TOM SWIFT #35: TOM SWIFT AND HIS PARAMAGNETIC INITIALIZER CHAPTER 1: A SECRET DESTINATION Tom Swift Sr. walked down the dark corridors of Swift Enterprises. It was about 1:30 in the morning. Only a few maintenance men were around. Mr. Swift entered and elevator and pressed the button for the basement. Once down there, he walked along the main corridor, dimly lit with old-fashioned light bulbs. It was purposely dim down here. Pipes and ventilation ducts crisscrossed the walls and ceilings. Every so often he'd pass a hissing steam pipe. There was no one down here. But he wasn't expecting anyone to be. He turned down one cross-corridor, then another. Finally he stopped in front of a locked door. He pulled out his keys and used one on the lock. Inside was the usual mess of mops, brooms, shelves loaded with cleaners, solvents, rags, gloves and other tools. Mr. Swift stepped inside the custodial closet and shut the door. He twisted the door's lock one way, then another, then back again. He heard the thick restraining bolts that were built into the top, sides, and bottom of the durastress-reinforced door quietly slide home. Nothing short of a tank would be able to penetrate the closet now. The sequence of knob- twisting also activated the security devices as well. He walked to the end of the closet, which wasn't far. Facing the wall, he spoke: "I am Tom Swift Senior. Rain has begun to fall." Speakers built into the wall recorded the password and compared Mr. Swift's voice to the one on file. A moment later the latter half of the floor where Mr. Swift was standing began to sink. It didn't sink far, perhaps five feet. Mr. Swift had to stoop over a bit in order to walk into the short, cube-shaped room ahead of him. As he did so, the floor rose once again, leaving him in darkness. Tom Swift Sr. slowly counted to thirty. Then he approached the wall and, using his knuckles, tapped a code onto the wall. He winced as he did so: the wall was solid concrete. But he knew the sensors embedded into it would register the vibrations. He also knew that if he didn't do this at the precise time, and use the precise code, the ceiling would lower all the way down. Gruesome, but necessary. After a short delay, a panel opened up to his side. Still hunched over, he made his way out into a well-lit corridor. He continued until he reached midway. Without warning, a series of cross-bars with razor-sharp points sprung out just inches in front of his face. He could feel other such points just barely touching his back. Very calmly, he recited a limerick, then waited. Moments later the bars withdrew in a flash. Mr. Swift continued on. He stopped in front of a massive metal door. The door was an alloy of beryllium, iridium and durastress. Even a tank would have a hard time breaching this door. Off to the side was a large array, twenty by twenty, of featureless square white buttons. There were two small lights on top, one red, one green. Currently the red light was lit. Tom Swift Sr. began punching in the thirty seven digit code he'd held in his memory all these years. He'd hoped he would never have to use it. Once the final button was pressed, the red light went out and the green lit up. The massive doors slid open. But Mr. Swift made no move to enter. Once again he waited, counting up to forty-five. Quickly he punched in a number sequence three times. The first two were identical; the third one had the final button in a different location. The green light blinked three times then held steady. Now the repelatron that had been aimed at his back since the first sequence of numbers had been pressed switched off. Had Mr. Swift made the slightest move toward the entrance without punching in those finally three sequences of buttons, the repelatron would have kicked on full force, smashing him literally flat against the wall. He wasn't worried about the wall: it was even more heavily reinforced than the doors were. The room he entered wasn't particularly big. There was a fairly large Transmittaton tank against the opposite wall. A console with a computer terminal stood in front of it. Mr. Swift inserted a special key into the console. He twisted the key this way and that, then punched it all the way in. The console lit up, the computer screen came to life. Any other sequence and the console would have self- destruct. Mr. Swift typed in a few commands, pulling up the master file. The screen showed: BARCLAY, BUD AGE: 18 TIME LAPSE: 10 YEARS, 3 MONTHS 2 DAYS, 5 HOURS SWIFT JR., TOM AGE: 18 TIME LAPSE: 10 YEARS, 3 MONTHS, 2 DAYS, 5 HOURS Below them, his name, Mary’s, the girls’, Harlan Ames and Phil Radnor’s were listed as well. Using a light pen, Mr. Swift highlighted both names. Next to the word COMMAND? he typed RETRIEVE. A moment later the computer screen read: FILES RETRIEVED. With a sigh, he punched a large red button on the console. There was a flash of light. In the Transmittaton tank stood Tom Swift Jr. and Bud Barclay - both at age 18. They stepped off the platform with smiles. "Okay, Dad, that's done," Tom said. "So now our patterns are stored in the computer for a while. Sure hope we don't have to use this for any - " he broke off with a gasp. "D-Dad?" he said, eyes bulging. "Mr. Swift?" Bud asked, incredulous. Mr. Swift seemed to have aged in the blink of an eye. Tom Swift Sr. managed a wry smile. "Welcome back, boys." CHAPTER TWO: AT THE COBRA'S LAIR The Black Cobra strode down one of the many corridors in the Kranjovian secret laboratory. Secret , he thought with a snort. Might as well erect a large, neon-lit sign on the mountainside above pointing out the lab's location . The Swifts and America's CIA now knew exactly where it was. And if they did, most of the other intelligence agencies the world over knew of it by now. Still, until the Ashtorath's Revenge was fit to be launched again, there was no place else to go. The Black Cobra unlocked the entrance to his private office. Inside, he stared again at the space where his computer used to be. He thought back to the day several years ago when he met one of the Tekili-li starships and it had taken him to their homeworld. It was his first visit there. Previously, he’d simply met with one of their starship out in space, and they would exchange data. This time they wanted him to meet with them. The Cobra still shuddered at that first encounter. Tough and ruthless as he was, he felt like a child in the presence of such incredible intelligence and evil. It had taken every bit of control he had to remain calm and not give into the screaming horrors. Merely being in the proximity of the Tekili-li felt like ever nightmare he’d ever had as a child brought to life. This time, rather than more of their incredibly complex math to aid with his star drive, they presented him with a computer, a computer unlike anything he’d ever seen before, modified for human use. They instructed him on how to use it and gave him the data crystals. Then they returned him to his back-up spaceship. The Black Cobra had returned to their planet a few more times, but had not looked forward to any of them. He did ask them, during one of the visits, why they didn’t just give him one of their starships and let it go at that. Turns out the ones they had were in a bad state of disrepair – he’d noticed that himself – and were none too reliable. It was the main reason they wanted him to build one of his own. Back at the Kranjovian secret lab, they’d gone over the computer with a fine-tooth comb, yet understood very little about it. The computer itself was more advanced than anything the Black Cobra or his allies had ever seen before, yet he got the distinct impression that the Tekili-li considered it to be hopelessly antiquated. But it was also the most modern computer they possessed. Somewhere along the course of their evolution, they passed beyond the need for computers or similar machines. Yet, in doing so, they also lost a lot of knowledge, like an over-specialized scientist forgetting basic algebra. That was the primary reason they needed the Cobra to give them the math behind disrupting stars. Further, they insisted that he needed to present the knowledge to them in person. Which he currently wasn’t able to do, since the math he needed was in his computer. And the computer was in the Swifts’ hands. I must get it back , he thought. Somehow he had to lead a raid into Enterprises and retrieve his computer. Work on the Ashtorath's Revenge had been very slow with out it. The Black Cobra knew that retrieving the computer wouldn't be easy. Swift Enterprises had been raided or broken into many times in the past.