Tom Swift and His Dyna-4 Capsule by Victor Appleton II Page A

right in front, and I know why—it’s the hotel Gar told me about, where they’d stocked food for you. Running water, everything."
    "A working phone?"
    "Oh, they all work . But all you get is a recording."
    "That’s ‘working,’ all right." A thought struck. "So how was I supposed to know about this place? Maybe dragging you down here was part of Eck’s plan from the start."
    She shook her head. "No. You haven’t checked your pockets?"
    Chagrined, Bud dug deep into them, and found a slip of paper. "‘ Your home here in Friendly Village is the Bateman Arms, 412 Second Street. Food in the kitchen. Relax and enjoy a vacation from this obscenity called the modern world. Let’s see how long it lasts. ’"
    "And now it’s ours to share," Reb pronounced with glowing embers in her eyes. "We needed something to be ours, Bud, just ours ."
    Bud looked away, his face in the shadow of lamplight. "I left a video for Tom. I told him the situation. I told him to leave it to me, to not get involved. I was pretty definite. He’ll understand. Yeah. So it’ll be days, maybe weeks even." He unshadowed his face to show her a defiant look. "But he’ll come for me. I know he will."
    "Sure," snapped Rose Reb bitterly. "Doesn’t he always come running?"
    It felt like the insult it was intended to be. Bud rose to it almost instinctively. "You missed the point. I’m saying there’ll be a long gap of time before he comes up with some Swift gadget to pluck me out of—whatever this is. And rather than waiting, I’ll get us out on my own."
    "Oh, Beeb, please don’t feel you have to prove yourself to me ." But it sounded mocking.
    "I’m not proving anything."
    "You don’t want a vacation?"
    "What I want," Bud declared quietly, "is out."
     

CHAPTER 10
PARADE OF PHANTOMS
    THE FOOD in the small hotel kitchen was canned or frozen, but not bad. Bud smiled at the various labels. He was sure everything was an authentic replica of 1953, the products of companies that probably had gone out of business decades ago. "But the meat is fresh," he said.
    "I don’t think they’d poison us," replied Rose Reb, eating a sandwich. "They need us—you. You’re the hostage for ransom. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be. I guess I was a witness to the plot, to what they did. I’m not so sure what they did was completely legal, you know? So Gar stuffed me down here to eliminate the problem."
    "Why didn’t he just shoot you?"
    "He’s not that kind of person, Bud," she replied. "You don’t know him. He’s caring."
    "I gather that."
    At Bud’s insistence, they slept with deadbolts between them. "It’s not that I don’t like you, RR," said Bud.
    She looked away from him with small angry eyes. "It’s just that I’m crazy."
    "Well... yeah."
    "I’m not armed. Do you want to frisk me?"
    "Goodnight, Rose Reb."
    "I don’t think so."
    The morning did not dawn, but it arrived. Bud watched as the stars shut down as one and the sky light came on. Now that he knew what he was seeing, it was obvious that the whole vault of sky was a dome-shaped ceiling, the effects produced by some manner of rear-screen projection. Tom’s telejector would have done a more convincing job, he thought. Admittedly, though, it had been good enough to convince him .
    They spent the day exploring Friendly Village, excised from the flesh of living time like something on a microscope slide. Despite the silent eeriness Bud felt involuntary admiration for the achievement. He had the impression that nearly everything they saw, every detail, every object, was in its way real . Their captor, Eck—more likely experts on his payroll—had raided second-hand stores across the nation, carefully refurbishing what they had found, polishing, painting, un-rusting, un-denting. "Man," he said to Reb, "all those old tubes for the radios and TV’s—"
    Reb was sullen. "It’s wasted on me. I hate the past."
    "Mine was okay."
    "Then I hate your past, flyboy ." Her tone shifted from anger to