Tom Swift and His 3-D Telejector (9 page)

"Yeah, well... As a matter of fact, I’ve taken ESP tests—that is, tests for extrasensory perception—at a university parapsychology lab and I’ve scored unusually high. So perhaps I
am
somewhat psychic. However, my mind reading depends on the usual trickery."

"I understand," Tom said. "Please go on. What happened to you may be more important than you realize."

Lunario frowned again and rubbed his forehead. "The strange thing is, when I started to answer your question out there, I—all I can say is, I suddenly began to receive some kind of
message
. I had a terribly strong, overwhelming impression of an outside force threatening you—that’s what frightened me. Believe me, I think your life is really in danger!"

"I see." Tom stared at Lunario thoughtfully. "You said something a little more specific, though. Do you remember?"

The man seemed to search through a jumbled memory. "I remember looking out at the audience, and they—
they weren’t there
. I was surround by a sort of light or glow. It was all I could see."

Tom thought he could guess more than Lunario could say. "A greenish glow?"

"Why—yes. Green. But swirling around me, surging violently like water in a rapids. And I heard a sound, too."

"What did it sound like, Mr. Lunario?" Sandy asked breathlessly. "Was it a voice?"

"Oh, no, not a voice," he replied. "Just a sort of high, buzzing tone. It reminded me of the sound you hear coming from those big electric transformers. But as to why I said what I said, I’m afraid I don’t know. It barely felt like it was me saying it!"

Tom nodded. "We’ll let you rest now. But thanks."

"Great show!" Bud said.

Sandy and Bash both looked worried as they left the dinner theater with the boys. "Gullyjeep! I don’t like this!" Sandy murmured. "You don’t suppose his warning could be true?"

"Fat chance," Bud scoffed. "I’ll bet the whole thing was a publicity gag. Ten to one there’ll be a write-up in the
Bulletin
tomorrow and a big interview with Lunario!"

Bashalli asked quietly, "What do you think, Tom?"

The young inventor shrugged. "I can’t help feeling Lunario was on the level. But that’s just a hunch. We know he’s a phony as a psychic mind reader. Maybe he’s just a guy orbiting toward a breakdown. Still..."

"Still," said Bashalli, "we all saw Captain Pegleg."

"Plus a little space girl," Bud conceded.

He and Tom exchanged meaningful glances. They hadn’t yet mentioned what Tom had been told by the Taxman—that the deadly snakeman, Li Ching, might still be at large. But how could the Black Cobra produce such bizarre effects?

And Lunario had said—
green
.

Bud drove Tom and the girls home, dropping Bashalli off on the way. At the Swift residence, as Sandy headed for the front door, the black-haired Californian laid a hand on his pal’s arm. "Tom, I can’t guess how the Cobra might be tied in with the Orb and what happened in space. But don’t you think what Eldrich Oldmother told you might be the big answer?"

"You mean what he wrote down—Q?"

Bud shook his head. "No, that’s in the ‘can’t guess’ file too. I’m thinking about the bit where all those mental wonders are disappearing."

"That struck me, too," Tom responded. "It wasn’t so long ago that Li Ching was involved in the similar disappearance of some world scientists and engineers."

"And they turned up on the Nestria operation—his asteroid pirates!"

"Yup."

Bud’s voice became lower with intensity. "So listen—what if those kidnapped psychics are trying to send us messages? Lunario’s not the only one to hint that you’re being begged to do something before it’s too late. ‘
The end is near!
’ sure sounds to me like the BC is threatening some lives!"

The young inventor agreed that Bud’s theory made good sense. "And yet other things don’t fit the theory very well. What about the tie-in with the Orb?"

"Well... okay... maybe it works like radar. They’re bouncing their thought-waves off the Orb and back to you!"

Tom grinned affectionately but persisted with his skepticism. "Some of those images the
Challenger
crew experienced are more about scaring people
away
than urging them forward; or at least producing a discouraging or disturbing frame of mind. And what’s with all the weirdness connected to Pete Langley?"

"Genius boy, it’s hard enough for me to come up with
any
theory," snorted Bud wryly. "If they have to be air-tight, I’m outta here!"

With daylight Tom resumed his work on his 3-D telejector, assisted by Hank and Dr. Grimsey.

A test showed promise, but also brought up Tom’s customary inventorly impatience. "Well, it’s visible. It’s three-dimensional. It moves." He eyed the floating scene—an aircraft taxiing for a takeoff—with a critical frown. "But when we shift it over in front of the lighted wall― "

"Too transparent," Hank nodded. "It never really occurred to me that a big part of our ability to see something on a TV screen is that the set itself is blocking the light coming your way from behind it."

Dr. Grimsey held up a small component that he had just removed from a well-padded, well-sealed plastic container. "But Tom’s already suggested a solution. Shall we introduce the triamplicon into the phase refractor?"

"It may make the difference," Tom said.

In minutes Tom switched on the telejector once more. The moving scene leapt to light, definitely stronger and more vivid. Yet there was a new difficulty. "Good gosh, we’ve gained at one end and lost at the other!" Hank groaned. The projected image had lost detail and much of its 3-D quality.

"Interference fringes." Tom gazed at the image through his own veil of discouragement. "I was counting on the triamplicon approach to resolve the problem. If that doesn’t work, we may have to go back all the way to― "

A single shout from Hank—"
Tom
!"—announced the sharp
slap-bang
of an explosion and a burst of light. The three were knocked back painfully.
The telejector’s base console had blown apart!

"Hank! Edmund! Are you alright?" gasped Tom.

Grimsey’s lean hand was pale as ivory as he rubbed his eyes. "That—that wasn’t supposed to happen!"

"Yeah, I’ll say it wasn’t," grated Sterling. "I’m okay, Tom."

Tom fanned away the smudge of smoke hanging about the telejector, wincing at the pungent smell. "Look where the dial-cover blew off," he pointed. "Right over where we inserted the triamplicon."

"But it’s just a set of microinscribed circuit chips, boss," Hank objected. "It doesn’t have any sort of mechanical function, no moving parts. What could possibly cause it to explode?"

"It may have retained chemical traces from its manufacturing process. The high-energy environment at that point in the machine may have set off a reaction," suggested Dr. Grimsey listlessly. "Brings a person down, though, doesn’t it?"

Tom was already using insulated grippers to remove the component. "Melted like wax!" he pronounced, holding it up for the others to see. "I’ll analyze it with the Swift Spectroscope—the rest of the on-hand stock of components, too."

Hank Sterling caught something in his young boss’s voice. "Thinking it might not be an accident?"

"That’s something we’ve learned
never
to rule out," replied Tom grimly. "The container was airtight, but it’s
possible
someone made a substitution at the front end."

"At least we’re uninjured," Grimsey said.

Tom and Hank were not easily consoled. "Now we have to spend time rebuilding the telejector prototype," Hank noted, "which was full of so much cobbled-together stuff it’ll be a lot harder than fixing the megascope."

"And of course," Tom added ruefully, "for all that, the megascope still can’t do the job." He sighed, thinking. "Well, Arv Hanson’s back at work today. He and Linda Ming can certainly work separately on some of the modular sections."

"How’s he feeling?" Hank asked.

"Completely recovered. Good news
there
, anyway."

Tom walked over to Arv’s "shop" and discussed the new assignments. Heading back to the electronics lab on the ridewalk, he took a call from Security.

"Can you come to my office first?" Harlan Ames asked tensely.

"A security problem?"

"More a
medical
problem, Tom," he replied; "but one with serious security implications. Eight of our spaceflight workers on Fearing have come down with that same strange fever Arv had!"

"DR. CARMAN at Fearing called Simpson about it, and Doc called me," explained Ames as Tom sat listening tensely in the security office. "Arv’s illness was brief and evidently had no lasting effects, but― "

"But why is it happening?" finished Tom. "And why these
particular
people at the Fearing base—plus Arv Hanson?" He looked again at the list of scrawled names Harlan Ames had handed him. "I know nearly all of these names. They’re mostly astronauts from the Enterprises spaceflight team."

"Why
them
. That’s the big question. You don’t suppose it could be something brought back from space?"

"An extraterrestrial bug of some kind? That’s pretty
inventive
, Harlan."

The lean chief of security half-chuckled. "I don’t mean
that
, exactly. But remember what happened on Nestria a while back. Doc thinks some sort of common, harmless germ—maybe the common cold—mutated under the unusual conditions and caused the debilitating illness Chow and the others came down with. And Fearing receives incoming flights from Little Luna and the space outpost."

"Maybe." Tom considered the matter. "And we may be dealing with a lengthy incubation period, and varying degrees of natural immunity.

"But still, I know that several of these people arrived at the island—in planes, not spacecraft!—within the last two days. They all went symptomatic at the same time. Even if they were unusually susceptible..."

"Right," nodded Ames. "
If
they were all exposed to something, it was on Fearing, and within the last 48 hours—less, actually—but there have been no incoming flights from the outpost or Little Luna for more than a week. My first-off-the-cuff analysis doesn’t make for a comfortable fit. And
that
, boss, is why I did some fast talking to Amos Quezada before calling you over."

"Something else?"

"Let’s just say there’s a time coincidence. Mid-day yesterday, there was an incident at one of the test blockhouses. One of the rocket engines—I think Quezada said an H-91, if that means something to you—developed a problem and had to be shut down. No real damage; but Tom,
every one
of those eight workers was present in the hangar. At that time they were
all
the closest people to the engine, the whole bunch of them!"

"That seems significant, all right! Do you know anything about the engine problem?" The young inventor half-expected Ames to refer to an explosion—like the mysterious explosion of the telejector console only minutes before.

But Ames had a different account. "Quezada refers to it as a fuel-choke. Some rumbling, some smoke, not much more than that. There was never any danger."

"Yes... it can happen at the switchover from the lower to higher-velocity cycle in the engine. Fairly common."

"Which leaves us with the question."

Question—another word beginning with
Q
! "The fever pretty much knocks you for a loop," Tom said, "but all in all, I gather it’s harmless."

"Seems to be. If this is your pal the Cobra pulling some kind of stunt, it’s falling pretty flat, I’d say."

Tom nodded, but added, "True—so far. But it may not be over, Harlan."

"
If
there’s anything to it in the first place."

A close analysis of the melted triamplicon was inconclusive, but Tom’s investigation of the stored stock of parts that might be used in the telejector’s development drew a clear negative. "We can go ahead, I guess," Tom informed his team. "What happened may have been a fluke. But," he added wryly, "be prepared to duck!"

Later in the day, when Tom’s presence was unnecessary in the lab, he was able to arrange a meeting that required a quick flight to East Haven, Connecticut. He invited Bud to join him and pilot the Pigeon Special that would carry them. "So now, what does this professor do, exactly?" inquired Bud. "Something that could give us a lead on those missing brainiacs?"

"Dr. Rogo is a well-known neurophysiologist who has an interest in the question of whether people who report ‘psychic’ experiences have something distinctive about their brains," explained his chum.

"You just shocked me, genius boy. I didn’t know there
was
such a thing as a ‘well-known neurophysiologist’!"

The Swift commercial aircraft were known for their ability to land safely in small spaces, and Tom had received permission to make use of a vacant parking lot adjacent to his destination, East Haven College of Medicine and Neurology. Dr. Stanton Rogo, a man not yet thirty, met the boys in the large lab room adjoining his office. "Great to meet you," he said with a warm smile as he shook hands with Tom. "And don’t worry. I won’t let it get around that a hard-headed scientist has a secret interest in matters paranormal."

Tom laughed. "I’m more a soft-headed tinkerer than a hard-headed scientist! As for ESP and psychic phenomena—I’ve seen too many strange things to be anything less than curious."

Bud asked Rogo if he had heard anything about the rash of disappearances. "Yes, though I hadn’t given it much thought until Tom mentioned it over the phone," he replied. "Two of the persons thought to be missing were tested here at my lab over the last few years."

"By any chance, have you also tested a man named Joe Mulver?" Tom asked.

Rogo looked surprised. "Don’t tell me Mulver’s missing too! I did test him here, as a matter of fact."

Tom described the incident with Mulver—The Great Lunario. "He mentioned having been tested for ESP."

"My tests here are more extensive than that," declared Dr. Rogo, gesturing at his panoply of equipment. "I’m not a professional parapsychologist. My main interest is the fact—the alleged and yet-unproven fact—that certain sorts of people are prone to have personal experiences that seem to them ‘mystical’ or psychic. Some see spirits of the dead, some see UFO’s or report being abducted by alien visitors, some have what they regard as flashes of foresight or precognition."