THE TOM SWIFT INVENTION ADVENTURES

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 looking 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 Winkler, 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," 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 subm’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 project. What the Swedes call it, I can’t pronounce!"

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 were official representatives of three governments 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 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 technicians, 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 calibrated 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 infinitesimal push, but computer enhancement can make something of the back-reaction nevertheless. 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 substances 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 inner surface into the tunnel. Another strip uses a similar principle to extract unbreathable exhaust — 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," observed 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 anchored 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, appeared 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 communications 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 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 GOG-Image. ‘GOG’ has become a common classi-fication term in the intelligence community — 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 unaccountable 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 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 precision."

"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 information 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 on it as soon as I get there."

"We knew you would, Tom. I’ll send you everything we have. But I beg you — remember 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 accomodate 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 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 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. 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. "Topological 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.

"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 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 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, anywhere. 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 — personality.

"How soon will this new northern ‘chunnel’ be connected up, Thomas?" asked Bashalli. "I assume I shall be invited to the ribbon tying ceremoney?"

"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 muttered, 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 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 pancakes, 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 woman, whose delicate-framed glasses suddenly 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 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 trayful 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 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 ominously:

"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 particular — wide, handsome, dignified, and somewhat 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’ Brazos County, Texas!"

Grinning with disbelief, Tom shook hands with the mustached man.

"But — er — what about that fellow you 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 companions, 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, incidentally."

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, Nomdy!" 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!" 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 repeletrons."

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

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 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 authenticated 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 that includes ocean-floor topography. I specifically 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 himself. "But then it’s back to the Sea Charger." He hadn’t felt it necessary to inform the Swedish 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 of the car cellphone. He answered — but no one replied on the other end.

"Hello? Hello?"

Yet there were sounds after all. Tom suddenly 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 happened 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 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 membrane of nanofilaments that helped control the humidity of the airspace, so near to the ocean’s 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 Enterprises’ Shopton affiliate, the Swift Construction 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 expression 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? 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 squeeled 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 then he remembered how much counter-pressure 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 bubblevators 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 communicator 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 machinery, 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 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. Jacobs was saying something about false reports, inital 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 reunion 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 corrected 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?" 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 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 pirates before."

"That’s what they say about pirates an’ rustlers an’ the like," Chow stated. "Beat ’em 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. Sondriesson?"

"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 understand 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. Sundriesson — "

"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 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. Sundriesson.

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 carelessness on the part of any of the workers. Including 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 unforgiving click of the radiocom suggested that Mr. Sundriesson’s closing pleasantry was less than deeply felt.

"Kind of a mess, huh, Tom?" said the radiocom 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, inwardly, that he felt a great need to prove that Mr. Sundriesson’s assumptions about him were unjustified. They had struck his guilt nerve hard.

Bud took a thoughtful bite of Chow’s casserole. "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 included, 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 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. Component 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 piracies 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 started 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 readjusting 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 themselves constrained by the lag effect. We had to set up some fancy pre-programmed sequencing to permit us to run through the materials signatures, 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 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, silicates, gold, iron — you get the idea. But to give one example, the density of chromium particulates is off the charts! Yet it’s not precipitating out in the textbook way. It’s as if it were being 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 triangle 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 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 watching 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 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 inspired 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 connected 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 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 submarine 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 to the Sea Charger as soon as Tom had determined 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 working, portable aquatometer trackers in just a few days, he thought wryly. He finally PERed Swift Enterprises 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 explained 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 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, were assembled and tested in a single day of strenuous work.

At a late, relaxing workout in the ship’s gym, Tom and Bud discussed the plan for the search. "You said a total of six divers, but I count five," Bud pointed out between weight thrusts.

Tom nodded. "I haven’t picked the sixth. I had planned to ask Dick Hampton, but the doctor thinks it would be unwise so soon after the accident. Maybe one of the Swedish workers would be — "

"Tom, you need seek no further!" piped up Alix Tuundvar from the flexmonster.

"You’re interested?"

"Yes, very much so indeed. Maybe it will make me look better to my employers — for I fear my reputation with Lor-Sofviio Teknos is now darkened a bit." He added quickly: "Not that I blame you, Tom, surely."

Bud leaned close and whispered slyly, "And also maybe, if they decide on canning him, it’ll help him get a job at Enterprises!"

Another day, another night, and the team was trained, outfitted, and ready. Five of the divers — Bud, Dan Walde, George, Ham, and Alix — lolled near Sealock Two in their hydrolung suits.

"So where’s our crewcutted leader?" asked Ham Teller. "My morning eggs are settling. And that ocean out there won’t be gettin’ any wetter."

"Some last-minute detail, probably," Bud answered. But he was also feeling impatient.

At last Tom arrived, clad in diversuit and carrying aquatometer.

Bud studied his pal’s face. "Everything okay, Skipper?"

"Oh, sure," was the reply. But his voice was thoughtful.

"Perhaps something we ought to know?" asked Alix. "Before it happens to us?"

Tom shrugged. "Nothing to do with the search — not this one, at least. But I was just speaking with John Thurston." He gave a brief, and carefully worded, recap of the circumstances that had led to consultation between the CIA and Swift Enterprises. "As I say, there’s international concern that some secret organization might have targeted that ship that went down, the Centurion."

"Has something new turned up?" George inquired.

"It’s more about something that didn’t turn up. The ship seems to have gone missing!"

"Missing? Bah! Norwegian waters, of all places to sink," harrumphed Alix Tuundvar. "I am not surprised if it can’t be located, not if the Norwegians are looking for it."

Bud held up a hand, cutting him off. Dan Walde said, "I don’t see how anybody could lose a supertanker!"

"Have you ever met a Norwegian?" challenged Alix.

"It has to do with that big storm that’s sprung up over the Norwegian Sea," Tom continued, as he made a final check of his diversuit equipment. "It made for problems with the rescue when the Centurion first foundered, and it’s gotten much worse. It was too dangerous to send seacraft into the area to do a sonar scan from the surface. They finally went in with one of those drone mini-subs."

Alix commented with pride, "My country is world’s-best in their manufacture."

"Well, what the drone found was a lot of nothing. They studied the currents, looked for oil residue, extended the search area wider and wider — "

"And still nothing," Bud finished for him. "So Dan’s question stands. Just how do you lose a supertanker?"

Tom reply was grim-faced. "You don’t. Which is not to say you can’t steal one!"

CHAPTER 7

TRACKERS OF THE DEEP

THERE was a moment of disbelieving silence. "That sounds more like something Ham would come up with," joked George Braun. "Are you really thinking that some evil genius could make off with a waterlogged ship blocks long and as deep as a sports stadium?"

"The Omaha kid lacks imagination," snorted Teller. "There must be a hundred ways to pull it off. Or at least one or two."

The young inventor put a stop to the banter. "Let’s not deal with it right now, fellows. We’ve got to hit the water before time and tide erase our trail completely."

The six exited through the subsurface sealock into cold blue water. The Sea Charger had let anchor — the highest-tech anchor possible, Tom’s gravitex device — in Alands Bay north of Stockholm, Sweden, where the Baltic Sea joined hands with the Gulf of Bothnia. The Shoptonian had reasoned that "water-X" could have been carried southward along the eastern coast and around the southern cape to the SMB.

The possibility faded instantly. "Not a trace on the aquatometers," Tom reported, scanning transmitted readouts from all six units on his master output screen. "But let’s fan out and head north for a while."

The hydronauts spread over the space of a mile or so, each aquatometer acting as a separate "sensor" for Tom’s unit — distant eyes. But after forty minutes, Tom called the others back in by sonophone.

"Nowhere fast, Skipper," Bud commented.

"I know, pal," replied the young inventor. "Rather than keep on northward, let’s jet south around the cape and head west. The current may have come from the other direction."

"Someone’s getting hungry for results," Ham Teller remarked Brooklynishly.

Retorted Alix Swedishly, "Who can blame?"

The ion-drive diverjets affixed to the backs of their suits allowed the team to zoom through the depths at torpedo speed, their depths maintained by electronic buoyancy-control units inside the stanchion that supported the jet.

"Slide-press the third circle from the end of your arm gauntlet," Tom directed them. "We’ll let the localculators guide us."

"The name rings a bell, Tom," muttered Dan Walde. "But I’m not sure Mr. Cox — Zimby — really explained it."

Bud uttered a sonophonic chuckle. "Genius boy likes to slip in new inventions on the sly. Gives him a chance to show off."

"Never!" laughed Tom. "Dan, it’s a computerized guidance device that not only automatically steers you around obstructions, but gives a precise three-dimensional reading as to your location."

"Inertial guidance?" asked George. "In other words, a gyroscope?"

"I really think Tom knows what ‘inertial guidance’ means, Brauny," Teller reproved teasingly.

"Now stop fighting, boys, or back you go! But George is right, in a way. The ‘Loki’ makes us of a property of subatomic particles called spin. It’s not the sort of mechanical spinning used in gyroscopes, but when virtual particles are exchanged in — "

"Perhaps that is enough of an answer," interrupted Alix. "But pardon me. There is some justice in the reputation we Swedes have for dourness and brusqueness."

"And the heavy drinking?" Ham Teller challenged.

"A myth. Yet true."

They passed over the sad remains of the dark, ruined SubMoBahn — passed over them in silence. Crossing the strait called Skagerrak that divided Swede from Dane, the hydronauts entered the North Sea. Once again the six fanned out wide. No longer able to see one another in the tranquil dimness, only their sonophone communicators testified to their continued existence.

"We’re sure making great time," Bud remarked. "And I’m not even thirsty or tired."

"Those ‘aquadapticum’ pills Doc Simpson came up with really do the trick," Tom agreed. "He thinks divers could keep going for more than 24 hours underwater, given sufficient oxygen and a source of nutrition."

"I didn’t think we’d be out so long on the first trek," said Dan Walde doubtfully from somewhere far away.

"We won’t, Dan. A few more hours out, then back to the Charger."

"Like I said — hungry," noted Teller.

Gunning their jets, the armada of fish-men speared through the water at multi-fish velocity — Shark Five. Minutes and miles sped by. Tom watched raptly the greenish panorama of sea life all around him as his exterior sound monitor filled the dome of his facemask with crackling noise from the green-blue world. Now and then he pressed a spot on his sleeve-gauntlet and slid his fingers along, adjusting the buoyancy device and descending in a swoop. He swept the lower depths with a tiny, penetrating lamp attached to his left forearm, his aqualamp. Flashing across the electronic beam, coldwater fish swarmed through the jungles of seaweed and underwater vegetation. The bottom, glimpsed dimly below, was carpeted with sea anemones, urchins, finger sponges, and mollusks.

"Watch yourself, genius boy — everybody!" came Bud Barclay’s warning voice. "I just spotted a Portuguese man-of-war."

"Those tentacles can sting a guy pretty bad," Dan commented. To which Alix added:

"Very much, but I have survived it."

As they cruised eastward above the sloping shelf of the North Sea, Tom felt himself becoming increasingly discouraged and impatient. Good night, I thought we’d trip over at least a smidge of ‘water-X’ by now, he thought. And even as the echo of the thought faded came George Braun’s voice:

"Got it, Tom! Pings on my detector!"

The young inventor checked the master readout with growing excitement. "At last! And there! — Alix’s aquatometer is starting to pick it up too!"

"So where to?" sonophoned Bud.

"George and Alix are both north of the rest of us," Tom answered. "Let’s veer a little northward. I’ll send the heading to your Lokis."

The aquatometer readings, now coming from all six trackers, revealed that the traces angled downward with the current that was carrying it from its unknown source. The hydronauts began a mass descent to a depth of 190 fathoms. When Ham Teller noted the depth, Alix added a verbal footnote. "You might wish to know, sea chums, that ‘fathom’ comes from an old Norse word, ‘fathm’r,’ the measure of the outstretched arm."

This brought no comment from the others. But moments later Bud suddenly yelped out: "Jetz! Something’s down there — big!"

"Can you tell what it is?" Tom sonophoned.

"Looks like — a ship!"

Tom gulped. Could it be? By some bizarre coincidence had the sea searchers run across the lost supertanker, the Centurion?

"Everyone! Head toward Bud!"

CHAPTER 8

MYSTERY MERMEN

THE sophisticated sonarscope system built into each diversuit allowed the five to converge rapidly on the sixth, Bud. "Get a load of that!" he exclaimed, circling slowly.

"I don’t see anything, pal," Tom declared.

"Huh? Oh, right — I’m using the ‘for my eyes only’ lamp setting." Bud altered the aqualamp’s frequency mix, so that its luminance wouldn’t be restricted to the view through the youth’s own treated mask-visor. "There!" All eyes followed the beam downward.

"Parakeets!" squawked Dan Walde.

"Yeah, that’s a ship. Sure is." Ham Teller’s Brooklyn-tinged voice was blasé. An oblong bulge lay inert far below, showing a sweeping edge obviously fashioned by the hand of man, half buried in sand and silt.

It was obviously far too small to be the colossal Centurion. "A Viking ship, perhaps," suggested Alix. "They plied these seas for centuries en route to Iceland, Greenland — even North America, before that ‘Columbus’ fellow."

Taking the initiative, Tom jetted downward. He circled the hulk once, closely, then returned.

"Well?" demanded Bud. "What did you see?"

"There were inscriptions on the side."

"What did they look like? Could you make them out?"

"Sure, flyboy — easily. They were in English. ‘Divers do it deeper’."

Tom could imagine the expression on his friend’s face. "And so! — on we go."

As they split up again, Alix Tuundvar sonophoned a question. "The boy — why did he say parakeets? Nothing looked to me like a bird, not a bit."

"It’s an Omaha expression of amazement," George Braun explained. "Like ‘jetz’. I’ve gotten used to it."

"Guys, in Nebraska we try to keep it clean," declared Dan Walde coolly. He elaborated by running over a list of words he would never say — in Nebraska.

The hydronauts proceeded in their quest. Sonophone conversation fell off. A distance off and feeling alone, Bud amused himself by watching the fish that glided, blinking and gaping, past the diamond beam of his lamp. One that made him gasp was an enormous oval sunfish over seven feet long. "Boy! Chow could feed a ship’s crew on that baby!" Bud said to himself.

Then suddenly the young Californian became tense as a tone erupted inside his mask, whose inner surface functioned as a stereo loud-speaker. He was being automatically alerted to something big and moving that the suit sonarscope had detected. "Tom — guys — "

"I see it on my scope, Bud," came Tom’s reply.

Added Alix, "Approaching from the rear. Shall we scatter?"

"No," decided Tom. "There’s no sign of its being a threat."

"And it may be interesting," remarked Ham Teller.

"Perhaps this ‘Great Orme’ of yours?" Alix speculated.

"Maybe-might. And by the way, it’s Conqueror Worm, please."

The hydronauts drew together protectively and proceeded with caution, alert for possible trouble, as the sonar shadow overtook them. Tom breathed a sigh of relief when he made out a blimp-shaped hull, diving planes, and slim, knifelike conning tower.

"Relax, everybody. It’s a U.S. Navy nuke," Tom signaled.

"Wonder where she’s headed?" Bud replied.

Dan Walde asked, "Do you suppose they’ve spotted us yet?"

"Not by sonar they haven’t," stated Tom confidently. "The Antitec-Tomasite coating on the diversuits prevents it. But still, we’re not invisible to sight. It might be best to hail them on standard sonarphone."

"Permit me," Bud volunteered.

Inside the American sub, the communications operator was monitoring the craft’s sensitive hull phones with a puzzled look. "Thought it was a school of porpoises at first, sir," he reported to the skipper, "but that squeal I’m getting now sounds like a regular sonarphone carrier wave."

"And nothing on the scope for miles around. Try the Gertrude," the captain ordered.

The enlisted man switched on the underwater telephone as the captain issued commands to slow the ship for a more intense sonarscope search. Presently all hands stared in amazement, eyes popping, as a voice from outside came over the speaker:

"And now back to Talking Fishheads. Today’s panel of experts are debating the probing question, Should an octopus try to meet a squid in an oyster bar? You be the judge! Lines are open — first caller, please!"

Red-faced, the captain strode to the underwater telephone and barked into the mike, "Captain Frost speaking. Who’s out there? What’s going on?"

Tom could not help laughing as he visualized the amazed reaction inside the submarine to Bud’s joke. He waved his pal to silence, then replied, "Sorry, sir. I apologize for the nonsense. This is Tom Swift. That Merman Moderator you heard was my, er, research associate, Professor Barclay. We’re a group of divers on a scientific project."

"Oceanographical," added Ham Teller.

"Nonpolitical," superadded Alix Tuundvar.

The response from the sub was a roar of good-natured mirth. "Well! Tom Swift and company, eh? Your merman really had us going for a while," the skipper said. "I’m Captain Frost of the U.S.S. Disbursement, out of Norfolk, standard deep aquatic patrol operations, North Sea up. Keeping America safe."

"Sorry to bother you, sir. We’d come aboard and visit, but we have to complete our mission before we turn back to our base. Incidentally," continued the young inventor, "I don’t suppose you’ve run across any supertankers down here, have you?"

Frost laughed again. "Like the Centurion? We’ve been ordered to keep our eyes open. Nothing so far. Anyway, Tom, you mermen out there — good sailing. That is, swimming."

After an exchange of good wishes, the submarine proceeded on its way north toward the icecap.

"This is great," said Dan Walde excitedly. "You never know who you’re going to meet underwater!"

By early afternoon they had passed the rise of the Shetland Islands and the Farroes and were speeding north of west through the Atlantic depths — which had become much deeper. Vegetation disappeared and the sea life seemed far less luxuriant, although the boys frequently sighted schools of fish.

"The Norwegian Basin," announced Braun. "Right smack on the Arctic Circle. When we start seeing mountains ahead, that’s the Jan Meyen Ridge."

"Then we’re not far from Iceland," Dan Walde commented.

Following the trail of current that bore "water-X," the team paralleled the sea bottom downward. Even in the glow of the lamps, the water had darkened to a somber gray-green. All hints of sunlight had vanished utterly.

The aquatometer readings had been growing stronger for hours, but Tom knew the team might have to turn homeward before they had found their objective. They were nearing the necessary end of their outbound quest when Tom noticed a sonar reflection which painted almost the whole of his mask-screen with light, a shape that narrowed toward the top.

"What is it? Some sort of geological formation?" Bud queried.

"Must be," Tom guessed, and George Braun added in the tones of an expert, and a teacher, "Probably an underwater volcano or a seamount. Tectonic plates are colliding all over the place here."

Presently, through the greenish murk, a huge dim mass loomed ahead, apparently rearing upward from the ocean floor.

"Hey! Aren’t those lights on top?" Bud signaled.

"Sure looks that way." Tom too could see tiny halos of yellow radiance, but they were too high up and at too great a distance for the hydronauts to make out the source. "Let’s investigate," Tom added cautiously. "But don’t use the visible setting for your aqualamps just yet." All along he had born in mind that "water-X" had caused what might well have been an intentional catastrophe, the scheme of a terrorist group. If the mountainous form were its source, the lights could signify enemy action!

The six hydronauts glided forward. Gradually Tom became aware of a strange, tingling sensation. It grew stronger by the moment.

"Anyone else feel that?"

"What concerns me, Tom, is what I’m seeing," replied Alix. Suddenly Tom realized that a myriad of coldwater fishes were swarming in the same direction as the divers! — rank upon rank gleaming in the aqualamp beams.

A sense of danger flashed through the young inventor’s mind as he suddenly felt giddy and disoriented. The tingling numbness fogged his brain.

A fearful hunch struck him! With a terrific effort Tom veered his course.

"All of you, stop!" he warned over his sonophone. "Turn aside! Don’t go any farther or you’ll be electrocuted!"

But not one undersea voice gave a sign of heeding Tom’s warning. He could see his comrades jetting ahead at top speed toward a strange, writhing shadow looming before them, not up from the sea floor below — but down from somewhere high above!

CHAPTER 9

BOTTOMED OUT

THE symbols marking the blips on Tom’s suit-sonar told him that Bud was leading the others by almost a quarter mile. "Bud!" Tom yelled again into his mask-dome receiver. No use — Bud obviously was too dazed from shock to respond. In seconds he might be beyond help!

Tom hesitated only for an instant. Then, heedless of his own danger, the young inventor speared forward in pursuit. Bud was far ahead by now — perhaps too far to reach in time. Tom gunned his own jet to the limit.

Again Tom felt the strange, tingling sensation, the sizzle in his nerves and muscles of a cascade of tiny shocks. His brain was reeling dizzily — all sense of time and place seemed to be slipping away.

"I mustn’t lose consciousness!" Tom told himself. "If I don’t keep control of my wits, we’re both goners!’’

Tom’s heart sank as he noted that his diverjet seemed suddenly to be sputtering and weakening. Would he have enough power to catch up to Bud? Then he realized with a start that he had overtaken his heedless quarry. He was close enough to reach out and grab Bud by the ankle of his sealed boot. The muscular copilot kicked and flailed his arms wildly. The resistance of the water gave a dreamy, slow-motion effect to the struggle.

"Bud — stop it — help me! Or it’ll kill me too!" This seemed to penetrate Bud’s frazzled consciousness. The athletic youth’s muscles went limp for a moment.

Tom’s ion hydrojet seemed to have conked out completely, but he managed to swing himself and Bud around so that they were aimed in a safe direction away from the danger zone. He clung doggedly to his chum as he forced his fingers to manipulate his suit controls. Now unable to jet away, he had seen one route to safety. There was a long gap between the bottom of the weird swirling mass that loomed ahead and above, and the dark seafloor far beneath them. By switching off his buoyancy unit and establishing zero-buoyancy, he began to plunge downward away from the phenomenon. "Can you hear me, everyone?" he sonophoned. "Shut down your buoyancy controllers completely — head for the bottom as fast as you can." He calculated that if other jets were also being affected, this would be the best way to quickly put some distance between the team and the thing.

It seemed that Bud had zeroed-out his buoyancy too, and the two friends plummeted together. Presently the tingling sensation in Tom’s brain faded. As he softly thudded down on the bottom, he was overjoyed to hear Bud mumble, "Uhh — what’s goin’ on? Hunh?"

Aching from the struggle, Tom was too dazed and drained to reply, but strong arms suddenly latched onto his own, and other arms took Bud. "Th-thanks Alix... Ham..." he managed to gasp.

"Come," said Alix gently. "But we’ll have to walk, I’m afraid — real sea legs! All of our suit jets seem now to be on the proverbial fritz." Tom noticed for the first time that Bud’s diverjet had also cut off.

Trudging with no lift and a feeling of dead heaviness, Tom, Bud, and the two rescuers caught up with Dan and George, who had retreated to a safe distance. "Great Scott, what is that thing?" gulped George. "Look at it!"

Tom swiveled his head and looked upwards. The huge object was conical, like a shadowy ice cream cone hanging upside down from above, its broad gaping mouth waggling back and forth.

Bud had recovered his voice. "Jetz! It’s a cyclone made out of fish!"

"Look at them all! — millions!" exclaimed Alix Tuundvar.

"But what’d it do to us? Was I having raptures of the deep or something?" Bud demanded woozily.

"You’d have been playing a harp in another minute or so," Tom told him. "And we’d all have been right up there with you! You were heading straight into water with enough electrical current to knock a whale silly!"

The young inventor pointed toward the huge seafloor formation that the hydronauts had been approaching. It was now partly hidden from view by swarming fish of all sizes — mostly herring and cod, but also mackerel, tunny, salmon, even a few dolphins and sharks. All were swimming frantically in the same direction, moving gradually upward as if into a narrowing, invisible funnel.

"I d-don’t get it," Bud stammered in confusion. "It’s some kinda flipped-over waterspout — an underwater waterspout!"

Dan Walde spoke up. "We studied it in school. There’s an electric deep-sea fishing rig suspended way up there in the water somewhere — it’s the only answer," he said. "I don’t think that type of fishing is legal these days, but — "

"But it’s hard to stop," Teller stated.

George Braun completed the account. "The fish are drawn helplessly to the electrode by a process called electrotaxis. When they get close enough, they’re electrocuted — like bugs hitting one of those bug-burner lamps — and get sucked up through a pipe to the fishing vessel."

"Do you mean to tell us we’d have gone up the spout with the fish?" asked Alix.

Tom shrugged. "Probably — I’m glad we didn’t find out. Our jets might have carried us within the pull of the intake suction."

"S-s-sufferin’ seals!" Bud shuddered at the thought of their narrow escape. "I was dazed enough. If it hadn’t been for you, pal, I’ll bet that trawler would have landed its first California pilot fish by now!"

"What a fish story that would have made," Tom remarked with a grin.

"Jetz! I’ll say."

"And what of the ‘jetz,’ eh?" Alix pointed out grimly. "They don’t work, none of them."

"Did the electricity short ’em out, Tom?" asked Dan.

The young inventor’s puzzled frown showed through his facemask. "Electricity in the water shouldn’t have affected us at all," he replied; "not inside these sealed, insulated suits. But if they’re using a different kind of setup — maybe inducing electrotaxis by electromag-flux pulsations..." Suddenly his eyes shifted and he exclaimed, "Hey! Those lights on the seamount have vanished!"

"Well, I’ll be an oyster’s uncle!" said George. "We weren’t seeing things before, were we? Light can get bounced around in funny ways down here."

"We saw lights and no mistake," Tom retorted. "Let’s try for another look!"

"I’m already looking," snorted Ham Teller. "But if you mean close-up reconnaisance, I’d say we have quite a walk ahead of us!"

Dan Walde’s eyes darted back and forth between the speakers. "Tom — I assume — you can fix the jets, right?"

Tom Swift shook his head, his facemask going along for the ride. "It wouldn’t be possible for me to open them up and get into the microcircuitry down here. It may be that the jets will start working again on their own as we put in some distance from the electrotaxis zone. Otherwise, though, we’ll just have to bob up to the surface and signal for a pick-up. We’d have to get into the open air — our suit radiocoms don’t work under water, and the sonophones don’t have more than a few miles range."

"We shall have the verdict soon, I’d think," commented Alix. "The electricity is being switched off."

The fish, or what was left of the swarming shoal, were now dispersing as if the electric fishing rig had been turned off or withdrawn from the water. In order not to take any risks, Tom directed the others to walk some distance across the bottom before trying their diverjet units.

Disappointment was instant. "Nothing!" exclaimed George.

"Not exactly nothing. We’re getting a weak flow through the jets — thank goodness, because it’s needed for the hydrolung system," Tom commented. "But unless we plan to become mer-pedestrians, I’m afraid we’ll have to buoy up topside and abandon the search for now. Switch your buoyancy units to high power."

"Don’t bother," said Bud quietly. "I’ve been trying my controls. You don’t see me ‘bobbing,’ weaving, or anything else."

Tom confirmed it in a tense voice: "My unit’s dead too."

They all were! "Parakeets! — what do we do now?" cried Dan fearfully.

"Enough with the ‘parakeets,’ already!" came the voice of Brooklyn.

"Calm down, Danny," George commanded. "We’ll just need to jettison some of our equipment, that’s all. The aquatometers — sorry to say it, Tom. And of course we don’t need the jets anymore."

The youthful sea explorer returned a slow headshake. "The aquatometers don’t weigh enough to make a difference. As for the diverjets, you can’t unhook them, not if you plan on breathing. The hydrolung apparatus is built into the stanchion brace for the jet."

"Then we’ll do it by brute force!" Bud exclaimed impatiently, tossing aside his aquatometer. Before Tom could stop him, Bud sprung upward, his powerful arms thrashing him toward the distant surface. The team watched his ascent as it became wavery, slowed — and halted. The bead of light began to fall again.

"Can’t be done," declared Bud sullenly as he touched down. "It’s like hauling Santa’s bag of goodies."

"You have the most muscle power, flyboy, but what we all have is way too much negative buoyancy in these fancy electric suits," Tom pronounced. "That’s why we had to have the buoyancy units in the first place. Without those or the jets — "

Dan Walde seemed to be verging on panic. "You mean — y-you mean we’re stuck down here on the bottom?"

"Do relax, young man," reproved Alix. "The breathing apparatus has not been affected, and those nice Swift solar batteries will last years, I’m told."

"Which is just about how long it’ll take if we have to leg it all the way to Iceland!" Ham Teller grumbled.

Alix shrugged slightly. "Admittedly, there is also the problem of food and water."

"Aw, good grief, this is ridiculous!" Bud protested. "When we don’t show up, they’ll start a search in the seacopters and the jetmarines — the Sea Charger herself can submerge, in fact!"

"That’s right," said George. "And don’t forget, that U.S. sub will report having seen us."

They all looked at Tom. His long silence was ominous. "I believe in being hopeful," he said slowly. "But we have to deal with the facts. It’ll be hours yet before we’re due back, and probably hours more before any kind of large-scale search can be organized. We’ve traveled hundreds of miles since we encountered the Disbursement, and we’ve changed course several times. You don’t need to be an oceanographer to know that the ocean’s a mighty big place. It could easily be days, even weeks, before we’re located."

"What you’re saying then, Tom, is," summarized Ham Teller, "that we’re sunk."

"I wouldn’t put it that way," Tom replied.

"I would," declared Alix.

"You were right about Swedes and dourness, Tuundvar!"" George Braun stated.

"This isn’t solving the problem, fellows," reproved their leader sternly. "Let’s head for the seamount. Those lights we saw could indicate some kind of underwater operation, people who could help us."

"If nothing else — climbing to the top puts us closer to the surface," Bud added.

Although the "underwater waterspout" had disappeared, there was no guarantee that their safety was more than temporary. At Tom’s suggestion the mer-pedestrians circled widely and approached the undersea formation from a different direction. "Keep your eyes open, all of you," Tom warned. "Let’s not get caught twice by the same trick!"

Bud shot his pal a puzzled look through his visor dome. "You said trick, Tom. Are you thinking that someone’s giving us the underwater hotfoot on purpose?" Then he added: "Not that I didn’t think the same thing right off."

"Just a hunch, but I’d almost bet on it," Tom said with quiet anger. "As I understand it, the usual maximum range of an electrotaxis operation is far less than what we encountered. The gear we’re up against must be tremendously more powerful and advanced. If there’s a trawler stationed up there to guard the seamount, that would explain it. Even if they didn’t know we were down here, they could be circling constantly on patrol — maybe a whole fleet of trawlers posing as ordinary commercial fishing operations."

"But to what end?" asked George. "What’s the big deal with this guyot, anyway?"

Bud raised his eyebrows. "A ghee-oh? What’s that?"

"Perhaps more clean expressions from Nebraska," wisecracked Alix.

Dan Walde laughed. "It’s a flat-topped, extinct underwater volcano. Oceanographers have spotted a number of them in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. They were named after a Princeton professor."

"Yeah? So what gave ’em that Tom Swift style crewcut?" Bud persisted.

"They stood above sea level for centuries and were worn down by the surf."

They trudged on across the seafloor silt and rock — on, and on. The guyot was bigger and more distant than they had first assumed, and their progress was irregular and torturous. Even the fact that their modest buoyancy made them lighter than they would have been on the surface worked against them, as any attempt to walk quickly caused them to break contact with the bottom and loose traction.

After some time, Dan brought up a clock readout on his mask-screen. "Para — er, golly!" he gulped in dismay. "It’s been almost two hours since we started walking!"

"In not too many more hours the Sea Charger will start getting nervous about us and raise an alarm," Tom observed.

"Tell us flat out, Tom — how long can we stay down here without being, you know — dead?" demanded Teller.

The young inventor could not provide a definite answer. "The aquadapticum tablets vary somewhat in potency from person to person. But honestly, in another twenty hours or so we won’t be doing so well."

At long last the aching, weary travelers stood at the base of the huge formation. After a rest period, they began to ascend. The eroded volcanic rock of the guyot offered many easy hand- and footholds, and this time their lightness helped more than hindered.

As they neared the summit, signs of human handiwork began to appear — discarded tools, rusted bits of machinery, lengths of metal cable, even an exhausted pair of scuba tanks.

Bud plucked a bulky, box-shaped object from the join of two upthrust rocks. "Look at this, Skipper," he called out. "It has a big lens on the front."

"A camera?" asked Alix.

"No," answered the young inventor as he examined it. "It’s a portable underwater flashlamp — a worklight." He slid the switch on the side, curiously, and a dim yellow beam shot forth.

Ham commented, "Batteries still work."

"It hasn’t been down here very long," said Tom. He gestured toward the spot next to the rock where Bud had found it. "It wasn’t buried in sand or silt — just sitting there."

"Right where the workmen dropped in a few hours ago," declared Bud. "You know — our happy troop of fish-shockers."

Tom tossed the lamp away. "No sign of anyone now, though. The scopes haven’t detected anything moving bigger than a mackerel." He chose not to voice the thought that came after: But they could ha