Tom Swift and His Flying Lab (3 page)

But before Tom could raise his foot, Bud had already bolted out the hangar door and was sprinting toward the trees beyond the main airfield. An excellent football and track man in high school, he covered the distance in record time, leaping over the ridewalks as if they were competition hurdles. As Bud entered the untended, wooded field that bordered the runways, an engine throbbed to life some distance ahead of him. Between the scraggly trees he could see the
Skeeter.
Her rotor blades were beginning to turn!

"That’s
got
to be our guy," he thought, desperately redoubling his speed.

With a frantic thrust of energy, he burst onto the paved test helipad. The new chopper was just taking off. Bud made a dash for the
Skeeter
, trying to grasp the edge of the still-open cockpit door and pull himself up before it rose out of reach, but he missed by inches. Nevertheless, he got a good look at the dark, slick-haired pilot. Then the helicopter rose and swung out of sight over the trees.

"He can’t get away with this!" Bud set his jaw. Dashing back to where Tom and his father waited in the hangar office, he gasped out breathlessly, "He stole the
Skeeter!
But I’ll take up a jet and try to force him down!"

"I’ll go with you!" Tom exclaimed.

"Hold on!" Mr. Swift warned him. "There’s no need to go charging into danger. We’ll send out some of our Enterprises pilots for a search by jet. I’ll alert the local commercial airports, too."

Tom frowned, his reluctance showing on his face. "Did you get a good look at him, Bud?"

"I sure did!" Bud replied. "Thin, dark, short. About twenty-five. Had black greasy-looking hair and eyes like a rat."

"That’s enough to get the professionals started. Besides, son," said Mr. Swift, his eyes twinkling, "you don’t want to miss RobiTec’s trip down the rabbit-hole, do you?" He knew Tom would rather be in on a scientific discovery than almost anything in the world.

Soon Mr. Swift, Bud, and Tom had gathered in Mr. Swift’s private laboratory suite next to his office. A monitor and remote-control setup had been wheeled in.

"Hey, hold on, hold on!" came the voice of Chow Winkler as the rotund cook came bobbing into the lab. "Brand my shootin’ stars, you gotta let me take a gander too—’specially after the way you boys ran off an’ let me find my own way out o’ that big plane!" Harlan Ames also joined them, but Mr. Swift decided not to admit any others.

The robot-mobile was deposited at the edge of the fissure by a small utility truck. On the video screen, the onlookers could see RobiTec waiting motionless, captured by one of the runway cameras. About the size of a large lawnmower, the machine had four flexible tank-tread "feet," retractable tubular arms of various sizes and shapes, and a boxlike framework, outfitted with various sensors and intake vents, as its "head."

Mr. Swift touched the controls, and the image on the monitor changed to the view through RobiTec’s camera eyes. "Here we go!" he said, easing the control joystick forward. RobiTec responded instantly, rolling over the edge of the ditch without difficulty and rapidly making its way forward to the large crater.

Tom switched to the onboard forward cameras. "There’s the tunnel entrance up ahead," he observed. "Look how smooth the sides are! What’s the temperature of those walls, Dad?"

"Only 130 degrees Fahrenheit now, and falling rapidly," said Mr. Swift, checking RobiTec’s sensors.

"Great coyotes, my cookstove gets hotter’n that!" Chow remarked.

As RobiTec entered the tunnel, Mr. Swift slowed the machine and switched on its high-intensity headlights. The image of the interior of the tunnel took on an eerie aspect as it crawled by on the monitor screen. Tom periodically read aloud the positional readout.

"We’re almost 250 feet along the tunnel," he said wonderingly, "and a good thirty feet below ground level."

"According to the forward radar, we’re approaching the end of the tunnel," Mr. Swift interjected. "We should be seeing—"

Bud interrupted him with an excited cry. "There!"

The monitor showed a streamlined cylindrical object protruding from the tunnel wall ahead!

"No way
that
thing’s a meteor," Harlan Ames commented grimly. "I’d say you Swifts have an enemy at large with access to high-tech weaponry."

"Harlan, we don’t know it’s a weapon," Tom retorted as Mr. Swift brought RobiTec to a stop. "Think of the way it came down, its flight path. It managed to avoid our buildings, our people, even our runways—as if its purpose was to demonstrate that it didn’t have any hostile intention."

"What do you think it is, boss?" asked Chow in a low voice.

Mr. Swift answered on behalf of his son. "I think we must consider the possibility that this device is of extraterrestrial origin."

Chow was thunderstruck. "Whoa! You mean there’s little
space people
in that thing?"

Tom had to smile. "Not likely, Chow. This is probably some kind of automated probe. You know," he continued thoughtfully, "my great-grandfather, the first Tom Swift, reported some indications of a space civilization. But he wasn’t believed. This could be our chance to show he was right after all!"

"It would also be the greatest scientific discovery in the—" began Mr. Swift. Tom suddenly gasped and leaned forward, grabbing RobiTec’s joystick control.

"Take a look at that!" exclaimed Tom, playing RobiTec’s headlights up and down the sides of the cylinder while enhancing the image resolution on the monitor.

A weird pattern of symbols was etched into the metal!

"What is it?" Harlan Ames asked softly. "Decoration?"

"It could be almost anything," replied Tom in hushed tones. "Even part of the missile’s guidance system, like a printed circuit."

"No doubt we’re all thinking the same thing," declared Damon Swift. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "Those symbols are a form of writing."

The pattern made little sense to the naked eye. There appeared to be dozens of symbols, arranged in a spreading circular pattern that resembled a sunburst. Zooming in on a small area, Tom saw that most of the individual symbols were small and fairly simple in design—ovals, triangles, criss-cross figures, and rows of interlaced circles. But some of the other figures resembled Greek or Hebrew lettering, or even Chinese characters.

"How could we even begin to translate a totally alien language?" muttered Mr. Swift.

"Why, shucks, it don’t look that hard t’me!" Chow exclaimed. He touched one of the symbols on the screen with his finger. "Lookit that one, f’rinstance. That means the sun, and this one here means ‘water falling from clouds’."

Tom’s brow furrowed. "Chow, how
in
or
out of
the world could you—"

"Cause I know how people
think,
boss. Those things look like whatcha call
Injun signs,
or mebbe cattle brands from different ranches. I been seein’ stuff like that all my life."

"That’s as good a lead as any," said Tom ruefully. "After all, these ‘space people,’ if that’s what they are, must have guided the missile here in order to communicate with our species. Maybe they understand how we think, at least a little."

"What
I
think is that these symbols represent mathematical concepts which might parallel concepts in natural language," Mr. Swift declared. "Mathematics is the universal language, after all."

"Hmmph!" snorted Chow. "Mebbe so, but I flunked arithmetic and I don’t see’s it held
me
back none!"

As Mr. Swift began to direct RobiTec to perform various tests on the outer shell of the missile prior to its being transported to a laboratory, Bud asked Ames, "Any reports on the
Skeeter?"

"Nothing so far," replied the security chief. "The heli-jacker hasn’t had time to make much distance, and it wouldn’t be easy to hide the craft on the ground. But the search jets haven’t seen a thing. Nothing from the police or the airports, either."

Tom turned very sober at the news. "I’m responsible for the loss, Bud," he said. "I should have had her locked away before leaving the plant."

"You’re sure to get her back!" cried Bud. "Tom, that ship’s a dream. She handles like a baby carriage—we proved it this morning. We can set her down on a dime and give back nine cents change!"

"I just hope it won’t be long before we can do it again," Tom said disconsolately.

"What I’d like to know is
why
that thief was snooping around here. Have you any idea, Mr. Swift?" inquired Bud.

"Not offhand," he replied, "but it won’t be difficult to find out if anything important is missing. I have a feeling the best place to begin is the auxiliary test room in the underground hangar. Quite a lot of work related to the
Sky Queen
is stored there."

Stepping over to a control console, Mr. Swift remotely accessed the auxiliary lab’s electronic inventory system. Every model, drawing, blueprint, or piece of equipment was tagged with a snippet of transponder tape, allowing the ceiling-mounted detector unit to determine if anything had failed to "report in." It took only a moment for the answer to appear on the monitor screen.

"Here it is," he said grimly. "The drawings and specifications for our ‘super-Geiger counter’ are gone, Tom. Now we know what the thief was after!"

"Wait a minute!" exclaimed Tom.

Tom hurried across the room and keyed his personal code onto a button-pad on the top of a metal cabinet. The bottom drawer slid silently open in response and a smile of relief spread over Tom’s face. "Only half of the plans are gone, Dad. I put the others in here yesterday with the miniature model."

Bud burst into laughter. "What a surprise the Pomade Kid’s going to get!" Then he became serious. "What I can’t understand is how he got into the underground hangar in the first place—not to mention the auxiliary lab. He’d need a special key, wouldn’t he?"

"You’re right—one of our electronic beeper-keys." Tom looked meaningfully at his father. "Do you think it might have been an inside job? Or a job with inside help?"

"That might account for his not being detected by the main radar unit," Bud suggested. "One of the plant workers might have disconnected it momentarily, then let his confederate in."

"I hate to be suspicious of anyone here," Mr. Swift remarked, "but I suppose we’d better consider every angle. Right now, though, we’d better make sure that projectile is moved to a secure—"

He was interrupted by a knock on the door. Tom, quickly blanking-out the monitor, rose and went to see who the caller might be. "Arthur Roberts is here," he announced over his shoulder to Mr. Swift. Roberts had worked for many years at the Swift plant as a tool designer. The close, exacting skill had proved too great a strain on his eyes. As a result, he had been assigned the duty of night watchman for the underground hangar and laboratory.

"Tell him to come in," said Mr. Swift, as Chow and Harlan Ames left quietly. Tom tapped Bud on the shoulder, asking him to remain.

The moment the man appeared in the doorway, the three in the office knew something was wrong. Roberts’s face was pale and drawn, and there were dark circles of distress under his eyes. As he removed his cap slowly, they noted that his hand shook a little.

"Yes, Roberts?" Mr. Swift said. The man cleared his throat, then spoke gravely. "I have something to confess. I’m responsible for the theft of the super-Geiger-counter plans."

Tom and his father stared at the man in astonishment.

"But you’ve been with us for years!" declared Damon Swift. "You’re one of our most trusted men."

Roberts looked down at the floor. "I know. But I couldn’t help what happened."

"Tell us everything," Tom urged, a gentle tone in his voice.

"Last night—actually early this morning," the guard began, "I had just unlocked the door to the underground hangar to make my hourly rounds when a strange man came up to me. He matches the description being circulated of the one who stole Tom’s helicopter. I don’t know how he got in—anyhow, it wasn’t by the main gate. He said he was a research member of Hemispak."

"Hemispak!" Mr. Swift cried. "The group formed to pool scientific information and resources for the protection of the natural environment in the Western Hemisphere!"

"I know how important Hemispak is, so I asked what he wanted," Roberts went on. "He mumbled something. And then—he pulled a gun. He started talking tough, said he’d been briefed on me. He even knew about my son Barry being in South America. You know, Barry’s a chemist there, and his work is for Hemispak." Roberts lowered his voice. "Looking for uranium, I believe. That fellow said both Barry and his wife would be tortured if I didn’t tell him where to find the plans for your new detector machine."

Mr. Swift nodded with understanding. "And you did?"

"I had no choice."

"So you took him to the underground lab?" asked Tom.

Roberts gulped and nodded. "The man had some little electrical gizmo that allowed him to unlock the storage cabinet. He rummaged several minutes until he found the plans, waving that gun my way the whole time. I wish now I’d jumped him, but you know my eyes aren’t so good anymore."

"Then what?" Bud asked.

"All I know is, he pulled something out of his coat pocket. It was a spray can, like those little cans of pepper-spray, you know? He sprayed me in the face, and then—my wife Dolores says I came home and crawled into bed at 6 A.M., but I don’t remember a thing about it. I slept just like normal. In fact, I must’ve been in a daze or something, because it wasn’t till I clocked in just a while ago that I remembered anything about the incident!"

"Instant concussion," said Tom in a wry voice. "Science marches on!"

Roberts sighed. "There’s something else I should tell you. I wrote to Barry about your device, which the two of you used to work on at night and discuss while I was making my rounds. I didn’t really realize that I shouldn’t. Someone must have intercepted the letter and opened it. Maybe Barry is being watched!"

"That seems likely. And—he works for Hemispak." Mr. Swift put a reassuring hand on Roberts’s shoulder. "Don’t worry about this, Roberts. But I’d suggest that you contact your son immediately and warn him. I think Harlan Ames can get you authorization to use the secure line to whichever American Embassy is closest to him. If this
is
the work of some enemy group, they may carry out the threat against your family."