Tom Swift and His G-Force Inverter (10 page)

He bumped along the underside of the dome, clonking against it with his own bald dome and squashing, and finally losing, his hat. "
Great thumpin’ pollywogs, I’m gonna bounce right out into th’ blame sky!
" He was approaching the slotted opening that split the dome!

A lesser man might have thought to set loose one or two of the ingravitized weights. But Chow Winkler had not been a lesser man since he started eating in earnest decades ago. Making a desperate and futile grab at one of the megascope antenna rings, he toppled over the lip of the opening and slipped blue-skyward!

In the airfield control tower, on the opposite side of the four-mile-square science station, controller Nick Doplo rubbed his eyes and nudged the young man seated next to him. "Now look at that," he grumbled. "How do they expect us to do our job when they send stuff up into the air without tellin’ us?"

"What th’ hey is it, Nick? Looks funny."

Nick studied the peculiar teardrop-shaped object, small with distance and mounting rapidly into the sky. "Weather balloon, I guess. Look, got some little instrument box hangin’ down there at the bottom."

"Wigglin’ all around. Think it’s supposed to do that?"

"Am I supposed to know, Sammy? Anyhoo, it’s driftin’ out towards the lake."

Low over glittering Lake Carlopa, one of Enterprises’ commercial miniplanes, a Pigeon Special, was heading back to port at the Swift Construction Company, the Enterprises affiliate at the opposite side of town. Tom’s sister Sandy was piloting. Employed as a demonstrator of the Specials, she was returning from a meeting with a potential puchaser in nearby Walderburg.

"Oh, now what’s that?" she asked herself. "Looks weird enough to be one of Tomonomo’s inventions."

"That" was Charles Ollaho Winkler, now flying upside-down—for his personal center of gravity was well head-ward of his cinched beltline, and he had flipped over upon taking to the sky. He couldn’t see—his elastic rounded prow had slid downward like a distended water balloon, slapping against his face. But he had no trouble with sputtering and yelping.

His bluejeans had quickly proven themselves false friends. When Chow had somersaulted, the beltline of his mansized pants, yanked by the anti-weights, had made a dash for freedom, sliding upward past the approximate location of his hips. Then, turning the jeans inside out, past his knobby knees—then his ankles. Now his pants were stretched skyward above him, linked to the big cowpoke by his boots—and nothing else!

He grunted, twisting his feet to keep the boots from popping off.
Aww, now, Winkler, what kinda blame stupid stunt did you pull this time!
he berated himself.
Shootin’ stars, these here belt loops were gettin’ thread-frayed a’ready!
What if the loops—or his jeans—gave up the ghost? He had a long fall ahead of him!

Sandy’s curiosity had drawn here nearer. Suddenly her blue eyes made sense of the image and she gasped in astonishment! "It’s Chow!" she choked. "Wh-what in the
world
is he doing? What’s he hanging from?"

She quickly determined that this was no ordinary experiment. This was a panicked cowboy in full stampede!

Chow was over the lake, but his upward fall was accelerating. "If he falls from this height, it’ll kill him!" thought Sandy desperately; "not to mention causing a tsunami!"

She circled in a slow upward spiral, an easy task for the tiny, deft Special. What could she do? But her father’s lessons in the principles of flight, and her expert pilot’s training from Tom and Bud, had not been wasted. She began a series of passes, not dangerously close but close enough to catch Chow in her backwash. The effect was to shove the human balloon downward—a series of shoves. Each time, he began to arc upwards again; but on the whole he was descending.

"Dang if I know what’s goin’ on!" he burbled despairingly. "Izzat a’ airplane?" Wriggling his neck, he managed of glimpse the lake water beneath him. "Okee then, not s’ high up now. Say now, mebbe—didn’t start t’ head up till I hooked that last one on..."

Reaching up to his belt loops was far beyond the acrobatic skills of the grizzled westerner. All he could do was wait and pray and
cuss
.

And then, altitude forty feet and varying, one of the weary belt-loops gave up. A single slug ripped loose and flew away.

Instantly he began to descend on his own. It was a smooth and slow descent—for about ten seconds. Then his stressed jeans decided to split at the knees and leave him forlorn and friendless. He flopped down into Lake Carlopa, raising a mushroom cloud of water. His shredded bluejeans took to the sky and ultimately to the depths of interstellar, then inter-galactic, space. Accelerating endlessly into the outer darkness, they were never seen again—by
human
eyes.

Sandy radioed for a rescue team. It wasn’t long before the unfeathered flyer, wet, chastened, and aching, was fished out of the lake and delivered to Doc Simpson.

Later in the day, after the
Sky Queen
’s return, Tom asked Bud why Chow seemed to be limping and wincing. "Beats me," said Bud. "And I don’t know what happened to his hat, either."

After some private moments of thunder, Rafael Franzenberg decided to let the incident pass. Science had been served enough. As for Sandy, she determined that, for now, it would be more satisfying to keep it as a secret to tell Bashalli. And the rest was silence.

In his bedroom that night, a call on his cellphone interrupted Tom’s thoughts. "Sorry to bother you, Tom. This is Kaye in Key West. That call you were expecting—"

"He’s on the line? Rampo Whatsisname?"

"Well, he said to just say he’s an old friend from Mexico City with an urge to chat."

"Thanks—put him on."

The voice was an unexpected one, however, and the tone was chilling. "Young feller, you decided to turn me over to the wolves, and that hurts my feelings. Bad, bad thinking on your part."

"What do you want, Asa?" Tom demanded. Was he about to be threatened?

THE MAN who was sometimes Asa Pike was unnervingly calm, his voice quiet and unemphatic. "By the end of this week my time is up. There will be concern at the top. They’ll come after me—and stay after me. That’s the kind of life you’re handing me, Tom. Did it ever occur to you that I might have a family?"

"What about
my
family? Asa, if you could give me a clearer reason to—"

"I can’t!" he snapped. "Just making this piddly telephone call—you have no concept of the risk."

"You saw the ad, obviously. And I sent you what I thought was a good lead."

"That?" Pike was scornful. "I already knew he was working Mexico City. I wanted you to find him and alert me immediately by a method I’d work out. I didn’t want you to make contact and tip him off. Much less get the Mexican authorities involved!"

"Bud and I didn’t shoot anybody, Asa," Tom stated bluntly.

"It doesn’t matter. You boys were there. What did you say to him? Did he tell you what he’s done with The Picasso?"

"No. I thought I—"

"You thought you’d act on your own. And now—

"But let’s set it aside. Are you willing to work with me, Tom? Will you at least make the attempt to use your equipment to track him down?"

Tom’s heart thumped at the gravity of the decision! "Asa—I don’t—you’re asking me to pursue an armed criminal on the basis of your word. Can you really expect me to do that?" There was a silence. "Asa?"

"Then I’m sorry, Tom," the voice said faintly. "I have to do what I have to do. I’ve given you and your people a little taste of it already, a real-time demonstration of what I can do. The information provided Perkins’s back-alley source came from
me
! I know a lot about Swift Enterprises, the Swift family, your friends—and your new project. Read all about it. I did."

"What are you saying?" Tom demanded.

"I’m saying that what you fear if you help me may come to you if you
don’t
! When the deadline passes you can consider me officially retired from ‘Collections.’ I’ll be on the run wherever I am—and I’ll need money."

"Which The Picasso could bring you!"

"I’ll go after our friend Rampo hammer and tongs, Swift. And until you decide to assist me, it goes for you too. All of you!"

A click. Silence.

Angry and worried, Tom and his father conferred at length with Ames and Radnor the next morning. "I was afraid Pike would start using threats as a crowbar when his deadline got close," Harlan Ames stated grimly. "So the bankruptcy rumor came from him, not Cruikshank or Kincaid."

"He’s escalating," said Damon Swift. "Obviously, the question is—what will he do next to apply pressure to Tom?"

"After all," noted the youth, "he’s a trained agent working—for now—for an organization with access to all kinds of secrets and ‘methods of persuasion’. His still has his contacts."

"Even if he can’t approach his bosses openly, he has the capacity to open his own bag of tricks," Radnor noted. "Damon, let’s heighten security here at the plant—at your house, too. Also at Swift Construction, of course."

"And then what?" mused Tom bitterly. "Bashalli Pranditt’s coffee house in Shopton? Fearing Island? The hydrodome? How about up at the space outpost? Good gosh, we already take extensive security precautions! How can we do what we’re
here
to do if we’re walled in?"

"Which is exactly the nature of the threat he’s making," his father said quietly. "Help him
now
—or he’ll ruin our company and our lives."

Looking at Tom, Ames began tentatively: "Boss, if you took your sensitector to Mexico for a few days and made a good-faith attempt—"

The young inventor’s deep-set blue eyes flashed with anger. "
No
! I won’t allow myself to be put in a moral bind by someone’s secret agenda!"

Mr. Swift nodded. "I agree, son. We have no reason, not one, to accept Pike’s story. It’s all been carefully thought out,
engineered
to produce this very dilemma. Leading him to Rampo Ociéda could well mean the man’s death, and we don’t know even
know
the consequences of helping Pike recover the... whatever it is."

"And yet—also—his story
may
be completely true," Tom pointed out in a frustrated tone. "I don’t want to contact Collections or the government and turn him in—not now, not yet."

"Then all we can do is what we
will
do," pronouced Harlan Ames. "Namely, our best—to keep everyone alive."

So Tom Swift returned to work—on the GDI, on the Monoswift. The next couple of days found the young inventor working round the clock in his lab. It got the job done—and it felt
safe
. Bud often joined his pal, to assist in whatever way he was able, sometimes just by making Tom smile.

Chow was constantly fussing over his young boss, professing worry about proper "
gullet-stuffin
’," but worried just as much about his friend’s general wellbeing. Once when he came in, he said to the boys, "Long as you two kin work, I kin cook. All th’ blame night if I hafta!" He was carrying two large sizzling skillets.

"You ought to go home," Tom urged.

"No siree!" insisted the cook. "Clompin’ down the hall t’ my room ain’t gonna do good t’ anybody! I'm ridin’ herd on that galley till you finish whatever you’re doin’. Someb’dy’s got to see that you're eatin’ properly."

"Well, pard, there’s always my mother."

"Ye-aah, but
she
don’t live with ya."

"What did you rustle up for us this time?" Bud queried. "Sure smells good."

"Ham an’ eggs Western style, as only I kin make ’em," Chow said proudly.

Tom rubbed his eyes. "Is this breakfast, lunch, or supper? I've lost track."

"You might call it an early-mornin’ midnight supper," the cook replied. "Say now, boss, I been meaning t’ ask you... What’d happen if you put
food
through that upside-downer thingamabob?"

Tom smiled affectionately. "What kind of food?"

"Wa-aal, fer example, fixin’s like flour ’r milk ’r butter. Ya see?"

Bud yawned. "Sounds like you’re planning on rustling up some flapjacks."

The stout Texan nodded his head vigorously. "That’s th’ idee, buddy boy. See now, I figger if you mix it up jest right, you could make flapjacks that’d flip themselves. Now
that
, Tom Swift, is an
invention
!"

Tom laughed and Bud wisecracked: "That’s one way to make ’em lighter than air! But say, old-timer—isn’t that a new hat you’re wearing?"

The cook reddened slightly. "Er, yeah. Old one got a little mashed-up."

"Sat on it, huh."

"Never yew mind." Suddenly something on Tom’s workbench seized his attention. "What in tarnation is that, boss?"

"It’s a model of the Monoswift," Tom told him. "Arv Hanson put it together for me."

Chow gazed at the model curiously. It was resting on top of a single rail about twelve inches above the bench. The body of the Monoswift was cylindrical in shape and somewhat flattened on top. On either side was a row of windows that bowed out at the tops, giving the panes a downward slant. The railcar had a snub nose at front and a rounded hollow at the aft end.

"Looks kinda like a big flashlight. What you goin’ to use it for?" the cook asked.

"To carry passengers," Tom replied. "It’s the Grand Canyon transit car we’ve got Art Wiltessa’s team working on—the prototype we’ll be testing."

"Oh yeah, that flyin’ train o’ yours." Chow tentatively picked up the model and studied it, turning it over. A long groove cut through the underside from front to back, open at each end. He scratched his head. "Okay, but—how’re you plannin’ to make it move? This here train car ain’t got wheels!" he exclaimed.

Bud chuckled. "Wheels? C’mon, Chow. Wheels are
way
old-millennium!"

"I working on a special kind of monorail track," Tom explained. "Except it isn’t exactly a
track
at all. I call it a beam-rail. If I can work out a few remaining probs with the fieldstat unit over there, I’ll be playing with the model any day now, like a kid with a model electric train."

"You were into the fieldstat when I took a gym break, Skipper," Bud said. "Does the thing work at all?"