Tom Swift and the Asteroid Pirates (7 page)

"Hey! Look who’s here!" Bud exclaimed. "It’s almost as if some
conniver
set it up to surprise you—er, us!" Tom chuckled. In creative conniving, Bud Barclay was usually suspect number one.

"And look what arrived in the mail this morning!" Sandy said proudly.

She held out her right wrist, displaying a silver link bracelet, decorated with a single, large sky-blue turquoise.

"You’re getting extravagant, sis." Tom pretended to object. "When did you order that?"

"
Order
it? Hmmph!" Sandy tilted an eye-brow. "I’ll have you know this was a gift from an admirer!" Reaching into her bag, she plucked out a card. The sender had printed on it, by flowery hand, a message:

TO A BLUE-EYED LOVELY FROM HER GREATEST ADMIRER, THIS BLUE TURQUOISE BRACELET. WEAR IT ALWAYS FOR GOOD LUCK!

"Now I wonder who that could be?" said Bashalli.

"Of course I’m only guessing," Sandy teased, "but anyhow ― " She took a quick step toward Bud and pertly kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you, Bud! It’s perfectly lovely!"

"B-b-but wait a second!" Bud stammered in confusion. He gulped and reddened. "Well— er—Sandy— you see— I didn’t send you that bracelet!"

"You didn’t?" Sandy stared at him in surprise. Then a mischievous gleam came into her eyes. "Hmm. In
that
case, let me see... those charming boys from Thessaly― "

"Are still in jail," Bashalli noted unhelpfully, earning a frown.

"Bill? Doug? Chad? ... "

"No," corrected Bash. "Chad is mine."

Sandy pretended to count on her fingers. "You really can’t expect us girls to sit around waiting for you two spacemen to find time to take us out."

Tom winced. "Come on. We apologized for having to cancel out the other day."

"Oh,
did
you? I must not have been paying attention." Sandy began to hum a popular song while holding the bracelet up to the light to admire the color of the large turquoise. Bud was speechless with embarrassment. Tom couldn’t help grinning at Bud’s plight.

"
If
you’re done with the torture bit," Tom said, "do you have any idea who really might have sent it, San?"

She shrugged. "No. Though that checker at the supermarket, Dwayne, does seem to pay me a lot of attention."

"With the braces? The fifteen year old kid?"

As Sandy frowned again, Bashalli remarked with a sigh, "We can slip nothing past the eyes of the observant scientist."

But suddenly the eyes of the observant scientist narrowed as a thought struck him. He glanced at the card again, then asked Sandy, "Mind if I take a closer look at that bracelet?"

"Why? Don’t you think it’s real?" she said indignantly.

"Very much so. I’d just like to see how it’s put together."

Wary, Sandy unfastened the clasp and handed the bracelet to her brother. Tom took it to a workbench near the wall and began prying at the setting.

"Oh, Tom,
please
don’t ruin it!" Sandy begged.

"Should you need to ruin something, there is always my purse," suggested Bashalli.

"Relax, sis," Tom told Sandy. "If I can’t put this thing together again, I’ll buy you a better one."

"
I’ll
buy it," Bud put in, "and send it to you anonymously!"

Presently the stone came out of its setting. Inside, to the utter surprise of Sandy, Bud, and Bash, was a tiny but compact assembly of electronic micro-units.

"Jetz!" Bud exclaimed. "It was bugged!"

"Bugged." Sandy echoed the word with unhappy resignation. "It had a radio inside. Naturally."

Tom pulled out a powerful magnifying glass and examined the circuitry. "No. No transmitter. It’s a very advanced digital recording device. This little sliver here is the chip that captures the data, and the whole surface of the gem acts as a resonating microphone. Your bracelet was designed to pick up conversations."

"So much for secret admirers," Sandy moaned. Then she asked a bit breathlessly: "But why? If it was just a trick, what are they after?"

Tom gave his sister a reassuring smile. "It’s probably some competitor of Enterprises who thought he might learn valuable secrets by tuning in your conversations with Bud and me, or Dad."

"We do talk about a lot over dinner, I—I guess."

Sandy looked crestfallen, but Bud tactfully added, "What a low-down trick! How do you think they planned to retrieve that recording chip, Tom?"

"What an easy question," responded Bashalli. "Are we not confronted, stalked, and threatened with kidnapping on a regular basis?"

Though the Pakistani’s tone was joking, Sandy turned pale. "But—but they won’t know you found them out, Tom. They’ll still try to take the bracelet from me!"

"No they won’t," declared her brother firmly. "They know you won’t always be wearing it— after all, it doesn’t match every outfit! —and they wouldn’t make an attempt unless they see it on you. Just wear it home when you leave here. I’ll sneak it back tomorrow and let the security guys look it over."

The girls left hastily, Sandy’s repaired bracelet back on her wrist. Bud turned to his friend and said: "Okay, Skipper, so much for keeping the civilians calm. You don’t
really
think this is about a business rival, I hope."

"Of course not. But Sandy’s always been pretty scared of Li Ching, especially so after what happened last time. She and Bashalli know about the Nestria situation, but Dad and I agreed to... to
postpone
bringing up the Comrade-General around her."

Tom phoned a full report of the episode to Phil Radnor, who had come in to work in his office. "More of Li’s high tech," he noted. "At least we know that cube the guy gave you isn’t bugged." The cobra talisman had been thoroughly scanned by a number of sophisticated detection instruments.

Radnor finished by promising to send a full report to Harlan Ames in New Mexico. "Incidentally," he concluded, "I have a few pieces of news concerning Mr. John Tsu. According to M.I.T. he’s a grad student in advanced engineering theory, part of a special exchange program with Hong Kong. Also, I called that clinic this morning. The doctor says Tsu’s in and out of consciousness and unable to speak. But he’s well guarded—now to keep him in place as well as to protect him."

"Good. But you know my suspicions, Rad. Despite what Mr. Fun said, I’m not so sure Tsu’s warning was just the interrupted start of a lie. I looked in his eyes—he was mighty scared, but trying as hard as he could to speak to me. I don’t think it was just an act."

The morning following—a cloudy Monday in upstate New York—Tom demonstrated his new inventive approach to Bud and Enterprises’ talented modelmaker, Arvid Hanson. They had gathered around a shallow, flat tank covered by a plate of Tomaquartz. "I know you use this for magneto-dynamic experiments, boss," said Arv. "I take it you’re planning to capture some of that antimatter in a magnetic bottle."

As Tom nodded, Bud said: "Okay, guys, what’s that—a bottle of fridge magnets?"

"They’ve used it for years in fusion-power experimentation," explained Tom. "The standard fusion process requires the creation of a minute pocket of hydrogen gas at extreme pressure and density. The gas in this state, plasma, is as hot as the sun, and because it has a net electric charge, an electromagnetic flux can be used to force it away from the sides of the container. Otherwise the container would vaporize instantly."

"Like lassoing it in magnetic lines of force. But as I understand it," Arv objected, "even the strongest fields have only been able to hold the plasma for less than a second."

"That’s true."

"And besides, our instruments don’t indicate that the barrier particles are charged in the first place."

"Right again."

"Fine.
Spill it,
sci-guy," Hanson remonstrated jokingly as Bud nodded.

"
Wa-aal, buckaroos,
as Chow would say," began the young inventor while he made adjustments to the controls of the test device, "remember how we ― "

Before he could finish the thought, he and his listeners swiveled about in surprise as a weird humming sound, unlike anything they had ever heard, filled the laboratory—and the lab door suddenly burst open with a bang!

TOM AND BUD tensed to rush at the intruder, then stopped themselves. "Boris!" exclaimed Tom. "What’s wrong?"

In the absence of Chow Winkler, his second-in-command was in control of the executive kitchen. But Boris Yakunetsky was no Chow Winkler. The Russian emigre was finicky, persnickety, excitable, and on occasion somewhat full of himself. Now his expression was fierce.

"Wrong? Wrong?
Pfah
! Where are they?"

"Misplace your midmorning snacks?" asked Bud with wry innocence.

The cook reared up with a glare of indignation. "Snacks? Nutsense! You think I am the Winkler, to make tidbits of mongeese?"

"Mongeese?" Arv repeated.

"Of course
mongeese
! There are two of them. I should say mon
gooses
?"

Tom suddenly understood—although it was, admittedly, a peculiar thing to understand! "You mean there’s a mongoose running around in here, Boris?—that is, two of ’em?"

The ex-Russian glared at his employer. "Isn’t it not what I say?
There are two mongeese!
Can you not hear them?"

"Right," said Tom. "That sound."

"It is they. They wish to mate, it strikes me."

"I get it," Bud said. "A male and a female."

"One might hope so!"

Arv Hanson was looking about into the corners of the lab room, which was large and square —and crowded with lab tables and equipment. "I can sure hear them. But where are they?"

Boris scowled. "Hmmph, you Swedes. Should I know that, would I be asking you?"

There was a pause in the sound—and then it suddenly redoubled! The four whirled to see what was causing it, and Bud exclaimed in astonishment.

A small, grayish-brown weasel-like animal was peering with glittering eyes from between the legs of a chair. Its back was humped like a spitting cat’s and its fur was bristling angrily. As the creature stood glaring, a second mongoose, the mate-in-waiting, poked its head out from behind a test stand nearby. "Good night!" gulped Tom. "What in the wide world are they doing here?"

"I do believe you can see what they are doing with your own blue eyes," sniffed Boris. "They are being pests, wild
varmints
, and mocking us with annoying noises."

Tom was patient, and becoming amused. "Yes. But
why
are they here?"

The emigre chef did not answer for a moment, and began to look somewhat abashed. "It was my own experiment, sir, perhaps to assist you. Winkler does such things, and he— he is given many privileges."

"What
sort
of experiment was it?" Hanson asked.

Boris smiled boldly. "Ah, my marvelous idea! The scuttling-butt of the grapevine speaks of a snake that is loose, a cobra. Very dangerous, hmm? So I buy from fellow Russian, a sea trader, two mongeese. They are to breed, many babies, all to be trained as watching dogs."

Tom stifled a laugh. "Watchdogs!"

"Illych says they are easily trained, and very intelligent. And do not many facilities like this Enterprises have such protectors?"

"Well, Boris, it was a good idea," said Tom, not wishing to disparage the man’s good intentions. "It’s sure true that a mongoose would make a perfect protector against a snake. Over in India they’re champ cobra-killers. But ... "

"You are giving me a
but
?"

"But the Enterprises grapevine was passing along bad data. There’s no snake loose here. It’s just a kind of nickname, for a person."

"A bad person? Might you not wish to have him bitten?"

Arv chuckled. "They may be smart, but my guess is they’d bite a hundred good guys before hitting on a bad one."

"Besides, Bor, they’re illegal," Bud remarked. "Can’t bring ’em into this country— if they get loose they start killing poultry and small game."

"I see." Boris reddened in anger. "I shall speak of this to Illych! I have long suspected he is not true Russian, but Ukrainian." The cook explained that both creatures had escaped their cage in his kitchen while he was trying to feed them.

"Tell you what, I’ll have some people from Life Sciences come over to, er, apprehend them," Tom promised. "We’ll keep ’em in the zoology cages aboard the
Sky Queen
, and arrange to find them safe haven—in another country."

"Where they will not be illegal aliens," sniffed Boris with a look of disdain. "Very well."

After the lab was cleared of mongeese, and of Russian chefs, Tom returned to his long-interrupted explanation. "All matter— all atoms —responds to magnetism to some degree. Matter with diamagnetic properties is ‘squeezed’ by magnetic forces and moves away from the center of the field, a form of repulsion."

"And I just
happen
to know that
paramagnetic
matter does the opposite," Bud interjected proudly.

Arv Hanson raised his eyebrows. "The boy’s been reading!"

Grinning, Tom went on. "Those basic effects are much weaker than ferromagnetism, the strong reactions we’re used to with substances like iron and commercial magnets. What I’m at work on, which I call a magnetic deflector, concentrates, modulates, and ‘contours’ a field in a way that amplifies the weaker forms of reaction."

"Made it work yet?" Bud asked.

"Watch." As Tom carefully adjusted the dials of the magneto-dynamic test device, a transparent filmy surface layer, floating on a fluid like a skin of oil, became luminous beneath the protective plate. "The glow is produced by microlasers in the sides of the tray, refracting upwards as they sweep back and forth through the top layer. Now let’s switch on the magnetic deflector apparatus, which is underneath the test stand."

There was a click. Instantly a pattern of neatly curving lines, a spiral, spread across the luminous surface. Like a tour guide, Tom commented: "That’s a perfect logarithmic spiral, by the way." There was a small dark area in the very center, and as the three watched it smoothly expanded out until the spiral was only visible at the edges of the fluid pan.