Tom Swift and His Dyna-4 Capsule Read Online Free PDF Page A

Sandy. It’s from Bud, and it’s marked: for Tom Swift—private and personal! "
     

CHAPTER 4
HAUNTED BY THE PAST
    BUD BARCLAY waved his chum a jaunty farewell, standing in front of his apartment as he watched Tom’s bronze-hued electric sport car glide silently away down a sleepy sidestreet. Tall and muscled, broad of shoulder, the black-haired youth stretched, knowing he would wince. They had just returned to Shopton from the Grand Canyon project, the levitating monorail made possible by Tom Swift’s G-force inverter.
    As souvenirs of the adventure, Bud had brought back colorful bruises, cuts and scrapes, groaning muscles, and a bad sunburn. "Dangling sky-high from a monorail track does not do a body good," he told himself wryly. "Bouncing off the Grand Canyon—worse." The majestic canyon was streaked with color; so was his black-and-blue body.
    Bud’s apartment was small—living room, kitchen, bedroom, bath. The first three somewhat ran together, distinguished mainly by their wall fixtures. The bath was mostly a shower stall. The furniture was spartan. Even Draconian. Bud’s most impressive piece of furniture was his television screen. As he stood in front of its domineering eye, looking at his reflection as his reflection looked back at him, he wearily dropped his baggage where he stood and began to strip down for the shower his body ached for.
    And turned—and frowned.
    "Okay, Bod Barclay, you’ve made your point," he muttered, addressing body and brain. "I’m stopped dead in my tracks. So why?" Something was wrong. Something was out of place. An inner alarm was sounding.
    It filtered up into consciousness. Something unaccounted-for lay on the cheap flimsy end-table next to the sofa, amid the pale rings of sweating soft drinks long forgotten. It was small and square and a shade of rosy-pink—a particular hue that meant something to Bud Barclay, the spear point of an insistent memory. "It can’t be," he told himself. "It can’t be! But how the heck did it get there?" Because it hadn’t been there when he had locked up weeks before.
    He approached with trepidation. It was, as he had thought and dreaded, a folded greeting card, hand made, the stiff paper expensive, embossed, textured. On the cover:
THINKING OF YOU
    It couldn’t be. But it was.
    Bud picked up the card, sniffed the perfume, read the familiar handwriting within. " Always . Waiting for the day. Time passes. Make it stop." And separately, at the very bottom: " C’ya. RR "
    His inner elevator was dropping fast.
    When he sat in his bedroom and made the video for Tom, weeks and incidents later, Bud commenced with the backstory.
    "Hi Tom—and I suppose your dad and Sandy and Bash and Harlan Ames and a whole crowd—Chow too, o’ course. Hiya, pardner! Doesn’t matter, pal, long as you’re there.
    "Been wondering what’s up with me? Sure. I thought it would just go away. Then I thought I could handle it here in Shopton, after hours. Two bads for flyboy. Now I have to take action.
    "Okay. I’m not the explainer you are, genius boy, but I know you’re supposed to start at the start. Here goes. Hey, for once it’s a ‘well- Tom ’ explanation!
    "The start of the start is back in San Francisco. Like you know already, I went to this special private high school—expensive place, but Mom and Dad were able to swing it. You start there early, in eighth grade, and then it’s five years. I went there, not because I’m so smart—pause for the jokes—but because I was pretty good—okay, really good—at things having to do with... I guess you’d say skill. Not just muscle stuff—hand-eye stuff. I already knew I wanted to fly. Dad said he expected wings to pop out of my back any day. This school kind of helps kids get their dreams started early, if you get the idea. Kids who aren’t the intellectual type, but who have what they call nerve intelligence . Body-thinkers, get it?
    "It was called—don’t groan, it’s really cheesy— Personal