Tom Swift and His Flying Lab (6 page)

Bud shrugged. "At least by someone who doesn’t want Tom to go to South America. Remember, it was
Tom
who was supposed to take the Special up today!"

Two hours later, after Sandy had been taken back to the Swift residence, Tom finished a cursory examination of the Pigeon Special
.
The crumpled craft had been moved to a hangar at Swift Enterprises by flatbed truck.

"This is going to be hard to believe, Bud," said Tom, "but I think something along the lines of an antiaircraft bazooka shot a micro-rocket at the plane."

"What!" Bud exclaimed, staring wide-eyed at the holes in the floor and ceiling of the cabin. "If that thing had exploded—" "The rocket launcher must have been in the woods," Tom declared. "Maybe a mobile, truck-mounted job."

Bud snorted. "By my arithmetic, that’s two attacks on you and Enterprises by those rebels. And two
too
many!"

"It sure looks that way." Tom clenched his fists. "But when he shoots at Sandy—"

"Whatever you do to him, count me in on it," Bud growled. "Say, how do you figure they found out that you were going to test the Pigeon this morning?"

"I wish I knew," Tom said solemnly. "There must be a nest of spies around here."

"Well, for Pete’s sake, watch your step!" Bud urged.

On the way to the administration building the boys talked of nothing else but the attack. And when Tom told his father about it, Mr. Swift looked grave.

"This is really cause for alarm," he said. "Until we get to the bottom of it, you must be extra cautious, Tom. Better report this incident to the police at once."

"I’ll do that, Dad," Tom replied. "And I’ll send a message to Mr. Rigoledo too, via the American embassy in Cristobal. All this may mean that the Verano rebels are getting restless!"

During the last several days, Mr. Swift had been working with Tom on the super-Geiger counter. He now announced his satisfaction with the result of a novel approach he had been trying.

"Tomorrow we’ll take the model up in a plane and try it on some buried uranium," he said.

The following morning, after Tom had finished an inspection of the altimeters on the Flying Lab, he drove by electric cart to a spot far removed from the Swift Enterprises buildings. Here his father was directing some digging. Two workmen, operating a power boring drill, were sinking a hole deep in the ground.

"We’re about ready to bury the uranium," Mr. Swift explained to Tom. "I think the hole’s deep enough. They’re down twenty feet now."

He walked over to where a heavy lead cylinder lay. The cylinder contained two curies of a naturally-occurring radioactive uranium isotope.

"All right, men, go ahead and lower the cylinder into the hole."

"Don’t you want us to uncork her first, Mr. Swift?" asked the team lead.

"Absolutely not!" Damon Swift commanded. "The container is self-opening and will eject the material only upon receiving my coded signal. I don’t want any of you within fifty yards of this ‘hot’ uranium even after you’ve got it covered with dirt."

When this was accomplished he turned to Tom. "We’re ready, son."

"Okay. I’ll head upstairs in the
Skeeter,"
the young inventor responded. "Keep your fingers crossed!" He drove off toward the
Skeeter’s
hangar, where the newly-redesigned detector had already been loaded aboard and secured.

"She’s ready to go," the mechanic on duty told him. "Just tuned her up. The engines sound smooth an’ fine."

"That’s great, Vern," said Tom, noting the name on the mechanic’s overalls. "Just as long as nobody shoots bazookas at her!"

"Yeah," the mechanic replied, scratching his head. "I heard about that!"

In a matter of seconds the unique helicraft was airborne under the power of its pulse-jet rotors. Switching to horizontal flight mode, Tom climbed steeply and leveled off at two thousand feet.

"Let’s try the counter at this low altitude first," came Mr. Swift’s voice over Tom’s televoc. "I’ve verified that the cylinder has ejected the uranium from the shielding."

Winging over the Swift Enterprises grounds, Tom eased the throttle. Presently the monotonous background hiss in Tom’s headset was replaced by the high-pitched mix of tones that signified success.

"We’ve got a winner, Dad," Tom televoc’d.

"Well, at least it works!" Mr. Swift chuckled.

"Let’s try it at five thousand feet," Tom suggested as he put the
Skeeter
into a steep climb.

At five thousand feet he leveled off once more, starting another run over the buried uranium. This time the detector tones came much less steadily and very weakly.

"But it’s there!" murmured Tom as he tried to adjust the counter so that it would produce a more sensitive response. "But will it work at, say, ten thousand, where we’d normally be cruising?" He set his jaw.
We may as well find out now,
he thought.

He pulled the ship into another upward surge. When the altimeter read ten thousand feet, Tom leveled off and made another pass, but the device registered no sound other than the normal background hiss. Tom’s face showed his keen disappointment. Even the improved super-Geiger counter lacked the power for long-range detection.

"Our invention probably wouldn’t detect radioactive particles from deep-buried ore," he said to himself. "There must be some way to perfect the detector, though. Maybe an entirely new approach to the problem." His mind was already hard at work!

As Tom set the heliplane down in a feather-touch landing, he exclaimed to himself, "That’s it—a new approach. We must throw out present-day methods."

Bounding from the cockpit, Tom dashed toward his father. "I have an idea! A completely new scheme!"

Tom’s enthusiasm was infectious. By the end of the day, the office shared by Tom and his father was littered with drawings, plans, and calculations.

"It looks entirely plausible," commented Mr. Swift, looking over Tom’s latest sketch. "We’ll have Arv Hanson’s crew put together a mockup for testing." Arvid Hanson was chief of Enterprises’ technical assembly department. His team of technicians were known for their ability to translate hasty blueprints and sketchwork into working test versions in a span of hours.

That evening, as the Swift family finished their supper, Tom and his father remained at the table discussing the events of the day. Eventually their conversation drifted around to the subject of the space symbol translation.

"I must admit, I’ve come to something of a dead end," said Mr. Swift. "Every segment seems to affect every other segment, and I no sooner feel I’ve solved one part than I find it doesn’t fit in with the rest."

"It’s the same way with me," Tom agreed, pulling his small working notebook from his pocket. "The first group of symbols—if it
is
the first and not the end—might be saying ‘we need data we can measure,’ or something more like ‘truth results from pure axioms’."

Mr. Swift nodded ruefully. "Yes, and I came up with ‘all attainment reduces to mathematical function expressed through time’."

Tom grinned. "All of which sound more like fortune-cookie sayings than greetings from another planet."

Sandy had been lingering in the doorway, listening to the conversation. Now she stepped forward hesitantly.

"Dad… Tom…" she began. And then shepaused.

"What’s up, sis?" Tom asked.

"It’s just—I had an idea about those attacks," said Sandy. "And please don’t make fun of me, because I’m just observing that old Swift adage about following imagination after logic gives up. But I suppose you’ll think I’ve watched too many TV reruns."

"Give us a try," said Tom reassuringly. "It’s not as if we’ve made much progress on our own."

"Well," his sister continued, "you’re all assuming the attacks have to do with what’s going on in South America. But really, that’s not the
only
possibility. I mean, couldn’t they have to do with that space missile?"

Mr. Swift raised an eyebrow. "Are you suggesting our adversaries might be trying to find out about the missile, or even to steal it?"

Sandy shook her head vigorously.

"No, Dad. What I’m suggesting is—
maybe it’s the space people themselves who are behind the attacks!"

TOM AND MR. SWIFT were left speechless by Sandy’s statement. The idea that the acts against them were being directed by beings on another world would have never occurred to them, despite the presence of an alien artifact in one of their own laboratories.

"But sis," protested Tom weakly, "you’re forgetting that the first incident occurred the night
before
the missile came down."

"I know that," she agreed. "But what if there’s a group of space people already on Earth? Maybe they look just like human beings, or maybe they have a way to
make
themselves look like us. Maybe the missile was an attempt by good aliens to warn us about the bad ones! So, see, the bad ones found out about it in advance and started trying to penetrate our defenses."

"Or maybe the missile was carrying something for the ‘bad guys,’ something they need—but it came down in the wrong place," Tom mused, glancing at his father. "They’ve been trying to get inside Enterprises in order to be in place to take possession of it."

"I suppose it’s possible," Mr. Swift commented. "We can’t
quite
rule it out."

Sandy’s face fell. "But it’s not worth thinking about."

"Well, Sandy," said Tom with a joshing smile, "you had a run-in with Mr. Slicktop. You don’t really think invaders from Mars would show up with bad haircuts, do you?"

Sandra Swift glared at her big brother. Then her expression turned sweet. "I’m sure
I
wouldn’t know anything about
bad haircuts,
Tom dear." She turned and swept from the dining room, leaving Tom to contemplate how long it had been since he had seen a barber.

Arriving at Enterprises early the next morning, Tom was pleased to review a number of reports from the various work teams indicating that preparations for the departure of the Flying Lab were progressing ahead of schedule. All the workforce was dedicated to helping the Swifts startle the world once more with their amazing inventions. Noting that Arv Hanson had not yet computer-messaged that the mock-up of the new detector was finished, Tom considered which tasks were next in line.

I’ll bet Bud is here already,
Tom thought, and went off to look for the young pilot. Finding his friend breakfasting in the plant’s cafeteria, Tom said:

"I’m thinking I might like to give the
Kangaroo Kub
and the
Skeeter
another good workout before they’re put aboard the Flying Lab. I don’t
s’pose
you’d be interested in a little race, would you, Mr. Barclay?"

A wide grin was Bud’s response. "You just
might
be able to persuade me, Professor Swift!"

"It was on that supposition that I took the liberty of clearing the skytrack for us," said Tom, giving his pal a thump on the back.
Clearing the skytrack
was Enterprises slang for filing the necessary flight path information with the federal authorities, who were very supportive of the Swift experimental programs. Continued Tom: "You take the copter and I’ll fly the plane. I’ll give you a ten-minute head start."

"You’re on, jet jockey!" Bud agreed, swallowing the last of a sky-high orange juice.

Side by side the boys warmed up the two flying "babies." The
Skeeter,
Bud’s vehicle, really did resemble a strange sort of bug-eyed mosquito, with its bulging double-domed cockpit and winglike rotor overhead. The craft’s rotor blades bore little resemblance to those of a conventional helicopter. Broad near the hub, the blade tips were elongated toward the direction of rotation, having a scythe-like form. Slots in the edges functioned as thrust-vents for the pulsing minijets that would whirl the rotor when the
Skeeter
was functioning as a helicopter. When functioning as a jet plane, the hub of the blades would be tilted back a few degrees off the vertical and the rotor, unpowered, would be allowed to turn freely in the onrush of air. This would provide the wingless vehicle with a steady lift, in the manner of an autogyro.

The
Kangaroo Kub
—so named because it would be riding in the
Sky Queen
’s "pouch"—was a true jetcraft and lacked the ability to hover in midair. But it made up in sheer speed and maneuverability for what it lacked as a "hummingbird." The
Kub
had the sleek V-swept wings seen on most jet-powered aircraft, but Tom could also see, in his mind’s eye, a feature that made the tiny jet unique: a second pair of straight-angled winglets that folded out from the fuselage for smooth flying at much slower speeds, close to the lazy pace of prop-driven planes. In a way the
Kangaroo Kub
was a true jet biplane.

Tom explained the course to Bud via the televoc system. "We’ll make a ten-mile run to the yacht club, wing over, fly back above the construction company field, and circle back above the high school."

"And finish up with a precision landing between those two big poplar trees at the edge of the woods," Bud shouted back, his voice alive with excitement. "Let’s see who comes closer to this line." He pointed to a tar strip in the runway. "My money’s on Budworth Newton Barclay!"

"So you think you can beat me in that windmill?" Tom gibed.

"Windmill!" Bud chortled. "Don’t be makin’ fun of your baby, Father Swift!"

Without another word, Bud revved up the special thrust engines of the "jetrocopter," as Tom’s jet heliplane was officially called. Having decided to lift off like an autogyro rather than a chopper, Bud left the ground a few moments afterward with surprising speed—as if in a single bound!

"Nice takeoff, but I’ll be back at the field solving differential equations before you’re halfway around the course," Tom televoc’d his good pal. Ten minutes later Tom’s jet took off with a
whoosh.

Though Bud had zipped along the course in good time, the
Skeeter
was not specifically designed for speed, and for all his bravado he expected Tom to overtook him in the
Kub
in a matter of minutes. Bud was surprised when he touched down in the
Skeeter
back at Enterprises with Tom’s jet nowhere in sight. As the seconds passed, he found himself working hard to avoid a disturbing thought—
had Tom fallen victim to his mysterious enemies?