Tom Swift and the Cosmic Astronauts (7 page)

The elevator deck-platform lowered the cycloplane from the
Queen
’s aerial hangar, and Tom used the wingless craft’s superfast rotating cylinders to lift off smoothly and then drop toward the ocean. "I fear we’ll see very little of interest in this darkness," murmured Felix.

"I can’t turn on the searchlights, unfortunately. The ice particles in the air would just reflect the glare back in our faces," Tom explained tensely. "But it may be better just above the waves, where it’s warmer."

As Tom swooped lower, more could be seen. Nevertheless, the tiny islets were like scattered lumps of coal and showed no sign of habitation or activity.

Suddenly a distant light flickered into view further to the north, then another next to it. The searchers both cried out in surprise as a whole constellation of pinpoint lights suddenly appeared. The lights were clustered together, but revealed no clear outline. "It appears we’ve found
something,"
Felix said in an uncertain voice. "But what is it?—a single ship or a bunch of small boats? Tom, could it be the
Sea Charger
herself?"

"I can’t tell how big it is yet." Tom checked his radarscope. To his surprise, he could pick up nothing on the screen. "Looks as though we’ll have to go find out in person," he said in a puzzled voice.

Tom actuated the tail jets and sent the
SwiftStorm
zooming like a javelin above the waves. Luckily the winds had abated and the waves were not high. They covered the miles to the horizon in seconds—and the lights ahead suddenly vanished!

"Hey! Wh-what gives?" Felix cried out in alarm.

Tom instantly slowed the cycloplane. It was an unpleasant sensation, moving through the inky darkness with no longer even a pinpoint of light as a guide. Overhead, too, all was dark except for a faint, eerie moonglow glimmering through the clouds in one part of the sky.

"There’s
got
to be something out there, Felix," declared Tom in bewildered frustration. Again he probed the darkness with the plane’s radar. At first the sweep once again detected nothing. But presently the scope revealed a huge object dead ahead.

"Good night!" Tom exclaimed. "Where’d
that
come from?"

Throwing caution to the winds, Tom switched on the cycloplane’s powerful fuselage searchlights.
A massive glittering iceberg lay jutting up from the water directly in their course!
A disastrous collision seemed only moments away!

Tom gunned the lift-cylinder engines and hauled back on the stick. The cycloplane soared aloft, barely clearing the huge berg.

"I guess you might call that a close squeak!" Tom mopped the cold beads of perspiration that had burst out on his forehead.

Even Felix’s mellow voice sounded strained as he murmured, "For a moment I feared we were about to meet our honorable ancestors sooner than I had expected!"

"What I don’t understand is why the radarscope didn’t pick the doggone thing up sooner," Tom complained. "But I suppose we should just be thankful we
did
spot it in time."

"I am most definitely thankful!"

They flew back and forth over the area a while longer, continuing to check their navigational position. But they caught no further glimpse of the mysterious lights, and the radar revealed no objects other than the iceberg and the rocky islets miles behind them. "One thing more," Tom said.

Hovering a few yards above the water, Tom lowered a small sonarscope transceiver into the frigid sea. As the device pulsed out its subocean signal, Tom studied the bounceback on the monitor. He rotated the transceiver antenna, slowly panning the depths all the way to the horizon.

Tom and Felix stiffened with excitement. A moving spot of light had appeared on the scope! "Can’t see it from this distance, but we’re pointing right toward the iceberg," noted the young inventor.

"But that blip, surely, is not merely the submerged part of the berg," Felix objected. "It is much too small, and moving."

"If my guess pans out—
yep!
There it goes!" Tom pointed at the screen. The strange blip had slid sideways across the screen at amazing speed—and disappeared completely!

"You have seen this before? But what can it be?"

Tom shook his head. "Chow calls it a ghost. Maybe he’s right!"

Radioing Bud, Tom ascended to the Flying Lab and made a deft landing on the hangar’s platform. Returning to the control compartment, Tom briefly explained what he and Felix had observed. "Now," he concluded, "let’s take the
Queen
for a look at that iceberg from up high. The Swift Searchlight will cut right through the ice fog with hardly any reflection."

They were not surprised to find that, once again, the mountain of ice failed to register on the radarscope. Hovering in position at two thousand feet, Tom aimed and activated the giant searchlight.

Gazing down through the cockpit viewpane, Tom’s eyes grew wide. "This can’t be!" he cried.

The sea was bare. The huge iceberg had vanished completely—as completely as the lost
Sea Charger!

SHORTLY after Tom and his crew had left on their mission to the north, stocky Phil Radnor, Harlan Ames’s assistant, came rushing into the plant security office, a scrap of paper in his hand. He slapped the torn-off sheet down on his boss’s desk.

"What is it?" Ames demanded.

"The plant switchboard receptionist took an outside call, a guy who wouldn’t identify himself. He insisted that she take down this message word for word and get it to Security immediately."

"Right. We get a lot of these, Rad—from the international crank-and-prank community." But Ames picked up the note and read it over carefully.

YOU SEEK THE DRIVER OF A TRUCK WITH A DENTED REAR BUMPER. THIS NIGHT HE SHALL BE WAITING AT THE DISU.S.ED BUILDING AT 449 WILVERTON ROAD TO MEET WITH A MAN NAMED CLEGGMAN. HE HAS NEITHER SEEN NOR SPOKEN TO THIS MAN. CLEGGMAN IS INDISPOSED AND WILL NOT ARRIVE.

STAND AT THE BOTTOM OF THE STEPS TO THE MAIN DOOR. FACE THE STREET AND PUT YOUR RIGHT HAND IN YOUR RIGHT PANTS POCKET. YOU ARE EXPECTED AT NINE THIRTEEN.

COME ALONE. PARK AT LEAST TWO BLOCKS DISTANT. NO OTHER VEHICLES CAN BE VISIBLE. DO NOT BRING A WEAPON AS HE CAN DETECT IT WITH HIS INSTRUMENTS AND WILL NOT COME OUT.

I PROVIDE THIS AS AN ADMIRER OF TOM SWIFT AND HIS WORK.

Ames whistled softly. "The truck details weren’t released to the press. Whether the whole thing is genuine or not, the phone caller definitely has some sort of contact with the plotters."

"My thoughts too, Harl. But what do we do with this? Alert Shopton PD to stake the place out?"

Ames lapsed into frowning silence for a moment, reading over the note again. "
‘Indisposed’!—
permanently, I’ll bet. No, Rad, let’s not get Captain Rock and his crew involved at this point. Whoever wrote this wanted Enterprises security to handle it."

Phil Radnor snorted. "Yeah, I’m
sure
of that. Maybe to take a hostage—or eliminate a threat!"

Ames gave one of his rare grins. "That’s real team loyalty, thinking we’d make more valuable hostages than real policemen or FBI guys! No, I’m going to say our informant has a
reason
to want whatever info we get to go directly to Tom and Enterprises. At least he thinks he does. So let’s go with it."

"Okay. Your call, chief." Radnor asked if he should contact Tom aboard the
Sky Queen.

"No need. He’s got enough on his plate right now. I’ll give Damon a jingle, though."

"And then?"

"And ‘then’ is—
then!"

The building at 449 Wilverton Road, on the outskirts of Shopton not far from the old Swift Construction Company, was one block long, shabby and dark, its windows plywooded and its plywood graffitied. The wording on the side,
Morgan Metalworks and Fabricators,
had faded to near nonexistence under the rain and sun of decades.

At nine thirteen Harlan Ames stood alone at the bottom of eight concrete steps leading up to the padlocked main entrance. Right hand in right pocket, he faced the road and the flat, empty weed field beyond. No cars passed, as the road ultimately dead-ended and there was no active business along it during the evening.

Behind came a raspy sound of metal, a padlock falling loose and a chain swinging limp. Cautious footsteps approached—just three steps.
Standing at the edge of the porch,
Ames thought, not moving.

"Don’t turn around," came a man’s voice.

"I don’t need to."

"You Cleggman?"

"That’s what they call me. Today."

The man chuckled. "Yeah, I know what you mean. So whattaya got for me?"

"That depends on who you are," replied Ames. "You know who I am. I think maybe you’d better prove who
you
are."

"I think that’s good thinking… I guess," said the man uncertainly. "Okay, turn around. Take a look."

Ames looked, and the man took a few steps down out of the shadows. The Shopton moonlight revealed a big, muscular fellow with a balding, buzzed head. "Okay?"

Ames waggled his head negatively. "No. You’re not the guy."

"Huh?"
The man looked dismayed. "Sure I am! I’m Hobell! Ya know?—Jack Hobell."

"No you’re not," the security chief insisted calmly. He wondered if he should be faking a foreign inflection. "I’ve seen a photo of Hobell."

"Aw, no, listen," protested Hobell. "That was just one of those professional headshots. For modeling, understand? In department store ads. It’s a few years out of date, and you know how those guys always make you look better than you are."

"Whatever, Jack. But you don’t get
jack
from me until you give the password. The boss requires it." Ames smirked. "But maybe you wouldn’t know that."

Hobell rubbed his forehead in frustration. "That
jerk
Fell! Fell never told me about any password. Musta forgot, what with all those beers we downed." He looked up at Ames. "How ’bout I show two driver licenses and a major credit card?"

"How ’bout I walk away and leave you to explain it to The Man." Ames turned as if leaving.

"No, no, wait!" cried Hobell, rushing down the steps. "I know lots o’ things only a made guy would know. Listen—the
Sea Charger,
the snakeman, the deal with the rental truck. How about when I shot that Mayday Mob dude in the woods? Right in the back, and took out the bullets just like they trained me. Don’t all that prove something, Cleggman?"

The false Cleggman seemed to pause, as if thinking the matter over. "Guess I’ll give you a break, Hobell. Okay." Ames reached deeply into his jacket pocket and drew out a thick packet.

Hobell looked surprised. "Huh? What’s that? It’s supposed to—"

"You don’t even know what I’m delivering? And I’m supposed to
trust
you?" Ames thrust it back into the pocket.

"No, it’s okay. I—I guess I—man, just
give
it so’s I can get out o’ here! Okay?" Hobell was pleading.

"I dunno. Let me see the sig mark on your gun."

Hobell looked blank for a moment, then drew out a compact, deadly revolver and handed it to Ames. Ames scrutinized it closely. "Yeah, it’s there." With a wrist-flick he tossed it away into the weeds.

"Hey!" Hobell protested. "Why’d you toss it?"

"Gesture of good faith. Or were you really going to let a guy stand facing you with your own gun in his hand? Wise up! You’re going to have some problems with
Him,
Hobell."

The murderer looked pitiful and resigned. "Yeah. Guess I will. Okay, well—give it to me, then."

Harlan Ames took out the big packet again and handed it to Hobell. But as the envelope was passed, there was a loud
clink!
from beneath it and the man looked startled. "Hey, what
is
this, Cleggman!"

Hobell was handcuffed to Ames’s wrist!

"Care to walk with me?" asked the former Secret Service agent politely.

"Take ’em off!"

"Or?—just curious."

"Man, I’ll rip out your throat with my bare hands!"

"Hand, singular. The uncuffed one, I’d imagine. Anyway, I don’t happen to have the key on me. Before I could send away for it, I stopped eating the cereal."

His cuff-mate was now huffing like a bull
. "I can slam your freakin’ head into that wall!"

Ames looked skeptical. "Think so? Might be more difficult than you think, buddy. And then what? Planning to drag my body along with you on that little motorbike I noticed back there? Still warm from use."

"You think you figgered it all out, huh!" grated Jack Hobell. "I got five guys waitin’ inside. I just gotta yell, and out they come—they’ll snip off this chain and take care o’ you
permanent!"

"Five on one bike? Where’d you find ’em, the circus?" The security chief had already determined that the layers of dust and dried mud in the area of the building had not been recently disturbed, except by the single motorbike. "But why quibble? Let me save you the trouble." Ames filled his lungs and yelled out:
"Okay, come on!"

In seconds three men armed with Swift impulse pistols—Phil Radnor and two employees of the plant security force—had come running up and surrounded Ames and Hobell, guns drawn. Hobell was pale and perplexed. "Where’d these guys come from?"

"The roof, of course."

"Naw—I woulda heard ’em."

"Look at their shoes, my friend," Ames replied. "Why do you think they call them
sneakers?"

The next day, the
Sky Queen
having flown back to Enterprises and Tom having slept a troubled sleep, the young inventor sat with a gleeful expression as Ames regaled him with the tale. "We delivered him to Shopton PD, where he sits safely even now."

"Good gosh!" Tom laughed. "That’s one
dumb
criminal! Has he said anything yet?"

Harlan nodded. "We’ve nabbed a real singer for once, Tom. He’s babbling like a brook—wants protection from Li Ching, whom he knows as
the snakeman."
He consulted the notes on his desk. "His contact in Shopton, whom he took his orders from, is a man named Antoine Fell. Fell’s been staying week by week in the old Trellis Arms Hotel, for months now. It was Fell who ordered the hit on that mobster who slugged you, Gilly Murchison. They meet at night, and Fell would give Hobell his instructions."