Tom Swift and His Dyna-4 Capsule by Victor Appleton II Read Free Book Online Page B

staring at Bud with pieplate eyes and a disarming, unnerving grin. Knock him down—he bounces right up! promised the placard. "What happens if you knock him up ?" Bud wondered.
    The next aisle offered model kits—ships, planes, cars. The jet planes were of the Korean War era. Likewise the model cars—classic woodies, a few sporty models, a convertible. There was a build-it-yourself log cabin, big enough for a kid to sit in, made of long cardboard tubes that stacked together in notches.
    But this Rex-All had boldly entered the Space Age. There were model rockets straight from ancient TV serials, the sorts of things done live in studios and recorded on scratchy kinescope film. One rocket bore on its side Jet Jaxton Space Commando: Genuine Super-Comet . "C’mon, guys," he said aloud. "The Star Spear , the Challenger —Tom Swift junk outsells everything these days." But this shelf had never heard of Tom Swift, evidently. Perhaps not " these days ," even.
    However, a moment made Bud reconsider, briefly. On a bottom shelf was a big box labeled Tom Swift Electric Rifle —safe for kids! Bud chuckled. That Tom was his chum’s famous great-grandfather. The item was now a collectible in the civilized world. Did obsessed collectors realize that old drug stores in timeless towns still had such a thing for sale? For—he almost gasped— $3.95? In mint condition?
    Maybe he was dreaming.
    He picked up a plastic ray gun, Blast-o-matic , and thumbed the trigger. The barrel whirred and flickered and spangles glinted. "Martians, beware!" he muttered.
    He called out a few more times, with little hope, then made for the door. "Everybody’s out watching the big parade," he pronounced sarcastically. "Except there’s no parade."
    He halted abruptly. Just inside the door was a magazine stand and a round swivel-rack of comic books. He stepped closer. It was as he had half-expected, but still it gave him an inner twist of disorientation. Bud had read comics growing up. He still did, now and then. These comics—
    He opened one and glanced at the issue date. Captain Powerful , untattered, unyellowed, perhaps never opened by human hands or sticky fingers, was dated:
SEPT 1953 NO. 6
    " Captain Powerful, Man of Jupiter ," recited Bud Barclay. "Discontinued 1965. Last issue numbered in double digits. Early issues worth several hundred bucks." If he were a certain type of guy...
    But he wasn’t.
    Still, maybe he could buy out the entire rack before leaving town. Town Whatever. Smaller Ville.
    Timeless Town.
    The magazines were the same—fresh, crisp issues from Fall of 1953. Painstakingly reprinted, it seemed. Men’s true adventures that weren’t, of course. Covers gossiping of movies now sold as cheap DVD’s in nostalgia packages. Starlets displayed with a becoming modesty no longer seen. Actors smoking pipes clutching wives and children—probably their own. World issues long forgotten, crises that expanded, then finally contracted to nothingness. President Eisenhower and his broad grin—in memory yet green. For retirees.
    Latest news of the war...
    Bud saw no newspapers, though. Nothing with the real name of the town, or the exact spot on the calendar the town so carefully portrayed.
    He went out onto the street. He felt dizzy. Real men do get freaked out by—this , he acknowledged ruefully.
    Down the street, the stoplight changed. The hanging telephone wires twitched very slightly in a breeze too timid for Bud to feel. Nothing else moved.
    He stood thinking, thinking as Tom Swift might do. What were the possibilities?
    Maybe he was trapped in an isolation tank and hallucinating. Hallucinating 1953? Why? Why not grunge, punk, or even disco? What did they even listen to in 1953? Big bands? The minuet?
    Maybe he had been shipped to Kranjovia and planted in a mock-up of a typical American town to drive him crazy and extract Swiftian information. But he doubted professional foreign agents didn’t know that the decadent West had become even