Tom Swift and His G-Force Inverter (15 page)

"So you changed sides," Ames suggested with skepticism disgust.

"I’m sorry, sir; sorry for
her
sake, because I’m in love with your daughter. She feels the same—I know she does, even after this. I had no idea of any kidnapping plot. But you’re right about one thing—sir. Father was behind it. Maybe he thought he could push things along by making me Dodie’s rescuer. In all my life it’s never occurred to my father that I might be competent to accomplish something myself, on my own.

"Now I won’t have any more to do with Turley and Martabat and Cosmo Kincaid and Technautics. Let ’em fire me—no,
I quit!
"

Ames stared at Ritt. "I believe you. Whattaya know. It’s all too ridiculous not to be true."

Tom had waited his turn, but now spoke up. "I think Ritt’s being truthful, but there has to be a lot more to the story. Those SUV tracks led into the yard, but not out. Unless they drove right up the side of one of the hills, the car is still here—probably in the garage."

"Tom’s right, Harl," agreed Radnor. "If they meant to leave after putting Dodie and the bomb in place, why not take the car?"

"Yet if they’re here," observed Damon Swift, "where are they?"

Tom smiled suddenly. "Maybe they decided to have a leisurely brunch inside. Let’s take a look."

Bud, wincing in pain from his cuts, was aghast. "Skipper, are you
nuts
? Even if the front door wasn’t rigged, who knows where they—"

Tom held up a hand. "Let’s take a look—through Rover Boy’s eyes!"

Eyes fixed to the small monitor panel on his Spektor, Tom had the SenTec roll into the house. Enhancing the feed from its electronic sensor-cameras, Tom guided the machine from room to room, with upward glances of its 3-D radar to check for bombs on the ceiling. "No one yet, and no explosives," he muttered. "Let’s find the door to that bedroom."

A look at the bedroom door disclosed a big sheet of paper bearing large letters.

HAVE I MADE MY POINT, YOUNG FELLER?

"I don’t understand," declared Tom’s father. "Is Asa Pike somehow involved with the Kincaid people?"

Ritt said, "I’ve never heard that name."

Tom rubbed his head wearily. "I get it now. It’s past Pike’s ‘drop dead date’ with Collections. He’s free and on the run—and
here
. He’s been following me, or at least someone close to me; maybe Sandy or Bashalli. He’s looked for opportunities to turn up the heat, to rattle me. Unless I hand Rampo Ociéda over to him—"

"He’s showing he can get to anyone, anywhere," snarled Bud.

Harlan Ames nodded. "He was probably behind the parking lot bomb, too—not Cosmo Kincaid. The police may find a note among the wreckage they’re going over."

"Maybe he just happened to be keeping watch on your condo, Harlan, and saw Dodie’s kidnapping by Cosmo’s thugs," Tom suggested. "He followed behind, let them proceed with tying Dodie to the chair—then took them out and installed the two bombs."

"But Tom, if he’s warning you in order to get your help, why would he risk killing you?" Bud objected.

"Good ‘why.’ Which is why we’ll probably find that those bombs are just fizzles," declared Ames. "To make a point."

Mr. Swift was grim-faced and angry. "I’d say the point has been made."

Investigation later in the day—this time by State Troopers—confirmed the theory. The bombs were only dummy smoke-makers. The original two kidnappers, who were found trussed up and helpless in the shed, spoke of a gaunt gray-haired figure who came from nowhere and commanded them at gunpoint. They admitted having been hired, but refused to name their employer, describing their actions as a "prank." Which didn’t prevent their arrest.

Busy days rolled along. Dodie Ames commenced to spending a great deal of time with Ritt Kincaid, newly unemployed. "He’s a nice kid after all," her father admitted to Tom. "Gooey in love. But that’s part of being 18. Isn’t it?"

"If I run across any 18-year-olds, I’ll be sure to ask," joked the youth.

On the evening after Dodie’s rescue, Tom placed a small, defiant notice in a box beneath the
ForeSite
masthead.

REGARDING OZONE LAYER,
DEFINITE AND FINAL NEGATIVE RESULT.
ADVISE YOU PURSUE EFFORTS IN MONGOLIA.

"But even if I get Rampo to turn The Picasso over to me—what then?" Tom asked himself. Who was its rightful owner? Was
anyone
? What if the whole matter were a typical ploy, a hoax from beginning to end serving some deep-cover agenda? "All I can do," he concluded ruefully, "is keep thinking!"

And try his best to keep everyone alive while he did it!

THE Monoswift project, and Rafael Franzenberg’s explorations of the G-force inverter, continued energetically. One day, as Chow came by Tom’s main lab with an afternoon snack, Tom stood on the far side of the room with a sly grin on his face. "Pardner, I’ve decided I don’t really need my left hand—just gets in the way."

"That so?"

"So I chopped it off."

"Uh-huh." But Chow’s eyes widened as Tom held high his left arm—which came to a sharp end at the wrist! "Aw, boss, don’t even pertend about sumpin’ like that! What’re yew up to, anyway?"

Tom laughed, pulling back his arm to reveal his hand well and whole. "Guess I’m not as good as Bud at pulling a gag on you, Chow. Just thought you might like to, mm,
experience
my invisibility glass."

Chow waddled closer. "Ye-ahh, I kin see y’got somethin’ set up on th’ counter. Yew say it’s glass that makes yer hand go away?"

"I call it periplex," Tom nodded. "It can’t produce total invisibility. Like that ‘chameleon suit’ I made, it has its limits—in this case due to edge refraction." Tom again waved his hand behind the near-invisible upright pane.

"Yep, now I see a
little
somethin’," Chow reported. "C’dn’t hardly see it at all from across the room."

"It’s most effective in wide, flat sheets. It’s built-up of microlayers of my transparent metallumin metal, with a special plastic film sandwiched between them. It’s computer-fabricated, with contoured gradients—long ‘edges’ bordering different densities—running all through it, which bend the light passing through. In a way, it’s like a window pane made up of microsized periscopes that pick up and overlap visual elements and colors from the more distant background, inserting them in front of the images of nearby objects."

"Hunh, like them perry-scopes on submarines." The cook nodded. "Guess that’s why y’ call it a perry-plex."

"Right." Tom explained that the many thousands of connected fieldstat units would have outer casings made of periplex, which could be manufactured in big sheets that were easy to cut.

"Easy? Gotta find ’em first, boss."

The young inventor laughed. "Anyway, viewed from the ground the periplex will make the whole beam-rail blend into the sky and clouds."

"That there loky-motive rail—thet’s th’ one yuh plan t’ make fly in the air?"

"That’s the one," Tom grinned. "Rafe and I are working up a way to send the periplex compounds through the GDI in a continuous stream. Chow, the entire length of the rail will be so light and buoyant it’ll just float in midair, like a bar of soap in a bathtub!"

"Welllp, gotta see it with my own two prairie eyes—if I kin figger out
how
!"

As matters progressed, Swift Enterprises gained Federal permission to set up a temporary manufacturing operation and construction site just outside the borders of the Grand Canyon National Monument. Jake Aturian, who ran Swift Construction Company, took charge of this aspect of the project. The GDI machine—which had grown larger and more sophisticated over time—was freighted there with its nursemaid Dr. Franzenberg. And eventually so were Tom and Bud.

As Tom’s ultrasonic cycloplane drew near the Arizona site, Bud was astounded at all the progress that had been made. "Good night, good grief, or maybe just
jetz
! This place looks like a baby Swift Enterprises!"

"Nothing close to that, flyboy," chuckled Tom. "All those buildings are temporary, prefab Tomasite structure set up by Uncle Jake’s construction crews. But we do have a lot of stuff. Even our own onsite power plant."

"For the inverter machine?"

"More than that. We have heavy equipment stamping out the fieldstat units one after another, running day and night." Tom noted that much of the beam-rail had already been completed, floating high and invisibly above the Grand Canyon, a few miles distant from the work camp.

"Great," enthused Bud. But then his face darkened. "Skipper, what about all the bad guys—Asa Pike, Cosmo Kincaid—"

"Right—
et cetera!
No action from any of them since Dodie’s kidnapping."

"What about The Picasso? Has Collections contacted you asking questions?"

Tom shook his head, but with little conviction. "I wondered if they might—but no. Hard to believe, but they may not know that I got roped into the matter. But when our pal Rampo finally gets bored with the game and gives it up..."

"What then, Tom?"

"Then—I have no idea," Tom admitted.

Landing, Tom introduced his pal to many of the workers and team leaders, which included many familiar faces. "Let’s see. Arvid Hanson, Hank Sterling—those names ring a bell," joked the black-haired pilot.

"Art Wiltessa’s here too." Tom didn’t need to add something Bud already knew—the presence of a full Enterprises security force, Phil Radnor providing onsite direction. Harlan Ames had decided to stay in Shopton, with Dodie.

Later in the day, Tom took the atomicar and gave Bud a tour of the sky-high Monoswift track. "Hard to see, but the view is worth it!" Bud exclaimed, eyeing the Canyon.

"I’m just glad we’re not ruining that view," Tom said with pride.

As they neared the end of the uncompleted beam-rail, Bud exclaimed in surprise: "Jetz, what’re those? A flock of condors on the attack?"

"See any wings, joker?" The flock consisted of busy project workers, bobbing and weaving in midair. The strange sight was made possible by another Tom Swift invention, which he had named the liftsuit. The suits consisted of box-shaped backpacks attached to harnesses, with long straps below that linked to the wearer’s boots, providing better and more comfortable support. The backpacks contained "antiballast," bars of ingravitized lead whose uptending weight counteracted the weight of the wearer.

"Okay, so those are the flying work duds you told me about," Bud conceded with a grin. "But what about those things sticking out from the back?"

As the atomicar floated nearer, the objects were revealed to be pairs of slender metal swing-arms, attached to the backpacks and extending several feet to the rear. Each one was tipped by a small parabolic dish. "Repelatron radiator antennas, if you haven’t guessed," explained the young inventor.

"The antigravity backpacks aren’t enough?"

"The ingravitized antiballast neutralizes the overall weight, more or less, but it’s on the low side for safety reasons—we don’t want dieting workers going into orbit! So the suit uses a mini-gravitex to pull the suit downward if needed, and the two repelatrons for some extra upward
oomph
. The trons are also used for maneuvering. Those skinny rods extending forward over the shoulders have hand controls attached."

"I thought your repelatrons couldn’t work so close to the ground."

"The re-tuneable super-repelatrons are unstable, but these are the single-substance models. In fact, they’re tuned to atmospheric air—just like the ones we’re sitting on in the atomicar, chum."

"Hmm, yeah. I gladly leave the thinking to you, genius boy."

"One more thing I thought of—there’s a ripcord in case you need to dump some antiballast if you find yourself heading skyward out of control. In other words, you make yourself
heavier
by
reducing
!"

At last came a day of celebration—the sky-tack was completed! Mr. Swift, Jake Aturian, and Tom himself addressed the assembled workers, warmly thanking them for their great efforts. Then a great many of them motored to the Monument, to the temporary terminal station at the very edge of the mighty canyon. The audience could barely make out the beam-rail of fieldstats, a faint silhouette against the color-streaked walls of the Canyon or, from beneath, the bright sky.

But the Monoswift car was itself a gleaming sight. Some thirty feet in length, the sleek contoured shell glinted of gold from its hull of ultra-lightweight Neo-Aurium. Oblivious to gravity, it hovered in carefree quiet above the jagged fieldstat rail, steady in a brisk wind.

One of the watchers was, inevitably, Chow Winkler. "Say, boss—are these old eyes o’ mine givin’ out, or does that there train car have a little bend to it?"

"Your eyes are sharp as ever, cowpoke," Tom replied. "As you can see, the beam-rail track has a slight curve at this point—so we’ve curved the car to match it!"

"Okay, but—I mean t’say, when she hits th’ straightaway—"

"It’s one of Tom’s gimmicks, Chow," Bud put in. "The metal hull has a little ‘give’ at the seams, and genius boy’s made the inner frame out of that stuff that flexes when you put electricity through it."

Tom continued. "In other words, we can actually give a smooth bend to the entire body of the car, which keeps the obduraton slot beneath positioned smack over the rail—‘in the groove’ for the full length of the car." He noted that the car had an inner shell which would shift position but not curve, keeping the passengers comfortable.

"Brand my flyin’ stagecoach!" exclaimed the cook in awe. "Plumb wonderful! Kin I go fer a ride?"

"Sure!" laughed Tom. "But later, pard. Bud and I get to make a final test run before all you dignitaries take the tour. That’s what we’re calling the maiden voyage."

The two friends climbed aboard easily enough—the entire side of the car swung upward like a garage door, so that passengers could board at any row of seats. Stepping inside, Bud was surprised to find that the passenger cabin ran the full length of the car. "Er—isn’t there a control cockpit? Where do you put the guy in the striped cap?"

"He can watch from a recliner seat with everyone else—and enjoy the ride," Tom grinned. "Each car has its own cybertron and sensor system, reporting back to the station. No need for a driver. But for this test run, I’ll be keeping an eye on the readouts through my Spektor here."