Tom Swift and His G-Force Inverter (3 page)

"No, Tom. He’s asking you to scoop up his whole plane—
in the air!
"

With a gulping glance at Bud, Tom switched channels and contacted the stricken pilot, who gave his name as Bill White. He sounded very young and very frantic! "T-Tom—look, it’s—I don’t know how to—"

"Bill, we’re heading your way and can probably help you, but try to calm yourself and explain what’s going on," Tom urged in a soothing voice.

"I’ll try," gasped the pilot. "Okay, it’s just—my plane’s falling apart!—disintegrating! I can see the ocean through a big crack in the floor—the, the fuselage is—"

"I get the idea," Tom said. "You can’t take her down for a water setdown?"

"Oh—no, no way! She’d just break apart when she hit, and I might be thrown into the prop! I can’t bail, I can’t even—"

"What are you asking us to do, Bill? What have you come up with?"

From the sound of White’s voice, a
crackup
was indeed imminent! "When the Norfolk tower said your big jet was near... See, I know all about your landing platform that drops down, and—and I thought—"

Tom nodded crisply. "Got it. You want us to match speeds so you can land on the platform. It’s been done before."

"I know, I read about it."

Bud leaned over. "But when it was done before,
Tom Swift
was the pilot for the landing," he whispered. "This scared kid may not be up to it!"

"Maybe I can talk him through it," replied his pal tensely. "And I’d better be a good talker. From the sound of it, we don’t get a second chance!"

IN MINUTES the
Sky Queen
had reached the vicinity of the doomed aircraft, a faltering speck next to the looming Flying Lab.

"We’re here, Bill," Tom radioed. "We’ll pull ahead and somewhat above, then phase down the forward jets and bring up the jet lifters—just enough to keep altitude. The underhull lifter banks are well forward of the platform. They shouldn’t affect you."

"B-but—if I overshoot—"

"Don’t."

Assuming position ahead of the prop plane and slowing sharply, Tom activated the landing deck’s elevator pistons and lowered it from the flat underhull of the fuselage. "Gonna be tricky, balancing on minimum lifter thrust while drifting forward," Bud murmured. "That baby plane’s moving along at mosquito speed!"

"And going down," Tom replied. "You can do it, flyboy."

"Oh, I know."

Tom gave minute instructions—and had to repeat them frequently. But with unnerving slowness and a few lunges and wavers, White’s plane closed the gap and crossed the trailing edge of the platform. At Tom’s command the pilot cut the motor and the craft thunked down hard.

Pulling the deck back into the hangar-hold, Tom switched on the heat lamps and restored full air pressure. Leaving Bud at the controls, he clomped down the interdeck stairs.

White’s plane sat neatly at one side of the wide hangar deck, next to the Flying Lab’s own baby craft, Tom’s ultrasonic cycloplane. Fortunately the wingless cycloplane had a narrow "footprint."

The first thing Tom noted was that the little plane showed no sign of obvious damage—no rip in the fuselage, no trace of disintegration.

The second thing was that the pilot who stood next to it was not a panicked kid but a much older man, gaunt and craggy, hair edged with white.

"Well now! Tom Swift!" chuckled the man pleasantly. "Mebbe I’m not quite who you were expectin’, eyuh?"

Immensely startled, the young inventor’s mouth gaped. "Good gosh.
Asa Pike!
"

"Mmm, good a name as any, reckon. Nice t’ see you too, young feller." Standing some twenty feet from Tom, the man’s expression suddenly changed completely. "Now that you recognize me, I’ll drop the crusty New England twang and lingo. Just a persona. Always was. Useful, given the circumstances."

Tom and Bud had first encountered the man who called himself "Asa Pike" when a threat to Tom’s rocket ship project had taken the boys to Maine. It developed that the man they had met was part of a high-security government agency that Tom had come to nickname Collections. After assisting Tom against a determined enemy, he had again worked with the young inventor in recovering a high-tech spy device that had been stolen. Now it seemed that Pike’s earthy charms were a ruse—as was the entire rescue of the stricken plane!

"What
is
this, Asa?" demanded Tom. "That was a risky stunt, risky for the
Sky Queen
as much as for you."

Pike shook his head. "No, not for me. I’m trained. Very thoroughly. Not bad at vocal theatrics too, wouldn’t you agree?"

"Right. Our tax dollars at work." It was the catchphrase associated with Tom’s contacts with Collections.

"Forget all that!" snapped Pike. Tom suddenly realized that the agent was nervous—even fearful!

"All right, Asa, you wrote yourself an invitation to the
Queen
," Tom said. "I take it you couldn’t just contact me via my computer journal as usual."

The man approached slowly and spoke quietly. "I’m going to explain, but basically I had to meet with you unannounced and out of sight. This silly gimmick allowed us the safety and privacy of midair. No one knows I’m here with you. Even the radio messages—who’s ‘Bill White’? Nobody. But on the ground, Shopton or whatever—
they
would know. And that’s what can’t happen."

"‘
They
’," Tom repeated. "Enemy agents?"

Pike nodded. "The deadliest kind. These opponents, no friend to the United States, have a monitoring technology every bit as sophisticated as that used by my... employer."

"They’re after you?"

"I have something they very much want."

"But—Collections—"

"The office can’t protect me, Tom. They can’t because—
I can’t go to them.
"

The young inventor was amazed! "Good night, have these enemies planted someone right
inside
Collections? Is
that
the reason?"

"No," he responded. He pulled his words together as Tom waited. "I’m going to tell you the story briefly and, I hope to God, clearly. I’m going to tell it once, once only. When this plane sets down and I skulk away, all further communications between us will be as truncated as possible. It
has
to be that way."

"I understand," Tom said coolly. "Eventually the plane-in-distress routine gets a little
old
."

"So listen. The opposition—let’s call it the Adversary and think of the devil—had made an arrangement with a drug cartel operating in Mexico. They were to work together; I won’t tell you anything about the operation, except that it would endanger a great many lives. The deal, the fee for services, involved the transfer of a certain something from the hands of the Adversary to the clutches of the drug lords."

"What kind of something?"

"Just
listen
! All you need to know is that it’s something very small and easy to conceal—a masterpiece in concept and design, which we, Collections, call The Picasso. Not a painting, Tom. Much more valuable.

"The delivery was to be made in Mexico City. Collections learned the details. A team was sent to disrupt the meeting. We did so. It was my assignment to take The Picasso and convey it to those who could make good use of it. Our operation was a success.
I had it in my hands, Tom!
And then—I didn’t.

"I confirmed possession, verified by my fellow agents, the others of the team. I left the site of the operation as planned, by necessity on foot. I won’t go into it. And during a walk which was to take precisely four minutes and fifty-one seconds, incredibly, unbelievably,
I was mugged!
"

Tom grunted involuntarily but didn’t speak.

"Ironic? Fantastic? You betcha," Pike continued. "There wasn’t even much of a fight, just some guy making a grab from the shadows, jumping and running for his car while I scambled to my feet. He wasn’t some spy or master thief. He has no connection to the drug syndicate or anything else. I
know
who he is—I saw his face clearly and matched it. I’ve looked over his complete record, Interpol, the Mexican authorities, everything back twenty years. He started as a kid. He’s the smallest of small-time crooks, a habitual burglar and street-thief named Rampo Ociéda. Even his
name
is hard to swallow, hmm?"

"You’re saying, then—"

"For various reasons, carefully planted, the Adversary—and the cartel—assume I still have possession of The Picasso. ‘Collections’ is sure of it, of course, because that’s how the op was to play out. The higher-ups don’t know anything is wrong, not
yet
, because a complicated route of delivery had been planned which would take a fair amount of time—weeks. We had to do it that way; it had to do with leaving false clues to protect some of our operatives.

"I’m supposed to be in Nassau right now. This morning, I was."

Tom was taking it in with a measure of caution, even a degree of skepticism. "Asa... why don’t you just report what happened and let the agency recover this—object?"

The man shook his head vigorously. "Tacking on a serious recovery operation would inevitably draw the attention of the opposition—the Adversary and the cartel—and compromise our purpose. Too many people involved, too many contacts, too much exposure.

"But Tom, from my own point of view, there’s a better reason to keep what happened quiet. Management would
have
to consider that I’d decided to steal The Picasso for my own advantage, that I was
rogue-ing
out. After all, my possession of it was verified onsite by the others. From your own reaction, you can see how the real situation strains credibility. A top agent gets mugged by a lousy street thug during a window of opportunity lasting minutes! It’s ‘
the dog ate my homework
’ to the Nth degree."

"They wouldn’t believe you."

"They couldn’t afford to, whatever their personal instincts. Tom, I’m sure you realize this—individuals are expendable in this game. Too much is at stake."

"Yes," Tom said grimly. "They can’t afford even the possibility of risk, proof or no proof. If they lost confidence in you, they’d have to dismiss you."

Pike shot Tom a look of contempt. "
Dismiss
me? Don’t be a fool. The unpleasantness goes well beyond employment matters! Think the worst, Tom—the
worst
!"

Tom flushed with many emotions. "Okay. You’ve come to me. What do you want me to do? Help you find this—Picasso?"

"No," replied Pike. "All I want you to do—what I
need
you to do—is find this man Rampo Ociéda.
I
can’t do it, ‘young feller.’ I have to keep to the schedule, to make my contacts, in person, exactly on time according to the plan. Good lord, it was a big enough risk, sneaking out of the Bahamas for a few hours."

"You can’t take enough time off to locate the man and cover your—tracks."

"I made the easy inquiries. No go. Without my usual resources at hand it’ll probably take days, more likely weeks, to find Ociéda. Whatever he’s done with the thing, I’ll be able to backtrack and recover it
if
I start with the thief in hand. I still have that ability, using my portable techs. It won’t take long to get him to talk, believe me; I’m a desperate man. What I lack is a speedy way to find the man himself. The office—what you call Collections—could do it easily. But given the situation—"

"Yes, I see." The young inventor stared at Pike, and thought heavily. "How much time do we have?"

"If I don’t hand in The Picasso by the twenty-eighth of next month, I’m a marked man. Plain truth."

"Uh-huh—‘
I’m a marked man
.’ As they say in old movies."

Pike glared at him. "You don’t believe me? Or do you just enjoy joking around about—"

"I know, Asa. ‘
Matters of life and death
.’ I’ve heard that one before too."

The hangar intercom bleeped to life. "
Skipper, everything copacetic down there?
"

Tom pressed the intercom button. "We’re fine, Bud—Bill and I are just having a conversation." He clicked off and turned again to Asa Pike. "I owe you, Asa, I know that. You saved Bud’s and my life, when we were up in the
Star Spear
. At least I
think
you did. You guys never acknowledge more than you want to.

"And frankly that’s kind’ve the issue here. I’m not a secret agent. I’m not on the government payroll. I’m an inventor—that’s what
my
life is about—and also an executive at a company with a pretty fair number of employees."

Pike frowned fiercely, his face hawklike. "You think I don’t know all that?"

"Now you show up in the middle of the air with a situation that sounds more Theatre-of-the-Absurd than the usual world-saving stuff we’ve been asked to get involved in. I’m supposed to put my life at risk—which usually means the lives of friends and family—to help you find a guy with a funny name so you can take back a thing with a funny name, so that you don’t get in trouble with your employer with a funny name. Plus the usual ruthless bad guys.
Two
bunches of them, in fact.

"And I’m not allowed to know what The Picasso is, what its importance might be, what Collections plans to use it for..."

"I’ve taken an oath, Tom. It’s an enforcible oath. Remember, I barely exist already; no one would note the disappearance of a nameless man. And besides, this is about our country. The security needs of—"

"Or maybe your own personal needs!" snapped the youth. "I have no way of knowing if you’re even
working
for Collections these days! Maybe this ‘Rampo’ is one of the good guys! How do I know? How?"

Silence smoldered. " ‘How do I know.’ But
I
know things about
you
, Tinker-Tom," Pike said in low tones. "You’ve recently been making the case for your intuition, your personal Swiftian instincts, eh? I assumed you’d consult those instincts and come up with an impulse to trust me."

"It might happen. It hasn’t yet."

"So. You’re turning me down, hmm."

"I need to think," declared Tom Swift.

"We all have needs." The nameless man who sometimes called himself Asa Pike backed toward his plane. "Talk it over. Consult. Get yourself convinced. Have a chat with Dad and Sis and your security boys. But if that chat requires going to the higher-ups—in government—then you might as well wash your hands now and leave me to whatever I can do alone."