Tom Swift and His Megascope Space Prober (11 page)

"A sort of threat, but in subtle form," murmured Tom’s father thoughtfully.

"Yes—something they can deny if we ‘call’ them on it. This ‘Julia’—if that’s even her name—may well be a real employee of SMT. For all we know, maybe all of the ‘Women With Issues’ are."

"So why not just alert the cops?" asked Phil Radnor. "There’s plenty of cause to pull ’em all in for questioning."

Tom responded, "If we have the State Police or the FBI go swooping down on this ‘lab’ of theirs, it would just ensure that we won’t learn anything significant. They’ve probably set it up in a way that
looks
entirely innocent and legitimate. Li Ching isn’t stupid."

Harlan Ames gave out a humorous sigh. "Why do I have the sinking feeling you two are going to go charging right on into this, like two caffeinated bulls?"

"Now, now, Ames," remonstrated Mr. Swift with a smile, "have you ever known a Swift to take chances?"

WHEN Tom and his father touched down in Trenton the next day in one of Enterprises’ Whirling Duck jetrocopters, the supposed Julia Furster was awaiting them next to a nondescript cream-colored sedan. She surprised them by taking out a small handheld electronic device and sweeping it over each of them in turn, up and down, front and back.

"I hope you’ll pardon me for this," she stated. "We have our own security policies. And also, it’s just like being in a passenger plane. Electronic devices—even a teeny tiny cellphone—can affect the delicate calibrations of our instruments. That’s what the lab boys tell us, anyway. Oh, and those very handsome wristwatches—electronic?"

"Yes," replied Damon Swift.

"Then I must ask you to hand them over, please. I’ll keep them nice and safe in a shielded container inside the car."

Tom and his father exchanged the tiniest of glances.
Good thing we anticipated our being searched
, Tom thought. They had considered carrying locator devices or secreted voice transmitters, but had ultimately decided against it. Such aids might be discovered, and it was important to keep the game going to its conclusion.

They entered the car and meandered slowly through downtown Trenton, then onto the highway leading north along the Delaware River. "We had assumed your laboratory was in the Trenton vicinity," commented Mr. Swift.

"Oh? I suppose it’s all a question of what you mean by
vicinity
," replied Furster breezily. "We like privacy for our test work. Better radio reception, too."

Tom couldn’t resist saying: "Radio reception? I understood that your devices were only designed to communicate with each other. Do they also pick up broadcasts?"

Miss Furster frowned. "They’ve been designed for multiple uses."

Leaving the industrial and concentrated residential areas behind, they came to the open countryside, taking an offramp onto a series of roads that progressively became narrower and less well-paved. The terrain also turned wilder, with low wooded hills bordering the road, and few houses.

"Your installation seems to be in a rather out-of-the-way location," remarked Mr. Swift. Miss Furster made no comment.

Presently she turned down a rutted dirt lane. After a few minutes of bumpy travel, she pulled up outside a startling structure that suddenly loomed up among the trees. It looked to the Swifts like a gigantic silver igloo!

"Here we are, boys," Julia Furster said as she switched off the ignition and climbed from the car.

On closer examination the odd-shaped laboratory revealed that it was built of some shiny plastic-like fabric material stretched taut over a score of arching strut-ribs whose contours showed through. Tom sized it up instantly—a temporary structure erected on a fixed foundation, more tent than building, light in weight but probably tough-skinned and fairly rigid.

Tom glanced at Miss Furster, who seemed to be enjoying herself. "Quite a surprise to see such a place out here in the woods."

She smirked. "You’ll find even more of a surprise when we go inside." Her tone was openly mocking. "Shall we?"

They entered through a doorway that was almost like an airlock, a sealable flap set in a plastic frame. The Swifts’ eyes widened at the sight within—a full-scale laboratory and engineering workshop stocked full of advanced machinery and instruments. Furster came out with: "Well what do you know! As you can see, you two, this really
is
a lab. Like I said—surprise, surprise! Oh, and take a look at our work table to your left."

Tom gasped.
The table held a pair of Tom’s Private Ear Radios!

Tom and his father heard a snickering laugh at their backs and whirled to face their host. Julia Furster was holding a gun! And
that
fact was
not
a surprise.

"Do you suppose we can skip the comedy, now that I have you two
genius boys
covered?"

"What’s the meaning of this?" Mr. Swift asked icily. "What are we to do, put up our hands? You said you were bringing us here to show us your company’s new radio."

"We’ll have it soon, I trust," said "Big Bertha". "That is, assuming your inventorly skills don’t come highly overrated, as so many things are these days. And please don’t pretend you came here in all innocence, boys. You decided to take a risk, as we knew you would. Why do you think I gave you my fingerprints?"

"And who is ‘
we
’?" demanded Tom.

As if in answer, the door flap was pulled open and three more women entered, flanking Julia Furster.

"I take it you’re the Women With Issues," pronounced the young inventor dryly.

"You take it rightly," said one of the women with a deadly smile. "And now, Tom Swift—to work!"

But Tom stood his ground and said, "We’re not going to do anything. You four may have ‘issues,’ but you’re not crazy. You can be sure Enterprises Security knows where we were headed today. We have fingerprints and a description. Kill the two Swifts and you won’t stand a chance against the worldwide outcry and manhunt!"

"Manhunt? I’ll overlook your sexist terminology," declared Furster. "As for the rest, there’s killing, and then there’s
killing
. Guns can wound, painfully, and a few shattered bones here and there can make escape a discouraging proposition, even for a couple macho men like yourselves. So you’re going to be cooperative. And you know, it’s entirely possible—for the very reasons you say—that we’ll allow you to escape when the job is done. Naturally we’ll be long gone by then."

Asked Mr. Swift scornfully, "Do you really think we’d have allowed ourselves to fall into your hands without making it possible for us to be tracked?"

"You haven’t been tracked," the tall woman declared confidently. "It’s not just my handheld detector that made certain of that. This whole area has been under careful surveillance from—let’s say, from a great vantage point."

Tom nodded. "In other words, from the stealth drone. Or do you mean Li Ching’s spacecraft?"

"Don’t mention that name!" said one of the women sharply.

"Yes. Mustn’t be disrespectful, Tom. The Comrade-General has been a sort of father to us," Furster said. "You see, he—
uh-uh, now! Let’s move back a couple steps, boys!
—he’s taken care of us over the years, paid for our education, seen to our training, many things since the deaths of our real parents."

Understanding, Tom looked from one to the other of the women. "You four are sisters."

"Do we look that much alike? But yes. Mireva, Lana, Angela—and ‘Julia’ really
is
my name. We are the daughters of Dyal and Rhoda Pellasen."

"Should I know that name?"

Mr. Swift broke in. "I know it. The Pellasens were radicals of some kind, militants who planted bombs in various labs involved in defense work. A number of workers were killed or maimed. They blew themselves up accidentally. This was about fifteen, twenty years ago."

"We honor their memory," said another of the sisters, Mireva. "It was Li Ching who sent them on that last mission. Their work was interrupted, but it lives on in us."

"And what’s the point of it all?" Tom demanded in disgust.

"Perhaps it’s just as we wrote you, little Tom. Maybe we girls just want to have
fun
." Julia motioned slightly with her gun. "Over by the table, please."

"What do you want from us?" asked Mr. Swift quietly. "Ransom? To deliver us to Li?"

Miss Furster—Pellasen—shook her head. "Men. Are you calling me a
liar
? How dare you! I
said
we might let you go, didn’t I? The things we’ve put Tom through, with Mr. Li’s cryocast gun and so forth, have impressed him greatly. We’ve shown ourselves to be good and loyal daughters. Admittedly we fell short and Tom and his crewcut still live. All right then,
fine
. It may be better after all to present Li Ching with the gift of a working model of the communicator device. And then, by allowing you to escape, you remain active as inventors, and thus suppliers of additional valuable items for Mr. Li to acquire. It’s surely clear by now that his genius is more than equal to any security protections you—or the government—can come up with."

"But why is Tom’s parallelophone so important to him?" asked Mr. Swift.

"Who knows, Damon? It’s new and valuable—and
pretty
! Mr. Li has his reasons. We four Women With Issues also have our reasons. It all comes out even in the end."

Tom’s eyebrows raised. "Then the Swedish company — ?"

"Well,
aren’t
you inquisitive! It’s a front for... well, hey now, let’s call it Li Ching Enterprises!" Big Bertha laughed her shrill laugh, cold eyes not leaving her two captives. "So now, Tom, Damon, here’s the deal. It seems the plans and notes Mr. Li’s Shopton agent stole were incomplete—he was scared off by your guards while copying the disk, and the communicators put together by our technicians here in this lab look good but don’t work."

"You thought you might be able to get the missing piece the other night, didn’t you—among the papers in the observatory?" declared Tom.

"We really thought you’d keep it all together in one place," another of the sisters explained. "We know your telescope uses the same kind of― "

"Shut up, Angela!" snapped Julia. "We’re not going to go into it with them."

"Oh, I’m—I’m sorry, Jules."

Julia Pellasen turned back to Tom and his father. "You’ll work here on your radio. We’ll give you three days—that is, three days of full use of your arms and legs without annoying distractions. Such as, for example,
pain
.

"But now listen to this: one thing we
did
know how to do was leave a vital component out of the units when we built them, something you can’t construct here with this equipment. So you can forget using the units to signal for help, but we know you’ll be able to complete the main circuitry, the quantum stuff, without it. And that’s what you’re going to do."

The four sisters backed out and sealed the entrance flap behind them. Tom and Mr. Swift hastened to examine the flap, then the sides and floor of the igloo lab. "Ironic," commented Tom. "Tomasite elasti-sheet, of all things, in the new Antitec formulation that blocks conventional radio signaling. Miracle products of Swift Enterprises!"

Mr. Swift sank down on one of the lab’s plastic chairs. "In other words, we can also forget about slicing through the walls. We don’t have the special equipment we’d need."

"Could you tell how the sides are fastened to the floor, Dad?"

"I surely could. The floor is a big round slab of concrete with power feeds and so forth set into it. The wall sheets are fused onto a rigid aluminum ‘hoop’ that runs along the bottom all the way around, which is in turn attached to the slab by thick metal bolts."

Tom nodded, eyes darting around the chamber. "The fabric doesn’t seem to be attached to the aluminum support struts, though. Just pulled tightly across them."

"Quite a cell to keep us in. How long before we make our escape, son?"

"Oh... I imagine we’ll be home by dinner time. With luck." Tom Swift was joking—but not entirely!

THE Women With Issues seemed to feel no need to keep close watch over their prisoners, ducking in less and less often as the day progressed. Tom and Mr. Swift soon had an impression that only one or two were present at the igloo site at any one time. Evidently the sisters had responsibilities elsewhere.

It was Angela Pellasen who brought them a late lunch, gun in hand. It was strictly drive-through dining, in a paper sack.

As she backed away toward the entrance, she paused suddenly, a strained and troubled expression on her face. "Tom—Mr. Swift—I—I just want to say that I’m sorry about all this. I didn’t think― " She reddened. "Well, one thing led to another. What my sisters are doing, what they plan to do—it’s just not right."

Tom spoke as gently as he could manage. "You’re the one who slipped us that note at the Inn, didn’t you? And you called with the tipoff to the tank substitution. Thank you, Angela."

"I’m not like my sisters."

"No, you’re not."

"I never have been, but I’m the youngest and they—they bully me."

"You can stand up for yourself now," urged Mr. Swift. "Find a way to help us escape. Or at least contact the authorities. The law will go easy on you."

But the young woman shook her head. "No, I can’t—I just
can’t
. How could I ever face them? And then..."

It was easy to grasp her meaning. "And
then
there’s Li Ching," Tom stated grimly. "Your surrogate ‘Dad’ is a little unforgiving. And he has a very long memory."

"I’ve said too much." Angela hastened from the chamber.

The two Swifts returned to their secret task—using the machinery available to them to work out an escape. One idea after another—discussed in abbreviated whispers and scribbled notes—had fallen by the wayside.

"How much do you suppose this igloo weighs, Dad?" Tom asked abruptly. "Just the fabric shell, not the support ribbing."

"Mm. You know our wonder plastic. It could hardly weigh much more than the two of us together. Under six hundred pounds I’d say."