TSJ #36, Chapter 8: An Unexpected Visitor

BY THE FOLLOWING MORNING Tom’s solartron had produced enough antimatter to move the Chariklo planetoid. After triple-checking his calculations Tom loaded the antimatter into three magnetic bottles, which he securely fasted onto repelatron donkeys.

“For safety reasons I don’t want anyone to actually set foot on that giant glob of nanites,” Tom explained. “We’ll use remote-control to guide our repelatron-powered workhorses into place. Once they’re in position we’ll detonate them.”

The positioning went without incident. From the bridge of the Challenger Tom personally guided each of the three craft into position. Once he confirmed that all three were in place he watched the countdown clock. At the precise moment the computer sent a signal to each of the three magnetic bottles that caused their magnetic fields to collapse.

Immediately there was a blinding explosion! Giant clumps of inert nanites were flung into space. As quickly as the light appeared, however, it dissipated.

“It’s weird, not hearing any noise,” Bud commented. “I know sound can’t travel through a vacuum but I was still half-expecting a giant roar. You don’t see silent explosions very often.”

“The physics of space are a little different from what we’re used to,” Tom admitted. He turned back to his control panel, and over the next few minutes he monitored the course of the asteroid. At last he was satisfied.

“That should do it,” Tom replied. “We may have to come back and make a course correction at some point, but I think we’ve about nailed it.”

“How long will it take to hit the Sun?” Bud asked.

“About fourteen years.”

Bud whistled. “Good thing we’re not in a hurry!”

Tom shook his head. “It’s the best I can do for now. I still consider that rock to be a threat, Bud. As long as it’s in the Solar System we’re running a risk. It may be a small risk, but even a small risk of total annihilation is unacceptable.”

“It’s certainly something you don’t want to mess around with,” Bud agreed.

Tom gave the order to proceed at maximum acceleration toward Earth. After all the arrangements had been made he turned the bridge over to Donnie and headed down to his laboratory.

“So what are you going to do now?” Bud asked.

“The first order of business is to destroy all of my notes on the claytronic stones,” Tom said. “I don’t want anyone getting their hands on my blueprints and attempting to build them. Of course, a lot of material is back in my office in Shopton; I won’t be able to destroy those until I get home. But those notes don’t include the time dilator that makes the stones practical, so they’re only a minimal threat.”

“That time dilator is quite an invention,” Bud remarked. “Even if the stones turned out to threaten the very existence of life on Earth, the time dilator is still pretty amazing. Surely there have got to be other uses for it!”

“That’s what I’m thinking. I can use it to speed up and slow down time. I wonder if I can use it to reverse time as well?”

“Are you sure you want to do that?” Bud asked. “I’ve heard that time travel is incredibly dangerous.”

“I believe I’ve already done that,” Tom replied. “We’ve been over this before, Bud. Somebody transported both Tom Swift IV and my father into the past on the fateful day I first met you. That means someone had access to a working, viable time machine. I thought for sure Tom IV had built it but I couldn’t persuade him to give me his plans for it. But perhaps I don’t need to. Maybe I invented the time machine! Maybe the secret is here, somewhere in the blueprint for the kronolator.”

“If you say so. I’m still not sure I buy that whole ‘I have to travel back in time because I’ve already traveled back in time’ argument, but then you’re the genius here. Is there anything I can do to grease the wheels of progress?”

Tom smiled. “Not right now, flyboy. I’m afraid this where I need to get knee-deep in some complex mathematics. I’ll let you know when I surface for air.”

“You do that,” Bud replied.

However, an entire week went by without hearing word from Tom. Chow entered the inventor’s laboratory three times a day to bring the him his meals, but Tom hardly touched him. “I ain’t never seen him like that before,” Chow told Bud privately. “Why, he’s as irritable as a steer caught in an electric fence! It ain’t like him.”

“Maybe things aren’t going well,” Bud suggested.

“I’ll say they ain’t! Brand my biscuits, but somethin’s got the better of that boy and he don’t like it one bit. I think maybe he’s bit off more than he kin chew.”

Bud shook his head. “Well, at least we’re only two days away from Earth. Tomorrow evening we should land at Fearing Island and I can fly him home. Maybe he’s just been in space too long. Even geniuses need occasional bits of sunlight and fresh air.”

“Mebbe so,” Chow admitted.

When another day passed without hearing word from Tom, Bud finally made his way down to his laboratory. He walked in and took a seat at the workbench beside the young inventor. “Sorry to intrude, but I thought it might be a good idea if I interrupted. We’ll be home in a couple hours, and your Mom might appreciate it if you didn’t look like something Brutus found buried in the woods.”

Tom stopped writing, rubbed his eyes, and looked at Bud. “It’s no use,” he said at last. He put his red pencil in his pocket and shoved the papers in front of him aside. Bud saw that Tom was surrounded by giant stacks of paper, all of which were covered with complex mathematical formulas. Over to Tom’s right was a giant wastebasket that was overflowing with discarded blueprints and scraps.

“I see you’ve been burning the midnight oil,” Bud remarked. “Maybe if you take a break it will come to you.”

“You don’t understand!” Tom protested. “You just don’t get it. It can’t be done! I’m telling you it can’t be done. There is just no way to use the kronolator to reverse time. It doesn’t work that way.”

Bud started to say something but Tom silenced him. “I have proved it conclusively, Bud. Time travel just does not work that way. In fact, from what I can tell, time travel does not work at all. You can use gravity to slow time and even stop time. But you cannot make time run backwards.”

“But Tom IV did,” Bud blurted out, before he could stop himself.

“Exactly!” Tom cried out. “How did he do it, Bud? How did he do it? If I didn’t know that it had already been done I would be prepared to swear that it is completely impossible. I would give anything to know how he did it. Anything! The secret to time travel completely eludes me. This is one thing I just don’t understand. I really don’t.”

“Maybe it’s for the best,” Bud offered. “This might be your chance to move on to other things.”

“But I’ve got to save her!” Tom cried out. “I’ve got to. I can’t let her down. Irene died because of me – because of a mistake that I made. That hyperplane she flew to New York was my design. I’ve got to bring her back – I’ve just got to. No matter how hard it is. No matter what it costs. This is something I just have to do.”

“I hate to be blunt, but death is usually fatal. Even you can’t do anything about that. You can’t raise the dead.”

“But what if there is something I can do?” Tom asked. “What if the answer is right here and I just can’t see it? I can’t give up, Bud. I can’t let this one go! Tom IV was able to do it. Why can’t I?”

“Look, Tom – you’re not going to solve this problem in the next five minutes. You really need to go take a shower and get cleaned up. We still have to land the Challenger and make our way back to Shopton. This problem isn’t going to go anywhere.”

Tom sighed. “I guess not,” he replied.

The Challenger touched down on Fearing Island at eight-thirty that evening. After the crew disembarked Tom instructed the base personnel to fix the fire damage in the ship’s laboratory. Tom and Bud then boarded a private jet, and Bud flew Tom back to Shopton. Several hours later Bud landed the plane at the Swift Enterprises airstrip. Bud then drove the exhausted young scientist home to his parent’s house. After getting Tom inside the house and saying goodbye to the Swift family he left.

The next morning Tom Swift Jr. got up, tired but feeling much better than he had the day before. He showered, had breakfast, and drove to Swift Enterprises. Even though it was a Saturday and few people would be in the office, he still wanted to go and destroy his claytronic research as soon as possible. He knew it was unlikely to be stolen over the weekend, but he didn’t want to take any chances.

When he arrived at the plant he went to his office and tried to catch up on everything that had happened during his absence. Miss Trent was not in, but she had left a lot of papers on his desk. Once he had gone through the stack of paperwork he made his way to his laboratory.

It is good to be back, he thought to himself. And it’s nice to have the Challenger back where it belongs. The trip wasn’t a total waste of time! Maybe it’s just good to be home.

Tom gathered his files on the claytronic stone project and began going through them, in order to make sure that nothing was missing. When he was almost satisfied that he hadn’t misplaced anything he heard a deep musical note sound in his laboratory. Tom instantly recognized it as the signal that someone was about to step through the Negative Zone.

That’s odd, Tom thought to himself. I certainly wasn’t expecting anyone! I wonder if something’s wrong? The young inventor ran over to the painting of Aurum City, slid it over, and pressed his finger on a small green panel that was hidden behind it. A moment later the panel emitted a soft white light and made a clicking noise, and the laboratory went into lockdown mode. All security cameras were disabled and metal plates descended over the lab’s window. The lights dimmed and a robot voice announced that the room had been secured.

Only seconds after doing this a teenage boy appeared in the middle of the lab. He had short blond hair and was wearing khaki shorts and a blue t-shirt. Tom looked at him in surprise. “Tom IV! I wasn’t expecting a visit from you today.”

“I wasn’t expecting a visit from you either,” Tom IV said. He was clearly upset. “Look. I know how much you miss Irene and everything, but breaking into my lab and stealing my time-travel research is going way too far. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice? I mean, really?”

Tom looked at him in surprise. “Breaking into your lab! I haven’t been in your lab for months – not since that night I asked for the plans to your time trigger. I haven’t even been on Earth for months. I just got back late last night from a trip to rescue the Challenger.”

“Are you serious?” Tom IV asked. “Then who broke into my laboratory?”

“I have no idea,” Tom replied. “The Black Dragon, maybe? Isn’t he always giving you trouble?”

Tom IV shook his head. “I’m positive it was somebody from this universe, and you are by far the most likely suspect. The signal is easy to track. It’s unmistakable – and you’ve got both the ability and the motive.”

Tom looked at him, puzzled. “I guess it’s possible that someone broke into this lab while I was away and activated the Negative Zone, but it seems really unlikely. Are you quite sure that the transfer signal actually came from this very room?”

Tom IV paused for a moment. “Actually, no. I didn’t think to check that. I just saw that the signal came from this universe and so I assumed the intruder was you. After all, no one else here has a negative zone, right?”

“As far as I know,” Tom replied. “We certainly haven’t given the plans to it to anyone else. It’s our most closely-held secret.”

“And we all know how good the Swifts are at keeping secrets out of enemy hands,” Tom IV remarked. He removed a small device from his pocket and activated its screen. The teenager began scrolling through pages of data. After a few moments he spoke up. “It looks like you’re right, Tom. I owe you an apology. The signal did not come from this lab. It apparently originated from a factory in Nebraska.”

Tom was puzzled. “Nebraska? Are you sure? Let me look at that.” He took the device from Tom IV and studied it. “Why, I know that place! The Barclay Group has a giant research center there. In fact, that’s where they’ve been preparing for their interstellar expedition!”

“So you know these people?” Tom IV asked.

“I certainly do, and I can tell you we certainly didn’t give them your technology. It looks like I need to pay them a visit. What did you say they stole?”

“The plans for my time trigger,” Tom IV said. “But how did they even know it existed? How did they know that I existed?”

“I think it’s time we found out,” Tom said grimly.