Tom swift and the Captive Planetoid (15 page)

He mouthed the words, then spoke aloud. The color had even drained from his
voice
.

“Ch-Chow, I think—what we have here—” He lost his voice for a moment in a gulp. “This is a nuclear dump site—
radioactive waste!
”

Neil Gerard grinned. “Scared?”

“THAT nooky-ler stuff ain’t so allfired good fer a body,” proclaimed Chow fearfully. “I sawr on TV—people in th’ future are gonna have eyes in th’ middle o’ their foreheads. Great big eyes!”

“They will
not
!” snapped Neil Gerard. “That’s not the future, that’s uninformed imagination.”

“Good grief, Gerard, are you saying you used to live here?” Bud demanded.

“I’m saying I
didn’t
used to live here! Not in your sense of that word. I’m saying I
found
my real life here. I
came
here. I came here a lot, back then, back when I made a lot of money from my books, back when I taught graduate seminars by invitation, back when NASA—not some hotel chain—used me to drum up public support. For the cosmic vision.” The man was lost among his many thoughts for a moment. Bud subtly indicated to Chow that they should edge back to the van. But Gerard resumed suddenly. “Life, love, being young. And money! The Society of Speculationists I started was a worldwide phenomenon, and boy, I was rakin’ it in! But look—don’t think I wasn’t sincere!”

“N-never thought a word!” Chow assured him with great haste.

“All right,” said Bud. “Here we are. We don’t
have
to get it. So is this what you wanted, Mr. Gerard? Shall we head back?”

The man looked at Bud in astonishment. “
Head back?—!
After coming this far? Honest God, we went through
Burley
!
I’m
the one who’s supposed to be nuts, Bud.”

“Okay. Then what do you want to do? Go inside?” Bud thought he was making a sarcastic gibe.

“That’s what doors are for!”

“Aw no,” Chow murmured. “No-nuh-
no
!”

Bud remained cool. “Uh-huh. I’m getting tired of the jokin’ around—and for
me
to say it means a lot! Before Chow has a core meltdown, how about telling us what this is all about?”

Gerard smiled blandly. “Why are we chatting? Let me
show
you the answer—inside.”

“W-we don’t really
need
all that
much
t’ know the answer!” Chow protested.

Bud persisted: “And how do you plan to get us through this big Federal-secured door?”

The man reached into his pocket and held up something that glinted of metal. “With a key!”

As Bud followed with astonishment, and Chow held back with even greater astonishment, Gerard approached the huge door and began to scrutinize it closely. “Uh-huh. Knew it was here somewhere.” He had found a tiny keyhole, unmarked. Bud watched him insert the key and twist it. “Rusty. Oxidation! Terrible. Not bad. So now I can slide the panel.”

Gerard walked along some thirty feet further. Stopping, he pressed both palms against a small section of the door surface, completely indistinguishable. A small rectangular panel receded a couple inches under Gerard’s pressure. He then moved it slightly upward until it clicked, then slid it sideways. Inside the recess now revealed to view was an input keypad.

“Now this,
this
is the real key,” the man explained. “The little physical key of matter was just the key
to
the key. See how Nature works?” He began to punch the keypad.

“Jetz!” Bud exclaimed. “You’re actually breaking into a
government nuke site?
”

A man-sized door—camouflaged in the middle of the big door—suddenly popped open with a loud creak. “At what point in galactic rotation did I say anything like that?” asked Gerard mildly. “The ‘N’ word came oscillating out of
your
mouth, buddy.”

Hearing this, slightly emboldened, Chow approached cautiously. “So... mebbe... this here place ain’t full o’ them radio-actors?”

“Do I look like a man committing suicide? Do you even know what a man committing suicide
looks like?
This big vault was constructed by the U. S. government as part of an experimental nuclear waste containment program. But it was never used—never even finished. Funding was dropped, whole program shut down. Had it in all the papers back then, for a few nanoseconds, like a vacuum-flux. ‘Not in
my
state!’ Bang bang.”

“So where did you get that key?” asked Bud.

Gerard laughed. “Why shouldn’t I have a key? I own this place! See, there were rich folk, future-minded businessmen, among the Speculationists. They bought this big hole when the government unloaded it for quick revenue, then deeded it over to me—some kind of tax benefit. Then they helped me fix it up. That was all years and years ago. Come see what I did with the place.”

He led Bud and Chow through the doorway into utter darkness. “I don’t much take to not bein’ able t’ use my eyeballs,” muttered Chow nervously. “Got a flashlight ’r somethin’?”

“Better than that,” came the futurist’s voice from the blackness. “Let’s see now. Workin’ my way by touch-feel...”

A faint rumble came floating out of the unseen distance. “There ya go. I figured the genny would still work. Designed it myself. Hydrogen fueled. See?”

“I don’t
see
anything,” Bud grumbled.

Then the Shoptonians gasped in sudden awe as gentle silvery light washed over them!

Stars!

The three stood beneath a starry sky. A colossal vaulted ceiling, arched over a concrete-floored square space at least a thousand feet to the side, was flush with innumerable pinpricks of intense light. “Wh-what
is
this?” Bud gaped. “It’s like a planetarium!”

“Brand my big ole peepers, it’s like midnight on th’ Pecos!” squawked Chow Winkler, respectfully pulling off his cowpoke hat.

“It’s
my
midnight,” Gerard replied. “I turned emptiness into
this
! I called it Terra Proto. We Speculationists were going to build a prototype space habitat in here, same sorta thing Tom Swift’s gonna make inside that planetoid he’s captured.”

Bud and Chow looked from side to side. “Tell ya what I see,” Bud said. “Yep—space all right, plenty of it. One big naked concrete floor. That’s it.”

Neil Gerard flashed a smug look. “How about the stars? Doesn’t count? It’s the view from near the center of the Andromeda galaxy, astronomically correct. Micro-lasers paint it right on the ceiling—that is, they supply the energy feed that makes the coating fluoresce. Hunh? Right?”

“What about the habitat thing?” Bud demanded skeptically.

“Oh, well, we ran out of money. And
I
just
ran out
.” The futurist drew a deep breath of remembrance. “I love the stars, boys, but I tellya—it was
human
love that sent me spinning right out of orbit.”

Chow was suddenly interested. “Oh yeah? I c’d tell a few stories m’self!”

“The universal subject,” murmured Gerard. “Forget gluons and string theory. I admit that being future-minded made me pay a price in
quirkiness
. Sure did. Not many friends. Girls?—never expected much out of ’em. Not my
bag
.”

“Your bag?” repeated Bud.

“Then Cythera Duff started editing the newsletter—no Internet back in those days. We had things in common, friendies. Not physiologically but—overlapping dreams. Man! All those talks. She was the best listener I ever came across.”

“Mine was
pretty
,” Chow remarked.

“Well, to me Cy’s ears were beautiful. Hunh? Big lovelies, because they
heard
.

“Now, see, I’d been coming up to Terra Proto pretty often. I’d get inside and spread my bedroll and just stare up at the stars. Hours at a time—days! By myself. Better than transcendental meditation to get your brain rovin’ around.

“But suddenly I wasn’t thinking of the big stars and the Big Future.”

“Yeah, I get it,” commented Chow dreamily. “Jest like with me an’ horses.”

“I thought about
her
,” Gerard went on. “So I brought her up here and turned on the sky and talked about asteroids and asked her to marry me. She didn’t answer. I assume she heard me. Like I said, she was a careful listener. But she didn’t answer. No answer. Answer equals zero. So.”

“Heartbreaker!” muttered Bud with a slight trace of possible skepticism.

The man stared at the youth. “And just what do
you
know? Ever have a great big love?
The
love?”

Bud reddened and sputtered. “Uh—I mean—it’s not like I’ve lived all that long—”

“Don’t wanna talk about it? Okay. Me, I
had
lived that long, and life came, and life
went
. She didn’t answer. It was a cosmically big question not to answer. Wha? So I switched off the stars and locked the place up and never went back.”

“And here ya are,” Chow said.

“Here I am, closing the circuit, tying off the old, ready for the New. The
Big New
. Bartonia! Took a while to get there.” Gerard turned to the Shoptonians with a look of pleading. “Maybe now she’ll think more of me. Name in the news again. Hunh? It’s been a few years, but there’s no reason she couldn’t answer the question. Know what thirty years means? Nothing. The past is nothing, boys, and the future is made of ideas.”

“Ye-ahh,” agreed Chow, “it’s th’ blame
present
that gets you.”

“And it’s never anything
but
the present.” After some silence, Gerard asked Bud and Chow to return to the van. “Leave me alone in here for awhile. If nothing else, I’ve got the stars to love. They’re all mine. I made them!”

Some hours later, suppertime, Boise, Bud placed a call to Tom’s number. Receiving no answer, he then tried the Swift residence. “Hiya, San,” he said. “Get you up from dinner?”

“We just finished, Buddo. How’s Idaho?”

“Hey, it’s beautiful. Kind of
tall
. —Is Tom around? Time to report.”

The cellphone was dead silent for a heartbeat. “Huh?”

“I just wanted to talk to genius boy. Just for a moment. I thought he’d be at the plant working his brain off, but he’s not answering.”

Sandy had a slightly irritated tone in her voice. “Bud, I have to help Mother clear the table. Save the jokes for when you get back. I’ll hold my laughter.”

“What jokes? I’m just asking to speak to Tom. You know—your brother? Blond crewcut? Blue eyes?”

“Uh-huh. So just turn around and talk to him.”

The strangeness of the conversation gave Bud a twitch of anxiety. “I don’t get it.”

“I don’t get it either,” said Sandy. “Tom went along with you to Idaho. Didn’t you notice? He’s there with you!”

STANDING in the Enterprises control tower, Tom Swift watched Bud’s jet until it disappeared in the western sky, bound for Idaho.

He left the tower and stepped onto a ridewalk conveyor, and began heading across to the plant infirmary. Fishing his cellphone out of his pocket, he called his father, who had spent the morning at home. “Dad, I’ve changed my mind at the last minute. Maybe you’re right. I think it’d be best for me to take a couple days off and fly to Idaho with Bud and Chow and Mr. Gerard.”

“I’m glad, son,” responded Damon Swift. “The Gerard project can struggle along without you for a little while. Spending every night at Enterprises will dull your edge.”

“Please let everyone know I’ll be back to work Monday, won’t you? Or I’ll call.” Tom frowned at himself, feeling guilty. “Oh—uh—there’s Bud waving me over. Got to fly, Dad.”

“Have a good time.”

Arriving at the infirmary, he sat down with Doc Simpson. “No bee sting problems, I trust?” asked the medic.

“Not a thing.” The young inventor cleared his throat. “Doc, I—could you take a couple days off? Break away from your schedule?”

Simpson’s eyebrows flew up. “I suppose. But why?”

“I’m going to take a trip, a long flight. I’d like to have someone along with me. Everyone’s involved in something right now, including Bud, and—”

“Bottom of the barrel, hm?” Simpson chuckled.

“Not at all. I think your medical training could be important. I know you’ve read the reports Dr. Carman sent over...”

“On the induced seizures—that
u’umat
business?” Doc nodded. “Ames asked me to make a medical assessment based upon the symptoms and examination data. He wants to know if some sort of drug is involved.”

“Have you drawn a conclusion?”

Doc smiled wanly. “Only that it’s outside my range of knowledge. Strictly speaking, it’s not a coma, not in the medical sense. It’s a kind of waking catatonia—almost a profound
sleep
, with the usual disconnect of the muscles.”

“With open eyes.”

“And the EEG readings are—peculiar. Symptoms like this can appear in the late stages of certain diseases, but there are no specific indicators of Parkinson’s, nor a neurological event. We have nothing but the symptoms themselves.”

“
Could
a drug cause this?”

Doc’s forehead wrinkled. “Sure—for instance, that so-called ‘zombie’ drug used to create victims in voodoo cults,
tetrodotoxin
. The effective amount is minute. But Skipper, we finally learned how to assess for things like that. All the ‘waking sleepers’ have been examined very thoroughly by the top experts in the country: bloodwork, spinal fluids, MRI...”

“They used the leptoscope, too,” Tom noted.

“As did I, when—just for fun—I tested you and the others after the bee sting incident. Would have been a clever plot. But not
this
plot.”

“So you’ve made my point, Doc. There’s a condition, causal factor completely unknown, that you’ve made yourself thoroughly familiar with. Even if you don’t know the cause, you know the effects.

“I’ve decided to take a quick trip to the other side of the world—Madagascar!—to talk to an astronomer named Louis Talmadge. His observatory is somewhere near a small inland city, Fianarantsoa. I don’t think the airfield there is very large, but we can take the
Skeeter Two
. She’s been upgraded to transonic, and our jetrocopters can set down—”