Tom Swift and His Ultrasonic Cycloplane (3 page)

"But this storm of sound waves will have to be very powerful to lift an entire airplane," said Bash doubtfully. "Does sound have so much strength?"

"You should’ve seen what it did to Tom’s shop apron!" Bud declared wryly.

"Don’t forget, Bash—these nodes get re-created more than a million times a second. Even the tiniest push can be pretty formidable when you multiply it by a million!"

"I dare say," Bashalli nodded. "So it seems you will have a wonderful plane with a wonderful name, and it can go up and down. And why is that so important? Balloons do it already—so do helicopters, and even your Flying Lab with its jet lifters."

"Not to mention pogo sticks," Sandy added mischievously.

"True," Tom agreed. "But my cycloplane will have unparalleled agility and stability in its vertical motions, or while hovering. Plus the wingless, bladeless fuselage will have a much narrower ‘footprint’ than any conventional aircraft—you’d be able to land it in an alley between two buildings."

"Plus, no heat or smoke, like you get from the
Sky Queen
," observed Sandy, referring to the Flying Lab.

"And so, when do you take us on a flight, Thomas of the Swifts?" demanded Bashalli with a smile.

Tom held up his hands in protest. "Hey, the full-sized model, which I’ve named the
SwiftStorm
, isn’t even finished yet."

The conversation was interrupted by Moshan, Bashalli’s older brother, who told Tom a telephone call had come in for him. Excusing himself, Tom stepped behind the counter to take the call.

"This is Mother, Tom," said the familiar voice.

"Hi, Mom—is anything wrong?"

"No, Dear, but there’s something I was sure you’d want to know about right away," was the reply. "Captain Rock just called here for you. He had news about that Cat person. I was going to leave a message for you, but then I remembered that you had said you were going to Bashalli’s café."

Tom’s eyebrows rose. "News about Jake the Cat? Has he been captured?"

"He’s in custody
now—
in the Shopton jail!" exclaimed Mrs. Swift. "And Tom, it’s quite strange—he’s turned himself in!"

AMAZED and excited, Tom hurried back to his friends and related the startling news.

"You mean to tell me this guy just waltzed into Shopton PD and said, ‘Here I am, Lock me up’?" Sandy demanded. "What kind of professional criminal
is
he, anyway?"

"I’m about to find out!" said Tom. He called the Shopton police station and spoke briefly to Captain Rock, a longtime friend, who told him that Jake the Cat seemed to be in a confessing mood. The Captain invited Tom to come down to the station right away, if he wished.

Bidding Bashalli goodnight, Tom hastily drove Bud and Sandy to the Swift home, where Bud was parked. Then he rushed to the police station in Shopton’s modest downtown area.

Greeting Tom, Captain Rock said, "You know, it gives me a funny feeling in my stomach when hardened criminals decide to turn themselves in. Doesn’t feel right."

As they walked toward the chief’s office, where an armed officer stood watch, Tom asked about the circumstances of Jake’s being apprehended.

"Young man, some forty minutes ago he just came walking through our front door and told Mindy who he was, and to put him away in the cooler! Mindy called me—I was hanging out down the street, enjoying a quiet moment of self-absorption—and I came back on the run. Jake says he’ll tell everything that he can, but—"

"But what?"

"I think he’s lost it, Tom. He keeps talking about how we shouldn’t touch his hands, or we’ll die!"

In the chief’s office, Jake the Cat sat on a hard, straight-backed chair under a bright light. Tom saw that one wrist was cuffed to the top of a chair leg. The swarthy burglar, wearing a high-necked mud-colored jersey, was as lean and agile as a trapeze stunt man.

He looked frightened and agitated, but when Tom entered he gave the young inventor a nod of greeting that was surprisingly cordial. "You Tom Swift?" he asked. "Hopin’ you can help me out, pal."

"Hello, Mr. Cat," Tom responded cautiously. "I hear you’ve confessed to some things."

"Sure—I’ll spill the whole story!" Jake whined. "Just gimme a break at the trial, an’ keep me alive t’
see
the trial, that’s all I ask!"

"We’re not making any promises," snapped Captain Rock. "Those fingerprints you forgot to wipe off your alarm-snuffer gadget give us a clear-cut case. But go ahead and talk, and we’ll tell the New York boys you cooperated. You’ve been read your rights, and the tape is running. Understand?"

"Okay, okay. Anything—but first, Swift-boy’s gotta do something about the cesium!"

Rock glanced at Tom. "He keeps babbling about
cesium.
Is there such a thing?"

"Sure," Tom replied, puzzled. "It’s a soft metal, part of the alkali group."

"And tell him the rest!" shouted Jake. "It’s
poison!
Get it on your skin, and you’re done for!"

Rock asked Tom, "Is that true?"

Tom nodded. "Sure, more or less. Jake, what makes you think you’ve been exposed to cesium?"

The man scowled bitterly. "You gonna play games? I saw on th’ TV how everybody was wearin’ gloves t’ handle that statue, but I didn’t think nothin’ about it. So I cipe it and make my delivery. Then I get home and get a message from an old associate—a colleague, you know what I mean—and what does he say? He says ever’body’s talkin’ about how that thing’s made of this rare metal stuff called cesium, that’ll kill ya if you touch it! Look at my hands!"

He turned his hands palms-up. They were chapped and red.

"Looks like you need a moisturizer," said Rock sarcastically.

"I been washin’ and washin’ all day long!" Jake cried. "Swift, you gotta give me the cure!"

"I think I’ll have some good news for you," Tom replied carefully. "But I think you said you had some things to confess, didn’t you?"

"Whaddaya want to know?"

"Where’s that statue you stole?"

"I ain’t got it. Like I just said, I turned it over to the guy who hired me to pull the job."

"The guy who hired you!" Captain Rock glowered in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"Just what I’m tellin’ ya," Jake insisted. "This guy gets in touch with me the other night—there are ways if you really want to, and got connections— and offers me a nice little bundle of cash to snatch the statue from the museum. Said he had to have it right away!"

"Who was he?" Tom asked.

"Search me. You think he gave his name? He wired me th’ deposit, rest on delivery o’ the goods. Met me in a parkin’ lot about five this morning."

Growled Captain Rock, "You must have seen him when you turned over the statue.’’

"Sure I did. Little old man, real skinny, kinda stooped-over, you know?"

"Where was the parking lot located?" Tom asked the thief.

"Little burg over in the next county—Walderburg, matter o’ fact. Where that big university is."

"Yeah, Grandyke U.," nodded Rock. "Tom! What is it?"

The young inventor looked startled. "I think I know who put Jake up to the theft—a professor at Grandyke who looked over the figure just the other day! His name’s Ward Feeney."

Jake nodded vigorously. "The dude looked like a professor, ya know? And he never touched the statue himself, just had me drop it into a box!" He shot Tom a look of frantic appeal. "I know I’m a bad guy, Swift, an’ I heard tell what you did to those guys who tried to con you over in Africa. But I’m beggin’ ya here—help me!"

The chief shot a puzzled glance at Tom. There was a brief silence.

"Do you think he’s telling the truth?" the young inventor asked.

Rock shrugged. "Could be. Naturally we’ll search his motel room in Walderburg with a fine-tooth comb. But none of this makes sense if his turning himself in is just a put-on of some kind."

Tom turned back to the prisoner. "I guess I’ll believe you, Jake. The good news is, that statue isn’t made of cesium or anything else that could hurt you. The underworld rumor mill got it wrong. As for the bad news—well, here you are, pal!"

Jake the Cat scowled fiercely. "Tell me about it!"

A female officer had been standing quietly at the door. Now she spoke up. "Captain, maybe this is just a coincidence but—there’s a man named Feeney out in front waiting to see you!"

Captain Rock’s jaw dropped.
"Feeney?
As in Ward Feeney?"

"That’s the name he gave, yes sir. He says he wants to confess to a crime, just like this guy!"

Captain Rock frowned suspiciously at Tom. "This isn’t some kind of psychological experiment you guys are conducting, is it?"

Tom half-smiled and shook his head.

Professor Feeney stood alone in the station lobby, a forlorn figure. Seeing Tom, he blanched. "Oh no!—well, perhaps it’s just as well. I’d have to face you and your father eventually."

"Professor, what’s going on?"

"Let’s go into a private little room and talk, shall we?" suggested the academic in a trembling voice. Ushered into a small room, he collapsed into a chair as the Captain read him his rights and set up the recording equipment. Feeney then commenced his story.

More than a year prior, he had been contacted, in a surreptitious manner, by a man who identified himself as a Dutch scientist. "He gave me quite a convincing sob story—about how he had been trying to smuggle a unique carved statue out of a far east country where the government forbids any traffic in archeological artifacts. He said he needed to study the figure with various instruments not available in that country, and that’s why he had to resort to smuggling."

"All in the interests of science, eh?" remarked Rock sarcastically.

"So he said. He claimed he had got the statue across the border, but the men he had hired got wind of its true value and disappeared with it. He asked me to keep an eye out for it, and promised that if I returned it to him, he and I would study it together. When you called, Tom, and gave me the description, I was fairly certain I had found what the man was looking for, and then when I examined it in my hand, all doubt vanished."

"So you had it stolen," said Tom grimly.

"I suppose I’ve let my friendly rivalry with Dr. Gorde get a bit out of hand. I couldn’t
stand
the thought that—well, never mind. I spoke to the Dutchman, who put me in touch with this Jake fellow and asked me to act on his behalf while he flew here."

Captain Rock asked what had happened when he turned the statue over to the Dutchman. The professor winced. "We met for breakfast in a diner, on the main highway outside Shopton, and I handed him the box. He thanked me, and asked how I liked my bran and granola, which I thought was an odd question. When I replied that I had it frequently, he said, ‘Dear Professor, I have in my pocket a small pistol, which I have aimed at you beneath the table. You may continue to enjoy many more such breakfasts if you go your way in peace and forget we ever had this conversation.’ Then he rose and left, sticking me with the bill. I never saw his car."

In response to a question from Tom, Feeney described the man as very slender overall, but with broad, muscular shoulders and a thick neck. His hair was a pale blond, his eyes watery blue, his lips rather thick. "I’d say he was in his early forties, and his accent seemed consistent with his describing himself as Dutch. He pronounced
‘Jake’
as
‘Jhake’
."

"Not much of a clue," Tom commented, "but at least it’s something to go on."

"We’ll follow it up," Captain Rock promised. After hammering a few more questions at the sheepish prisoner, who in truth needed little hammering at all, he called in an officer and said, "Okay, take him away! The other one too! But stow ’em at opposite ends." Shaking his head, he added to Tom, "Strangest night I ever had around here." Tom laughed in agreement.

Before Tom retired for the evening, he phoned Ed Longstreet in New York and told him of the astounding developments. "I’ll tell Dr. Gorde," promised Cousin Ed. "Now if we could just get the darn thing back!"

The next morning Bud found Tom hard at work in his main laboratory, which adjoined the huge underground hangar where the
Sky Queen
was berthed.

Bud perched himself on his customary stool and asked his pal if he were working on the cycloplane. Tom glanced up and shook his head.

"Not at the moment, flyboy. I’m taking one of my head-clearing breaks."

Familiar with Tom’s work habits, Bud nodded in understanding. "Then what are you working on? A long-range stolen statue detector, maybe?"

"Glad to see your ESP is working, chum," Tom answered. "I don’t know how to find where ‘Kangaroo Sue’ has got to. But with a little luck, these calculations I’ve made just might tell us where she came from!"

UD BARCLAY had seen so many amazing things during these recent years of friendship with Tom Swift that he sometimes had to fake his amazement, so as not to deny his pal the pleasure he derived from seeing it. But on this occasion Bud’s surprise was genuine and obvious. "Genius boy, how are a bunch of numbers going to tell you where the thing came from? Especially since you don’t even have it anymore?"

Tom grinned with enthusiasm. "Granted, we don’t have the object itself, but what we
do
have is a pile of data stored in the electron-wave spectroscope from our examination of it the other day. It stays on the hard drive until it’s overwritten."

"And that’ll tell you something?"

Tom stood and stretched. "C’mon, let’s see!"

The young inventor led his friend to the materials lab, where he activated the spectroscope control terminal as Bud looked over his shoulder. Consulting his notes and calculations, he began to enter a processing routine into the device’s inbuilt computer.

"What I’m doing," he explained as he manipulated the keyboard, "is telling the computer how to extract and summarize magneto-orientation data from the stored scan of the metal lattices of the holmium."

"Oh," said Bud. "I see."

Tom chuckled at the blank expression on his friend’s face. "As I mentioned, the rare-earth metals have unusual magnetic properties. When the statue was cast and cooled, faint magnetization patterns induced by the earth’s magnetic field were frozen in place."