Tom Swift and His Giant Robot (3 page)

"I suppose the antenna for the relotrol will be in the head, right?" Bud remarked.

"Right, along with the light-emitting ‘eyes’ and radar ‘ears.’ After Robo Boy’s head is on, he’ll be remotely controlled. Right now I have to use a direct control and monitoring method." Tom pointed to a long cable protruding from the back of the robot’s cylindrical neck and running to a mobile operator console.

"What can your giant do so far?" asked Bud, eyes gleaming with fascination. "When I left last week, you were trying to get him to lift his arms."

"Oh, now he can walk, and do almost anything with his hands, as long as I ‘aim’ him properly. Want to see him thread a needle?"

"I’d rather watch him walk."

"Okay. Here goes." Tom selected the "walking" function on the control panel and slipped in a high-density data disk. He explained that there were several of these magnetic disks, each encoding specific instructions for certain complex modes of action. "It’s safer to store the data separately from the robot’s body, so there’s no chance of it becoming corrupted by radiation," he explained.

The young inventor inserted a simple key in the back of the robot and turned it to open the relay circuits. The giant’s machinery began to hum. At the same time, its body broke out into a dazzling blaze of colored pinpoint-sized lights, dotted across the robot’s chest and clustered at every joint.

Bud chortled with laughter. "A real light show! What are they for?"

"To tell me how the circuits and mechanical units are working," Tom explained as he snapped off the laboratory lights.

"Looks like a Christmas tree."

"But who ever saw a walking Christmas tree?" Tom grinned. "Watch this!"

He advanced the large control dial on the board a few notches. Slowly the robot lifted his oversized right foot. The foot moved forward, paused, and came down with a crunch. The computer in the control panel registered this motion and, finding it adequate, sent a signal to the other foot, swinging it forward with an awkward stride. Step by step, the automaton clumped forward.

Tom stepped up the speed and the giant began to advance rapidly across the long laboratory floor.

"Whoa!" Bud warned. "Robo Boy’s going to run away."

Tom chuckled. "If he gets going faster than the control setting calls for, a damper will automatically slow him down."

The robot was almost running now.

"Tom, he’s going to walk into that vacuum furnace!" cried Bud nervously.

Laughing, Tom quickly threw a switch for a coordinated turn. The giant stopped and pivoted stiffly.

Bud looked relieved. Tom explained, "When we have the head in place and the relotrol is operational, he’ll be able to detect and avoid barriers on his own."

The robot now headed for the closed door leading to the building corridor. Again he was going at breakneck speed. Bud held his breath but Tom seemed confident. Working quickly, he inserted another action disk into a second drive slot in the control console. The metal body paused, raised its right arm, and extended the hand. With Tom "fine tuning" the action, long metal fingers reached out, gripped the doorknob, and turned it slowly.

Stepping forward, the giant pushed it open. The arm mechanism dropped and the robot paused.

"Watch me take him through the doorway without hitting the frame," Tom said, manipulating the controls. Bending slightly—for even without a head he was almost too tall for the human-sized doorway—Tom’s giant stepped neatly through and strode into the silent corridor.

Suddenly Tom and Bud froze as an unearthly shriek sounded in the hall and echoed through the laboratory!

"Robo Boy must’ve run over someone!" Bud gasped.

"QUICK, Tom! Stop him!" Bud yelled in fear.

Tom frantically slammed down a switch on the control board to halt the robot. As the giant hesitated just beyond the doorway, Tom and Bud rushed in front of him. A stupefied man stood there, his mouth wide open.

"Brand my li’l ole panhandle!"
he choked out breathlessly. "I thought I’as bein’ massacred by the ghost of my old potbellied cookstove!"

"Chow!" roared Tom, a broad smile of relief spreading over his face. "You old coyote cooker! When did you ride into town?"

"Jest tumbled in—an’ I don’t recollect you ever eatin’ any o’ my coyote cutlets, Tom Swift!"

Chow Winkler, the stout former chuck-wagon cook who tended the galley on Tom’s Flying Lab and went along on many of Tom’s journeys, mopped his high and shiny forehead with a large red neckerchief. "Whew!" he said. "Feller can’t even come t’holler hey at ya without gettin’ skeered half to death."

"You mean you haven’t met Tom’s new cook?" Bud teased. "Where have you been, Chow?"

"Aw, jest flew in last night from Shopton with Mr. Swift’s atomic specializers. Woulda stayed, too, if I’d knowed I was goin’ to bump into this here monster." His fear fading, Chow approached the robot and poked his chest cautiously. "Feels like the padded dashboard on my old pickup," he said. Then his eyes narrowed and he turned toward Tom. "This thing really s’posed to make like a cook, Boss?"

"We’re a long
long
way from being able to mechanize
your
special talents, Chow," said Tom soothingly. "Robo Boy here is my new project, a super-strong mechanical workhorse to do tasks in places too dangerous for us puny humans."

"I heard tell you ’as working on somethin’ like that," Chow commented, stuffing his kerchief back into his pocket. He cast a withering glance in Bud’s direction. "Reckon Buddy Boy here was makin’ one o’ his so-called jokes."

"Sorry, pard," Bud apologized. "What I
said
was a joke, but we didn’t mean to startle you."

Warily Chow moved closer to the robot. "That’s okay. Weren’t skeered none," he drawled. Eying its immensity, he snorted, "Glad I don’t have to cook fer this here giant. Say, maybe you-all could rig up one o’ these come roundup time next year in Texas. My friends sure could use a mee-chanical cowpuncher for ropin’ an’ brandin’."

"I’ll do better than that, Chow," said Tom, laughing. "How about my entering one in the Southwest Rodeo for you? I can fix the controls so he’ll never get thrown by any bronc!"

"That’s right nice o’ you, Tom," said Chow, grinning. "Tell you what. He kin wear my new red-an’-yellow plaid shirt. He’d sure look more civilized that way."

"But we’ll wait until he has a head," said Tom. "I’d hate to scare your cowboy friends."

"Ye-ah, some o’ them folks ’as got a nervous dispersition, all right," nodded the Texan. "Anyway, I came t’see if you folks had lunch yet. Hows ’bout a bowl of my rattlesnake soup?" he asked jokingly.

"No, thanks," said Tom. "I’d rather be bitten by a new idea. That I could use!"

"Reckon I could cook up most ever’thing but that!"

While Chow prepared a substantial lunch of hamburgers and onions, Tom and Bud tried to analyze the image captured by the digital camera, but to no avail. "This model just isn’t sensitive enough," complained Tom. "All I can say for sure is that whatever’s causing that blob of light isn’t inside the camera mechanism."

"Guess that’s what dear-departed crows look like when you try to take their picture," Bud commented.

The boys were continuing to talk about the baffling problem when Chow arrived again with lunch. He demanded to know what they were discussing, and Tom gave him a brief account.

"Spirit-stuff!" the cook exclaimed. "Bet I know some’n who could tell you all about it!"

Tom’s eyebrows raised in surprise. "Who? Somebody around here?"

"Why, somebody I’m gonna be payin’ a call on this evening, matter of fact," said Chow, unconsciously taking off his ten-gallon hat, as if in respect. "A lady, name of Jessee Thunder Lake."

"Is that her real name?" asked Bud.

Chow looked offended. "Shore is! She’s full-blooded Arapajo."

"No offense," Bud added hastily. "But when did you meet her, Chow?"

"Buddy Boy, you fergit this here New Mexico desert is where I lived since I moved over from good ol’ Texas when I was about your age."

"That’s right," Tom interjected. "Dad and I met Chow back when the Citadel was being built, a few years ago. You were working at the Bar-Double-R Ranch on the other side of Tenderly."

"That I was," Chow said. "I’as the cook, and you, Tom, were a skinny kid who liked hangin’ around and askin’ questions."

"Okay," Bud said. "Now tell us about this Mrs. Thunder Lake."

"It’s
Miss
Thunder Lake," Chow corrected. "Mighty fine woman. That’s why I ast her t’marry me."

Tom and Bud gasped as one, almost choking on their meal.
"Chow!"
Tom cried.

"That’s m’name," he responded calmly. "Asked her not jest once, neither, but four times now! First time—I was a young sprig with lot’s o’ hair—she was engaged to somebody else. Filled me up with pain an’ sorrow, and I went away fer a few years. But she never did marry that ol’ poke Winton Blaisnell. So when I found that out I came back an’ ast her agin."

Bud tried to look sympathetic. "But nothing doing?"

"Whatter you think?" snorted Chow. "Seems Blaisnell had run off, and she was all ‘pain-and-sorrow’ herself and wouldn’t think of anybody else. So she gave me one o’ them woven blankets and sent me on my way."

Tom stifled a laugh—barely!—and said, "But still, you tried again."

"I did. I waited one square year, and then I cornered her at a dance. Really thought I had a chance, too, all fixed up like I was. But nope. She said she was gonna move up north to Finch River, Alaska, and teach school, and she didn’t think I’d take to th’ move—prob’ly right. So she gave me one o’ them little round rugs and that was that."

"You poor cowpoke!" Bud exclaimed.

Chow sighed and shook his head. "Ain’t over yet, neither. Years an’ years go by, and now I’m a mite older, with a mite less hair. One o’ the ranch hands tells me Jessee’s back in Tenderly, workin’ at the library. So I get all duded up and I go to pay a call—"

"Let me guess," Bud interjected. "A bath towel?"

"A shawl!" snorted Chow disgustedly. "Fer keepin’ me warm in my old age, I guess."

"Pard, do you really think it’s—er,
wise
to try again?" Tom asked quietly.

"You mean tonight?" The cook chuckled. "Naw, that’s all over with. Jest gonna say hello, since I’m in the area again. But listen, Jessee Thunder Lake knows a whole lot about the Arapajo and the spirits of th’ desert and such. She jest may have somethin’ to tell you boys about that status-peer spook you seen!"

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. Bud pulled on a pair of trunks and decided to sun himself on the lawn next to the employee cafeteria. He begged Tom to join him, but the young inventor waved him off, explaining that he needed to test a new idea he had for his relotrol device.

"You think you can make it less sensitive to those atomic rays?" Bud asked, standing at the lab door with his outer clothes bundled under one arm.

"That’s the idea," Tom replied, grinning. "If we can figure out how to protect
your
leathery hide, Budworth, I’m
sure
we can devise some super-sunscreen for our metal man here!"

Tom worked alone through the bright afternoon and into the evening, little noting the passage of time. One angle after another was cast into material form—and then cast aside, a failure. Tom’s broad workbench was littered with bits of circuitry, computer chips, and ragged patches of antiradiation shielding.

The answer’s here somewhere,
he said to himself, gazing at the scattered detritus of a day’s labors.
I just know it!

But finally, at the height of frustration, he began to make some progress. He had just cobbled together a promising new model when he was interrupted by the ring of the laboratory telephone.

"This here’s Chow, Boss," came a familiar twang. "You an’ Buddy Boy had that dinner I left for you?"

Tom was slow on the uptake. "Dinner?"

"Figgered you’d fergit," the cook remarked. "So now I want you two to head over to Darlita’s Rancho Patio, and pronto! I got Jessee Thunder Lake with me, and blamed if she doesn’t know a thing ’r three about big black crows that disappear!"

TOM AND BUD were very familiar with the Mexican restaurant Chow had named, as Darlita’s was the only eating establishment between the Citadel and the town of Tenderly, and was frequented by Swift employees seeking a change from cafeteria food.

The boys were met in front by Chow, dressed in his sharpest western-wear, and Jessee Thunder Lake, who turned out to be an attractive motherly woman of middle years, decked out in colorful scarves and copper jewelry.

"So very pleased to meet you two," she said, extending her hand. "Charles has said so much about you and your adventures." Tom and Bud took to her immediately.

After chatting lightly over a fine dinner, Jessee brought up the mysterious stratosphere sighting, which Chow had described to her.

"We don’t know what to make of it," Tom said. "But Chow mentioned that you might know something about it, or something like it."

Jessee nodded modestly. "Indeed I do, if it will be of any help.
Not
that I’ve seen such things myself, you understand. I’ve always thought these old legends were just so much moonshine. But now—I wonder."

"What does the legend say?" asked Bud.

"It’s one of the old stories of my ancestors, the Arapajo Nihavi, as we are called. I remember my grandfather telling me the stories when I was a little girl."

"An’ that’s quite a ways back!" Chow blurted out. Then he blushed, realizing what he had said. But Jessee ignored the faux pas.

"The stories are about different kinds of birds," she continued. "They are the forms taken by our tribal gods and our ancestor-spirits. The Crow-Black-As-Night-Shadow is named
Oi-Pah,
the spirit of vengefulness. The spirit always watches, always listens; and when a father wishes vengeance against a father, or a son against a son, he must light a cottonwood branch on a night of no moon and call out to Oi-Pah, who will fly above him in the shape of a crow big as a horse."