize the device and use it in desperation without its creator’s permission.

Chow Winkler, who lived in a comfortable apartment on the Enterprises grounds near his beloved custom kitchen, knew that Tom had risen early. At seven AM he came knocking at the lab door, a steaming breakfast ready and waiting on his cart.

"You cain’t give up eatin’, boss, er somethin’ bad’s gonna happen to your brain too," he declared as he entered. "B’sides, bet it’s time fer a break, doncha think?"

"Guess so, pardner," Tom replied. "But I still have a lot to get through before I go meet with Harlan and Rad at nine."

"Why’n’t you tell me all about it over the bacon an’ eggs?" Chow offered. "I don’t much imagine I’ll understand it, but mebbe it’ll spruce up your mind some."

Sipping an orange juice, the young inventor gave a half-nod. "It just might at that. Well, Chow, right now I’m trying to adjust the telextenna input analyzer to sort out the—"

"Whoa, now, hold on there!" interrupted the ex-Texan. "How ’bout mebbe you start at the beginnin’ and tell me how you kin go about in the first place makin’ a machine that can read your mind!"

Tom sighed inwardly. The possibility of completing any work before his meeting had suddenly become bleak! But he was unwilling to hurt the older man’s feelings. "Sure—sorry. The first thing to know is, my thoughtograph imager is not a mind reader!"

"It ain’t?" The cook pushed back his customary western hat and scratched his head.

"Nope. I’ve called it that as a joke, but really, I don’t have any idea how to go about actually coming up with a device for detecting and recording another person’s ordinary thoughts, the ones you sort of ‘hear’ in your mind when you think."

"Wa-aal, I dunno, boss," Chow objected. "I took a doctorin’ test one time back in Texas, an’ they had this here little thing that made a wavy line on a roll o’ paper. The young feller said it was my brain waves. Couldn’t you jest feed ’em into a computer er somethin’?"

"I’ll have to give that a try sometime," Tom replied carefully. "But those weren’t recordings of your thoughts, Chow, just the general electrical rhythms of your brain. You see, what we call thoughts are extremely complicated patterns of electrical and chemical changes that take place all through the cerebral cortex—that’s the thinking part of your brain, pardner. As far as we know so far, the structure of the human cortex is the most intricately detailed thing in the universe! You know those Indian blankets you like, the ones with the elaborate patterns woven into them? Well, imagine completely covering a blanket with patterns like that, super-detailed and so close together they overlap."

"It’d take a good year’s worth o’ weavin’, I’d guess."

"Uh-huh. Now imagine if the blanket was as big as the whole solar system!"

Chow’s eyes widened. "Brand my parsec salad!"

Tom grinned in response. Explaining his inventions to Chow Winkler was time consuming, but he had to admit that it was also good fun! "That gives you just a slight idea of the complexity of a human thought!—and I was only talking about one single thought, lasting a fraction of a second. And it gets even worse!"

"It does?"

"Even though one human brain looks about the same as another, each one is highly customized. At the microscopic level, the small structures of the cortex are differently configured from person to person, no two exactly alike."

Chow brightened. "Sure—jest like they say about snowflakes!"

"That’s right. The apparent similarities between corresponding organs are really general and superficial, like when you identify a person as tall or—well, as tall. But it’s all those infinitesimal details that make the difference between your thought of, mm, armadillo soup, and Bud’s thought of catching a football pass. Not even a super-computer could sort it all out and translate it into anything another person could understand. You might say we don’t have the key to each other’s customized code. We only manage to understand one another because each brain does its own translating, into very general terms based on the day-to-day experiences we all share."

Chow gulped. "Okay then, boss, I get th’ message. Guess I won’t haveta go around watchin’ what I think."

Tom paused as a dreamy, philosophical light came into his eyes. "But to tell the truth, we shouldn’t be so sure we know what a thought is, really. We have to assume it has something to do with brain structure and function, but who’s to say? Maybe the brain is like the antenna on a TV set, special-designed to receive something that originates elsewhere."

Chow seemed a bit uncomfortable with the discussion’s philosophical turn. "Wa-aal, if it’s all so blame complexified, what in th’ name o’ Sam and Sadie Hill does that camera o’ yours do?"

Tom took a few bites of his rapidly cooling breakfast before answering. "What saves the day for science is the fact that we’ve been able to identify one special part of the brain with a dedicated function that we can understand. By electrically stimulating a very tiny section of nerve tissue during surgery, medical scientists have discovered that it encodes and ‘records’ visual-type images."

"Sorta like one o’ them videotapes you kin rent?" asked the cook. "Is that th’ idee?"

"In a way," was the reply. "The cortex may use it as a sort of master reference to guide the neural processing cycle that ends up producing the mental ‘picture’ that we actually see. The recording is in the form of a pattern of electro-chemical activation that remains isomorphic to—"

"Uh—boss—"

Smiling, Tom apologized again. "What I mean is, the shape of the nerve pattern actually copies the shape of the original image—it isn’t just an unreadable code, as other mental processes are. The strongest and clearest patterns represent images coming in from the eye, but this specialized area handles mental imagery of all sorts, including memories, dreams, and pure imagination. Even hallucinations—those pink elephants people see when they have a few drinks too many."

"Seen m’ share of ’em, back when I was a wild young sprout." Chow nodded soberly several times, brow wrinkled. Tom was pleased to detect what looked like a gleam of understanding in his eyes. "So it’s like takin’ a photy-graph of a movie screen, ceptin’ th’ screen’s inside yer head."

"I guess you could say that," agreed Tom. "At least that’s why I call it a ‘thoughtograph’."

"Say, boss," interrupted the older man, "I know ya like t’ talk, but you’d best get t’ eatin’ afore your breakfast gets cold."

The young inventor nodded and plunged in hungrily. Chow watched him in silent approval for a minute. "That’s better. But y’know, you never did get around to tellin’ me the problem yuh’re workin’ on."

Taking a gulp of coffee, Tom was about to answer when the nearby desk telephone shrilled its alert. "This is Tom."

Tom recognized the strained, excited voice on the other end. The caller was George Dilling of the plant’s communications office. "Tom, I just took a call—it’s Bud Barclay! He’s been in an auto accident!"

"The police—it was a squad car call routed directly through our switchboard," responded Dilling. "Bud was hit in that convertible of his."

"Where, exactly?"

"Intersection of Bluffside Way and Third Street."

Tom’s voice was grim. "That’s along the route Bud always takes to Enterprises." Hearing Bud’s name, Chow, startled, looked up at Tom in alarm.

Tom asked Dilling if he had been given any more information. "No, sorry Tom—the officer at the scene had to sign off before I could ask any questions. I thought I ought to call you before I did anything else."

"Make the calls. But I’ll be at the scene before you’re able reach anyone with information," the youth declared with grim determination. Hanging up, he gave Chow the gist of the call, then dashed out the lab to the ridewalk, a moving walkway that allowed Tom to combine its modest speed with his own frantic trot.

In less than eight minutes Tom’s bronze-hued electric sportscar had screeched to a stop only a few car-lengths from the site of the accident. A Shopton PD squad car blocked his view, but only for an instant as he leapt into the street and scrambled around the obstruction.

Even before he caught sight of Bud, he was relieved to hear the sound of his pal’s voice. "Look, officer, I’m fine, really fine!" the young pilot was insisting, his unruly black hair flopping across his forehead in all directions, plastered down by a wispy, intermittent drizzle. "I don’t need an ambulance, just a tow truck for my poor convertible!"

As Tom came rushing up, Bud winced in apologetic embarrassment. "Hey there, skipper!—should’ve known they’d call you."

"Mr. Barclay says he’s all right," said the frowning officer to Tom. "I’ll release him to you, since he refuses medical attention. I’ve taken a statement and called a tow."

"Thanks a lot, officer. Don’t worry—Bud’s as tough as a tree stump."

"And about as stubborn, I’d say," commented the officer sourly.

Under his breath Bud muttered "Wise guy!" as the officer returned to his squad car. Then he faced Tom a bit sheepishly. "I suppose you’d like to know what happened. First of all, it wasn’t my fault!"

Smiling as he looked Bud over, Tom conceded the point immediately. "I figured that, flyboy. You’re a pretty careful driver. Well—a pretty skillful one, anyway."

"This time I was being especially careful, Tom, because I knew the streets’d be wet and slick from this drizzle," Bud said. "That’s why I put the top up. Here’s what happened. I left my apartment on the way to Enterprises just like always. After a couple blocks I noticed I was being followed a ways behind—a woman on a motorcycle. She wore a helmet and jacket; couldn’t see her face."

"What made you think she was following you?" asked Tom.

"Mostly a hunch at first. I guess I noticed the way she hung back, keeping her distance even though there weren’t any cars between us. So I went around the block at Payman Street—floored it, too. Sure enough, she does the same thing."

Tom gave his friend a teasing look. "Maybe she wanted an autograph. You can be pretty charming, I hear—from you."

Bud ignored the friendly gibe. "Anyway, I had to stop at the light over there." He bobbed his head toward the stoplight suspended over the intersection. "I assumed the woman would keep her distance. But she didn’t! All of a sudden she comes roaring ahead at top speed, like she’s going to ram me from behind. Just then the light was starting to change, so I tore out into the intersection. But Madame Moto-Cross was already going mighty fast—I think I heard her clip me on the passenger side as she went tooling by. And then—well, I was distracted and the street was slick—"

"So you skidded right into the streetlight pole," Tom concluded. "How bad’s the damage?"

"Oh, not too bad. Not like the last time or two. Or three." The youth ran a hand through his hair. "Did a number on my right headlight and bumper, though. Oh man, what I put ol’ TseTse through." This was Bud’s affectionate nickname for his convertible, which bore the license plate TSE TSE FLY, a characteristic Barclay pun on the initials of Tom Swift Enterprises.

Tom looked at Bud thoughtfully. "Did you see what happened to the cyclist?"

"Not really. I was devoting myself to skidding and crashing."

"She couldn’t have known you’d skid," Tom observed. "So causing the accident wasn’t the point. But if she was following you—why? The route to the plant isn’t a secret."

Sharing the young inventor’s puzzlement, Bud shook his head. "Dunno, genius boy. In my mirror I saw her reach into her jacket; I thought she was pulling a gun on me. That’s why I took off like I did."

Tom didn’t reply for a moment, frowning deeply. "You said she passed you on the righthand side?"

"Uh-huh."

"And you had the top up."

"So?"

"So think about it, Bud," replied Tom, squinting into the wet gray distance as if he were visualizing the scene in his mind’s eye. "You had the top up, so passing on the passenger side would make it hard to draw a bead on you from the motorcycle. The angle’s wrong—the edge of the top gets in the way. She wouldn’t be able to see you to aim the gun."

Bud looked surprised, then admiring. "Good grief, no wonder they call you Swift! Sure—she’d want to pass next to me on my side if she planned to gun me."

"And so, maybe she didn’t have a gun. She was reaching for—what?" Bud’s disabled convertible had been pushed to the curb, out of the way of traffic. Tom now walked up to it and circled around to the passenger side. Suddenly he looked up at Bud and motioned him over excitedly.

"What’s up?" Bud called as he came trotting over.

Tom pointed to the side of the convertible. "What’s this?"

Bud whistled. "Beats me, pal. But it sure doesn’t come standard." Standing out against the brilliant scarlet of TseTse’s paint job was a flat, square object the color of dull metal, no more than three inches broad. The plate seemed to be stuck in place on the side of the car.

Bud reached for it curiously, but Tom grabbed his wrist. "Don’t!"

The young pilot gulped. "You mean—you think—it might be a bomb or something?"

"There’s a safer way to find out, flyboy," the young inventor declared. "I’m packing a TeleTec in my car."

Tom hastened back to his car and in a moment returned with a small electronic device in hand, about the size and shape of an old-style home movie camera. The TeleTec was the latest elaboration of the television detector invented by the first Tom Swift, Tom’s celebrated great-grandfather, in 1933. The useful invention allowed the operator to take video-like pictures through solid obstructions from a distance of several yards, without the use of X-rays. The unit in Tom’s hands was a new ultra-miniaturized model.

Standing a few feet back, Tom aimed the TeleTec’s lens tube at the square of metal and adjusted the focus.

"Doesn’t look like there’s anything inside it," murmured Bud, looking at the TeleTec’s tiny viewscreen panel over his friend’s shoulder.

"It seems to be just a piece of solid metal. But let me change the focus a little."

"Wait!" cried Bud excitedly. "I see something!" Superimposed against the square outline were several lines of minute, irregular figures. "It looks like writing—but what kind of writing? Do you suppose they’re space symbols?"

For quite a time now Swift Enterprises had been in communication with mysterious extraterrestrial beings, Tom’s space friends. These alien scientists expressed themselves to earthly humans by means of symbolic figures representing mathematical and logical concepts.

Bud was taken aback when Tom came out with a bark of laughter. "Not this time. You’re just seeing the writing in reverse, mirror-style, because it’s on the reverse side of the metal plate." He switched off the TeleTec, adding, "I think it’s safe to take a look."

Bud touched a corner of the object and cautiously pulled on it. It came away from the car body with a slight resistance. "It’s magnetized," Bud remarked. "You know what, skipper? I think this is just a refrigerator magnet, the kind people use to hold notes on the fridge door, stuff that they want to be free to forget about. She just pried off the enameled cover."

Careful to hold the piece of metal by its edges only, Bud turned it over. Both boys could now read the writing on the reverse side, which appeared to have been crudely scratched into the metal with a sharp object.

T SFT

NO TO TRUST

ONE EYE OPEN

BETRAYTOR

"Good night, what is it? A threat?" exclaimed Bud.

"Not a threat," stated Tom. "A warning. But what does it mean?"

"Not even a partial?" asked Radnor.

"Nothing, Rad," was the reply. "A whole lot of nothing."

"You two are the experts," Tom stated, "but I’ll risk a guess that the person who wrote the message wasn’t a native speaker of English."

Not taking his eyes off the inscription, Ames gave a slight nod. "Looks that way. The words are pretty cockeyed. Still—some people are more or less illiterate, even here in the U.S."

Radnor added, "‘Betraytor’! Suppose that’s a combination of betray and traitor?"

"Could be," said Tom. "But I don’t think he, or she, is just uneducated, or making mistakes out of haste. Look at those ‘R’s."

"I noticed that right off," Ames remarked. "They’re written backwards."

An intrigued smile on his face, Tom shook his head. "They’re not backwards. They’re written properly—in Cyrillic!"

This brought an unbelieving snort from Phil Radnor. "That’s Russian writing, isn’t it?"

"Also some other European and Asian countries in the region. For example—" The young scientist-inventor paused dramatically. "Zirghozyia!"

Ames’s expression became stony as granite. "I suppose we might’ve known. This has something to do with the nuclear crisis."

After driving back to Enterprises with Bud, Tom had kept his postponed meeting with Harlan and Phil. While the square of metal was being run for fingerprints by a technician, Tom had given the two an account of the previous day’s unexpected conference and the nature of the grave situation on the southern border of Russia. "They use Cyrillic lettering in the Zirghoz Republic," continued the young inventor. "I did some reading about the country last night."

"All right then, we have a good working theory," Ames declared; "which is a little better than the nothing we had before."

"But that message could mean almost anything," Radnor put in. "Let’s say we have someone who barely speaks English who’s trying to compose a message using something like a translating dictionary—Zirghoz-to-English, if you like. No to trust, one eye open. Does it mean Tom’s to trust no one and keep an eye open for danger? What if it means, We’re keeping an eye on you because we don’t trust you!"

Reluctantly, Tom concurred. "In that case, ‘betraytor’ could mean that the writer is accusing me of betraying someone."

"There are plenty of secure ways to get a confidential message to Tom Swift, whether it’s a threat, a warning, or something else entirely," noted Ames. "Why use such a weird, convoluted method of delivery?"

Tom responded with a theory. "Maybe the woman was being watched in some way. Or—better—maybe she made a hasty decision on the spur of the moment, just before she was to leave the area, or just before some other factor would prevent her from contacting me."

"Or maybe," commented Radnor, "she’s just another paranoid nutcase."

"We’ve had our share of those," Ames agreed. "I’ve lost count!"

On this inconclusive note, the meeting ended. Tom strode into the adjacent office, the large modern office he shared with his father. He had decided to make some entries in his computerized journal before lunchtime.

Presently Munford Trent, the Swifts’ secretary, rapped on the door and entered. "Tom, while you were meeting with Mr. Ames I took a call from someone who left his number. He said it’s a private, secure number. A Mr. Zirghoz. He said you’d know what it’s about."

"Thanks a lot, M—er, Trent." Zirghoz! Tom dialed the number immediately, recognizing a Washington D.C. area code and familiar exchange prefix.

"Good morning, Tom," answered a voice that Tom recognized as belonging to Undersecretary Trane. "Mind if I call you on your PER?"

"Please do, sir," was the reply. "I gave you the setting for my office unit."

The Private Ear Radio was an invention of Tom’s that permitted communication with absolute privacy and security; the laws of quantum physics prevented even the possibility of eavesdropping. Hanging up the phone, the young inventor snatched up the walky-talky sized PER from its nearby cradle. In a moment it bleeped softly with an incoming call.

"Now we can talk without my feeling quivery in the pit of my stomach," said Trane. "Have you made any progress on your end of the operation?"

Tom smiled. "I’m flattered that you think I might have made a breakthrough in a single morning, Mr. Undersecretary! I’m working through a few preliminary ideas, though."

"Yes, well, I don’t mean to rush you. Of course, thousands, if not millions, of lives are at stake. But take your time." The official harrumphed politely. "However, the purpose of my call is to lay out for you the plan the committee has developed to get you close to Iskovich’s ward, Andriej Burkeshyanov."

"He’s in custody of the Russian Government, isn’t he?"

"He is," Trane confirmed. "But so far they feel his existence, not to mention the probability that he saw the code numbers, is unknown to Yongjiss Ubar’s people. They prefer not to risk drawing attention to his presence on Russian soil. We’ve argued with them. We could surely slip you and your machine into Moscow. But they are quite adamant—proud people, God knows why—and have expressed their views through Dr. Nemastov. His hands, our hands, all our hands are tied."

Tom indicated that he understood the situation.

"Good," said Trane brusquely. "Here’s what we’re going to do. The boy and a Russian overseer will take an inconspicuous trip to a city outside the Russian Federation, where you’ll meet up with them and use your imager on him. No one will be the wiser."

"What city?" asked Tom.

"Volkonis, Brungaria."

A feeling of surprise and alarm wormed its way down Tom’s spine. Brungaria, formerly a totalitarian country and a dedicated foe of the United States and the interests of the West, was now a friendly democratic state, Volkonis its urbane capital. Yet on more than one occasion agents of a dissident faction had threatened Tom and his scientific projects.

"Now look, I know what’s on your mind," Trane commented with haste. "We will have the thorough cooperation of not only Brungaria’s security apparatus, but some of the best operatives in the western world. There’s no chance of that idiotic rogue group, the Sentimentalists, getting in on the ploy."

"If you say so," Tom said doubtfully. "But frankly I’ve found it difficult to travel without attracting attention. Enterprises is always being watched in some way or other. Even if there’s no public announcement, my heading off for Brungaria will—"

The undersecretary interrupted. "We’ve considered all that, obviously. What we’re going to do is provide a plausible cover story. As a matter of fact, bring along your usual crew—your technical people, your friends, even your family. Make a vacation out of it; they probably need one. As for you, we’ll let it get around that you’re visiting as a guest of the government to explore the feasibility of constructing one of your skyways."

Another surprise! Tom’s repelatron skyway, a "flying" thoroughfare for automotive traffic, had been built to address the needs of a developing Africa nation, Ngombia. Despite discussion here and there, no contracts for further skyway projects had developed as of yet. "Well," he said, "I suppose that’ll justify my bringing along a tech team and a certain amount of equipment."

"Our thinking precisely. We’ll spread the story that you’ve been asked to link Volkonis with the city of Taicrola on the Vass River, right over the tops of the Hargmiz mountain range. That’s not impossible, is it?"

Tom conceded that such a project was possible in theory. "I guess it’s a pretty good ploy, sir."

"It should be. That’s the business we’re in." Before signing off, Undersecretary Trane advised the young scientist-inventor that he was sending an experienced CIA agent to Shopton to accompany Tom. "He’ll ride herd on the operation. Name of Quimby Narz. Highly professional, very knowledgeable on subjects related to Brungaria and southeastern Europe in general. He’ll make the tough calls on our behalf."

After the PER call had ended, Tom found himself frowning at Trane’s peremptory style. Yet he understood the stakes.

Tom made a call to the Fiske-Hergan Institute to check on Bashalli’s condition, and was disappointed to learn that there had been no definite change. Then he joined his father for lunch, bringing the elder scientist up to speed on the latest developments.

The remainder of the day, and most of the day following, was devoted to solving the thoughtograph’s problems. Tom and his chief engineer, Hank Sterling, worked tirelessly hour after hour, sharing ideas and criticisms like the longtime friends they were.

By four in the afternoon, Tom was able to declare triumphantly, "This is wonderful! We’ve managed to put both problems to bed!"

Hank grinned a weary grin. "We? As I recall, the brainstorms were mostly yours, Tom. I was just along for the ride."

"You’re the one who detected the field leakage, pal," retorted Tom appreciatively.

At that moment, the head of a cautious Bud Barclay made its appearance around the doorjamb. "I knew we should have kept the lab door shut!" gibed Hank.

"Aw c’mon!" was the response. "I haven’t seen genius boy since my accident, and he’s due to give me one of his ‘Bud explanations.’ Besides, I’ve come with a cowpoke bearing treats."

"And they’re mighty tasty," said Chow, entering behind Bud with a tray.

Tom grinned a bit wryly. "More of those, er, buffalo cookies?"

"Now you leave the fun-makin’ to this hombre here," chided the westerner, indicating Bud. "These are good ol’ plain strawberry cupcakes, nothin’ fancy about ’em. Even brought milk."

The three young men sampled the cupcakes and agreed that they hit the spot perfectly. As Chow beamed beneath his cowboy hat, Bud inquired about Tom’s and Hank’s progress on the thoughtograph imager.

"Looks like we’ve solved it," Tom replied.

"What a shock!—Tom Swift solves a scientific hangup!" joked Bud. "But how’d you do it?"

Hank answered for his boss, whose mouth was full of cupcake. "The memory-selection problem was pretty tough, Bud. You know how, when you’re listening to a song you know well, you can anticipate not only what’s coming right up, but can sort of run through the whole song to the end—as if your brain was on fast-forward?"

"Sure."

"Say, I’ve done that m’self," Chow put in. "Mostly country-western songs. Always wondered how I happened t’ have sech a good memory when they’s music on."

"It’s not really what we call memory, Chow," Tom said. "Not in the usual sense. It turns out that the human brain is especially good at storing certain kinds of sequences—series of things in a fixed order, as opposed to the particular episodes memory replays for us."

Bud nodded. "Got it. So you use the sequencer business to find the right memories?"

"That’s it, flyboy. We can run through fragments of imagery in reverse order, like a sort of visual index, and can estimate, very roughly, how long ago the image became fixed in the neural center."

"Man!" cried Bud delightedly. "It really is a lot like a video player!" Then a sober look crossed his face. "But what about the thing that happened to Bash?"

Tom became solemn, and Bud knew instantly that his pal was dealing with considerable guilt and remorse. "We confirmed that the device itself doesn’t give off any harmful radiation. But—the wave-field at the sensor point does. You might say it leaks. It’s extremely weak, but as the operator tunes it in, it becomes locked-in to the natural electrical rhythms of the synapse processes in the subject’s cortex. I’m sure that’s what happened to Bashalli."

"And I’m sure yuh’re right, boss," Chow remarked, trying to be encouraging. "But brand my sign-lapses, why’d it jest happen t’ her and not the rest of us?"

"That’s the missing piece of the puzzle," admitted Tom. "We’ve had thoughtographs from more than a dozen people along the way, and Bash is the only one who reacted to the wave leakage. It could be something like a shock-effect that blocks memory retrieval. She must have some sort of organic susceptibility to it."

"Reckon that’s it," said Chow doubtfully. "Fixed it now, have you?"

Hank explained that he and Tom had worked out a way to make the excess emissions self-canceling. "Not a trace of ’em now."

"That’s right fine," the cook declared. "And if y’need someone to test ’er, you got yerself a subject right here!" He slapped Bud’s back.

Tom grinned. "How about it, daredevil? Matter of fact, there’s something locked up in that brain of yours that I’d like to pry out."

"I’ll give it a try," said the dark-haired young pilot. He pulled a stool over in front of the telextenna array and sat down. Tom actuated the imager, and in a moment the viewscreen began to blossom with vague, tumbling forms.

"We’re tuned in," Tom announced. "How do you feel?"

There was a pause. Bud stared at Tom, his brows knitted. "How do I feel? What do you mean?" The athletic youth ran his fingers through his unruly dark hair, eyes darting about in perplexity. "Say, mister, where am I anyway? San Francisco General?"

"Great gobs o’ gravy!" sputtered Chow in alarm. "That dang machine o’ yours has erased Buddy Boy’s memory too!"

"Whatever, dude," muttered Bud Barclay. "But I sure don’t remember how I got here. Have you called my folks? We live over on Gough." Bud seemed to believe he was still in San Francisco, where he had been raised!

Tom was silent, his deep-set blue eyes boring into Bud’s sentimental-gray ones. "Boss, you gotta do something!" urged Chow. "Mebbe we oughta call Doc Simpson!"

"Let’s skip Doc," Tom replied. "See those power cables over there? I think we’d better apply electroshock immediately."

Chow’s jaw dropped. "Ya think so? Ain’t that jest a mite risky?"

Hank suddenly caught on. "Forget the shock treatment, guys. Chow, maybe you could go put on that gold and pink number you were wearing last Monday. That’ll bring this numbskull back to his senses if anything will."

Bud burst out laughing. "Okay, sorry—just a joke. I’m fine. Er, Chow… you’re not gonna get mad at me, are you? It might send me into a relapse!"

The rotund cook’s brow was darker than a prairie thunderstorm. "T’ think I ’as all worked up over your worthless hide!"

"A little too much fun, Bud," Tom chided. But he gave a slight smile to soften his words. He knew Bud wouldn’t be Bud without his pranks and quips.

"Sorry Tom, Chow, Hank." He sat up straight on his stool. "I’ll play nice from here on. Go ahead."

Tom snorted and returned to the control board. "Okay. You said you didn’t see enough of that cyclist’s face to be able to guide a police sketch artist."

"Right," Bud nodded. "I had to keep my eyes on the road, and she was wearing a helmet and goggles."

"Still, if you’d had time to really look at her, you might have been able to retain a few details," Tom pointed out. "Maybe we can take a few thoughtographs to help us—pictures of memories you don’t even know you have."

"They say the brain never really loses anything," observed Hank as Tom worked the dials. "I read about the case of a woman who was able, under hypnosis, to write out the lyrics to a song in an obscure language she’d never learned. Nobody could explain it, until they found a library book that she had used as a schoolgirl, with her name on the checkout card. The lyrics were printed on a page that she couldn’t have more than glanced at—maybe just once!"

"That’s plumb ree-markable!" Chow exclaimed. "Sorta scary, too, and that’s a fact. They’s more’n a few things I’ve done in my long life that I’d jest as soon fergit!"

Tom grinned. "Don’t start worrying yet, pard. We don’t even know if the system will work." He continued to adjust the controls, describing for Bud’s benefit the fleeting images he could see on the mini-monitor as Hank and Chow looked on excitedly.

"Wa-aal say, that there’s you, Tom—an’ Hank here—an’ me!" muttered the big Texan. "Leastwise I guess it’s supposed t’ be me. Don’t think I look that way all s’much. Do I?"

"Guess that’s the way you look to Bud, anyhow," Tom laughed. "Don’t forget, all our perceptions and memories are colored by imagination."

Chow harrumphed. "Reckon this’n’s imagination is more partial t’the looks o’ you two than t’me. I’d say he’s fixed you up right nice, but he’s got me lookin’ like that there big blimp, the one that crashed ’n burned up."

"The Hindenburg," said Hank as Bud reddened—it wasn’t a comfortable thing to have one’s brain picked!

"These are his most recent memory-images," Tom explained. "You can see that it’s the whole episode that just took place, right here. Now let’s try the reverse-sequencing method."

A powerful computer charged into silent action, and sketchy vague thoughtographs, skimpy of detail, began to flash by at unnerving speed. "Brand my buttons, slow the thing down, boss," Chow mumbled. "Cain’t make out one from t’ other!"

Tom complied with the touch of a button, and the screen freeze-framed. "What’s that we’re seeing?" asked Hank.

"Bud," Tom called out, "you had burgers night before last—right?"

Bud laughed. "Easy guess! But yes, you’re right, skipper."

Now Tom began to move the stored images forward again in their normal time sequence. "Big white teeth—what Bud has in his mind while he’s brushing them." The screen grayed out briefly as the young pilot drifted off to sleep. Then came a succession of eerie scenes that melted into one another in a logic the onlookers could not follow.

"Dreams!" whispered Hank in awe.

"You can skip forward, guys, if you don’t mind," urged Bud. He added in sign language directed Tom’s way: "Quickly, please."

"Okay, next morning," said Tom. "Getting dressed… raising the top on TseTse… there!"

The screen showed a jumbled, impressionistic image of a woman on a motorcycle, as glimpsed in a rearview mirror!

"Wa-aal, not s’much use in that," Chow complained. "Still cain’t hardly see more’n on a foggy day."

"This is just what you might call the ‘surface image’, Chow. But now that we’ve located the neural time-frame for the images we want, we can probe more deeply and sharpen up the picture." Tom manipulated the controls with expert delicacy, and a more vivid series of clear thoughtographic images began to flash upon the monitor in staccato rhythm, now showing a continuous sequence of action. At one point Tom paused the process. "This one is as she’s roaring up close from behind. Bud glanced back over his shoulder and paid extra attention. Probably the best we can get."

The results, impressive as they were scientifically, were less useful in a practical sense. As Bud had said, the woman was well-wrapped in her riding jacket and helmet. "We can at least get her approximate height and weight, the look of her lower face, the make of her cycle," Tom remarked, somewhat disappointed.

"Looks like we got some good closeups on her eyes," Chow said. "Right pretty eyes, too."

Tom shook his head. "Yes, but they’re pretty mainly because flyboy’s imagination is filling in the details in a way his subconscious happens to like. Notice how they’re a little different each frame. And oversized."

"But here’s something significant," noted Hank, pointing. "You can see the corner of what she’s taking out from inside her jacket."

"You sure can. And it looks a lot like that magnetic plate," agreed the young inventor happily. "I just wish the imager could scan her mind." The run of images had been recorded on a chip, and Tom printed out the one useful frame on paper for future reference. "I’ll send Security a copy right away."

Left alone, Tom continued working through dinner, trying to improve his invention and make it easier to transport. At seven Bud arrived with an extra sandwich, quietly sitting while his pal intermittently munched and concentrated, a process the young pilot had watched with fascination many times over.

Tom’s concentration was interrupted by a call from the main airfield tower. A small jet had touched down. Special Agent Quimby Narz had arrived at Enterprises.

The agent was escorted to Tom’s lab. He entered without knock or hesitation, hand extended, silently shaking Tom’s hand, then Bud’s. If his face held a polite smile, it wasn’t obvious.

The boys exchanged veiled glances. Quimby Narz was very different from what they had expected!

"Not much like the movies, am I?" were Narz’s first words. No one would disagree with the comment. Agent Narz was moderately tall, gaunt as a flagpole, and slightly stooped. His face had the saggy-baggy look of a retired basset hound, and his hair was thinning and more salt than pepper. He could hardly be younger than sixty years of age.

"Well," said Tom awkwardly, "you’re here for your expertise."

"Not for hand-to-hand combat," continued Narz. "I’ve been doing this work for forty-one years, boys, first as a student of language and culture, then as a special select employee of the Department of State. Dick Trane is just a toussle-headed kid as far as I’m concerned. So pull all four of your eyes back in your heads and let’s get to work."

After a brief dispute on whether Bud Barclay should be allowed to remain—settled firmly and finally by Tom—the three had a preliminary discussion of the Volkonis ploy for about an hour. Then Tom showed the man to his quarters in the administration building. "Sorry we can’t offer you a better space," Tom apologized, "but my family is—"

"Yes, I know, I know. Good night." With that, agent Narz shut the door on Tom and Bud.

As the two ridewalked to Bud’s rental car in the executive parking lot, Tom said, "The man knows his stuff, pal. But…"

Bud nodded. "Yeah. I felt the same But."

"What is it, though? It’s like a warning twinge in my tailbone. What is there about him that seems strange?—off?" Tom was perplexed. "His manner is brusque, but that’s not it. Not his age, either. His CIA credentials check out."

The two were wrapped in silence as they approached Bud’s car. Suddenly Bud paused, gasped, and grabbed Tom’s elbow. "Skipper!—I just realized what it is! Good night, no wonder we couldn’t put our finger on it! It’s the sort of thing a person wouldn’t even think to think about!"

Tom stood with crossed arms. "Okay, Bud. What’s the idea?"

Bud looked down at the asphalt, as if thinking aloud. "What did that message say? One eye open?" He looked up in excitement. "Tom, Quimby Narz’s right eye—it never blinks! That means—"

"I know," breathed Tom. "He’s always got one eye open!"

"My contacts in Washington had a few things to say about Mr. Narz," said the former Secret Service agent. "It seems he’s led a more active life than he cares to disclose. Some years ago he took a bullet wound to the head which caused nerve trauma. His right eye won’t blink by itself. When he wants to sleep, he has to push the eyelid shut with his finger. To keep the eye from drying out or becoming infected, he wears a special permanent contact lens that covers the white of the eye as well as the pupil. Uses medicated drops and eyewash twice daily. Must be quite a hassle."

"That explains why he has ‘one eye open’," Tom declared. "But not whose side he’s really on, or whether we can trust him. Did you speak to Mr. Trane?"

"I thought the better of it, Tom. Trane’s people have already vouched for Narz. Naturally, we gave them full info about that cyclist’s message right away. Knowing politicians and the bureaucracy, they won’t be receptive to reopening the issue, as they never make mistakes—obviously. Besides," Ames added, "there may turn out to be some value in leaving Narz free to try to make his move while he’s around in plain sight. But of course, you’ll have to keep an, er, eye on him."

Tom grinned. "Bud and I will do just that. I think it’d be best not to let this Narz business get around to the rest of the team, though, except Dad."

"Fewer mouths to accidentally spring a leak," nodded Ames approvingly. "And we already know that Chow talks in his sleep."

As the discussion continued, the security chief asked Tom if he had been in touch with the young scientist-inventor’s own special contact in the world of international intrigue, a shadowy government group, nicknamed Collections, that had assisted Enterprises on several occasions. "I sure tried," Tom replied, "and right away, too. No response. But they’ve had a lot to deal with lately—our normal channels might not be open just yet."

Over the ensuing few days Swift Enterprises mobilized to prepare for the faux expedition to Brungaria and for its hidden purpose. Tom’s famous three-decker skyship, the Flying Lab, was efficiently loaded and stocked for the operation, which was expected to last eight days. In keeping with the plan, Sandy and Tom’s parents would accompany the flight, as if the trip were a family vacation as well as an Enterprises business venture.

Tom and other key players met frequently with Quimby Narz, Tom and Bud trading glances of suspicion now and then. For the moment, the suspicions led nowhere. More annoying were the daily calls from Undersecretary Trane, who seemed to find it advantageous to be constantly at Tom’s elbow, jarring it.

"If that guy had a black eyepatch, he’d be at the top of my danger list," grumped Bud to his friend.

Tom laughed. "Absolutely! But as far as I know, he’s all-seeing—or at least he thinks he is."

The Swift family, and Bud, maintained close contact with Dr. Fiske, soliciting reports on Bashalli’s condition and visiting her frequently. She enjoyed their visits, but there was as yet no sign that she was recovering her lost years. Dr. Fiske continued his tests, but he was baffled.

It was a Friday when the silvery Sky Queen finally jet-lifted from its special landing platform, soaring vertically into the blue Shopton skies and lazily turning its blunt nose eastward. Aboard were Tom and his family, Bud, agent Narz, a small tech crew that included Arvid Hanson and Hank Sterling—and Chow Winkler as chef, a near necessity.

As Bud worked the controls in the underslung command compartment, Tom stood behind with his mother and sister.

"Wouldn’t you two prefer to be up in the lounge, with the big windows?" Tom asked.

"Really, I think the view here is more exciting," Mrs. Swift replied. "Here under the nose you can see the ground more easily, and that’s what gives me a thrill. Sky, clouds—we can get those at home!"

As Tom chuckled affectionately, Sandy added, "And besides, I get to watch Bud at the controls. I just might pick up a few pointers. Not very likely, but who knows?"

Bud snorted. "Don’t bug me, girl. You’re not strapped in—I could run into turbulence any time. Voluntarily!"

It took only minutes for the elegant supersonic craft to leave New York, and the continent, behind. Less than an hour later they were well out over the sparkling Atlantic.

Mr. Swift had joined Tom and Bud in the room-sized cockpit, Mrs. Swift and Sandy having left for a moment. "I was reviewing our skyway documentation up in my cabin," he said. "I continue to be surprised that this system of ours hasn’t provoked more interest from other countries—cities, even. Our leasing fees are very modest."

"Remember, Mr. Swift, the skyway stuff is just a cover story," Bud remarked over his shoulder.

"Oh, I know, Bud. Has to be credible, though. I wonder if we should have arranged for one of the workchoppers to accompany—"

"Hold it!" called Bud suddenly. "Tom, take a look at this."

"What?" The young inventor took a long-legged step toward the forward control board.

"Oh my, are we in for some drama?" asked a feminine voice sarcastically. Sandy had returned to the compartment, her mother following her through the hatchway. Anne Swift’s step was awkwardly interrupted as the deck made an abrupt, startling tilt to starboard!

"Ohh!" cried Tom’s mother, losing her balance.

"Got you, Dear," Mr. Swift murmured.

"Bud Barclay!" Sandy burst out in reproving tones. "Your joke is going too far!"

"No joke, sis," said Tom distractedly. "We’ve got a malfunction. One group of jet lifters has come on line. They all run along portside, and the whole ship is tilting starboard."

Damon Swift tried to hold his concern in check, but he understood the implications of his son’s words. "Jet lifters at full-throttle speed? Tom, you’ve got to cut the forward engines."

"I’ve already done it, Mr. Swift," Bud reported tensely. "We’re slowing. But I can’t choke off the lifters!"

Tom glanced back at his family. "And we can’t switch on the others."

"Then we’ll flip over sideways!" gasped Sandy with wide eyes. "Won’t we?"

"The supergyros are helping, but if I increase the power to them any further, the disks will start to fracture." Tom’s nimble fingers played about the delicate controls. As the Queen’s forward momentum ebbed away the stratoship began to shudder. "The aeolivanes can’t maintain lift pressure at this speed," Tom murmured to Bud, who nodded.

Sandy, unprompted, took to the ship intercom, directing all crew to strap in for safety. Then she and her mother and father did the same.

Tom had to rein-in the gyros to prevent them from failing completely, and the quivering Flying Lab began immediately to tilt further on its side. "Your call, skipper," said Bud quietly. "What shall we do?"

Staring intensely at the readouts before him, an idea broke upon Tom. "We can throttle-up again, keeping us aloft. Then we can play-off the starboard-side aeolivane against the lifters to keep us level."

Not looking at his pal, Bud shook his head skeptically. "What about the turbulence at higher speeds, the vibrations? The Queen’ll wag herself to death!"

"I don’t think so!" Tom countered. "If we raise the angle of the forward axis at the same time, we shift the airstream constants."

"Son, that’s right!" exclaimed Mr. Swift. "We found an alternate window of stability in the windtunnel tests! But," he added, "it’s a narrow one. You’ll have to hit it right down the middle."

The junior Swift put his desperate plan into action. As he brought in the forward engines again, the craft shimmied and shook with increasing teeth-rattling violence. At the same time, Tom began to force her nose upward slowly against the forces of the pounding airflow, seemingly one aching inch at a time. There came a last shock, like a slap in the face—and suddenly the Sky Queen was gliding along smoothly once again.

"Tom, you’re giving me quite a ride," breathed Tom’s mother in relief. "I really don’t need all that much excitement, thank you."

"Sorry, Mom," Tom grinned back, perspiration dripping down his forehead.

"Magnificent piloting, son," declared Mr. Swift proudly.

Bud silently thumped his pal on the back.

The intercom bleeped. "What th’—brand my—"

"It’s over, Chow," Tom said into the microphone. "Technical problems. Any casualties in the galley?"

"We won’t mind a cake that’s a little flat, pard," responded Tom reassuringly.

"Not that kind o’ fall—she fell t’ the floor! Not s’much flat as smashed t’ smithers!"

"We’ll just call it a crumb cake," Bud whispered.

There were no further incidents as the Flying Lab continued its now somewhat lopsided flight, forced to struggle on restlessly below the speed of sound. They crossed the northern tip of Spain, the great Bay of Biscay, green France, and the white-draped Alps. Tom was hard at work during those hours, trying to diagnose the jet lifter problem. It would be impossible to land safely under the present jerry-rigged arrangement.

As the stratoship finally crossed over into Brungarian airspace, most of her passengers had assembled in the lounge at the prow of the upper deck, where great viewports lined the walls from floor to ceiling. "What a beautiful country!" Sandy exclaimed. "But just think of all those years they hated us."

"Politics, all politics," declared Damon Swift. "I don’t like it. The family never has. Scientists cooperate and share their discoveries and efforts. Why can’t the rest of mankind?"

"There are such things as industrial secrets, Damon," needled Hank Sterling, whose late father had been one of the elder Swift’s closest friends.

Mr. Swift smiled. "Yes. And your father mentioned that fact often enough. I don’t have to like it, though."

"Lotsa things a person’ll tolerate without likin’ it," Chow said. He added quickly: "No smart remarks about my cooking!"

The Sky Queen passed over the Vass River that spilt Brungaria in two down the middle, and the travellers saw the small industrial city of Taicrola, which was to be the terminus of the mythical Swift skyway. After a high hop over the Hargmiz Mountains, Bud announced from the control room that they were beginning their descent to Volkonis.

"By the way," intercommed the young pilot, "our local genius has fixed the problem with the lifters, so you can all relax. Seems it was a little pile of glitches from the fire that wasn’t caught during the checkover." Bud was referring to recent events, a massive explosion and fire in the ship’s underground hangar.

Mr. Swift wondered if anyone else had caught Bud’s emphasis on the word seems. But, he reasoned, no one but he knew what—who!— lay behind it.

Quimby Narz sat in silence on one of the overstuffed lounge chairs. His face was stone-still, which meant that its craggy landscape bore a slight scowl that was more than slightly offputting. When Bud sent the craft on a slow, lazy spin around the city, Narz surprised the others by speaking up. "Nice city, Volkonis. Not big, but bustling. I’d compare it to Pittsburgh."

"Have you been here before, Mr. Narz?" asked Sandy.

"Twelve times. And by the way, Miss Swift, please call me Quim."

"That’s a unique name."

"I’m a unique man."

Arv Hanson interrupted the exchange. "Look on the side of the mountain over there. Is that a castle?"

"The castle of the Archduke of the old Duchy of Brungary, built in 1381," responded agent Narz. "Abandoned for a nice new palace in 1740 when the Archduke was made a king and the country became the Kingdom of Brungaria. 1877, constitutional monarchy with a parliament, another palace. The Party moved into something grander and uglier during the totalitarian era. Nowadays the President of Brungaria lives in a modern residence suitable for a republic. Biggest one of all, matter of fact. I hope you all have a chance to take a tour of the city."

"Goodness me, it seems Brungaria has quite a history!" commented Mrs. Swift.

"It surely does. Goes back to Roman times—ruins of a garrison fort and a temple just outside the city. Matter of fact," Narz continued, "it was the Romans who gave the city its name, after Vulcan, the old god of metalworking and the forge. Called it Vulcanistum. Even back then, the Brungars—‘brunga’ means ‘dirty fingernails’—were known for their expert metalworking. Most of that red you see in the mountains is what’s left of Volkonitan iron. World famous back when the world was smaller."

"Ever’ time I go on one of these here trips, I get a history lesson, want it er not," Chow remarked. "Wish’t I’d spent more time in school. Awake."

At the controls, Tom and Bud guided the Sky Queen toward its reserved landing space—almost the size of a small airfield—at the edge of Volkonis International Airport. By contrast to those in the lounge, their mood was grim.

"The lifter problem wasn’t easy to solve," Tom muttered to his pal. "I feel like I’ve missed two nights sleep."

"So what do you really think, skipper?" Bud asked. "Was it a problem left over from the fire?"

"It could have been," replied the young inventor thoughtfully. "But if so it was one of those oddball malfunctions that you wouldn’t expect to happen more than once in a hundred years. That’s why the hangar crew didn’t look for it."

"If it was even there. You know and I know that Old Man Narz was out of sight for quite a while after we lifted off. Could he have done something to sabotage the lifter ‘brain’?"

Tom conceded that it would be possible for a person with inside information on the technical specs of the Flying Lab to cause the damage at one of the interior inspection points. "But if Narz has been turned—if he’s working for that dictator Ubar—he’s not just trying to stall my use of the thoughtograph machine for a while."

"I’ll say," Bud Barclay gritted. "He’s willing to risk his life. But hey, whatever, that’s no big deal, Tom. What worries me is that he’s willing to put all our lives on the chopping block too!"

He stepped up next to Sandy and threw an arm around her. "Thinking about Bashalli?"

"She would have enjoyed this trip so," the girl replied with a sobby sigh. "It’s unfair."

"Let’s have faith that she’ll get well quickly," Tom urged. "Maybe she’ll be up and waiting for us when we get back to Shopton."

Sandy brushed away a tear and forced a smile. "That’s a mental image you can thoughtograph and hang on the wall."

Two limousines awaited the Shoptonians, courtesy of the President of Brungaria. A nervous-looking little man with plastered-down hair and pleated pants also awaited them. "I am Svoont, your guide to Volkonis. I am a professional, but there is no charge for my services. Or rather, the fee has already been taken care of by His Most High Excellency President Radichyofski. Not from the public treasury, but on his own."

"We certainly appreciate it," said Damon Swift as he shook the man’s hand.

"Ah! But it is no problem."

Their luggage sent on ahead, and two of the Enterprises technical crew remaining behind on the Sky Queen to discreetly watch over the imager, the group divided up and entered the limos. As Quimby Narz joined Tom and Bud, he nodded toward Svoont in the other limo. "Your official minder," he said quietly to the youths. "He’ll politely accompany you folks as often as possible when you leave the hotel. Keeping an official eye on us. Distrust of foreigners, especially Americans, remains the custom here."

Sandy looked disgusted. "How stupid! Just to be ornery, I’m going to avoid that little man as much as possible. I’m glad you asked me to take this car, Quim." Narz gave her an unsmiling nod.

A short ride took them to the high, modern hotel named, in translation, The Presidency Regal. The visitors were shown to their several adjacent suites, agent Narz having his own room next to the elevator. Bud had been given a suite with Arv and Hank, but Mr. Swift invited the athletic youth to share the family’s quarters.

"Plenty of room and an extra bed," added Tom’s mother.

"Besides, flyboy, you won’t have to walk so far to crash breakfast with us," gibed Tom.

Bud laughed. "Sold!"

"And I shall be in my own room, very convenient, across the hallway," declared Mr. Svoont. "Very small, one room, but we must not overindulge at the expense of our President. It is not a problem."

"I’m glad," said Tom dryly. He imagined Svoont keeping an eye on the visitors through the peephole in his door.

The day was mostly gone. After settling in, the entire cadre of visitors met to dine together at an elegant old restaurant next to the hotel.

"Not bad," said Chow as he sipped the aperatif cautiously. "Don’t know what it is, but it’s sure no worse than some o’ that greeny Russian stuff Boris pours out. When I’m not lookin’."

"It is clodjwine, the national drink," noted Mr. Svoont. "Most visitors to Brungaria find it quite acceptable."

"It’s delicious," Anne Swift offered quickly.

"May I have a sip, mother?" asked Sandy.

"No."

Agent Narz had explained that Mr. Svoont was in on the trip’s cover story, but not the fact that it was just a cover story. Only the trusted group from Shopton knew of the crisis in central Asia. Except for officials at the highest levels, Brungaria had bought the story, not knowing of the imager equipment carefully stowed away in the ship’s hangar-hold. Narz had warned them all against any mention of the real project outside a secure confidential setting.

The dinner’s main course included moofta, the spicy Brungarian national dish, which Tom and several of the others had tried previously. "Be sure your water tumblers are full, everyone," Tom urged with a grin. Spicy meant tongue-burning spicy.

Added Bud: "That red color isn’t iron, and it’s mighty—"

"Piquant," inserted Svoont, clearly a patriot.

The next morning the Enterprises group divided. Tom and his father had a scheduled meeting with the President and his various advisors, while Hank and Arv were to return to the Sky Queen to begin unpacking and assembling the imager, which required extensive calibration before use.

Quimby Narz invited the others—Sandy and Anne Swift, Chow, and Bud—to take an informal tour of the city’s hereabouts with himself the guide. "That is," he said to Bud, "unless you feel you should be with your friend."

"Oh, I wouldn’t want to miss this," was the bland response. Bud had other thoughts that he kept to himself. Good thing Narz doesn’t have a thoughtograph camera of his own! he chuckled inside wryly.

"And I shall be with you as well," announced Mr. Svoont, who had materialized in the hotel hallway almost at daybreak. "I am your official guide, and must account for my time."

"How very thoughtful," commented Sandy with a frown.

"It is no problem," the little man replied. "I shall call for the limousine."

"No," Narz declared. "We’ll walk."

The hotel was located in an old and colorful section of the city, offering buildings that had been in continuous use since before the American Revolution. The narrow streets were crowded with cars of two kinds, the decrepitly old and the expensively new. Agent Narz provided a crisp, intermittent narration, which Mr. Svoont sometimes found reason to politely dispute. "Perhaps you will not mind my