Tom Swift and His 3-D Telejector (5 page)

"I know. Is that what happened?"

Brow creased, Aciema looked away. "I reached the end, and my ‘accounts’ didn’t ‘balance.’ There it was on the monitor, the unwanted number, blinking at me. I’ve just spent the last half-hour trying like the dickens to find the false step. I just plain couldn’t see any mistake, anywhere."

"Sometimes that’s the way a problem is," Tom said ruefully. "You just
can’t
see it—not while you’re fretting over it, anyway. I think problems must evolve chameleon powers for survival!"

"No, you don’t understand," the astrophysicist bluntly pronounced. "The problem is, there
was
no problem!"

The youth stared. "You’re right. I don’t understand."

"I must’ve looked at the set of resultants a hundred times while backtracking. There’s no doubt in my mind, none, that my final figures didn’t correlate. But when I checked the last time,
they did
!"

"Okay, but maybe one of the things you tried in recalculating― "

"I didn’t recalculate," she said quietly. "I was only trying to find
where
I’d gone wrong. Once that happens, reworking the figures is trivial. I made no changes. But the final numbers suddenly weren’t the numbers I’d been seeing all along. It was driving me nuts. All that time, I felt like I just wanted to zoom back home and crawl into bed." She turned back to the viewport. "And that’s what’s on my mind, Tom."

He joined her at the viewport, silent.
Numbers that weren’t there
, Tom said in his mind.
A fire that wasn’t there
. A fleck of dull green was visible in the far distance.
And—the little orb that isn’t there.

Suddenly worried, Tom called up to Bud. "Everything okay up there, flyboy?"

"Sure."

"Would you do an eyeball check on the air sensors and the circulators?"

Bud reported in a moment that all seemed normal. "Something going on?"

"Yes," Tom replied. "What, I don’t know. But at least it’s not some problem with the air."

The young space pilot elevatored to the control deck and stood beside his friend. Bud glanced up at him curiously. "All the times you tell me about your inventions—and
now
you’re clamming up on me."

Tom laughed. "Let me com Hank first. Maybe we’ll have even more to talk about."

The young inventor asked Hank if he had had any unusual experiences since they had parted.

"
Unusual
, Skipper? Like what happened to Chow?"

"Anything that struck you as a bit off."

"I suppose what happened a few minutes ago counts as ‘off,’ even if it didn’t amount to anything. I was working at the translation computer. I guess my attention wandered a little—all those darn words and numbers can make a guy feel drowsy."

"Did you nod off?"

"I didn’t think so. Maybe I did, for just a second. I thought I saw..." Tom waited. "It was as if I’d glimpsed something out of the corner of my eye."

"Something that bothered you." It was not a question.

"Yes. It did. It was the face of my son. It couldn’t have lasted more than a tick, but that’s how I remember it."

"Did it—he—say anything?"

"No. But something about the expression was... sad. More than that, actually. It’s hard to talk about it, but it seemed as if he were reacting to something
awful
that had happened."

Tom ventured a guess, gently. "Such as the loss of his father?"

"That’s how it struck me. All I could think of, for a moment, was how badly I needed to be back there to comfort him. But it’s no big deal, really. All in a split second, like something you barely glimpse that memory reconstructs. When I looked hard, there was nothing there." Hank hesitated. "Which, of course, is just like it was with Chow’s galley fire."

Tom switched off the intercom, sucking in and letting out tense breath. "That’s everyone, except you and me, Bud. We’re seeing things—not just random things, but things with personal meaning. It’s as if― "

Looking over, he broke off the thought. Bud was sitting in his contoured chair, rigid and white-faced. The black-haired youth was staring hard, not at his friend, but forward, out the huge, broad viewpane.

He spoke in a rasp. "T-Tom..."

Tom followed Bud’s gaze. His throat went dry. "I see it."

"See... what?"

"Her."

She was a little girl, perhaps eight, perhaps nine. Very petite. Her long hair was a dullish blond. She wore a blousy top over faded jeans. She was looking at Tom.

From the other side of the Tomaquartz pane.

"Sh-she doesn’t have a spacesuit," Bud whispered. "She’s just floating out there."

"No," murmured Tom, his heart thudding. "Not floating—
standing
! Standing on empty space."

The little girl was gazing intently, desperately, into Tom’s eyes. Her expression was pleading. Her lips were moving.

And she was gone.

THE BOYS’ fearful gazes met only blackness and stars—and a spark of green.

Bud could barely squeeze the words out. "We couldn’t have― "

"We did!" Tom brusquely declared. "We both saw her. I read her lips, Bud, just as I did before."

"With the ghost. So― "

"She was repeating it over and over. ‘
Tom, don’t be scared. Don’t go away. Hurry.
’ "

"Right," said Bud, abruptly sarcastic. "Because
the time is near
. Jetz! Why can’t they manage to come right out and say what’s on their minds?"

"They?" Tom dropped down into the chair next to Bud. "
They who
?"

Bud snorted, casting a look that went with it. "Uh-huh. ‘They who?’ Isn’t it obvious what’s going on?
There are people on the Green Orb—and they’re messin’ with our minds!
"

Without much conviction, Tom shook his head. "Nothing’s obvious, flyboy. There’s nothing
there
for people to be ‘on.’ The Orb isn’t a solid body. It’s barely anything at all—mostly
light
, as far as we can tell."

"Fine. Then what’s happening to us?—by sheer coincidence as we get nearer that big glowing
nothing
out there!"

"I don’t know what’s happening to us. But I’m sure it started before this, back home."

"You mean the pirate ghost?"

"More than that. I told you about my phantom phone call. We’re not just
seeing
things."

Bud’s fortitude made a comeback. "And we’re not turning tail."

"Absolutely not." Tom added with a grim chuckle: "I’d sooner let my crewcut grow out than give up now!"

Another hour passed. There were no further weird incidents.

The small crew gathered on the control deck. A feeling of tension gripped everyone when the Green Orb finally came into view as a
something
, not just a vague spot of light. And yet there was no great difference. Its diffuse, yellowish-green halo gave it the look of a soft ball of cotton batting, dim and hard to see even against the velvet black of space. Minute by minute, the mysterious object loomed larger.

"Time to launch the Donkeys, if we’re sticking to the plan. Are we, Skipper?" Hank asked.

Tom nodded his head. "No change."

He conned the flight dials and swiveled the central cabin-cube of the
Challenger
on its upper and lower pivots, squarely facing their target. Then he took control of the two Repelatron Donkeys and opened the wide hatchway of the vehicular hangar. In seconds the small, disk-shaped platforms darted past the viewport and on into space, becoming silhouettes against the glow of the Orb, then vanishing specks.

A minute passed. Another.

"Are we close enough for any readings?" asked Aciema Musa.

"We should be," Tom stated. "But we’re not getting anything more than before. Even the LRGM—the gravity-variance mapper—is drawing a blank."

"Say now," Chow burst out suddenly. "There’s sure
somethin
’ going on out there."

It was the same violent disturbance as before. Though the visible disk was still too small with distance to show any agitation, the Orb had lit up with an intense glow. As it increased, the compartment shone with its greenish brilliance!

"Wh-what in tarnation’s goin’ on?" Chow gulped.

Aciema asked Tom: "Could it be an effect of our repelatron beams?"

"The trons aren’t aimed at the Orb—we can’t get a telespectrometer reading to calibrate them. I’ve been using other bodies for thrust and steering."

Bud looked nervous as the light painted a greenish pallor over his face. "Then what’s making it light up?"

"I think it’s reacting to the Repelatron Donkeys."

"But you just said― "

"Not to the repelatrons
on
the Donkeys, Bud. The Orb is reacting to their
presence
. The same sort of thing happened when we sent the megascope terminal close to it. But the
Challenger
is well insulated against any sort of energy discharge it might toss our way," Tom added reassuringly.

Throughout the flight Tom had kept contact with his father in Shopton by means of the Private Ear Radio. Now he began to PER back a report of the flyby maneuver and the launch of the two instrument probes. "And you say the instruments are still failing to detect anything?" asked Mr. Swift.

"Just the glow, Dad. At least we’ll be able to profile the luminance figures as they increase."

"Perhaps you’ll be able to get something more when the probes pass through the corona into the body of the Orb. Such as it is."

"Hope so. Penetration in four minutes."

Tom broke contact, turning his keen eyes toward the board readouts. Absorbed, Tom failed to notice his crewmates’ silence.

Suddenly movement caught Tom’s eye. Bud slumped forward against the instrument panel, inert. The copilot was unconscious—dead to the world!

"
Bud
!—Help him, Hank!" Tom looked around frantically and gasped in dismay. Chow had sunk to the floor, where Aciema Musa lay already. Hank and Bill Bennings were leaning against the bulkhead, eyes closed, on the verge of collapse—and even as Tom watched, they slid down to the deck.

Tom switched the quantum cartridge of the PER to connect to mission control on Fearing Island. "Tom to base! Something’s happening to the crew!" he radioed desperately. "D-don’t know what’s wrong... They... they’ve passed out!... And I..."

Tom’s eyes felt heavy, leaden. An overpowering drowsiness enveloped him. He fought to stay awake, then suddenly sagged in the pilot’s seat!

Silent and helpless, the
Challenger
hurtled toward the Green Orb!

At the tracking center on Fearing Island, flight chief Amos Quezada and his crew waited tensely. "Base to Tom! Come in, please! Fearing calling
Challenger
! Can you read us?" Again and again Quezada spoke into his headset mike.

The tracking technicians sat at their monitoring consoles in anxious suspense. "Tom must have blacked out, too!" an aide murmured to Quezada.

"He must have. Switch the PER cartridge, Leo. I need to bring Damon Swift into this."

Tom’s father received the word from Fearing Island with perplexed dread. "How is this possible, Amos? Do you still have the ship on deep tracking?"

"We sure do," was the response. "Of course we can’t make anything of that Orb momma on radar. But going by the last figures from the outpost’s telescopes, they should be making their flyby right now."

"What’s the separation?"

"About three hundred miles at the near point."

Mr. Swift turned to the broad-shouldered young man sitting across from him in the Swifts’ office. Arvid Hanson was Enterprises’ ingenious maker of design models and prototypes. The talented engineer and technician had often joined Tom’s expeditions. "Arv, this is a very serious situation."

"They’ve blacked out, but it seems the ship is still all right."

"That’s not the issue," declared the elder scientist. "They were maintaining constant 1-G acceleration since leaving Earth orbit. Tom didn’t plan on turnover until further along, after passing the Orb. The
Challenger
’s guidance computer would continue with the instructions in place, automatically reorienting the repelatron radiators to continue the specified acceleration."

"Then she’ll― "

Damon Swift’s expression was dark with fear. "She’ll keep piling on velocity.
The spaceship will exit the solar system before we have a chance to get up there for a rescue!
"

Hanson nodded sharply. "A rescue with
what
? We don’t
have
any craft that could catch her now—not to mention later!"

Mr. Swift rubbed his eyes. "We can’t give up. They may regain consciousness. But if not—!" An idea struck, suddenly. "Hanson, do you know of any way we could establish some sort of long-range control of the ship? Override the board?"

"No way I know. Man, we can’t even see what’s happening until the megascope is up and running again. And yet..."

"Something?"

"There’s another possibility!"

Meanwhile, a deathlike silence reigned in the
Challenger
’s flight compartment. The near pass behind it, the ship retreated soundlessly from the Green Orb with no living hand at the controls.

Minutes later, Tom stirred in his pilot’s seat. He felt as if a whining dentist’s drill were at work in his brain, piercing through thick layers of fog. The drill changed to a buzz saw, then to a wildly shrieking banshee as fire trucks raced toward him, sirens wide open.
Wh-what kind of fire is that?
he wondered.
It’s green!
A giant alarm clock exploded and kept on shrilling insanely.

Tom jolted awake with a painful effort. "Those crazy noises!" he mumbled weakly. Then he realized the sounds were coming over the Private Ear Radio—high-pitched squeals, buzzing, and raucous beeps!

Struggling upright, Tom grabbed the mike. "
Challenger
to base!" he exclaimed hoarsely. "Can you read me?"

Amos Quezada’s relieved voice had cheering in the background. "
Challenger
, we read you—loud and clear! Are you all right, Skipper? Status nom?"

"I—I guess so... My head’s cottony. But what was that racket on the PER? Someone jamming our frequency?—no, that’s impossible."