Tom Swift and His G-Force Inverter (7 page)

"It’s early," responded Tom dryly.

The boys took several organized tours of the
colonias
—the city’s historic neighborhoods, quaint and crowded. The walked the winding cobblestone streets of the San Angel district, rich with bougainvillea and the adobe’d walls of Old Mexico; and Calle Francisco Sosa, a narrow alley called the oldest street in Mexico.

"I know this is all life-or-death spy work," Bud televoc’d. "But I’m ashamed to say that I’m having fun. It’s like a vacation." Tom nodded back, but with only half a smile. As the days passed, the spytron had occasionally vibrated in Tom’s hand, indicating detection of a trace of their quarry. But the traces never added up to a trail.

On their first Sunday they visited the museums of the Coyoacán district, including the Anahucacalli Museum, famous for its collection of pre-Hispanic art. Afterwards they floated through the dense crowds of the bazaar in the main plaza, a sea of elbowing locals and tourists. Suddenly Tom jabbed Bud in the ribs. "Ahead, over to the right, in front of that stall with the stone calendar replicas!" he televoc’d—breathlessly, of course. "I’m
sure
that’s him!"

"He won’t get away this time!" Bud replied, heedlessly out loud. "Let’s take him!"

TOM’S quick hand held his impulsive friend back. "Keep it casual, pal. He’s not running. He’s looking for opportunities. I can almost see his fingers twitching."

The figure, intermittently visible through the wandering clumps of crowd, closely resembled the several mug shots that Asa Pike had included on his data disk. Rampo Ociéda was a weaselly little man. His features were lighter than many Mexicans, his neatly trimmed hair streaked with auburn. He had a small mouth beneath a small mustache.

"Do you think he’s seen us, Skipper?" Bud asked.

"Seen us? Probably," Tom nodded. "Professional pickpockets are always scanning the crowd for watching eyeballs. But what he’s seen are two American tourists in dark glasses, casually looking at the sights."

They began to edge closer to Ociéda, taking a meandering route. The man seemed oblivious.

Tom was about to tell Bud to split off and corner Ociéda between them—when a sharp voice cut the air.

"
Ah! Tom—Tom Swift! And Bud Barclay, eh?
"

"Aw
jetz
!" grumbled Bud by televoc.

The tall man approaching them wore a khaki uniform, a uniform Tom and Bud had first encountered in Yucatan during their exploit with Tom’s electronic retroscope camera. Gruff and impatient at first meeting,
Jéfe
Luis Rodriguez of the
Policía Especiálidad Federáles
had proven himself a thorough professional with a somewhat dry sense of humor that hinted at a friendly attitude toward the famous young inventor from
El Norté.

"Are we still Don and Rick?" televoc’d Bud.

"He’s ‘made’ us. Let’s just try to contain the damage," returned Tom. He then went vocal. "Hello, Chief Rodriguez! What a surprise!"

"Ah, no doubt. Perhaps even a pleasant one this time." He shook hands heartily with the two. "I almost didn’t recognize you two. Even a little time can bring many changes. I grow grayer. But perhaps you two are in disguise, eh?" The man chuckled. "Should I apologize for—what is it to say?—for the blowing of your covers?"

Tom smiled. "We’re tourists these days."

"Surely you have been to the City before?"

"Just briefly. Ri—er, Bud—came through a while back."

"Company business," Bud rushed in. "Now I’m seeing the sights I didn’t have time to see before."

"Yes, Castillez mentioned you had visited. And you, Tom, my friend—perhaps you are testing some new invention of yours?"

Tom tried not to look down at the device in his hand. If Rodriguez asked, how could he explain carrying a flashlight? "Not right now, sir. But we’ve got something cooking back at Swift Enterprises."

"As always, I would say. But now, before my own goose is cooking, I should hurry back to my wife. We too are enjoying a vacation." The
Jéfe
shook hands again and hustled away.

"Good night!" Bud grumped televocally. "The law is against us, Skipper."

"I worked myself into position to keep an eye on Rampo," reponded his chum. "He moved off in the crowd, but I still see him."

"Tom—maybe we should just run and grab ’im. Ya think?"

"How about a very swift slither?"

They closed in on two sides, moving as quickly as possible in a pincers movement that they hoped wouldn’t draw stares—for as two tall Americans, they were easy to see.

Yet it was in vain. Rampo’s sense of danger, on constant alert, evidently provided the Distant Early Warning that the thief depended on. Suddenly he ducked down behind a clump of tourists next to a kiosk, as if to tie his shoe. He never came up.

"We’ve lost him!" groaned Bud aloud as he and Tom came together.

"Fan out—fast!" Tom told the muscular youth. "Maybe we can still net him."

It didn’t work. After an hour of frantic effort, it was clear that Rampo Ociéda had declined to make himself available. "I still wouldn’t think he’d know who we are, even if he
did
notice us," declared Tom. "He probably just got nervous."

Bud nodded. "If he’s smart, he noticed khaki guy Rodriguez and was suddenly struck by the thought we might be undercover agents looking to protect the tourist trade." Then the San Franciscan flashed a grin. "But he doesn’t realize the situation is
worse
than that—
way
undercover agents Swift and Barclay are hot on the trail!"

Tom grinned back, though wanly. "And the trail he’s left is a fresh one. I’ve already scooped up a few new scent-profiles. Look, flyboy, let’s come back in the evening when the crowds have thinned out. Then we can
really
do the bloodhound routine."

Waiting impatiently in their hotel room, Tom made one of his twice-daily calls back to Shopton by means of the Private Ear Radio—which the eyes of airport security had seen as an innocent if bulky walkie-talkie. "No explosions or kidnappings so far, Tom," reported Mr. Swift with a smile in his voice. "No threats, subtle or unsubtle, from Asa Pike."

"How about the GDI project?"

"Rafael tells me he’s making real progress with the rebuilt—what are you calling it now?—G-force inverter. He says to tell you he’s been successful in refocusing the rotation forcers and suppressing those secondary vortexes. A matter of keeping things carefully tuned. He’s certain he rotated some air molecules through."

"History’s first ingravitized matter!" Tom exulted, thrilled. "I should go away more often!"

"No, son," retorted Mr. Swift soberly. "We need you here and safe."

Killing time as the hours passed, Tom told Bud of his plan to use the Grand Canyon project to demonstrate to the public the uses of ingravitized matter in construction and engineering. "I don’t get that, genius boy," said the young pilot. "Isn’t it obvious that antigravity is the biggest of big deals?"

Tom shrugged. "You’d think so, but not everyone thinks in terms of possibilities. This isn’t the sort of thing most people envision as sci-fi ‘antigravity.’ It’s not some sort of magic beam that makes you take off for Jupiter when it falls on you."

"Hey—
could
you ingravitize a human body?"

"Depends on whether you want the body alive or dead," was the wry response. "Though the basic structure and properties remain unchanged through the
i
-axis rotation—chemical reactions go on as before—normal gravitation plays more of a role in our life processes than people realize. Dr. Kupp thinks ingravitization might affect ion-exchange at the nerve synapse, for a start—"

"And a finish!" interrupted Bud hastily. "So how about a car? Can we make TSE TSE FLY
really
fly?" This was Bud’s beloved, much abused scarlet convertible.

"Not without some further breakthroughs, chum. We’re pretty near the theoretical limit of the field capacity—it can’t be made much bigger without an exponential increase in power. And the exponent is four!"

"Er—four, huh." Bud didn’t entirely catch the significance of Tom’s statement. "So you’re limited to a few molecules at a time? That’s not much of a demonstration project, Tom."

The young inventor chuckled. "No, it isn’t. But the situation isn’t
quite
that bad. When the inverter is fully functioning, we plan to send small metal pellets through the vortex in a steady stream, enough to create substantial weights—if you can call it ‘weight’ when the force is upward. In other words,
anti-ballast
."

Bud nodded as he looked at Tom’s sketches in his notebook. "It’ll take a
lot
of upside-down weight to lift this ‘sky train’ of yours."

The young inventor’s sketches pictured a sleek, passenger-carrying monorail train suspended high over the vast gulf of the Grand Canyon. Its single track would float in the air without any support structure to obscure the view. "For this purpose, this ‘Monoswift’—let’s say it honors the family, not me personally!—is better than something along the lines of the repelatron skyway," Tom went on. "No repelatron towers on the ground, no visible roadway to block the line of sight or deface the beautiful blue sky; and the government people are very explicit about not allowing private vehicles inside the borders of the Monument. Even in the air above it! They plan to ban completely overflights by private helicopters and planes."

"Even flying atomicars?"

"Hey,
I
didn’t write the law."

"They’re pretty ugly, anyhow." —which brought a retort in the form of a thrown pillow. But Tom knew very well that his
Silent Streak
was graceful technologically but not visually. It had become something of a joke, which Tom took with good-natured rue.

Late in the evening—a typically boistrous evening in the vicinity of the Zocálo—the boys rode their rented scooters back to Coyoacán and the market plaza. The tourists were gone; only some strolling locals and maintenance workers remained. "But there’s a cop," Bud televoc’d.

"Don’t act suspicious, flyboy."

"Tom, acting suspicious is easy, but I have no training in acting
un
suspicious!"

They reached the spot where they had last seen Ociéda. Tom held the spytron in his right hand, pressed against the handlebar and grasping both. With a subtle movement he angled the transmitter downwards toward the pavement. The device immediately gave its silent vibratory alert—trace acquisition! "Got him!" exulted Tom. "Or at least—sniffed him."

"And we know he was heading in this direction," Bud replied.

They rode along very slowly. The vibration signal occasionally wavered and faded, but then returned with renewed vigor. They passed from the market plaza onto a bordering street, then down a twisting alley to a neighboring street, a small one. "Okay—stop!" commanded Tom suddenly.

"Lost the trail?" asked Bud aloud.

"Ends right here at the curb. He must have got into a car. I’ll start running through our ‘library’ of car-trace profiles." In just a moment Tom hissed: "Match and lock-on!"

"Can we track it this time?"

"I’m sure we can! It’s fresh and well-‘signatured.’ Follow me!"

A long winding trek began, several hours of dizzying twists and turns. "Jetz, what was Rampo doing?" complained Bud as midnight passed.

"Probably looking for crowds and opportunities. Maybe casing storefronts for future burglarizing. Can’t make a living without hard work."

"Yeah, good for him. I’m getting a little saddle-sore, genius boy."

Winding northward they had crossed the borders of the
Ciudad
, though there had been no change in the dense urban scenery. Fortunately their quarry had chosen to avoid the larger boulevards and highways. Tom knew his humble spytron would have become confused by heavy traffic.

Even before they began to see signs, in Spanish and English, they knew where they were heading by the domes and peaks poking high above the neighborhood roofs ahead.

"This is the Tepeyac district," Tom pronounced. "I recognize it from photos."

"Tepeyac? What
are
those buldings up ahead? A sports arena?"

"Looks like Rampo decided to ply his trade at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, chum—one of the most famous historic sites in the Western Hemisphere!"

"
Jetz
!" Bud gulped. "Nice place to visit!"

THEY arrived at the edge of the great plaza, near the hill where, in 1531, a native peasant had reported meeting the Virgin Mary and receiving her image on his cloak, or tilma, woven of rough cactus fiber.

"The image of the Virgin of Guadalupe," breathed Bud. "You see it everywhere in Latino communities."

Tom pointed. "It’s displayed above the altar in the new basilica, the domed cathedral. But this one here is the original basilica, dating back to the 16th Century. It was deemed unsafe due to its age, but I’ve read it’s been partially refurbished and reinforced, and some parts are open to touring."

"Think that’s where he went?"

"Let’s see."

The trail stopped at a rusty old pickup, nondescript. The spytron indicated that Ociéda had parked, then continued onto the plaza on foot. Tom carefully noted down the license plate number.

The plaza was open and had the occasional night stroller and security guards. Tom and Bud parked their scooters and strode across the ancient stones like casual tourists walking off a night of touristy drinking. "Very strong trace profile," Tom televoc’d.

"He sure made a beeline," commented Bud. "Didn’t wander around at all. Must have seen an easy mark."

"My guess is his ‘work’ hours were over. He wasn’t here to pick pockets, flyboy. He had some business to take care of at the Old Basilica. He may have arranged to meet someone at a certain spot."

"We’ll probably pick up his trail leading back, then."

Tom disagreed. "His pickup’s still parked in place. He may have gone off with whoever he met—"

"Or he may still be here!" Bud declared excitedly. "Tom—we’re mighty exposed out here on the plaza."