Tom brought his atomicar down cautiously and landed it on what appeared to be the bed of a dried-up creek. He got out and looked around.
Suddenly a yellow beam caught him square in the face. Tom stood pinned in the glare. Then the light moved and played over the transparent bubble dome of the flying car.
A man’s voice spoke from a clump of rocks and brush. “Hands up, Swift, and walk this way.”
114 3-D TELEJECTOR
Tom obeyed. A figure rose from the brush, but -the glare was too blinding for Tom to see the man’s face.
“Turn around!”
Tom complied and the speaker frisked him.
“Now go back and open your car trunk, so I can make sure you’ve brought no one else along.”
Satisfied at last, the man conducted Tom to a car parked off a dirt road nearby. The man forced Tom to take the wheel and climbed in.
“This is a poison-dart gun I’m holding,” he added, “so no funny business.”
Tom started the car and headed along the road, following his captor’s directions. A forty-minute drive brought them to a small Quonset hut nestled among trees. The man took Tom inside and turned on fluorescent lights. The place was a laboratory, crammed with electronic gear, but Tom was more interested in his captor.
The man was red-haired and pudgy with darting, ferrety eyes. “My name is Horst,” he said with a nervous smile. “Now that we’re face to face, we should be able to talk business.”
He named a large sum if Tom would agree to hold his 3-D television off the market. The young inventor stalled and tried to find out what company Horst was representing. Tom’s tactics seemed to enrage the red-haired man.
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