Tom Swift and the Mystery Comet (4 page)

I LOVE MY RETICULAN GRANDCHILDREN

"And they’re very well behaved," the woman stated when she noticed that the table had caught Tom’s eye.

They turned into another aisle. "I’ve read my share of kid books, but most of this is a mystery to me," Bud commented. "Like—who’s Danny Dunn?"

Tom didn’t reply but motioned his friend over to a nearby display of photographs of the day’s convention highlights. He pointed silently and the young Californian’s gray eyes grew wide. "Hey, that’s you! But―"

"Looks exactly like me down to a ‘tee.’ Blue stripes and all! Except I’ve been wearing white shirt and tie since we arrived."

"But it’s here, all right—and this morning, it says." Bud gave a shrug. "I guess some ‘Swiftonian’ decided to make himself up to look like his crew-cutted hero."

Tom’s keen eyes probed the photo more closely. "Bud—my impersonator is talking to a guy seated at one of the tables. There’s a little placard in front of him that says Dr. Karl Feng!"

"
Feng
!"

With help from one of the convention volunteers, Tom and Bud speedily located the table in the photo. No one was seated behind it, but the table bore a stack of paperback books. "‘
Messengers of Light: A Medieval Mystery of the Skies’ by Karl Feng, Ph.D.
’ " The cover illustration showed a comet streaking across the starry heavens.

"The guy’s playing up the comet bit," Bud remarked. "Good way to sell books this year."

A voice behind them said, "Ah! Gentlemen! Do you wish to buy?"

It was the man in the picture—a small, slender, rather frail-looking man with a thready mustache and goatee. He seemed about the age of Tom’s father, perhaps a bit older. His eyes suggested an Asian background, but in other ways he appeared European. Tom decided he was Eurasian, as his name suggested. Smiling, the man said to Tom: "You vanished so abruptly I thought I had offended you. But perhaps you went off to find your friend, eh?"

"I don’t understand, sir," Tom responded. "Have we met before?"

Bud nudged his pal. "He thinks you’re the guy in the photo—T-shirt Man."

Dr. Feng’s polite frown turned to surprise. "
Ach
! Now I see! My word, you are not the young man I spoke to this morning after all!"

"He said he was me?" Tom asked.

"He did, and there was a strong resemblance! I knew you were to appear here today; naturally I assumed―"

"Dr. Feng, it seems to be some kind of... trick," said the young inventor tensely. "It’s probably harmless but—what did he speak to you about?"

Bud added with enthusiasm, "We’re digging for clues, like the Hardy Boys."

"Yes, I see," nodded Feng. He had a slight accent that Tom decided was German. "He said very little. I think he rather snuck up on my table, perhaps to avoid causing a sensation among the others in the room. Hm! He introduced himself and said, very kindly, that he had heard of my book but hadn’t yet read it. I turned away to get a loose copy for him to autograph, but when I turned back he was nowhere! I felt a bit disappointed to have lost a sale."

"We’ve seen a photo of him talking to you. Do you happen to recall its being taken?"

The man shook his head. "No indeed. With these tiny modern cameras, who can tell? Perhaps we are being snapped even as we speak!"

Bud looked about nervously.

Tom said reassuringly, "Just somebody’s idea of a prank, I suppose. But tell me, sir," he continued, "what’s the subject of your book? Are you an astronomer?"

Feng smiled, clearly pleased by the question. "Well now, I am a historiographer, an historian with a certain particular interest in old manuscripts and documents—that sort of thing, you see. I have earned two doctoral degrees, in fact, from the University of Heidelberg—in history, and in psychology."

Bud grinned. "That’s kind of a neat combo. Just how do they fit together?"

"In surprising ways," the man chuckled. "You see, I have followed the trail of the famous psychologist Carl Jung, who advanced the idea that the symbols we use reflect pre-established guiding intuitions lying deep within the human unconscious. We all share these tendencies collectively, by birth—the collective unconscious."

"I’ve heard of his theories," Tom nodded.

"He studied the cryptic symbols used by the medieval alchemists. I have pursued the matter further. I contend that a secret, hidden school of alchemists, the Brothers of Hermes, practiced alchemy not to turn lead into gold, but to transform mankind’s spiritual perception."

Bud didn’t follow. "Er—yeah?"

"Odd sounding theory, is it not? The concept is that by meditating upon certain visual signs, certain primordial symbolic forms drawn forth from the universal heritage of the human mind, an individual becomes better attuned to the wisdom of a higher reality. Ultimately the entire race is elevated as the practice becomes widespread. All rather messianic."

Tom hoped desperately that Bud had turned away, so as not to offend Dr. Feng with any eye-rolling. "And what are these ‘messengers of light’ your book talks about? Are they connected to comets?"

"Perhaps, Tom, your interest will lead you to buy a copy of my little book," Feng said with a twinkle. "The thing is complex and typically obscure. It is also typical that I am called a crackpot and a charlatan."

Bud nodded and said, "Some people come up short on the dipstick as far as imagination. Tom’s talk was disrupted by some nutcase who runs a ‘skeptics club’ or something."

Dr. Feng’s delicate, spider-webbed face clouded with anger. "Bah!—that publicity seeker who calls himself Dr. Sarcophagus! He makes a good income with his ‘crusade,’ investigating and ‘debunking’ paranormal claims and unusual theories, the sort of thing his people term
twaddle
. A vulgar schoolyard taunt! I run into him all too often. Mean-spirited—obsessive! The internet seems to generate people of this sort."

With a glance at Bud, Tom tried to defuse what threatened to evolve into a furious tirade. "Well, Dr. Feng, I’m glad to have met a
real
scientist here."

"Might you wish to purchase...?"

"Er—yes. Of course."

Book in hand, Tom bade the man goodbye and found Mr. Gozzamash. "Ready to head back to the airport, if you don’t mind," Tom said.

As Tom and Bud followed him from the hotel and walked across the sidewalk to the curb, a voice yelled out from the throng: "Hey, Bud Barclay, you may be only a boy, but
I
am the woman to make you grow up!"

"Nice t’ see ya, Drilly!" Bud yelled back with a wave. The athletic youth explained to his chum, "We always called him
Drillbit
."

As Bud flew the jet eastward, Tom spent some time skimming through Karl Feng’s book, well illustrated with drawings of various symbols and reproductions of medieval tapestries and pictures from illuminated manuscripts. As something caught his attention, he provided Bud with an intermittent commentary. "I have to admit, this theory of his is pretty interesting. Certain basic symbols seem to appear over and over in world cultures. They even work their way into the shapes of letters—for example, the big fancy letters in gold that start chapters in monastic manuscripts."

"Sounds like word-o-logical guerilla warfare!"

"A famous Englishman from the time of Elizabeth I, Dr. John Dee, copied down a whole alphabet of symbols of this sort, which were supposedly seen in a crystal ball. He called it the ‘Enochian language’—the language of angels and devils."

"Sounds a little
reticulan
," Bud joked. "But you know, genius boy—
you
do the same sort of thing when you tune in to the mathematical symbols of the space friends. The imaging oscilloscope setup is pretty much a modern crystal ball, isn’t it?"

Tom laughed. "Say, you’re right!"

"Is there an author bio?"

"Yep." Tom flipped the book over. "Hmm. It says his father taught in communist China and married a German woman. Dr. Feng grew up in China, emigrated to Austria and Switzerland, and finally settled in Heidelberg, where he got his two degrees. He’s a professor at the University there."

"And now he’s—er, what exactly
is
he doing, pal?"

"He’s doing ‘historical research on the development of key cultural symbology in the medieval European milieu’."

Bud snorted. "Yeah. That’s what happens when you get to write your own bio. So—have you found out what
messengers of light
are?"

"I’ll have to read it in more detail," replied the scientist-inventor. "Basically, the secret group of alchemists, the Brothers of Hermes, wrote their manuscripts in something called ‘the green language.’ The text, in Latin, had a conventional surface meaning, but a kind of
subsurface
meaning was coded into it."

"Like a cryptogram?"

"No. It’s just that the words were known, to the initiates, to have a double meaning."

"I get it—a book written in puns!"

"I
don't
think Dr. Feng would put it that way, flyboy. Dr. Feng thinks references to ‘the messengers of light’ have to do with chemical phenomena—
chymicall
―" Tom spelled out the word. "—that the initiates would interpret—like reading tea-leaves, I guess. It all has something to do with some mystical thing called the White Queen..."

Bud had a wisecrack ready and primed to go, but its launch was interrupted by the alert-beep of the Private Ear Radio. "From Enterprises," Bud noted as he whisked up the compact unit from its cradle on the board. "This is Bud, SCC-19W."

"Bud, this is Tom’s Dad," came the familiar voice, crystal clear. "How’s your fuel reserve right now?"

The black-haired youth raised an eyebrow. "Um, fine. Why?"

"Could you handle an extension of your flight plan? Another couple thousand miles east?"

Bud gulped. "Jetz! I—I guess that’d work. We fueled up in Phoenix."

Tom took the PER unit from his chum’s hand. "Dad, what’s going on?"

"I’m not sure, but it could be an emergency in the making. I’d like you to take a look at it right away, without delay."

"An emergency? Where?"

"On the ocean floor, Tom—Helium City!"

HELIUM CITY!—Swift Enterprises’ deep-sea hydrodome! Established on the Atlantic floor several hundred miles east of the island of Bermuda, the installation was an artificial bubble of air enclosing a helium-extraction operation. At any given time the big hydrodome housed dozens of employees!

"Dad—tell me!" Tom urged.

Mr. Swift spoke cautiously, almost shame-facedly. "Perhaps I’m overreacting. Hollifeld—he’s in charge down there, as of last month—wasn’t overly concerned when he contacted us..."

"But what’s happened?"

"Over the last day or so, a number of the workers have reported to the infirmary, saying they felt ill—dizzy, short of breath. The facility physician, Cara Praeger, thought it might be a virus, but all the standard tests come up negative. The thinking now is that it’s something in the air that some of the workers are especially sensitive to."

"But the air is constantly monitored."

"I know," agreed Damon Swift. "Nothing shows up in the spectroanalysis, and the pressure reads normal. But Tom,
any
oddity that affects the deep-sea living environment automatically puts lives at risk, at least in potential. Dr. Praeger is new down there; I’d feel better if you’d fly there directly and take a look yourself. You took one of the amphibs, didn’t you?"

"Yes, one of them happened to be prepped and ready. We can set down near the floating platform."

"I’d much appreciate your setting my mind at ease." Mr. Swift promised to relay word to the hydrodome crew immediately.

Tom and Bud altered course for the Helium City site, not sure whether to be merely concerned, worried—or panicked! "Doesn’t sound all
that
serious," remarked Bud hopefully after Tom had spoken directly to Dr. Praeger by conventional radio, relayed down to the hydrodome from the access platform on the surface.

Tom nodded. "It doesn’t sound serious at all, thank goodness. But as we know, sometimes unusual microbes and similar agents turn up when we expose the ocean floor to air." Bud had been a victim of such an infestation, a dangerous skin fungus.

After hundreds of miles of blue ocean, now touched with the bronze colors of the setting sun, Bud began the descent to the floating platform that was the upper world’s point of connection to the hydrodome far below. Tom plucked the radiocom microphone off the control board. "Like the dome, the platform doesn’t have a PER," he explained. "Atlantica North, this is Tom Swift. We’re beginning final approach."

But Dixon Wade, sole operations attendant on the platform, failed to respond. After several tries, the boys exchanged worried glances. "Just set us down," Tom said quietly.

The newest descendant of the first Tom Swift’s ocean airport system, the platform, Atlantica North, was compact, flat-topped, and polygonal. Composed of several score floating "cells" that latched together magnetically, it was large enough overall to serve as a helipad and a floating pier for seacraft, including the tankers that transported the compressed helium to the mainland. The deck, raised several yards above the low waves, was stabilized by Tom’s gravitex device and bore a small enclosure, like a pilot-house, for the attendant stationed there.

Surveying the scene with electronic binoculars, Tom said: "There—I see him. He was out near one of the bubblevator hoists."

Bud shrugged. "Wonder why. They can be monitored from the shack. Eyeballing wouldn’t do much."

The jet splashed down on its extensible pontoon-skis and Bud guided them to a gentle bump at the passenger gangway.

Wade greeted them. "Hi, guys, sorry I stepped away from the com. I—I’m plenty bugged, Tom. Something’s mojo wrong down there!"

Tom nodded. "That’s why we’re here."

"Glad of that," Dix Wade replied. "Or you’d
really
see some major outfreaking! Sometimes, y’know, they try to keep these big outbreaks quiet—things that make your skin fall apart... I got jumpy and tried to see if I could see anything coming up from below, like bubbles or... uh... anything—okay,
bodies
! But no."