Tom Swift and His Dyna-4 Capsule

THE TOM SWIFT INVENTION ADVENTURES

TOM SWIFT

AND HIS DYNA-4 CAPSULE

BY VICTOR APPLETON II

This unauthorized tribute is based upon the original TOM SWIFT JR. characters.

As of this printing, copyright to The New TOM SWIFT Jr. Adventures is owned by SIMON & SCHUSTER

This edition privately printed by RUNABOUT © 2011
www.tomswiftlives.com

"THE FACT that he’s not sitting next to you," said Sandra Swift, "proves that something is wrong with the universe."

"You’ve got a point," her brother responded with obvious reluctance. Then he added slyly, "So have you started solving the mystery yet, sis? Have you started making your list?"

"My list?"

"Of unsuspected suspects."

"Oh, stop it," retorted the year-younger sister of already-young-himself Tom Swift. "You don’t understand the logic behind my methods."

"Mm—guess I’ll admit to that one."

The pretty blond girl frowned, her bright blue eyes scanning the instrument panel before her as she composed a rejoinder. "It’s really so simple and obvious that even
you
should be able to understand it,
Mister
Inventing Prodigy. All mysteries produce
evidence
. Evidence produces
suspects
. The
obvious
suspects, the ones you suspect, are cornered and captured or cleared right away. So if the mystery is unsolved for any significant length of time—well, it
must
be one of the
unsuspected
suspects who did it!"

Tom nodded, wise beyond his years in knowing when to nod, and no less mocking. "Very logical. But I’ve never quite grasped how you go about compiling that list when the people on it are
unsuspected
."

The comment bought a moment of silence in the cockpit of the majestic
Sky Queen
. "We’re getting off the topic," asserted Sandy with pert reproof. "Back to Bud. I’ve noticed it ever since the two of you got back from Arizona."

A Swift Enterprises project in the Grand Canyon had offered Bud Barclay a view of its painted majesty from a perilous vantage point—dangling from a monorail track floating high in the sky. Tom had rescued his best friend, and the operation made possible by the young inventor’s G-force inverter had been a wide-hailed success.

But since their return to industrious little Shopton, New York, the black-haired Californian, young as his pal, had seemed—different. Bud was customarily at Tom’s side, but now custom had been breached. Lately Tom’s side was Budless more often than not. Bud’s usual chair at the Swift family dinner table sat empty too many evenings. And even when it wasn’t empty—it
was
.

"He doesn’t talk as much," Sandy continued. "His jokes are—"

"Not funny?"

"They were
never
all that funny. But now they seem half-hearted. It’s more like he’s
playing
Bud than
being
him."

"People do change over time, you know."

"Not Bud," she snorted, in a refined manner.

Tom nodded, banter set to the side. "I know, San. He has something serious on his mind. Some kind of disturbing news must have been waiting for him when we got back."

"He just brushes me off when I mention it."

"Me too," said Tom. "He says it’s nothing. If I push, he makes some excuse and goes off on his own. Know what’s most unsettling? Here I am in the thick of a wild new invention, and what does he have to say about it?—nothing!
He hasn’t once asked me to explain how it works!
"

Sandy frowned deeply. "That’s just plain abnormal. We
owe
it to Buddo to do some clever, subtle probing, Tom."

The young inventor gave her a look well-shaded with skepticism. "Mm-hmm. Clever and subtle."

"Don’t get sarcastic, crewcut-boy. I’ve solved mysteries before. Don’t forget what I came up with in London."

"We’re not in London."

"On The Mystery of Budworth Barclay, we’re not
anywhere
!"

The sibling Swifts were halfway across the country up near the ceiling of the air, supersonic-ing toward the state of Nevada and the next stage in Tom’s new project, his time-transformer. Under Tom’s and Bud’s tutelage, Sandy had become an expert pilot, working part-time as a demonstrator of the Pigeon Special mini-planes turned out by Enterprises’ Shopton affiliate, the Swift Construction Company. She had rarely had a chance at the controls of the huge three-deck Flying Lab. When Bud had backed away from the proposed trip with a half-hearted excuse, she had exercised the occult influence granted sisters and wheedled her way into the pilot’s seat. There were no other crew aboard the
Sky Queen
. The massively cyberfied skyship virtually flew itself.

After another unnecessary glance at the controls, Sandy turned to her brother, who occupied the copilot’s chair with lazy insouciance. "I’m sure a mere sister is no replacement for your
bro
-mantic buddy. But I suppose
someone
should ask the big question. So, hey, Tom Swift—tell me about your new invention!"

Tom grinned. "Thought you’d never ask!"

"Something about a capsule and a time-transformer. But you say it’s
not
a real time machine?"

"Oh, it’s a time machine all right," replied the young inventor. "Just not the kind of time machine you mean. It doesn’t take you into the future, or back to the days of Julius Caesar."

"I’d settle for the dawn of rock ’n roll."

"Not even that. You don’t move through time inside the dyna-4 capsule. Time moves through
you
—as fast or as slow as you want it."

"I see—age control without cosmetic surgery. What’s with ‘
dyna-4
’?"

"The ‘4’ refers to time, the fourth dimension—although Dr. Kupp—"

"Oh, please don’t even
mention
that silly Dr. Kupp!"

"He did the fundamental theoretical work, Sandy—it’s connected to his gravitation-dimension studies. I just wanted to say that he has a different idea of how dimensions ‘work’. He doesn’t think we should number them as we do. He objects to the term
dyna-4
."

"Bud would probably come up with a nickname."

Both faces darkened for a breath or two.

"Well," continued Tom after the shadowed moment passed, "the dyna-4 capsule is the heart of the time-transformer apparatus. The occupant—or whatever is to be exposed to an accelerated or decelerated time flow—has to be suspended at the exact focal point of the time-flux lens set-up."

"That’s the chronolens?"

"That’s what I call it. Actually there are two lenses, one above the capsule and one beneath."

"And it works?" asked Sandy, knowing the answer but trying to imitate their absent friend.

"Sure does," Tom nodded. "That is, the small model Arv Hanson and Linda Ming first turned out has a detectible effect on various timing instruments we’ve inserted into the critical part of the field. The effect is slight so far, but that was true of the G-force inverter as well. A truly useful time-transformer has to be plenty big."

"Right. About the size of a football field, you said."

"That’s the width of the whole chronolens set-up. The capsule itself is much smaller—about the size of my bedroom. There’s even a bed!"

"Stay young while you sleep?"

"Or get old in a minute. The transformer works either way. But sis, human aging isn’t the main point. It has important scientific and industrial applications; but I’m more interested in the way it can be used as an instrument to find out about the basic structure of the spacetime—"

"
Tom
!" Sandy interrupted forcefully. "Look! What
is
that—a danger?"

They were cruising at an altitude of about 270,000 feet, have risen through the stratosphere into the lower layers of the ionosphere. The sky was blue-black and star-laden, the world spread wide beneath them, a curving carpet of pale blue over brown. Now, ahead of them and at a higher altitude, was a phenomenon Tom had never seen before.

"Gosh, I—I don’t know
what
it is," murmured Tom. "But according to the instruments, it doesn’t look like a problem for us."

The phenomenon looked, at first, like a luminous smoke ring against the dark backdrop. But even as they watched, it was expanding out. In moments it was revealed to be composed of innumerable thready filaments radiating from the center and glimmering.

"It’s not solid, anyway," Sandy pronounced. "Maybe it’s a weather effect, like a sundog."

Tom shook his head. "No—if it’s weather, it’s
space
weather."

"My goodness! You mean a meteor shower or something?"

Her brother again examined the instruments, checking both the radar bounceback and the long-range spectrometers. "What we’re seeing are ice granules made incandescent by air friction. I’d guess a drifting ice clump, probably from a comet, shattered to bits as it came shooting into the air. It might be something left over from Comet Tarski." Tom had led an expedition to the mystery comet not long before.

"So it’s a shower of ice cubes, hmm?"

"If you call a
cube
something smaller than a grain of sand. Still, they’re moving at hypersonic—"

Suddenly the
Sky Queen
rang with a sharp
clang
!—and then more!

Sandy gulped. "Starting to hit us! Tom, can—can those little bits of space buckshot knock us down?"

Tom smiled. "No. Our magtritanium hull is mighty tough, and the Tomasite coating is even tougher. There’s nothing big out there."

"I’m surprised the particles haven’t just melted away from the friction heat, if they’re hot enough to glow."

"They’re moving so fast the external heat doesn’t have
time
to penetrate, not at this altitude. Remember, water—and that includes ice—is a very sluggish conductor of heat."

"Oh, right—igloos. So no evasive action?"

"Not needed."

They watched, fascinated, as the upper-air phenomenon spread wide, like an ink splotch on a wet tissue, as they passed beneath its center. Its outer edges slowly faded to an occasional flicker in their path. They knew that the "threads"—trails of fire with a life span of a fraction of a second—appeared to radiate from a common center due to their angle of vision. "Like looking upward at falling raindrops," Sandy noted.

Moments later the
Sky Queen
shivered slightly, then began to swerve port and starboard. It wasn’t much, but Tom and Sandy could feel it in their stomachs. "As Bud would say,
Good night, Tom!
—we can’t
skid
on falling ice, can we?"

Sandy was smiling, but Tom was not. "The ice-micrometeors produced plasma flumes—wispy stuff, but it’s interacting with our aeolivanes."

"Should I panic?"

"Mm—wait a little. I’ll tell you when."

The swerving stopped—and a new mystery presented itself. Sandy pointed at a blinking panel on a graphic display of the ship’s layout. "That doesn’t look so good, Tomonomo."

"Pressure falling in aft compartment 3-9."

"You said the particles couldn’t penetrate—"

"If it’s a leak, it’s a slow one," pronounced the young inventor. "A pinhole puncture—maybe the original ice chunk had a rocky core. I’ll go back for a look."

Sandy was still a younger sister. "
Try
not to fall out of the plane this time."

"No promises, sis."

After determining that the inner pressure was still safe and breathable, Tom entered the small compartment, switching on the overhead lamps, and began to scan it with a detector instrument that displayed air currents and pressure differentials on a tiny screen.

Abruptly the deck heaved beneath him. He gulped with surprise, unprepared, and tried to steady himself. Then he was thrown against a bulkhead. Everything went black!

"TOM! Are you okay?" commed Sandy. "That was kind of a big one!"

"I’m okay," came the reply. "But the overheads went black—wait! They’re flickering back on."

After several more minutes Tom rejoined his sister in the underslung command compartment. "Mystery solved."