A snakelike form reared up into the air
and darted straight at Tom!

THE TOM SWIFT INVENTION ADVENTURES

TOM SWIFT
AND HIS AQUATOMIC
TRACKER

BY VICTOR APPLETON II

TOM SWIFT AND HIS
AQUATOMIC TRACKER
    

    
    
CHAPTER 1
    
    
    

OMINOUS IMAGE

    
    
    
    
    
“THIS will be one of the greatest scientific adventures of the century! We’ll all be pulling for you!”
    “Thanks, Dan,” responded the athletic look- ing young man standing next to him. “Just about everyone’s pulling for us — but we won’t know for a couple weeks yet whether all that pulling is enough to help us pull it off.”
    Two youths, who looked young enough to still be in their teens, stood with an older man at the metal railing that bordered the deck of the mammoth research vessel Sea Charger, their three gazes trained seaward.
 

    The older man, a rotund figure who clutched a ten-gallon cowboy hat against the wind, spoke with Texas confidence. “Now don’t you worry a whit, son. When Tom Swift and his folks take a notion t’do somethin’, they never give up till it’s spang on the plate!”
    “He’s using a fish metaphor,” explained Bud Barclay with a broad grin.
    “Oh, I get it,” nodded Dan Walde. “Like reeling in a fish for dinner.” The red-haired young man, in a sailor’s work garb, turned his back to the Baltic Sea and faced Chow Wink- ler, executive chef — and executive friend — to Tom Swift Enterprises. “But what I don’t quite get...” He shrugged. “I’m one of the junior trainees in the oceanography course, see. From Omaha? We really weren’t briefed all that extensively about this big operation out here.”
    “They have oceanography in Omaha?” asked Bud slyly.
    “Now buddy boy,” Chow intervened, “you oughta know they have ocean-oh-graphy all over th’ place. Even in Texas! Why I hear’d the whole blame middle o’ the U.S. useta be under water!”
    “Thanks for the lesson, Professor Winkler,” xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

retorted the black-haired youth. “Say, maybe you’d like to answer Dan’s questions, hmm?”
    “Oh, I didn’t realize you were one of the scientists, sir,” said Walde, embarrassed. “You must know everything there is to know about all this.”
    Chow reddened just a bit — and glared at Bud just a bit. “Wa-aal sure. I’m a perfesser o’ cuisinology, all right. And m’ friend Tom Swift — he’s the one who worked the whole thing out — he gave me a right complete explanation. So what’d you want to know?”
    “First of all, why do they call it the SMB?”
    “Er, well now, it’s a-cause ‘s’ and ‘m’ and ‘b’ are th’ initials o’ the words. That help?”
    “Sure, but what are the words?”
    “Why, ‘s,’ that there letter ‘s,’ means sub- m’rine. Like as, underwater.” The ex-chuck wagon cook was desperately searching his broad, if shallow, memory bank.
    “What the professor means to say,” put in Bud, “is that ‘SMB’ stands for SubMoBahn.”
    “Sure,” Chow confirmed hastily. “Bahn! —  whatcha call a German freeway.”
    “More like a German free-for-all,” chuckled Bud. “Anyway, it’s what the news guys call the xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

project. What the Swedes call it, I can’t pro- nounce!”
    Dan nodded and asked Chow if the Swedish government would own the SMB outright upon its completion. Having no idea, but with mouth already open, the cuisinologist essayed an answer. “Y’see now, we got ourselves a full- blooded Swede workin’ at Enterprises, a right smart feller name o’ Arv Hanson.”
    “Oh really?” said the trainee in a puzzled voice.
    It was Bud to the rescue again. “The Swedish government is paying for the tube-tunnel, along with Denmark and Germany,” he explained. “When it’s finished, I think the plan is for all three to own it together. That Swedish company that pushed the idea will actually operate it, though.”
    “That’s right!” confirmed Chow forcefully.
    When young Tom Swift had returned to Shopton, New York, after completing his astounding aerial highway in Africa, a tale told in Tom Swift and His Repelatron Skyway, the news of his accomplishment had preceded him, circling the globe at the speed of television and the internet. Awaiting him at Swift Enterprises xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

were official representatives of three go- vernments and an executive from a Swedish firm, Lor-Sofviio Teknos. Tom’s success in Ngombia had revived the moribund prospects of a somewhat similar effort at radical road- building — but this was to be a motorway spanning the hundred-mile stretch of the Baltic Sea separating Germany, at the Danish border, from the southmost tip of Sweden. The challenging project entailed construction of an automotive tunnel beneath the sea!
    “I realize you use those Swift water-repelling machines to hold back the water, Mr. Winkler, but some of it’s still mighty hazy,” persisted Walde. “If it’s going to be a real highway, for cars, what about getting air to them down there? What about the tailpipe exhaust?”
    “Yeah, and what about th’ fish?” demanded Chow, forgetting momentarily that he himself was the question-answerer.
    “Mind if I try for an answer, guys?” asked a friendly voice. Tom Swift ambled into view around a corner, extending a hand to Dan Walde.
    “Wow!” gulped the youthful trainee. “I’d hoped to meet you, Mr. Swift — Tom — but I xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

figured you’d be squirreled away somewhere working on equations or something.”
    “I manage to come up for air now and then,” Tom remarked with a grin. “In this case, just in time to hear your questions.”
    “I’ll leave th’ answers to my young friend an’ ay-sociate,” declared Chow, smug and relieved. “Explainin’ makes fer good practice.”
    As was his unconscious habit, the young inventor sketched in the air as he spoke. “I started off calling my invention the DOT —  Deep Ocean Transitway. But nobody else calls it that. I’ve given up.”
    “SMB sounds a little pizzazzier,” joked Bud.
    “I’m sure you know the basics, Dan. The underwater construction workers and tech- nicians, whom Enterprises trained and outfitted, are building a pair of tube-tunnels running side by side to handle the two directions of traffic, eight lanes in each. Set at intervals are special repelatrons, the same kind we developed for the skyway project, sweeping back and forth and tuned to repel the local mix of seawater.”
    “I understand that much,” said Walde. “I know your machines have to be carefully cali- xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

brated for the precise elements and compounds they’ll be pushing against.”
    Tom nodded. “When we set up the helium- extraction hydrodome in the Atlantic, which also uses a repelatron system, we had to set up sensitive sampling devices all over the area to keep the repelatron precisely tuned — even small variations in the mix of substances can weaken or cancel out the repulsion effect.”
    “Which is part of what they’s settin’ up here,” added Chow, taking what he thought was only a small risk.
    “Well — that’s what we first considered, true,” Tom noted quickly. “But I stumbled across a simpler, yet more precise, approach.”
    Bud couldn’t help displaying the privileged insight his best friend always provided him. “That one’s called an aquatometer.”
    “Uh-huh. A water-atom measurer, in other words,” confirmed Tom. When Dan asked what was different about it, Tom went on, “The aquatometer doesn’t take in water and analyze it, the way the earlier sampling devices did. Instead it sends out a sort of ‘feeler’ repulsion wave in all directions. It’s too imprecisely attuned to give anything more than an infi- xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

nitesimal push, but computer enhancement can make something of the back-reaction never- theless. As the aquatometer runs through the range of settings in a few seconds or so, we assess the different pushes and determine the proportions and general distribution of sub- stances in the local water — many thousands of gallons of it in one sweep!”
    “All by ree-mote control, y’might say,” Chow interjected proudly.
    Walde indicated that he understood that part of the approach. “I was also wondering about — ”
    “I overheard you,” Tom said. “You know all about that little gadget I invented for free divers called the hydrolung, which uses an electronic principle to extract molecules of breathable oxygen from water, directly.” In the transitway tubes, he continued, long flat strips of artificially engineered material ran unbroken from one end to the other, filling a longitudinal slot in the Tomasite plastic that constituted the tunnel walls. “The outward side of the strip is in contact with the ocean water, which it draws in and works its magic on. Oxygen, along with a nitrogen-helium mix, is then exuded from the xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

inner surface into the tunnel. Another strip uses a similar principle to extract unbreathable ex- haust — not just the automobile kind, but the human kind.”
    “Now tell ’im about the fish,” urged Chow Winkler.
    “That’s why we’ve given the tunnels walls of Tomasite plastic,” explained Tom in reply, “rather than just using the sort of nanofilament barrier we use for our hydrodomes. We’re in much more of a ‘fish zone’ in this project, and it’s important to keep marine life, which is mostly unaffected by the ’trons, from poking into the tunnel.”
    “Especially during rush hour,” added Bud, a native Californian.
    “No offense, Tom, but it still seems kind of dangerous, driving around under water,” ob- served Dan. “What if you had a seaquake? That’s something we study in my field. If the floor starts rippling, the SMB could just twist apart, couldn’t it?”
    “We thought of that,” the youth replied. “As a matter of fact, the tunnels don’t sit right on the bottom, but are suspended at a height of about thirty feet. They’re held up, and also an- xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

chored in place, by lengths of transifoil, which can be made to curl or uncurl electronically in response to changing subsea currents or earth movements. Even with a full flow of traffic, the two SMB’s are fairly buoyant, by the way. It doesn’t take much to hold them up.”
    “It’s — it’s fantastic!” gulped Walde, eyes wide.
    “You’ll get used to it,” Bud assured him.
    The four turned to the railing and the sea, and a thoughtful silence descended. “I called it a scientific adventure,” mused the trainee from Omaha. “But I guess it’s more of an engineering challenge, really. Does it also have any practical scientific value?”
    “Scientists don’t always limit their research to practical matters.” Tom grinned. “However, this is also a test to prove how our diversuits and underwater construction methods can be used. Think of it as another step in blazing a trail for later field study of the undersea environment firsthand by oceanographers — like you, Dan — and marine biologists. And we hope it may open new possibilities in safe offshore mining and oil prospecting.”
 

    “Some experts even claim man will have to seek new living space under the sea someday,” put in Bud. “Right, Tom?”
    “Right. And we may not have a choice. But that day is a long way off, I hope,” added the young inventor with a chuckle.
    “A person kin get a mite tired eatin’ nothin’ but fish,” Chow muttered thoughtfully.
    Just then a crewman wearing a Tom Swift Enterprises jacket emerged from the escalator hatch nearby and beckoned to Tom. “I’ll leave you three to contemplate the future,” Tom said, excusing himself. “Looks like the present is calling.”
    As Tom approached, the crewman said, “Tom, they want you down in Communications right away.”
    “Message for me?”
    “Somebody important, they said.”
    In the communications room below deck, the chief officer greeted Tom and indicated a red light flashing rapidly on the control panel of the Swifts’ private satellite-linked TV network. Tom flicked on the videophone monitor. Blake, Enterprises’ Washington DC telecaster, appear- xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

ed on the screen.
    “Hi there,” grinned the young inventor. “We haven’t spoken for a while.”
    But Blake did not return the greeting. “This may be important, Skipper,” the telecaster said in sober tones. “John Thurston has something to show you.”
    Thurston, a calm-faced, balding official of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, stepped into view before the camera. “Hello, Tom. Everything proceeding smoothly on your underwater roadway?”
    “You probably know that better than I do, sir.”
    The CIA section chief smiled slightly. “Well, one mustn’t rely completely on intelligence work. At any rate, I’ve received something interesting by way of Bernt Ahlgren.”
    Tom raised an eyebrow. Not long before Tom had worked with Ahlgren when a man-made threat from space had endangered the world. The agent worked with, but not for, the CIA, and had described himself as a com- munications expert. The simple mention of his name signaled danger! “What’s up?”
    “Take a look at this.” Thurston held up a photographic print, and Blake switched to a xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

closeup so that it filled the video screen. “By showing this to you, Tom, I’m trusting your solemn word that none of this matter — none! —  will become public knowledge.” Tom gave his promise in response.
    The print showed what appeared to be a stylized drawing of a figure wearing a Roman soldier’s helmet sinking head downward into water. Tom studied the image intently for a long moment. “What is it?” he asked.
    “Ahlgren’s people picked it up yesterday from an untraceable satellite transmission on a channel we’ve been monitoring.”
    “How was it transmitted? Video signal?”
    “No — digitized in a ciphered format we’ve been able to break. This is the output; we’ve got the actual number-string under top security. We’re sure that channel is being utilized by some sort of espionage cell operating in Europe. We know essentially nothing about them, but our European colleagues have reason to suspect a terrorist action in the making.”
    “Good gosh!” muttered Tom. “You don’t know who they are?”
    “For convenience we’ve labeled them Image-GOG. ‘GOG’ has become a common classiication term in the intelligence commu- xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

nity — Group of Guys, believe it or not.”
     “Have you doped out anything about what the image might signify?”
    “I’m afraid not. We’ve been working all night to try to link the image, which may be some sort of insignia, to agent groups we’ve penetrated. We’ve come up dry, Tom. It may be a trigger message.”
    With a slight hesitation, the youth made a suggestion. “How about Collections? Do they have a take on it?” This was the nickname of a highly secretive government agency dedicated to technological threats of the gravest kind. Tom had received information from the group on several occasions, marveling at their un- accountable ability to uncover secrets that their possessors wished desperately to remain covered.
    Thurston responded quickly — and coolly. “Let’s keep our discussion focused, please. What we have here is an unknown threat, perhaps a command for immediate action, being passed along in electronic disguise.”
    “And you think Enterprises might be able to help you figure out what it means?” The young xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

inventor was troubled by the request. “Mr. Thurston, I don’t know if codebreaking is considered a science, but we sure don’t have a department for it at Enterprises.”
    “Then you might give some thought to starting one,” Thurston stated bluntly. “Because if your Swift science can’t drag some information out of this little picture, hundreds of lives could be lost by the end of the week!”

    

    
    
CHAPTER 2
    
    
    

DOUBLE DISGUISE

    
    
    
    
    
TOM SWIFT was thunderstruck by Mr. Thurston’s words —  and horrified at the thought of the responsibility being placed upon his shoulders! “Sir, I —  I don’t know what to —  ”
    The section chief overrode him. “I’ll use three-channel fractionated encryption to transmit the complete string of digits —  to your Shopton office, I presume. The string consists of eleven repetitions of the same identical sequence; the image, in other words. Reiteration of that kind is common as a way to get around the minor disruptions of natural interference —  static.”
 

    Tom had already commenced mulling over the problem. “Which implies that they needed to get the image across with absolute pre- cision.”
    “Correct. Ahlgren thinks something in the underlying formatting data must act as the cipher-key to the real message. But it may involve obscure mathematical transformation formulas that you might be familiar with in your scientific work. We’ll continue to work on it, naturally. But Bernt thinks it’s vital to pull you into the loop, and I agree!”
    “Then I’ll do my best, Mr. Thurston. I’ll arrange to be back in Shopton by mid- afternoon, your time.” Somewhat uneasy, Tom considered whether he wanted to provide Thurston, and the CIA, with direct access to his research and invention files. Deciding, Tom asked that Blake switch over to an electronic data-ceiver that could record complex infor- mation in a matter of nanoseconds, to be relayed on to Shopton by the trusted, long time employee. “Blake, I’m sending you the access sequence that opens my secured server at the plant. Go ahead and send Blake the complete image data, Mr. Thurston, and I’ll begin work xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

on it as soon as I get there.”
    “We knew you would, Tom. I’ll send you everything we have. But I beg you — re- member your promise of secrecy. Give out no more information than is absolutely essential. You never know what tiny scrap of data might put someone’s life at stake.”
     Bud and Chow were amazed when Tom informed them that he would be flying home to Shopton within the hour, and their amazement turned to dismay when the youth proceeded to summarize — vaguely, with a view to keeping his word — the worrisome situation. “I’ll take the Sky Queen back,” Tom explained. “It’s due here soon from the Fearing training facility with the next squad of the Swedish company’s subsea workers. We’ll make Enterprises the return destination instead of Fearing Island.”
    “You said ‘I.’ Seems to me that nice big Flying Lab has room for quite a few ‘we’-s, pal,” objected Bud.
    “Sorry, flyboy, but while I’m away I need you here on the Charger. The new diving crew is inexperienced. They may have questions you can answer easily. You’ve been dealing with the hydrolung diversuit since I invented it.”
 

    As Bud nodded reluctant agreement, Chow piped up: “Wa-aal, brand my calamari, boss, you can’t say that about ole Chow — I can’t even fit inside them plastic shark suits. So I’m goin’ back with you — and don’t bother arguin’, son.” Tom didn’t.
    Designed by Swift Enterprises for oceanic research of all kinds, the Sea Charger’s deck was as big as that of an aircraft carrier. It could easily accommodate the huge three-level Flying Lab as the wingless craft settled to a stop on its vertical-thrust jet lifters. Tom welcomed the dozen new workers, and within ten minutes the Sky Queen was again in supersonic flight.
    The skyship was taking a great-circle route to North America which brought it over the island nation of Iceland. As he stood musingly by the tall windows of the upper-deck lounge, he gazed down at the rugged terrain of sparkling white and half-hearted green. “You know, Diana,” he remarked to one of the crew, on break and reading a magazine, “Iceland is the one big stretch of land on Earth where the mantle layer, the layer below the crust, protrudes out into the open. This whole sub- Arctic region of the North Atlantic is folded and xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

up-thrust.”
    “Mm-hmm,” was Diana Mulvey’s fascinated response. “Tom, could a person really make a bullet out of ice? You think?” She glanced up over the edge of her crime-fiction magazine to see Tom shrug. It seemed both minds were otherwise occupied.
    Landing at Enterprises, Tom immediately went to his fully equipped personal laboratory, which adjoined the Flying Lab’s underground hangar. Thurston’s relayed transmission awaited him, and he worked on it for hours, calling in the plant’s resident expert in higher mathematics, Omicron Kupp, for whatever obscure help he could provide.
    At last, brain-weary, he left for a late dinner at the Swift home with his family. Maybe it’ll recharge me, he thought, frustrated. He had made no progress.
    Slender, attractive Anne Swift tried not to show alarm over her son’s story — ominous enough even when related in polite generalities. Tom, who knew how his mother worried over his usually hazardous scientific adventures, did his best to reassure her. Danger was nothing new to the Swift family, beginning with Tom’s xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

same-named great-grandfather a century before.
    After a delicious fried chicken dinner, Tom and his father spent some time discussing the Baltic Sea project and the “drowning Roman” image. All Tom’s life father and son had worked as a team, and Tom knew John Thurston wouldn’t expect him to withhold the details of the grave matter from the man who had taught and inspired him. “I sure wish I knew how to go forward, Dad,” Tom said. “This makes deciphering the Space Friends’ symbols seem easy.”
    Damon Swift nodded, but chuckled with wry understanding. “Allow me to disagree, son. I suspect it will prove easier to crack a code created by our own species than something cooked up by extraterrestrials — whose thoughts are a cipher from the start!”
    The two scientist-inventors batted around ideas for a time, but Tom finally trudged upstairs to his bedroom. Even then his churning mind would not allow him to sleep. He switched on his computer and accessed the data on his secured server at Enterprises.
    He stared blankly at the image for a time. xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Then, abruptly, things became much less blank! “Good night!” he breathed excitedly. “All along I’ve been looking for a verbal message in the underlying code string. But what if the message isn’t words but another image?”
    Instantly Tom began to follow the lead. He now sought clues to line-morphing commands hidden inside the number string — and found them! Running the new routine, he was rewarded by the sight of the Roman becoming weirdly distorted, as if inscribed on tortured rubber. Soon it was unrecognizable. “Topo- logical transform matrices,” he muttered — cryptically.
    Yet when the morphing hesitated, Tom could make nothing of the jumble of lines and curves that filled the monitor. The transmission static must’ve scrambled the data sequence beyond recovery, he told himself despairingly.
    Static!
    “Gosh, that’s it!” he almost shouted. “It’s the perfect disguise!” He and the others had been seeking systematic variations from segment to segment, the giveaway sign of a code being transmitted in serialized form. But the seemingly random static interference would be expected xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

to vary over the eleven image repetitions. The bursts of apparent “interference” hadn’t been included in the code analysis!
    Tom plunged into the problem with renewed energy and solved it in a few Swift minutes. A new image appeared on the screen — and this one made sense! “It’s a map!”
    But a map of what? There were no words, no numbers, no lines of latitude or longitude, no compass indications. The simple diagram showed an irregular, somewhat circular feature that resembled a lake, with long, wandering lines of varying thickness spreading out from it in all directions. Could they represent rivers? Here and there were sets of thin-lined elliptical figures, many of them nested inside other larger ones. Elevation markings? Variations in climate or temperature?
    Was it a map after all?
    Tom’s bed suddenly looked very inviting. “Well,” he told himself, “at least now we have something! — I think.”
    The next morning Tom remained home but contacted John Thurston with the news of his progress, using his ultra-secure Private-Ear Radio. Thurston was delighted and grateful, but xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

forcefully urged the young inventor to remain in Shopton to work on the problem, using all the available resources of Swift Enterprises even as Thurston’s own team plunged into work on the new angle. “I’d planned to, sir, for a few more days, at least,” he reassured the CIA leader. “But at some point I’ll either solve it or reach a stopping point, and Enterprises is contractually bound to provide technical supervision at the Baltic site. Lives will be at stake there, too —  and that’s not just guesswork!”
    “I understand, Tom. We can live with that.”
    A full day at home of stretching, crunching, twisting, and rotating the maplike diagram brought forth no conclusion. It couldn’t be made to correspond to any geographical feature, any- where. Tom had to consider that he might be on the wrong track. But all his instincts decreed otherwise.
    That night brought some welcome relaxation as Bashalli Prandit joined the Swift family for supper, as she often did. Tom always looked forward to her breezy — and bracing — per- sonality.
    “How soon will this new northern ‘chunnel’ be connected up, Thomas?” asked Bashalli. “I xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

assume I shall be invited to the ribbon tying ceremony?”
    “Ribbon cutting,” Tom corrected her with a warm smile. “And yes, of course you will. The whole family will.”
    “You heard him say it, Sandra, my dear,” remarked the young Pakistani with a twinkle. “I have at last made the family.”
    In the middle of lively conversation in the living room, the foyer telephone rang.
    “For you, Tom — it’s Chow,” Sandy reported.
    Tom was surprised. “He told me he was going to check out that new French restaurant tonight. Wonder what’s up.”
    “No doubt he found a snail in his appetizer,” Bashalli suggested has Tom headed for the phone.
    “Boss, you gotta come over here right away!” the Texan babbled excitedly, trying with minimal success to keep his gravelly tones even closer to the gravel. “Sumpin’s goin’ on, and I shor don’t mean any o’ them purty-fer-grass French snails!”
    Tom was instantly alert. “Okay, pardner. But what is it? Where are you calling from?”
 

    “Can’t explain now, but I’m at that classy French restaurant I toldja about, over here in the hoity-toity section — you know, Carlopa Heights. The Quel Fromage. But lissen, don’t go callin’ in th’ posse, cause it’ll make him bolt fer sure!”
    “Make who bolt?”
    “Cain’t talk now. Hustle here fast, boss, ’cause the varmint may leave soon!”
    Tom heard the receiver click. He returned to the living room. “It seems Chow’s trapped a varmint in a French restaurant. Sorry, but I — ”
    “ —  have to leave,” finished Sandy, sourly.
    Bashalli had a wry suggestion. “Perhaps he should have it printed on cards.”
    Meanwhile, Chow hurried back to his table, brushing his considerable broadside, for the fourth time, against the low-cut back of a widely seated woman. “Sorry there, ma’am,” he mut- tered, ignoring her glare. “Tables’re a mite close, ain’t they?”
    Clumping down at his own elegantly appointed table, the ex-Texan sat fidgeting impatiently. His quarry — a wiry, muscular- looking man with a dangly mustache and tinted glasses — was seated some distance away with xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

two companions. Chow craned for a better look, but his view was partly blocked. He could see the man only in profile.
    “Brand my turkey giblets, they’ve finished that blame fancy dee-sert,” the Texan fretted. “I gotta get a squint at that hombre’s face! They’ll be gone afore Tom gets here!”
    “Monsieur is enjoying his crepes suzette?”
    “Huh?” Chow looked up with a start and saw a waiter hovering at his shoulder. “Oh — er — sure, sure! It’s a great suzette all right. Allus in th’ mood fer good flapjacks, even little bitty ones like these here.” Chow reached for more sauce to put over the sugar-powdered pan- cakes, but instead he absent-mindedly picked up the vinegar and proceeded to pour it on lavishly.
    “Monsieur is most venturesome.” The waiter raised his eyebrows, shrugged expressively, and glided away.
    The man in tinted glasses and his two companions were now dabbing their lips with napkins as if about to leave. In desperation, Chow got up and headed toward the suspect’s table, intending to walk boldly past for a close look — again a collision course with the seated xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

woman, whose delicate-framed glasses sud- denly dived soupward from her less than delicate nose. But as he approached, the man suddenly turned around to speak to someone at the table behind him. The Texan could see little more than the back of the man’s head.
    Aaa ding dang! Shoulda stayed put, thought Chow. Coulda seen him perfect.
    Fuming, he returned bumpingly to his own table, then saw that the suspect was now facing his dinner companions again.
    “Make up your golsarn mind, buster!” Chow steamed.
    Once more, Chow started toward his quarry’s table. The seated woman had now migrated to the opposite side of her table — which hélas turned out to be on Chow’s new route.
    “Sorry, ma’am.”
    “Sir! Must you?”
    “Wa-aal shor! You should allus say you’re sorry when you thwack someb’dy’s backside.” That gussied-up lady musta been born in a barn! he told himself.
    Several other diners looked annoyed as the pudgy, bowlegged cowpoke maneuvered his bay window past their chairs for the umpteenth xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

time, and the waiters looked on helplessly, with horrified fainting looming on the horizon. And again, as Chow approached, the mustached man turned around to resume chatting with the person behind him!
    Chow’s face was now perspiring furiously. The man’s companions — one a woman, the other a burly, fat-faced fellow — stared up at him.
    “Say there! You looking for someone, friend?” the burly man asked in a needling voice.
    “Mebbe I am an’ mebbe I ain’t,” Chow snarled. He walked slowly past, peering back over his shoulder in hope that the mustached man would turn around again.
    Kee-rash! A trayfull of dishes and silver went flying in all directions as Chow collided with a waiter. Chow staggered back from the impact, tripped over a diner’s foot, and fell back flat onto the floor.
    “Nom de nom!” the waiter wailed in genuine French terror as he gestured toward the prairie wild man on his floor.
    Chow grasped the extended hand. “Nice t’ meet ya, Nomdy. Chow Winkler.” He quickly added: “Oh yeah — sorry. Can’t fergit that!”
    “Haw, haw, haw!” The burly man roared xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

with glee. “That’s what happens when you don’t watch where you’re going, fat boy!”
    “Now jest a corn-shuckin’ minute, you smart French-fried so-an’-so!” Using the waiter’s hand to brace himself, which yanked the waiter into a near somersault, Chow struggled to his feet. Salad dressing, genuine Mode Francais du Poupon Megiariffe, wormed down his head and face. “If it’s trouble you’re lookin’ for — ”
    The mustached man suddenly rose from his chair and exclaimed, “Shut up and wipe off your big barndoor face, you loudmouthed range bum!”
    “Range bum!” Rumbling with full-throated rage, Chow mopped the salad dressing from his eyes and tried to focus on his enemy. “You hear what he said, lady? — Naw, not you, ma’am, the fat one b’hind you.”
    Finally finding his adversary somewhere on the other side of the dressing, he barked omi- nously:
    “Take off them glasses, an I’ll show you who’s a range bum, mister!”

    

    
    
CHAPTER 3
    
    
    

THE DROWNING ROMAN

    
    
    
    
    
AT THAT moment of drama — high noon at night! — Tom was  tooling through downtown Shopton in his bronze sports car, powered by the silent electricity of a Swift solar battery. Arriving in the Carlopa Heights district, Tom’s dashboard guide-map directed him to the Quel Fromage restaurant, where he ignored the frowning valet and slid into a parking space on his own.
    Inside, the restaurant was in an uproar. Most of the diners had left their tables and were crowded in a half-circle around the far end of the room. Tom noticed one woman in par- xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

ticular — wide, handsome, dignified, and some- what elderly. She was half-crouching, money in her hand, as if rapidly laying bets on changing odds.
    Loud grunts and exclamations could be heard. “That’s the stuff, baldy!” one of the onlookers called out. “You’ve got him now!”
    “Good grief, what’s going on?” Tom gasped. Did he mean Chow?
    The youth burrowed through the animated crowd, then stopped in amazement. Chow and a mustached man were seated at a table, sleeves rolled up and engaged in an arm wrestling contest! Both their faces were beaded with perspiration.
    Suddenly Chow forced his opponent’s arm to the table and crowed in panting triumph, “Gotcha, Duke!”
    “Okay, okay, cowboy — you win.”
    Just then Chow caught sight of Tom. “Hi, buckaroo!” he bellowed. “Step up an’ meet Duke Tyler, former arm-rasslin’ champ o’ Bra- zos County, Texas!”
    Grinning with disbelief, Tom shook hands with the mustached man.
    “But — er — what about that fellow you xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

wanted me to see, Chow?” Tom inquired.
    Chow, meekly embarrassed, gave a sheepish chuckle. “Oh yeah, wa-aal, that. It was jest my ole range pal, Duke, from years back on th’ Horton spread. Only I didn’t reckernize him behind them cheaters — an’ also he’s growed a mustache since I seen him last. Got a little gut on ’im, too.”
    “Still got m’ hair, though, Chow-boy.”
    “That ya do, Duke.”
    As the crowd returned to their tables, dazed waiters found Tom a chair and hr sat down with Chow, Duke Tyler, and Duke’s two com- panions, one of whom, namely the woman,  turned out to be Mrs. Tyler.
    Tom’s expression told the big chef he needed to commence an explanation fast.
    “It’s like this, Tom. I ’as here eatin’ this pitiful food when I catch this voice goin’ off across the restaurant, right loud. It was Duke, but I didden know it — said some stuff about ‘Tom Swift an’ his big funnel’ an’ how you was jest wet b’hind the ears an’ how he wanted t’go on over t’ Sweden an’ take you down a peg.”
    “Had me a few drinks gullied down,” Duke muttered apologetically. “No offense. Big talk.”
 

    “Born in Texas,” noted Mrs. Tyler.
    Chow continued, “Some more o’ that big talk an’ I was allfired sure he was one o’ them enemies that always turn up whenever you got something goin’ on, boss. So — ”
    The young inventor gave his friend a reassuring smile. “So you decided to play detective.”
    “Uh-huh. Afore he had a chance t’ pull anything.”
    A pretty girl in a pretty skimpy outfit, who had been walking around with a dainty camera, sidled up to the table and purred, “Monsieurs, if you’d care to remember this awfully exciting evening at Quel Fromage, here are some glossy photos of the big match that I took.” As Tom reached for them, she went on, “And they’re only $7.99 each. We can supply copies, inci- dentally.”
    Tom jovially purchased the set and divvied them up, keeping one for himself to show to his family and Bud. As he slipped it into his pocket he said to Chow with a chuckle, “Thanks for looking after me. It was a great try, pard, and I sure appreciate it. But after this maybe you’d better leave the detecting to Harlan Ames.”
 

    “That’s our plant police feller,” Chow explained to the others. “Knows his business.”
    Tom briefly excused himself to call home, leaving Chow happily swapping reminiscences with his friend. An hour later they all bid one another goodnight.
    As Tom and Chow headed for the door, the young inventor said softly, “I spoke to the owner when I made my call, Chow. I offered to pay for any damages — after all, you were acting as my personal representative, in a way!”
    “Thanks much, son. But lookee, I prob’ly helped their word o’ mouth. Nothin’ s’good fer advertisin’ as a little excitement!”
    “Well, that headwaiter looks like he’d like to brain you with a leg of lamb!” retorted Tom.
    “Aw, no, that’s Mr. Nom. He looks that heartburn sorta way all the time. Adios, Nom- dy!” Chow called across the crowded room. “Don’t let the bugs bite!”
    Before retiring Tom made a PER call to Bud aboard the Sea Charger, on the side of the earth where it was late morning. He told Bud the story of Chow’s exploit, and could easily imagine his pal shaking with laughter. “Man oh man! Wish I’d been there to see it, genius boy!” xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Bud exclaimed.
    “I’ll show you the photo. How’s the new work team?”
    Bud answered, “They’re fine — Zim did a great job with ’em on Fearing.” Zimby Cox was a veteran sub pilot who had been assigned to head up the training program at the tiny islet that served as the Swift Enterprises base for spacecraft and submersibles. “I’ll be down in the tube with them tomorrow, though. That guy Alix Tuundvar — something like that — says his crew’s been having on-the-spot questions about how to maneuver the diversuits near the re- peletrons.”
    “Which you know all about. I know you’ll be a great help, chum.”
    The next morning, as Tom and his father sat discussing the SubMoBahn project in their shared office, Harlan Ames came striding in from the Security office next door. A news- paper was folded under his arm. “Got something you two will want to look at.”
    “Is that the Shopton Evening Bulletin?” asked Mr. Swift.
    “No, this is a real newspaper — from that big town with the initials NYC.” Beckoning xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Tom over, Ames spread the front page on Damon Swift’s desk. Its screaming yet ever-dignified headline read:

    
STATUE SHIP SINKS OFF NORWEGIAN COAST;
ALL SAFE

    
    The first paragraphs of the story described how the big vessel, an oil-freighting supertanker, had foundered in the Norwegian Sea off Alesund. The cause of the event was unknown as yet, though there were no signs of a collision with another vessel. “All hands were rescued, thank goodness,” murmured Tom’s father.
    “I read about this just the other day,” declared Tom. “In addition to oil, they were carrying a large cargo of valuable statuary from the State Museum in Trondheim to Greece, from where they’d been ‘borrowed’ during the Greek civil war fifty years ago. One of the statues is pretty famous — the Delian Apollo.” The crewcut youth glanced up at Ames. “Bad news, but why did you want us to know about this?”
    “They’ll probably ask Enterprises to assist with the salvage job as we’ve done before,” the xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

security chief said. “But that’s not the main reason. Notice the name of the ship?”
    Mr. Swift shrugged. “The Centurion.”
    “Wait — I get it!” exclaimed Tom. “Harlan’s suggesting it could tie in with the ‘drowning Roman’ image!”
     “Hmm.” Mr. Swift frowned thoughtfully. “A centurion was a Roman military officer in the days of empire — that fits, all right. Which implies that the group behind the transmission knew beforehand that the ship was doomed.”
    “Sure, because they’d planted a bomb aboard!” Tom reasoned. “The drawing authenti- cated the transmission, like a ‘watermark,’ for the recipients — probably a diving crew waiting in the area — and the ciphered map must show precisely where she’d be sunk. They could be planning to retrieve the statues in order to finance...” At a warning look from his father, Tom finished with: “ — some kind of criminal activity!”
    “That’s my thinking as well,” stated Ames.
    Tom frowned. “But... there’s a piece that doesn’t quite fit. In trying for a match I pulled up topographical info from all over the world. And xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

that includes ocean-floor topography. I speci- fically remember that those waters were covered, yet the diagram contours didn’t correspond to anything in the area.”
    “Nevertheless, fellows, I’m treating this as a lead.” Ames promised that he would speak to John Thurston immediately. “By the way — don’t strain your brains trying to keep the terrorist business secret from me. Thurston’s made me a part of the knowing circle, as of this morning.”
    “Sorry, Harlan,” said Tom.
    Tom made further studies of the transmission, trying vainly to interpret the maplike diagram. He stayed into the evening, Chow bringing him a light dinner and some disapproving looks. But at last Tom abandoned the effort and headed homeward. “I’ll give it tomorrow,” he told him- self. “But then it’s back to the Sea Charger.” He hadn’t felt it necessary to inform the Swe- dish firm managing the SMB construction, Lor-Sofviio, of his brief absence. “But if they try to reach me and I’m not there, it’ll give me one more problem to juggle.”
    Tom’s thoughts were scattered by the bleep xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

of the car cellphone. He answered — but no one replied on the other end.
    “Hello? Hello?”
    Yet there were sounds after all. Tom sud- denly realized what he was hearing. Sobbing!
    “...T-Tom...”
    “Sandy? What’s — ”
    “Ohhh — oh Tom. They called here, and I — I — The project — the sea tube — s- something terrible! And, and — ”
    An instinct told Tom Swift exactly what his sister was about to say! “Bud! What’s hap- pened to Bud?”

    

    
    
CHAPTER 4
    
    
    

AQUATASTROPHE!

    
    
    
    
    
WHEN Bud Barclay had said tomorrow to Tom, he hadn’t mentioned that “tomorrow” on the Baltic Sea would start for him before dawn. The sky was still black with a touch of cream when the Charger’s sea elevator — a repelatron descent platform Tom had devised nicknamed a bubblevator — was swung out over the gray waters to lower the athletic youth to the fore-end of the growing SMB, now within twenty miles of its destination on the German coast.
    “Glad I am to have experienced this already,” remarked one of Bud’s companions, Rutgar Spirss, as the frigid waters closed in around xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

them. “But the first time, on your island, my eyes were ready to jump out of my head.”
    “An elevator made out of a bubble,” murmured Alix Tuundvar, chief of the work crew. “I do assume, Bud, that we do not need to seal our diversuits to enter the tube-tunnel?”
    Bud nodded. “Our own repelatron bubble will overlap the air space at the open end of the tube.”
    “This, I already knew!” piped up Rutgar with a laugh. “I did my homework. The repelatron spaces merge together like water droplets, Alix. One merely walks across — dryly!”
    The SubMoBahn was brightly lit, as far as the eye could see, by the diamond rays of a line of powerful Swift Searchlights. It was an awesome sight, yet also eerie, like some glowing sea- snake stretching on for miles in the violet-tinged black. Only one of the paired tubeways was near completion. Construction on the second one, to run alongside, had scarcely commenced at the distant Sweden terminus.
    The bubblevator touched down and the three strode through the intangible, invisible mem- brane of nanofilaments that helped control the humidity of the airspace, so near to the ocean’s xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

waters. This newest segment of the SMB was alive with human activity, which proceeded in shifts round the clock. Technicians and construction workers roiled back and forth across the eight-lane highway.
    “But now I’m surprised!” exclaimed Rutgar. “They have already painted the lines on the pavement? One would think the pavement would come at the end of it all, after both tubes are completed. Hmm?”
    It was Alix’s turn to look wise. “Now now, Spirss, it isn’t pavement, you know, but textured plastic, set down by that wheeled machine over there next to Biede.”
    “It’s like a coarse fabric — Tomasite burlap,” explained Bud. “Car tires grip it better than asphalt. It even has some ‘give,’ to smooth the ride.”
    “Hah!” snorted Rutgar. “Who needs tires!”
    The other members of Alix Tuundvar’s crew soon joined them, all clad in their diversuits, their contoured full-face visors hanging open on their chests. As their suboceanic work was to be done some several miles north of current construction, they crowded into four of the midget electric vehicles manufactured by xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Enterprises’ Shopton affiliate, the Swift Con- struction Company. The group of nanocars hummed off up the SubMoBahn at high speed.
    “Okay, guys, here we are,” signaled Bud presently. “Access hatch 79.” The little convoy braked to a halt and the men clustered around Tuundvar, awaiting his instructions.
    “As you know,” he began, “we are to make adjustments to the cables of transifoil which hold us up above the bottom and anchor us there. They must bend and curl in a coordinated manner, adjusting to currents and any motion in the seafloor, may God forbid. Also, we must naturally keep the roadway perfectly level, eh? And so the calibration — ”
    A sudden sharp motion by Bud caused the crew chief to break off in surprise. The young Californian said nothing, but the intent ex- pression on his face flashed an obvious sign of alert. He was staring further up the brightly lit SMB tunnel, which ran to the horizon.
    One of the men followed Bud’s gaze. “Up there — what is it?”
    “What is what?” demanded Alix.
    Rutgar squinted into the distance. “Far away in the tube. Look now, Tuundvar — see it? xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Something flimmerting? At the end?”
    “The air...” murmured Bud. “Where’s this wind coming from, anyway?” Suddenly his face turned white as he answered his own question! “Jetz! Get back in the nanos and turn ’em around! Everyone! Peel out!”
    Startled into action, the men rushed to comply — except their leader, who held back with a frown. “Kindly inform me — ”
    Bud jumped forward and yanked the Swede toward his seat in the nanocar with tough muscles. “Get in here! Good grief, don’t you get it? The tube’s collapsing!”
    It was a concept they could all grasp — instantly. Rubber squealed on Tomasite as the nanos struggled to reverse direction, and they began streaking back toward the tube-end at frantic speed. They were pursued by surging, unrelenting danger from the further reaches of the SMB, a wall of high-pressure seawater. Still miles away, it was closing on them with every second, driving the air in the tube ahead of it.
    “What — what shall happen?” choked Alix. “To ourselves, to the others? Can we outrun it?”
    “I don’t think so,” grated Bud. “Although — if the air pressure builds up enough to — ” But xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

then he remembered how much counter-pres- sure would be required to halt the advancing deluge in its tracks. And what such pressure would do to fragile humans! “No... the walls’ll pop like balloons! The trons are only tuned to water, not air.” The youth clicked on his radiocom and broadcast a shrill emergency tone. “This is Barclay! Evacuate the tube immediately! Anybody with a diversuit, seal up and jet as far away as you can. The rest of you — ” Did the suitless workers have any hope of survival? “Divide up among the bub- blevators and make for the surface. The SMB is flooding and it’s headed your way! You’ve only got seconds!”
    Bud glanced in the rearview mirror, dreading what he would see. Dread was rewarded: the driving, foaming water-wall was now only a few hundred yards behind them!
    The tunnel was filled with a shrill roaring sound, high-pitched — fingernails raking a chalkboard. “You see, the tube is becoming a whistle,” muttered Rutgar through the commu- nicator built into his sealed facemask.
    “Can we do nothing?” Alix asked Bud. “If we go out into the sea, through a hatchway — ”

    “Jetz, we can’t even slow down, much less stop!” barked Bud. “Everyone, make sure you’ve switched on your hydrolungs. Get ready to jump. When the water hits, don’t fight it, go with it. Kick free of the nanos and try to use your suit jets to guide you. Keep to the middle of the tube. If you — if you make it to the end, jet out into open water at top speed, right through the Inertite barrier. Remember, your suits are made to resist force and pressure, and they’ll cushion you, too.”
    “Nice. Oh, but, you see...” A calm smile on his face, Rutgar twitched the tiniest of shrugs. “It is here.”
    There was little reason to consider safe driving and the rules of the road. Bud twisted about and stared behind him. The water was so close on his tail that he could almost see his face staring back at him!
    He had time to take the barest, briefest glance forward. The cars were nearing the end of the tube. Bud could see the abandoned ma- chinery, and a few figures frantically elbowing onto the several bubblevators that serviced the site. Beyond that, the open end of the tube yawned wide, the worklights reflected from the xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

glassy surface of water held back by repelatron force — which, by the design of the SMB, was only directed outwards!
    Oddly enough, the column of hurtling water behind them never touched the nanos. The front of pressurized air, pile-driven before it, was finally strong enough to cannon vehicles and occupants into the open space of the tubeway, which was almost as high, along the middle, as it was wide. Bud kicked free of the tumbling nanocar, made a desperate effort to streamline his body like a diver — a horizontal one! — and slammed violently into the high blue-gray cliff that was, simply, the Baltic Sea.
    It was at the top of the stratosphere, hurling itself eastward at multimach speed, that news of Bud Barclay’s fate reached Tom, hunched forward in the wide cockpit of the Sky Queen. “Tom, this is Captain Jacobs,” came the radio voice, crisply professional. “I wanted to be the one to tell you — ”
    “Tell me!” Tom snapped.
    “Barclay’s alive. He’s okay. A jetrocopter is bringing him back.”
    “Th — thank — ” Then Tom fell silent. Ja- cobs was saying something about false reports, xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

initial confusion, apology. It went unheard. For a moment Tom Swift could not speak. At the sound of blubbering behind him, Tom reached back and patted what lay within reach — a Texas beltline.
    Jacobs continued, “Good thing this big ship has a big infirmary, Tom. It’s mighty full-up.”
    “Any casualties, sir?”
    “None. Injuries, though — bruises, hypother- mia, a broken arm, two concussions. Plain old water packs quite a punch when you hit it the wrong way, hmm? A few near-drownings, obviously. Barclay was one of the unconscious ones; we tracked him from the chopper with instruments as he just jetted along underwater like a torpedo. Not a care in the world. But now he’s complaining, they tell me.”
    “I’ll bet!”
    The Flying Lab made it to the deck of the Sea Charger in record time, however slow that time felt to those passing through it. Tom’s re- union with his best friend below deck was emotional.
    “Hey, Tom, let up!” Bud yiped. “Ouch! Every bone and joint in my body has something to say!”

 

    “Buddy Boy, what th’ ding-danged flyin’ sea monkeys happened to you folks down there?” Chow Winkler demanded, wiping his bag-laden eyes. “They make it sound like the blame tunnel jest got squozed-up like a toothpaste tube!”
    “I don’t exactly know what happened,” Bud said. “Just ‘water, water, everywhere’.”
    “No one does,” declared Tom gravely. “Not yet. I’ve been getting updates from the ship ever since I left Shopton, but all we know right now is that SMB-A is ruined from one end to the other. We have hydrolung divers inspecting it section by section.”
    One of the workers from Enterprises, a friend of Tom’s named Dick Hampton, stirred in his nearby hospital bed. “Tom, do you mean it’s flooded?”
    “Not just flooded,” the young inventor cor- rected him; “but completely wrecked. As the water surged in at some point in the middle, the advancing pressure blew the sides out and basically peeled the thing like a banana! All that’s left are Tomasite shreds, empty-handed lengths of transifoil, and eight lanes of ‘wet conditions’!”
    “Good night, Skipper, how could it happen?” xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

fretted Bud. “You told me the repelatrons had all sorts of emergency backups, and each unit was independent of the rest in terms of power.”
    “Right, pal, thanks to the neutronamos.” Tom explained that as successive sections of the tube walls failed, the repelatrons were knocked out of orientation, no longer squarely focused on the surrounding ocean. “Remember, these are not the all-directional models, like we use at Helium City and on the bubblevators. We had to use focused beam-type generators because we couldn’t risk the possibility that the field would affect water in the cars — or in people, for that matter.”
    “Yeah — a safety feature!” The black-haired youth’s words were ironic and bitter.
    “But now lissen boys, that ain’t the whole story,” Chow objected. “I mean t’ say, what started it? How’d the first o’ them ree-pellers get fouled up, hunh?”
    “Great question, pardner,” replied Tom. “Offhand, I don’t see how any of them could have failed without deliberate interference.”
    “And you don’t have to be a ‘genius boy’ to know who that means!” Bud snorted. “Those ‘drowning Roman’ guys must’ve got wind that xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Tom Swift was on their tail.”
    But Tom shook his head thoughtfully, unconvinced. “It would be no surprise for the plotters to have found out they’d been busted. But I’ve pretty well finished my part in it, now. How does destroying the SMB project help them? Whatever brand of crazed fanatics they might be, would they risk the exposure of their whole operation for personal revenge? Unless...” He was rubbing his chin now. “Unless the SMB was the mystery target all along!  — But then where does the Centurion come in?”
    Tom’s comment gave raise to a pair of puzzled looks, which Chow gave a voice to. “Who’s comin’ in?”
    “Haven’t had a chance to tell you or Bud,” responded Tom. “It’s a new wrinkle.”
    “Uh-huh. Brand my space biscuits, I got a few new ones myself!”
    Speaking in low tones, Tom gave an account of the foundering of the supertanker and Harlan Ames’s suspicions. When he had finished, Bud whistled softly. “We’ve fought shipwrecking pi- rates before.”
    “That’s what they say about pirates an’ rustlers an’ the like,” Chow stated. “Beat ’em xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

once, beat ’em twice, they don’t never give it up, no-how! Sumpin in the blood.”
    Tom spent some time speaking with the other men and women in the infirmary, thanking them and giving such comfort and information as he could manage.
    Presently an intercommed request called the young inventor to the ship’s communications center.
    “This is Mr. Swift?” asked the accented voice on the radiocom speaker.
    “Yes, this is Tom Swift, Mr. Sondriesson.” Tom had a gulp in his voice. The Chief Executive Officer of  Lor-Sofviio Teknos, the Swedish firm in overall charge of the SMB project, had never been less than pleasant, but Tom didn’t relish having to give an account of the suboceanic catastrophe.
    “It seems you have encountered a difficult situation beneath the sea.”
    “How much have you been told, Mr. Son- driesson?”
    “I wish you to proceed as if the answer to your question is, nothing. Do go ahead, won’t you?”
    “I’m happy to, sir. I just want you to under- xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

stand that we know very little at this point.”
    Hegg Sondriesson responded a bit too quickly. “Yes, but what I already know is most interesting. Your transitway corridor has collapsed, has it not? And it seems this incident may very well constitute the end of the project. A total loss for Lor-Sofviio, for Sweden and Germany, for the investors of many countries. Is my account accurate thus far?”
    “Yes sir. I’m afraid it is.”
    “Then it seems we are on the same page. As it is said.” The man’s voice suddenly hardened. “And so, Tom, tell me why we should not hold you and Swift Enterprises responsible for the negligence that produced this disaster!”

    

    
    
CHAPTER 5
    
    
    

CRYSTAL BALL QUEST

    
    
    
    
    
TOM SWIFT was stung by the CEO’s words. “Negligence! Mr. Sondriesson — ”
    “My choice of words is hardly inappropriate, my young man, when we review the facts. Was Swift Enterprises not hired to provide scientific expertise, training, consultation? Were you yourself not obliged to provide direct oversight of the technical aspects of construction?”
    “That’s absolutely true, sir,” conceded Tom. “Obviously, I can’t claim to have done a great job, given what happened.”
    “Ah, ‘given what happened’ — yes. And indeed, given that you were not even present xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

to do your job! For I must tell you, Tom, we have been informed that you were away from your assigned post aboard your science ship. Do you deny that you have just now returned from Shopton?”
    Tom hung his head, as if the man could see him. “No. I don’t deny it. But please believe me, I had to attend to something urgent. If you knew what it was — ”
    “If I knew? I am waiting for you to tell me!” snapped Mr. Sondriesson.
    The promise that Tom had given John Thurston — the vital need for complete secrecy at this point in the dangerous game — was a weight upon Tom’s tongue. “Sir, I — I can’t give you the information I owe you, not now. Please trust, just for a while, that my reasons are good ones. At any rate, what happened here wouldn’t have been prevented by my personal oversight. There’s no indication of any care- lessness on the part of any of the workers. In- cluding me! — sir.”
    “That will surely become a matter for the legal profession to consider. As for now, of course, all operations are suspended. Have I more to say to you? I do not. Good day!” The xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

unforgiving click of the radiocom suggested that Mr. Sondriesson’s closing pleasantry was less than deeply felt.
    “Kind of a mess, huh, Tom?” said the ra- diocom operator sympathetically.
    “Sure is.” Tom sighed. “At least nobody died.”
    “Except maybe the SMB.”
    The self-reparative powers of Swift and Barclay were legendary, and by evening Bud was up and around and no worse for wear.
    He joined his pal for supper. “I don’t feel too bad,” Bud stated. “But I sure feel bad for the project, Tom.”
    “It’s a great loss,” nodded Tom discon-solately. “Science could have learned a lot from an experiment like that — and in a way that’s what it was, flyboy, an experiment in applied engineering, aquatic style.”
    “So I suppose we’ll be flying right back to Shopton?”
    “Not right back,” the other replied. “Because there’s something I want to learn. Namely, the cause of the tube failure. It’ll have to be identified and dealt with if the SubMoBahn is ever to be revived.” And Tom couldn’t deny, xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

inwardly, that he felt a great need to prove that Mr. Sondriesson’s assumptions about him were unjustified. They had struck his guilt nerve hard.
    Bud took a thoughtful bite of Chow’s cas- serole. “Still thinking the ‘drowning Roman’ bunch had something to do with it? Because I sure do!”
    Tom studied his fork for a moment. “Motive — opportunity — means. It’s the last one we may be able to uncover something about.”
    “Some kind of sabotage. The usual deal.”
    “And yet... Bud, to even start thinking about running traffic through a long underwater tube, we had to convince everyone, ourselves in- cluded, that it could be made safe. Every repelatron had a whole hardware-store’s worth of electronic backups built into it. It wasn’t like those old-style Christmas-tree light strings, where one burnt-out bulb blacked out the whole string. Every tiny part of every system was multiply redundant and independent, and the slightest deviation from top efficiency would have signaled itself to us instantly, long before the part went critical.”
    “I see, Skipper,” said Bud. “Security Level: Awesome! And you told me that even if one xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

tron were to fail, the others near it would be enough to keep things dry while it was being fixed. So several of the darn things must’ve gone bad in the same place, at the same time.”
    “At the exact same moment!”
    The young inventor stood and switched to pacing mode. Bud half-smiled as his eyes followed him around the executive dining room. Tom mused aloud: “So. Same moment. Com- ponent failure? Not possible. Power fluctuation? Never happened on one neutronamo, much less a bunch.”
    Tom’s audience asked if something could have interfered with the spacewave fields that were the basis of the repulsion effect. “I mean, you’re always gonna get a little static.”
    But Tom gave a negative shake of the head. “The linear fields generated by the repelatrons aren’t electromagnetic in nature. Static in the usual sense wouldn’t affect them at all.”
    “Uh-huh. But the Black Cobra managed it,” Bud pointed out — with a knife.
    On several occasions the youths had come up against a determined foe, a Chinese expatriot named Li Ching. He had taken to calling himself the Black Cobra, and his technological pira- xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

cies and subversive attacks had constituted a serious international threat until his recent death. “You’re right,” conceded Tom. “And I haven’t forgotten the anti-energy crystals he came up with. But don’t you forget that we doped out how to protect the repelatrons from the blocking effect, when we studied the sample we captured.” He noted that all the SMB repelatrons had been made safe from the Cobra’s crystals.
    “All right then, genius boy. So be a genius man and rise to the challenge! What else can foul up a repelatron? — pardon me as I eat while you think.”
    “What else? — ” Tom was all frown for a second, but Bud could tell that behind it something was dawning. “I’m thinking of when we tested the bubblevator prototype that time...”
    “Hey, that’s right! The airspace bubble start- ed to collapse on us — just like the SMB airspace did.”
    His chum nodded. “The seawater was infused with a foreign substance the repelatron couldn’t handle — the field beams couldn’t ‘see’ it, so to speak.”

 

    “I know the trons have to be really fine- tuned, not just to elements and compounds, but even specific mixtures and proportions,” Bud prodded.
    “And yet — ”
    “Darn!”
    “And yet,” persisted Tom with a quick smile, “that’s the whole idea of the new aquatometer setup — to get detailed info on changing seawater composition well before it arrives, in order to compensate for the lag effect in re- adjusting the super-repelatrons.”
    Bud asked, through a mouthful of Persian rice, if the aquatometers might have had some undetected flaw. “If it’s undetected, I wouldn’t know!” gibed Tom. “Still... you know, Bud, the microrepelatrons inside each aquatometer — which ‘feel out’ the surrounding water composition by back-reaction — are them- selves constrained by the lag effect. We had to set up some fancy pre-programmed sequencing to permit us to run through the materials signa- tures, using multiple antennas. And now I can see how a very dilute, very exotic mix might not be detected.”
    “Opening a window of opportunity wide xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

enough for a few million gallons of seawater!”
    The next day, as the Sea Charger made for the several ports on the Swedish coast where the bulk of the construction crew would be let off, Tom worked in the vessel’s laboratory section on various water samples taken from the vicinity of the SMB. He almost immediately made an intriguing discovery that moved him to call his father in Shopton.
    “You say you can’t identify it, son?”
    “The substances themselves aren’t unusual,” Tom replied into his PER unit.  “But I’ve never run across anything like these relative concentrations and proportions. The science databases haven’t given me any leads so far.”
    Mr. Swift offered a speculation. “Might it be artificial? Some sort of industrial byproduct?”
    “Perhaps so, Dad. But in a funny way, the makeup seems too ordinary for that. There are no weird, complex chemical compounds in the water — it’s all done with regular seawater stuff, metallic salts, chromium, manganese, sili- cates, gold, iron — you get the idea. But to give one example, the density of chromium particu- lates is off the charts! Yet it’s not precipitating out in the textbook way. It’s as if it were being xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

held in some sort of forced suspension.”
    “Intriguing. Have you any notion as to the source?”
    “Not so far,” replied the young inventor. “It only took a couple hours for the local currents to disperse the traces all over the place. But I’m at work on a little something, Dad, that could help.”
    Characteristically, Tom switched his efforts to the little something immediately. By mid-afternoon his workbench was littered with technology, which Bud found him sifting through when he dropped by. The athletic Californian was joined by young Dan Walde, whom Bud had casually befriended.
    Bud pointed at a small object on the bench. “Does the magic crystal ball hold the answer, Swami?” The object was a fist-sized globe, crystalline but pearl-white and opaque. Wire leads were bunched at its bottom.
    “Is it a repelatron?” inquired Dan.
    “No,” Tom said, “although some models of the trons do have spherical radiator antennas. I guess you could call it a sort of monitor screen.”
    Bud laughed. “Good grief, you mean I was right? You really do look into it?”
 

    “Yup. Here, watch.” Tom flipped a power switch and carefully adjusted a dial. The sphere became slightly luminous, and then, slowly, lost its whiteness and took on an appearance of crystalline transparency.
    “Something inside it,” Dan noted. A shadowy triangular form, like a spear tip, had been revealed at the center of the “crystal ball.” As Tom continued to make adjustments, the tri- angle became sharply outlined.
    “Okay, genius boy, there it is,” declared Bud. “So what is it?”
    “It’s a directional indicator, like the needle on a compass,” Tom explained. “But unlike the needle on an ordinary compass, this version doesn’t exist! It’s an image generated by electronics.” He went on to describe how he had been working on a similar image system for some time, in hopes of devising a 3-D television. “The globe is filled with a matrix of tiny interlaced ‘flakes’ suspended in a transparent gel. Microwave interference patterns, produced inside the image space by nano-transmitters spaced over the inner surface of the globe, affect the grouping and orientation of the flakes. Then the 3-D image is created as a laser xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

scanning beam sweeps across the matrix and bounces back to your eyes.”
    Dan and Bud circled the workbench, keenly observing the floating indicator. The image changed with their changing perspectives, as a solid object would. “So someday I’ll be watch- ing America’s Least Talented on something like this?” Bud asked skeptically.
    Dan muttered, “That’s a good show!”
    Tom laughed and said, “Actually, I finally abandoned this approach, at least for television- type viewing. I just thought I’d use it as a quick- and-dirty readout viewer in my new underwater tracker.”
    Dan Walde’s face lit up. “Wow! A new Tom Swift invention?”
    “Always!” snorted Bud. “And now the explanation. Sit down, Dan.”
    “This one’s pretty simple, guys,” grinned Tom. “It’s just an adaptation of my aqua- tometer, which I’ve made more compact and lighter in weight.” He described how individual divers, in hydrolung suits, would carry the portable units with them. “I worked up some new approaches to the repela-scanning gimmick that make it much more sensitive and flexible.”
 

    “So I take it you can use it to pick up that weird stuff you found in the seawater,” Bud remarked with a nod, which Tom repeated back in confirmation. “And you can use it to track the stuff back to where it came from?”
    “Sure, like a hound dog on the scent. Remember, the aquatometer doesn’t just tell you what’s out there in the water, but where it is — a 3-D profile of its relative concentrations. The analysis computer will put it all together and control the spheroscreen accordingly, pointing the indicator toward the direction of highest overall densities. And that’s the most promising direction to search in.” When Dan asked how soon Tom would be putting together a team of divers and commencing the search, the answer was, “Right away! If the source of ‘water-X’ is intermittent, we need to get on the trail before it’s totally scrambled. The ocean has already made it undetectable by normal means.”
    Dan Walde nodded, but Tom and Bud could tell that he had more on his mind. “Mind if I make a little pitch to be one of your team members? I was trained on using the diversuits, you know — I guess some day we’ll all be — and it would be a big boost to my learning to xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

use it for on-the-spot oceanography research.”
    Tom was doubtful. “I don’t know, Dan. This is a serious situation. I’m not sure using the search for training purposes is such a good idea.”
    “Keep at it, Dan,” Bud stage-whispered. “He’ll give in. Fifteen seconds tops.”
    “Maybe I can add something to sweeten the deal,” said the college student with a somewhat shy smile — for he was actually talking to the great Tom Swift! “There’s a scientist in the Oceanography Department at the University who’s a friend of our family. We’ve known him for years. Really, he’s the one who sort’ve in- spired me to go into the field.”
    “The wet field,” Bud quipped.
    “As a matter of fact, it’d make sense to have a professional oceanographer along with us,” noted Tom thoughtfully. “We’ll need a thorough understanding of the seafloor terrain and ocean currents. Is he someone I might have heard of, Dan?”
    Now the student grinned broadly. “Yeah! Cause to tell the truth, Tom, he’s somebody you already know — really well!”

    

    
    
CHAPTER 6
    
    
    

THE CONQUEROR WORM

    
    
    
    
    
TOM had no trouble guessing the truth. “Good night! You must mean Ham or George!”
    Hamilton Teller and George Braun, whose names were always yoked together, were well-known oceanographers who had twice joined Swift expeditions to Aurum City, a site of ruins on the floor of the Atlantic thought to be con- nected to the ancient legend of lost Atlantis.
    “Mr. Braun was born in Nebraska — Minden, as a matter of fact,” explained Dan. “He and my dad knew each other as kids and kept in touch. He was at my parents’ wedding.”
    “Now that you mention it, I remember his xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

mentioning that he was on sabbatical from a teaching position when he and Ham Teller joined us last time,” Tom said.
    “Yep — Omaha!”
    Bud snorted. “C’mon, don’t tell me George got Ham to leave Brooklyn and move to Omaha!”
    Dan laughed. “Hey now! There are more jokes about Brooklyn than about Omaha!”
    Tom was pleased with the notion. Within the hour he was speaking to Braun, easily winning his consent. “And I can speak for our Brooklyn Boy too,” he chuckled. “We’ve been splitting a room here in Oh! lately so we can continue to avoid real life by working on another one of our oddball mysteries. We could even combine your operation with our own — if you’d be willing to send your big ship a mere thousand miles up to the way North Atlantic.”
    “You fellows may not even have to wait. The trail could lead us anywhere. Where exactly, George?”
    “Neighborhood of Iceland.”
    “Iceland! — we just flew over it the other day. But what’s the mystery in Iceland? Another sunken city?”
 

    “Old hat. You seen one city o’ gold, you seen ’em all,” gibed the oceanographer. “No, Tom, this one’s much weirder. Think monster sea snakes!”
    Tom laughed — in amazement. “Like a sea serpent?”
    “Ah, but this one is real. Ham thinks so, and he just might be right. For a change.”
    George Braun narrated the story with dramatic flair. A Canadian vessel engaged in surveying the ocean bottom with a high-resolution sonar imaging system had detected peculiar “tracks” — long, shallow grooves — running along mile after mile, finally becoming undetectable as the seafloor changed to a rockier composition. Later inspection by sub- marine had confirmed the findings, retrieving detailed photographs from the dark depths but no clue as to the cause.
    Tom asked if the tracks were thought to have been left in primordial times by some extinct sea creature. He could almost feel his friend’s eyes twinkling at the far end of their radiocom link! “What a great theory, sport! Except for one thing. Over a few weeks, new tracks have appeared!”
 

    “That does present a difficulty! So what are people thinking?”
    “Oh, I’m sure you can predict it — the usual range of opinion — giant mutated atomic lobsters, a few flying saucers tossed into the mix! The ‘respectable’ theory is that it’s some kind of unclassified, but nonetheless boring, geophysical phenomenon.”
    “But I can count on you two being anything but respectable,” Tom needled him.
    “Now now. I’m entirely respectable, modest, conservative,” retorted the oceanographer. “But Ham Teller naturally has this lunatic theory about some kind of supersized aquatic snake, or eel, or even — ready, Tom? — worm!”
    “You’re kidding!”
    “Me? Anyway, Teller, with his usual puckish insouciance, insists on calling the thing The Conqueror Worm! — from a poem by old Edgar Allan Poe.”
    “That makes sense, anyway,” the youth noted, grinning. “At any rate, worms or no — having you and Ham along will be a big help to me in running this search I’m putting together.” They made arrangements for Enterprises to pick up the pair of scientists in Omaha and fly them xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

to the Sea Charger as soon as Tom had de- termined where the search was to start from — for the trail from the carcass of the SubMoBahn had grown cold.
    After some thought Tom decided a team of six divers would be most efficient. Which means turning out six new working, portable aquatometer trackers in just a few days, he thought wryly. He finally PERed Swift Enter- prises and spoke to Arvid Hanson, a good friend and the plant’s chief maker of models and test prototypes.
    “I’d be happy to join you on the Charger, boss,” he declared. “And I’ll be overjoyed if you’ll grant a special request.” Hanson ex- plained that his elderly parents, who had been born in Sweden, had long wanted their son to pay a visit to the small town of their birth. “And since you’ll be right there — !”
    “Request granted! But fly out as soon as you can, Arv, and bring all your super-tech tools.”
    “Okay! See you in, oh — eight hours?”
    “Great!”
    As it ended up, the Sky Queen played ferry, returning to the U.S. and strato-jetting Braun, Teller, and Hanson to the mammoth research xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

vessel, even as it proceeded with its port calls along the Swedish coast.
    With Arv’s help the six tracker units, which resembled compact attaché cases, albeit with “crystal balls” as well as handles, wer