Tom Swift and His 3-D Telejector by Victor Appleton II

Author:Victor Appleton II
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

SKULKING BY NIGHT

IF TOM expected Bud to be surprised, it was Tom who received the surprise. "I guessed it," the gray-eyed youth said mildly. "Don’t know why, exactly."

"At some point," Tom reflected, "I felt like I was on—inside—the Orb. I was looking out through the green stuff at the sun. But the sun was swollen and somehow... distorted. It filled the whole sky; yet it didn’t hurt to look straight at it."

"Were you afraid, pal?"

"I felt overpowering, intense emotions. Fear? I—I don’t know. As if there were two emotions at the same time, one awful and one..." Tom glanced aside toward Bud. "Joyful!"

Bud looked ruefully perplexed. "Maybe the answer’s to find this Jennifer kid. Or is she just another pink elephant, like what the others saw in space?"

Back at Swift Enterprises, the young inventor worked for a time on the telejector repair job. But the name Jennifer December continued to bob about in his mind, and at one point it nudged a hunch into view.

"Tom!" said the surprised voice at the other end of the phone. "Leave something behind?"

"No, Dr. Rogo. Sorry to interrupt you twice in one day."

"It’s no problem at all. What can I do for you?"

Briefly and undramatically—to the extent that such was even possible—Tom summarized his recent visionary episodes. "It just occurred to me. These incidents have some kind of psychic connection to one another, it seems, and—it’ll sound more psychotic than psychic, but have you ever had a little girl as one of your test subjects?"

The short silence in response was amazed! "Might you be referring to Jennifer December?"

"Good gosh, then you do know of her!"

"Yes, I surely do. I tested her last summer, along with some other residents of Bylands Residence School. It’s a private orphanage up in northern Maine. The staff physician, Lorna Darvey, is an old friend."

"Would you mind describing the girl, sir?"

"Very petite. Basically dark features, but her hair was blond as I recall. She was seven years old at that time."

Tom nodded to himself. The description matched! "Did she do well in the tests?"

"Unusually well," Rogo answered. "The only reason I don’t call her one of my ‘superstars’ is that she couldn’t stay long enough to complete the test protocol. But where on Earth did you run across her name?"

"It came to me, somehow, during your DEM-CS procedure."

"And her appearance too, evidently."

"Let’s just say I connected her name to an image in one of the vision-episodes. I’m sure it’s the girl you just described!"

Bemused and intrigued, Dr. Rogo provided Tom with the telephone number of the orphanage. When the youth clicked off after expressing his gratitude, he felt at last that he had made some progress!

Early next morning the telephone rang in Bud Barclay’s Shopton apartment. "Hey, genius boy! What’s up?"

"How’d you like to go with me down to Fearing this morning, pal?"

"Checking up on that mini-epidemic?"

Tom explained that Harlan Ames had directed his assistant, Phil Radnor, to fly down to look into the matter. "Harlan thinks it could

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