One by one, they took their turns under the
 purring snout of the cannon

THE TOM SWIFT INVENTION ADVENTURES

    
TOM SWIFT
AND HIS
SPECTROMARINE
SELECTOR

BY VICTOR APPLETON II

CHAPTER 1




       THE SUBMARINE CITY





“ATLANTIS dead ahead, skipper!” sang out Slim Davis as he piloted Swift Enterprises’ newest super-submersible, the Deepwing, through the cold dark depths of the mid-Atlantic.
    Before young Tom Swift, captain of the expedition, could respond, his pal Bud Barclay exclaimed excitedly, “Already? Man, this whale of a sub is faster than a greased barracuda! Or have I said that before?”
    Tom grinned at his friend’s compliment as he joined Slim at the wheel. Gazing out the cabin’s broad, curving viewpane, the blond-haired scientist-inventor exchanged his grin for a xxxxxxxxxxx

frown. In the darkness beyond the craft’s aqualamp beam lay mystery and adventure! “Not much to see so far,” he murmured.
    Slim gestured at one of the screens on the control board. “But the sonarscope readings match the topography readout perfectly. We’ve locked on to the same route you fellows recorded on your first visit in the Ocean Arrow.”
    “Let’s hope this visit is a little less rocky,” Bud remarked wryly and dryly.
    While combing the Atlantic seabed for a lost rocket in Tom’s original diving seacopter, Tom and Bud had discovered a sunken city of ancient, overgrown ruins that accompanying scientists believed were traces of the legendary lost island of Atlantis. Tom had led an eventful and danger-filled life since that distant day, his inventions carrying him to many corners of the globe and up into the void of space surrounding it. But he had always planned a return to the seafloor city, and during his most recent expedition — to the Yucatan jungles with his electronic retroscope camera — his father had thrown the full xxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

weight of their mammoth invention facility behind the effort. Months of strenuous preparation were at last bearing fruit, and the present preliminary survey of the site was the project’s first step.
    Less than an hour had passed since Tom and his crew had ended their brief stopover in Helium City, Enterprises’ gas extraction station on the ocean floor near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Leaving the hydrodome and the jagged spine of subsea mountains behind them, the Deepwing was now approaching the chain of geological features known as the Horseshoe Seamounts, which lay between the Madeira Islands to the south and the coast of Portugal to the northeast. It was here, among looming plateaus and overhanging cliffs, that the seacopter had been half-buried by falling boulders. Tom and Bud had nearly ended their lives trapped in a deep chasm which had never known the sun.
    Zimby Cox, an experienced company sub captain with a background in marine tech- nology, joined the watchers at the viewpane. “How’s it hangin’ back there, Zim?” asked Bud.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

    “Shipshape in the cargo hold,” replied Cox, whose full given name, rarely pronounced aloud, was Zimbalest. “That watery warehouse must be as big as the hangar inside your Flying Lab, Tom.” The giant-sized stratoship, the Sky Queen, carried a hold on the lowest of its three decks large enough to serve as a hangar for shuttle aircraft.
    “In cubic feet you’re just about right,” Tom stated; “if you add the port and starboard holds together.”
    The Deepwing was one of the three new oversized seacopters that Tom had been designing for some time now, and the first of the three to be completed and ready for service. These craft, several times the size of the Ocean Arrow and the later Sea Hound, had a wide curving fore-edge that tapered smoothly toward the stern into a protruding tail section. The overall effect suggested the kiteshaped fins and flattened body of the manta ray — also called the devilfish. Nicknamed the mantacopters, each sub- mersible sported two rotor wells which vertically penetrated the low flat hull on  xxxxxxxxxxx 

either side of the prow control cabin. The whirling prop blades were used to hold the ship underwater against the effect of its buoyancy. The mantacops had been developed to carry the bulky equipment and extensive supplies required by large undersea operations. Like the other seacopters, they were powered by compact atomic reactors and driven by jets of superheated steam.
    Leaning over the controls, Tom now swiveled the diamond-bright aqualamp beam and set it to a greater range. A wall of gray rock, dotted with long streamers of deepwater vegetation, leapt into view. “Stand-to, Slim,” Tom directed. Slim Davis immediately reversed the powerful steam jets. The Deepwing eased to a hovering halt, thirty feet above the floor.
    “Shouldn’t Cromwell be up here to see this?” Bud asked. “I mean, he is here as an observer.”
    “Yep. An official observer,” agreed Tom. A slight tinge in the young inventor’s voice made Bud smile. Lieutenant Cromwell, an officer in the U.S. Navy, had joined the Enterprises expedition at the request of xxxxxxxxxxx

ONDAR, the Office of National Defense Applied Research. Tom had worked with this government agency before. In the present case the request was backed by the Navy and the State Department, who were concerned with various legal issues surrounding American activity at the site of the ruins, which lay in international waters. Tom and his father cooperated. But Bud knew his pal was always somewhat leery of any “official” in- volvement that might complicate a scientific project or compromise its goals.
    A rough-hewn heavyset man who somehow seemed ill at ease in his Navy uniform, Darrin Cromwell had already rubbed Tom and Bud the wrong way in the several days since his arrival at Swift Enterprises. He had a habit of pestering them with aggressive questions. Tom assumed they were relevant to legal matters. But he didn’t like them. And Bud, charac- teristically, was willing to add that he didn’t like the man himself.
    “Lieutenant Cromwell to control,” Tom intercommed. “We’re beginning our approach xxxxxxxxxxx

to the site.”
    “Be right there,” came the reply over the speaker. In a moment the Navy man entered the spacious cabin through one of the watertight bulkhead doors that connected the control deck to the string of special-purpose compartments that wound their way around the two rotor wells. “So this is it, hmm, boys? Submarine city of gold! Picked up any gold traces on your metal-detector yet?”
    “Nothing unusual,” Tom responded, gesturing at Slim to resume forward motion. “The inhabitants must’ve mined the gold some distance from the city. Didn’t Admiral Hopkins brief you on all the specs, Lieutenant?”
    Cromwell gave a dismissive shrug. “Oh, the documentation was fairly thorough. But those details aren’t important to me. My job is simply to report your findings. Old Hopkins said most of the operation is top secret.”
    “Sure,” Bud retorted. “Imagine what’d happen if word leaked out about all that gold lying around unclaimed!”
    The officer hissed out a chuckle. “A xxxxxxxxxxx 

submarine gold rush probably.”
    “Worse than that,” Tom said gravely. “It could lead to real international trouble.”
    “Right, right. I see what you mean.” Cromwell’s voice grew tense as he went on. “But what a setup! If that undersea layout is really built of solid gold, it must be worth more than Fort Knox!”
    Surprised by the officer’s greedy tone, Tom retorted, “We’re not going as gold prospectors, Lieutenant. That lost city may hold the answers to a whole flock of historical and geological problems!”
    “Well, I’m all for science,” was the reply, a bit sarcastic. “I take it you’ll be retrieving some artifacts and specimens to take back.”
    “Yes, a few. We need a clearer idea of what we’re dealing with here. But the main purpose is to map out the site.”
    “Yeah. You need to figure where to set up that bubble machine of yours.”
    It was Tom’s plan to use his matter- repelling device, the repelatron, to push back the waters and create a giant bubble, or series of bubbles, over large areas of the city. The  xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

scientists would be able to live in these air-filled hydrodomes in a comfortable shirtsleeve environment without the encumbrance of bulky protective suits. He had used the same method to establish his permanent helium-mining facility.
    Further conversation was forestalled by a low cry from Slim Davis. “There it is, Tom. That must be the pass the Arrow went through last time.”
    “It sure looks familiar,” Bud commented. “I don’t remember it being so narrow, though.”
    “Don’t forget, flyboy — that avalanche brought down a lot of rock,” Tom pointed out as he studied the broken cliffside. “Anyway, we always knew the Deepwing would never be able to work its way through.”
    “I know that’s the plan, but still — ” The young pilot’s brow creased beneath his straggling lock of dark hair. “Isn’t the upper route pretty much blocked off?”
    Cromwell glanced at Tom with narrowed eyes. “Blocked off? What’s he referring to?”
    Tom gave the Navy officer a muted look of surprise. Just what had the man been briefed xxxxxxxxxxx

on?
    “The city sits on the floor of a sort of narrow box canyon with a single outlet, the pass. It’s completely surrounded by very high, steep cliffs. The opening at the top comes in at a slant — sort’ve like the chute on a mailbox, if you see what I mean. The overhang shields the ruins from sight, including sonar depth-mapping and imaging.”
    Cromwell nodded. “Got it. So now we slide down that chute.”
    “I’d prefer keeping an even keel to sliding,” Tom responded curtly.
    He now directed Slim to slightly decrease the rate of the rotors. The mantacopter bobbed upward gently, and the jagged side of the barrier cliff slid downward across the viewpane past their watchful eyes. As Zimby read off numbers from the sonarscope, Slim deftly guided the craft forward over the top spine of the seamount, then followed its slope downward again.
    Tom pointed. “That way. About twenty degrees to portside.”

    “Just what are you aiming at, skipper?” asked Bud. “I don’t see any opening at all.”
    “Look at that forest of seaweed,” directed his pal. “I’m sure it’s covering the entrance. Sonar says it isn’t very dense. We can’t see through it, but I’m betting we can push through it without difficulty.”
    The Enterprises personnel all trusted Tom’s instincts and scientific judgment, but it was impossible not to feel a surge of anxiety as the Deepwing edged its way into the screen of indigo streamers. Yet there was no jolt, no impact. The waving vegetation crawled lazily across the window of Tomaquartz, then parted before them like a curtain. They had made it through!
    Cromwell muttered, “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?”
    The sub was now moving through an open space beneath a down-tilting rock ceiling. The aqualamp revealed a corresponding slope beneath them, and walls that faded off into the dim distance. “Big as a football field!” Bud breathed.

    “And it widens out below. The actual canyon floor, the site of the ruins, is at least a mile across,” Tom reminded him. “Just imagine the sort of tremendous upheaval that shattered these slabs of ocean bedrock and forced the fragments up on end!”
    Obviously unimpressed, Lieutenant Crom- well noted that the slope fell off into darkness one hundred yards ahead. “Must be the edge of the canyon, hmm?”
    The mantacopter sailed over the edge, then paused, hanging in watery space as Tom switched on the hull-bottom aqualamp and angled it sharply downward. Grinning but silent, he gestured broadly as the crew craned their necks.
    “Lord above!” gasped Zimby Cox. “It’s fantastic!”
    The electronic gleam lit the floor of the subocean canyon like a miniature sun. The submarine city, crumbling and overgrown but clearly visible, spread out in all directions. They could see square and circular structures, collapsed towers, traces of broken columns,  xxxxxxxxxxx

scattered blocks of worked stone, and small upthrust objects that might prove to be statues or monuments. The pattern of streets was still evident to the eye.
    Cromwell interrupted the moment of stunned reverie. “Looks more brown and green than gold.”
    Tom stared at him disapprovingly. “The real surfaces, gold or not, are underneath all that accumulated gunk. In fact, clearing it away is the purpose of a new invention that we’ll be freighting along when we come back to set up operations.”
    As Slim brought the Deepwing down into the maw of the canyon, Zimby half-turned to Tom and said, “Skipper, I meant to tell you — you might want to take a look at Hatchway Four.”
    “Something wrong?”
    “Not necessarily. But when I was checking out the airlock sequencing controller, there was a little fluctuation in the circuit. It straightened itself out almost immediately, but I thought I’d mention it.”
xxxxxxxxxxx

    “Thanks, Zim. C’mon, Bud, let’s take a  look.”
    As Tom led Bud through the corridor to the starboard hold, he said quietly, “Lieutenant Cromwell doesn’t seem to have absorbed his briefings very well, has he.”
    “My thoughts exactly,” Bud agreed. “Of course, with different words!”
    “He sure seems focused on the gold,” Tom added as he entered the hold, which on this preliminary trip was mostly empty. Popping the reinforced door, the youths stepped into the large freight airlock adjoining Hatchway Four.
    Tom removed a small circuit-scanner from his pocket and approached a green rectangle painted on the bulkhead. “The main circuitry is here, behind the wall,” he explained to Bud. “There’s no actual access port, because we don’t want to introduce a weak point in — ”
    He interrupted himself as the overhead lights seemed to dim slightly, then returned to full power. “What’s up with that?” Bud asked, looking toward the ceiling nervously.
    But Tom had no time to answer. He whirled, startled, as the open door to the hold xxxxxxxxxxx

swung itself shut behind them with a bang. A hissing sound, painfully high-pitched, suddenly filled the chamber, causing the two to wince. As they staggered back in bewilderment, thin jets of water shot downward like crystalline rods from a dozen small openings where the surrounding walls met the ceiling. A spray, rebounding from the airlock deck under tre- mendous pressure, hit them from all sides with a stinging impact.
    “Good gosh!” Tom murmured in horrified disbelief. “The airlock’s being flooded!”

CHAPTER 2




         MOB ACTION






IN SECONDS the ice-cold seawater was lapping at their ankles! Bud stared at his pal in whitefaced fear. “Can’t we turn it off?”
    “Not from inside! But maybe the door hasn’t sealed itself.”
    They sloshed to the door and grabbed its heavy metal handle with four desperate hands. Pressing their feet against the bulkhead, they pulled together with all their strength. Their muscles bulged and the veins in their necks stood out, but the door held. “It’s sealed,” Tom panted. “The whole automatic airlock sequence must be running. xxxxxxxxxxx

When we’re flooded to the top, the outer hatch will open.”
    “Can’t we stop it?” gasped Bud. “Rip out some wires or something?” His eyes darted about frantically. “But no — no access panels, no controls. Aw jetz, Tom!”
    Their legs were growing numb as the frothing water rose above their knees. Suddenly Tom grabbed Bud’s arm. “Your shoes! Take them off!”
    The young pilot boggled. “Don’t go nuts on me now, Tom!”
    “Do it! Hurry! Hand ’em to me!”
    Bud complied. The direct contact of the water with his socks made no difference — his feet were as feelingless as lead weights. But plunging his arms and upper body into the freezing water shocked his system from head to toe.
    Tom also had ripped off his shoes. He waddled over to one corner, gazing up at the spot where two walls met the ceiling. There the surface was interrupted by an oval opening about the size of two fists. “Boost me up, Bud,” he commanded. As Bud did so, Tom pounded first one shoe, then a second, into the opening, xxxxxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxxxxx

one above the other. Almost immediately the youths winced in pain as a jolt of air pressure surged against their eardrums. “Now the other vent!” Tom gasped.
    In a moment both oval openings were crammed full of shoe. Tom and Bud pressed their palms over their ears, their eyes slitted with agony. “The rising water is compressing the air,” Tom yelled. “We’ve blocked the air outlet ports.”
    “So now what?” Bud demanded. “Will the backpressure hold back the water?”
    “Eventually!” But Bud grasped the implication. By the time the pressures came into balance, they would be dead! Nevertheless, the rise of the water slowed as the airspace above it shrank. The water was knocking against their chins as they stood on tiptoe, shivering violently and barely holding on to consciousness.
    Then, without warning, the water inlet jets choked off. The reassuring sound of pumps reverberated through the chamber as the water level began to fall away. In two xxxxxxxxxxx

minutes they were high and dry, lying on the deck and gasping for breath.
    With a click the inner door popped open, and they dragged themselves into the hold. As they lay panting, Bud choked out, “Wh-what happened?”
    “As I hoped... when the ports couldn’t drain off the air and the pressure got too high... the safety backups overrode the controller cir- cuit...”
    Bud shook his head, starting to breath normally again. “Great. But what I meant was, what made the circuit go bad in the first place? Sabotage?”
    Tom shrugged, but his shrug was an eloquent answer in itself. They both were well aware that their official passenger had spent much of the trip in the rear of the subship, out of sight.
    In the pilot’s cabin the other three members of the crew were horrified. “You mean you guys were getting yourselves drowned and crushed back there, and we didn’t have a clue?” gulped Slim Davis.

 xxxxxxxxxxx 

    “I would think some kind of emergency alarm would have gone off,” declared Lieutenant Cromwell.
    “It should have,” said Zimby. “Definitely! It must all be due to that circuitry problem I noticed.”
    Tom looked out the viewport musingly. “That seems likely. We might have jarred a weak connection when we opened the inner door to go inside. We’ll check it out back in port.”
    “Back in port? You won’t be completing your survey, then?” demanded Cromwell.
    Tom did not respond, but spent a minute checking over the system readouts on the control board. “Nothing else looks suspicious,” he stated at last. “We’ll proceed for now.”
    “It’s your call,” Cromwell said indifferently.
    Slim Davis had set down the Deepwing in a fairly open space that might have been a plaza at the intersection of two boulevards. The mantacopter rested upon flexible tractor treads that extended from the under-hull on pistons.
    Zimby asked if Tom and Bud were about to go outside. xxxxxxxxxxxxx

    “A little later, Zim,” Tom answered. “It’s really more important to get the mapping done.” As he spoke the young inven- tor was watching Lieutenant Cromwell’s expression from the corner of his eye. Was the man’s frown only Tom’s imagination?
    Lifting off to a height of about fifty yards, Slim guided the Deepwing along an expanding spiral course, using doppler sonar to map out the lay of the ruins. In an hour they had surveyed the entirety of the city and were elbowing along the cliffs and rocky slopes that surrounded it. Landing again near a complex of big, tumbled structures, Tom and Bud made ready to exit the craft.
    Cromwell held up a hand. “Just the two of you?”
    “Got a problem with that, Lieutenant?” snapped Bud in a challenging voice.
    But Tom spoke soothingly. “It’s his assignment to keep an eye on us, Bud. You’re welcome to join us, sir, if you like. It’s easy to get the hang of the Fat Man suits.”
    Tom led Bud and Cromwell down a short corridor abutting the hull, stopping where four man-sized metal objects, polished to a silver xxxxxxxxxxx

shine, protruded from the bulkhead as if penetrating right through the ship’s hull. These were the Fat Man suits, midget one-man submersibles that made their way along on jointed mechanical legs. Each suit was equipped with small propulsion jets, robotic arms, and its own independent air supply.
    Lieutenant Cromwell gave the suits a skeptical lookover. “You don’t keep them in an airlock?”
    “It’s not necessary,” Tom explained. “Each suit fits perfectly into an opening in the hull lined with a contoured sealer-flange that can withstand pressures as well as the hull itself. They face inward, with the backside protruding out into the water. As you back away and disconnect, the flange dilates inward along the curve of the suit and closes off the hole. Not a drop leaks through.”
    “No doubt you’ve tested it out thoroughly,” the officer grunted. “Then again, I had assumed the same thing about your airlock.” Ignoring the dig, Tom demonstrated how the entire inward-facing half of the Fat Man xxxxxxxxxxx 

swung open like a door, allowing the aquanaut to step backwards into the suit. Pulled shut, it would seal itself automatically.
    As Cromwell turned to enter his Fat Man, Tom held his hands behind him, out of sight to the Navy man but in full view of Bud. Waggling his fingers to attract his friend’s eye, Tom signed a silent message in ASL, American Sign Language. Hang back, don’t seal. Bud coughed, signaling that he understood.
    After a few minutes of instruction, Tom swung the suit closed on Cromwell, at the same time surreptitiously opening a small panel and twisting some control knobs beneath it. “All right, Lieutenant. You can switch on the flange release mechanism and start backing out.”
    Behind the transparent viewdome Cromwell gave a curt nod and his thick-fingered hands moved about on the small control panel before him. “Nothing’s happening,” he muttered over the suit’s external speaker.
    “I’ll go over it with you again,” was Tom’s response. But when he made a show of unsealing the front of the suit, it refused to xxxxxxxxxxx

open!
    “What the blazes is wrong, Swift?” demanded Cromwell with rising anger and a trace of panic. “I want out of this thing!”
    Calling Bud over — and giving a secret wink — Tom and his chum worked at the problem for several minutes as Lieutenant Cromwell’s face grew redder and oilier. Finally Tom looked up and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. Some part of the mechanism is malfunctioning. I can’t open her up without special tools. But it’s a good thing the problem showed itself while you were still inside the Deepwing — I hate to think — ”
    “Are you trying to tell me I’m trapped inside this can?” Cromwell interrupted furiously.
    “You’re perfectly safe. The air tanks will last until we return to base. We’ll leave immediately, of course.”
    “Just pull down that little seat behind you, Darrin old boy,” put in Bud with a twitch of a mischievous smile. “Take a load off.”
    The boys turned and hastened up the corridor, leaving Cromwell raging and sput- xxxxxxxxxxxxx

tering behind them. Back in the control cabin, Bud slapped Tom on the back. “Mighty sweet deal, genius boy!” he laughed.
    “What’s going on?” asked Zimby.
    “We’ve got our mapping data. We’re done here for now. Slim, take us up and out — let’s head home,” Tom answered smoothly.
    Both Zimby and Slim looked startled. “But why? Where’s Cromwell?” asked Slim.
    “In safekeeping.”
    “In a cool dry place,” Bud added. “Should keep fresh for hours.”
    The mantacopter angled back up through the slot and into open water, then rose the long way to the surface. Slim reversed the pitch of the rotor blades and the Deepwing lifted several yards above the low waves, suspended on a cushion of compressed air. Soon they were jetting south of west toward the Enterprises facility on tiny Fearing Island off the coast of Georgia, base for the company’s space missions and many of its unique submersibles.
    Tom made numerous attempts to contact Fearing, then Swift Enterprises in Shopton, xxxxxxxxxxx

New York. But the radio replies were garbled, fading, and full of harsh static. “That upper-air storm must be putting out a lot of lightning,” was Tom’s analysis. “Anyway, our saboteur — our suspected saboteur — won’t be going anywhere until we have a chance to get Security involved.”
    “But what could the guy have been after?” asked Slim Davis. “Why try to get rid of you two? Is he some kind of foreign spy?”
    Tom shrugged. “Beats me. He arrived with all credentials in order, and both Admiral Hopkins and Admiral Krevitt spoke highly of him.”
    “Maybe so, but my instincts are going off like a four-alarm fire!” Bud declared.
    Finally settling into the seacopter dock at Fearing, Tom briefly stuck his head out through one of the small personnel hatches and directed the dock crew to bring an armed security team on the double. When he saw the team approaching by jeep, he went back below.
    Cromwell was still red and fuming in his metal egg, but his voice was under control. xxxxxxxxxxx 

“We there? Got your tools?”
    Tom nodded without speaking and crouched down out of sight. Again twisting the external suit control knobs, he stood up and pulled the suit hatch open. “That did it. Bet you’d like some fresh air up topside.”
    The man only glared. As they walked briskly past Bud and the others in the control cabin, the young flyer asked softly: “Any special orders for the crew, skipper?”
    Tom shook his head, keeping his eye on Lieutenant Cromwell, who had practically run across the deck to the hatch ladder. “It’s Rad’s show,” he whispered. Phil Radnor, assistant security chief of Swift Enterprises, was making a week-long inspection tour of the Fearing Island security setup.
    Tom and Bud followed Cromwell through the hatch. As they trotted down the rampway to the concrete dock, Tom tensed. Radnor awaited them with crossed arms, a burly Fearing security man at either side, hands resting lightly on their holsters.
    To Tom’s surprise, Radnor stepped forward and extended a hand toward Lieutenant  xxxxxxxxxxx

Cromwell, who glanced at it as if it were a snake, but shook it. “Phil Radnor,” said the stocky security man with a friendly smile. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Judson. You’re under arrest.”
    The man in Navy uniform jerked away his hand. “What’s that? Arrest?” He spat out the words, eyes darting wildly. “You’re crazy! I’m — ”
    “Joe Judson, right arm to Longneck Ebber,” said Radnor coolly, motioning his two men forward. In an instant Judson, the phony Cromwell, was handcuffed. “This is where you say things like This is an outrage. But spare our ears, okay, Judson?”
    The man fell silent. Tom turned to the assistant security chief and gestured toward the prisoner. “Who is this man, Rad, and what’s his full name?”
    “Not Darrin Cromwell,” was Radnor’s grim response. “The real one was kidnapped, along with his Navy pilot, during their Washington stopover en route to Enterprises. They were pistol-whipped and held captive until four hours ago when Federal agents tracked them   xxxxxxxxxxx

down. They’re hospitalized. So’s your buddy Dick Halfven, Joe — two bullet wounds. And we’re on the trail of the guy who posed as your pilot.”
    “Okay, but who are they?” Bud demanded. “What’s the deal?”
    “We don’t know the deal,” said Radnor as Judson was carted off by jeep. “Ebber runs a branch of something called the Mayday Mob. Wise guys — mobsters.”
    “The Mafia?” Tom inquired.
    “No, independents with plenty of nerve and plenty-thick skulls. Or at least that’s their rep — independent practitioners of the fine art of organized crime. But the Feds think they have some new backers. And that’s bad news for you, boss — and for your Atlantis operation!”
    

CHAPTER 3



              THE WRECKED CAR






“HEY!” Bud Barclay exclaimed. “Slow down! What do a gaggle of gangster types have against Tom’s exploring a bunch of waterlogged ruins?”
    “Don’t forget the gold,” noted Tom wryly.
    But Radnor shook his head. “I’m sure that sweetens the deal for Ebber and company, but Harlan’s contacts are pretty sure a foreign government is involved.” Harlan Ames, a for- mer Secret Service agent, was head of Swift Enterprises security.
    “Brungaria?”
    Rad chuckled. “Nope, the other one — Kranjovia!”

    When Tom and his team had travelled to Antarctica to drill for molten iron with his atomic earth blaster, he had been stalked by agents of the Democratic Workers Republic of Kranjovia, a splinter of dictatorship located on the Baltic Sea. The government there had proven a ruthless and persistent foe of the United States and other modern democracies. “What are Kranjovia’s interests regarding the submarine city?” the young inventor asked as they began strolling from the dock in the direction of the huddle of buildings fronting the spaceport and island airfield.
    “Again, no one really knows,” stated Radnor. “But they’ve been privy to the same closed-door discussions as other European nations, and I understand they’ve raised quite a few official objections to the American interpretation of various agreements and treaties — loud, strenuous, and threatening objections!”
    “Uh huh, that’s Kranjovia all right,” snarled Bud in disgust. “They never met a civilized nation they didn’t dislike.”
    But Tom disagreed with his pal. “The problem isn’t the country but their self- xxxxxxxxxxx

appointed dictator, Ulvo Maurig, General-Secretary of the Party. Some of his government officers are fairly sophisticated, but Maurig is supposed to be some sort of delusional egomaniac.”
    “And today’s mystery question is — just what sort of delusion does he have in mind?” Phil Radnor snorted.
    After seeing to the berthing of the Deepwing, Tom and the others were jetted back to Shopton by Slim Davis while Judson remained under lock and key on Fearing Island, awaiting the Federal agents who would transport him to his fate. He had sullenly refused all further comment.
    It was early evening when the scientific travellers deplaned onto the broad airfield of Swift Enterprises, whose ultramodern instal- lation was four miles on a side. Tom and Bud joined Tom’s father in their shared office. The elder scientist had already been briefed by radio, the lightning storm having finally drifted away. Harlan Ames also joined them.
    “Phil Radnor did his usual superb job, xxxxxxxxxxx  

Harlan,” commented Damon Swift. His voice was faint. The description of the terrifying threat to his son’s life had shaken him deeply.
    “We expect nothing less of each other,” Ames responded. “Are you all clear on the sequence of events? From the description provided by the real Lieutenant Cromwell, the FBI was able to identify the kidnapper as an ex-convict with known ties to Ebber and his mobsters. Judson has already served time for embezzlement, firearm violations, even second-story work. He carried out the assault on Cromwell and the Navy pilot with a pal who we think is named Gilly Murchison, a former military pilot gone bad. That’s all we know so far. No sign of Murchison or the hijacked jet.”
    “What about the big boss?” Bud spoke up.
    “Ebber is still at large,” Ames replied. “It seems he’s always at large — for years now. Never quite enough evidence to nab him. But he may not be for long, after the authorities start tracing his contacts with Kranjovia.”
    “If Judson was working for foreign agents,” xxxxxxxxxxx

Mr. Swift said, “we may be in for serious trouble. Ulvo Maurig is a sort of gangster himself, and his cadre is absolutely ruthless. We know that from the Antarctica business.”
    “Well, I think they must be running out of ideas,” noted Tom with a weak smile. “This is the second time they’ve used the drowning bit on Bud and I.”
    “They say the third time’s the — ” Bud began.
    “Don’t say it,” snapped Mr. Swift sternly.
    The distinguished scientist’s face was grave as he outlined the possible dangers. “Once other nations find reason to doubt America’s ability to manage and protect the site, they’ll mount a diplomatic full court press to internationalize any scientific presence there.”
    Tom sighed. “It would be like a horde of sightseers trampling around at a crime scene. The clues science is counting on could be compromised, or lost altogether. The gold doesn’t matter at all compared to that.”
    The meeting concluded, Tom left the office for one of his private labs, telling his father xxxxxxxxxxx

that he would be home for a late family dinner after downloading and checking the sonar mapping information from the trip, which he had carried to Enterprises on a computer disk.
    He left the plant a few minutes later and began to head home in his two-seater sports car. Noting that there was still plenty of time before dinner, he decided to follow a winding route that led through the pleasant woodlands that rolled along at the edge of Lake Carlopa for most of the distance around the lake.
    Though he had tried not to show it to his father, Tom himself had been deeply affected by his horrifying experience in the airlock. He felt a need to unwind, and always found the scenery refreshing after a hard day’s work at the plant.
    Man! That pine-scented air sure smells good! he thought, breathing in deeply.
    Glancing at the rearview mirror, Tom no- ticed headlights some distance back on the unlighted road, which was little used by locals and often completely deserted. On impulse he pulled to the side of the road and allowed the other car to catch up and pass.


 xxxxxxxxxxx

    “A new Tioga,” he noted admiringly. “That car has a real engine for a compact job!”
   Taking to the road again, Tom’s thoughts soon turned to his own problems. What was behind Judson’s actions? What orders had the Kranjovians given him? Were other plotters at work to stop him from exploring the city of gold?
    Tom was still deep in thought several minutes later when, rounding a curve, he started violently as a figure came staggering out of the trees ahead and into the roadway almost directly in front of him! He slammed on the brakes and screeched to a breathless stop as the figure, a middle-aged woman, collapsed to her knees beside the pavement. Leaping from the car and running up to her, Tom was shocked to see that she was bleeding from a wide gash on her forehead.
    “Please... please... we need help!” she gasped. “Our car — ”
    She gestured weakly. Tom noticed for the first time signs of a skid leading into crushed, flattened shrubbery. “I’ve got to get you to a   xxxxxxxxxxx

hospital,” he said comfortingly. “I can call an ambulance on my car phone.”
    “No, please,” she sobbed, “I’ll be all right, but Harry — he went right into the windshield, and — and I don’t think he can pull himself free. You’ve got to...” Her voice trailed off as if she were on the verge of fainting.
    “I’ll take a look,” Tom assured her. “You’d better lie flat.” He followed the smashed bushes and scarred tree trunks down a gentle slope for about fifty paces. Then, in a clearing, he saw a car butted up against a tree.
    The Tioga! his mind registered. But as he trotted closer, he hesitated, puzzled. The wind- shield was undamaged, and there was no sign of anyone inside the car.
    Immersed in the problem, his keen mind blotted out the rest of the world — and then went dark as he was struck violently from behind!

CHAPTER 4




           GRIM EVIDENCE






IT WAS nearing dinnertime at the Swift home, only minutes from the fenced borders of Swift Enterprises. Tom’s sister Sandra was setting the dining-room table while her mother basted the roast in the oven. The appetizing odor of beef wafted through the house.
    “Mm! That smells heavenly!” Sandy exclaimed, coming back to the kitchen. “You are positively the best cook in seven counties, Mother!”
    Anne Swift, a slender, attractive woman, gave her daughter a hug. “You’re a flatterer, xxxxxxxxxxx

Dear. But thanks!”
    “I mean it — really,” Sandy insisted. “Dad says you’ve spoiled us for any servant’s cooking and he’s right. It’s your own fault!”
    “I like cooking for my own family — it’s a joy!” Mrs. Swift said. “That’s why I do it. It isn’t just the men who have the inventive instinct, you know.”
    As they proceeded with the preparations for the late-evening dinner, Mr. Swift ambled into the kitchen, a scientific journal in hand. “Now I’m relaxed,” he joked. “By the way, where’s Tom? Not home yet?”
    “No. In fact I’m getting worried,” Mrs. Swift fretted. “You said he had only planned to work a while longer, but it’s been — ”
    Mr. Swift glanced at his watch. “Well, you know how absorbed Tom gets.” The scientist smiled. “Arv Hanson finished the scale model of Tom’s new invention. He’s probably caught up in working out some kink.” Arvid Hanson produced working models that usually served as preliminary test prototypes for Tom’s inven- tions.
    Anne Swift shook her head distractedly. “No, it can’t be that. He showed me the model xxxxxxxxxxx

here at home just before he left on his underwater trip.”
    Sharing in the concern but feigning a nonchalant attitude, Sandy put the finishing touches to the table setting. The roast and vegetables were soon ready and the Swifts decided to eat. But after a few halfhearted bites, Mr. Swift said, “I think perhaps I’ll call the plant and jog Tom’s memory. We can keep his plate warm if we know he’ll be home soon.”
    From the telephone alcove in the hallway he called Swift Enterprises on their private line. The night operator rang Tom’s laboratory and then the double office in the main building. Neither call drew an answer. Next she paged the young inven­tor over the plant’s public-address system — again without success.
    “I’m sorry, sir,” the operator reported. “Your son must have left.”
    After trying Tom’s personal cellphone and the unit in his sports car, Mr. Swift called Bud at his apartment in town. “Sorry to disturb you, Bud,” the scientist said pleasantly when the young copilot answered the phone. “Tom hasn’t come home yet and I wondered if xxxxxxxxxxx 

you’d seen him.”
    “Why no, sir. Not since the meeting in your office,” Bud replied. “Think there’s something wrong?”
    Mr. Swift hesitated, seeking unalarming words. Bud sensed his uneasiness, a feeling he began to share. “Mr. Swift, let me get hold of Harlan Ames. I’ll call back as soon as possible.”
    “Thanks, Bud. I’m sure it’s nothing.”
    Mr. Swift returned to the dining room, trying to conceal his inner concern. But his wife’s eyes met those of the inventor in a worried look. “Damon, is Tom all right?” she asked anxiously. Her husband replied reassuringly, “So far I can’t reach him, but we’ll no doubt hear from him soon. I wish I had a dollar for every time Tom has been late.”
    All three waited worriedly in the big comfortable living room. Tense moments crept by. When the telephone rang, Mr. Swift sprang up im­mediately to answer it. “This is Bud,” the caller said. “I talked to Ames and he thinks we’d better start a search. Would it upset Mrs. Swift if we dropped over and talked about it?”     “Come ahead, Bud!” the scientist replied. xxxxxxxxxxx  

“I’m afraid she’s already upset.”
    A few minutes later Bud’s sleek convertible pulled up the graveled drive. On the way he had picked up Arv Hanson, a big blond six-footer. Ames arrived shortly after- ward, bringing Slim Davis and Hank Sterling, the quiet-spoken, hard-fisted chief engineer of Enterprises, a close friend of the family.
    “No news?” Mr. Swift greeted the new arrivals at the front door.
    “Not yet,” Ames replied, then whispered, “We’re afraid that Tom’s absence may be connected with the arrest today of Judson.” The security chief walked into the living room and was greeted by Tom’s mother and sister. He asked, “Can you think of any errand that might have taken Tom out of his way?”
    The Swifts shook their heads to both questions. “Then,” Ames went on, “we’d better divide into search parties and cover every route Tom may have taken from the plant. If that doesn’t turn up any clues, I think we’d better call in the police.”
    “Shouldn’t Mother and I go along?” asked xxxxxxxxxxx
 

Sandy.
    “Let’s stay home and wait for Tom,” Mrs. Swift said. “He could arrive any minute.”
    After a hurried conference to settle their plan of action, Bud took off in his convertible with Arv Hanson. Ames went with Slim Davis. Mr. Swift followed in his own car, accom- panied by Hank Sterling.
    Fanning out through Shopton, they questioned traffic policemen, news vendors, and gas station operators — anyone who might have noticed the young inventor’s custom-built sports car, very well known throughout the town.
    Remembering some previous incidents, Mr. Swift drove over the tree-shaded lane which he and Tom sometimes used when they felt like walking home from the plant. The other two cars took the main highway which led from the out­skirts of Shopton past Enterprises. All reported failure when they met at the plant.
    Mr. Swift was tight-lipped but calm. “Tom occasionally takes the old Mansburg road around Lake Carlopa,” he recalled.

 xxxxxxxxxxx

    “That’s right,” Bud confirmed. “He takes it when he has some thinking to do. Let’s give it a try.”
    To make use of all six pairs of eyes, the three cars set off together, using spotlights from Enterprises to illumine both sides of the wooded road.
    Ames was in the lead. Suddenly his car swerved toward the dirt shoulder and braked to a halt.
    “Hold it!” he called via cellphone. “I see something!” What looked to be an automobile windshield was gleaming among the trees. The others braked their cars to a stop and leapt out.
    “It’s Tom’s car, all right!” Bud cried. “But where is he?”
    “Look over here, guys!” yelled Hank Sterling. The pooled spotlights showed tire tracks and an oil stain where a car had evidently swerved off the pavement. Crushed underbrush pointed a further route among the trees.
    Mr. Swift went pale. “He may have been forced off the road by a second car!” he xxxxxxxxxxx  

murmured. “If they pulled a gun on him — !”
    Hank Sterling gripped Mr. Swift’s arm. “Maybe you’d better stay here, Damon.”
    But with his son’s fate in question, nothing could stop the elder scientist. All six grabbed power­ful flashlights from the cars and hurried into the darkness of the woods.
    The trail ended in a clearing next to a ravine that was almost invisible behind a wall of overhanging trees. Tracks, gouges, and oil droplets gave testimony that a vehicle had been parked there recently. “Oh, no!” A tense cry escaped Bud’s lips as he pointed off beyond the clearing. Broken branches showed that some- thing or someone had made its way through tangled underbrush edging the ravine!
    Had it walked — or had it been dragged?
    Sick with fear, the searchers scrambled down the sloping bank, Bud and Mr. Swift in the lead. “Maybe Tom was dazed by the accident,” Bud suggested hopefully. “Perhaps he’s wandering around somewhere close by!”
    Mr. Swift was in no mood for false hope. “There was no sign of an accident, Bud.”
    “Tom! Tom Swift!” The repeated calls rang xxxxxxxxxxx
 

through the darkness.
    Suddenly a yell from Bud electrified his com­panions. Within moments all of them had rushed to his side. Ames arrived last and gave a startled gasp.
    Tom lay unconscious on the ground, caked and drying blood on the back of his head and neck. His father knelt beside him. The glow of their flashlights revealed a square white object, like a card, pinned to his t-shirt.
    Mr. Swift scarcely trusted himself to speak. He gestured that someone should look at the note.
    “No words,” grated Ames. “Just some kind of figures or symbols.”
    “Figure it out later!” Bud commanded. “We’ve got to get Tom to a hospital!”
    Mr. Swift had slipped one arm under Tom’s shoulders. “He’s had a blow to the head, obviously,” he muttered after a quick examination. “No sign of anything else. He’s breathing — strong pulse.”
    Suddenly Tom sucked in his breath. “He’s xxxxxxxxxxx

coming around,” said Slim Davis. The young inventor’s blue eyes fluttered open. He blinked at the faces bending over him.
    “Tom! Do you recognize us?” Bud asked, his voice quavering.
    “Sure I do,” Tom breathed. “You’re Sandy — right?”
    Bud snorted in joy and relief. “He’s fine!”
    Presently Tom recovered enough to tell what had happened. “Did you get any glimpse of the person who hit you?” Ames inquired.
    Tom shook his head painfully. “No. But it must have been the driver of that Tioga. I’m sure the woman was his crony — a real actress.”
    “Did you notice the license plate?” asked Arv Hanson.
    “I’m afraid not.”
    When Ames showed him the strange note, Tom looked it over and frowned thoughtfully. “These two symbols look like Chinese writing. It must be some kind of warning or threat.”
    “Whatever the point of it was, they didn’t xxxxxxxxxxx 

intend to kill you, it seems, thank God,” said Tom’s father.
   “Hey!” shouted Hank Sterling, who had strode a few paces away. “There’s something further on down the slope!”
     Ames trotted over. His sharp eyes followed Hank’s pointing finger.
    “It’s a body,” he pronounced grimly.
    

CHAPTER 5




           FEEDBACK FLAW






STARTLED by Harlan Ames’s words, Tom tried to rise to his feet. His father gently held him back. “No, son, stay put.”
    Ames worked his way down the side of the ravine about fifteen feet further. “Male caucasian, early middle age, balding.” He spoke loudly enough for the others to hear. “Unarmed. No wallet. And very dead.” He stood and climbed back to the others, rejoining Tom and Mr. Swift. “He was shot, then picked up and tossed down the embankment.”
    “Oh man,” said Bud. “Must’ve been an innocent bystander who saw too much.”
    But Ames shook his head. “Not the way I xxxxxxxxxxx

read it. Near the body is a short length of copper pipe — probably what he used on the back of that concrete skull of yours, Tom. There was a little grease on the pipe, and the guy had the same stuff on his right palm.”
    “It could be a ruse,” Tom said, “but it sure looks like the victim was the man who attacked me.”
    “Then what the heck’s going on?” exclaimed Slim. “Two teams fighting each other to take out Tom Swift?”
    “Forget all that right now,” demanded Tom’s father impatiently. “I’m driving Tom to Shopton Memorial.”
    “I’ll switch seats with you, Bud,” offered Hank Sterling. “Go along with Tom. We’ll all wait for you back at the house.”
    Hank and Slim half-carried the young inventor back to his father’s car. Mr. Swift rushed Tom to Shopton’s main hospital. Slim Davis volunteered to drive Tom’s car back to the Swift residence.
    Almost before Mrs. Swift and Sandy had had time to absorb the distressing series of xxxxxxxxxxx 

events, Tom was back home, head bandaged but in good spirits. The doctors had pronounced him free of concussion, but prescribed, sternly, two full days of bedrest,
    It was a daunting prescription for Tom Swift. By morning he felt fine and was bursting with energy. He greeted his mother and sister with a smile as he sat down to a late breakfast. Mr. Swift had already left.
    “Please stay at home today,” Mrs. Swift urged anxiously.
    “Can’t, Mom! Honestly!” Tom grinned and hugged her. “But I promise I’ll — ”
    “Darling, when I said ‘please’ I was just being polite,” said Mrs. Swift sweetly. “I’m prepared to use strong-arm tactics if neces- sary.”
    Tom gave her a sheepish look. “Gee, I think I’ll head back to bed. I’m feeling just a little — faint.”
    “I have such smart children.”
    As the restless invalid lay in bed reading, his nightstand telephone rang. Harlan Ames was calling. After asking Tom how he felt, Ames xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

said, “I thought you might like to hear the report I just gave your Dad. The police and the coroner have confirmed what I said about the man’s death. They’ve run fingerprints and dentals; it seems our late friend was one Gilly Murchison, a gangster, somewhat low in the food chain.”
    “That’s the man suspected of playing pilot for Judson.”
    “Yes. I’m sure Joe will be broken up, losing a pal like that. We haven’t had any luck tracing the woman or the Tioga. And guess what? — the bullets used on Gilly were expertly plucked out of his body, so there are no leads in that direction.”
    “What about the note, Harlan?”
    “Nothing unusual about the paper. Just a blank for a business card print run. No fingerprints, of course. But we do have a lead, or at least something interesting to consider.”
    “The writing?”
    “Right. That was a good hunch of yours, about its being Chinese. We took it over to Arv’s assistant, Linda Ming. It’s a little weird and a lot melodramatic, Tom.” xxxxxxxxxxx

    Tom laughed. “Always is!” He listened with keen interest as the security chief continued.
    “One symbol was easy. It means Death. The other was unusual. Linda thinks it’s the ideogram for a man’s name, Li Ching. But it’s been stylized in a funny way — looks a bit like a snake.”
    “It must be his trademark, so to speak,” Tom mused. “Does that name mean anything to the authorities?”
    “He’s not a wanted criminal, not in the U.S. anyway,” replied Ames. “But they’re looking into the possibility of a foreign connection. I’ll let you know if anything pops up.” He added that Joe Judson, now in Federal custody, had been interrogated. “But it was a waste of effort,” Ames concluded. “Judson still won’t talk.”
    Tom mulled this over. “Hmm. Maybe if Longneck Ebber is found, it’ll solve the mystery.”
    “I hope so,” Ames said glumly. “But the FBI has no lead on him yet. He seems to have dropped out of sight.”
    Shortly after Ames’s call, Doc Simpson, the xxxxxxxxxxx

young Enterprises physician, arrived at the house to perform his own examination of Tom. He firmly ordered Tom to remain in bed. “No use pleading, boss,” the medic said. “That was a nasty blow you got, concussion or no. If you overdo things, it could have some aftereffects. Now you stay in bed and take it easy — at least for today.”
    Tom fumed but complied, secretly thinking: Well, at least I’ve shaved one day off my captivity! Sandy did her best to keep her brother amused throughout the day. But it was hard for someone as keen and active as Tom to stay cooped up like an invalid when he felt well and sunshine was pouring through the upstairs windows. Besides, there was so much to be done on the undersea project!
    Fortunately Bud stopped by during the afternoon, bringing Bashalli Prandit in his red convertible. Bashalli was Tom’s favorite date — in fact, his only regular companion among the eager young ladies of Shopton.
    “What a break!” he exclaimed with a grin. Bash’s dark eyes twinkled as she produced a xxxxxxxxxxx

gift she and Bud had brought. “I think the major break was to your skull. But here, Thomas — get well soon!”
    She held out a tempting basket of glazed fruits and other delicacies.
    “Wow! This is worth having to stay in bed for!” Tom chuckled with delight at the girl’s thoughtfulness. “Thanks a million, you two!”
    “We’ll help you eat it,” Sandy volunteered. Tom tore off the cellophane and passed the basket around. As they nibbled the fruits, Bashalli asked how Tom had been passing the time. “Other than recuperating in bed — which you do seem to do quite a lot, I must point out.”
    “He beat me so often at chess that he got bored,” Sandy replied. She giggled. “Then he started working out theorems in rubber-sheet geometry.”
    “Good night, what’s that?” Bud asked.
    “Don’t ask me!” Sandy retorted mischievously. “He says it deals with such problems as whether the hole is inside or outside of a doughnut.”
    Tom laughed at Bud’s popeyed stare. “The xxxxxxxxxxx

real name for it is topology, a form of mathematical analysis having to do with shape. It’s a little tough to explain.”
    “Okay! Don’t bother,” said Bud hastily with a wink in Sandy’s direction. “I suppose it has something to do with your cannon.”
    Bash’s eyebrows arched prettily beneath her raven-black hair. “Tom has invented a cannon?”
    “Oh, that’s just what Bud calls it, Bashi,” explained Sandy with a teasing roll of the eyes. “Look, there’s the working model right over there.”
    Bashalli curiously examined the intricate miniature resting upon Tom’s desk. “I see. It does look a bit like a cannon, doesn’t it.”
    “It’s called a spectromarine selector,” Tom said with a smile, half-apologetic over the somewhat tongue-twisty name.
    The device sat upon a rectangular platform with small tractor-tread units attached beneath. “The full-sized version will be twenty feet long and eight feet across,” the young inventor explained, “and the tread units will be able to be extended downward on pistons to xxxxxxxxxxx 

accommodate uneven terrain, just like the ones on the seacopters.”
    Bashalli pointed to the silver, cannonlike unit swivel-mounted on a pedestal and pointing forward. “And this fearsome cannon — what is it for, protection against whales?”
    Tom broke out laughing, then winced, touching the bandages around his head. “I’ll tell you all about it, ladies — Bud’s already had his usual briefing. First of all, the purpose of the spectrosel is to help marine archaeologists, which is a specialized profession nowadays, explore subocean ruins by safely and selec- tively cleaning off the thick coatings of gunk that accumulate over the centuries. Most of it consists of organic remains: dead seaweed, layers of plankton, coral — that sort of thing.”
    “Maybe a few leftover tentacles from a dead octopus,” Bud put in.
    “And pirate bones,” Sandy added.
    “All right, then,” said Bashalli. “And so, how does this de-organic-izer of yours actually work?”
    “Look, I’ll show you the main components.” Bash handed Tom the model. “These little units xxxxxxxxxxx 

mounted above and below the mouth of the ‘cannon’ are synchro-phased masers — microwave lasers. They produce two focused beams. You can stand in front of them and barely feel a thing, but at the point where they combine, right on the surface of the material to be removed, a real hotspot is created.”
    “Since you’re talking about waterlogged stuff, that must cause steam,” Sandy re- marked.
    “Yep. In fact it causes a tiny explosion of steam at the point of focus, strong enough to peel off the outermost layer and literally blast it away into the air. As the beams scan back and forth, the entire underlying surface will eventually be exposed.”
    Bashalli shrugged. “Very nice, but you will have quite a pile of debris to sweep up, even if it has been steam-cleaned.”
    “Not at all, Bash,” responded the youthful scientist-inventor. “That’s where this cannon part comes in.” He indicated the round opening at the front. “These panels just inside the mouth generate spectron-field pulses, xxxxxxxxxxx 

basically the same sort of technology we use in the repelatrons. But they don’t cause a repulsion effect; the spectron waves bounce off the surface the machine is aimed at, like a radar beam. The returning waves give a little nudge to the dislodged particles and carry them right into the intake cylinder, where the particles — it winds up as a powder — get compressed into a storage reservoir here at the rear of the platform.”
    “And it won’t accidentally strip off all that gold?” inquired the young Pakistani.
    “Let’s hope not! Like the repelatrons, the impeller-waves can be tuned to affect certain materials and ignore others. That’s the ‘se- lector’ part.”
    As Bashalli nodded pertly to indicate that she understood, Sandy pointed out another part of the device which Tom had not yet mentioned. Suspended from a long overhead boom, it was shaped like a funnel and hung a few feet above the front end of the cannon. A jointed hose spiraled back from the narrow neck of the unit, branching out to connect to a number of   xxxxxxxxxxx

cylindrical metal tanks. “And what’s this for, Tomonomo?”
    “I call that part the moleculetron,” Tom answered.
    Bud interrupted with, “I haven’t come up with a nickname yet, but I’m workin’ on it.”
    “What it does,” Tom persisted, “is separate and process the gaseous products arising from the treatment. The spectronic beams can be made to reflect back at slightly different angles. It’s like the way a prism separates rays of light into different colors. The heavier particulates go into the cannon, but the lighter free molecules — gases — are conveyed into the moleculetron, which selects-out the va- rious elements and basic compounds for more efficient storage. For safety, we don’t want to leave anything floating in the air.”
    “Don’t you mean, in the water?” Bud pointed out.
    “Nope. We’ll be using the spectrosel inside the hydrodome airspace created by the repel- atron.”
    Bashalli noted the delicately crafted mini-  xxxxxxxxxxx

ature control panel next to the rear of the cannon-cylinder. Studded with tiny levers and dials, it appeared extremely realistic. “It ought to be,” commented Tom with pride. “This is as accurate a scale model as Arv and Linda can make, and it’s fully functional.”
    “This little model actually works?” Bashalli asked in amazement.
    “Sure,” Tom turned to Bud with a grin. “Like a little hair off the top, pal?”
    “Please! Don’t experiment on me, Professor!”
    Bashalli held up her leather purse with silver initials. “The purse is new, but these letters already need polishing,” she said playfully. “Could your machine remove the tarnish?”
    Tom hesitated, a doubtful look on his face. “Well, actually — the spectromarine selector is designed to work on materials with water content. I don’t know if — ”
    “Aw c’mon, genius boy!” Bud urged teasingly. “The Swift honor is at stake!”
    “All right,” said the young inventor reluctantly. “I suppose it can’t do any harm.”

 

    As Bash held her purse about a foot away from the cannon, Tom aimed the model at the metal initials. Then he flicked on the power, provided by a miniature solar battery, and gently pushed a lever forward with the edge of his fingernail.
    “Ohhh!” Bashalli and Sandy shared a delighted gasp as the tarnish seemed to fade away like magic until it had completely disappeared. But their amazement quickly turned to dismay as the initials too began to vanish! Before Tom could fumble his fingers into position on the tiny levers to turn off the machine, even the leather was partly eaten away!
    “It’s ruined!” Sandy groaned.
    Tom, red-faced, hastily apologized.
    “Don’t worry, Thomas,” Bashalli said good-naturedly. “It’s an old purse, anyhow.”
    “You said it was new.”
    “Now it’s old.”
    “But what happened?” Sandy asked. Tom explained that he had adjusted the machine to remove tarnish, a sulfide compound. But the xxxxxxxxxxx

selector circuit, by an unexpected feedback action, had also ordered the selector to remove the metal alloy, which contained a sulfurous base.
    “There’s sulfur in the leather, too,” he added. “So the spectrosel took part of that off!”
    “Just a slight slip-up,” Bud grinned.
    “It’s a problem that could cause plenty of damage,” Tom noted ruefully. “I’ll buy you a new purse, Bashalli, and let’s say this one went for the cause of science. At least it showed me a flaw in my machine that needs correcting!”
    “I trust you are no longer bored,” com- mented Bashalli.
    The next morning Tom returned to work at the plant over his mother’s resigned and half-hearted protests. He made a quick tour of the various departments to check progress on the full-sized version of his new invention. Luckily there was still time to make changes in the spectrosel’s differential-detector unit. Having developed a promising approach, he went to confer with Art Wiltessa, a brilliant young xxxxxxxxxxx

engineer who often oversaw the construction of Tom’s inventions. He had supervised the production of many of Tom’s projects from blueprint to working model.
    But before three words had escaped Tom’s mouth, his pocket cellphone bleeped. Tom apologized to Art and answered the call.
    “It’s Ames, Tom,” said a tense voice. “I’ve received some new info on this Li Ching guy. It looks like you’re in for some real rough sailing!”

    

CHAPTER 6




          AN EXCESS OF LOVE





TOM groaned. “What did you find out, Har- lan?”
    “I’ve been in touch with Hal Brenner, the FBI agent you’ve dealt with,” Ames re- sponded. Agent Brenner had previously assisted Tom when he and Hank Sterling had been imprisoned during the run-up to Tom’s flight to South America in his Flying Lab. “He was given permission to tell me what they know about Mr. Li. The main source is Interpol, although I think Brenner was hinting at some sources in the CIA and the domestic terrorism office.”
    “And maybe your cousin Steve?”
 

    Ames chuckled. “Tom, you should get out of  inventing and become a detective!  At any rate, here’s what I was told, boiled down. Turns out Li is, officially, Comrade-General Li Ching, former head of the technological research division — weapons, in other words — of the Army of the People’s Republic of China. He was suspected of marketing secrets to Taiwan, but fled the country before he could be arrested.”
    “So he’s a traitor.”
    “Yes, and worse — he’s thought to be the leader of a sort of international spy-for-hire ring with a specialization in high-tech theft. Brenner describes him as ruthless and mur- derous.”
    “We’ve definitely seen that!” Tom de- clared. “But just how is he involved in this Mob-Kranjovia connection?”
    “Brenner’s stumped on that one, and so am I,” admitted the security chief. “It’s possible, of course, that some entirely separate group is trading on his name. But there are a half-dozen government offices at work on the problem — not to mention Enterprises’ own xxxxxxxxxxx

security aces!”
    “I’m betting you solve it first, Harlan!” commented the young inventor appreciatively. “Thanks a lot for the report.”
    “Watch your backside, Tom.”
    “That’s hard to do,” Tom joked. “I’ll let Bud watch my backside, and I’ll watch his.”
    Turning his attention back to Art, Tom described the flaw that had spoiled his de- monstration on Bashalli’s purse. “I think I have the answer,” he added.
    Pulling out pencil and paper, Tom sketched a feedback-control circuit which he had worked out in his mind overnight. Its purpose was to prevent the compounds in the object being cleaned from affecting the selection of elements to be removed.
    “Good enough,” Art commented. He was a man of few words, but his eyes showed his admiration for his young employer’s technical insight. “And we can add that easily before the unit’s assembled.”
    “Thanks, Art.” Tom thumped him on the back. “I hate to slow up your schedule, but we want all the bugs ironed out before setting up xxxxxxxxxxx

shop in those Atlantis ruins.”
    Having given work to others, Tom was now somewhat at loose ends. After spending some time making entries in his personal journal, he prowled about his several labs restlessly. As noon approached, he was relieved when his telephone buzzed.
    “Hi, sis! What’s up?”
    “Oh, just felt like giving a call to my famous big brother,” was Sandy’s breezy reply. “I don’t suppose you’ll be taking off for the sunken city this afternoon?”
    Tom gave a wry chuckle. “Not a chance. We’ll probably work Saturday, though. Lots to do.”
    “Don’t try to wiggle out!” his sister warned. “Daddy says you have this afternoon free, and we want you to join Bud and Bashi and I on a pleasure outing. Even if you don’t care about your devoted sister and poor Bashalli — she of the abused purse! — you don’t want to let Bud down, do you?”
    Tom groaned humorously. “Well, I suppose if you’ve already got Bud’s okay...”
 

    “Meet us in the parking lot in fifteen minutes.”
    In eight minutes Tom found the girls leaning glamorously against Bud’s scarlet convertible. Bud gave Tom a rueful look. “When they told me you’d given thumbs-up, pal, I figured I’d better come along to play watchdog.”
    “Huh?” Tom gave Sandy a look of mock accusation. “You said you’d already got Bud’s okay before you called me!”
    “No, Tom, you said I’d already got Bud’s okay,” Sandy replied blithely. “Can I be blamed for your jumping to a conclusion?”
    Bud struck his forehead with his hand. “Genius boy, we’ve been had!”
    “A fine thing to say, Buddo,” Sandy pouted. “Is there something wrong with us, Bashi?”
    Bashalli’s long dark lashes drooped sadly as she smothered a giggle. “It’s no use, Sandra. I fear we’re just not their type.”
    “Oh well.” Sandy shrugged mischievously. “If they have to work so hard all the time, maybe we better find ourselves other dates.”
    “You know, there are these nice two boys xxxxxxxxxxx

who work at Wickliffe Laboratories...”
    This brought a quick reaction from Bud. “Hey, none of that!” he protested. “Maybe we could manage to break away.”
    Giving up the game, Tom laughed. “So what’s the plan?”
    The plan turned out to be an afternoon at Carnival Park, a large amusement park in the old-fashioned style that had just opened in a little resort town at the tip of Lake Carlopa. For weeks, the girls had been begging Tom and Bud to accompany them there.
    “Yippee!” Bud burst out gleefully. “This is wonderful, Sandy! I haven’t been to a carnival in a blue moon!”
    As soon as they had parked, the four young people hurried off gaily on foot to the carnival grounds. A din of excitement filled the place. The carnival was ablaze with color, highlighted by striped tents and clusters of toy balloons. Barkers shouted in front of the amusement concessions, while children shrieked and squealed with laughter on the fun rides and the merry-go-round.
 

    “Oh, I’m so excited!” Bashalli confessed. “Sandra, this is the best idea you ever had!”
    “Check!” Tom agreed, laughing.
    “And you didn’t even have to change your signature blue-striped t-shirt, Thomas,” she added with irony, and a twinkle in her eye.
    The two couples lunched on dogs, fries, and shakes, to which the voracious Bud Barclay added his favorite, roasted corn on the cob. Everywhere they went, strolling Shoptonians nodded hello, for Shopton’s most celebrated citizen was well known to everyone.
    “Hey, let’s show Sandy and Bash what hot shots we are!” Bud proposed as they passed a shooting-gallery booth.
    “Okay.” Tom grinned. “We’ll make it boys against the girls — losers buy cotton candy all around. But let’s not run up the score on ’em too high!”
    The girls selected guns and shot their round first. Bing! Bing! Bing! The travelling ducks went down faster than clay pigeons at a rifle match.
    “Wow! Almost good!” Bud gulped. Sandy xxxxxxxxxxx

and Bash smiled innocently but said nothing.
    When Tom and Bud’s turn came, they were unable to beat the girls’ high score. The boys looked at each other in deep male chagrin as they lay down their guns.
    Tom chuckled wryly. “You don’t suppose this could have been a put-up job too?” he quipped to Bud.
    The girls burst out laughing.
    “I suppose we mustn’t destroy their fragile egos,” cautioned Bashalli. “Tom may be needed to save the world.”
    “Okay, we’ll ’fess up!” Sandy giggled. “We’ve been taking shooting lessons from Chow!” Chow Winkler, a big and grizzled one-hundred-percent Texan, had recently left on one of his periodic trips back to his home in Texas. He had proven himself skilled at the cowboy arts of ridin’, wranglin’, and shootin’.
    The boys vowed to do better at the next concession. This turned out to be a booth where the customers were pitching baseballs at a comical-looking dummy. As Tom left them momentarily to fetch the promised cotton xxxxxxxxxxx

candy, Bud sized up the game. “Three shots for a quarter!” the barker shouted. “Nothin’ to it, folks! Hit the dummy and down he goes! So step right up and win your little lady a prize!”
    “Okay. Maybe our luck will turn here.” Bud, who had been a fireball hurler on his high school team, grinned in anticipation.
    Just then a lady bystander snickered. “Hey, that dummy looks just like you, Longneck!”
    Bud stiffened. Could the speaker be referring to Longneck Ebber? Beneath hat and sunglasses, the man standing next to the woman certainly resembled the FBI photo Harlan Ames had shown them!
    Bud shot a quick glance at Tom as he walked up with the cotton candy. “Tom, that guy over there — I’m sure it’s Longneck,” he whispered to his chum. “If he notices you — ”
    Tom turned to the two girls, speaking quietly and tensely. “Wait over by the ferris wheel, out of sight. We think we see one of that gang, and he could be armed. We’ll be right back.”
    The possible Ebber, a tall, cadaverous man with a beaky nose, was already walking away xxxxxxxxxxx

with his companion. Tom and Bud followed them at a distance, hoping to remain unseen in the crowd.
    But it seemed the mob leader had the sixth sense of a born criminal. He abruptly stopped and turned. His eyes fell on the young inventor, and his slit of a mouth turned deadly.
    “Get outta here!” he grunted at his woman friend, roughly shoving her away. Ebber whirled and took off like a startled jackrabbit, plunging violently into the crowd. Tom and Bud dashed after the suspect almost without thinking.
    Ducking and weaving to avoid collisions with the carnival merrymakers, the two boys sprinted through the midway. But the crowds of people made it impossible to keep their quarry in sight. They paused to catch their breaths, ready to give up the chase. Longneck Ebber could have slipped off in any of a dozen directions among the tents and concession stands.
    Suddenly Tom hissed, “I see him! He’s at that big building over there, behind the ticket xxxxxxxxxxx

booth!” Ebber was standing in line to enter one of the enclosed rides, evidently trying to get out of sight. Even as the youths began to run, they saw Ebber hand a ticket to an attendant and scramble into a boat-shaped  conveyance. Over the mobster’s head was a gaudy sign outlined in flickering bulbs: Spend Ten Minutes in The Tunnel of Love!
    They attempted to jump the line, but two stern well-muscled carny men warned them back. “Ticket booth over there, boys!”
    Tom and Bud rushed up to the booth. “Two for the Tunnel of Love!” Tom demanded, panting as he fumbled out some coins.
    “The times they are a–changin’,” said the man in the booth languidly. “First some guy wants to ride all by hisself, then you two boys — ”
    “Come on!” Bud demanded. “We’re in a hurry!”
    “I bet,” scowled the man, peeling off two tickets.
    In moments Tom and Bud were in their two- seater boat, which ran along on a rail partly xxxxxxxxxxx

covered by a shallow stream of water. They glided slowly forward into the darkness of the building. A number of the little boats, filled with ardent occupants, now lay between them and Ebber.
    “Can you see him?” asked Bud.
    “Nope. He’s somewhere ahead of that bend up there.”
    There was nothing to do but wait as the boat inched lazily along among the blacklight-lit monsters and weird clown faces. They came to an open place where they could see across to a further point on the track. Tom elbowed his pal. A boat had just emerged into the violet dimness — empty! “He’s jumped out somewhere!” Tom exclaimed. “He must be trying to get out through a back door!”
    “Trying to shake us,” Bud gritted. “But we won’t be shook!” He stood in the boat, pulling Tom to his feet. They jumped off onto the painted “shore,” their feet crunching down through its foam covering as they sprinted across toward the opening of the xxxxxxxxxxx 
 

dark section that the empty boat had just emerged from.
      Then, accompanied by startled screams, a gunshot crackled through the purple shadows!

    

CHAPTER 7





          ON TO ATLANTIS!






TOM and Bud hurled themselves down flat, muscles tensed in anticipation of bullets. But there were no more bangs, only the babble of excited voices.
    “Lookit that!” laughed a boy somewhere ahead. “Man, this ride has everything!”
    Rising cautiously, the boys made their way forward at a crouch. “Look down there,” Tom whispered. “Footprints.”
    They crossed the stream, using the prow of a passing boat as a stepping stone. “Sorry,” Tom muttered to the riders.
    “Having a good time?” was Bud’s contribu- xxxxxxxxxxx 

tion.
    They crept through an archway into another section — and halted with stunned gasps. A lean, longnecked figure was hanging from an overhead beam, arms dangling down limply, so low that the laughing riders had to duck beneath his fingers.
    Tom and Bud made a slow approach, jerking back at one point when it seemed an arm had twitched. But it was only the nudge of a head brushing as it passed beneath.
    Tom drew close and touched the body.
    “Dead?” asked Bud.
    Tom nodded. “Bleeding from the back. That shot was meant for Ebber, not us.”
    Even in the dim luminance they could make out a small square of white against the late Longneck Ebber’s dark shirt. Li Ching’s calling card!
    After a long afternoon with the local police, carnival officials, and a pair of sour-faced young ladies, Tom and Bud ended their day of carefree amusement conferring with Harlan Ames and Mr. Swift back at Enterprises.
    “No trace of Longneck’s female compan- ion,” reported Ames. “Matching Bud’s description to yours, Tom, we think it was xxxxxxxxxxxxx

the same woman who stopped you out on the road.”
    “So now this Li Ching character has racked up two victims from the Mayday Mob,” Bud noted. “Someone must have been following Ebber.”
    “And was Ebber following Tom in turn?” asked Damon Swift. “We found a gun — Ebber’s — on the floor near the body. He must have drawn it.”
    “Nobody could have known that we’d be at Carnival Park,” Tom put in thoughtfully. “More likely he was holed up somewhere in town putting together some more dirty work, and decided to take his lady friend out on a date.”
    “It’s enough to make you give up dating,” Bud remarked. “Long as I live, I’ll never go into another Tunnel of Love!”
    “Comrade-General Li may be taking out the bad guys for now,” stated Ames, “but who knows what he’ll turn to later.”
    Seeing the look on his father’s face, Tom said gently, “We’ll be safer underwater. When xxxxxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxxxxx 

is Lieutenant Fraser supposed to get here?” Lieutenant Brian Fraser was the assigned replacement for Cromwell, who was still hospi- talized.
    “There’s been a change in plans,” Mr. Swift answered. “I received word this afternoon, while you were all off enjoying yourselves. Fraser is on Fearing, where he’ll stay until the expedition is ready to depart.”
    “I’ll say Monday’s the day, Dad. The spectromarine selector should be ready by then; I think we can load it onto the Sky Queen Sunday afternoon. All three mantacopters are already waiting in their berths on Fearing.”
    “Your science team gets here tomorrow morning,” Ames added. “I’ve checked them all out, and so has the FBI. More than once!”
    “It’ll be great to see Ham and George again!” Tom grinned. George Braun and Hamilton Teller were a lively, bantering pair of scientists with a background in oceanography and archaeology and a powerful interest in the Atlantis legend. They had been part of the first seacopter visit to the city of gold.

    Ames winked. “I’ll do my level best to keep you boys alive, at least through tomorrow morning.”
    Bud had the last word. “Could you make it tomorrow evening? I have afternoon plans.”
    The next day, Friday, brought not doom but a diversion. Anticipating the arrival of the science team by plane, Tom’s wait in his office was interrupted by the office secretary, Munford Trent. “Tom, there’s a Miss Gabardine here to see you.”
    “Does she have an appointment?”
    “She claims not to need one. She says she’s here from the Treasury Department — official business.” Trent approached Tom at his desk and spoke softly. “Please don’t make me argue with her any more, Tom. It’d take an atom bomb to pry her out the door!”
    Tom chuckled under a sympathetic look. “All right, let’s see what she wants. I’ll keep a finger on the security alert button.”
    “They’ll need to send a squad.”
    In a moment a woman marched in,