The remote
desert regions of the American South-West have frequently been used for
clandestine testing purposes by military and civilian agencies. There is the Nuclear Test Site, north of
Approx. 3,554 words
Tom Swift and His Atomic Jack-Alope
©2004 by W. E. Lopez
“Glenna, please send in Mr. Meade, will you? Then you may take the rest of the weekend
off.”
The petite secretary swiftly completed her task of
setting out chilled carafes of Evian and drinking glasses. “Yes, sir, Mr. Roberts, thank you sir,” she
said.
Stewart Roberts waited until the woman left the small
conference room. He glanced around at
his five counterparts, four men and one woman.
Between them, they sat on the boards of thirty-seven Fortune 500
companies and controlled the vast majority of commerce within the
The conference room was not large, though it could
have accommodated another dozen persons.
The group had deliberately chosen this small room in
The double doors opened and Henry Meade entered the
room. He briefly glanced around and then
wordlessly took a small meter from his pocket and began walking around the
room, sweeping the meter in an up and down motion. He approached the conference table and gave
it a thorough going over, then walked behind each of the six directors and
swept them too.
“Thank you, sir,” he said to Mr. Roberts. “In my position, one can never take too many
precautions.”
“Agreed, Henry, as in ours. Was your mission
to
“Quite, sir. I’m certain you’ll be pleased
with my report.”
“Very well,” he glanced around at the others, “since
we’re all up to speed on this project, shall we allow Mr. Meade to continue?”
Four heads silently nodded.
“My
first sighting of the jack-alope was as it leaped across the road…”
“You mean the rumor was true?” Roberta Stafford asked.
“Yes. I was
driving north from Beatty, on what they call the
“What was it doing?” Frank Hill asked.
“About what you would expect, when a jack-alope is in
motion. It was leaping twenty yards into
the air and covering forty yards in a leap.
The forward velocity had to be about twenty-five miles per hour, I
estimate.”
“Astounding,” Sam Johnson put in, “and all without
benefit of an internal combustion engine?
No gasoline?”
“None, Mr. Johnson. Young Tom is
getting funding from NASA, and they need a transport which can operate in the
absence of an atmosphere, such as on the moon, Mars, or the moons of Jupiter,
in time. The US Army, in their quest for
an autonomous reconnaissance vehicle, is also contributing financial support.”
“So, how does he do it?” Roberts asked.
“It’s sort of a technologically advanced pogo-stick,
with an electrical boost from a self-contained nuclear power pack. That’s the reason Mr. Swift located his
laboratory in Nevada, to be near the nuclear waste repository and mitigate the
paper work involved regarding the transport of nuclear material.”
“You mean it generates a lot of waste?” Roberta
Stafford asked. “Perhaps we won’t have
to do anything about this device. It
might not be economically practical.”
“Quite the other way around, Ms. Stafford,” Henry
Meade answered. “The material used as a
fuel source is recycled nuclear waste.
He’s found a practical use for something the government and nuclear
industry has been trying to get rid of for decades!”
“Damn!” Ray Price exclaimed. “We’ve got to get in on that. The profit potential is sure to be enormous!”
“If we can continue,” Stewart Roberts said
quietly. “I’d like to hear Mr. Meade’s
report in its entirety if we are to be able to reach some sort of conclusion
and decide upon a course of action.”
The other directors quieted down and Meade took that
as his cue to continue.
“After I watched the inventor make several hops with
his strange conveyance, he had an accident and I rushed to his side.”
“Gosh,” Tom Swift said. “I didn’t see that rock there and the landing
probe must have slid sidewise as I landed,” he said obliquely.
“Are you okay,” I asked.
“Only my pride is bruised, Mr…?”
“Meade, Mr. Swift.
Henry Meade, I’m with the
The young man picked himself up and brushed the dirt
from his Levi’s. He stuck out his hand,
“Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Meade.
You’re sort of off the beaten path out here, aren’t you?”
“Well, of course, Mr. Swift….”
“Call me Tom, won’t you?”
“Tom, yes, thanks.
My paper sent me out to do a story on you, boy inventor and all that,
and since you’re off the beaten path, as you put it, here I am.”
“Why would anyone be interested in me?” Tom Swift
questioned.
“You have quite a history, Mr…. Tom. Matriculation from UCLA with a degree in
electrical engineering, at sixteen; you followed that with a masters from
Perdue at nineteen, and then a doctorate in theoretical physics from MIT at
twenty-two, a very interesting history.
Naturally, we’re curious as to what you’re up to out here in the
“While I was talking to him, the boy picked up his
invention and began straightening the antennas mounted on top….”
“What did the device look like, Mr. Meade?” Roberts
asked.
“A cylinder, sir, about four feet long and eight
inches or so in diameter. Projecting from beneath it was a rod with a
circular disk at the end. Near the top
was a saddle where the operator fastened himself by means of a seat belt and
grasped the handlebars used to steer and control motion, forward or backward. Lateral direction was controlled by leaning
the weight of the body into a turn. A
roll cage protected the operator in the event of an unfortunate accident such
as I had just witnessed, and several antennae projected from the roll cage
giving every appearance of antlers. In
fact, the boy told me that was why he called it a jack-alope, since it moved
like a jack-rabbit and had antlers like an antelope.”
“Some sense of humor, I take it,” Ray Price said.
“Yes, boyish humor,” Henry Meade replied. “Young Mr. Swift was very pleased with his
invention and anxious to tell me how it worked.
The cylinder was actually a tubular capacitor. Inside the capacitor was a copper coil, and
inside that, a cylindrical magnet attached to the nonferrous stainless steel
probe. The magnet was thrust into the
coil when the machine came to ground and an intense electric current was
briefly generated and stored in the capacitor, which was automatically pulsed
by an electronic circuit, causing the magnet to be forced to the opposite end
at intervals. The resulting motion
caused the jack-alope to bound into the air, and when it came down, the landing
was cushioned by the electrical resistance of the magnet being thrust into the
copper coil again, charging the capacitor at the same time. When needed for high speed or hill climbing,
the nuclear power source continuously added more power.”
“That’s all too slick, and not good for buisiness,”
Ray Price said, gloomily. “In the automotive
industry, our profit from the sale of new models is trivial. The big money is in replacement parts and
maintenance. If this Swift kid gets his
device into mass production, it will not bode well for us!”
“You’re worried?” Frank Hill said. “If the public sees this jack-alope invention
as a novel alternative to private transportation, we in the oil business can
expect our profits to take a serious nose dive.
Kerr-splatt!” he said, punctuating his words with pantomiming gestures.”
“Then we can agree, corrective action must be
applied,” Roberts said. “Is there a
motion before the board?” He looked around;
waiting to see which of his fellow board members would rise to the occasion.
Sam Johnson rapped his knuckles on the mahogany table. “I move we send our agent, Mr. Meade, back to
“Second!” Roberta Stafford immediately replied.
Roberts steepled his fingers and allowed a moment for
reflection. “It has been moved and
seconded that this board empower Mr. Meade to return to
“Henry,” he said to Meade. “Thank you for your report. Please see Mr. Kellogg in the special
projects office and draw a voucher for whatever funds you feel are necessary.
I’ll notify
Henry Meade suppressed a small grin of
satisfaction. He had worked as an
employee of a clandestine government agency for 18 years before being forced to
retire as the result of a minor infraction.
No longer working for the government, he found it only natural to offer
his services where they would be most handsomely compensated. He smiled with the knowledge that no one
could establish a paper trail to his movements should he wish to avoid such
tracking, not even his previous employers.
“Thank you, Stewart, you can depend upon me. I’ll leave within 48 hours and report back
the moment the task has been completed.”
* * *
The corporate jet settled onto the runway of the
He found the beige Jeep Wrangler Sport on the third
level of the parking garage. He inserted
the key and left the El Cortez, driving north to Beatty where he filled the gas
tank before continuing. The twi-light
was fast waning to blackness when Meade turned off Highway 95. When he turned off his head lights the
quarter-moon provided adequate illumination for cautious night-time driving in
the clear, desert air.
Meade drove twenty miles before parking the Jeep next
to a scrawny cottonwood and concealing it with camouflage netting. He shouldered the backpack which had been
provided and used his compass while climbing the low hills overlooking Tom
Swift’s test and development property.
Concealed by the darkness, Henry erected a second camouflage net on the
forward slope of the ridge to avoid being silhouetted against the night sky and
settled down to await the dawn.
According to his training, Henry Meade had done
everything right to avoid detection, even from low-orbit reconnaissance
satellites with infra-red cameras. But
Henry Meade was not current with the surveillance equipment employed by the
Swift Corporation.
Four years earlier, Tom Swift had perfected Cyclops, an unmanned, medium altitude
surveillance aircraft. Cyclops used two
electrically charged screens, twelve feet in diameter, spaced ten inches
apart. The power was beamed by microwave
from a source at the security office.
The upper screen emitted highly charged electrons, attracted by the
lower screen. The lower screen served as
an attractor and was not intended to catch the high velocity electrons, merely
to direct them downward. The swiftly
moving electrons collided with enough air molecules to provide the downward
thrust which kept Cyclops silently aloft.
In the center of Cyclops, a real-time TV camera with
inter-changeable lenses was located.
During daylight hours, telephoto views of the terrain would be
transmitted back to the security office.
In darkness, a wide-angle night observation device provided a
brilliantly illuminated field of view.
The TV camera also had infra-red capability and could locate a target in
complete darkness if the target heat was only a fraction of a degree above the
surroundings. Cyclops locked in on Henry
Meade using the heat radiated by the engine of the Jeep and followed the
vehicle to where Henry had concealed it.
Then it locked in on the man-size target of Henry as he separated
himself from the vehicle and hiked three miles to his vantage point on the
ridge. Despite his precautions, Henry
Meade’s presence was never hidden from the security personnel at Swift
Corporation.
While the morning sun climbed above the eastern
mountains, Henry heated water for instant coffee over a tiny, solid fuel camp
stove. He munched a high-energy cereal
bar and kept watch over the test site two miles away. At
The day grew hotter but Henry Meade was patient. Protected from view as well as shielded from
the direct heat of the sun, Henry remained in his position throughout the
day. At
The following day was a repeat of the previous
one. Swift was precise as he navigated
his Jack-Alope over the testing course, and still his speed increased. The time of his visit varied by only a few
minutes as Swift continued to drive the Jack-Alope faster and faster along the
test course. Perhaps this kid really did
have a vehicle NASA, the military, and the civilian market would eagerly
clambor for.
On the evening of the second day, Henry returned to
the Jeep and filled his backpack with forty pounds of Prel, an easily
manufactured explosive used in construction and mining. It took him two hours to hike to the area
where he felt sure Swift would pass again in the morning while testing the
Jack-Alope. Meade used an earth-auger to
bore a series of holes into the mountain side near the trail where he had seen
Swift frequently driving his curious contraption, and inserted eight pounds of
explosives into each of five holes. He
linked each charge with primacord and attached a radio controlled detonator to
the center charge. When he had carefully
wiped away all traces of his activity, Meade activated a 30 minute timer which
would turn on the radio-receiver once he had cleared the immediate
vicinity. Meade had been trained to be
especially careful when dealing with explosives.
When he returned to his observation post, Meade
settled beneath the camouflage netting and awaited the morning and the
fireworks to follow.
The sun rose and Meade went through the familiar
routine of preparing his coffee and slowly consuming another energy bar. At
His heart beat faster and he wetted his lips as the
Jack-Alope swiftly moved to the target position in the killing zone. 50 yards… 30 yards… ten, Henry sucked in his
breath and pushed the switch with his thumb!
It was glorious!
The earth erupted in five places, sending dirt and debris a hundred feet
into the air. Henry had set the charges
above the trail, knowing where Swift would ride, and in seconds, tons of debris
had buried the young inventor and his silly contraption. Meade snapped a dozen photos in rapid
succession, before, during, and after the explosion, photos to submit as proof
to his employers, but Meade would keep copies for his personal collection and
would savor this moment time and time again.
Before the dust could settle, Henry Meade rolled up
his camouflage netting and stuffed it into his pack. He jogged steadily as he returned to his Jeep
and removed the netting concealing it.
In moments he was back on the dirt road and heading away from his latest
successful operation. Long before
Swift’s friends began to miss him, Henry Meade would be back on the highway and
headed for
* * *
“Your skill as a photographer is excellent, Mr.
Meade,” Roberta Stafford said. The board
was assembled this time in a secure conference room in
“You’re certain Tom Swift has been elimated?” Sam
Johnson asked.
“Without a doubt,” Henry Meade said. “In the past three generations, no member of
the Swift family has ever let another take the risk of testing a new
invention. The boy might have courage as
well as genius, but he is dead right now because he let himself fall into an
easily predictable routine.”
“The Journal has reported a sharp decline in Swift
Corporation stocks,” Stewart Roberts said.
“The corporation information office has only released the minimum details
of the explosion, and wouldn’t have done that if a team of deputies hadn’t been
investigating clandestine narcotics activity within a few miles when it
happened.” He turned to Meade, “You’re
certain no one was aware of your presence in the
“Only a few coyotes and perhaps a UFO or two,” Meade
said smugly.
“Then you are to be congratulated, Henry, with the
appreciation of the board and a bonus also,” Roberts said. “Ray?
Would you do us the honor?”
Ray Price leaned out to grasp a bottle of champagne
which had been setting in an ice-bucket.
He deftly wrapped it in a napkin and popped the cork. Ray passed the bottle around allowing each
member of the board, and Henry Meade to fill their tulip stemmed glass for a
toast.
“Gentlemen, and lady,” he nodded to Roberta
Stafford, “we celebrate the untimely demise of Tom Swift, III, and the success
of another operation to further insure the power and profit of our respective
enterprises. We lift our glass to you,
Mr. Henry Meade!” Five glasses were held
aloft and then joined by that of Henry himself.
As the group took a tentative sip of their champagne, savoring the exquisite
bouquet, the heavy door of the conference room burst inward. Six men wearing the dark battle-dress of a SWAT
team raced in and leveled an assortment of weapons at the group seated around
the table.
Following the members of the SWAT team was none other
than Tom Swift, himself, and three men with business suits covered by Kevlar
vests.
Henry Meade was stunned! “No!
This is impossible! I saw you
buried and I have the pictures to prove it!”
“You saw only what you were meant to see,” the boy
inventor observed. “We had you under
surveillance from the moment you approached the proving grounds. By the manner in which you attempted to
conceal your presence, my security agents knew you were up to no good.
“After you planted the explosives, and while you were
headed in the opposite direction, my agents set up several holographic
projectors, activated by remote control and aimed to make you think you saw the
Jack-Alope approaching on schedule. All
we had to do was turn off the projectors when the debris came raining down to
make you think you had buried me and my invention. The small deception was necessary to enable
us to track you back to your fellow conspirators.”
“Stewart Roberts, I’m Special Agent Gene Ames of the
FBI. You and your conspirators are
charged with attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and I’m sure the
Attorney’s General of several states will have additional charges for you to
answer. You’re all under arrest!”
Swiftly the members of the SWAT team began applying
handcuffs to each of the board members in turn.
As an agent approached Stewart Rogers he said only, “One moment,
please. This vintage is too excellent to
go to waste.” He downed the remainder of
his glass with a quick gulp and then the agent placed his hands behind his back
and handcuffed them together.