Tom Swift and His Giant Robot (16 page)

"Do you mind if we see for ourselves?" asked Tom in a mild tone.

Turnbull shrugged. "Not really. I’ll have them come out. Their legs are free; I need only open the door." He went to the door, unlocked it, and pulled it open. "You may come out now," he said.

They came out one by one with varying degrees of fear on their faces, their hands tied behind their backs. First was Ammo’s buxom wife Luscious, followed by his overweight son Jarret, whom Tom recognized as Ammo’s driver of the other night. Then came a glaring, wiry man with beady eyes, whose skin disclosed a good deal of time in the sun. Last came two middle-aged men in white shirts and ties.

"Plug ’em, Chief!" snarled the wiry man, nodding at the last two men.

"How come, Albert? Hal and Burt are old friends!"

"Friends? Friends?" Albert snorted derisively. "I heard all about it. They got
turned!
They’ve been feeding info to Slick Steck and Flash Ludens for months now!"

The two men started to protest, but Turnbull silenced them. He turned to Ammo. "Albert is right. Which shows that money can even buy friendship."

Nicky Ammo glared at the men. "You two are a disgrace to the FBI!" He then turned to his wife. "How are ya, Lush?"

"Oh, Nicky," she whimpered. "This, this
man
just walked right into the house waving a gun at us!"

"We’re okay, Poppy," said young Jarrett.

"So where’s the other one?" Bud asked. "Where’s your brother?"

Turnbull sighed. "He’s a bit shy. Come along, Raymond, don’t dawdle, please!"

Tom wouldn’t have been surprised if no one at all had appeared. But the person who actually came stumbling from the room was the biggest surprise yet.

"Well, well!" Tom exclaimed
. "Slick Steck!"

"No," said Turnbull with a frown. "This is Raymond. You
do
see the resemblance?"

"The guy’s crazy, Swift!" babbled Steck. "He thinks I’m his twin or somethin’!"

Robert Turnbull shook his head sadly. "Poor Raymond. He doesn’t know his own mind. Most of this was
his
idea, you know—including the abduction of Mrs. Stennard and this fine young man. I think he has an
obsession
regarding you, Mr. Ammo."

"Yeah, why am I
not
surprised!" Nicky retorted. "What’s it all about, Slick? You and Flash still digging around that mesa for old man Briggin’s pot of gold?"

"Wouldn’t you, Nick?" Steck demanded. "A microchip with a list of ex-spies in East Germany! An’ now that there
ain’t
no more East Germany, some of those guys are in the government and’ll pay plenty for it. It’s not just a gold
pot,
it’s a gold
mine!"

"I get it now," Bud exclaimed. "So there really
is
a ‘lost treasure’ inside Purple Mesa!"

"You want some of it?" whined Steck. "Briggin stuck it in one of those big cracks. You help us get out of here and find it, and we’ll split it with ya."

Tom couldn’t help smile in admiration at the ingenuity and complexity of the plot. "I gather the idea was to manipulate the local Arapajos—Joseph Cloud Bear, mainly—into blocking Professor Hermosillo’s archeological digs on the mesa. Hence, the crow."

"Yeah, sure," Steck confirmed. "Not like we could put out a contract on some university guy. So we hired Turnbull here. He had quite a crime rep before he fried his brain cells."

"I resent that," commented Robert Turnbull. "I happen to be born a natural prodigy, just like our young Mr. Swift here. It wasn’t right that I should be compelled to labor by day on these foolish radio-telescopes while
you,
Raymond, were free, utterly free."

"So how much did hirin’ this guy set you back, Slick?" asked Ammo.

"Not a penny, I’d bet," Tom interjected. "My guess is the only thing Turnbull asked for was help in getting his hands on my robot."

"A masterful piece of work, by the way," said Turnbull. "I plan to take it apart, lovingly. I really must learn how the parts fit." He walked over to one of his banks of instruments. "But we’ve had enough talking for now. My head is
splitting."
He flicked some switches and brought up an image on a monitor screen.

Chow’s eyes widened. "Tom, that’s—!"

"Yes, yes," cried Turnbull languidly. "The concrete balloon, the energy farm—your Citadel, Tom. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
atoms to atoms!"

Turnbull pressed a button and began to cackle. "We can’t quite hear the sound and fury from here, I’m afraid. But my hidden bombs are marvels of efficiency. As you can see on the screen, the Citadel is now nothing more than fire and light, a nuclear memory!"

The monitor screen showed, not Turnbull’s fantasy, but the familiar image of a black crow, wings flapping, diving and whirling endlessly.

They became aware of sirens approaching from a distance. In a few moments the state police had swarmed through the doorway, pushing past Ator, weapons drawn.

"Sorry it took us a while, folks," said the lead officer. "Seems something shorted out the security and communications equipment all across the station. We had to figure out where you all were!"

"Treat Mr. Turnbull gently, officers," urged Tom quietly. Turnbull seemed barely aware of their presence.

"Sure," added Chow. "This dude’s
crazy as a loon!"

By the start of the week following, the bizarre plot was only a memory. Turnbull was in custodial psychiatric care; the turncoat agents Hal and Burt were incarcerated, as was Slick Steck; and Flash Ludens had been picked up by the German authorities. The enemy micro-helicopter had been located in a camouflaged hangar in the desert near Purple Mesa.

"So Robert Turnbull never did have a twin?" asked Damon Swift.

"Yes and no," his son replied. "The child who would have been Raymond Turnbull, Robert’s identical twin, was born dead. The doctors think Robert has some sort of progressive cranial disease, a deformation of the bone that put pressure on his temporal lobe, leading to delusional psychosis. It may be reversible."

"Then
do
explain this, Thomas," Bashalli Prandit said. "What was the purpose of making your gangster friend Ammo believe he was being haunted?"

"Just a test of the machinery, Bash," Bud put in. "Of course, Slick didn’t mind making Nicky sweat a little in the process. They used old photographs of that Zoltan guy to rig up a phony image."

"My," said Bashalli, "one can do
anything
these days with special effects!"

They were all gathered together at the Citadel for the debut of Tom’s robot Ator inside the reactor core. The much-postponed day had arrived at long last.

Tom had arranged for his mother to fly out with a planeload of officials from Swift Enterprises. High government dignitaries and representatives of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission were present as observers, as were Professor Hermosillo, Jessee Thunder Lake, Joseph and Kevin Cloud Bear, and Sam Valdrosa—whom Tom and Mr. Swift were meeting for the first time after so many telephoned conferences.

When the audience was seated before a large television screen, Tom and his father entered the reactor control house. Mr. Swift verified that the reactor was functioning at optimum levels, its inner chamber a holocaust of heat and radiation. Then Tom accessed the disks that would guide Ator through the newly repaired service corridor and into the presence of the atomic pile itself.

His hands on the relotrol-linked instrument panel, Tom glanced up at his father. "Dad, I feel like I’ve spent half my life pushing this button."

"This time I have a strong intuition it will work without a hitch," responded Mr. Swift confidently.

Ator made his way to the end of the tunnel and opened the reactor hatchway, stepping over the threshold into its deadly nimbus of light. Through the camera eyes of Tom’s great invention the viewers saw the robot slide the nuclear quenching rods into place, smoothly regulating the rate of chain-reaction conversion.

"It’s a complete success!" Bud cried enthusiastically.

"And not a
crow
in the sky!" remarked Joseph Cloud Bear dryly.

Tom and his father emerged from the building and joined the onlookers.

"Oh, Tom, I’m so proud of you," Bash said, her eyes shining.

Mrs. Swift glowed with happiness as she looked at her husband and son.

In impressive speeches, the government officials lauded the Swifts and pointed out the tremendous advances in medicine, industry, and national defense which the products of the pile would make possible.

"And let us take account not only of these gifts of the atom, but the wonderful things that will come of Tom Swift’s breakthrough in robotics," concluded one of the more flowery speechifiers.

"Can’t we see Ator?" Sandy asked.

Tom explained soberly that the now-radioactive robot would never leave the concrete-shielded pile to mingle with mere mortals. He would remain forever as a willing servant of the mighty atom, the purpose for which he had been created.

"I reckon he’s happy there," Chow reasoned. "It’s home to him." The cook grinned broadly. "An’ he can do his own cookin’ on the ‘oven’!"

"What’s your next brain child going to be, Tom?" Bud asked with a grin. "So far you’ve gone up into the air,
way
up into space, deep into the ocean, and into the atomic nucleus—in a way. You’re running out of directions!"

Tom smiled and shrugged his shoulders. "Guess there’s no place to go but straight down," he replied, thinking of the project awaiting him at Swift Enterprises. But Tom was unaware at the moment that his
Atomic Earth Blaster
would lead him into one of the strangest adventures of his life.

As the crowd finally dispersed, Tom and Bud noticed that Chow and Jessee Thunder Lake had strolled off to the side and were engaged in earnest conversation. The cook had removed his customary ten-gallon hat and held it in his hands, meekly.

Bud nudged Tom. "Do you think Chow’s—?"

"Maybe," Tom grinned. "We’ll see."

That evening the boys cornered Chow in the galley of the
Sky Queen,
where he was silently intent upon cooking a dinner to be enjoyed during the flight back to Shopton.

Bud whistled. "Man, those are
great
pot-holders, pard! Hand-woven, aren’t they?"

Chow cast a dark look at Bud, then another at Tom. Then he sighed. "Don’t care t’ hear another word about it!" he said. "But let me tell you, buckaroos, there’s times when bein’ a mechanical robot don’t sound like sech a bad bargain!"