Tom Swift and His Electronic Retroscope (5 page)

"Sounds like you’ve had a few adventures, as usual, son," Damon Swift chuckled. "But this business of the carved symbols—astonishing! Are you quite certain of what you saw? Such faint, weathered carvings can be subject to wishful thinking."

"Oh, I know," Tom replied. "That’s what the retroscope is here to handle. But remember, Chief Quetzal’s translation matched my own."

"Do you anticipate any difficulties in setting up the camera?"

"Not at all, Dad. But I have to admit, I’d feel a lot more confident if Hank or Arv were down here with us." Expert engineers and technicians, Hank Sterling and Arvid Hanson had remained behind at Enterprises to assist Mr. Swift preparing for an upcoming government-backed operation that demanded considerable time and technical planning. This vast and complicated project would involve work in a distant deep-sea environment.

Mr. Swift expressed regret that so much of the plant’s scientific and technical staff were tied up attending to these details. He also assured Tom that he would be on hand to greet the Mayan men when they arrived in Shopton and would escort them personally to Grandyke University.

Giving his love to family and friends, Tom signed off and returned to the truck. "I was hoping you’d dilly-dally a little longer, skipper," Bud pronounced, leaning on his elbow in the tattered front seat. "I wouldn’t mind a bit if we didn’t get moving until after sundown."

Tom laughed. "Maybe
you
wouldn’t, flyboy. But Chow would, wouldn’t you, pard?"

Chow looked puzzled. "Huh? Why’s that, boss?"

"Well, jungle bats that fly at night, for one thing. And then there’s that jaguar, creeping around in darkness. And—"

"Let’s get goin’!" the westerner gulped.

By the time Tom had signed off, the afternoon sky had darkened considerably. He had emerged from the
Sky Queen
to find a stiff wind blowing in from the southeast.

"What’s wrong, skipper?" Slim Davis asked, leaning on the truck windowsill as Tom gunned the engine. "You look worried."

"From the look of that sky, I think we’re in for a storm," Tom replied. "We can probably beat it, but it’ll be close."

The old truck rumbled off on its way back to Huratlcuyon. As the minutes dragged by, the wind rose and the palm fronds above began to writhe like snakes. Tom stopped briefly to pull a protective tarp of waterproof Tomasite plastic across the truck bed.

An hour later the storm had broken. A blanket of torrential rain swept down on the jungle, making visibility almost zero. The wind increased to gale force. Nervously watching through the cab windows, the boys and Chow saw the nearby trees bend under the smashing impact of the wind.

"Guess the wind just got its second wind!" gibed Bud. But his eyes were wide with tension as lightning slashed the darkened sky.

"Good night!" muttered Tom at the steering wheel, eyes squinting in the effort to make out the road. "We’re slipping and sliding on the mud. Better slow down."

Suddenly the truck began to shudder and move sideways, swerving into a fishtail.

"We’re bein’ pushed off th’ road by the wind!" Chow cried. "Tom, we’re gonna crash into the trees!"

INSTANTLY Tom’s right hand flew to the parking-brake lever, while his left hand smoothly twisted the wheel, steering into the skid so as not to worsen it. His skillful maneuver kept the truck from nosing into a tree trunk, but he couldn’t prevent its thudding sideways against a mass of fallen branches.

"Mebbe we oughta abandon ship—’er somethin’!" rumbled Chow in fear.

"Too dangerous in this storm,’ Tom replied tersely. "But maybe I can hold us off from crashing any further into the forest." As the groaning wind whipped about the truck, Tom inched it forward onto a mat of thick leaves and intertwined branches. He knew this would provide them a bit of wheel-traction and a fair fight against the wind.

"Whew!"
Bud mopped his forehead. "That’s what I call too close for comfort! I had visions of us plowing into that big trunk and the whole tree keeling over on us!"

The roar of the hurricane winds outside and the clattering impact of the rain against the truck made it almost impossible for Tom and his companions to hear each other’s voices.

They slowly became used to the lightning that seemed to flash unnervingly close. Then they flinched back as an even more dazzling light blinded them!

"We been hit!"
Chow bellowed.

To his astonishment, Tom broke out laughing. "Calm down, cowpoke! Look!—it’s just the sun breaking through."

A crack of burning yellow-white had appeared in the charcoal sky, near the western horizon. The squall seemed to be breaking apart as fast as it had appeared.

"Wa-aal, lookit them clouds," exclaimed Chow in calmer tones. "Scurryin’ along like a sky stampede!"

In minutes the storm was entirely over, the drenched, dripping jungle twinkling in the late-afternoon light.

"Guess we can stow the water-wings," Bud declared. "Can we get under way again?"

"Maybe," responded the young inventor. "These tires are pretty big and broad, and the axles are fairly high off the ground. Let’s scope out the road." Gunning the engine, he eased them forward in the direction of the roadway, expecting to find it running like a river.

But when the truck emerged through the brush, they found that the jungle had unveiled another surprise. The road was muddy and puddled, but almost completely visible!

"Now howd’ya figure that?" Bud asked, scratching his head. "Where’d all the water go?"

Tom thought the matter over for a moment, glancing at the map of the area. "It’s interesting, isn’t it? This little road isn’t just gouged into the ground by occasional traffic. It seems to be very slightly elevated. The water just runs right off."

"Guess someone really thought her through," ventured Chow. "Good news fer us."

"I know what you’re thinking, genius boy," Bud said. "You’re wondering if somebody actually
constructed
the road—the old Mayas, maybe."

Tom nodded. "That’s right. It’s disguised by several centuries worth of mud, rotting leaves, pebbles—all sorts of random junk; but go down far enough and I’ll bet you’d find some kind of stonework."

"In other words, a paved highway!"

"That’s what I’m thinking."

Chow raised an objection. "That’s all right nice, but yew sure don’t go t’ the trouble to make a highway out in the middle o’ nowhere, less’n it goes someplace. That little ole village don’t strike me as worth it."

"I agree," said Tom. "I doubt the village itself, the actual huts, is even a hundred years old. But it may have been the latest in a long line of settlements at, or near, the same spot. Look at the map." He spread it across their laps. "This broken line is our poor little road. Go on past where the
Queen
is and eventually it merges with the big road that leads to Polyuc. We don’t know what happened to that end of the road, of course, but there are plenty of ancient ceremonial centers and ruins in the Polyuc area."

"Okay," Bud conceded. "What about the other end?"

Tom moved his pointing finger along the line of the road. "It runs along fairly straight—then here, a few miles ahead, it curves off toward Huratlcuyon all of a sudden. After it passes the village, it runs on for just a couple thousand feet, looks like, and just stops."

"Like I said," remarked Chow, "—middle o’ nowhere!"

"Sure, that’s what it looks like
now,
Chow," Tom agreed. "But what might’ve been there a thousand years ago?"

Bud’s eyes gleamed. "Maybe a wrecked super-spaceship or two?"

Tom chuckled. "I’d settle for just one! What I really have in mind is something like a carved monument or a temple, something commemorating the strangers from the sky. We’ll see!"

The tired truck finally pulled in to Huratlcuyon at dusk. Professor Castillez came out to greet them, shaking Tom’s hand in relief. "When the storm hit, we were very worried; especially when we contacted your man in the airplane and were told you had left hours before. The
medico
, Simpson, wanted to go the length of the road on foot to search for you, but Hutchcraft and I convinced him it would be too dangerous."

Doc now came trotting up and gave each of the travelers a bear hug. "And while you boys were out wallowing around, I was able to make some real progress identifying our Grandyke prospects. I’ve narrowed it down to eleven men."

"I have some news too," Tom said. He briefly related his theory concerning the old roadway, repeating it again as Chief Quetzal arrived.

"The great-path is very old," commented the
ahau.
"More than that, I do not know."

"Have you any stories of stone monuments once standing in this area, or ruined buildings?" Tom asked. "Sometimes such knowledge is passed along, father to son."

"I say again, Tom-Swift, I do not know." Hu-Quetzal suddenly turned and strode away.

Chow, a good judge of character, had an opinion. "That feller’s hidin’ something, boss. He knows a peck more’n he’s sayin’—which ain’t so hard, since he ain’t sayin’ nothin’ no-how!"

Tom nodded, frowning, but decided to say nothing himself.

The young inventor felt it best to stow the retroscope equipment and patching materials in Chief Quetzal’s hut for the night, where they would be protected, safe under the watchful eyes of the Americans. This they did piece by piece with great care, finishing in the glow of the village cookfires.

"Well! What have we here?"

Tom turned and found Wilson Hutchcraft languidly regarding him from one of the doorways. "How are you, Mr. Hutchcraft?"

The philologist-archaeologist ignored the question and stepped into the hut, glancing over the assemblage of electronics equipment with a vaguely critical air. "No doubt this is your televised time machine, hmm?" Tom confirmed the guess, and Hutchcraft continued, "Quite a tangle of electrical spaghetti, but I
suppose
that’s the kind of thing you technician-sorts like. I find hands-on investigation so
much
more rewarding."

Tom tried to conceal his growing irritation. "I’m sure it is, in its way. But my invention doesn’t replace that kind of work. It makes it easier and more productive."

"If it should happen to work, hmm?" Hutchcraft sank down on Doc Simpson’s vacant hammock and wiped his forehead. "And just how
does
it work? How do you take pictures of the past? As the poet said,
The past, passed, dead, ever fled, beyond recall."

"I’m not sure I’d expect a
poet
to understand it," Tom said with a smile. "But I’ll be glad to explain the general idea."

The retroscope camera was based on two earlier achievements of the Swifts. One was Tom’s discovery of a hitherto unknown radiation, the spectron rays or "space-waves," that selectively interacted with the nuclear configurations at the core of all matter. This had led to the invention of the Swift Spectroscope and the force-ray repelatron used in Tom’s latest spaceship.

The new camera also made use of certain scanning features originally developed by Tom’s celebrated great-grandfather for his so-called television detector, further elaborated for use in Tom’s Eye-Spy camera, as Bud had nicknamed it. This remarkable device could take video-type pictures through a wall or other solid object.

"I call my invention a retroscope," Tom went on, "because ‘retro’ means ‘back’ or ‘backward’—as in
retro-rocket
—and the camera is suppose to allow us to ‘see back’ how a carved object looked originally, hundreds or even thousands of years in the past."

"A very sensible
name,
at any rate," Hutchcraft remarked dryly. "But how is this miracle to be accomplished?"

Tom began to gesture as if drawing diagrams in the air, a habit that seemed to help him think. "Think of a carved stone or other such surface. As I’m sure you know, any rock may undergo radioactive aging as its natural elements break down and become other elements. That happens all through the rock, and can be used for dating the materials. But the layers nearer the surface are more exposed to cosmic radiation from the outside, which is always streaming down from space."

"Mm-hmm," said Hutchcraft. "A carved surface means that different layers of rock are exposed at one time."

"Exactly," said Tom. "For instance, if you carve a gouge in the rock, the cosmic radiation would penetrate deeper at that point than it would at an uncarved part of the rock. Therefore, as the cosmic rays penetrate a slight ways into the solid material, a sort of pattern is created inside the rock that follows the in-and-out depth pattern of the carvings on its surface."

"Wait a minute!" Hutchcraft snapped his fingers in unimpressed sarcasm. "I
think
I get it. By measuring the pattern of penetration all through the rock, you can put together a picture of what the carving looked like before it was worn away."

"That’s right, Mr. Hutchcraft," Tom said mildly. "Of course, the original cosmic rays are long gone, either absorbed or reflected back."

"Then what remains to be measured?"

"I’m getting to that. My device makes use of the natural magnetism in the rock to—"

The archeologist held up an imperious hand. "Magnetism? You expect to find these inscriptions carved into magnetic rock?"

"Not at all. Like most people, you may be under the impression that natural magnetism is only to be found in certain kinds of rock—lodestones, as they’re called. That’s true enough if you’re trying to produce a useful magnet, but it isn’t the whole story.
All
atoms, of any kind of material, possess magnetic properties; it’s a consequence of their internal configuration of electrical charges. They can be diamagnetic, weakly repelled by a magnetic field; paramagnetic, weakly attracted; or ferromagnetic, which produces the strong response we associate with standard magnets."

"I understand," said Hutchcraft impatiently.

"Ordinary rock, however pure, normally has traces of differing substances showing the whole range of magnetic properties. Most of these particles lie every which way, randomly, but a percentage magnetically arrange themselves with parallel or non-parallel orientations, which can be ‘flipped’ by a nanosecond’s exposure to a cosmic ray."