Tom Swift and His Cosmotron Express (16 page)

Finally reaching position, the flotilla from space circled the scene of the catastrophic touchdown of the Cosmotron Express. Tom watched, white-faced and tight-lipped, as the
Starward
, his dream ship, plunged into the gray Atlantic. Hitting at a slight rearward tilt, she raised a gargantuan splash like a crater-wall of water.

"We’ll get her back," he murmured to Bud. "I’m not beaten yet."

"She’s still in one piece," Bud replied. "And the crew is safe. Your decision was the right one—Skipper."

Suddenly the PER unit came alive. "
This is Fearing, Tom. I’m patching through a call from the mantacopter
."

"Roger."

"
Tom, Zimby Cox on the
Supermanta.
Transradar is picking up an intruder on an intercept course—Mach 4!
"

"What heading?" Tom demanded.

Cox read off the numbers. The rogue intruder was leaping the miles by the hundreds, closing in on the Express crash site!

Bud gave voice to what the two of them already knew. "It’s the
Fire Fury
! They’re trying to highjack the Cosmotron Express!"

"Highjack—or
destroy
!" was Tom’s grim rejoinder.

TOM ordered the other three escapods to flee the scene in all directions for safety. "But
we’re
staying put, aren’t we, Skipper?" Bud urged. "We
have
to see what those multi-Mach weasels are up to!"

Tom glanced at his pal with his own
Fire Fury
. "Absolutely!"

The tiny
Viper Spirit
was now visible to the eye, hurdling the horizon like a bolt of lightning. In scant seconds it had buzzed the bobbing Cosmotron Express, missing it by yards, then commencing to circle, an attacking swarm of one!

The hyperjet trailed a ribbon of sunlike fire. "They’re gonna blister the paint right off the
Starward
!" Bud exclaimed.

Forcing calm, Tom scanned his Spektor dials. "Incoming signal," he told Bud grimly, adjusting the reception.

"
We can see you in that little window, Tom!
" crackled the familiar voice of Bielo Ikyoris, avuncular, lazy, almost friendly. "And next to you—Bud Barclay, no doubt. The two of you immersed in danger up to your contrasting hairlines! Ah. What else is new, eh?"

"Make your demands, Ikyoris," Tom snarled into the Spektor.

The response faded in and out as the
Fire Fury
looped around the area, sometimes scores of miles away, sometimes virtually in their faces. "Another case of ‘what else is new,’ I fear. We have brought down your wonderful spaceship, your
Nina, Pinta
, and
Santa Maria
rolled into one. Like proper rats, you and your crew fled the ship, and now it floats about empty, ours for the taking—ours to bombard with our weapons!"

"You’ll blow
yourselves
up before you can destroy the Express!"

"Did I say
destroy
? You must listen, my boy. We will administer some small puncture wounds, and when she sinks, our waiting submersibles will drag her away for our own use. We will leave no trail, no trace—we have learned how to defeat your aquatomic tracker. And then we will have our own ship with which to search the heavens for our leader, Nattan Volj.

"Mm, but what is this?—another idea!" continued Ikyoris mockingly. "Tell us what you know, Tom Swift. Tell us where your government holds Volj and the
Dyaune
prisoner. Tell us with convincing sincerity, and we will fly away, leaving you to do what you will with this poor hulk. What do you say?—alas, I fear your usual brave bluster is bubbling up as an answer. But think, young inventor,
think
!"

"I’m
always
thinking," Tom replied. "You say you brought down the
Starward
; I say you’re a liar. You don’t have the ability to reach out into space—you told me so yourself, remember? You had to
steal
the plans for that hyperjet you’re buzzing around in. And you’re desperate to get the
Dyaune
back because you don’t have the resources to build another one."

Bud had a comment. "Yeah!"

"We are not here by coincidence, Swift!" blustered Ikyoris.

"You’re here because you knew we’d be returning to Fearing Island after our flight. You’ve been tracking us—I’ll give you that.
And that’s all I plan to give you, Mr. Ikyoris!
"

The Brungarian made no reply. The snarl was unvoiced. The fantastic craft made one more loop about the stricken
Starward
, then abruptly broke away, leaping the horizon in a single bound. "Scared him away!" cheered Bud.

Tom made no comment. He contacted the other escapods, then the
Supermanta
. "Nothing on sonar," said Zimby Cox in answer to Tom’s inquiry. "What Ikky said about submersibles was just a bluff. How’s the Express?"

"The ship’s floating," he told Zimby. "Give her the once-over before you pick us up, will you?"

"Aye-aye, Tom!" Cox answered. "Happy splashing—to all four of you flyin’ canoes!"

The escapods and been drifting downward, very gently, throughout the course of the drama. With a final burst of repelatron power, and a sharp rearwards yank from the gravitex, the pod bearing Tom and Bud set down, gently, in the low waves.

They were only a thousand yards from the mountainous Express, nodding placidly, half-submerged. Bud exclaimed happily, "Good night, she floats like a life preserver! I figured she’d at least
bump
the bottom."

"Well after all," winked the young inventor, "she
is
as light as a soap bubble—I’ve heard."

Tom and Bud and the other space passengers were flown back to Shopton as a small fleet of Enterprises oceanic vehicles towed the
Starward
to Fearing Island for reconditioning. Two days later, the news of the inspection of the ship was jubilant. "She’s almost undamaged!" reported Amos Quezada. "You made her mighty tough, boss!"

"We’re leaving on the space tour as scheduled," Tom pronounced in reply. "I’m not letting
anything
stop us!"

But at the crowded review meeting that afternoon, in the Swifts’ office, the mood was subdued and apprehensive. "It’s wonderful that the ship made it through unscathed," said Hank Sterling. "But... I can’t help saying it... I have a wife and children. Now that we know the cosmic phenomenon can even affect the
Starward
—"

"There’s no shame in it, Hank," Mr. Swift said warmly. "We’d think the less of you if you
didn’t
consider those around you. Tom and I know what we put our family through."

"Damon, I intend to be on that ship. I just want to hear someone’s estimate of the danger."

"There’s as much danger for us on the Grand Tour as there was for any of our pioneering space missions," Tom declared quietly. "It’s what Bud and I faced in the
Star Spear
, what we all faced on the Nestria expedition and the moon trip."

"We do it because we want to. We’re all volunteers, genius boy," Bud put in.

"Did our
families
volunteer?" asked Tom. His young face bore a troubled expression.

"Now
lissen
!" piped up Chow Winkler, standing near the door. "Nobody in this here life volunteers fer nothin’, near as I kin tell. Nobody says
I wanna be born
. Nobody volunteers fer a flat tire, or a hit on th’ head, or a train wreck. It all jest
happens
, son. And if it didn’t happen on account o’ people we love—brand my fat ole belly, somebody
else’d
horn in, somebody we don’t love s’much at all! Jest go on ahead up th’ trail, chew yer chaw, and make th’ best o’ what comes."

"Would you risk your pots and pans on that?" asked Phil Radnor.

"Shor would!"

"I’ll tell you what I think," Tom said after a moment. "I’ve been studying the incidents, when and where they happened—and when and where they
didn’t
."

"You came up with a theory?" asked Arv Hanson.

"I think this effect—natural or manmade—draws energy from the gravitational field, the same stress-tension we tap with the cosmotron spacedriver."

"But gravitation is everywhere in space, Tom," his father objected.

"I know, Dad. But when I listed the incidents and thought about the timing, it turned out that
every one
took place while we were using a gravitex!"

"Those cone things?" inquired Chow. "What you use as a kite string on that Space Kite?"

"We use gravitexes a lot these days, pard."

"I think I understand, fellow Texan," said Andor Emda. "Somehow the space stresses produced by the gravity concentrator enable the ‘grabber’ phenomenon to work. Hitches a ride."

"Exactly," came the reply. "In each case, the effect began to occur after the gravitex had been switched on—remember, Arv?—and ended instantly when we switched it off. And that’s why we had no problem during the
Challenger
moon survey. We had no occasion during the flight to use the gravitexes."

"I know Doc Vi’s capsule was in its final maneuvering, so they’d have been using their gravitex," mused Bud. "And I’d switched on the Cosmo’s gravitexes to hone in on reentry trajectory."

"But what about the
Dyaune
disappearance?" objected Hank.

Tom nodded toward Emda. "How about it, Andy?"

"You’re right," acknowledged the Brungari-American. "Before I left, Stang and the others were working on their own version of a Swift gravitex, trying to find a way to make it work without the Lunite components. The
Dyaune
probably used something along those lines to break lunar orbit."

"Bad choice," grinned the young spaceman. "The phenomenon then had enough power to drag the ship away into space, evidently with such velocity it was lost to radar tracking.

"Our own encounters don’t suggest any kind of destructive effect, thank goodness," Tom concluded. "It’s still possible it’s some kind of natural phenomenon, maybe generated by the Emma object in some way. But I’ll admit, it sure sounds, to me, like a
weapon
—a deliberate intervention in our space efforts for some unknown reason!"

"Right—
space
efforts," repeated Bud grimly. "Skipper, it sounds to
me
like our enemy is that alien faction we dealt with before—the Others."

"Maybe. But don’t forget, the Cobra group made contact with them. They may have received some technology back in exchange for their services."

Arv asked if there were a counterweapon. "No," admitted the youth. "But we
can
take advantage of the effect’s natural limitations by simply avoiding the use of the
Starward
’s gravitexes as much as possible. It’s do-able—we can get by with using the repelatrons alone. I just ran the numbers."

"You Swifts have to do what you have to do," said Harlan Ames, taking a few hours leave from his Wickliffe posting. "But bear in mind that what I’m investigating—the spies and the
Fire Fury
matter—could be a more immediate threat than hungry spacewarps. Or whatever they are."

"But surely we’ll be safe from those connivers out in deep space hundreds of millions—" began Mr. Swift.

"I don’t make that assumption, Damon," sharply replied the former Secret Service agent. "
Someone
was here with a nullifier amulet the night Tom was taken. The problem isn’t limited to the Wickliffe Labs installation. Ikyoris could have cronies planted all over the place. And that includes Fearing Island!"

"You think they might try to sabotage the Cosmotron Express?" asked Bud.

"It’s happened before," noted Hank.

"It’s happened a
lot
," added Tom ruefully. "The selected crew for the Grand Tour mission are above suspicion, but who knows who might’ve wormed their way into the tech team on the ground?"

Radnor snorted. "Mace Vendiablo is a good guy—but I’m not always real impressed by his judgment. He gets defensive and over-excited way too easily."

"Not cool cucumbers like you two!" smiled Andy Emda.

Mr. Swift asked Ames how far the Wickliffe investigation had progressed. "I’m not close to naming any names," stated the man bluntly. "Amelia Foger is still on my list, but I may have some other leads—or rather, some ideas on how to
get
some leads."

"And if you find any clues at Wickliffe, it will help you identify any plants at other locations," pronounced Damon Swift. "The case could break before the
Starward
lifts off."

"Over the next few days?" mused Tom. "But if anyone can do it, you can, Harlan." The young inventor avoided looking Chow’s way, knowing that his friend was staring a hole in the back of Andy Emda’s head.
And what if he’s right?
thought Tom dispiritedly.
What if we’re taking a saboteur right along with us?

The night before departure, Sandy and Bashalli engaged in what had become a sort of tradition—a going-away party, this time the biggest ever. Briefly displacing the Flying Lab from its home, the block-square hangar beneath the Swift Enterprises airfield became a vast cavern of balloons, streamers, and thunderous sound, with surreal images floating overhead courtesy of Tom’s 3-D telejector. Delivered by rented buses and discreetly looked-over by penetrating sensors, much of Shopton was in attendance, young and old and undeclared. Though Chow set the refreshments menu, its preparation was a virtual industry in itself. "Oh, but it’s so wonderful!" enthused Tom’s friend Liz Greenup to Chow. "Even my Dad looks like he’s enjoying it. And it takes a
lot
to get
that
face to unfreeze."

"Jest doin’ my job," beamed the cowpoke, gaudily garbed but topped with a white chef’s hat, not his ten-galloner. "Worked bigger spreads than this one in my time."

Amid a sea of bobbing heads and flailing arms, Tom close-danced with Bashalli. "Now Thomas—Tom—" she said with sudden earnestness, "this trip... you’ll be so far away. Even the sun will be just another star in the sky. When I think of—of what happened to poor Violet Wohl—"

Tom suddenly stopped dancing. He rested his hands on her shoulders and looked into her auburn-at-midnight eyes—then pulled her close and kissed her lightly. "Bash, I wouldn’t go if I weren’t sure I’d get back."