AS SIRENS BLARED, TOM SWIFT IV raced toward the second deck of the Exedra. Tom Swift Sr. and Bud Barclay followed close behind him. By the time they reached the room that held the time-travel equipment, however, the excitement was over. The starship’s automatic fire-detection systems had already put out the blaze, burying sensitive electronic equipment in mounds of chemical foam.

“This is terrible!” Tom IV said glumly.

“Tom III really does need better fire-fighting equipment,” Mr. Swift agreed. “Back at the plant we’ve developed some pellets that do a much better job of putting out fires.”

“Or you could just evacuate all the air out of the room,” Bud pointed out. “I’ve seen Tom do that several times. It’s a whole lot cleaner than this mess.”

“Who cares?” Tom IV replied. He yanked a blackened circuit board out of a charred computer and held it up. “Do you see this? This control board was burnt to a cinder! By the time that foam shorted everything out it was already too late. How are we going to get back home without the time trigger?”

“There are actually several ways to do it,” Mr. Swift replied thoughtfully. “Traveling into the future is much easier than traveling into the past. In fact, all of us are constantly traveling into the future. It’s a very difficult thing to avoid.”

“You’re hilarious,” Tom IV grumbled. “You’re not really suggesting that we just wait around for a couple years, are you? That’s crazy!”

“What about the time dilator?” Bud asked. “I’ve seen Tom alter time with that.”

“I’m afraid we don’t have one of those on board,” Mr Swift replied. “Fortunately, however, we don’t need anything quite that exotic. Doesn’t the Exedra have a lightspeed drive?”

“I think so,” Tom IV said. “Oh, I get it! You’re thinking we should just travel at the speed of light for a while, in some sort of loop that would take us back to Earth. Since we’d be traveling at the speed of light time would stop for us but would continue to flow for everyone else.”

“Exactly. It should be quite simple. I image Aristotle could perform the necessary calculations and ensure we arrive back at Earth in time to avoid the impending nanite flood.”

“I guess you’re right,” Tom IV said. “I’m sorry I lost it. I just got upset when I saw all this equipment destroyed. It wasn’t easy to build, you know.”

“But it did have to be destroyed,” Mr. Swift said firmly. “If we’ve learned anything at all today it’s that time travel should be avoided at all costs.”

“Agreed,” Tom IV said reluctantly.

The trio returned to the bridge and told everyone the news. Tom III informed them that the Exedra had suffered a hull breach but its primary systems were still operational. “We’ve been able to route around the damage. and seal off the affected areas. What I don’t understand is what could have hit us.”

“What do the on-board cameras show?” Mr. Swift asked.

Tom III pressed a series of buttons on a keyboard. In a few moments the videoscreen had loaded the recording. At first they saw nothing of significance. Then there was a brief flash of light and a large semi appeared right next to the Exedra, moving at high speed. It collided violently with the starship, tearing both vehicles apart. A moment later a piece of debris soared toward the camera and the screen abruptly went black.

“That’s all we’ve got,” Tom III announced.

“What in the world was a semi doing at 30,000 feet?” Anita asked.

“That was my son, flying one of our triphibian atomicars,” Mr. Swift said. “We should have known this would happen. The Exedra had to be close enough to the point of exit to surround Tom with the time field. As it turned out, we got too close and collided.”

“That was a car?” Ben Walking Eagle replied doubtfully. “It looked more like an eighteen-wheeler to me.”

“The atomicars come in many models, including a line that is dedicated to freight transport,” Mr. Swift explained. “Tom must have borrowed one of the larger units so he could carry equipment with him.”

“You make flying trucks in your world?” Anita asked. “Why would you ever do such a thing?”

“They’re quite useful in Africa,” Mr. Swift remarked. “In our world many places do not have roads, or if they do they’re little more than dirt paths. Technology like that is especially useful in developing countries.”

“But what happened to Tom?” Bud asked. “Is he still out there somewhere? Where did the semi go after it hit us?”

Tom III worked at the controls of the ship for a moment. “I’m detecting faint traces of temporal distortion at the bottom of the bay,” he said quietly. He used the Exedra‘s scanners to zoom in on the location. The water obscured the picture but they could still make out the twisted remains of a semi trailer, partly buried in ocean sediment. “The signal is rapidly fading, by the way. I think Tom’s time trigger is shorting out.”

“I don’t see the cab anywhere,” Bud said.

“It’s hard to see anything in that picture,” Anita remarked.

There was silence for a few moments and then Mr. Swift spoke up. “I hesitate to suggest this but I think we should call off the search. If we continue probing around and asking questions we risk changing the timeline, and it’s hard to know what consequences that might have. If my son is alive he will find a way home – he’s a Swift, after all.”

“You’re probably right,” Tom IV said. “Besides, we don’t really know a whole lot about how time travel works. Right now there could be two Tom Swift Jr.’s alive. What happens if past-TSJ survives while future-TSJ dies? I mean, at some point past-TSJ is going to become future-TSJ, and if he then decides not to travel back in time–”

“We can debate causality another day,” Mr. Swift said, cutting him off. “Right now we have more pressing matters to attend to. I believe Irene will be arriving shortly. Are we ready to take her on board?”

* * * * *
 

Irene Goddard awoke with a start inside the nuclear hyperplane. She struggled to open her eyes and glanced down at her position. The girl gasped when she realized that her plane was now soaring over the United States. I must have passed out, she thought to herself. The girl struggled to breathe. I feel so sick.

It had not been long since she took off from Brungaria, but the radiation output from the poorly-shielded reactor was so high that she was already feeling the effects of radiation sickness. The girl felt severe nausea and was having trouble staying conscious. Her thoughts were erratic and she found it almost impossible to focus on flying the plane. My head is killing me. I feel so weak and disoriented.

With what little energy remained, Irene corrected her course, cut her speed, and put the plane on autopilot. The cargo bay doors would automatically open at the correct time, delivering the plane’s much-needed cargo to the Tomasite reactor. She then contacted New York City for the last time. Mr. Swift answered the call. “Hello?” he said.

“Hey,” Irene said, struggling to speak. The very act of talking was almost impossible. She knew she had only a few moments left to live.

“Irene?” Mr. Swift said, with concern in his voice. “How are you feeling?”

The girl ignored his question. “I’m almost there. I’ve set up a timed drop. You should be able to track the package on radar after it leaves the plane. It should land near you.”

“We’ll be watching for it,” Mr. Swift replied. She heard him hesitate. “My son called. He wanted to know if there were any problems with your hyperplane.”

Irene smiled despite her pain. “So he figured it out.” She suddenly started coughing for a minute, but finally regained control of her voice. “He’s a smart kid. Yeah, the jet has some problems. I think this will be its final flight.”

“Where you are going to land?” Mr. Swift asked quietly.

“I won’t be conscious that long,” she said quietly. “Sorry.”

“Can you eject?” Mr. Swift asked.

She was about to speak when she suddenly felt a tingly sensation, as if something was pulling at her. As everything went black she thought Oh, Tom, what have you done?

After a period of time Irene felt herself slowly regaining consciousness. Her eyes fluttered open. Above her was a white ceiling that had no visible lights. The room appeared to be lit from some unseen source. Interesting, she thought.

“There you are,” a female voice said. “I was wondering how long it’d take the Kwortese molecule to do its work! You’re responding very well to treatment.”

The girl sat up and saw that she was lying on an uncomfortable hospital bed. The room was filled with medical equipment, much of which she had never seen before. Sitting beside her was a teenage girl with pale skin and thick red hair. It was obvious that the girl knew Irene.

“Where am I?” Irene asked.

“In sickbay,” the girl replied. “I’m Anita Thorwald, by the way, and it’s quite an honor to meet you! I’ve heard so much about you over the years.”

The teenage girl was taken aback. “I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid I don’t know who you are. Have we met?”

Anita laughed. “Oh no! Not until just now, anyway. We’re from two very different places.”

As Irene become fully awake she was surprised to find that she felt much better. The nausea and headache had disappeared completely and she could think clearly again. “What just happened? How did I get here?”

“First, let me assure you that everything worked out just fine,” Anita replied. “Tom Swift used the computer you provided to shut down that reactor of his. Xanthus was taken into custody and the global nuclear war was prevented.”

“What about Tom?” Irene asked. “Did he make it back?”

“He did. He and Bud Barclay became the best of friends and went on to have many adventures. He became perhaps the most famous inventor of all time, but I’ll let him tell you all about that.”

Tom had ‘many adventures’? Just how long have I been out? Aloud she asked “Where is he?”

Anita sighed. “We don’t really know. It’s a long story, actually.”

At that moment the door opened and Mr. Swift walked into the room, followed by Bud Barclay. As soon as Bud saw Irene he broke into a huge grin. “Wow, you made it! Way to go! I just knew you’d pull through. Look at you!”

“Hey,” Irene replied, smiling. “It’s good to see you too! I’m glad you made it out of Brungaria in one piece. I knew you would, though – you’re a crack pilot, after all. I just hope Tom didn’t get too upset over the little trick I pulled on him.”

“I’m afraid he never got over it,” Mr. Swift remarked. The elderly inventor sat down beside Irene and took her hand. She was surprised to see tears in his eyes. “My son spent years heartbroken over you. He tried so hard to get you back. He really believed he could save you.”

“Years?” Irene asked. “What do you mean, years? Have I been in a coma or something?”

“You didn’t make it,” Mr. Swift said quietly. “You died when the hyperplane struck the ocean. People from all over the world came to attend your funeral. Your sacrifice made you a hero – one of the great legends of all time. You became known as the girl who gave her life in order to give mankind another chance.”

“And Tom brought me back to life?” Irene asked dubiously.

“Not exactly,” Bud said. “It’s a lot more complicated than that.”

“Then let’s start at the beginning, Bud. First of all, where am I? Is this the infirmary at Swift Enterprises?”

“You’re actually on the starship Exedra,” Anita explained.

Irene’s eyes widened. “A starship? So you’re from the future?”

“Yes and no,” Anita replied.

“What do you mean, ‘yes and no’? You either are or you’re not, right?”

“We’re not all from the same future,” Anita explained. “Mr. Swift and Bud are, but I’m actually from a parallel universe. My friends and I just came along because Mr. Swift wanted to borrow a time machine built by a Tom Swift from a different parallel universe, but he didn’t have a starship. Since Mr. Swift’s planet had just been destroyed they came to our universe to get the Exedra.”

“Oh boy,” Irene replied. “I see Tom’s been getting into all kinds of trouble in my absence. What’s been going on?”

It took Mr. Swift about an hour to explain to Irene how she came to find herself in the sick bay of the Exedra. By the time he finished his story Tom Swift IV had entered the room. “Everything’s ready!” he reported. “We’re leaving New York now and are heading out into space. Once we get clear of the planet’s atmosphere we’ll engage the lightspeed drive.”

“Which Tom are you?” Irene asked.

“IV,” he replied. “It’s good to see you, by the way! I’m glad that molecule of theirs worked. I’m sorry I haven’t had time to chat but I’ve been busy trying to work out a jump into the future. I’ve never done anything like that before and there’s not a lot of room for error.”

“I still can’t believe all this,” Irene said. She was visibly excited. “Time travel! Parallel universes! Timeline problems! The end of the world! What on earth have you guys gotten yourselves into? Have all of you lost your minds?”

“Mostly just Tom,” Bud explained. “We all tried to stop him but he’s a pretty hard guy to stop.”

Irene sighed. “You’re telling me! I know exactly what that’s like. I did warn him not to come after me, though. I made it very clear in my final message that he needed to let go and move on. I guess he didn’t want to hear that.”

“Don’t be too hard on him,” Mr. Swift cautioned. “He loved you very much. Losing you changed him. It was a very difficult thing for all of us to go through.”

“I’m sure it was,” Irene said softly. “Thank you so much for rescuing me. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful – it is a miracle to have a second chance at life. And I can’t tell how excited I am to see the future! This is going to be great. I can’t wait to see what I’ve missed!”

Irene got out of bed and stretched. She then glanced down at the outfit she was wearing. “Oh my goodness! I’m a mess. I can’t let Tom see me like this! I haven’t bathed since we left California and my hair is a wreck. Anita, is there a shower on board this ship of yours?”

“Right this way,” Anita replied. “I think I might even have a change of clothes that’s your size.”

As Anita led Irene away the rest of the group made it back to the bridge. They sat around and chatted as the Exedra left the Earth and headed out into space. When they had reached a safe distance from the planet Aristotle engaged the ship’s lightspeed drive. The drive was disengaged a few seconds later. A picture of the Earth reappeared on the forward viewscreen – one that looked identical to the planet they had just left.

“Did it work?” Tom IV asked.

“One moment,” Aristotle replied. “Yes, I can confirm that we are at the correct time. The star alignments and planetary positions are correct.”

Mr. Swift let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you! In that case we have a job to do, gentlemen. Who would like to accompany me to see Ed?”

“I’m in,” Tom IV said. “I want to make it very clear what I think of people who steal from my lab.”

“I’ll go,” Bud added.

“I’ll stay here with the ship,” Tom III replied.

“I’ll stay behind with Tom and Anita,” Ben Walking Eagle said.

“All right,” Mr. Swift replied. “Before you transport us down below can you confirm that Ed is in his office?”

“That appears to be the case,” Aristotle replied. “The ship’s sensors are indicating a large life form at the location that you specified.”

“Then let’s go,” Tom IV said grimly. “It’s time to pay that man a little visit.”

* * * * *
 

“You really must stop dropping in on me like that!” Ed complained. “Can’t you call first and schedule an appointment, or at least knock? That’s the whole reason I have a door – so people will have to open it before coming inside! What good is a door if you Swifts keep pulling these transporter stunts? It’s very rude of you – very rude indeed!”

Tom Swift Sr., Bud Barclay, and Tom IV had materialized directly inside Ed’s private office. Mr. Swift looked at Ed, puzzled. “I’ve never dropped in on you like this before! Besides, this is a urgent matter. I did not have the time to call ahead and get on your calendar.”

“Maybe you haven’t, but your son has! He dropped in a few days ago and read me the riot act. Didn’t he tell you? He scared the willies out of me! I’m not going to cross him again – no sir! He’s a real live wire, that one is.”

“Tom’s been here?” Tom IV asked, surprised.

“Of course!” Ed looked at him, confused. “You look familiar. Do I know you? I feel like I should know who you are.”

“Yes, you should know me,” Tom IV said grimly. “You broke into my lab to steal my time trigger plans. And I am not happy about it.”

“Oh!” Ed exclaimed. “So you’re Tom IV! I’m so sorry – I really am. I had the best of intentions! I meant no harm – no harm at all. But I’m afraid I can’t give the plans back to you. Tom burned them – burned them right there in that trashcan. I don’t know what got into him.”

“He burned them?” Tom IV asked incredulously.

“Don’t you people communicate with each other?” Ed asked. “I mean, sorry. Yes, he was here. He told me those stones destroyed the universe. He wouldn’t give me the plans to them, no sir! He was quite upset about. Accused me of wiping out all life on Earth! Me! Have you ever heard such a thing?”

“Tom must have made it back after all,” Tom IV said.

Mr. Swift nodded. “I should have realized he would stop here. He’s probably back at Swift Enterprises by now.”

“I’m sure he is,” Ed replied. “And if you’ll excuse me I have work to do.”

“I’m sure you do,” Tom IV said. “But listen. You broke into my lab and stole something incredibly dangerous. Since you’re a friend of Tom’s I’m going to let it slide. But if I ever catch you traveling to my universe again–”

“I know, I know, there will be death and destruction,” Ed replied, sighing. “I should never have gotten mixed up with you Swifts. Never! You people lead the most horrible lives. I’ve had nothing but trouble these past few days, and it’s all your fault!”

“Things might improve if you stopped stealing things and started keeping your promises,” Tom IV replied. “You might give that a try.”

“But I never even had the stones!” Ed cried out. “Here everyone is blaming me for using them in horrible ways, and I’ve never even so much as seen the cursed things!”

“If I were you I would be grateful for that,” Mr. Swift remarked. “Where I come from, the claytronic stones were the last things you ever saw.”

The two Toms then left the office. Ed looked at the door and sighed. “Maybe it’s time for you to retire, Ed. Leave this inventing stuff to someone else. Fly fishing – that might be a good hobby for you to take up. Or perhaps championship bowling! Why not?”

* * * * *
 

“So what do we do now?” Tom Swift III asked, after the group was back aboard the Exedra.

“I hate to impose on you, especially after all you’ve done, but can you stay with us for a few more hours?” Mr. Swift asked. “There are a few more loose ends that need to be tied up.”

“Certainly,” Tom III replied. “Besides, this is still the past for us. We’d have to travel into the future to get back to where we came from.”

Mr. Swift smiled. “Thank you so much. Could you contact the outpost in space and get me the Transmittaton chief? I think it’s time I had a long talk with my son.”

“He doesn’t know what we’ve been doing, does he?” Tom IV asked. “I bet you’re going to have a lot to tell him!”

“I’m hoping he’ll have a lot to tell me,” Mr. Swift replied.

Tom III typed away on a keyboard. A moment later Laurence Grinsby answered. “Hey there, sir! How can I help you?”

“Can you locate Tom for me?” Mr. Swift asked.

“Looks like he’s in his office at Swift Enterprises,” Laurence remarked a minute later. “At least, that’s where his wristwatch is, according to the plant’s patrolscope system. Do you want me to get him for you?”

“Actually, I’d rather be transported down there, if that’s possible.”

“Sure thing, chief,” the officer replied. A moment later Mr. Swift disappeared from the bridge.

TOM SWIFT JR HAD CONFIGURED HIS time machine so it would appear in New York City about six hours before Irene arrived in the hyperplane. That will give me plenty of time to get set up and allow for a margin of error in my calculations, he thought. After all, if I cut things too close and the trigger turns out to be imprecise then I might miss her arrival entirely.

At first the jump into time travel gave Tom an abrupt case of nausea. After a few moments, however, the feeling subsided. He watched, fascinated, as shifting patterns of purple and blue flashed outside the window. I wonder if those patterns have a meaning, Tom thought. The atomicar was occasionally buffeted by turbulence but overall the ride was quite smooth.

When the indicator on the dashboard finally hit zero the purple lights vanished and reality returned. For a brief moment Tom had a gorgeous panoramic view of New York City. He could even see his father’s reactor in the distance – a sure sign that he had arrived at the correct moment in history.

Then, without warning, the semi violently struck something! There was a sickening crunching noise, followed by the sound of metal grinding against metal. Tom watched in horror as the semi’s trailer was ripped off and thrown across the sky! Its shattered remains plunged into the bay below and sank out of sight.

Tom had no time to dwell on this, however. A host of warning lights flashed on the dashboard and the semi rapidly lost altitude. The young inventor desperately tried to gun the repelatrons but they appeared to be inoperable. Tom was on the verge of panic. The power’s gone! As the semi plunged out of the sky he desperately worked at the controls, attempting to channel whatever energy was left to any repelatrons that might still be working.

With barely a thousand feet to spare one of the repelatrons weakly came to life. Tom gunned it. The descent slowed but did not stop. Tom quickly looked around for a safe place to crash and saw a vacant lot by a beach on the coast. He tried to aim the atomicar for that lot and then braced himself.

The semi plunged into the ground, scattering sand and bits of broken metal everywhere. Tom was nearly yanked from his seat as the semi skidded down the beach, tumbling once or twice before finally coming to rest on its side.

When the moving finally stopped Tom remained in the cab, trying to catch his breath. It took him a moment to regain his senses. He then unbuckled his seatbelt, climbed up the seat, threw open the door, and walked outside.

The semi was a mess. The damage was so great that it was almost unrecognizable. At least I survived, Tom thought. That’s something to be thankful for. There’s no telling what might have happened to the timeline if I’d been killed. Let’s see if there’s anything here that I can salvage.

Tom spent the next half-hour doing a thorough examination of the ruined semi. As he expected the cab was no longer drivable. However, two of the vehicle’s four atomic power capsules were still functioning, and Tom was able to reconnect them to the main power distributor. Once he had power back online he was able to jury-rig his time dilator. At least I can get back to the future now, he thought.

With a little effort he was able to salvage several of the repelatron dishes. It’s not pretty but I’ll be able to move the vehicle. The question is, where do I go?

It was at that point that Tom remembered what had happened to the trailer. His heart sank. The trailer contained all the equipment he needed to rescue Irene; without it he was helpless. Even the time trigger was stored there. There was no way he could build a Transmittaton in the few hours he had left, and even if he could, the science of the alien translator was beyond him.

I don’t understand, Tom thought helplessly. What went wrong? What could I possibly have collided with? There was nothing up there in the sky – nothing! How could I smash into an object that wasn’t even there? All my equipment is at the bottom of the bay now and is completely unsalvageable. What am I going to do now?

For a long time Tom did nothing. He sat on the beach and stared out to sea. To his left he could see his father’s power plant. He knew that if he waited long enough he would see the hyperplane streak overhead and crash into the ocean. I can’t watch her die, Tom thought. I can’t go through that again. It’s just not fair! Irene is alive right now and I can’t get to her. I can’t even see her!

Tom’s anger eventually faded, replaced by deep sorrow and regret – a grief beyond words. He found himself unable to move – unable to do anything. He just sat on the beach beside his ruined semi and waited for the inevitable.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed. His grief was so great that time no longer seemed to have a meaning. When it finally happened he almost missed it. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something streak across the sky at an unbelievable pace. It soared off to the horizon and then came down to meet the ocean, which it struck with unbelievable force. There was a giant plume of water and smoke, and then it was all over.

The first time Irene died Tom had only heard about it after the fact. This time he was able to see it himself. It was a horrible feeling – the worst feeling in the world. Tom felt an overwhelming sorrow. It was as if he had died. He finally broke down and cried, and for a long time he did nothing else.

When the sun began to set Tom pulled himself together and stood up. I guess I’d better be getting home, he thought. All of the life had been drained out of him. He didn’t care about anything anymore, and he wasn’t sure if he would ever care about anything again. His world had just come to an end. For years he had hoped to go back in time and save Irene, and now that he’d been given that chance he found himself utterly defeated. A knife had been plunged into the heart of his dream. He wanted to just lay down and die.

As he climbed in the ruined cab he sighed. I guess I’d better go talk to Ed. Otherwise I won’t have a world to go home to.

He reached over to activate the time dilator and then stopped himself. “What am I doing?” he said aloud. “I can’t timeshift here! People would definitely notice a sphere of utter darkness on a beach – especially one that lasted for years on end. I’ve got to go find a place that’s a lot more secluded.”

Tom gunned the repelatrons and the ruined cab gingerly rose off the beach and righted itself. He then drove the cab out to sea and descended deep into the ocean, using the repelatrons to create a bubble of air around him. When he had reached what he felt was a safe level he configured the time dilator.

I’m going to do this right, Tom thought to himself. I don’t have a time machine anymore so I can’t go back if I miss my mark. He set the coordinates and pressed the button. The time dilator activated, and a moment later it turned itself off. It seemed like only a second had passed.

Let’s see if that thing still works, Tom thought. He activated the repelatrons and rose out of the ocean. The first thing he noticed was that his father’s Tomasite reactor was gone. He flew the ruined semi onto the beach, took out his pencil radio, and attempted to contact the outpost in space.

Laurence Grinsby answered. “Hey there, skipper! What’s up?”

“I need you to do me a favor,” Tom said. “Can you transport me to Ed Grinsby’s office?”

“Can do!” the Transmittaton chief answered cheerfully. “It sounds like you got those claytronic stones working!”

“You bet I did,” Tom replied evenly. “And it’s time to tell Ed all about it.”

The young inventor felt the Transmittaton tugging at him. There was a flash of light, and a moment later he materialized inside Ed’s office. The large man looked up at him in surprise. “Why Tom!” he exclaimed. “I see you’re not a man to waste time. Transport yourself right here – that’s the ticket! I like your style.”

Tom marched over to the desk and looked at Ed in the eye. “I will never give you the plans for my claytronic stones. Never! I will die before I see that information fall into your hands, you monster.”

Ed was completely taken aback. He was shocked at the genuine anger that radiated from Tom. “Why Tom! What’s happened? Did something go wrong?”

“Go wrong? I’ll say it went wrong! I gave those plans to you in good faith, Ed, after you promised to never use them. And do you know what you did? You used them to destroy the entire world! Every single last person on Earth died because you were too stupid to leave them alone.”

“What are you talking about?” Ed replied, gasping. “I don’t have the plans for your stones – you haven’t even given them to me yet! What are you talking about?”

“But I did give them to you,” Tom shouted. “On this very night I gave them to you, and you gave me the plans for the time trigger. It was the worst mistake I ever made! Billions of people died became I gave them to you. Do you know what it’s like to watch your whole world be destroyed?”

Ed stared at Tom, open-mouthed. He didn’t know what to say. “But if the whole world was destroyed, then – oh – you must be from the future. I guess you already have the time trigger plans, then.”

“If I didn’t,” Tom growled through gritted teeth, “you, and the rest of the world, would be dead by this time next week. And I am not going to let that happen again.”

Tom grabbed an ashtray off the desk and walked over to the filing cabinet that was behind Ed. He used it to bash the lock off of the top drawer, then yanked the drawer opened and grabbed the blue folder labeled “Time Trigger”. Without looking at its contents he grabbed a lighter off the desk, set the folder on fire, and tossed the flaming folder into the trashcan. Ed watched, shocked, as the plans burned to ashes.

“I guess that’s that, then,” Ed replied weakly. “But at least you can travel through time now. Have you rescued Irene yet?”

Tom stared at Ed, and then looked away. He tossed the ashtray and the lighter back on his desk. “Time travel doesn’t work that way,” he said at last. “I wasn’t able to rescue her. The only thing we accomplished here was the destruction of all life on earth. At least I can prevent that.”

“Well, thanks for stopping by,” Ed said weakly. “It’s always a pleasure to do business with you.”

The young inventor turned to look at Ed. “You haven’t seen the last of me. I’m going to be back to see if you’ve destroyed the Negative Zone or not. If I find out that you haven’t, not only will I destroy it myself, but I will personally see to it that you are placed in more trouble than you will ever be able to get out of. I have contacts in high places and can make sure you never see daylight again.”

“There’s no reason to threaten anyone,” Ed replied hastily. “Don’t give it another thought. I’m not a dangerous man.”

“That’s exactly the kind of thinking that destroyed the whole world,” Tom snarled. He stormed out of the office and slammed the door behind him, leaving a badly shaken man in his wake.

THE EXEDRA TOOK ONLY A moment to travel through the Negative Zone. As soon as the starship dropped into normal space Aristotle maneuvered it into a stable orbit around Earth.

“Looks like we made it!” Tom Swift IV said triumphantly. “Ok, guys, it’ll take just a moment to calibrate the jump. We’ll be ready to jump back in time in just a second.” The young inventor walked over to a computer keyboard, sat down, and began typing.

Bud looked at the forward viewscreen and frowned. “Hey, wait a minute! Are you sure we jumped to the right place? That doesn’t look right at all!”

“What do you mean?” Tom Swift III asked. He glanced at the screen. “That looks like Earth to me – large land masses, a couple oceans. What’s the problem?”

Mr. Swift stared at the screen intently. “Bud’s right – we’re in the wrong place. Our planet is a sold mass of green nanites. There aren’t oceans or land masses anymore. The whole planet was destroyed.”

Tom Swift IV turned around to see what was going on. He frowned. “You’re right – that’s not the same planet we left. I must have accidentally jumped us to the wrong universe. Sorry about that! Just a minute, please.” Tom walked over to another computer console and worked while everyone else stood and watched. At last he frowned. “I don’t understand! This doesn’t make any sense. According to this we’re in the right place.”

“That seems highly unlikely,” Mr. Swift commented. “But we can easily test that hypothesis. Aristotle, can you contact the outpost in space?”

“I cannot,” the robot replied a second later. “I am afraid this planet has no orbital space station. Indeed, it has no orbital satellites at all.”

“None?” Mr. Swift asked. “But there are countless satellites in orbit! The nanites are not airborne particles. The satellites were left unaffected.”

“I’m telling you this is the right place,” Tom IV insisted. “Something must have happened to them.”

“What about Nestria?” Bud asked.

“Excellent point,” Mr. Swift replied. “Can you locate it?”

The robot shook his head. “It appears to be missing as well.”

Bud looked at Tom IV, confused. “So the satellites are gone, the sky wheel is gone, Nestria is gone, and the planet is no longer overrun with nanites. How could we possibly be in the right place?”

Tom IV snapped his fingers. “I’ve got an idea! Give me a minute.” The young inventor ran back to his time terminal and worked at it furiously. At last he nodded with satisfaction. “All right, gang! I know what happened. It turns out this really is the right place – the Zone hasn’t malfunctioned on us. The problem is that the timeline has changed.”

Several people gasped. “Good night!” Bud exclaimed. “What sort of change could cause all that? And who went and traveled back in time, anyway?”

“My son,” Mr. Swift said suddenly. “It must have been him. Somehow Tom survived the nanite flood and then went back in time to stop it. Only something went wrong.”

“It doesn’t look that bad to me,” Anita commented. “I mean, the nanites are gone, right? It looks like people live there. Are you sure he didn’t fix things?”

Aristotle spoke up. “I am afraid the planet’s looks are deceiving. The Exedra‘s sensors tell me that much of its surface is emitting low levels of radiation, and there are no major population centers. It would appear that the world was destroyed in some sort of global nuclear exchange.”

Anita was shocked. “That’s horrible!”

Mr. Swift looked at the planet and shook his head. “It must have happened at least several years ago. The war somehow prevented mankind from developing space flight. Nestria is not there because in this timeline we never made contact with the Space Friends. That should help us pinpoint the exact date that time changed.”

Tom III turned to Tom IV. “You’ve got a chronoscope, right? Can you look back in time and see how it happened?”

“Maybe,” Tom IV said cautiously. “Whenever a time trigger is activated it leaves a trail that the chronoscope can follow. In this case it’s a little tricky to do, though, because of the way things turned out.”

“What do you mean?” Tom III asked.

“Well, somebody went back and changed the timeline. However, in the altered timeline no time-travel attempt was made. That means we can’t look for a recent time-trigger event and then work backwards. Instead, I have to scan the distant past for time-travel activity. That’s a lot harder to do.”

“But we can use logic to narrow things down,” Mr. Swift pointed out. “If my son is responsible for this, he most likely went back to the moment just before Irene died. Given how high international tensions were that day it’s possible he did something that triggered a nuclear war.”

“You could be right,” Tom IV said. “Do you have any idea where he would have gone?”

“There are two possibilities,” Mr. Swift said. “He may have gone to the Tomasite plant in California to stop Irene from going to Brungaria. The other option is my reactor in New York City; he may have gone there to rescue her from the hyperplane just before it crashed. There are other options, of course, but I believe those are by far the most likely.”

“I’ll check into both of them,” Tom IV replied.

* * * * *
 

Even with the search criteria narrowed it still took Tom IV an hour to trace events through time. When he finally had everything figured out he turned around to face the group.

“Here’s what happened. Mr. Swift is right – Tom Jr. did go back in time. He appeared over New York City just a few hours before the reactor went critical. However–”

Tom IV suddenly stopped. He looked acutely uncomfortable. “Look. You have to understand that I told him to never build a time machine. Bud was there – he knows what I said! And on top of that, Tom did not get the plans through me. I didn’t even know he had them until it was too late to stop him from using them.”

“No one’s blaming you,” Anita replied.

“What are you getting at?” Mr. Swift asked.

Tom IV sighed. “I will admit I had a copy of Dr. Reisenbach’s notes in my office. I knew better than to have a copy of those notes, but I needed them when I developed my chronoscope. That invention is completely harmless, by the way.”

“Ok,” Tom III said. “So?”

“So the point is, I, um, well, I modified the documents a bit. In order to protect the secret of time travel I changed a few equations in a way that would be impossible to spot. That way anyone who found the documents would eventually conclude they were worthless and throw them out.”

Mr. Swift looked at Tom IV intently. “So you’re saying my son used blueprints that had been tampered with?”

“Yes, but they were tampered with in such a way that any trigger built from them should have failed entirely,” Tom IV said defensively. “Somehow Tom found a way around the problems I created. I don’t know how he did it, but he got it to work well enough to take him back in time. However, the time trigger wasn’t stable. Instead of cleanly transporting himself into the past, it just collapsed.”

“What effect did that have?” Mr. Swift asked.

Tom IV paused for a moment. “It destroyed New York City.”

“What?” Mr. Swift gasped. “How is that possible?”

“Hey, there’s a lot of energy involved in time travel! I’ve told everyone time and time again that it’s not safe and can do horrible things. It could have been a lot worse! The collapse could have caused reality itself to unravel, which might ultimately have led to the collapse of the entire universe.”

“That was a distinct possibility,” Aristotle confirmed.

“Now hold on,” Anita said. “Aren’t we about to travel back in time? And you’re saying that could destroy everything?”

“Not in our case,” Tom IV hasten to add. “My time trigger actually works. I wouldn’t recommend using it very often, but it will work this once.”

“A nuclear war,” Mr. Swift said softly. “That’s horrifying.” He gazed at the ruined planet, lost in his thoughts. “Washington must have thought the Brungarians were responsible, so they retaliated. In the end everyone died. That was exactly what I was afraid might happen that day. In fact, had Irene not sacrificed her live to deliver me the spare parts I needed that’s what would have happened. My son has undone the very thing Irene sacrificed her live to prevent.”

“Let’s not forget Tom IV’s role in all this,” Anita pointed out. “He’s the one that poisoned the plans.”

“You can’t blame this on him,” Ben Walking Eagle protested. “He told Tom not to use them! This is all his fault.”

“We can discuss who’s to blame blame later,” Mr. Swift said firmly, ending the discussion. “Right now we need to find a way to fix this problem. Are there any ideas?”

Everyone looked at Tom IV, who shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I know, I know. All this time travel stuff is my invention. Let me think. Well, there may be way we can undo this. If we can stabilize Tom Jr.’s re-entry into the past, we should be able to prevent the explosion that altered the timeline. Then the nuclear war will have never happened and things will go back to normal. All we’ll then have to do is prevent the nanite flood, which should be as easy as taking the plans back from Ed and beating some sense into him.”

“Can we do all that from here?” Anita asked.

“I’m afraid not,” Tom IV replied. “I think I can extend the time trigger’s effective radius enough to encompass Tom Jr.’s machine, and use our trigger to stabilize his entry. However, we’re going to have to be at that precise moment in time to do that.”

“Now wait a minute,” Anita protested. “Before we were just going to go back a couple weeks to have a one-on-one meeting with a single person. Now we’re talking about a much bigger expedition. I don’t like this.”

“It’s either that or go home,” Tom III said, sighing. “Tom’s right – we don’t have a lot of options. Either we fix this new problem that Tom Jr. created or we leave the world knee-deep in ashes.”

Everyone looked at Mr. Swift. For a while he said nothing. “What are the risks?” he asked.

“Minimal,” Tom IV said. “We shouldn’t have any problems traveling back in time. It will be painless.”

“What about this whole ‘extend the time field’ thing?” Anita asked. “Have you done that before?”

“Not exactly,” Tom IV admitted. “I mean, I understand the theory behind it. I think the math works out. But – well, anything could happen, I guess.”

Mr. Swift nodded. “Thank you, Tom. Given those facts, these are my observations. If we try this and fail, the explosion will still happen and history will once again get to this point. In that case we will have done no further harm. However, if we try this and succeed then history will revert to what it once was. If we can then stop the nanites from being created then the problem will have truly been solved. Given that, I believe the attempt is worth the risk.”

“I agree,” Tom III said, after a moment’s hesitation.

“I’m in too,” Tom IV said. “It’ll take a moment for me to crunch the numbers. I’ll get right on it” He turned back to the keyboard and started typing.

“Hey – what about my vote?” Anita asked.

Ben Walking Eagle smiled. “Well, if you don’t want to come–”

“–I can be dropped off at home,” Anita finished. “I know. No thanks.”

Bud Barclay suddenly spoke up. “What about Irene? I mean, I know she’s not the reason we’re going back in time, but since we’ll be there anyway shouldn’t we try to rescue her?”

Mr. Swift nodded. “That is an excellent point. Aristotle, does this ship have the ability to transport a person out of a plane that is moving at supersonic speeds?”

“It does,” the robot replied. “If you so desired, I could extract Irene Goddard from the hyperplane moments before it crashes. I assume you would want me to act in a way that preserves the integrity of the original timeline.”

“I think that would be wise,” Mr. Swift said. “I don’t want to risk causing even more problems.”

“But what about her radiation sickness?” Bud asked. “I mean, in this timeline aren’t the translators still on Thanatos?”

“That will not be a problem,” Aristotle replied. “We have the ability to treat her on-board.”

Mr. Swift was surprised. “You can treat advanced cases of radiation sickness?”

Ben Walking Eagle nodded. “A while back we went to a crazy planet called Kwortu’um. While we were there we got a special molecule that can cure pretty much anything. It’s astonishing – it’s completely revolutionized the field of medicine.”

“It’s astonishing we survived going there,” Anita replied. “Those people are insane.”

“I don’t know if you’d call them people, exactly,” Ben commented. “They certainly weren’t human.”

“All I know is we are never going back there,” Anita said firmly. “It’s not a happy place.”

“I’ll second that motion,” Tom III said, grinning.

Twenty minutes later Tom IV spoke up. “I think I’m done here! Aristotle, can you double-check these numbers?”

“Most impressive! Your calculations appear to be correct.”

“Thanks,” Tom IV said. “Let’s hope reality agrees with us.” He turned to Tom III. “I’m going to set the time trigger to drop us out about three hours before Tom Jr. arrives.”

Tom III nodded with satisfaction. “That should give me plenty of time to get the Exedra into position over New York City. I’ll make sure the ship’s cloaking field is activated so no one will even know we’re there.”

After making sure everyone was ready Tom IV activated the time trigger. The viewscreen went black. There was a slight sense of nausea, but other than that there was no way to tell that the ship was traveling through time.

“What happened to the screen?” Anita asked.

“Right now there’s nothing out there for the ship’s sensors to detect,” Tom IV explained. “We’re not really in normal space anymore. You might say we’re between spaces.”

A moment later the feeling of nausea stopped and the viewscreen came back to life. This time it showed a lush, green planet.

“Aristotle?” Tom IV asked.

“We appear to be exactly where you predicted,” the robot replied. “I detect no anomalies.”

Tom III nodded. He carefully maneuvered the Exedra out of orbit and toward the thriving metropolis of New York City. After forty-five minutes the starship was in position.

“Now we wait,” Mr. Swift said.

Time passed. Mr. Swift stared quietly at the viewscreen, thinking about the events that had happened that day. Bud saw the intent look on his face and walked over to talk to him.

“It’s weird, thinking that Irene is still alive right now,” Bud said.

Mr. Swift nodded. “It gives me chills to think that in a few hours she’ll be on board this ship. I’m not sure what to say to her.”

“I bet she’ll be quite surprised to see us!”

“Probably, but even so, it will be more awkward for us than it will be for her. She doesn’t know that she’s been dead for years. For her, it’s only been a short time since she last saw you.”

“I wonder what her parents will think,” Bud said.

Mr. Swift shook his head. “Losing a child is perhaps the most terrible thing that a parent can go through. I think the Goddards will be delighted to have her back, but I don’t know. It’s hard to predict what sort of psychological impact this will have on them. It will certainly be an unexpected shock.”

He sighed and looked at the viewscreen again. “Too much has happened recently, Bud. I feel like I’m numb to what’s going on. Both of us watched our planet destroyed, and then we came back to find it had been destroyed again. This is going to take a long time to sort out.”

“I think we’ll fix it,” Bud said confidently. “Things will be back to normal soon.”

Mr. Swift shook his head. “Things will never be back to normal. Whatever we do here will change the future forever. Whether we’re able to save Irene or not, your life – and my son’s life – will never be the same again.”

“But in a good way, right?” Bud asked.

“I don’t know,” Mr. Swift replied, sighing.

* * * * *
 

“I don’t get you guys,” Anita complained. “I mean, here we are, traveling back in time! Where’s the excitement?”

“We’ll get excited later,” Tom IV said. “After we’re safely home.”

“But this is still an amazing occasion! I mean, think about it. How many people get to travel back in time?”

Ben Walking Eagle shrugged. “Sure, but this is happening in someone else’s universe. To me it’s more like visiting a new planet. It’d be different if we were back in New Mexico. We don’t even know the people here.”

“Quiet, please,” Tom IV said. “Tom Jr. will arrive in less than a minute.”

There was silence on the bridge. Tom IV pressed some buttons on the keyboard and confirmed his settings for the ninth time. He then sat quietly, nervously, watching the screen.

“Here it comes,” he whispered to himself. “Five…four…three…two…NOW!”

The whole ship shook. Tom IV felt an intense feeling of nausea. There was a brilliant flash of light, and something violently collided with the Exedra. There was a horrible grinding noise and the power began fluctuating. A moment later the feeling of nausea faded away.

Mr. Swift looked at the viewscreen. “Well, New York City is still there, and I see no signs of an explosion,” he remarked. “Does that mean–”

A siren suddenly went off! Red lights began flashing.

“What’s going on?” Tom III asked. He dashed to the controls frantically.

“A fire has broken out on deck two,” Aristotle reported.

Tom IV gasped. “That’s where all the time-travel equipment is stored!”

A muffled boom was heard in the rear of the ship. The deck shuddered.

“What was that?” Anita asked.

“I think our ride home just went up in smoke,” Tom IV replied. “If the time trigger’s been destroyed we’ll have no way to get back home!”

TOM SWIFT JR HAD CONFIGURED HIS time machine so it would appear in New York City about six hours before Irene arrived in the hyperplane. That will give me plenty of time to get set up and allow for a margin of error in my calculations, he thought. After all, if I cut things too close and the trigger turns out to be imprecise then I might miss her arrival entirely.

The jump into time travel gave Tom an abrupt case of nausea. Reality disappeared, replaced by chaotic patterns of dark violet and black. The young inventor was surprised when the atomicar was immediately buffeted by turbulence. Tom fought to keep the semi from turning over. As he traveled further back in time the ride grew increasingly violent.

I don’t remember time travel being described like this! Tom thought with concern. He watched as the semi drew closer to its target date. I don’t remember the trip taking this long either. What’s going on?

When the indicator on the dashboard finally hit zero, the purple lights vanished and reality returned. For a brief moment Tom had a gorgeous panoramic view of New York City. He could even see his father’s reactor in the distance – a sure sign that he had arrived at the correct moment in history.

Then, without warning, time itself seemed to snap. There was a huge flash of light. Oh no, Tom thought with a surge of panic. The time trigger is breaking down! It’s about to-

The last thing Tom heard was a breaking noise, as if someone had violently shattered an entire carton of light bulbs. Then the time trigger erupted, engulfing the semi in a titanic explosion of atomic proportions.

* * * * *
 

A few miles away, Tom Swift’s father had just been rescued from Xanthus by his security detail. They were discussing the events surrounding Xanthus’ plot. Frank Herschell told him that the Navy had let them know there was a Brungarian in their midst.

“The Navy called?” Mr. Swift asked. “How did they know?”

“Apparently your son tipped them off,” Frank replied. “They want to speak with you immediately.”

Mr. Swift nodded. I bet they do, he thought grimly. If Xanthus is telling the truth then we have a huge problem on our hands! If this reactor goes critical and destroys New York City then that will be the end of the world. The United States will interpret that as an act of war and will retaliate.

As Mr. Swift walked out the door Xanthus called after him. “You cannot escape! There is nothing you can do to save them.”

The elderly inventor opened his mouth to reply when he suddenly heard a tremendous explosion. The ground shook beneath them.

“What was that?” Mr. Swift asked, looking at Xanthus.

“I do not know,” Xanthus replied.

“Make sure he doesn’t get away!” Mr. Swift ordered. As the security detail hauled him off Tom raced outside the building. When he made it outside he stopped dead in his tracks. Most of New York City was simply gone. It was difficult to see through the dense smoke, but the city that had once stood there was destroyed. Little remained but broken buildings, rubble, and dust.

“NO!” Mr. Swift cried out. He screamed and dropped to his knees in anguish.

Moments later other people rushed out of the building. They were dumbfounded when they saw what had happened. A few began screaming; others sobbed uncontrollably. Ned grabbed Mr. Swift and helped him to his feet.

“What happened?” Ned asked.

“It must be Xanthus,” Mr. Swift replied weakly. “I guess he was afraid his ploy at the reactor wouldn’t work, so he must have stashed an actual atomic bomb in the city. I guess it was set to go off in the event he was captured.”

Ned looked at the city, aghast. “There were people there,” he whispered. “Millions of innocent people. Why did he do it? Why, Tom?”

“They’re just the tip of the iceberg,” Mr. Swift replied. “This is the end of the world, Ned! Once Washington realizes what happened they’ll deploy their atomic bombs against Brungaria and her allies. My son has already told the Navy that the Brungarians are behind this, so there will be no question as to who was responsible. For their part, I’m sure the Brungarians have already launched their remaining weaponry at us and our allies. By the time this day is over there won’t be anything left of the civilized world.”

“Will there be a world at all?” Ned asked.

Mr. Swift found it difficult to concentrate. His whole life was flashing before him. He knew that all the people he loved were about to die, and there was nothing he could do to save them. His initial sorrow was overwhelmed by terror at what he knew was going to happen next.

“It depends,” Mr. Swift said when he could finally speak. “Under normal circumstances the lingering radiation would be deadly but it would fade with time. The half-lives of the elements used in a nuclear bomb are fairly short. After a few weeks much of the residual radiation would have faded away. The people would be dead, of course, but the planet would survive. Life would go on.”

Mr. Swift paused. “However, both sides have been experimenting with cobalt bombs. The whole purpose of such an awful weapon is to cover an area with radioactivity and make it uninhabitable. It’s the final blow – not only would the targeted nation be destroyed, but no one could ever live there again. The radiation from such a weapon is intense and lingers for many years. By the time it decayed into harmlessness there would be nothing left.”

“But surely no one would build such a thing,” Ned replied, aghast. “They’re just theoretical, right?”

“I don’t know,” Mr. Swift replied. “I have no idea what people in power have been doing. I pray you’re right. I pray no one would be that foolish and short-sighted. Otherwise life itself ends today.”

* * * * *
 

Less than twenty minutes later, a fleet of American bombers were loaded with nuclear weapons. They left their bases in Europe and flew at top speed to Brungaria. The Brungarians were caught completely by surprise. The first wave was devastating and laid waste to most of their country. By the time the Brungarians realized they were under attack there was nothing left to defend themselves with. The second wave of bombers destroyed what little had survived.

Since their nation was in ruins, the Brungarians ordered their foreign bases to deploy against the United States. The Americans knew they were coming, but the United States was a large country with extensive borders. There was no way they could protect everything, and on top of that they were fighting an enemy that was enraged and had nothing to lose.

By the end of the day there was nothing left of the United States, Brungaria, or their allies. Third-world nations and outlying islands were left untouched, but it was only a matter of time before the giant clouds of radiation drifted onto their territories.

Mr. Swift and Ned Newton died when the tomasite reactor went critical, destroying what little had survived of New York City. Tom Swift Jr., Bud Barclay, and Irene were killed when American bombers destroyed Brungaria, taking out the hidden base with one of many nuclear weapons. The rest of his family – and millions of others – lost their lives in the nuclear war.

As it turned out neither side used cobalt weapons, but the damage was done. The few remaining survivors fought each other for what little food and water remained, further reducing their numbers. The world erupted into anarchy and chaos. A planet that had been on the verge of space travel now found itself brought back to the stone age, unable to even feed its population. Night had fallen upon mankind, and things would never be the same.

I just wanted to let everyone know that the massive book “The Complete Tom Swift Home Page” is now available! This 600+ page book is a collection of the articles, pages, and information that can be found on my Tom Swift webpage. I’ve assembled it into a giant, full-color PDF in order to make the content more accessible and more available. You can download the book free of charge right here:

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Thanks!

WHEN TOM SWIFT JR. returned to his laboratory he was surprised to see Phyllis Newton waiting on him. Phyl was sitting impatiently on a chair right outside his door. The teenage girl was wearing a long, yellow dress and clutched a matching purse. Tom could tell by the look in her eyes that she was extremely angry.

“Where have you been?” she demanded. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for you?”

Tom was taken aback. “I’m sorry – nobody told me you were coming! I honestly had no idea. I just stepped out for a few minutes to get a bit of fresh air, and–”

“What do you mean, today? I’ve been waiting on you since last week! You promised you’d get back with me as soon as you returned from space. Remember? You promised!”

Tom winced. “I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s just that there’s been a lot of things going on. You see–”

“There are always a lot of things going on,” Phyl complained. “You seem to have plenty of time to go to Neptune, but somehow you can never find time for me.”

“You’re right,” Tom agreed. “I have been terrible. I’m going to make some time for you right here and right now. Come with me.”

The young inventor unlocked the door to his laboratory and invited Phyl inside, Still fuming, Phyl entered the room and Tom closed the door behind him. She was surprised to see a semi in the middle of his lab but she said nothing. Her mind was elsewhere.

As soon as the door closed Tom walked over to his workbench and activated the time dilator. I hate doing this, but I really don’t have time for her right now, he thought to himself. At least this will give me a bit of an edge. I just wish she hadn’t picked this exact moment to come over! I’ve got so much to do before Bud gets back.

“What’s that?” Phyl asked, pointing to the time dilator.

“It’s, um, a bit complicated. It’s kind of hard to explain.”

“I’m not the village idiot,” Phyl snapped. “You don’t need to patronize me. If you can explain it to Bud then you can explain it to me.”

Tom was surprised at her sharp attitude. “Are you ok? I haven’t seen you like this before. What’s bothering you?”

“You really don’t know? After everything you’ve done to me, you honestly have no idea why I’m upset?”

What is she talking about? Tom thought. As he tried to listen to the angry girl in front of him, out of the corner of his eye he suddenly noticed that some papers were missing from his workbench. He turned his head and saw that all his Dr. Reisenbach’s notes on the time trigger were gone. “No!” Tom cried out. He ran over and began a hasty search for the missing notes. His heart sank as he realized they were gone.

“You’re not even listening to me!” Phyl shouted.

“I’m sorry,” Tom apologized. “I’m so sorry about this. I’m afraid that right now just isn’t a good time. I think someone’s been into my lab and stolen something.”

Phyl’s anger boiled over. “I don’t care, Tom. I really don’t. I hope they’ve stolen everything you’ve got! What I care about is that we are finished. Do you hear me? Finished! I’ve had it up to here with you and I’m not going to take it any more. There are plenty of other guys out there – guys that will actually pay attention to me.”

That stopped Tom in his tracks. “What? What do you mean, we’re finished?”

“Don’t give me that,” Phyl shot back. “You figure it out, ‘genius boy’! The only time you’ll ever go out with me is when Sandy and I twist your arm. I’m tired of it! I’m tired of playing second fiddle to a girl who’s been dead for years. I’m not doing it anymore. It’s over. I should never have gotten mixed up with you in the first place.”

“You mean Irene?” Tom asked, puzzled.

“Of course I mean Irene! She’s all you’ve been able to think about for years. Why, I bet that stupid truck over there even has something to do with her. Everything you do does! Tell me I’m wrong, Tom. Go ahead. Tell me that gizmo on your desk has nothing to do with Irene.”

Tom felt acutely miserable. His plans had been stolen and his girlfriend was having a complete meltdown. He was at a total loss. I don’t know what to say, Tom thought, as Phyl stared at him.

“Well?” she demanded.

“Hold on,” Tom said suddenly. “Do you hear something?”

Phyl stopped. “Of course I hear something! I’ve heard that growling sound for the past five minutes. Isn’t that normal?”

Tom shook his head. Ice-cold fear shot though his veins as he realized what the sound meant. He walked over to the window and looked outside. What he saw confirmed his worst fears. A cloud of utter darkness was racing toward the laboratory at blinding speed!

When Phyl saw the look of utter terror on his face she walked over and glanced outside. “What’s that?” she asked.

“Doomsday,” Tom replied, barely able to speak. A feeling of total panic overwhelmed him. He had never felt so afraid and helpless in all his life. “It’s the end of the world.”

A moment later the cloud engulfed them. To his surprise the laboratory remained unharmed. The rest of the building, however, melted away into complete oblivion. A moment later the power went out, plunging the room into shadows.

Tom reached over onto his workbench and felt around for a flashlight. He turned it on and looked around the room. The entire laboratory appeared to be intact, but he could see nothing but blackness beyond.

“What just happened?” Phyl asked, her voice quivering. “Is this another one of your experiments?”

Tom found himself unable to speak. He knew exactly what had happened but he could not form words. The magnitude of the event overwhelmed his sense. He felt crushing sorrow and remorse – a bitter pain that dwarfed even the death of Irene. It was as if everything cheerful and happy inside him had been erased, replaced by the blackest depression.

“I’ve destroyed the world,” Tom said at last. He felt as if he would never be happy again. “It’s gone. Everything is gone.”

Phyl felt herself start to panic. “That doesn’t make any sense. How could the world be gone? What did you do?”

Wearily, Tom told her about the nanites. “Ed must have disregarded my warning and created a batch of them anyway. It looks like they got out of hand and consumed everything. In a few minutes there will be nothing left anywhere.”

Phyl’s eyes widened in horror. “Can’t you do something about it? Isn’t there some way to stop it?”

Tom shook his head. “I built a kill switch into the nanites, but Ed must have made a mistake when he manufacturing them. I knew he would – that’s why I told him to not make them in the first place. The batch that he made can’t be turned off.”

“If you knew this was going to happen then why did you give them to him?” Phyl screamed. “Why did you give him something that could destroy the whole world? What got into you?”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen!” Tom protested. “All I wanted to do is go back in time and save–” and then he stopped, realizing what he was about to say.

Phyl finished his sentence for him. “And save Irene, you mean. Is that what all this is about? You were willing to risk the safety of all life on Earth just so you could save your girlfriend? And I can’t even get you to go out on a date with me!”

“I’m sorry,” Tom replied, utterly crushed. “I never wanted to hurt anyone. I just thought I could save her. If Ed had listened to me none of this would have happened.”

“If you hadn’t been obsessed with Irene none of this would have happened!” Phyl shot back. “The world would still be out there today if you had just moved on with your life – if you had actually loved me, instead of treating me like some dumb obligation. I never meant anything to you!”

“That’s not true,” Tom protested.

“If Irene had wanted to go out with you last week, would you have put her off?” Phyl demanded. “Would you have given her a rain check and gone to Neptune instead? Would you, Tom?”

“I’m sorry,” Tom repeated. He felt like a dead man. “It just all went wrong. This wasn’t part of the plan.”

There was silence for a while. Phyl eventually spoke up. “Hey Tom – if the whole world has been destroyed then why aren’t we dead?”

“The time dilator is protecting us,” Tom explained. He told her about his invention and how it manipulates the flow of time. “The nanites can’t get inside the field. Fortunately it has its own power supply, so it didn’t turn off when the electricity was cut off.”

“So can’t you use that field to protect everyone else?” Phyl asked.

Tom shook his head. “The generator was only designed to protect this lab. Even if I did extend its range it’s already too late to protect Shopton – the damage has been done. And if I shut down the field now so we could move it somewhere else, we’d be instantly consumed by the nanites.”

“Wonderful,” Phyl replied. “So we’re the last two people left on Earth?”

“Well, there’s also the outpost in space, Nestria, and Bartonia,” Tom pointed out. “They won’t have been effected by the nanites. But that’s all.”

“So what are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to fix this,” Tom replied. “I’ve got to! It’s up to me, Phyl. There’s no one else left who can do it.”

“What about Tom IV? You stole the time machine plans from him, right? Can’t you get him to do it?”

“I don’t have a way to reach him anymore,” Tom explained. “After the recent break-in Tom IV put a lock on his Negative Zone. In order to open it I’d need to be able to reproduce his electronic key. That’s something I can’t do – Tom IV kept that to himself.”

“But your Zone still exists,” Phyl replied. “Why, it’s right over there! You don’t have to reproduce anything.”

Tom shook his head. “That was just where the tunnel manifested itself. The actual machinery that generates the Zone itself is huge – it’s buried underground, well outside the laboratory. It’s gone.”

“So I guess it really is up to you,” Phyl said.

Tom got back to work on his time machine. At first he was concerned about the loss of his notes, but after a few hours he realized that was actually a blessing in disguise. Since he didn’t have those notes to use as a crutch, his brain was forced to resolve the problem. He soon began realizing what pieces he had been missing.

The first problem was finding a way to restore power to his laboratory. He ultimately decided to tap into the atomic power capsules that powered the atomicar. The energy he needed to finish the time trigger was negligible compared to the power they could produce. After running a few cables and building an interface he was able to restore electricity to his lab.

“How long do I have to stay in this room?” Phyl asked. “I want to get out of here.”

“You have to stay at least until the cloud collapses. When the blackness goes away it should be safe to turn off the field. In theory, anyway. I wouldn’t want to try it.”

“I’m certainly not going to stay in here with you,” Phyl replied pointedly. “As soon as that cloud disappears I’m going to get transported up to the outpost. Or maybe Nestria. Anyplace but here.”

Tom nodded, but said nothing.

It took hours for the black cloud to dissipate, but eventually the darkness cleared. Phyl shivered when she saw what was left of the world. One of the laboratory walls had been outside the field and was eaten away, revealing the frightening outside world. There was nothing left but a flat blue sky and a flat, endless sea of green nanites.

“It’s horrible,” Phyl said. “Are you sure it’s safe to turn off the time dilator?”

“No, I’m not. I didn’t build those nanites and I don’t really know what other flaws they might have. It’s possible that when I shut down the time field they might re-energize and consume this lab. I just know.”

“Can I be transported through the time field?” Phyl asked.

“I’m afraid not. The time difference creates too much distortion.”

“Then I guess I’ll stay here,” she replied grumpily. “At least for now.”

It took two more days for Tom to finish his time trigger. He was now glad that he had been storing food in his lab. At least we’re not hungry, he thought.

“So what are you going to do now?” Phyl asked. Her mood had not improved with time.

“What do you mean?” Tom asked. “I’m going to go back in time and stop Ed from creating the nanites. What did you think I was going to do?”

Phyl shook her head. “No you’re not. You’re going to go back in time and save Irene. You might stop on the way back to the future and talk to Ed, but that’s not going to be your first jump.”

“Traveling into the past is very dangerous,” Tom protested. “Making two jumps backwards is far more hazardous than just making one. It makes much more sense to get Irene first.”

“And what about jumping into the future?” Phyl asked. “Isn’t that equally dangerous?”

“Oh, no – that’s the easy part. I can just use my time dilator to adjust the speed of time. That part of the trip won’t be a problem.”

“I still don’t think you should save her,” Phyl said flatly.

“Why not?” Tom asked, surprised.

Phyl shook her head. “You’re just not thinking anymore, are you? Don’t you realize that you’re the only person that can fix this planet? If you go back in time to save Irene and something goes wrong then the whole world is doomed!”

“It’s not like that,” Tom protested. “I have a plan. Nothing will go wrong.”

“You had a plan about the nanites, too, and look what happened! Your ‘plan’ led to the extinction of all life on Earth. Stop fooling around, Tom, and get serious! Save the world. Don’t put it in jeopardy again just to save someone who’s been dead for years. It’s a stupid thing to do.”

“I haven’t come this far to give up now,” Tom replied evenly. “I can do this.”

“No, you can’t,” Phyl replied.

Tom looked at her awkwardly. “I guess I’ll be going, then.”

Phyl shook her head. “You’re a fool, Tom. I just hope you can save the world. How long do you think it will take?”

“It should be instantaneous. As soon as I disappear the world should go back to the way it was. If it doesn’t, then I’ve failed and there’s no hope.”

“What will happen to me when you change the past?” Phyl asked. “I mean, I remember the world being destroyed, but you’re going change it so that event never happened. Does that mean I’ll remember something different?”

“I don’t know,” Tom confessed. “I’ve never done this before. I guess we’ll find out.”

Tom looked at Phyl, hoping she would say something encouraging, but she only shook her head. He sighed, got into the cab of the semi, and activated the time trigger. The machine disappeared in a flash of purple light.

TOM SWIFT IV looked at Bud Barclay, puzzled. “Nanites? Is this some new invention?”

Mr. Swift quickly explained to Tom IV about Tom’s latest invention, the claytronic stones. “But I was positive my son had added safeguards!”

“He did,” Bud affirmed. “I was there – I saw it myself. Tom had perfected a way to keep his stone from replicating. Besides, his stones don’t create a black field anymore. I think the stones below came from somewhere else.”

“Ed Gamino,” Mr. Swift said suddenly. “They must have come from Ed!”

Bud nodded. “That’s got to be it. A few days ago Tom gave him the plans and warned him to never use them because if the stones weren’t made correctly they could cause a chain reaction. Tom told me that Ed promised to keep the blueprints only for reference purposes. However, knowing Ed…”

“…he probably didn’t,” Mr. Swift finished, aghast. He watched as his home world was swallowed by the creeping black cloud. Already North and South America were covered, and the cloud was rapidly spreading across Europe. “This is horrible,” he whispered. All of the life had been drained out of him. “There were billions of people down there. Billions. This can’t be happening.”

“Isn’t there some way to stop it?” Tom IV asked quietly.

Bud shook his head. “Only Tom would know how to do that, and nobody knows where he is. As far as I know he’s down there somewhere.”

“I’m sorry,” Tom IV said quietly. They could do nothing but watch as the whole world was consumed by shadow.

It took several hours for the entire planet to be consumed. An hour later the time field collapsed, revealing a solid mass of green nanites.

“It’s too much to take in,” Mr. Swift said at last. “I just can’t accept this. This can’t be happening. There must be something we can do! Some way to reverse this and put the world back the way it was.”

“I think it’s too late,” Bud said. “Tom didn’t seem to think the reaction could be made to work backwards.”

“Maybe there’s another way.” Mr. Swift turned to Tom IV. “You’ve traveled back in time before, haven’t you?”

Tom IV nodded reluctantly. “I see where this is going. Ordinarily I’d say it’s far too dangerous, but given what just happened I guess we can’t make the situation any worse.” He paused a moment to put his thoughts together. “Let’s head back to my universe. I’ll try to put something together.”

“But what about Tom?” Bud asked.

Mr. Swift sighed. “If he had survived I think he would have come to the station by now. The only other places where humans are still alive are Nestria and our colony on Bartonia. It wouldn’t have taken Tom long to find us here.”

Bud nodded. “I guess you’re right. I just can’t believe he’s gone. But how are we going to get to Tom IV’s universe? Wasn’t the Negative Zone down there in Shopton?”

Tom IV pulled out a communicator from his pocket. “We don’t need to use your Zone, Bud. I can just use mine. This device allows me to send a signal back home. My Zone will then open a doorway between our universes.”

“Of course!” Bud replied. “I knew that. How else could you hope to get home when you traveled to other places?”

“Exactly.” He turned to Mr. Swift. “You don’t happen to have any spare spaceships lying around, do you?”

Mr. Swift shook his head. “There are a few Titan-class rockets are docked here at the station but they’re fairly old. I’m afraid the Challenger and the Cosmotron Express were both at Fearing Island.”

“That’s what I thought,” Tom IV replied. “In that case we’re going to need to make a quick stop on our way back.”

* * * * *
 

“Explain this to me one more time,” Tom III said slowly. “You want to borrow the Exedra to do what?”

The entire group was in Tom III’s private laboratory in Shopton, New Mexico. Mr. Swift, Bud Barclay, and Tom IV were there, along with Tom III, the robot Aristotle, Anita Thorwald, and Ben Walking Eagle.

“It’s quite simple, Tom,” the robot Aristotle explained. “They wish to travel back in time to save Tom Swift Sr.’s homeworld. To do this they require a spaceship that is large, powerful, and fast. Your vessel fits the bill perfectly! I am surprised you are having difficult grasping this.”

“It’s the whole time-travel thing that gets me,” Tom III said.

Tom IV nodded. “Yeah, it’s a lot to wrap your head around but we’re going to keep this simple. All we’re going to do is go back in time and stop BG Industries from using the stones. I’m not anticipating any problems.”

“You Toms never do,” Anita Thorwald complained. “Unexpected things always happen, especially when you’re dealing with the hair-raising things we get mixed up with! You can always count on something awful going wrong.”

“Like the time we went to Kwortu’um to look for a cure,” Ben said. “I know. But we don’t have a choice! Their whole world was destroyed. You know if that’d happened to us we’d be asking the same favor.”

“Do you need us to come with you?” Tom III asked.

“If you don’t mind,” Tom IV replied. “None of us know the first thing about flying the Exedra. Faster-than-light starships don’t even exist in my universe! If the three of you could fill in as the crew I’ll supply the time machine.”

“What about us?” Bud asked.

“You can deal with that Ed character after we finally get to him,” Tom IV replied.

“And I will deal with my son,” Mr. Swift replied. “When we find him.”

* * * * *
 

It took Tom IV several weeks to build his time trigger. During that time the gang camped out at his Swift Enterprises facility in southern California.

“This is so different from Shopton,” Bud commented, as he started out the window of Tom IV’s laboratory. Modern cards were driving by, and Bud could see palm trees in the distance. “Everything seems more modern. And faster. I really wish I could try out the beaches.”

“That’s probably not a good idea,” Mr. Swift warned. “We don’t want anyone asking questions about where we came from.”

“It’s probably already too late for that,” Anita replied.

“Not really,” Tom IV said. “I mean, sure, Harlan Ames knows you are here, but he’s kept tight wraps on this place. I don’t think even my sister Mandy knows about you guys. If she did you can bet she’d be down here in a heartbeat.”

“I’d love to meet her,” Ben Walking Eagle replied. “I’ve heard a lot about her.”

“We can do that later,” Tom III said. “We’ve got our work cut out for us.”

“Do you think there will be much danger?” Anita asked.

“Probably not,” Tom IV said. “I mean, yes, there’s always danger when you travel through time, of course. But all we’re going to be doing is going back a few weeks! I’m not going into the prehistoric past like I did last time. A short jump should be pretty simple.”

“Do we know where to go?” Bud asked. “I saw the black cloud but I didn’t happen to notice where it started.”

“BG Industries has a facility in Nebraska,” Mr. Swift remarked. “That’s where Ed’s office is located. I would be willing to wager that the nanites came from there.”

“We can do even better than that,” Tom IV said. “I just happen to have a chronoscope, which I can use to look back through time. When we get to your universe I’ll use it to pinpoint the source of the problem. That way we can make sure we don’t arrive at the wrong place or the wrong time. I’d like to get everything done in a single jump.”

“That should do it!” Bud replied.

* * * * *
 

The Exedra had been parked in a geostationary orbit, with its cloak activated so the governments of Earth wouldn’t detect it. Under Tom IV’s guidance, Tom III and his friends installed the finished time trigger on the ultramodern starship.

“Do we want to test it before we begin?” Bud asked.

“That would be most unwise,” Aristotle replied. “According to my calculations, each use of the device increases the risk of a catastrophic failure that could destroy spacetime itself. It would be far wiser to only use it once. Indeed, it would be wisest to never use it at all, but given the circumstances the danger is acceptable.”

“If you say so,” Anita replied. “Have you done any testing on this, Tom?”

Tom IV nodded. “I’ve done a few small tests on a molecular level. I’m pretty sure I got it right.”

“But this is still new territory, right?” Anita persisted. “I mean, even when you used it to fight Von Doom, or whatever his name was, you still didn’t transport an entire spaceship. You just used your TANC.”

“It was the Black Dragon, and yes, that is correct,” Tom IV replied. “This is something new. But I think it will work.”

“Hey, now that you mention it, why aren’t you using your TANC?” Bud asked.

Tom nodded. “Good question! First, we are going to be bringing the TANC – it’s a handy excursion vehicle. I don’t really want to land the Exedra on Earth, so we’ll use it to get to the surface. However, the reason we need a starship is because this model of the time trigger is very different from the last one. One of the reasons the original one did so much damage to spacetime was because it was a very crude device – it was like using a sledgehammer to open a window. The Exedra has a fusion reactor that produces incredible amounts of energy. I can use that energy to make the trip smoother and less destructive. It greatly increases our odds of success.”

“But you’ve never actually tried it before,” Anita repeated. “You’re just ‘pretty sure’.”

“You don’t have to come,” Tom IV countered. “I’d be glad to drop you off in your own universe before we leave.”

Anita shook her head. “Nothing doing! I’ll come. I just have a bad feeling about all of this.”

Aristotle spoke up. “I am sorry to intrude, but the calibrations are complete. We can depart on your command.”

Tom IV turned to Tom III. “Are you ready?”

He nodded. “My ship is ready to go.”

“I’m ready as well,” Mr. Swift replied.

“Then let’s go,” Tom IV said. “First stop – Tom Swift Jr.’s universe!”

Tom III pressed a button on the ship’s control panel, and the Exedra vanished.

LATE THE NEXT AFTERNOON Tom Swift Jr. entered his private laboratory in Shopton, New York. He and his friend Bud Barclay had spent the entire morning unpacking crates and getting his lab back into shape. Once everything was set up Bud flew back to Fearing Island to manage the installation of the kronolator. Bud promised to be back in a week.

“Don’t forget about Phyl,” Bud had said, as he left the lab. “I think she’s been feeling a bit neglected lately.”

“I won’t,” Tom promised. But all thoughts of the girl vanished as soon as he glanced at the research Ed had given him. It didn’t take him long to realize that he would need more than a week to perfect the time trigger.

I need to buy more time, Tom thought to himself. So let’s see what I can do.

The young inventor walked over to his workbench and flipped a switch on a small, silver device. The boxlike contraption emitted a deep hum. A few seconds later a distortion pattern appeared around the edges of Tom’s laboratory. Tom smiled. That should do it, he thought, as he tweaked the settings on the time dilator. Time now passes three times faster inside the field than it does outside. That will give me three whole weeks to perfect my time machine!

Tom had already moved a triphibian atomicar into his laboratory. Instead of a convertible model, however, he had chosen a semi with a large trailer. It’s large and bulky, but since I’m taking a lot of equipment with me I need all the space I can get! I’d planned on taking the Challenger, but since Bud’s off repairing it this is the best I can do.

The young scientist spent the rest of the day installing equipment in the back of the semi. First he installed the translator, which he had borrowed months before from his space friends on Mars. Next he took his laboratory’s Transmittaton and installed that as well. That will enable me to transport Irene out of the hyperplane right before it crashes, and then cure her of her radiation poisoning, Tom thought approvingly. Now all I need is a functional time machine!

Tom soon found out that working 72-hour days was too strenuous, even for him. Since meals were now 15 hours apart he started keeping food in his laboratory and napping at regular intervals. The workload was enormous but Tom kept at it. He was determined to finish his time trigger before Bud returned to Shopton. I can’t let anyone interfere – not even Bud, he thought. I know they mean well but they just don’t understand. Time travel may be dangerous but I have everything under control. I’ll go back in time, rescue Irene, and come home. Nothing bad will happen.

At first Tom was greatly encouraged by the information on the plans. As Ed had pointed out, they were not the blueprints to a working time trigger. Instead they were the original research notes that had been put together by Dr. Reisenbach. Tom IV had based his time trigger on those notes. In theory Tom Swift Jr. could do the same thing. I never thought of doing it this way, Tom thought as he studied the papers. No wonder I wasn’t able to find a solution! I wasn’t even approaching the problem correctly. This is exactly what I needed.

Tom quickly sketched out a device based on the ideas suggested in the paper. However, he immediately ran into problems. Hours went by as Tom stared at the notes, puzzled.

“I just don’t get it,” he finally said aloud. “This doesn’t make sense! It’s as if parts of it are missing – but I clearly have all of the notes. There’s no gap in the equations or the logic, but it’s just wrong. What am I missing?”

A day went by, and then another, and another. One experimental device after another failed to produce any results. Tom soon realized that he was going to run out of time and still not have a working time trigger. The young inventor became even more discouraged when he glanced at the calendar and realized that there were only two days left before Bud was scheduled to return.

I’ve got to get out of here and clear my head, Tom decided. Maybe a change of scenery will help. I’m sure the solution is there; I just need to step back so I can see it.

Tom locked up his laboratory and left.

A few hours later Bud Barclay unlocked the door to his laboratory and walked inside. “Hey there, Tom! Guess what! I got done early, and–”

Bud stopped in his tracks, amazed. “Hey Tom, what’s an eighteen-wheeler doing in your lab? Is this some new invention I don’t know about?” Bud looked around for his friend but a quick search revealed that Tom was not in his lab.

Must have stepped out for a minute, Bud thought to himself. Hmmm. I wonder what he’s been up to? Bud spied a stack of papers on the workbench and casually walked over to them. When he saw then name Reisenbach on the top one he gasped. He nervously picked them up and started going through them.

“Hey – these are the papers that were stolen from Tom IV’s office!” he said aloud. “What gives?” Bud then glanced at the semi again and his eyes widened. He walked around to the rear of the vehicle and peeked inside the cavernous trailer. When he saw the Transmittaton and the translator inside he gasped. Tom’s building a time machine! But how did he get these plans? What’s going on here?

Bud stood there a minute, thinking. “This is too much for me,” he said at last. “I need help. Something’s just not right here. Maybe I’m just missing something.”

The young pilot walked over to the picture of Aurum City and slid it to one side. He then pressed his finger against the green panel that was hidden behind it. There was a clicking sound, and the laboratory went into secure mode. Bud then grabbed a communicator and contacted Tom IV. Over the radio he explained what he had just found. A moment later the young scientist came out of the Negative Zone and appeared in Tom’s lab.

Tom IV became furious when he saw the documents in Bud’s hand. He grabbed them from Bud and examined them closely. “These are the missing plans, all right!” he said grimly. He glanced at the semi. “And it looks like Tom has been putting them to use! I knew he was the thief. I just knew it! I never bought that line about Ed.”

“So that is a time machine,” Bud said. “I kind of thought it might be. Can you tell if it’s finished?”

Tom IV made a quick examination of the machine. “Nope, it’s not. Tom’s still missing a few very important pieces, but I’m afraid he’s pretty close. The worst part is that I can tell he understands the basic principle. That means he can now finish his machine without these plans. It’s probably too late to stop him. The little thief got what he wanted. I should have known right from the start he was behind all this!”

“So you think Tom stole them?”

“Are you kidding?” Tom IV asked. “Seriously? Of course he did! Tom’s the one that wanted the plans, and he knew they existed. He broke into my lab, stole them, and pinned the whole thing on that Ed guy. It was a setup right from the start!”

“I don’t know,” Bud said dubiously. “That doesn’t sound like Tom.”

“This job has his fingerprints all over it,” Tom IV insisted. “I mean, look at that semi! Look at these plans! You caught him red-handed. What further proof do you want?”

“I guess,” Bud said reluctantly. “It’s just hard to believe he’d do something like that.”

“Hasn’t he told you that he would do anything to get Irene back?” Tom IV asked angrily. “What part of anything do you not understand? What we need to do now is find him and tell him that his big time-travel adventure is stopping right here and right now. Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” Bud said. “I haven’t seen him in a week. But I think I know someone who can help us.”

Bud contacted the outpost in space and asked Grinsby to transport the two of them up to the station. A moment later they appeared in the outpost’s observatory. The spacious room was filled with ultramodern equipment, including a giant megascope space prober. Tom Swift Sr. was standing beside the megascope, examining a globular cluster that was displayed on a terminal beside it. On the wall behind them was a giant glass window through which they could see the Earth rotating below.

Mr. Swift turned around in surprise when he heard them materialize. He was even more surprised when he saw who had accompanied Bud. “Why, Tom! What brings you here?”

Tom IV quickly glanced around the room. “Are we alone? It is safe to talk?”

“For the moment,” the elderly inventor replied. “I’ve been up here the past few days doing some deep-space studies for a conference next month in Berlin. As far as I know I’m the only one in this part of the station.”

Tom IV nodded. After asking Bud to lock the door he showed Mr. Swift the plans that the pilot had discovered in Tom’s laboratory. Mr. Swift’s face fell when he saw them.

“This is all starting to make sense now,” he replied. “I was wondering why Tom had decided to revisit his claytronic stones after the immense disaster they had caused on the centaur. I have a hunch that Ed is your culprit.”

“But he’s a paper-pusher!” Tom IV protested. “It would take a brilliant mind to get past my security.”

“Ed has a brilliant mind,” Mr. Swift replied. “Last week I went to BG Industries to formally hand over the Behemoth. While I was there Ed gave me a tour of his office. He’s actually a very accomplished inventor.”

“I didn’t know that,” Bud exclaimed, amazed.

“Neither did I,” Mr. Swift replied. “Ed must have realized that Tom would need some very strong motivation before he would even consider finishing his claytronic stones. He probably made Tom a deal – if Tom would finish the stones then he would give Tom the plans for your time device. In fact, he probably went to your universe for the sole purpose of getting them for Tom.”

“So that’s why Tom finished the stones,” Bud said. “What a mess!”

“I think we have a much bigger mess on our hands,” Tom IV said, interrupting. “What’s that?”

Mr. Swift and Bud turned their attention out the window behind them. A black shadow was rapidly spreading across North America, swallowing it up in utter darkness.

Bud paled. “I’ve seen that before – it’s a nanite chain reaction! Tom’s stones must have gotten lose and are destroying the planet!”

THE FOLLOWING MORNING Bud Barclay found Tom Swift Jr. in his laboratory at Swift Enterprises. He was surprised to find the room filled with wooden crates. The young inventor was busily packing up his equipment.

“What’s going on, genius boy? Have you decided to leave this joint and move the company to New Mexico or something?”

Tom grinned. “Do you really think I’d leave home and move us to the desert? No, I’m just packing up my equipment so I can resume work on my claytronic stones. The stones are too dangerous to develop on Earth so I’m temporarily moving my lab to the Challenger. That way I can do all of my experimenting in space, far away from civilization.”

Bud looked puzzled. “But I thought your spaceship already had a lab! Didn’t we just spend weeks in it developing those very same stones?”

“It does, but it’s not as fully equipped as this one. That’s one reason why it took us weeks to accomplish what we did. With the equipment I’ve got in this room I should be able to progress much faster.”

“Makes sense,” Bud nodded. “So what’s the plan? Do you have a way to keep the stones from destroying the planet?”

“I think so,” Tom said, as he finished packing up his workbench. The young inventor nailed the crate shut, labeled it, and then placed it on top of the others. “There are really two problems. First, I need to find a way to get a signal through the time barrier. There’s got to be a way to do it – after all, we were able to send electrical signals through without any problems! I have a hunch that there’s some sort of flaw in the time dilator that’s throwing up interference. Once I get that fixed I should be able to control the nanites or stop them altogether.”

“But wasn’t the bigger problem the way that the nanites replicated themselves endlessly?”

Tom nodded. “Yes, it was, but in a way they were doing exactly what I told them to do. You see, I commanded the stones to replicate until they covered an area of so many square feet. The problem is that each individual nanite cluster tried to carry out that order! They didn’t understand that the order was for the group as a whole, and not for each individual unit. I need to add some way for them to communicate with each other so they can better understand what has already been done.”

“Sounds good to me,” Bud said approvingly. “And if anything goes wrong you can just send a kill signal. I like it! So how soon can we begin?”

Tom shook his head. “I’m afraid there’s no we this time, Bud. The experiment is just too dangerous! I don’t want my stones to put anyone else’s life in danger. This is something I need to do alone.”

“Which is exactly why you need your trusted friend and companion!” Bud countered. “This experiment is too dangerous to do by yourself. You need someone to keep you out of trouble! Besides, if you were up on the Challenger all alone you’d forget to eat and wouldn’t last a week. Trust me, skipper – you need a partner.”

“I guess you’re right,” Tom said at last. “I appreciate it, Bud. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Hey, that’s what I’m here for,” his friend replied, grinning. “Oh, I almost forgot! Phyl wants to talk to you – I think she wants to go out on a date. You’ve got to admit you’ve been neglecting her recently.”

Tom nodded ruefully. “I guess it’s been a while since we’ve been out, hasn’t it? I’ve just been so busy lately! First there was the Challenger, and now this. I just haven’t had the time!”

“There’s always this afternoon,” Bud pointed out.

Tom shook his head. “I’d like to, but I really need to get my stones finished as soon as possible. Ned is going to deliver the Behemoth soon and I promised Ed I’d have the stones ready by the time the colonists leave. Can you talk to her and get a rain check for me? I promise the four of us will all go out together as soon as we’re back.”

“Don’t worry about a thing, Tom – I’ll take care of it,” Bud promised.

* * * * *
 

By the end of the day the two teenagers had packed up the entire laboratory, transported the crates to the airstrip, and flown them to Fearing Island. The next day they loaded the equipment onto the Challenger.

“I wish I’d had time to repair the kronolator before we left,” Tom remarked, as Bud piloted the spaceship off the island and into Earth orbit. “I know we won’t need it on this jaunt but it’d still be a nice thing to have.”

“We can always do that when we get back to Earth,” Bud pointed out. “I’ll call Ned this afternoon and ask him to build us one. They take a long time to build, but once they’re built they don’t take long to install. If Ned can have it ready by the time we return home I can install it while you’re off giving the stones to BG Industries.”

“You could install the kronolator without me?” Tom asked incredulously.

“I helped you install the first one,” Bud pointed out. “Besides, I’m sure I could borrow a team from Ned. He’s been building these units commercially, you know. They’re huge sellers.”

Tom nodded. “You have a good point. Come to think of it, though, don’t ask Ned to build a kronolator. I’ve got another idea.”

“Oh? What is it?”

“Wait and see,” Tom said mysteriously.

For the next two weeks Tom labored day and night in his orbital laboratory. Getting the stones to communicate with each other proved to be fairly simple, but finding a way to make the time barrier transparent to radiation was not. It took him a week before he realized the problem was minute impurities in the time induction matrix.

“The flaw is in our manufacturing process,” Tom explained to his friend. “The way we’re fabricating these matrices is just too crude. I had to make 34 of them before I got one that passed the quality tests! There must be a better way to create these but I just don’t see it.”

“Maybe Ned Newton could help with that,” Bud suggested. “After all, manufacturing is his specialty! One of his men may have an idea that could clear the whole problem up.”

“You’re probably right. I’ll talk to him after we wrap up our work here. I’ve still got one more big piece to do, though!”

Bud frowned thoughtfully. “Hmmm. You can communicate with the stones and you can keep them from replicating endlessly. What else am I missing?”

Tom grinned. “Oh, just the ability to have the stones form other shapes. I suspect that’s a feature BG Industries might be interested in.”

“Of course!” Bud exclaimed. “Man, that sounds tricky.”

“It’s really not,” Tom replied. “I can already use the Transmittaton to create objects directly from energy streams. We can feed it a pattern and produce almost anything we want. All I have to do is adapt that technology to these stones. Essentially, the stones will be producing the patterns using themselves as building blocks.”

“So why not just use the Transmittaton?” Bud asked. “It sounds like it’d be a lot easier!”

Tom grinned. “It takes a whole lot of energy to produce mass, flyboy! There’s no way we could just beam an entire city into existence – or even a house, for that matter! The key advantage to these stones is that they’re able to use their surroundings as raw materials. That enables them to reproduce themselves to the point where we can build pretty much anything, of any size. It’s a giant leap over what the Transmittaton is capable of doing.”

“It sounds like you’ve thought of everything,” Bud said approvingly.

“I certainly hope so,” Tom replied.

* * * * *
 

Three days later Tom announced that they were ready for the big test. The two teenagers had already performed a number of small-scale tests to make sure that the changes Tom had made were working. Now, though, Tom was ready to test everything.

“My goal is to feed the stones a blueprint and watch them make it,” Tom explained, as Bud piloted the ship to an unnamed near-Earth asteroid. “If they can do that without creating a chain reaction then I’ll be satisfied.”

When the ship reached the asteroid Tom had selected Bud looked at it, puzzled. The rock was only about two hundred feet long. “That looks kind of small to me, skipper! I don’t think we can land there.”

Tom laughed. “No, definitely not! We don’t need to land, though – we’ll just use one of our repelatron donkeys to transport a single stone down there. The asteroid should have more than enough material to replicate what I want. Besides, if something does goes wrong we won’t have destroyed a large piece of real-estate.”

“Good thinking,” Bud said approvingly. “So what are we going to be manufacturing?”

“Why, a kronolator, of course!”

Bud snapped his fingers. “Wow! Why didn’t I think of that?”

Tom grinned and deployed the repelatron donkey. Using remote control he maneuvered the donkey to the asteroid and deposited the stone onto its surface. The stone was solid green block, measuring two feet on each side. After securing the translucent stone to the asteroid’s surface, Tom then moved the donkey some distance away into space.

Tom then looked at his friend. “Are you ready for this?”

“You bet!” Bud replied enthusiastically. “This is going to work, Tom. I can feel it!”

Tom gingerly pressed a button on the Challenger‘s control panel. The stones immediately started to change color! As they turned dark green and became opaque a distortion pattern appeared around them, looking almost like a heat wave. The stones remained visible, however. After a short delay they began absorbing material from the asteroid and replicated rapidly.

“It’s working!” Tom cried enthusiastically. “I can still see them! If I’m right, this should only take a few minutes.”

Tom was proven correct! The boys watched, fascinated, as the stones took shape. After producing a giant mass of nanites the tiny micromachines began forming a kronolator. It took only a few minutes for the machine to become recognizable. Within twenty minutes the entire process was complete. An entire kronolator was now sitting on the surface of the asteroid!

The two teenagers cheered. “You did it, Tom!”

Tom was immensely pleased. “That will work, Bud. It’s even better than I’d hoped. Now let’s go get that kronolator and head home. I have an appointment with BG Industries!”

* * * * *
 

That evening Tom found himself standing in the private office of Ed Gamino. Ed was immensely pleased. “This is fantastic, Tom – truly fantastic!” he said, as he browsed through the technical blueprints that Tom had given him.

“It’s all there, and it works,” Tom replied proudly. “I haven’t tried it on anything as large as a city, but as long as we’re careful and build the colony in smaller sections we should be all right. When the Behemoth makes it to Epsilon Eridani I’ll come out and handle the city’s construction.”

Ed beamed. “I appreciate it, Tom. I really do. This is everything I had hoped for! You won’t regret this.”

Tom nodded. “It is a marvel. All I ask is that you don’t try building the stones yourself. The time matrices are extremely difficult to manufacture, and the tiniest flaw can lead to a runaway chain reaction. I’m giving you the blueprints so you can see what I’ve done but I want you to promise me that you will never, ever use them. I will personally bring the stones for your colony.”

“You have my word,” Ed promised. “I’ll file these away and leave them alone. And now it’s time for me to fulfill my part of the bargain!”

Ed got out of his chair, walked over to a secure filing cabinet, and unlocked the top drawer. He rifled through it for a moment and then pulled out a blue folder labeled “Time Trigger”. Ed handed Tom the entire folder.

“Here you are, just as I promised! This is everything I got from Tom IV’s laboratory – my only copy. It is all yours, my boy. I only hope that you are able to get it to work. I couldn’t understand a word of it, myself!”

Tom glanced through the folder. His pulse quickened as he realized that the documents were genuine! As he glanced over the hand-written equations his mind began to race. This is it! Tom thought excitedly. This is exactly what I needed! I can’t believe it. I’m finally holding the missing key to time travel!

“Now those aren’t actual blueprints,” Ed warned. “I think those are the research notes that Tom IV used to design his own time trigger. As far as I could tell Tom IV didn’t keep any blueprints. That’s all I was able to find.”

“This is all I need,” Tom replied. “This will work fine.”

“Wonderful! Wonderful. Remember, be sure to bring Irene here after you rescue her! I want to meet her.”

“I’ll do that,” Tom promised. “And thanks.”

“No, thank you. This is a day that will change the course of history forever! Mankind will never forget what you’ve done, Tom – never.”

“DO YOU WANT ME to go with you to confront him?” Tom Swift IV asked.

Tom Swift Jr. slowly shook his head. “It’s a tempting thought, but I have a feeling it’s best if the entire world didn’t find out about the multiverse. We don’t know how many people at BG Industries knows about the Negative Zone and there’s no telling who we might run into on our way there. No, I’ll handle this and will let you know what I discover.”

“How soon can you talk to him?” Tom IV asked.

“Probably not sooner that Monday. I’m sure he’s out of the office on weekends. I’ll call him, though, and set up a private meeting for Monday morning. This should be a very short discussion!”

Two days later Tom Swift Jr. found himself standing in front of a giant glass building that rested deep in the heart of Nebraska. Tom had to admit it was a very classy research center. The landscaping around the structure was artfully done, with lush green trees, flowers, and bushes dotting the landscape. The structure reminded Tom of an oasis in the desert.

Bud had volunteered to go with him but Tom told him he could handle it. This surprised Bud, but Tom explained this was probably all a misunderstanding. “I don’t think Mr. Gamino actually means any harm – he probably just got a little carried away. I don’t want it to look like we’re threatening him. I just want to have a private one-on-one conversation and get to the bottom of what’s going on.”

“If you say so, boss,” Bud replied reluctantly.

Tom stepped into the building’s magnificent lobby. The spacious room was dotted with modern chairs and furniture. On the walls hung rows of paintings of random colors and designs that Tom thought must be examples of modern art. There are some things I’ll just never understand, he thought wryly.

The young inventor walked up to the receptionist. Before he could say anything she spoke. “Why good morning, Mr. Swift! Ed Gamino is expecting you. Just take the elevator to the left – he’s on the fourth floor, down the hall, first door on the right.”

Tom looked surprised. “Do I need a visitor’s badge or anything?”

The secretary shook her head. “You’re always welcome here, Mr. Swift. Feel free to make yourself at home.”

Tom thanked her and made his way up to Ed’s office. To his surprise he had no secretary. As soon as he opened the door he found himself in a spacious, modern office, filled with all sorts of gadgets and machinery. I had no idea Ed was an inventor, Tom thought. But I guess that makes sense. He does run BG Industries, after all!

“Why there you are!” Ed boomed. When Tom entered the office he had been standing over a computer terminal, but as soon as he saw the young scientist he rushed over and eagerly shook his hand. “Please, have a seat – sit anywhere! I’m so glad you could come. I’ve been expecting you for days.”

Tom took a seat in front of Ed’s enormous desk. “You’ve been expecting me?”

“Of course! You’re no dummy, Tom. No dummy at all! I’m sure you’ve discovered by now what I’ve done and have come to ask for an explanation. No one can put one over on you, that’s for sure! Your track record is most impressive. Why, you single-handedly brought the entire nation of Kranjovia to its knees!”

Tom was astonished. “So you knew we would catch you? Then why did you do it?”

Ed smiled. “Why, we did it for you, young man! I decided to help you out – to take the one step I knew you would never take. I did it for the good of all mankind. But tell me – just to satisfy an old man’s curiosity – how did you find out we’d built a Negative Zone?”

“Tom Swift IV came and paid me a visit,” Tom explained. “He told me someone had broken into his lab and stole some things. With a little research we discovered that the intruder came from this building. It turns out the spacial disturbance made by the Negative Zone is very easy to track. You weren’t hard to find.”

“I do wish you had brought Tom IV,” Ed said. “I really do! I would loved to have met him. And to think that there are even more Tom Swifts out there! Possibly an infinite number! It’s amazing. And people don’t even know it!”

“You’re not supposed to know it either,” Tom pointed out. “How did you even find out about it?”

“Why, you told us! When we asked for scientific assistance your father gave us everything you had. The blueprints for the Negative Zone were mixed in with a whole stack of other designs.”

Tom sighed. “I knew I should have been more closely involved with the knowledge transfer. Ed, you weren’t supposed to get those files. That was our most closely-held secret! At least, it was supposed to be.”

Ed nodded. “I can certainly understand why! But once I saw it I knew I had to try building one! I just couldn’t resist. I assure you no one else in this whole company knows about it. I’m the only one! And I built the Negative Zone device right here in my office – all by myself! My, but it was a tricky bit of work. Worth it, though! It’s not every day you get to visit another universe.”

Tom was astonished. “You built it yourself?”

“Of course! I’m an inventor too, you know. Someone had to design the machines that this company makes! I didn’t do them all, of course, but I’m not bad – not as good as you, though! You and your father are my heroes – always have been, always will be. We can’t all be like you, but we can all do our part!”

“Then why did you do it?” Tom asked. “Why did you break into his lab and steal the time trigger plans?”

“I didn’t steal anything at first, you know,” Ed began. “I built the Zone just to satisfy my own curiosity – I wasn’t going to touch anything. I made quite a few trips without doing a bit of harm! But then I saw how reluctant you were to perfect your magnificent claytronic stones. I understood, of course, but I though you were misguided. I have the utmost confidence in you! All you needed was a push – the right motivation. And I know what you want more than anything else – the one problem you’ve never been able to solve.”

Tom was taken aback. “You’re talking about time travel!”

Ed nodded. “Exactly. Time travel. You just can’t do it. I think you could do it if you weren’t so emotionally invested in the outcome; your heart is clouding your mind. But that’s neither here nor there. The point is, you can’t solve that problem. But Tom IV did! And you just need his plans. So I took them! I’ve got them right here. I can’t make any sense out of them, and I’m not going to try, but I bet they make a lot of sense to you. All I ask is that you perfect your claytronic stones and I’ll hand them over to you. All of them – I won’t even keep a copy for myself. You can rescue Irene and all will be well.”

“But the stones are so dangerous,” Tom protested. “I destroyed an entire planetoid.”

“It was your first attempt! First attempts always go wrong. You can fix the problem, my boy! Look. We won’t use the stones here on Earth. We’ll only use them one time – on a completely uninhabited planet, to build our city in the stars. You can even be there to supervise it! You can add in some kind of failsafe so it doesn’t happen again.”

When Ed saw that he was still reluctant the energetic man continued. “I’m not a monster, Tom. I just want to help. And in return for fixing your stones – for making them safe for humanity – I’ll give you the plans you need to save Irene. What do you say?”

“Let me think about it,” Tom said at last. “This is too much to process all at once. I need to figure this out.”

“Of course, of course,” Ed replied, beaming. “Just let me know. I’ll be right here. Feel free to drop in anytime. That’s why I don’t have a secretary – I don’t want to discourage visitors.”

Tom got up to leave, and then he stopped. “Oh. I almost forgot! I’m afraid you’re going to have to destroy your copy of the Zone. We can’t–”

“I understand completely,” Ed replied. “I expected that! I’ve had my fun and I’m done. I’ll destroy it as soon as you leave. Don’t even worry about it.”

“Thanks,” Tom said. He shook Ed’s hand and left.

* * * * *
 

When he got to the parking lot he pulled out a communicator and contacted Laurence Grinsby, the Transmittaton chief, who was stationed on his outpost in space. “Hey, Laurence!”

“Hey there Tom!” Laurence replied. “How did the meeting go?”

“It went…well,” Tom said at last. “Hey, I need you to do me a favor. Instead of transporting me back to my office, can you send me directly to these coordinates?” Tom gave him a set of figures.

“Can do, chief,” Laurence replied. A moment later Tom felt the Transmittaton grab him. There was a flash of light, and when the light faded he found himself standing at the top of a small, grassy hill. Off in the distance he could see Lake Carlopa. It was an overcast day, with a hint of rain in the future. Gusts of wind rattled the trees.

Tom walked to the top of the hill. At its crest was a small, private graveyard, dedicated to the Goddard family. Tom opened the wrought-iron gate and walked inside. In the back of the graveyard he found a small marker, signifying Irene’s grave. He knew she wasn’t actually buried there, for none of her remains were ever recovered from the wreckage of the hyperplane. That was to be expected; her plane hit the ocean at several times the speed of sound, and very little of it survived. But Tom still came here from time to time when he wanted to feel close to Irene again. He missed her tremendously – sometimes more than he could bear.

Tom knelt down beside the tombstone and used his finger to trace over the carving of her name in the granite. He thought about the last time he had seen her alive, back in Brungaria. He thought about the last message she had left for him, moments before being killed in the crash. “I never got to say goodbye,” he whispered.

There were a lot of things he never got to do. He never got to give her the engagement ring he made for her. For months he had pictured the look she would have on her face when he finally handed it to her and asked her to marry him. Now he would never get that chance. They were supposed to have a future together – they were going to create a new tomorrow for civilization. She should have been there when I built my rocket ship, Tom thought. When I discovered Atlantis. When I set foot on the Moon. When I met the Space Friends. She should have been a part of all of that – but she wasn’t. Because of me. Because of a mistake I made that cost her her life. I put her in that grave. I took her future from her.

Tom looked at the tombstone with a tremendous feeling of regret. But I can fix this! I can bring her back. I can still give her that ring. We can still have a future together. I’ve got to try – I’ve just got to. She deserves that.

The young inventor stood up and looked over the lake. Dark clouds rolled overhead, threatening to rain but not yet raining. All sorts of emotions filled Tom – elation, regret, concern, trepidation. But he knew what he was going to do. The decision was made. Tom took out his communicator and contacted Lawrence once more. “I need you to do me another favor. Can you transport me back to BG Industries?”

“Can do,” Lawrence replied.

* * * * *
 

An hour later Tom materialized inside his laboratory at Swift Enterprises. Bud Barclay was waiting there, along with Tom’s father. “So how did it go?” his father asked.

“It went very well,” Tom replied. “It was all a big misunderstanding, really. It turns out they got the plans for the Negative Zone from you.”

Mr. Swift winced. “I had a feeling that was the case. I’m sorry about that, Tom. I take full responsibility. I’ll make sure that it never happens again.”

Tom nodded. “It’s ok. The only reason Ed built it was to satisfy his own curiosity. He didn’t mean any harm. When I confronted him he promised to destroy it and never use it again. He struck me as an honest person – I’m sure that’s what he will do.”

“But what about the time trigger?” Bud asked. “Stealing the plans is not exactly an above-board move! We can’t let Ed decide to experiment with time travel. He could put the whole universe in jeopardy!”

“Bud’s right,” Mr. Swift agreed. “We don’t dare let anyone build a time trigger, no matter what their intentions. That technology is just too dangerous.”

Tom’s mind raced. “Ed didn’t know anything about the time trigger,” he said at last. “He confessed to building the Negative Zone and using it to travel between universes, but he didn’t steal anything. I suspect the thief is someone else entirely – perhaps an enemy Tom IV has dealt with in the past.”

“Are you sure?” Mr. Swift said doubtfully.

“It makes sense,” Bud said. “I mean, what are the chances that Ed could have even found the blueprints? We don’t even know where they’re stored, and I bet Tom IV has all kinds of advanced equipment guarding them. You’d need a high-class inventive mind just to get past all of that.”

“That’s true,” Mr. Swift replied. “I hadn’t thought of that. I guess you’re right.”

He stood up. “I’m sorry for causing this mess, Tom. When you see Tom IV can you give him my apologies?”

“Of course,” Tom replied. “I’m sure he’ll understand. In fact, he probably already has plans in motion to make sure this never happens again.”

“Is there anything else?” Mr Swift asked.

“There is one other thing. Ed has convinced me to take another look at claytronic technology.”

His father looked at him in surprise. “Really? I thought you had decided that technology was far too dangerous!”

“It has dangers, but it has promise as well,” Tom explained. “I believe I can build in sufficient safeguards to prevent another disaster like the one that happened on Chariklo. Besides, Ed has promised to only use the stones one time, on an uninhabited planet – and I can be there to supervise it. I think, if properly managed, the risk is minimal. It would certainly be a tremendous help to the project!”

Mr. Swift nodded. “If you think the risk is worth taking then I’ll support you, Son.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Tom replied.

* * * * *
 

“So Ed didn’t steal the plans,” Tom IV said slowly. “I guess it makes sense – it would take a mind like yours to get through all of my security. A paper-pusher in an office certainly couldn’t do it!”

“We’re really sorry about all of this,” Tom added. “My dad is deeply embarrassed. We’re going to take steps to make sure this never happens again.”

Tom IV nodded. “I understand. I’ve lost secrets myself before. The good news is I’ve come up with a technological solution. I’m going to put an encryption key on our Zones. Before you can contact me your Zone will have to send me an encrypted signal – a signal that only I know how to produce. If anyone else builds a Zone they won’t be able to reach mine because they won’t have the key.”

“That sounds like a good solution,” Tom agreed. “I’m assuming you’re not going to give us the plans for generating that signal!”

Tom IV smiled. “You know what Ben Franklin always used to say! ‘Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.’”

Tom laughed. He stood up to go. “Is there anything else?”

Tom IV shook his head. “No, that’s all. Thanks for letting me know what’s going on. I’m glad Ed was so agreeable about destroying the Negative Zone. The only thing that bothers me now are the time trigger plans. If Ed didn’t steal them then someone else did – and I need to find out who that person was. Time travel is just too dangerous to be messed with.”

“Good luck on your search,” Tom replied.

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.

TOM FRANTICALLY contacted the Challenger over his suit radio. “Donnie – transport us off this rock and get us into space immediately!”

As the two teenagers raced across the pitted surface of the asteroid Bud glanced behind them. “It’s gaining on us!”

With adrenaline surging through their veins, the two made a mighty dash for the ship. As they neared the entrance they suddenly felt the Transmittaton grab them. A moment later they found themselves standing on the bridge of Tom’s spaceship.

Before Bud could even catch his breath Tom yanked off his helmet and was giving orders. “Activate the emergency liftoff procedure!” he commanded. “If those nanites touch us…!”

Donnie entered the final setting and slammed the final switch into place. Tom was almost knocked off his feet by the sudden blast of acceleration. The asteroid quickly disappeared from view as the ship rocketed into space.

Bud let out a long, slow sigh of relief. “Whew! That was a close one, Tom. For a minute there I thought you’d run your final experiment.”

“We’re not out of it yet,” Tom warned. “The nanites are still out of control. Donnie – bring us around so we can see the planetoid, but keep us at a safe distance.”

Donnie slowly brought the ship around until Chariklo was in view. Everyone gasped. “It’s being eaten,” someone said aloud. More than a quarter of the rock was already shrouded in complete darkness, and the black cloud was rapidly consuming the rest of the planetoid.

“That’s a pretty accurate description,” Tom said regretfully. “My stones are consuming it at an incredible rate.”

“Isn’t there some way we can stop it?” Bud asked. “Can’t you hit it with an electromagnetic pulse?”

Tom shook his head. “The pulse would never make it through the time barrier. It would have no effect.”

“What about missiles?” Bud asked. “Can we blow it up?”

Tom looked at him strangely. “This is the Challenger, flyboy! It doesn’t have missiles. None of our ships do.”

“I bet that Kranjovian crate in the shuttlecraft bay is armed,” Bud pointed out.

Tom nodded. “I’m sure you’re right. However, I doubt it would do much good. Even if we did manage to blow up a few nanites there are trillions more to take their place. We could never hit the entire asteroid at once.”

“So what do we do?” Bud asked.

“We wait. I’m afraid that’s all we can do. We just wait until the stones run out of minerals to consume. At that point the reaction will die and the time field will collapse. We can then hit Chariklo with that electromagnetic pulse you were talking about, just to make sure the time field never re-engages.” He shook his head. “Could you imagine what would have happened if we’d run this experiment on Earth? It would have destroyed the entire planet!”

Bud shivered. “Let’s just be glad we tried your doomsday device out here in space. Do you think you can fix the stones so they don’t do that again?”

Tom shook his head. “I’m not even going to try. My stones are incredibly dangerous. One false move and I could wipe out all life on Earth! I think it’s best if I moved on to something else. This is one invention that should never see the light of day.”

It took less than thirty minutes for the entire asteroid to be consumed in darkness. Five minutes later the darkness began collapsing, revealing a smooth, featureless blob of green goo. Tom looked at it and sighed. “I’m just glad no one lived there,” he commented. “We got lucky – really lucky.”

When the last bit of darkness disappeared Tom gave the command to emit the electromagnetic pulse. The Challenger spent the next several hours orbiting the devastated planetoid, bombarding the rock with electromagnetic energy. Tom went over the entire asteroid six times.

“I’ve got to make sure it’s completely inert,” Tom explained. “I know we’re not detecting any radiation but I don’t dare take any chances. This stuff is just too dangerous to fool around with.”

“So what do we do now?” Bud asked. “Just leave it here?”

“Oh no,” Tom said. “Definitely not! I think the only safe thing to do is push it into an orbit that will make it fall into the Sun. That way we can be sure that it’s destroyed. The nanites are sturdy but they can’t survive the intense heat of solar fusion.”

Bud nodded. “That makes sense. But how are you going to change the asteroid’s orbit? After all, that rock is 160 miles long! Even the Challenger can’t budge it. Our repelatrons aren’t that strong, no matter what our marketing department says.”

The young scientist grinned. “True, but I’ve got another plan. While this ship can’t change that asteroid’s orbit, we can make something that’ll do the trick. All we need are the right ingredients.”

Tom gave the order to deploy his space solatron. For the rest of the day the majority of the crew worked outside in the vacuum of space, deploying the enormous solar array that powered Tom’s matter-maker. By the end of the day the giant machine was in place.

“I don’t get it,” Bud remarked, after they were finally back on board. “I thought you told me there wasn’t enough sunlight out here to run your solartron.”

Tom nodded. “That’s true when we’re talking about making large quantities of matter. However, all I want to make are a few grams of antimatter. The solartron should be able to do that in a few hours, even way out here. By the time we get up in the morning I should have all the material I need.”

“A few grams?” Bud asked. “What could you possibly hope to do with that? That’s not even enough to sneeze at!”

Tom grinned. “Antimatter is pretty potent stuff, Bud. Whenever an atom of antimatter comes into contact with an atom of matter, the two annihilate themselves in a burst of gamma rays. Don’t you remember our experience with antimatter in the caves of nuclear fire? A thousand grams of antimatter can produce the same energy as 40 megatons of TNT.”

“I get it!” Bud exclaimed. “You’re going to build an antimatter bomb and use it to subtly nudge the giant blob of goo into a new course. The force of the explosion should shift its orbit.”

“Exactly. The only downside is that it will take years for the asteroid to reach the Sun. I haven’t crunched the numbers yet, but it doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out that a rock moving rather slowly about a billion miles from the Sun is going to take a long time to cover that distance.”

“But it should be safe,” Bud added. “I mean, it’s not like it can cause any further harm.”

“I hope not,” Tom replied sincerely. “Let’s hope we never find out.”

After configuring the solartron to produce antimatter Tom went to bed. The next morning he got up, took a shower, and rushed to the solartron. As he was poring over the results Bud walked into the room, carrying a plate of doughnuts.

“How’s it look?” Bud asked, as he munched on a chocolate-covered doughnut.

“It looks like the energy the solartron is gathering from the sun is even weaker than I thought,” Tom admitted. He took a cream-filled doughnut off the plate and began eating it. “I’d really hoped we would be able to produce antimatter at a much faster rate. It looks like I’m going to have to let it run for at least another day. On the bright side, that will give me time to run the calculations and figure out how to change its orbit. Orbital mechanics is–”

Tom’s train-of-thought was was interrupted when Donnie walked into the room. “I hate to bother you, skipper, but your dad just called. He said that he has a meeting with the Barclay Group in an hour and they want to talk to you about a few things.”

Tom sighed. “All right. I guess I can attend. Can you get the telejector conferencing set up in my lab?”

“Sure thing,” he promised.

When he left the room Bud looked at his quizzically. “What’s this about a telejector? Do we have one of those on board?”

Tom shook his head. “Not exactly. It was actually Dad’s idea – he’s the one that did all the development work on it. Basically, I’m going to sit in front of a 3D camera. The video feed will then be beamed back to Earth, and a telejector at Swift Enterprises will create a three-dimensional image of me in the conference room. It will look like I’m there, even though I won’t be.”

“Nice!” Bud remarked. “But how will you see the other people?”

“On a normal TV screen,” Tom explained. “I haven’t installed the viewing piece of the system on any of our spaceships just yet. I always seem to have more pressing things to worry about.”

“Like rogue centaurs,” Bud quipped.

Tom sighed. “Exactly.”

An hour later Tom sat down in his laboratory and activated the video broadcasting equipment. It took a few moments to establish the connection and receive the remote feed, but everything was finally set up.

“You look great, Son!” Mr. Swift commented. “This is working even better than I hoped. It’s not every day I get to have a meeting with someone in deep space! This opens up a whole new era in communication technology.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Tom replied. Tom could see his father on the video screen in his lab. “All the credit goes to you, though, Dad. This is your idea.”

Mr. Swift made the introductions. “I’m sure you remember the representatives from BG Industries,” he began.

“It’s good to see you again!” Ed Gamino boomed. “I’ve got to say we’re very pleased with the ship you designed for us – very pleased indeed! It’s everything we hoped for and more besides. I’m sure the Behemoth will have no trouble bringing the finest minds on Earth to Epsilon Eridani. No trouble at all!”

“I’m glad you are pleased with her,” Tom replied. “I take it the construction is still on-schedule?”

“Absolutely,” Ned Newton said. “It will be delivered on-time.”

“Oh, hi there,” Tom remarked. “I didn’t see you sitting there. How have things been?”

“No problems to report,” Ned replied.

“That’s remarkable!” Tom quipped. “That’s got to be a first.”

“What’s that?” Ed asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Tom said quickly. “Was there something in particular that you wanted to talk to me about?”

“What?” Ed asked. “Oh, yes! Right! Of course there is! I want to talk to you about your claytronic stones, my boy!” Ed eagerly rubbed his hands together. “The stones of destiny. Indeed, the stones of greatness! I must hear about them. I must have them! Have you perfected them? When can we see a demonstration? How soon can we get a shipment of them?”

“I’m afraid I’ve had to cancel that project,” Tom said regretfully.

“Cancel!” Ed exclaimed, astonished. “What’s this? I’ve never heard of such a thing! Did they not work?”

“Oh no. They worked. In fact, they worked all too well! I couldn’t make them stop working.”

“I don’t understand,” Ed replied. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Did something go wrong?” Mr. Swift asked.

Tom nodded. “Yesterday I ran a full-scale experiment of the stones. They worked, all right – in fact, they were able to replicate themselves with astonishing speed.”

“Then they’re a success!” Ed exclaimed.

“I’m afraid not,” Tom said. “The problem is that the stone did not stop replicating. They kept reproducing themselves until they consumed the entire asteroid I was experimenting with.”

“Oh my,” Mr. Swift gasped. “Tom, that’s terrible! Why, if you had tried that experiment here on Earth–”

Tom nodded. “Exactly. The stones are just far too dangerous. If I had tried my little test in Shopton we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. The stones would have turned the entire surface of the planet into a sea of green nanites. Nothing would be left.”

“But surely it’s not that bad,” Ed commented. “You just need a better way to control them. I admit there are risks, but think of the enormous possibilities! Claytronics represents the greatest scientific advance that mankind has ever seen. I’m sure you could design a failsafe of some sort – some way to prevent them from spreading out-of-control.”

“It’s too risky,” Tom argued. “All it would take is a single mistake to wipe everything out. I don’t want to be the person that wiped out all mankind.”

“But what if we only used it on uninhabited worlds? That way no life would be endangered.”

“You would still have to transport the goo to those worlds,” Tom pointed out. “Besides, do we really want to destroy yet another piece of space real-estate? I’m sorry, but my answer is no and that’s final.”

Ed paused for a moment. He was clearly greatly disturbed. “I understand,” he said at last. “That’s responsible of you – very responsible indeed. I commend you for thinking of humanity. Perhaps we can revisit this later after the situation has changed.”

“Changed?” Tom asked. “In what way?”

“We’ll take care of it,” Ed replied evasively. “Don’t worry. We’ve got everything under control.”

“Dad?” Tom said.

“The project is going smoothly,” Mr. Swift confirmed. “Still, it would be nice to have you back. When do you think you can return to Shopton?”

Tom thought for a moment. “At top acceleration I think I could get home in nine days,” he said thoughtfully.

“We’ll be ready,” Ed promised.

As Tom closed the connection and left his laboratory he stopped to think. Ready? Ready for what?

THE COSMOTRON EXPRESS ARRIVED two hours later, ready to accept the Kranjovian prisoners and transport them back to Earth. Harlan Ames, the security chief at Swift Enterprises, transferred the soldiers to the other spaceship. “They’ll be taken into custody as soon as we land,” he promised Tom. “The State Department is very interested in questioning them.”

“You’ll never get anything out of us!” General Volnas screamed. “All hail the glorious might of Kranjovia! You will regret this, Tom Swift! I will have my revenge!”

“We’ve heard that tune before,” Bud said, yawning. “Honestly, it’s getting a bit old. You should be more creative! Try something different.”

“You have a big mouth, but an empty head,” the general sneered. “The doom of your country is inevitable. We will dance on your graves.”

“You’ve got it backwards,” Harlan replied. “The dictatorship in Kranjovia is highly unstable. Your fearless leader’s policies have caused the Kranjovians to be in an eternal state of unrest. Declaring war on the United States really wasn’t the smartest thing for him to do.”

“The Kranjovians declared war?” Tom asked, surprised.

“A group of Kranjovian soldiers attacked a spaceship of the United States,” Harlan explained. “Our government has decided to interpret that as an act of war.”

“You’ll never defeat us!” General Volnas screamed. “Your pitiful forces will be crushed by our superior might!”

“We don’t have to defeat you,” Harlan replied. “You’re doing that all by yourself! Once your people realized that its leaders had declared war on a nation that had space aliens for allies, they began rioting in the streets. Even your army is in a state of panic! By the end of the day your government will be overthrown and the United States won’t have had to fire a single shot.”

“Nice going!” Bud told the general. “That’ll definitely earn you a spot in the Kranjovian Hall of Fame.”

The general continued to shout incoherent threats as Harlan marched them off to his ship. Bud leaned back in his chair and smiled. “You know, that went pretty well.”

“It did,” Tom grinned. “That’s probably the last we’ll see of him! There’s no time to rest on our laurels, though. We’ve got a date with a centaur that I don’t want to miss!”

“A what?” Bud asked, puzzled. “When did we start dating mythological creatures?”

“You’ll see,” Tom said mysteriously.

Tom and Bud spent the next two days working on the claytronic stones. Tom spent his time in the laboratory while Bud dismantled the kronolator and brought its pieces to Tom. The young inventor worked feverishly on his latest idea, often staying up far into the night.

By the end of the second day Bud had finally finished taking apart the kronolator. He brought its last piece into Tom’s laboratory and wearily sank down into an overstuffed chair. Bud glanced around the lab and saw that it was in complete disarray. Electronic components were strewn all over the floor, and a complicated mess of tubes, wires, and circuits covered the workbench. At the far end of the room a giant aquarium had been converted into a holding tank for an unidentified green goo.

“So what’s this all about, skipper?” Bud asked. “Why did we chop up your greatest invention and scatter its parts all over the floor?”

Tom grinned. “Sorry about that. I’m usually not this messy but there just wasn’t anywhere else to put it. The Challenger is a pretty big ship, but laboratory space is still at a premium. Parts that are on the floor are easy to find.

“In answer to your question, though, this is all about the claytronic stones. The problem with them has always been that the reaction takes far too long. Turning a vat of goo into a bicycle isn’t nearly as useful if it takes a week to complete. The Barclay Group wants me to grow entire cities with this stuff. Do you have any idea how long that would take?”

“A month of Sundays?” Bud asked.

Tom laughed. “More like a year of Sundays. In fact, our Sun might burn out before it finished! But with the time distortion field everything changes. If I can control time then it doesn’t really matter how long something takes. Sure, it’ll still take three days for the stones to take on a new shape, but if three days inside the field are just a few moments outside the field then it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“I get it,” Bud replied. “So you’re trying to build a portable time dilator so that the stones can work inside the field?”

Tom shook his head. “Not really. These are replicating stones, remember. What I want is for the stones to produce their own time dilator as they expand. Otherwise they’d replicate until they reached the end of the time field and then stop. My work has been focusing on simplifying the time dilator to something that the stones could replicate on their own.”

“Sounds like a plan!” Bud said. “But how does the smoke fit in?”

“What smoke?” Tom asked, puzzled. He turned his head and saw a column of smoke billowing in one corner of the lab. His eyes widened. “That’s not a part of the experiment – that’s a fire!”

“Then why didn’t the fire alarms go off?”

“Oh no!” Tom exclaimed. He watched as the beaker that had been smoldering caught fire. Flames climbed toward the ceiling. Am ember landed on a nearby chair and quickly caught fire. “We took the smoke detectors out when we were rebuilt the lab, and they never got replaced! Bud – go pull the fire alarm in the hall while I put this thing out!”

As Bud raced outside the lab Tom searched the room for a fire extinguisher. The flames quickly consumed the leather chair and spread to the bookcase, torching Tom’s collection of scientific journals. In the flickering firelight Tom spied an extinguisher mounted on the back wall. He grabbed it, removed the pin, and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Tom glanced at the gauge and saw that it had no pressure. A quick examination revealed why – a hole had been punched all the way through the wall of the container.

“Must have been damaged in the battle with the Space Legion,” Tom muttered. He tossed it aside and glanced around the room in panic, as the flames drew nearer to the invention on his workbench. Smoke began clouding the room, making it difficult to breathe.

A moment later the fire alarm went off. Sirens echoed down the corridor and red lights flashed. Bud raced back into the room. “What do we do now, skipper?”

“We get out of here!” Tom shouted. He and Bud ran out of the room. Tom slammed the door behind them and quickly pressed a series of buttons on a nearby panel. As crewmembers began racing toward them they heard a huge sucking sound coming from inside the lab. Tom could hear glass breaking and pieces of equipment smashing into each other.

“What did you do?” Bud shouted over the deafening noise.

“I vented the lab’s air into space,” Tom explained. “Fires need oxygen to burn. With the air vented the fire won’t have any fuel and will go out. I just can’t believe I didn’t have working fire-fighting equipment in the lab. That was a terrible oversight.”

“Especially since your father invented his own fire-fighting equipment,” Bud needled. “You really should carry some of his fire-fighting pellets with you.”

“I normally do,” Tom replied, sighing. “It’s just one of those things I didn’t think about when planning this trip.”

“I guess even geniuses can’t think of everything,” Bud replied, grinning.

After Tom was sure the fire had gone out the young inventor repressurized the room and opened the door. He shook his head when he saw the damage. The far left of the room had been scorched by the blaze, turned into a pile of ashes and ruined equipment. Other instruments had been violently thrown around when the air was evacuated from the room, causing glass and bits of broken electronics to be strewn about. “At least the workbench didn’t catch fire,” Tom remarked. “That’s something.”

After sending the crew out to find a working fire-extinguisher, Tom and Bud started cleaning up the lab. By the next morning they had returned the room to working order. The crew was able to locate a box of Mr. Swift’s fire-fighting pellets, which Tom gratefully placed in a cabinet on the wall.

“What are you going to do about the burnt furniture?” Bud asked.

“I’ll just replace it after we get back to Fearing Island,” Tom replied. “Right now it’s not important. The good news is that my stones are back in working order – and just in time for our date with the centaur!”

Tom left the lab and headed up to the bridge. Bud followed. When they made it to the bridge Tom walked over to Donnie McGinnis, who was at the helm. “We’re almost there, skipper,” Donnie reported. “You can already see her on the scope. We should be touching down on Chariklo in less than twenty minutes.”

“The centaur is a rock?” Bud asked.

“Exactly,” Tom replied. “As you know, the main asteroid belt lies between Mars and Jupiter. However, there are also a number of asteroids that orbit between Jupiter and Neptune. These asteroids are called centaurs. Their orbits are usually unstable. We’re headed for a centaur named Chariklo, which is about 160 miles across – a pretty good sized-rock!”

“And it’s way out here?” Bud asked.

Tom nodded. “Its orbit actually follows Uranus pretty closely. I thought it would be a great place to test the claytronic stones. We can just set them down on the surface and let them replicate. With luck, they should be able to use the minerals in the asteroid to reproduce themselves.”

Donnie landed the Challenger on Chariklo without incident. Tom and Bud put on spacesuits and carried boxes of equipment out to the surface of the asteroid. The rock was a light-gray planetoid with a heavily-cratered surface. Boulders of all sizes were strewn about, with a fine layer of dust covering everything. All around them was the vacuum of space, dark and unforgiving. A few weak stars could be seen. The sun was a small yellow dot, barely noticeable.

“Not much to look at,” Bud remarked. “I can’t say this is an inviting place.”

Tom nodded. “It does seem to lack many of the comforts of home. But it’ll work just fine for our experiment.”

As the two boys carried the carried the equipment away from the ship Bud noticed how difficult it was to walk.“There’s really not much gravity on this rock,” Bud commented.

“It’s almost negligible,” Tom agreed. “But our magnetic boots seem to be working. Luckily this asteroid has a high-iron content. We should be fine.”

The two teenagers walked about a tenth of a mile away from the Challenger. They set the boxes on the ground and began emptying them. Tom took out his time dilator and began connecting it. When he was ready he set a container of green goo next to it and stepped back about 100 feet.

“So what’s going to happen?” Bud asked, as Tom took a remote control out of his spacesuit pocket.

“For this first experiment I’m not going to try anything complicated,” Tom replied. “All I want to do is see how quickly the stones can replicate themselves. The time dilator has an effective radius of about fifteen feet. If this works, the stones should replicate both themselves and the dilator until they cover a radius of fifty feet.” Tom’s eyes glowed with excitement. “We should be able to watch the stones replicate in real-time – right before our very eyes!”

Bud nodded. “Sounds good, genius boy! Let’s see what these stones can do.”

Tom pressed a button on the remote. The time dilator glowed to life! A second later the area surrounding the dilator was plunged into darkness.

“Of course,” Tom muttered. “I knew that. We can’t actually see through the dilation field. But the stones should be replicating inside.”

“How will we know if–” Bud suddenly stopped as he noticed the black field start to grow. It expanded slowly at first, but its pace picked up over time.

“It’s working!” Tom cried enthusiastically. “The stones have to be replicating. The time field is expanding!”

He watched eagerly as the radius of darkness expanded to twenty, then thirty, then forty feet. When it hit fifty feet he turned to Bud. “It works! It’s even better than I’d hoped.”

Bud nudged Tom. “Isn’t it supposed to stop?”

Tom looked back at the field and frowned. The black field continued expanding beyond fifty feet. “That’s odd,” he remarked. “It’s supposed to shut itself off after fifty feet. Oh well – I’ll just kill the reaction.”

He pressed a button on the remote. Nothing happened. His eyes suddenly widened. “Bud – the kill signal can’t get through the edge of the time field!”

Tom and Bud took a few steps back. The black field continued creeping toward them.

Bud looked at Tom in horror. “You mean there’s no way to stop it?”

“That’s exactly what I mean! Run for your life!”

The two began sprinting toward the Challenger. The black field expanded behind them. Within moments it was just a few feet away!

A LOOK OF HORROR appeared on Bud’s face as the now-frozen guard vanished! The edges of the room turned black and crumbled away, replaced by utter nothingness. It was as if the entire universe had suddenly shrunk to a tiny sphere not much bigger than the kronolator. Bud jumped back when he saw how close he was to the edge of reality.

Bud turned to Tom. “What just happened? Please tell me you didn’t–”

Tom laughed. “Don’t worry, Bud. You should know better than that! The Challenger doesn’t even have a hyperdrive, remember? Tom III may have to worry about a zero-five, but the worst thing that could happen to us is the drive failing to do anything at all. The kronolator works on an entirely different principle. I was just giving the guard something to think about in case my plan failed.”

“That’s right!” Bud said. “I’d forgotten. So what happened? Why did the universe just disappear?”

“It’s still there, flyboy. I’ll give you a clue: did you notice that the guard froze just before he disappeared?”

When Bud nodded, Tom continued. “The reason he stopped moving is not because time stopped. It’s because, in this small zone, time is moving at an incredibly rapid pace. I’ve created a localized area where time is flowing much faster than normal. I thought that would give us a tactical advantage over the Kranjovians.”

“I still don’t get it,” Bud replied. “What have you done to the kronolator? For a minute there I thought you had completely lost it.”

“It’s actually quite simple! You see, my kronolator enables us to travel faster-than-light by manipulating the flow of time. I’ve simply tweaked it a bit so that, instead of acting on the entire ship, it’s only creating a tiny field that just barely extends to the edges of this room. Inside that field time is flowing much, much faster than it is outside the field.”

“Ok,” Bud said slowly. “So it sounds like we’re just moving really, really fast. But tell me something. What would happen if I tried to step outside the field?”

“I’m not exactly sure,” Tom confessed. “If half of your body was inside the field and the other half was outside, it’s possible that you might get torn apart. I haven’t done any experiments so I don’t really know. But it’s probably best to avoid the edges of the room, just to be safe.”

“And that must be the edge,” Bud said, gesturing toward the region of utter blackness. “Why does it look like that?”

“It’s hard to say,” Tom admitted. “We’re exploring new territory here. It may be because the light rays from outside the field are having trouble making their way through the boundary between this time zone and that time zone. I’d have to perform some experiments before I could say anything with certainty. It could also be a flaw in the time field itself.”

Bud nodded. “So what do we do now, genius boy?”

“We take advantage of our superior situation!” Tom replied. “From this room I can control pretty much every system on board, including the Transmittaton. Now all we need to do is use it to transport all the Kranjovians to a holding cell.”

“Can we really do that from inside the time field?” Bud asked dubiously.

“I think so,” Tom said confidently. “After all, electronics work at the speed of light. Even though time is going quite slowly in the ‘real world’, we can still send the Transmittaton commands and receive a response fairly quickly. The unit’s sensors should tell us where the Kranjovians are hiding.”

“But what about their guns?” Bud asked. “How are you going to disarm them?”

“That’s a little trickier, but it’s also possible,” Tom replied. “Do you remember smelling strawberries just before we passed out?”

Bud shook his head. “All I remember is the world going back and waking up to find General Hotshot standing there.”

Tom grinned. “Well, the way the Kranjovians took over the ship was by gassing us with a non-toxic but highly effective potion. I happen to be familiar with that particular formula, and what worked on us will work on them.”

“I like it!” Bud exclaimed. “Give ’em a taste of their own medicine. But why not just gas them first?”

“Because I don’t have any of the gas on hand,” Tom replied. “I’ve got to make some up first, and I just don’t think General Volnas will let me use my solartron for a couple hours. So I’ll round ’em up, then suspend them in time while I work on the gas. Once the gas is ready I’ll use it, take their weapons, lock them up, and head home.”

“I knew you wouldn’t let me down,” Bud said enthusiastically.

As it turned out, the plan took far longer to carry out than Tom had anticipated. He had no trouble locking onto the Kranjovians, but the actual transportation process did not happen at lightspeed. It took forty painful minutes to transport each soldier to the holding cell. Transporting all of the soldiers took many hours. But Tom and Bud persevered, and after what seemed like an eternity they finally cleared the ship and placed all of the Kranjovians into a single room on the far side of the ship.

Once the soldiers were safely isolated Tom adjusted the kronolator’s field to allow them access to the rest of the ship. He was careful to not extend it far enough to reach the room where the prisoners were being held. Tom and Bud then quickly made their way to the laboratory, where Tom got to work.

“Do we really have a solartron on board?” Bud asked, as Tom browsed through beakers of chemicals.

“We do, but I’m not going to use it today,” Tom replied. “First, we’re orbiting Neptune, and the amount of sunlight we get out here is practically zero. It would take a really, really long time to produce enough matter to make the knockout gas – especially with time slowed down! So I’m switching over to Plan B.”

“Which is?” Bud asked.

“Making a knockout gas with the chemicals I happen to have on hand,” Tom explained.

Bud nodded, and Tom went to work. An hour later Tom stepped back, satisfied. “This should do it,” he said, holding up a small green pellet.

“How do we know if it will work?” Bud asked.

“We test it, and see,” Tom replied. He handed Bud a communicator and the gas pellet. “Here’s how this will work. I’ll go down to the kronolator while you head off to the holding cell. Once you’re in place I’ll extend the time field just enough to allow you to open the door. Once you’ve opened the door and tossed in the gas pellet I’ll shut off the time field entirely. If the gas doesn’t work you’ll hear a lot of commotion. Just let me know and I’ll freeze them again, and we’ll switch to a different gas.”

“What if the kronolator fails to re-engage?” Bud asked.

“Then we lock the door and run for our lives,” Tom quipped.

Bud grinned. “Whatever you say, skipper!”

To Tom’s immense gratification, the plan worked well. The gas rendered all of the Kranjovians unconscious and Bud confiscated their weapons. After securing the door Tom dropped the time-distortion field and headed to the bridge. The Challenger was soon on its way home.

“I can’t believe the Kranjovians actually brought their spaceship into our shuttlecraft bay after they took over our ship,” Bud remarked. “What would they have done if we’d had a shuttle in there? The only reason it was empty was because that’s where our space friends stored the shuttle they used to reach the Space Legion’s base.”

“They probably would have just left it floating around Neptune,” Tom remarked. “Or maybe had a pilot fly it back home. What amazes me is that they were actually able to make it all the way out here to Neptune! It must have taken them weeks to make the trip, if not longer. They were really dedicated, Bud.”

“And soon they’ll be dedicated to a federal prison,” Bud replied. “It couldn’t have happened to a better group of people. Say, speaking of our space friends, aren’t we stranding them out here?”

“Not really,” Tom replied. “They’re pretty busy right now and aren’t eager to return home. When they’re ready to go back to Mars I’ll just send the Cosmotron Express after them.”

“Sounds good,” Bud replied. “Say, speaking of that, isn’t the kronolator still in pieces? How are we going to get home?”

“By the repelatrons,” Tom explained. “It’ll take longer, but we’ll still get there! Besides, the flight will give me the time I need to work on my claytronic stones. The kronolator is the piece I’ve been missing all along!”

“How is that?” Bud asked.

Tom grinned. “The whole problem with my replicating stones is that it takes so long for them to morph. But the kronolator changes all that. After all, if I can manipulate the flow of time, then time is no longer a factor! Everything changes.” Tom paused for a moment as he considered the possibilities. “There’s only one other thing I wish I could get the kronolator to do.”

“What’s that?” Bud asked.

“Reverse the flow of time,” Tom replied.

I just wanted to let everyone know that the second Starman book, The Runaway Asteroid, is now available on the Kindle! You can find it on Amazon on this page: The Runaway Asteroid. The download costs 99 cents.

Over the next few weeks I hope to make the other 7 Starman books available as well.