Tom Swift and the Asteroid Pirates (8 page)

"What is it you have floating on the suspension liquid, Skipper?" Arv inquired. "Iron filings?"

Tom shook his head. "Nope. It’s been dusted with tiny droplets of Tomasite doped with manganese flouride, which is magnetically unresponsive."

"But it responds anyway," Bud declared.

"That’s the whole point," his friend noted.

Arv scratched his forehead, jostling his lazily-combed blond hair. "I’m guessing the Meissner Effect." Which elicited the Barclay Effect—a blank, slightly pained, look.

"I took a different direction, Arv," Tom corrected the modelmaker. "Remember how we used linear spacewave fields to guide the megascope’s microwave beams through space? Well, my brain-light flicked on and it struck me that microwave interference patterns crawling along a surface like that act like ‘virtual’ electric currents."

Responding to Bud’s expression, Hanson said: "Hey, let me take a crack at the explanation bit. Budworth, you like surfing and hit the beach when there’s one available, right?"

"Good start—Arvid."

"Then maybe you’ve noticed how, when regularly spaced ocean waves come in and hit against a straight barrier—a seawall—at an angle, you can see a chain of wave crests moving
sideways
against the barrier." When Bud nodded, the engineer continued: "Well, if I’m grasping what our blond prodigy is saying, he’s using an effect like that to produce what amounts to a chain of moving electric charges on the surface of the spectronic field. And that’s what an electric current
is
—moving charges. Which, incidentally, generate magnetic force."

"Hmm." Bud winked at Tom. "Not bad. The guy’s got a future."

Tom laughed. "Anyway, by projecting the forces out into the space ahead of the deflector, it creates highly localized currents that grab ahold of ― "

"
Hey!
"

The exclamation was Bud’s, but Hanson echoed it. "Something’s rummaging around in my pants pocket!" gulped Arv, startled.

Tom stared at his companions with blank puzzlement. Then his hands darted downward toward his own pockets. The same thing was happening to him!

The next instant the entire contents of all their pockets—coins, keys, bits of paper, even globs of lint—were streaming out into the air at high speed, turning the pockets inside-out.

"Good grief, it’s happening all over the lab!" cried Tom.

Throughout the laboratory, small objects were streaking back and forth through the air, colliding with one another, shattering into fragments—and changing by the second into a hail of deadly bullets!

"GET DOWN!" Tom ordered as he sank to his haunches. "Make for the hallway and shut the door!" The young inventor gave Bud a look that stifled the young Californian’s instinctive protest. He and Hanson complied, protecting their heads with their arms.

Tom had realized immediately that his new invention was the behind the chaos. Unexpectedly, with no warning, the powerful magnetic forces were grappling all smaller, lighter objects in the vicinity and propelling them through the air in what Tom now observed to be wild back-and-forth loops, always returning to the same position—then darting away again!

The phenomenon had become a whirling cloud of shrapnel. Tom wormed his way across the tiled floor to the test stand and tried to reach up to the control board—then drew his hand back down with a cry of pain. Flying fragments of shattered test tubes had raked across the top of his hand, drawing blood!

Okay!
he told himself, his muscles knotting as he steeled them for the pain to come.
I’ll have to cut the power over at—

And then, abruptly, came a ragged crash all across the room. In unison the streaking shards had dropped limply to the floor! The banging roar was replaced by dead silence.

After a moment a white face beneath a floppy lock of black hair poked through the doorway. "Uh —T-Tom? Are you ... "

"I’m fine," Tom called out, rising to his feet. "Just a scrape on my hand."

"Was it the magnetic deflector?" ask Arv as he and Bud cautiously reentered the lab.

Tom nodded wryly and said, "And I didn’t even get a chance to play hero by disabling it."

Bud looked surprised. "Yeah? So what
did
stop it?"

"I guess you could say it stopped itself," was Tom’s reply. "Look at that gouge-mark on the control panel. One of the fragments rammed the off button!"

Arv’s nod came with a wry snort. "Another day, another lab trashed. I take it this wasn’t part of your demonstration?"

Tom chuckled. "Well, it demonstrated something to
me
, at least. The thing works—but it goes critical at the slightest fluctuation in power input."

"Shouldn’t be hard to fix," commented the modelmaker. Tom agreed.

"That’s great. But... er, Tom," began Bud. "There
is
one more thing ... "

"What’s that, flyboy?"

"Buried somewhere in this big mess is—my car keys!"

Finally retreating to his design workshop, Tom spent the waning hours of the day working up the layout of the drone rocket which he hoped would crash through the disintegration barrier and return a sample to Earth. The rocket was to be shielded with a heavy coating of Tomasite and Inertite laminated with asbestalon, a heat-insulating material which Tom had devised for his atomic earth blaster.
But none of this matters at all unless the antimatter granules can be pushed aside by the magnetic deflector
, Tom reminded himself. As a further difficulty, the protective field would have to have a weak spot, an opening through which the sample would be funneled into its special container within the rocket fuselage.

After a call home and a late supper, Tom bunked down in the room adjoining his workshop and fell asleep instantly. When Bud came to rouse him, Tom blinked at the clock in disbelief. It was 11:30 in the morning!

"Good night!" gulped Tom.

"You mean
good morning
, pal!" replied Bud with a grin. "But anyway, I’m afraid you’re gonna have to gulp down your brunch on the run."

"Huh? How come?"

"I came looking you up because Phil Radnor asked me to. He told me he just took a call on the security office’s PER unit from a guy named John Thurston at the CIA!"

Tom swung upright, senses engaged. "Thurston at the CIA? We’ve worked with him before —you’ve met him, Bud. In fact, he was one of the people Dad talked to in connection with that EMP pulse that disrupted defense communications."

"Well, I’m supposed to trot you out onto runway three as soon as I can toss you out of that cot," Bud stated firmly. "A jet’s going to fly you to an emergency confab, right away."

"Really? When’s the jet due?"

"Due? She’s already here, pal—and waiting!" As Tom stood up, straightening his sleep-rumpled clothing, Bud’s expression darkened. "But look, pal. Are we really sure Thurston is Thurston, and the jet’s not carting you off to the Black Cobra?"

Tom stretched. "If the call came in on the CIA cartridge of the Private Ear Radio, I’d say we can be about ninety-nine percent confident. Even if Li managed to replicate the PER circuitry, don’t forget that the cartridge matrixes of the communicating units are ‘mated,’ one for one, in a way that can’t be faked."

Some minutes later a wet-faced, slightly less disheveled Tom Swift boarded the sleek, unmarked jetcraft awaiting him. Inside the hatchway a hand was offered him. "I’m your pilot, Mr. Swift—Tom," said the uniformed woman. "Lt. Dorrie Bemis, USAF, special tactical. They’re all waiting for you back in the flight lounge. Oh, and... well ... " The Air Force lieutenant appeared somewhat embarrassed.

"Was there something else?" Tom asked with a polite smile.

"I just wanted to say—I enjoy those books
so
much! You know, the novelizations? I just read the one about the giant wrestler, where you’re in Yucatan. Say, did all that really happen?"

It was Tom’s turn for some mild embarrassment. "Well actually... I haven’t gotten around to reading
Retroscope
just yet. You see, we don’t preapprove those books. I’m afraid some of the details are sort’ve hyped-up to make a good story. But it’s true, there
was
a big wrestler, and we
did
go to Yucatan." The woman smiled, and there was an awkward moment. "If you’d like, ma’am, I’d be happy to sign one of your books," he offered.

"Oh, no, no, I had the graphology section do an autograph for me, and a
very
nice note in your own handwriting. But thank you." She added: "We’ll be leaving in three minutes."

"You’re cleared for takeoff?"

"Tom, we’re
always
cleared for takeoff!"

In the jet’s lounge, three men awaited their young guest. "Morning, Tom," said John Thurston. The CIA section chief nodded toward the tall, slender man standing to his left. The young inventor thought he resembled a stalk of corn in shirt and tie. "Tom Swift, Dr. Leo Palfrey, National Research Council."

As he shook Tom’s hand, Palfrey smiled thinly and said, "Incidentally, I bring greetings from our friend at ONDAR, Admiral Krevitt." Krevitt, of the Office of Naval Defense Advanced Research, had worked with Swift Enterprises when submarine pirates had menaced the continental sea lanes. "He plays a great game of pinochle, Tom. We should get together some time."

"Sure," replied the scientist-inventor politely. He turned curiously toward the third man, a solidly built youngish man in a gray suit.

"Bernt Ahlgren, Tom. I’m afraid I can’t tell you exactly who signs my paycheck, but we’re the good guys. As for me personally," he added, "I’m an expert in the field of advanced communications."

"Intercepting them?" Tom asked dryly.

"Perish the thought!"

As Tom sat down, the jet fired up and began to taxi along the runway. He turned to Thurston, about to ask their intended destination, but the man stopped him with a finger wag.
In a moment
, mouthed the CIA man.

The jet lifted and climbed. To Tom’s surprise they didn’t level off, but continued a long ascent into the darkening sky.

"Now we can talk," Thurston announced presently. "Bernt gave us a brief lecture on how conversations in a parked plane make him feel a tad insecure."

"I love the stratosphere," stated Ahlgren. "The
upper
stratosphere."

Tom frowned. Another game! "You’ve all made your point about security. Now tell me where this plane is heading—please."

"Our destination is Shopton, New York," answered Thurston with a wink. "Swift Enterprises, to be specific. You see, we plan to make a great big lazy circle over the Great Lakes, then head back."

Tom nodded. Evidently the secret conference was to take place entirely in midair!

It was Ahlgren who seemed to be in charge of the agenda. "Tom, you’re being brought into this because it appears to be connected to what’s happening up in space, the Nestria problem."

"You’re referring to the Black Cobra? Li Ching?"

"For some time now we’ve known, thanks to the work of our... our special experts... that the Comrade-General is somehow involved in all this. He has his own spacecraft, of course—one which we can barely see, let alone track on radar. As you know, our boys haven’t quite solved the secret of his antidetection technology."

"Which is not to say that your own ‘Antitec’ material isn’t
far
superior," hastily interjected John Thurston, as if it were important to keep Tom’s ego well-stroked.

Tom said, "You’ve obviously read the reports my father and I have been sending to Washington. We assume the Cobra has produced some sort of finely dispersed cloud of antimatter particles in the space around Little Luna. I expect to be able to retrieve a sample in a matter of days."

"That’s good news," muttered Dr. Palfrey. "Do you have hope of reaching the surface of the asteroid before conditions at the base become critical?"

"Hope? Yes." Tom frowned. He sensed that a good deal was being left unsaid. "No offense intended, gentlemen, but how about explaining to me how all this is a matter for the CIA and gosh-knows what else you represent."

An exchange of glances ended at Bernt Ahlgren. "The EMP event the other day has quite a few folks—and not just in this country —mighty worried. If this international marauder can create phenomena of this nature on demand, he can basically pick the highest bidder—and auction off the rest of the world."

"Bernt is speaking metaphorically, of course," said Thurston. "But then also, we must consider Li’s evident access to antimatter, the ultimate ‘controlled substance’. The implications for ― "

"I think we should tell him!" interrupted Dr. Palfrey suddenly.

"Yes," stated Tom Swift. "I think you should!"

"Very well, then." Ahlgren leaned forward. "From behind the shield of a protective barrier of the sort he has created, the Cobra could wield a weapon even more formidable than antimatter. Antimatter is fantastically destructive—but that is also its weakness. Great for blackmail, theoretically. But bombard a country from outer space, and what you get are tens of thousands of square miles of radioactive embers, useless and uninhabitable for Lord knows how long. Nor can the rest of the planet be protected from windborne fallout. As a practical matter, Tom, this sort of ‘doomsday weapon’ is valueless."

"Antimatter warfare is not healthy for children and other living things," said Palfrey in what Tom finally concluded was an attempt at wit.

"It would only be launched by some sort of revenge-minded psychotic, as a sick final gesture," Tom agreed. "Li Ching is egotistical and grandiose, but mainly ― "

"The word you want is
controlling
," John Thurston said. "And a man like that needs to have something left to control."

Dr. Palfrey’s voice was dry, almost ghostly. "Our people have concluded that the weapon he is seeking,
the weapon he may now have
, is one that destroys selectively, without general devastation. Do you understand, Tom?"

"I do, sir." The young inventor had long since felt the blood draining from his face as he caught on. The prospect suddenly confronting him was a terrible one. "You’re talking about Lunite deatomization."