Trouble in Warp Space Read online

Jerri Bell glanced around nervously. “We were feeling bad about the show,” she said.

  “We left the party and decided to take a walk to clear our heads,” Bruce continued. “We came down here to have one last look around.”

  “Then you’re not interested in the pager?” Iola asked, coming through the elevator door and standing next to her brother.

  “What pager?” Jerri and Reid asked simultaneously.

  Frank, still in his alien disguise, stood up. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “We weren’t expecting them.”

  “You mean you were meeting someone here?” Jerri asked. “Who?”

  “The person who sabotaged the show, we hope,” Joe said. “You two need to get out of here, or you’ll spoil our trap.”

  “Spoil nothing,” Reid said excitedly. “Is there anything we can do to help?”

  “We don’t have time to add new cast members into our screenplay,” Frank said. “The best thing you can do is get out of here. We don’t want the saboteur getting suspicious.”

  Reid nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said. “If that’s all we can do. Come on, Jerri. We’ll go back to the party. You can reach us there if you catch whoever it is.”

  “Fair enough,” Joe said. “Keep your fingers crossed.”

  “We will,” Jerri said. She and Reid turned and left quickly.

  “Well,” Chet said after they’d gone, “that got the old adrenaline pumping.”

  “Let’s try to settle down again,” Frank said. “The night’s early yet.” The teens returned to their stations and waited quietly.

  Three quarters of an hour later, they heard the stage door creak open again. This time, though, no talking followed the noise, only soft footfalls on the concrete floor.

  As the teens waited tensely, a shadowy figure crept through the darkness toward the bridge set. When he got there, he spotted Frank sitting in the command chair. The person stood at the edge of the set, just out of range of the dim light from the consoles.

  “Stiller?” said the intruder. “I thought you were still in the hospital. Taking my pager was a mistake.”

  “I’ve been expecting you,” Frank said, making his voice hoarse so that the saboteur wouldn’t realize he wasn’t Stiller. “Why don’t you step into the light, Mr. Webb.”

  Rod Webb stepped forward, so that he could be seen clearly. “So,” the director said, “you figured out it was me, even after I fed you all that information to make you think it was Jerri Bell encouraging your vandalism and petty theft. I’m impressed. I didn’t think you had that many brains.”

  “You’d be surprised what I know,” Frank said in his alien voice. “I know that you’re not making much money on this assignment. You did it just to fill out your contract, betting that the show would fold quickly. When it didn’t, you decided to help it along. Too bad. You could have made some real money if Warp Space took off.”

  “Who could wait that long?” Webb said. “You certainly didn’t want to. Did you think I was feeding you all that juicy info for your own benefit? Did you think I didn’t know who was behind all the petty thievery? I knew you were causing accidents, hoping to drive up the prices of collectibles. I turned my back on what you did because you and I both wanted the show off the air. If the show flew, I’d have been locked in for another three years. Why should I waste my best years on this penny-ante network? This way, we both make out.”

  “Maybe you do,” Frank said, playing his Stiller part to the hilt. “I’m not so lucky. When my loot runs out I get to be a gofer on another show. At least, that’s how it might have been, if you hadn’t tried to kill me.”

  Webb shrugged. “What else could I do?” he said. “When my pager went missing, I knew you’d taken it. I couldn’t chance you stumbling onto my connection to Monumental Broadcasting. They’re lining up a sweet deal for me—a deal I can’t pass up. It was just my bad luck that you hid the pager before I zapped you.”

  He walked casually toward the command chair. Frank stood as he approached.

  “Too bad,” Webb said. “A smart guy like you should have figured if I tried to kill you once, I wouldn’t hesitate a second time.” He drew a gun from his pocket and pointed it at Frank.

  “Now, Iola!” Chet called.

  At the sound of her brother’s voice, Iola switched on the big floodlights. The blazing display dazzled Webb for a moment. In that instant Joe rushed forward and knocked the gun from the director’s hand. Frank aimed a punch at Webb’s chin, but the director stepped back, away from the blow. As Chet Morton charged in through the elevator door, Webb leaned against the bridge control panel and stabbed one of the buttons.

  Foosh! The panel blew up in a huge shower of sparks. The Hardys and Chet staggered back. Webb tossed a console chair into Chet’s midsection and fled. Chet went down, but Frank and Joe recovered and ran after the saboteur. The director bolted straight for the stage door with the brothers in hot pursuit.

  As they ran, Joe spotted a long cable snaking along the floor from one set to the next. “Hey, Frank!” he said, pointing.

  “Go for it,” Frank said. “I’ll catch him when he falls.”

  Joe reached down and grabbed the cable in both hands. He reeled back and cracked it like a whip. The cable snaked out in front of Webb, tripping him. The director fell sprawling to the floor, and before he could get up Frank caught him and clouted him in the jaw.

  Webb went out like a light.

  Frank smiled and pulled off his borrowed mask. “Good work, Joe,” he said.

  The sound of police sirens echoing through the open stage door told the brothers that Iola had done her job. She and Chet soon caught up with the Hardys. Together, they found some spare electrical cord and used it to tie Webb up.

  “He who lives by the cable, dies by the cable,” Joe said with a grin.

  • • •

  Two days later the cast and crew of Warp Space gathered at Claudia Rajiv’s condo for a far happier party.

  “Well,” Sandy O’Sullivan said, hanging up her cell phone, “it’s official. We’ve been saved from cancellation.”

  The assembled crew gave a whoop of approval.

  “I guess the network figured the publicity from all this would offset the production losses,” Bruce Reid said. “Good thing, too. I don’t think my career could have stood another flop.”

  “What I don’t understand,” Claudia said to the Hardys, “is how you figured out it was Webb behind everything.”

  “I thought it was suspicious,” Frank said, “that in both Iola’s accident and Stiller’s, that Webb knew exactly what to do to cut the power. The evening we caught Webb, I remembered Millani saying that Webb had started in showbiz as a gaffer’s assistant.”

  “Because gaffers work the lights and electrical equipment on a set,” Joe said, “Webb knew just how to sabotage the control panels and Chet’s ray gun, among other things. He also arranged the ‘accident’ that zapped Stiller and one that nearly hurt Iola. Stiller was behind what happened to Peck Wilson, though, as well as a lot of the other mischief around the sets. Webb secretly encouraged him, hoping to drive the show under.”

  “Killing the show would have allowed Webb to move west and take on a new assignment for Monumental Broadcasting,” Frank said. “The number on the stolen pager was to a producer’s office. It seemed unlikely that a big dealmaker like David August would be calling anyone below the level of producer or director.”

  “That narrowed it down to Webb or Sandy,” Joe said. “But Sandy had nothing to gain if the show went under, and everything to lose. That left Webb. We didn’t have proof, though, until he came to the set.”

  “He’d wiped out Stiller’s computer, and anything else that might have led back to him,” Chet said.

  “But he didn’t get the pager,” Iola said, “and that’s what nailed him.”

  “I can’t get over how bad I felt for that creep Stiller!” Jerri Bell said.

  “He got what he deserved,” Stan Pekar said, rubbing the back of
his head where Stiller had hit him.

  “In any case,” Frank said. “I’m sure that both Stiller and Webb will be locked up for a long time.”

  “In the same cell, if there’s any justice,” Claudia Rajiv added.

  Sandy O’Sullivan sighed. “I really don’t know how I can thank all of you,” she said. “If not for you four, Warp Space might have been space dust.”

  “Just doing our job,” Joe said with a smile.

  “Are you sure you won’t take some more bit parts on the show?” Sandy asked.

  “No, thanks,” Iola said. “All that makeup was murder on my skin. No offense, Mr. Pekar.”

  “None taken,” Stan Pekar replied.

  Frank shook his head, too. “I think Joe and I have had our fifteen minutes of fame,” he said.

  “What about you, Chet?” Sandy O’Sullivan asked.

  Chet Morton looked at his watch. “I might give it another go,” he said. “If what they say is true about everybody getting fifteen minutes of fame, I figure I’ve got about fourteen minutes to go.”