Tom Swift and His G-Force Inverter (4 page)

"Understood. Look, Asa, I
do
take all this seriously—"

"Of course you do," he nodded brusquely. "I’m asking you to use whatever you have, scientifically, inventively, to find this man. Just find him." Approaching again he withdrew a small disk from his pocket and handed it to Tom. A tiny sealed capsule was attached. "The disk contains all the info I’ve been able to gather. The capsule contains a scraping from his skin, for your tracking machine to use as a scent-trace."

"How’d you manage that?"

"I fought him, of course. One punch connected. I scraped the side of his face. This trace came from under my fingernail."

"I have to know where to start looking, Asa."

"I’ve included the exact location of the mugging. Ociéda’s probably still in Mexico City. That’s his familar crime-scene, his comfort zone. He has contacts there. He has no idea what he has; it looks innocent enough. Nor do you—nor
will
you.

"I’ll give you 48 hours to decide. If you plan to assist me, place the words ‘ozone layer’ beneath the masthead of your company website,
ForeSite
. If I don’t see it... I’m on my own. And then, most likely, dead."

Pike climbed back into his plane. The "meet" was over.

Tom returned to the control cabin. "So how is the guy?" Bud asked. "What was the problem with his plane? You know, Skipper, it struck me—how do we know this ‘Bill’ is who he says he is? Maybe it wouldn’t be safe to give him the run of the
Queen
."

"Good points," replied the young inventor. "Bill White won’t be coming up. He’ll stay in the hangar-hold until we drop him, and his plane, off at the airport in Norfolk."

"Okay. But Tom, what was—"

"It turns out to be complicated."

"Yeah, big surprise. All this and a flying buzzsaw on the moon! I don’t suppose they’re related—are they?"

Tom sighed. It was a kind of sigh, resigned and frustrated, that Bud hated to hear from his close friend. "Related? I don’t know
what’s
‘related.’ Good night, flyboy, all I wanted to do was be an inventor! Sometimes nothing makes sense."

"I know," Bud nodded sympathetically as the
Sky Queen
accelerated. "Like they say, I have the feeling it take your whole life for things to
really
start making sense."

"Don’t forget the rest of the saying," added Tom. "‘
And then you die!
’"

"BILL WHITE" was left behind in Norfolk, his further destination unsaid and unknown. The
Sky Queen
proceeded north, and Tom told Bud the story.

The black-haired San Franciscan was at a momentary loss for words. "Tom, it’s—I don’t know what to make of all this. I’m sure you can find this mugger guy with your sensitector tracker or some other great Swiftian gizmo, but the question—"

"The question is whether I
should
," finished Tom. "You know, pal... we’ve never actually confirmed that it was Asa who saved our lives by getting in touch with the Odysseus yacht. All we really know is that he served us homemade lobster stew! Even if more than one guy has been our internet contact, the Taxman—do we really know, for
sure
, that ‘Asa Pike’ was ever one of them?"

"But the government had him involved in the Eyeballer recovery."

Tom nodded, as if it were a reluctant concession. "That’s true enough. But..." Tom was suddenly shaken by a surge of resentment! "I’m bone tired of ‘existential crises’ and questioning motives and whether I’m a
real
scientist or just a dabbler—all that! And another thing I’m sick of is being manipulated into doing things because high-placed others
want
me to do them!"

Bud nodded, with the full understanding of a close friend of the closest kind. "Yeah."

Tom gave an abbreviated account to Franzenberg, Hank, and Chow, leaving out the
angst
and anger. "
That
feller agin!" said the cook. "Never met ’im, so no offense to the poke, but I never did take to them pinch-faced New Englanders."

"He’s not a New Englander, I guess."

"Where’s he from?"

"He didn’t say."

"Wa-aal, I don’t much like
that
place either, less it turns out to be Texas."

Rafe Franzenberg declared: "This nonscientific matter doesn’t involve me, I’m pleased to say."

"Seems to me, Rafe, you’re involved in ‘nonscientific matters’ frequently," needled Hank.

"
This
one looks unrewarding at
any
level."

Finally back at Swift Enterprises and down on the ground, Tom called a meeting in the Enterprises security office with his father and Harlan Ames, the plant’s chief of security. "Seems you’re already doing just as Pike recommended," smiled the lean-faced former Secret Service agent.

"Perhaps we should say
predicted
," Mr. Swift added pointedly. "These people have such advanced spy technology at their disposal that it seems as if they can see the future."

"I haven’t invented a counterweapon for tea leaf reading," smiled Tom half-heartedly. "Dad, Harlan—I know you both understand why this has me tied in knots."

"Yes, son," nodded Damon Swift. "He could be using your prior trust in him to trick you into helping him take something that he has no right to possess."

"Matter of fact, ‘Rampo Ociéda’ sounds even more like a super-spy’s cover name than ‘Asa Pike’," Ames noted with a low chuckle. "He’s set up the situation brilliantly if the idea is to put you in a bind, Tom. You can’t check up on him with anyone who knows anything without defeating the whole purpose and blowing his cover."

"And endangering his life," added the young inventor. "Other lives too—he says."

"And to apply more pressure, he’s put in a ‘ticking clock’," Tom’s father noted. "Ames can do his usual discreet checking-around, and I can give my ‘wise fatherly advice.’ But Tom—"

The youth crinkled his nodding forehead. "I know, Dad. It looks like, at the end, it’ll be a decision made between my brain and my mind—between me and
me
."

It was his habit to think in action and wait for ideas to "fall out." He went alone to one of his labs, working into the evening on the instrumental readings and samples he had acquired on the moon trip. "Gosh, this stuff is fantastic," Tom muttered. "It really turns the physics of solid matter inside out and upside down!" And then he thought wryly:
about time, too!

A phone call, routed from outside the plant walls, eventually drew him from his thoughts. "Hey there, Swiftage! Don’t need to ask if I’m interrupting anything."

"Hi, Pete. It’s okay—I’m ready for a break."

"I know whatcha mean. Give the brain a chance to catch it’s breath, right?"

Peter Langley, called
the other young inventor
by the gossip-happy news media, was the head of Wickliffe Laboratories in Thessaly, across the county line. Perhaps fueled by gossip and the inevitable ego of youth, the two were respectful rivals and wary friends. But the moods shifted like the weather. "So what’s new, Pete?" Tom asked. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know.

"Believe it ’r don’t, I’m being a pal," chuckled Langley. "I’m passing along a tip—a nice big science project that we can’t tackle over here, but I’m betting Swiftworld can."

"Too tough for Pete Langley? I don’t know how much of a
favor
you’re doing me. I do have a few things on the table right now."

"Sure. When don’t we? But wake up an’ smell the circuitry, buddy. Big challenges are like caffein, right? Brain food!"

Tom had to nod. "True. So what is it?"

"Sightseeing!"

"Hunh?"

"You heard it here first. The U.S. Department of the Interior—or maybe some kind of office underneath them but still on top of the taxpayers—is circulating a request for proposals from techy-engineer types on how to give people a better view of—ready?—
the Grand Canyon!
"

"Good night! You mean a
movie
, or—"

"A movie?" gibed Langley. "Movies are Old Millennium—you know,
Tom Swift and His Wizard Camera
. Naw, naw, we’re talkin’ on-the-spot sightseeing, full disability access, loungechair-lazy access, bring-the-kids access. Safe, comfortable, no environmental impact."

"I see," Tom said. "Maybe a robot mule train?"

"What-like-ever. Up to you, young inventor with a crewcut. Sounds like fun, dunnit? But not a good moment for Wicko here. Not this month. Too busy solving the secrets of the universe before you do."

"Having any luck?"

"Let me put it like this: ever cost-out making a commuter car out of tofu?"

"Thanks for the tip, Pete."

"Pleas’-pleas’, man! I’ll give your regards to Amy."

Amelia Foger, now Peter Langley’s romantic consort, was an attorney formerly employed by Tom Swift Enterprises—a brief employment terminated under disgruntling circumstances. "Right," Tom said sourly. "Give it to her."

"Let’s see now," the youth mused to himself as he clicked off. "Saving a man’s life—or not. Controlling the G-force—maybe. Helping tourists scope out the Grand Canyon—now
there’s
a science challenge!"

Yet the young inventor’s dismissive attitude didn’t last. As he worked, some tiny circuit in his prodigal brain was also at work, nudging Tom to think again. Finally he slapped down his design-screen stylus and leaned back in his chair.

"Okay, Tom," he said aloud. "
Maybe
there’s something there. In fact—" He suddenly plucked up his notebook, home to so many ideas a-borning. "Maybe it
could
have something important to do with Swiftworld after all. Maybe there’s an invention hiding inside all this—a real eye-popper!"

NEXT MORNING Tom joined Rafael Franzenberg in Enterprises’ big high-energy lab. "I’m not sure if I should thank you for emailing me the instrumental data, as it kept me awake for hours," said the physicist with mock annoyance. "Good reading, though."

Tom grinned. "Isn’t it! I’ve decided to call the moon stuff—"

Rafe interrupted. "Let me guess. Serpentilium? Serptilium? Along those lines? Or even worse?"

"How’s Galilectrum grab you?"

"Not bad! Reasonably pronouncible," the man nodded. "First part in honor of Galileo, obviously—for his scientific study of gravity way back ‘in the day’. But the rest of it sounds like a reference to electricity."

"It is," Tom confirmed. "Partly because of the electromagnetic MHD effect that we saw on the moon. But there’s something else, too," he continued. "I think you were right. I’m convinced the theory you and Dr. Kupp came up with, the entrained electropolar reversal—"

"Ha! Something to it, looks like. We caught the scent at first glance, didn’t we, chief? Existing in nature—but who would have dared dream it would exist so
close
to us, eh? On the moon! We thought we’d be fantastically lucky to detect it in intergalactic space."

Tom Swift was clearly thrilled and energized by what Nature had so unexpectedly provided. "We’re running across more and more examples of this
new physics
we talk about. It seems to be connected with solid matter under super-high pressures, deep underground.

"First we found veranium, a new stable fissile material underground in the mountains of Verano. Then the traces of deep-earth fusion that the earth blaster came across. And of course—"

"Yes," Franzenberg anticipated, "the Mount Goaba antiproton phenomenon. What did you end up calling that stuff? Oh yes—Diracinium. Nice tribute to Paul Dirac, mister antiproton himself."

Tom’s eyes, luminously blue, were flung wide. "Now
this
! I think it shows that Luna has its own mysteries way down deep, like Earth. You know, seismic studies show the moon has a dense core just as we do."

"
My
core grows denser by the hour," pronounced Franzenberg dryly. "But you’re surely right, kid. Galilectrum defies the orthodoxies of my field, physics. Indeterminacy in electropolarity! We’ll have to completely rethink conservation of charge parity and baryon number. And that’s something that was a
law
for all my scientific life."

"But you predicted it, Rafe."

"Yes I did. One of my priceless hallucinatory episodes."

They walked over to the apparatus that stood like a monument in the middle of the lab’s shielded test chamber. Long planned, finally constructed, this was the GDI—the Gravitation-Dimension Invertegrator that made Enterprises scientists dream of controlling mankind’s great eternal nemesis, the force of gravity.

The dream had seemed a hopeless fantasy until Tom had discovered a device on Earth’s second moon, the tiny phantom satellite Nestria, that used the technology of the space friends to distort the local gravitational field. The extraterrestrials provided no account of the impenetrable "gravity cube" and its workings, but instrumental studies of the forces it generated had led Tom to his own gravity concentrator, called the gravitex.

But to distort or amplify gravitation fell short of neutralizing or controlling it. In theory the GDI could lead to the envisioned breakthrough—but there were technical snags that had seemed insoluable. "Now we may be able to pull it off," breathed Tom. "Galilectrum looks like it has the necessary properties to use in the rotation forcers."

"I can see the vector diagram in my impressively large head," Franzenberg enthused, dreamily. "We spike the disks with the tiniest salting of Galilectrum—surely no more than .0000001 by mass—switch her on, and stand back. Hyperlocalized MHD torque like a year of Sundays, Tom! Instant dimensional rotation vortex! And we don’t even have to convert our entire planet to energy to produce it."

"We ought to have enough Galilectrum in the telesampler cells for the first tests, at least," noted the young inventor. "And of course—we can always pry more out of Crater Aldeb. Only three hours away!"

"Life is wonderful."

"And then you—" But Tom stopped himself. "Yes—it is."

The GDI test device, a pair of very thick disk-shaped caissons positioned above one another with a slight gap between, was already virtually complete. "All we really need to do is pull the helix rotors and refabricate them with the Galilectrum additive," Tom stated. "We should know right away whether we’re making progress."