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

televisions—mostly big cabinet models with tiny screens—played black-and-white movies, ancient sitcoms, stat icky dramas with actors long dead, commercials for condensed milk and odd products he had never heard of. There were some quiz shows. There were no newscasts. All recorded too, he supposed. Once genuine, now deceased, eternally rerun. "But I’ll be fair," he told the TV screen. "Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m reliving the same hours over and over." Maybe it was Bud Barclay who was trapped in reruns.
    He began to make a point of leaving on, and blaring, the radios and TV’s and various big LP record players. He decided he liked the idea of giving Friendly Village some ambient noise. But out in the street there was nothing but a very slight creak as the overhead phone lines rocked gently.
    One more day , he told himself. I’ll sleep tonight and get the last of those drugs out of my system. I’ll have a good meal. I’ll take a car and drive away. If I have to drive across sidewalks or open fields or little green lawns, that’s what I’ll do. If the State Police run me down on the road, I’ll get down and kiss their boots.
    He looked up. The sky over Friendly Village was still as it had been when he first looked at it that morning. Not dark, but he couldn’t make out the position of the sun. High altitude haze? Strange...
    He looked at the shadows on the street, then at his watch. More than six hours had passed as he had wandered through building after building, street after street. He had had a canned, unduly healthful lunch, back in the diner. His stomach was now looking forward to supper.
    Looking at the shadows, then at the sky, an inner alarm began to sound. Facts—possible and disquieting facts—were breaking through. He suddenly became convinced that during all those hours, while his mind had been elsewhere, the shadows had not moved. The hidden sun had not moved in the sky.
    And this sent an electric quiver through his raw nerves. "Time doesn’t pass here in Friendly Village. People, real people, live inside of time. But here, no time. Therefore, no people. Except me.
    "No, that can’t be right, Bud. No way. Time does pass. Your watch is counting it up. You can move. The stop signal changes. The music on the radio is a song, not just one note extended forever. And it changed from day to night, and now it’s day again. And clouds blew in..."
    He gazed upward. Were the clouds moving? He couldn’t quite tell.
    Maybe the sun is standing still, he thought. Like that thing in the Bible.
    As if cued by the word, he looked down a long street, and at the end saw the church. A tall white steeple, very tall. Just what one might expect to find in Friendly Village.
    That steeple was the highest spot in town.
    Bud approached the church anxiously; in fact, he found himself running.
    The high-arched double doors stood open and welcoming in the proper churchly manner. Inside, the wooden pews crouched varnished and empty. No one in the pulpit. Despite the slanting light through the stained-glass windows it was dim inside.
    Holding himself back, out of respect, he walked up the center aisle, looking right and left for signs of life with an inner prayer but no hope. He crossed behind the pulpit and into the wings— Backstage , said his thought.
    He found the narrow stairs leading up, up into the steeple. They spiraled around as the walls came close. The last ten feet were attained by a ladder of wooden rungs. Bud shoved a trap door open above his head and rose into a very small space with open sides and a double bell filling the middle. There was no room to stand, little room to sit. He finally perched his athletic form on the edge of the floor, legs dangling out into space.
    From this high vantage point he could finally see the horizon, the lay of the city—or rather, the small town of contradictions and mystery, the friendly village he had learned to hate. He changed his position four times, to survey all