TOM SWIFT

"MAN, look at this earth blaster go to town!" yelled Bud Barclay from the cab of a big tractor trailer.

Tom Swift, standing on the ground next to the vehicle’s wide tractor-treads, looked up from his notebook in good-humored surprise. "Bud—we haven’t started it yet."

"Oh, I know. Just practicing." He joined in his best pal’s laughter. "I mean, hey, it’s a Tom Swift invention. It’ll work like a charm!"

The blond, rangy young scientist and his muscular, dark-haired pal were testing Tom’s latest invention—an atomic-powered earth-digging machine, nested in a cradle of cushioned brackets in the oversize truck-bed. Tom hoped to use his invention for road and bridge construction work and for drilling tunnels.

The young inventor had obtained permission from a farmer to dig on a vacant section of partially wooded land adjacent to the right of way for a water conduit. Tom had chosen this spot, a quarter of a mile off the highway near Shopton, because its rocky formation would provide a better test than the loamy ground of Swift Enterprises, where Tom and his father developed the astonishing inventions that had brought worldwide fame to the Swift family and the little town of Shopton, New York. Tom and Bud had spent the first hour of their morning checking out the various controls and mechanisms of the earth blaster to make certain it had not suffered from its fifteen-minute road trip. Now it was time to test the device in action.

Bud raised the machine from the truck-bed using a portable derrick clamped to the body of the tractor-truck. He swiveled the derrick crane and gently lowered the earth blaster to ground level, dipping its nose so that it rested upon the ground. The machine looked like a ten-foot torpedo and was comprised of three main parts. The main body of the gleaming steel cylinder housed a compact atomic pile to power the implement. Extending forward from the cylinder was a slightly narrower shaft, containing transmission gears to convey the atom-powered strength of the device to its business end. This narrow "neck" could be pivoted smoothly in any direction, as flexible as an earthworm. The nose of the earth blaster was a tapering segment armed with a cluster of twenty forward-thrusting spikes—the "teeth" of the ingenious machine—which could chew into the hardest rock as they pulsed and vibrated at hypersonic speed.

At Tom’s signal Bud gunned the electro-kinetic engines concealed within the main chassis of the device. The grinding hum of the earth blaster burst forth in an ear-shattering roar that rose to a high-pitched whine as the penetrator vanes approached their prescribed vibratory rate. The nose of the machine blurred into a haze of motion.

Bud let out the cables that attached the earth blaster to its crane, and the machine bored into the ground. As Bud eased the big truck forward on its treads, a clean furrow seemed to materialize around the blaster as if by magic.

Bud gave a happy thumbs-up to his friend, who was jogging along next to the cab. Tom’s atomic earth blaster was a success!

As the heavy truck rumbled along, the machine was dragged forward and plowed a deep trench in the ground. A steady stream of dirt and rock, pulverized almost to dust, spewed out of the rear of the main cylinder into a wide flexible hose which whisked the suspended debris into a holding container in the truck-bed.

After traveling along for a few dozen yards there was a moment of hesitation, as if the blaster had encountered an obstacle in the ground. Then with no more warning than that, Tom and Bud were jolted by a loud clash of metal on metal. A split second later a geyser of water shot up one hundred feet into the air!

Hastily Bud jammed the truck into reverse and backed away from the drenching outburst, shutting down the earth blaster. But it was too late—the damage was done!

"We’ve hit an aqueduct!" Tom shouted, as he drew up alongside. "Hand me the cellphone!"

In stunned silence, Bud grabbed the portable unit off the cab shelf behind him and tossed it down to Tom. Quickly Tom made contact with Swift Enterprises.

"We’ve had an accident," he explained to Munford Trent, the two Swifts’ secretary. "The digging machine broke a conduit. Phone the water company right away, and—also see if Hank Sterling can get a repair crew out here pronto!"

"Will do, Tom," Trent responded. "You boys all right?"

"For the moment," Tom replied. He added wryly: "Ask me again after we’ve had to face Mr. Greenup!"

Within minutes an emergency crew from the Enterprises plant had arrived on the scene. It was headed by Hank Sterling, square-jawed chief engineer for Swift Enterprises projects and general trouble shooter for the outfit. A young man, only a handful of years older than Tom and Bud, he had become a close friend.

By now, however, the geyser had stopped, indicating that the water company had either shut off pressure at the pumps or closed a valve somewhere in the system.

As Tom pointed out the damage, other vehicles began to pull up at the scene—two police cars, several fire trucks, and a number of private cars containing curious townspeople who had glimpsed the column of water.

While Hank supervised the unloading of a section of replacement pipe from the repair truck, Tom turned his attention to the police and firemen, who were doing their best to keep the growing crowd in check.

"Think you can handle the situation?" asked the burly chief in charge of the fire trucks.

"I’m quite sure we can," Tom said. "Sorry you had to call out all this fire equipment."

"Don’t worry about that," replied the fire chief. "Makes for good practice, and it’s safer that way."

"Maybe you won’t find it so easy to handle Old Man Greenup," remarked a uniformed police sergeant. He jerked his thumb toward a long, black car which had just pulled up. A man with iron-gray hair climb out of the car. Frowning, he hurried toward them with decisive strides.

Bud jumped down from the truck cab. "Who’s he?" Bud asked in a low voice.

"The president of the water company," Tom said quietly, keeping his eyes fixed on the newcomer. He knew he was in for trouble, and hoped he could avoid involving his father and Swift Enterprises.

Greenup’s face was calm and composed, but streaked with angry red.

"Well, here’s the young man who’s responsible for this mess!" he snapped at Tom.

"It was strictly an accident, Mr. Greenup," explained Tom respectfully. "I’m sorry if we caused any inconvenience, but it—"

"Inconvenience?" Greenup interrupted. "Is that what they call it out at that big installation of yours—an inconvenience? That must be a scientific term I never learned back in college."

"Sir, if—"

"Do you realize that that was the principal transmission line you burst? We had to stop the pumps and shut off water to the whole community! Suppose a bad fire broke out—what would the fire department do for water? And what about the Shopton Hospital—suppose they need water there?"

Sensing trouble, and grateful for it, the spectators crowded closer.

"I understand all that, sir," Tom said, trying to keep his voice steady. "I realize that an accident of this kind could lead to a mighty serious situation. But our men will soon have the main repaired, and I can promise you that Swift Enterprises will pay for any damage."

Greenup nodded noncommittally. "How did it happen in the first place?"

"It was my new earth-digging machine," explained Tom. "We accidentally plowed into the water main."

"I see. Just a little accident." Greenup looked off into the distance. "And you accidentally decided to dig around without concerning yourself with our city water mains." As his voice became quieter, it grew even more menacing. "I know what you’re up to. I know what your company’s trying to do. As for you, in my opinion you’re a public menace. Your father should be hailed into court for not keeping you under better control!"

Bud Barclay shouldered his way forward. Tom saw that his friend was about to blaze back angrily, and put a firm hand on Bud’s muscular arm. "Listen—Sir!" Bud exclaimed. "If it weren’t for the Swifts this town would still be a way-station for watering horses!"

"Bud!" Tom warned in a quiet voice. "Mr. Greenup, please keep my father out of this." The man began to edge away. "If you think my inventions haven’t benefited anyone, that’s your privilege."

Greenup paused and looked back. "You’re right, young man. It is my privilege."

Hearing Greenup’s angry voice, Hank Sterling left the repair crew and stepped over. "We’ll have your pipe fixed in half an hour," he said.

Greenup snorted. "Oh? Fine. Our water situation is bad enough even when we don’t have to cope with trouble like this! The water reserve was already dangerously low. We need at least fifty percent more capacity, especially during this dry spell of ours."

Tom recalled that a town order recently had been issued banning the sprinkling of lawns during the peak hours of the day.

After a few more grumbling remarks, Mr. Greenup wandered off to inspect the work of the repair crew. The men, stripped to the waist, were dripping with sweat as they labored under the hot Autumn sun.

"Say, pal, I’m sorry I got you into all this," Bud apologized, an embarrassed look on his face.

"Forget it," Tom replied. "Greenup’s been ticked at Swift Enterprises for quite a while. He tried to make trouble for Dad at the last meeting of the Town Council."

Bud continued, "I don’t get what happened. I followed the map provided by the water company as carefully as I could. You looked it over too—we weren’t anywhere near where the conduits were marked!"

"Let’s go back and take a second look," Tom suggested. The youths turned back towards the earth blaster truck.

"I left the map behind—" Bud broke off abruptly, a concerned expression on his face. "Hey, we’ve got a tourist!"

A man, whose face was unknown to Tom and Bud, had climbed up on the tractor-treads and was panning the earth blaster from end to end with what appeared to be a hand-held camera. Having evidently completed this task, he then climbed up further, entering the cab. It seemed he wanted an unobstructed top-view image of the machine.

"Hey there!" Tom called out mildly. He was not especially alarmed by the fact that some townsperson wanted to photo-record his new invention, only curious and slightly concerned for the man’s safety.

But the man’s response was anything but reassuring. He glanced expressionlessly in Tom and Bud’s direction, then shinnied across the seat of the cab and out the door on the far side.

"I think I want to talk to that guy," Bud muttered. Before Tom could comment he was off like a shot, loping around the truck with Tom at his heels.

"Hightailed it into the woods," exclaimed Bud in disgust. "I’d say that counts as suspicious behavior."

"Why don’t you go off left, and I’ll work my way up towards the farmhouse," suggested Tom in response. Bud nodded, and Tom plunged into the thick underbrush that divided this unworked section of the farm from the rest of it.

Between the scrubby fall-colored trees, among clumps of coarse grass, Tom spied marks of heavy heelprints and crumpled stalks just beginning to spring back, showing that they had been underfoot only moments before. He followed the trail without any thought that danger might lie ahead.

A minute later the young inventor came in sight of the man himself, hunched over and scurrying through the trees in the general direction of the road that served as a driveway to the farmhouse.

"Hey, you!" shouted Tom angrily. "What’s the big idea?"

The stranger looked up with a startled expression, then jerked himself sideways. He made a dash for a densely wooded area, but Tom quickly caught up with him and grabbed him by the coat collar.

As the tall stranger spun around, Tom saw that he was gaunt and hollow-cheeked. His green eyes glittered with contempt and glaring determination. One hand whipped inside his coat and came out again clutching a snub-nosed blue-steel automatic of unusual design.

Tom was shocked at this reaction, but he had seen the move in time. With his left hand he grabbed the man’s wrist. The stranger tried desperately to wrench his gun hand free.

For a moment the two struggled furiously. Tom, though not so tall as his opponent, had the wiry, muscular strength of a well-trained gymnast. He twisted the man’s wrist further and further until he gasped in pain and dropped the weapon to the ground.

"Now you’re going to tell me what this is all about!" Tom growled angrily. "And then I’m—"

His words were choked off as he was grabbed from behind. Turning his head, he glimpsed that his assailants were two rough-looking men.

Tom fought desperately, but resistance ended when each man held one of his arms tightly.

"What’ll we do with him?" one of the captors asked, breathing hard from the effort to hold the prisoner still. "Know who this is? It’s the Swift boy himself." The other man had clamped one hand over Tom’s mouth to prevent his calling for help.

"Rope—in the auto," panted the gunman in a deep voice touched with a murky accent. "Hold him. We’ll tie him to that tree."

A moment later he returned with the rope. Tom was shoved back against the tree and lashed tightly to the trunk. As one of the men knotted the rope, the other gagged the young inventor with a bandanna handkerchief.

"Good! Now we get out of here!" said the man with the foreign accent. With his two henchmen at his heels, he ran back into the woods. In seconds the sound of an engine told Tom that the three men had made their escape.

In helpless fury, completely bemused by this strange and violent turn of events, Tom struggled to free himself. But he was helpless!

TOM WRITHED and twisted to free himself from his bonds. But instead of loosening the ropes, his desperate efforts only made them cut more painfully into his arms.

Failing in this attempt, Tom concentrated on working the gag out of his mouth. By pushing the bandanna with his tongue, he tried to force it out from between his teeth. But again his efforts were futile.

Almost three-quarters of an hour after the young inventor had been taken, he heard voices shouting his name. Then came the sound of snapping twigs in the underbrush. A few moments later Tom’s heart pounded with relief as Bud Barclay sprinted toward him, followed by one of the Enterprises repair crew.

"For the love of Mike!" Bud exclaimed, as he ripped away the bandanna. "What happened to you?"

"Get these ropes off me first!" said Tom, who was filling his lungs with deep breaths of fresh air.

The repair crewman pulled out a jackknife and handed it to Bud. "Here, use this," he said. "It cost ninety-four dollars! I’ll go tell the others we’ve found him."

As Bud cut the ropes he said, "You really got us nervous, genius boy! At first I figured you were just trailing the guy all over the map, but finally I decided it was time to trail you."

"It’s a good thing you did. I was nearly choked." By the time Bud finished unwinding the rope from Tom’s legs and arms, others from Swift Enterprises had come up through the brush, having parked a company jeep on the nearby roadway. Among them were Hank Sterling and Harlan Ames, chief security officer at Enterprises, who had driven out to investigate the strange accident.

Tom quickly told them everything that had happened.

"That foreigner you saw, the one with the camera—" questioned Ames, "what did he look like?"

"He was very tall," Tom said. "Must have been well over six feet. And he was gaunt and lanky. But the queerest thing about him was his eyes."

"In what way?"

"They were light green, a weird shade—sinister-looking." He looked grim as he recalled the attack. "Boy, I’ll never forget the look he gave me when I grabbed him by the collar!"

"Crazed?" asked Bud.

Tom shook his head. "Not exactly. Like a man on a mission who’d do anything to reach the goal."

Tom then described the two other assailants, remembering that one man had a slight scar over his left eyebrow and that the other wore a fancy stone-studded belt buckle.

Harlan Ames reached inside his coat and pulled out a small photo. "See if you recognize this picture," he said, handing it to Tom.

"That’s the guy I grabbed!" Tom exclaimed. "The ‘tourist’ with the camera." He glanced at Ames with a puzzled expression. "Who is he? And why are you carrying his picture?"

"He’s a dangerous foreign agent," said Ames. "This photograph was circulated to all law-enforcement agencies by the FBI. He was tagged in Barcelona for meeting with a suspected terrorist group that was under surveillance, and then he was recognized entering the U.S. through Miami about three weeks ago, but the trail went cold. They suspect Bronich of trying to buy United States defense secrets for the Kranjovian government."

"What kind of defense secrets?" Tom asked, concerned about this new aspect of the mystery.

"Top atomic secrets," Ames replied. "Space weapons under development for Strategic Defense Initiative projects."

Bud gave a low whistle. "Tom! No wonder this Bronich dude was so anxious to get the low-down on your earth blaster!"

"I still don’t get it," Tom demurred. "It’s true that the blaster is powered by atomic energy. But there’s nothing very secret about that. Every nation on earth knows how to construct an atomic pile by this time—even the veranium type used in the earth blaster."

"Maybe so," agreed Ames, "but none of them knows how to harness atomic energy in the form of an earth-digging machine like yours."

"But think of what you’re saying, Harlan. This is just a glorified rock drill, not a death-ray or missile," Tom protested. "It’s not a weapon that could be used for fighting a war."

When Ames pointed out that the blaster might be adapted to military uses, Bud added: "Besides, from what I’ve read about the Kranjovians, those rats would steal the tin cup from a blind man if they figured it might help them!"

"And it’s not the first time we’ve come up against them," Ames added soberly.

Kranjovia, a collectivist dictatorship in north-eastern Europe shouldering the Baltic Sea, had not emerged from the shadow of Soviet communism despite the downfall and reform of their patrons to the east. The government had been connected with a number of plots against America, as well as the other nations of Europe. Within the preceding year, they had been linked to a scheme to illegally exploit the uranium resources of the South American country of Montaguaya, an intrigue foiled by Tom and his Flying Lab.

"I guess you’re right," Tom agreed in a troubled voice. "We have to assume they have a reason to study my invention."

"The question is, what are we going to do about it?" Bud pondered.

Tom thought for a moment but had no answer. "How about that break in the water main? Is it repaired yet?"

"All fixed," said Hank. "Old Greenup had nothing more to gripe about, so he went back to town."

"Thanks, Hank. You and your men return to the plant. The rest of us will try to pick up a lead on Bronich and his two henchmen."

Sterling gave a humorous salute and left. Tom, with the help of Bud and Ames, trekked to the small farm road in a search for clues. But there was nothing to see but a few drops of oil marking the spot where the getaway vehicle must have stood waiting.

"I’d guess they had a fourth person ready in the car," commented Ames. "Tom, was there anything noteworthy about the camera Bronich was using?"

"No," the young inventor replied. "Just a compact digital videocam. It’s widely available—I’ve seen that model in catalogs."

"Not much hope of catching them now," muttered Bud. "They’re probably miles away, and you never did actually see the car."

"There is one more thing to look at, flyboy. Though it may have nothin’ to do with nothin’, I’d still like to examine that map you were using," Tom said with half-hearted hope.

"The map from Shopton Water? How does that figure in?" asked the young pilot.

"Maybe not at all," was the response.

They returned to the truck-tractor and pulled out the map, which Bud had downloaded from the company’s public website. Nothing was obviously amiss—except that it was, obviously, inaccurate.

"Don’t worry," Tom said grimly. "They won’t get away with this. I’ll find Bronich and look him right in the eye. I’ll see his determination and raise him one!"

The others shared grins, knowing that Tom’s words were no idle threat. In the adventures that had become known as Tom Swift and His Flying Lab and Tom Swift and His Rocket Ship, the youthful inventor had turned the tables on other foreign agents seeking to harm the western world, and in Tom Swift and His Jetmarine he had brought to justice a gang of modern pirates and kidnappers. His most recent exploit, Tom Swift and His Giant Robot, concerned outwitting a crazed scientist bent on capturing Tom’s robot and destroying his father’s atomic energy research plant in New Mexico.

Tom drove the earth blaster back to Swift Enterprises, with Bud and Ames as his escort.

"I’ll alert the FBI and the police right away," the security chief said to Bud as the gate, activated by the coded signal of an electronic transponder, shut behind them.

With the new invention safely housed in the huge underground hangar that doubled as Tom’s experimental laboratory and workshop, the two boys took the plant’s moving walkway system, the ridewalk, to the office Tom shared with his father in the high-rise administrative building.

"This is a pretty alarming development, son," said Damon Swift after hearing the story in detail. "If this Ivor Bronich is involved with professional terrorists, the threat could extend to many others beyond you and I and Bud."

Just then Munford Trent stuck his head in the office door. "Mr. Swift—both of you—Lewis just called from the geophysics lab. The lithosonde readings are ready."

"Have him transmit them to the digi-fax here in the office," Mr. Swift directed him. He turned back to Tom. "A little light reading for tonight at home!"

"I’ve heard Tom mention the lithosonde experiments," Bud remarked. "But I never had a chance to ask genius boy for his usual dumbed-down explanation—which is the only kind my brain can absorb!"

They shared a laugh and Tom said, "It’s pretty simple this time around, pal."

Damon Swift’s eyes twinkled as he added, "All we’re doing is listening to rocks."

"They say it’s good to keep your ear to the ground," Bud wisecracked. "What do you mean, listening to rocks? Real rocks?"

"The deep, deep underground kind," Tom said. "You’ve seen those cutaway diagrams of the earth, haven’t you? The ones that show the different layers of things?"

"Oh sure," Bud replied.

"Ever wondered how they get that info?"

"Not especially. I suppose they drill a hole and drop in a camera. Or—ask a gopher?"

"They use the shockwaves generated by earthquakes, or, sometimes, by underground H-bomb tests," Tom said. "The waves are reflected or distorted as they travel through the earth, just like sonar."

"Or like the sonograms they take in hospitals," continued Mr. Swift.

"Got it," Bud noted with a smile. "It’s like taking a sonogram of the whole earth."

"Exactly," said Tom approvingly. "But those big waves are hard to bring into focus. Our photos of the insides of Mother Earth are pretty blurred. We only really know about the main layers—the thin outer crust we walk around on, the thick mantle underneath that, and the core, which seems to be divided into an outer core of liquid iron and what they call the inner core, which is probably iron compressed into solid form despite the super-high temperatures."

"Okay. So what’s this new ‘ear’ all about?"

"It really is all about listening," replied Damon Swift. "We pick up higher-frequency vibrations—sounds—generated within the depths of the planet and use them to assemble a more detailed image, using computers."

Bud looked puzzled. "Guess I’m missing something. What’s causing those vibrations you’re listening to? Don’t tell me you’ve been setting off atomic bombs under Shopton!"

"Believe it or not, the vibes are caused by the sun and the moon," Tom said. "As the earth turns, the sun and moon create tides in the solid parts of the earth just as they do in the oceans—they’re just not as easy to notice, because we ride on top of ’em. As the tides pass, the earth eases back into place. But the uneven stresses produce the vibrational patterns that our sensors pick up. That’s why we call the system a lithosonde, which means rock-sound."

Bud nodded sagely. "I knew that, of course. So now you’re going to take the output home to have a look, Mr. Swift?"

"Precisely," he replied.

At home that evening, Tom ate a late meal by himself. The rest of the family had finished dinner some time earlier, and Tom’s father was engaged in studying the readings from the lithosonde.

Rather than sit alone in the dining room, Tom preferred to eat in the big, cheerful kitchen of the Swift residence. As his dainty, attractive mother served the food she had been keeping warm on the kitchen range, Tom’s seventeen-year-old sister Sandra plied him with questions about the day’s events.

"Does this mean your earth blaster is ruined?" the blond, blue-eyed girl inquired anxiously. "Does taking videos count as spy-sabotage?"

"Not so far, sis," said Tom. "It’s just another factor, since we have no idea why they were doing it."

"Maybe they plan to dig a big hole underneath the Pentagon," Sandy speculated whimsically.

"Then they made a good choice, because the blaster could do it!" Tom came back. As he went on to explain the details of his invention, Mrs. Swift smiled at her son proudly. Even though most of the time she did not follow the technical aspects of Tom’s and his father’s work—though she herself had a degree in molecular biology—Anne Swift always listened attentively when they "talked shop" at home.

After supper Tom rejoined his father. Mr. Swift was seated in his comfortable private den, a large room on the first floor of the house, which opened onto a terrace through French doors.

"Any word yet from Harlan about that atomic spy?" Tom asked.

"Not yet. But the State Police and all sorts of alphabetical Federal agencies have joined in the search, so it should be only a matter of time."

"I sure would like to find out why that fellow Bronich wants the scoop on the earth blaster!" Tom went on. "But anyway, Dad, how did the lithosonde readings come out? Any sign of monsters at the earth’s core?"

"Not in the first batch of data," chuckled Damon Swift. "But it’s clear we’re getting a sharper picture of the earth’s interior than ever before. Look over the readouts yourself if you want, Tom. You know how to interpret them."

At eighteen Tom had inherited the Swift family’s scientific genius and resembled his father physically as well. Both had the same keen, deep-set blue eyes, but Tom was the taller of the two.

"By the way," remarked the elder inventor, "Uncle Jake is coming over tonight. He wants to talk over plans for manufacturing your earth blaster. He said he had some problems to take up concerning our jet production, too—materials problems."

A few minutes later they heard the sound of a car on the graveled side drive.

"That must be Uncle Jake now!" Tom exclaimed, jumping up from his chair. "I’ll go let him in."

Jake Aturian was his father’s oldest and most loyal friend. He was also the business manager and chief of operations of the Swift Construction Company, which had expanded to nationwide importance under his guiding hand. He, Damon Swift, and Hank Sterling’s deceased father had all struggled together to make the Construction Company’s high-tech offshoot, Swift Enterprises, into a renowned scientific installation.

Tom met Uncle Jake at the front door and led him back to Mr. Swift’s den. The two old friends greeted each other warmly. When Uncle Jake was seated in a comfortable chair, he turned to the younger Swift with a grin in his eye. "I hear you had a slight brush with Mr. Greenup."

Tom grimaced. "I just hope it doesn’t lead to trouble with the Town Council."

"You let me worry about that," Uncle Jake replied, and added with a chuckle, "I’ve handled that old curmudgeon before."

"What is it he has against Dad and me anyway?" Tom asked. "He seemed to be alluding to something, but it wasn’t clear."

Jake settled back, shaking his head. "It’s not clear to anybody, Tom—maybe not to Herb Greenup himself. Over the last few years he’s gotten kind of eccentric. At the last meeting he came up with this off-the-wall charge that Enterprises was throwing its weight around unfairly."

"To what end?"

"He thinks we’re maneuvering to take advantage of the drought situation to win a contract with the city to pump water in from the Fennisville reservoir through Pine Hill," Uncle Jake explained. "He thinks we’re going to drum up public support by rolling out some sort of high-tech approach to the problem."

"Oh man!" Tom groaned. "Inventing the earth blaster just feeds his paranoia."

"That, and today’s accident. Just the same, this water problem is getting serious," said Mr. Swift. "If the water company doesn’t find an answer pretty soon, we may have to curtail operations at the plant!"

The two older men discussed this situation and other production problems facing the Swift Construction Company. Tom submitted an occasional remark, but directed his attention to the lithosonde data.

"In my opinion," remarked Jake Aturian, "the worst problem facing the technological industries in this country is a threatened shortage of good iron ore. Without ore, the world’s mills can’t produce steel. And that could lead to a dangerous dependence on sources in some countries that don’t wish us well."

"What about the Ungava range up in Labrador?" asked Tom, not looking up.

"Almost played out," was the response. "Going the way of the Mesabi ore strike." He puffed thoughtfully on his pipe, then said, "Tom, since you’ve got your earth-borer machine up and running, can’t you figure out a new source of high-grade iron ore?"

The young inventor was staring intently off into space. It wasn’t the first time that he had given thought to this particular problem.

"I don’t have to figure it out," he said at last, almost dreamily. "I can name you a source of pure iron right now, one that’s never been tapped."

"Where?"

"The center of the earth."

Uncle Jake’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Impossible! No one could tap that!"

Tom disagreed. An amazing idea had just occurred to him.

"I think I could do it," he said quietly.

TOM’S quietly confident statement amazed Jake Aturian, but Tom’s father only smiled indulgently and shut his eyes. He and his son had debated the issue before.

"Are you serious?" Uncle Jake asked.

"Very much so," Tom replied.

"Serious about what?" put in a girl’s lively voice.

"Oh, come on in, Sandy. You too, Mom." Sandy and Mrs. Swift had come to join the others. Instantly Tom drew up a chair for his mother, while Sandy perched on the arm of Mr. Swift’s chair.

"Tom was just telling us he has an idea for tapping pure iron from the center of the earth," Uncle Jake explained. "I must say it seems a little farfetched, even from Tom."

"Tom likes farfetched ideas!" Sandy declared. "That’s how he exercises."

"That’s the truth, Sandy," Tom said, grinning.

"What is it you have in mind, dear?" Mrs. Swift inquired.

"Well, to begin with," Tom said, "scientists are agreed that the center of the earth is molten iron.

"The entire core of the earth is molten iron, isn’t it?" Uncle Jake asked.

"No one knows for sure," Tom replied. "However, based on slight deformations in the shape of the earth and theories about earth’s magnetic field, most scientists think the inner core is solid iron, with a layer of molten liquid in between that and the earth’s mantle, as they call it."

"You’re right," Mr. Swift agreed thoughtfully. "That theory agrees with most estimates of heat at the earth’s core."

"Anyhow," Tom went on, "it’s certain that if we burrow down far enough, we’ll strike molten iron."

"Goodness, it sounds as if you’d have to go miles down!" his mother exclaimed.

Tom nodded. "That’s true. But there’s one place where I believe the molten iron is much closer to the surface than anywhere else on earth."

"Where’s that?" Sandy asked. She was listening eagerly, her chin cupped in her hands and her eyes wide with interest.

"At the South Pole," Tom replied.

There was a stir of surprise as the young inventor went on to explain his reasons.

"For one thing, it shows up in the ground temperature. You see, up in the north polar regions, the soil is covered with a solid layer of permafrost all year round. But down south, in the Antarctic, you find spots that are warm and free from snow."

"Those are pretty good arguments," Mr. Swift conceded. "Your ‘theory’ is perfectly reasonable. But your mother is still right. Even at the South Pole, that molten iron must be a couple thousand miles down from the surface. And that would take a lot of digging, even for your atomic earth blaster."

"It would leave quite a pile of dirt to clean up, too, I’d think," put in Sandra with a laugh.

Mr. Swift pulled open the drawer in an ornate desk nearby. "Tom and I hashed over his idea just last week, and I still have our figures. Let’s see now. Suppose you dug a pit just three feet in diameter," he continued. "For every hundred miles you went down, you’d haul up enough dirt to cover an area six city blocks square, piled three times as high as the Empire State Building!"

"Golly!" Sandy gasped, and her expression showed that for the first time she felt some doubts about her brother’s plan.

But Tom had a solution. "We could get around that by using a more advanced version of the earth blaster that I’ve been working on."

"How?" Jake Aturian asked.

"Instead of using the atomic energy to power the penetrator vanes, we could tap it for a sort of external atomic ‘blast furnace’, making it a real earth-blaster. The process would release gaseous oxygen from the vaporized rock. And the superheated gas in turn would billow up the shaft and disperse. No dirt pile! And then the molten iron would shoot up to the surface like an oil gusher."

Mr. Swift tugged at his lower lip and nodded thoughtfully. Though he dissented from Tom’s conclusion and thought the project infeasible, he was proud of his son nevertheless. But Uncle Jake shook his head.

"Even if your general idea is sound, think of the tremendous expense involved in setting up a mining operation in Antarctica. I’m afraid we could never finance such a venture."

"I’m sure that the government would help out on the cost," said Tom. "Especially if we invite their scientists to go along on the expedition."

"There’s another objection, Tom," his father put in. "Suppose you did strike that molten iron. You’d have every government that ever staked a claim at the South Pole insisting the ore belonged to them too. Various United Nations resolutions effectively internationalized the whole region, you know."

Frowning, Tom got up and paced around the room. "Well, Dad, that’s a question the United States government would have to settle. But one thing I’m sure of. No government that hasn’t staked a claim at the South Pole should be allowed to interfere!"

"You mean like Kranjovia, for instance?" asked Sandy.

"Right!"

There was a long silence. It seemed even Jake Aturian and Damon Swift were swept away by Tom’s bold vision. But then Mr. Swift shook his head, as if returning to reality.

"Sorry, Tom, I just don’t see how it could work. The heat, the pressure at that depth—it’s impossible."

Tom’s eyes took on a gleam. "You’d pretty much convinced me of that, Dad. Until this evening!"

"What do you mean?" Mr. Swift asked, surprised.

Tom walked back to his chair and picked up the lithosonde readouts he had been studying. "I saw it right away in the middle of all the other data. According to this, there’s a narrow vein of molten iron that comes much closer to the surface than anyone ever suspected!"

"Less than two thousand miles?"

"Less than two hundred!"

At that moment there was a loud buzz, accompanied by a whining, growling sound, as though a pack of watchdogs had suddenly caught a scent of danger. "The alarm system!" cried Sandy, jumping up from her chair. "Someone must be trying to break into the house!"

"You and Mother stay here!" Tom declared.

With the two older men, he made a dash to check on all doors and windows.

The entire house and grounds were surrounded by a magnetic detector field originally devised by Tom’s great-grandfather, the first Tom Swift. Any person entering this field disrupted its flux balance and automatically set off the alarm system, unless provided with some kind of deactivator mechanism.

The Swift family and their friends all wore little neutralizer coils in their wrist watches for this purpose. But prowlers or unexpected visitors unknowingly signaled their presence by touching off the alarm.

Tom flicked a switch near the front door and immediately the grounds were flooded by the glare of powerful spotlights, arranged to cover every bit of the property.

"This should flush out anybody hiding in the shrubbery," Tom said. He went outside by a side door, poking around the bushes with his father and Uncle Jake. The young inventor found several sets of partial footprints on the grass, but they faded out and led nowhere.

"Let’s use the bloodhounds," Mr. Swift said. The two dogs, Caesar and Brutus, were kept in kennels behind the garden. Straining at the leash under Tom’s and his father’s control, they made a complete circuit of the house and grounds.

But even the bloodhounds failed to locate the intruder. Puzzled and uneasy, Tom and the two older men returned to the house. Mrs. Swift and Sandra were waiting for them in the den.

"Who was it?" asked Sandra.

"I don’t know. He got away," Tom replied in a worried tone of voice. "Maybe just some kids."

When they resumed their interrupted conversation, Uncle Jake asked for more details about Tom’s plan.

Suddenly Mrs. Swift gave a startled gasp. Someone was tapping on the study window!

"Take it easy, Mumsy." Tom was hoping to reassure her, but he himself felt uneasy as he got up to open the Venetian blind and look out.

The window tapper was Bud Barclay!

Tom gave an inward sigh of relief. "Come around back to the terrace!" he told Bud. "I’ll let you in through the French doors."

"Hope I didn’t startle you folks," said Bud, entering the room. "It was awfully stupid of me, but I forgot that my wrist watch is broken and I’d left it, with its neutralizer, at home. Thought I’d better show myself before things went nuclear."

"What!" Tom cried.

Bud looked at his friend in surprise. "For Pete’s sake, don’t get bent out of shape—anyone can make a mistake!"

"You don’t understand," Tom said. "The alarm system didn’t go off this time!"

"Huh?" Bud stared. "You mean I didn’t set off the alarm, even though I wasn’t wearing the coil?"

"That’s right," said Tom. "And the funny thing is, the alarm did go off about twenty minutes ago, but we couldn’t find anyone."

"We’d better investigate further," Mr. Swift said, rising.

Meanwhile Tom pulled open the concealed master control box for the detector setup and was performing some diagnostic tests with it. "There’s your answer," he announced grimly. "The whole alarm system is dead!"

Everyone present exchanged glances that bespoke concern and anxiety. What—or who—had wrecked the alarm system? Was it accidental, or a case of deliberate sabotage? Was the Swift home about to be the target of a terrorist attack?

The young inventor continued to run various diagnostic routines. In a few minutes he had the answer. "It was sabotage, all right. Someone shorted out the main dispersion solenoid. And in my opinion, it was done by a clever technician—someone who knew exactly what he was doing!"

"Bronich!" exclaimed Bud.

Suddenly Uncle Jake stood up, his face turning pale. "Tom, if the system is dead—he could have broken into the house. He could be hiding inside right now!"

"Let’s not talk ourselves into a panic," said Tom’s mother with forced calmness. "You can make the rounds again with the bloodhounds—just to play safe," she said. "And this time, start out inside the house!"

They split up into two teams. Tom and Bud covering the grounds again with Caesar, while Mr. Swift and Uncle Jake searched the interior with Brutus.

"Anything?" Tom asked his father when he reentered.

"Nothing," Damon Swift replied. "And I’ve done a sweep for listening devices, too." Tom and his father quickly repaired the detector system.

A short time later Uncle Jake and Bud said goodnight and left. Soon Tom’s mother and sister retired to their rooms upstairs. After they had gone, Mr. Swift turned to his son. "I’m going to have a guard sent over from the plant, at least for a night or two. And I’ll call Ames at home and give him a full report."

Finally, hours later, Tom and his father were able to snatch a few hours’ uneasy sleep. But their first thoughts upon waking had the same theme as their last thoughts upon falling asleep.

Could they defend family and friends against a determined agent like the Kranjovian known as Ivor Bronich?

If only they could be sure!

OVER A LATE breakfast the next morning, Tom and his father talked again about the possibility of a South Pole expedition in search of iron. Overnight Damon Swift had come around to his son’s way of thinking and was now excited about the possibility of Swift Enterprises participation.

"I have to fly to Washington late today, anyhow," Mr. Swift announced. "While I’m there, I’ll sound out the authorities about government backing."

"I sure hope you can sell them on the idea!" Tom said. "In the meantime, I’ll get back to work on the earth blaster. I have some further ideas on making a much more powerful machine to penetrate the earth’s crust."

After breakfast father and son drove to Swift Enterprises. Here, in a cluster of buildings and airstrips sprawled over a four-mile-square enclosure, their astounding dream would see the light of day—if it proved to be possible at all!

Tom said goodbye to his father at the main gate and hurried to one of his auxiliary laboratories, this one in a lab complex next to the main administration building. To get in, he took an electronic key from his pocket and beamed it at the lock. The coded signal was recognized and the heavy door popped open into the wide hallway.

In a cradle in the middle of the clean, gleaming room was the cylindrical form of the new-version earth blaster, which Tom had been working on since the first version had been substantially finished.. The machine was mostly incomplete as of yet, and its power was drawn from thick cables. The veranium atomic pile would not be installed until a further point in its development.

Seated on a stool in front of his 30-foot workbench, Tom quickly applied his thoughts to the job of altering and improving his original blaster design. Where to begin?

The first hurdle was the problem of heat. Tom had decided to try adapting the cooling system he had invented for his giant robot. This system used a highly paramagnetic gas which was alternately magnetized and demagnetized at the same high rate as the characteristic emission frequency of radiant heat waves. The gas was circulated through tubular interstices in the robot’s "skin" to maintain its ideal working temperature of 96.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

A similar system would be needed to protect the instruments in the earth blaster from destruction. Similar—but far stronger. At only one hundred miles down the blaster would already be coping with temperatures of several thousand degrees—hot enough to shrivel a human being to ashes in seconds!

But how could the robot’s system be made more effective? "We could convert the excess thermal energy in the coolant directly to electricity by a thermocouple arrangement," mused Tom. He made some calculations and sketches, and wrote notes to himself in his ever-present notebook.

"She’ll need a gyroscope, too." He smiled at the thought of what might happen if the machine ever veered off course. "It might burrow into some other country’s territory and swipe their ore—and the Old Man Greenups of the world wouldn’t care much for that!"

Two hours later, while Tom was busy with his design-simulator flatscreen working out structural details of the new blaster adaptations, he became aware of muffled voices in the hall outside the laboratory door.

One voice was that of Bud Barclay, the other, as recognizable as fingerprints, was Chow Winkler’s. Chow was a Texas-born former chuck-wagon cook whom Tom and his father had virtually adopted as their personal chef and good friend.

"I know yuh’re just yankin’ my lassoo, Buddy Boy," Chow was saying. "They’s no way y’can walk around in soft dirt without leavin’ footprints."

"It’s true, Chow," insisted Bud. Tom could imagine the look of mischievous innocence on his friend’s face. "He’s got it all worked out—special spy shoes that don’t leave a mark. They don’t even sink into water!"

"Nngh, now I know yuh’re bluffin’ me," the Texan replied. "I may be past my prime—an’ fat—and a little bit bald—"

"You want me to stop you when I disagree?"

"Stupido, I ain’t!" Chow concluded smugly.

There was a knock, and Tom unlocked the door remotely with the electri-key. A picture of offended dignity, the roly-poly cook marched into the lab, Bud following. "Boss, this here cayute is tryin’ to tell me—"

"I heard, Chow," said Tom. "But he’s just passing along our cover story."

Chow nodded suspiciously. "Cover story, huh?" He glanced skeptically at Bud, then back at Tom. "I know what that is—whatcha tell folks when you think you got a problem with spies, right?"

"That’s right," Tom confirmed. "But since you’re our partner and pal, I’ll tell you the real story."

Chow was placated by the praise. "Okay, then!"

"We’re going to the South Pole pretty soon, to drill to the center of the earth with my new invention, in search of iron. But we don’t want to let it out to the public—it’s very hush-hush. There’s international diplomacy involved."

"I get it, Tom." Chow nodded sagely. "Yep. South Pole. S’all covered with ice, so’s you can’t leave footprints no-way anyway."

Tom flashed an affectionate grin that was matched by Bud from behind Chow’s broad back. "That’s good figgerin’, pard!"

Chow left, promising to return with a mid-morning snack. At the door he glanced back at Bud. "That’ll learn ya, Bud," he said. "Cain’t bluff a bluffer." He pushed the door shut behind him.

"Nice save, skipper," Bud said. "Thought I’d stop by on my way to the control tower in case you needed my advice on any new inventions."

"Advice is always welcome, Isaac Newton," chuckled the young inventor.

Bud strolled over to the earth blaster chassis and knocked on it. "This the new baby?"

"That’s it—version two. Destination, the earth’s core!"

"Or thereabouts, huh." Bud had been told of the audacious project. "Looks like you’re changing the digging spikes."

The cluster of twenty sharp spikes of various lengths which had adorned the nose of the first model had been completely removed. Instead, each of the two intake ports at the fore-end of the cylinder was bordered by a pair of tapering vanes that shone like polished gold, with a fifth vane of slightly greater length and thickness extending forward from the center of the unit. A pair of conical cowlings now flared from the rear of the blaster at the ends of the inner conduits.

"These its new teeth? They look like snail antennas, Tom—and don’t look very sharp."

"Don’t have to be," retorted the young inventor. "They’ll never touch rock at all."

Bud gave his pal a half-smile. "Well, we ran into ghost crows in New Mexico—now it’s ghost teeth!"

Tom laughed and explained. "Those vanes are electrodes of a special design. An electric current—more like an electrical fireball—will arc from the big central electrode to each of the others around the perimeter."

"Little lightning bolts, huh?"

"Yes, but continuous. And it’s going to be a little warm—warmer than your California sunshine in summer, flyboy."

"How warm?"

"In Fahrenheit, try 4800 degrees!"

Bud gulped. "Not sweater weather! But seriously, how can the machine withstand heat like that?"

"I doubt it could, even with the new cooling system," replied Tom. "But that temperature is inside the electric arc-field. The arc itself won’t even touch the metal hull, and it won’t be nearly as hot where it contacts the electrodes."

Bud nodded his understanding and asked, "So what did you mean about never touching rock?"

Tom walked over to the blaster control panel and tapped it absent-mindedly. "Bud, anything the arc-field touches—dirt, rock, metal, anything—will be vaporized instantly. The temperature is as great as that on the surface of the sun! We’ll be melting our way down into the earth."

"Man alive, that’s—"

"Bud! Don’t move! Not a muscle!"

The impact of Tom’s unexpected command brought Bud to a complete stop, as if frozen in place. "Skipper, wha—"

"No!" hissed Tom in a forceful whisper. "Don’t talk—and don’t move!"

His heart beginning to pound, Bud waited immobilely for his friend to explain.

Barely audible, Tom continued. "Just listen. If either of us moves, we’re dead! You can’t even twitch or turn your head… It’s the electrodes on the blaster. I’m looking right at the monitor dial—they’re powering up! Must’ve been going on for several minutes now; it takes time. But they’ve passed the redline, the danger indicator. I—I don’t see how it could have happened…"

Tom’s tense voice trailed off for just a moment; his throat had gone dry. Then he resumed the strained whispering. "Here’s the problem. This lab has a special ventilation system to suppress currents of air and maintain a constant temperature. It’s the only thing keeping us alive right now! Any disturbance of the air—even a slight one caused by somebody shifting an arm, say, or a loud noise—creates a moving pressure differential. The electrodes will arc along that differential all the way across the lab, and into any good conductors—like the human body. We’ll be incinerated!"

Bud made a soft sound in his throat, as if he wanted to speak. "Go ahead," said Tom. "Softly, like me."

"Okay," whispered Bud in a strangled voice. "There’s a screwdriver on the counter about three feet away. Maybe I could edge over to it at snail-speed and toss it—"

Tom interrupted him. "I know what you’re thinking. But tossing a screwdriver won’t divert the arcing effect away from us. It wouldn’t be grounded. We’re not grounded very well on this floor, but the arc will flash to the best conductors around, and we’re it! Besides, there’s no time to sidle up to the counter: the electrodes are still powering up. In a minute it won’t matter whether we move or not!"

"Then I—I—maybe—"

At the corner of his eye Tom saw Bud’s muscles clenching under his t-shirt.

"Don’t!" Tom ordered sharply. "You’d be throwing your life away, and it wouldn’t make any difference—whatever hits you gets me too. We’ve got to think; and one minute to go!"

Just then came the clop of boots and the sound of a twangy voice in the lab building hallway. "Hey, George, Marty—in the mood for some fancy early eatin’? Give ’em a try!"

"Chow!" breathed Bud in despair. "Tom—did you lock the door?"

"No."

"Then when he opens it—"

"We’re cooked!" Tom finished. "Literally!"

PERSPIRATION trickled down Tom’s face as he thought harder—and faster—than he ever had in any moment of his life, knowing that this could well be the last moment of his life!

He carefully shifted his gaze downward to the top of the workbench on which the earth blaster controls had been mounted. The kill switch, which would cut all power to the machine, was more than two feet distant. Too far! But only a few inches separated the tips of his right-hand fingers from a small battery-powered soldering iron in the shape of a thick colored drafting pencil.

He sensed, somehow, that the soldering iron was the solution. His subconscious had begun to work the problem through, the final result not yet displayed to his mind’s eye. But he could already feel his muscles aching to move toward the implement and switch it on.

His hand, trembling, inched through the air as slowly as the rising mercury in a thermometer tube. He barely heard Chow knocking on the lab door, so intent was he on his task; barely heard the metallic click of the door latch as his fingers brushed the activator button and he stabbed down hard. One chance! he said to himself.

The soldering iron took a second or two to heat up. If Chow were to barge on in—!

But even before the seconds had elapsed, the tip of the iron had begun to glow orange with heat. When Tom had pressed the button, he had gently nudged the device forward along the workbench a half-inch or so, forcing its tip against the fold in a blueprint. Now, almost instantly, a single minute spark of flame puffed up from the paper.

What followed was a split second of chaos!

A spray of water jetted down from the overhead sprinklers. Before it even reached the floor, the lab was rocked by blinding flashes of light and a series of high-pitched cracks like the roaring of a machine gun. Chow, beginning to open the lab door, flinched backwards with a shriek of alarm.

As if mesmerized, Tom saw bizarre fireworks erupting in midair, like blazing snakes striking upward toward the ceiling. And at almost the same moment, a powerful force thundered against his side and slammed him down to the lab floor. Bud had tackled him like a training dummy!

"Down, boy!" gasped Bud next to Tom’s ear. The thudding of Bud’s heart kept time with his own.

"The kill switch!" Tom choked. He wormed his way out from beneath his friend’s heavy muscular bulk and felt blindly around the top of the bench. Finally he found the kill switch and depressed it.

He and Bud sighed with relief. The lightning display was over.

"Boss?" came Chow’s cautious voice. "What’re you boys doin’? One o’ your experiments?"

Water still spraying down from the ceiling sprinklers, the two drenched youths were grateful to be alive. The air was full of steam, smoke, and the pungent odor of electrical fire. The sprinkler above the nose of the earth blaster was blackened, smoking—and partially melted.

"Whataya mean, Chow?" panted Bud, struggling to his feet. "Nothing going on in here!"

"Brand my bunsen burner!" exclaimed the rotund westerner. "All this fuss made me drop my snack tray!"

It was a half-minute after the explosive arc-burst before Tom, dazed and shaken, managed to pick himself off the floor. His face stung and smarted. Groggily, the young inventor brushed one hand across his cheek. When he brought it away, it was streaked with blood.

"You brought me down pretty hard, Bud," Tom murmured.

At that moment Hank Sterling burst into the lab, accompanied by several plant workmen.

"Holy snark!" Hank exclaimed. "What’s going on in here?"

"You two young’uns all right?" Chow demanded anxiously.

"Still in one piece," said Tom. "But I guess we could do with a little cleaning up. Hank, m-maybe you could… tell maintenance… to shut off the f-fire sprinklers..." Tom’s voice was weak and hesitant.

Both Tom and Bud had suffered slight burns from the flying droplets of flash-melted metal, and their clothing was splattered with a wet sooty mixture, but otherwise they were uninjured.

Damage to the laboratory was also slight. Other than the ruined sprinkler system plus some broken test tubes and other minor chemical equipment, little would need replacing. The sturdy earth blaster had suffered no damage at all.

After leaving orders to have the debris cleaned up, Tom accompanied Bud to the Swift Enterprises infirmary, where their cuts were treated by the company nurse. Then they adjourned to the spacious private office in the main building which Tom shared with his father.

Tom’s half of the office displayed models of Tom’s most important inventions, hand tooled by Arvid Hanson, chief modelmaker of Swift Enterprises. Among them was a large, perfectly scaled model of his Flying Lab the Sky Queen, a silver replica of Tom’s rocket ship resting on its fins with its nose pointing skyward, and a copy of his jetmarine, the Nemo, in blue plastic. The largest item in the collection was a model of Tom’s giant robot.

Tom and Bud showered and changed in the bath connected to the office. Over a tasty lunch of soup and sandwiches, which Chow brought them, the boys recounted the horrific experience to Tom’s father and Hank Sterling. Tom was able to explain the sequence of events.

"The safety sprinkler setup uses a purely optical detector," he said. "There’s no need for hot air or fumes to reach the sensor in the ceiling—it ‘sees’ the wavelength of fire and opens the valves immediately."

"It sure does!" Hank commented. "It’s gone off twice over in my shop at just a tiny spark. Very irritating!"

"And so you allowed the spray of water to disturb the air," prompted Mr. Swift.

"Yep—but up above the electrodes. The discharge arc followed the droplets back to their source."

Sterling nodded. "From lesser to greater conductive density."

"Right," said the young inventor. "Now we’ve got one melted sprinkler head, instead of two vaporized employees!"

Tom’s father looked thoughtful and uncharacteristically troubled. "We never would have known what had happened," he said slowly. "What caused the accident, do you think?"

Tom had to smile. "Mr. Greenup does a whole routine when you say ‘accident’."

"I don’t care about Greenup!" Damon Swift said sharply. "Was this an accident? Or a terrorist act orchestrated by Bronich?"

"I guess I don’t know," Tom admitted. "I can’t figure how the electrode system could power up by itself like that."

"If it was sabotage, it just shows how little the Kranjovians care about human life," Bud declared grimly. "Not that we didn’t know that already!"

Hank Sterling suggested that he examine the control circuits and try to identify the source of the malfunction. Mr. Swift was just thanking Hank when the office door opened and Harlan Ames strode into the room. "Big news!" he exclaimed.

"What’s up?" Tom asked the security chief.

"Looks like they’ve nailed those two thugs working with Bronich—the ones who tied you up! The State Police caught two men today who answer the description! Captain Rock wants you to identify them."

"Now we’re getting somewhere!" Bud exclaimed. "Let’s go, Tom."

Twenty minutes later Police Captain Rock greeted them in his office in downtown Shopton police headquarters. "Sit down and I’ll have the men brought in. They were picked up breaking into a convenience mart that had closed for lunch."

Their wrists handcuffed, the two men entered the room with a husky state trooper as guard.

"How about it, Tom?" said Captain Rock. "Are these the men?"

Tom got up from his chair and went over to study the prisoners closely.

"No doubt about it," he announced. "I can identify this fellow by the small scar over his left eyebrow. And the other one was wearing the same belt he has on now." The belt was unmistakable.

"Not too swift on the concept of disguising yourself, huh guys?" Bud mocked.

"All right Bank, and you too Dutt," Captain Rock said. "Start talking. And you’d better make it as convincing as your police records!"

"Just put us in our cell, man," mumbled Bank, the one with the scar.

Bud clenched his fists. "Maybe you two would like the same kind of a going-over you gave my pal!"

"Take it easy, Bud," Tom said, putting a restraining hand on his friend’s shoulder. "It’s true they tied me up, but they didn’t try to rough me up."

The prisoners shot him a grateful glance as the young inventor continued speaking.

"Look," he said to them, "there’s no sense in taking the rap for someone else. I’m fairly sure the whole thing wasn’t your idea, anyhow. So why not tell us who put you up to it?"

"It was just some guy," said Dutt with a nervous glance at his crony.

"It’s too bad if you can’t help us. Because that gunman with the video camera is a foreign agent. If you want to cover up for him, you may both end up in prison on charges of treason and espionage—and aiding and abetting terrorism!"

The prisoners looked at each other apprehensively, then back at Tom and Captain Rock.

"What do you want to know?" growled Bank.

"Who hired you?" asked Tom.

"The dude you were just talkin’ about. He picked us up at a bar down in Meadowview. Guess he knew we had records."

"Where can we find him?"

The man shrugged. "Search me. He wouldn’t even tell us his name." Bank paused and shifted his weight uncomfortably. Dutt stared at the floor.

"Come on, speak up!" snapped Captain Rock. "We haven’t got all day!"

"Yeah? I thought this was your day job!" sneered Bank.

"Well, there is one thing I can tell you," Dutt said. "I heard him gabbin’ on a cellphone once. Most of the time he was jabberin’ away in some foreign lingo I couldn’t understand. Like Russian er somethin’, you know?"

"That’s all you can tell us?" pressed Captain Rock.

"Look," said Bank, "he said he was gonna rob a couple driller boys at a construction site, that’s all. Never mentioned Swift-boy here. Said he might need a little help if they got feisty, and we were s’posed to wait outside the car and watch for him to come out through the bushes and wave if he needed us. That’s the whole bit."

Bud shook his head. "No it isn’t. How about the fourth guy, the one driving the car?"

A wave of surprise passed across the men’s faces.

"How did—" Dutt began, but Bank cut him off.

"Let me. Okay, yeah, there was this one other guy. Never seen him before and he never said a word. All he did was drive. Kind of a short, dumpy middle-aged dude—nothin’ special."

"Okay, take them back to their cells," the police chief said to the guard.

Bank was led through the door. Just before he exited the office, Dutt turned to Tom. "95 Western Drive," he said in a terse whisper, obviously not wanting Bank to hear him.

As soon as the prisoners were led away, Captain Rock ordered two of his men to Western Drive.

"Wait a minute, Captain," Tom said. "Two uniformed police in a squad car might tip off the man we want. Let me take Bud here and Harlan Ames to scout the place. We’ll report back to you."

The captain agreed. "Harlan’s a good man. He’ll handle it well."

Western Drive was a broad, spacious thoroughfare that wound through Shopton and along the shore of Lake Carlopa. Tom and Bud met up with Ames a block away from their destination.

"Mighty nice afternoon to get incinerated!" Bud joked, gazing at the blue, sparkling lake waters as they walked along toward the address. "But they say smoking’s hazardous to your health!"

Harlan Ames was watching the numbers of the houses and apartment buildings. Suddenly he exclaimed, "Look! There’s the place!"

Both boys gaped in astonishment. The building which bore the address of 95 Western Drive was the Excelsis Club, a favorite haunt of wealthy sportsmen and their wives! Its front faced the street and the rear of the property backed onto the lake shore.

"Now what would Bronich be doing in a place like this?" Bud exclaimed. "Isn’t it a little rich for a spy’s blood?"

Harlan Ames smiled. "Must be one of those elegant, upper-crust-type spies."

"Let’s inquire inside," Tom said. "At least we can find out if anyone knows him."

At that moment a man emerged from a cluster of cars in the club’s private parking lot and headed toward a side door of the building. Just before entering, he turned his head for a glance at the lake, and Tom caught a brief glimpse of his face.

"That’s Bronich!" Tom hissed. "I’m sure of it!"

Tom made a dash for the side entrance. Bud and Ames followed.

The heavy door, marked PRIVATE, had already slammed shut by the time they reached it. Tom and his friends pounded on it loudly and rattled the handle but got no response. The three hurried back around the corner of the building and ran up the flagged walk.

Under a striped awning, a towering doorman in a gold-braided uniform stood guard at the entrance. As Ames and the boys tried to rush past him, he stuck out his right arm to bar the way.

"May I see your cards, please?"

"Hang it all," Ames said impatiently, not quite in those words. "We have no cards, but we’re here on very important business!"

The doorman assumed a frozen, supercilious expression.

"I am sorry, sir," he replied firmly, "but my orders are to admit no one to the Excelsis Club except regular members—in proper attire!"

Fuming with impatience, Harlan Ames told the doorman who he and the boys were, and demanded to see the manager.

The doorman looked Tom up and down. "The famous Tom Swift, hmm? We’re honored. As to the manager, he’s not available," the man said icily.

"We’re trailing someone who’s wanted by the police!" Tom explained. "He’s a dangerous foreign agent and we saw him enter this club through the side door!"

"Sorry, sir, but I have my orders." A smirk touched his lips. "Perhaps one of your inventions could help you—Mr. Swift."

At a nod from Tom, Bud and Ames followed the young inventor in a search of some other means of entrance to the club. "That frozen-faced doorman!" raged Bud, as they circled the building. "We should’ve grabbed him by the seat of his plush pants and tossed him in the lake!"

"Never mind him," Tom said. "The important thing is to collar Bronich before he can slip away again. Listen, I think I might be able to work my way down to the side patio from the bridge over there. Harlan, maybe you could work on gently persuading that uniformed goon that it’d be in everybody’s best interest to cooperate."

"A pleasure, Tom," Ames nodded.

"I have an idea," Bud said. "In back there’s a big overhang—that part of the building is up on stilts ’cause of the way the beach slopes. Bet there’s a door or something underneath for access to the beach area!"

The three separated. Trying not to be noticed, Bud made his way to the shoreline. He saw that there was a private bathing beach for club members behind a fence—deserted for the moment.

Barclay, you’re on to something, Bud told himself. He made his way into the deep shadow of the overhang—and stopped dead.

Directly in front of him a door was propped open, with a flight of steps leading upward!

Bud, said his inner voice, I think you just made the club!

THE FLIGHT of steps opened at the top onto a long windowless hallway of polished wood and indirect lighting. No one was in sight. Bud made his way forward along the plush carpet until he came alongside a pair of swinging doors. Opening one a crack, he could hear the sound of showers running and locker doors slamming.

Say, that’s right, he thought. The Excelsis Club has a health spa, a gym, and a restaurant!

He pushed the door open further and edged his way inside—only to beat an immediate and red-faced retreat. "Sorry, ladies!" he murmured through gritted teeth.

Further along, the hallway took a hard left. Beyond this was another swinging double-door. Inside Bud found the men’s locker room and men’s shower area. Though the locker room seemed empty he heard a mutter of voices near the showers and tried to creep closer without being seen. Quickly darting behind a row of metal lockers, a wall mirror afforded Bud a glimpse of two towel-clad men—one tall, one short—ambling toward the showers, talking softly.

Bud recognized the taller man immediately—Bronich!

He realized he would have to get much closer to the pair. All the lockers were unlocked when not in use, as members were expected to provide their own locks. Bud quickly pulled off his clothes and stuffed them into a vacant locker, whipping a towel off a shelf nearby and wrapping it about his waist. As he passed the wall mirror, he paused. Hmm, he told himself, flexing his muscles. A natural athlete! Then he cautiously entered the shower area.

As he did so, two showers began to hiss somewhere ahead. The room was large and L-shaped, divided into dozens of showers by chest-high tiled partitions. Bud realized that the moment he stepped round the corner, he would be in full view. Even if Spy Guy doesn’t recognize me, ten to one they’ll both shut up in front of a stranger, he thought.

Suddenly he noticed a steam-cloaked glass door marked STEAM SAUNA, leading into a square cubicle with walls of redwood planks with narrow spaces between them from which wisps of steam were rising. Entering, he made his way through the cloud of steam and pressed his cheek against the wall nearest his quarries.

Over the sounds of the showers, Bud could hear the two men talking back and forth in a guttural language he could not understand. He strained to catch what he could of the foreign words.

"Must be Russian," said a close-by voice, and Bud jumped. The sauna was occupied!

"Oh, uh… guess so," Bud murmured quietly to the man seated further down. "Just curious."

"Then again, we do have some Norwegian members," the man continued. "I’m—wait now, haven’t we met?"

Bud half-turned and groaned inwardly. His comrade-in-steam was Mr. Greenup!

The young pilot brushed a lock of his dark hair down across his forehead and hoarsened his voice. "No, no, but I was just leaving," he rasped, heading sideways toward the door and pushing through it.

He tiptoed toward the other section of the shower room. The showers were still running, though he could no longer hear any conversation.

Well, he told himself, right now they’re both about as vulnerable as a person can be! He tensed his muscles and strode forward.

The two shower stalls were empty! The showerheads had been left running—probably to muffle the men’s stealthy escape.

Bud ran light-footedly back to the locker room, quickly looking down each aisle in turn. Then, alerted by a slight noise, he turned and saw two towel-draped figures, side by side, exiting the locker room into the hallway. One was tall, the other short!

Bud hurdled a bench, sprinted across the concrete floor, and grabbed both men’s towels from behind, trying to pull them back.

"Gentlemen!" Bud exclaimed, ripping the towels from around their waists and spinning them both around to face him.

There were three gasps and a shocked pause. Then Bud choked out: "Mr. Martinberry! How great to, um—see you!" The tall man was the head librarian of the Shopton Public Library!

"Barclay, isn’t it?" responded Mr. Martinberry, thoroughly perplexed and thoroughly unclad. "Have you—that is—" He paused, staring at the towels in Bud’s hand. "This is Mr. Byrnes. Tyler Byrnes."

Byrnes gave a broad grin and stuck out a hand obviously accustomed to glad-handing. "Howarya, Barclay. Ty Byrnes, Apex Real Estate. Say, you own or rent?"

"Rent!" Bud replied as he tossed the men their towels and backed away toward the door.

"On our way to massage," Byrnes continued. "Why don’t you—"

"Nice. Pleasure. Bye!" Bud stammered, pushing past them and out into the hallway.

On the floor above, Harlan Ames was engaged in vigorous conversation with the manager of the Excelsis Club. Next to Ames stood Tom, who had found access to the building through the terrace.

"Let’s all keep our voices down, please," said the manager nervously. "These are very serious matters."

"You bet they’re ‘serious,’ you lump-nosed pencil pusher!" fumed Ames. "We can have this club of yours shut down in a minute if—"

"Mr. Keiverlav," Tom said, "we’re trying to be reasonable. This man Bronich was seen entering your building by the side door just minutes ago. You say you don’t recognize him?"

The man shook his head. "I can’t be expected to recognize all our members by sight. Furthermore, he might be a guest—members can sign in personal guests, you know."

Suddenly the man’s eyes widened. Tom and Ames spun around.

"Bud!" Tom cried. "What—where—"

"Sir!" Keiverlav said coldly to Bud. "You must be properly dressed to walk about on this floor!"

"Properly dressed?" Bud gave him a woozy grin. "Hey, this is one of your own towels!" He pointed to the embroidered logo.

As the manager tried to block him from the sight of the curious public, Bud related his adventures on the floor below. "So I guess I lost ’em," he finished ruefully.

"Young man, you really must put some clothes on!" demanded Keiverlav.

"Oh, yeah." Bud winked at Tom. "Lemme see now. I know I put them someplace…"

An hour later, after the police had searched the Club thoroughly and Mr. Keiverlav had retired to his office in search of sedation, Tom, Bud, and Ames sat on a bench in front of the building discussing the strange affair as Bud made notes in Tom’s notebook.

"This is the best I can do," said Bud, handing the notebook to Tom. "Those words sounded something like this, phonetically spelled. At least that’s all I can remember."

"Thanks, pal," said Tom. "We didn’t find Bronich and his friend, but at least we’ve got this to play around with."

"Well, I’m going to follow a few hunches back at Enterprises," Harlan Ames said, rising to his feet. "If you two know anybody who speaks Kranjov, maybe you can make something out of all this."

As Ames walked away, Tom frowned thoughtfully. "You know, flyboy—weren’t we talking about somebody who spoke Kranjov a few weeks ago? When we got back from New Mexico?"

"Say, that’s right!" Bud thought for a moment, then snapped his fingers. "I remember! Bash was telling us about that woman she babysits for. She was born in Kranjovia!"

Pakistan-born Bashalli Prandit was a close friend of Tom, Bud, and the Swift family. She and Tom frequently double-dated with Bud and Sandy.

Without waiting the boys drove to The Glass Cat, the Shopton coffee house where Bashalli worked. She brightened as they walked in.

"Ah, the scientific rover boys!" was Bash’s humorous greeting. "In the mood for a Danish?"

"No," Bud replied, "a Kranjovian!"

Tom briefly explained their need for a translator, taking care not to go into detail about his project or the threat against his family and friends.

"Well, Mrs. Zalvonyov is very nice," said Bashalli. "I imagine she’d like to help you. Her story is quite dramatic, how she escaped from Kranjovia with her son and little granddaughter. Let me telephone her."

Mrs. Zalvonyov was agreeable. Within minutes Tom and Bud were ringing for entrance at her rented house at the edge of town.

She proved to be a small, white-haired woman with a very determined manner and a fairly dense accent. She ushered them into a parlor decorated with photographs and memorabilia from her homeland, and bade them sit down on a threadbare sofa. "Alright now," she said brusquely. "For me, what do you have?"

Tom pulled out the notebook sheet of phonetically-spelled words and phrases and handed it to her. "We assume it’s in the Kranjov language, ma’am. Bud had to spell it as it sounded, but we thought you might make something of it."

"It’s a conversation between two men," Bud added. "I couldn’t remember who said what, though."

Mrs. Zalvonyov put on a pair of bifocals and examined the sheet. "This—nonsense, gibberish!"

"I did the best I could," responded Bud in an apologetic tone.

"Not very good," she said. "Like little Latvian boy in school trying to learn, eh?"

"Is there anything at all that—" Tom began. But Mrs. Zalvonyov interrupted him with a dismissive wave.

"I do not say there is nothing. Only that it is bad." She studied the paper closely for a minute, nodding now and then. "Okay, okay, now I tell you what it means—at least in teeny bits."

Tom gave an appreciative smile. "That would be a great help, ma’am."

"Yaa, yaa. Okay, I think someone says ‘too cold is the water’ and someone says ‘so you turn handle’ and someone says ‘be strong-trunk’—that is how we say, what?—get used to it. Our way of saying. So someone says ‘good wish, to have easy-handle for cold in weather.’ Then I think they are making vulgar jokes. Blah-blah. Now, what? Something about—I think it’s a name, Detar. Common name." Mrs. Zalvonyov paused and looked up. "They do not say it with formal politeness, but as if he is a friend. See?"

Tom nodded. "I understand."

"Not much more I can understand. Soap; say hello; some foreign word ek-sell…"

Bud looked embarrassed. "Great—Excelsis! I should have noticed."

"Means nothing, eh-eh," said their translator. "Last part here, something about going under a cap of glass."

"Is that a Kranjov idiom—an expression?" asked Tom.

"Not as I have ever heard," Mrs. Zalvonyov replied. "But there is a sound-like word, would make even less sense. Word for…what is it?…" She moved her palm back and forth parallel to the floor, as if it were sliding across a smooth, flat surface. "When top of pond is frozen hard. Ice!"

"‘Cap of ice,’ huh." Bud’s face fell with disappointment. "Maybe one of the guys was getting a headache. Guess all I heard was a lot of chit-chat."

Tom was silent, and Bud glanced his way. The young inventor looked tense and thoughtful—and alarmed! "What is it, genius boy?"

"Don’t you get it, Bud?" asked Tom evenly, not wanting to provoke any hard-to-answer questions from their hostess. With a feigned smile he leaned over closer to Bud’s ear. "Cap of ice—icecap! As in Antarctica!"

Somehow their deadly adversaries had learned of the Swift Enterprises plan to drill deep into the earth from the South Polar region—placing the entire massive operation in danger!

IT WAS LATE in the afternoon when Tom and Bud were able to sit down with Harlan Ames in his office and discuss what they had discovered.

"It seems we just can’t manage to keep a secret around here," commented Ames wryly.

"I suppose we can’t be absolutely sure that Mrs. Zalvonyov got the translation right," Tom reminded him. "She did say it could be either ‘ice’ or ‘glass’."

"And I was trying to hear it over the sound of a shower, anyway," added Bud.

Ames made a dismissive gesture. "Okay. But ‘ice’ sure fits in with all that other talk about cold—doesn’t it? So let’s be smart and assume for the moment that Bronich and his buddies have a very up-to-date source of information about what we’re doing here behind these walls. How are they working it?"

Bud pointed out, "We’ve had turncoat employees here before, you know. Maybe Enterprises is skimping on someone’s dental plan!"

Tom and Ames laughed. "If they just knew about the second version of the blaster—I can see how that might have leaked out," said the young inventor. "But the Antarctic project is only known to a few of us."

"Most of them here in this room," commented Ames. "Plus your family and Chow Winkler, and Jake Aturian over at the Construction Company."

"Hey!" exclaimed Bud. "I forgot about Uncle Jake. Maybe he’s let it get around among his employees—or maybe his office is bugged!"

Ames shook his head negatively. "Ever since some of our recent problems, I’ve had my people do sweeps of both plants on an almost daily basis with long-range detectors. I’m confident any listening devices on the premises would be located right away."

"Guess you’re right," Bud admitted. "That’s why we had to stop using the televocs."

The televocs were ingenious private communication links allowing near-range person-to-person transmission. Unfortunately, Ames had concluded that it would be too easy for a technologically sophisticated enemy to tap into them, endangering Enterprises security. He had persuaded the Swifts to discontinue their use for the present.

"And Uncle Jake told me just an hour ago that he hadn’t needed to mention the project—he calls it Project X—to anyone over there. He’s sure he hasn’t let it slip to anybody." Tom’s voice expressed the confidence he felt in the Swift circle of family and friends.

"Your father is meeting with a Congressional subcommittee right about now, Tom. It’s supposed to be a closed, confidential environment—but that’s not something we can count on," Ames noted. "However, that couldn’t explain what’s already leaked out."

"So far, the only key we have to all this is the Excelsis Club," Bud reminded them. "They say they’ve never heard of Bronich, and the police couldn’t find a trace of him and his friend, but I don’t trust those hoity-toity club types. For all we know, Old Man Greenup could be involved in all this."

"By the way, Bud, that reminds me of something," Ames said. "Did you see that second man, the shorter guy, in enough detail to have a police sketch artist draw him?"

The young pilot shrugged. "Maybe. It was just a glimpse, but I have a pretty good memory for faces. Want to try it?"

Ames nodded and said, "I’ll have someone out here tomorrow."

The informal meeting broke up on an inconclusive note, Ames mentioning that he might bring in a security consultant with whom he was personally familiar.

The next day Tom was at work at Swift Enterprises when he received a call from Ames. "I was finally able to get a reliable list of the Excelsis Club membership."

"Anything interesting?"

"Nothing in particular—on the surface," replied the security chief. "But it seems they also note the names of guests for a period of one year. I’d like you to look it over. Maybe you or Bud will recognize a name."

"Will do, Harlan."

Just as Tom was passing the news along to Bud, Sandy and Bashalli Prandit walked into the laboratory dressed attractively in shorts and nautical garb.

"Well, are you two all set to go?" asked Sandy gaily. "But aren’t you going to change clothes?"

"Go where?" said Bud blankly.

"Oh, Tom! Didn’t you tell him?" Sandy turned to her brother with a puzzled frown.

"Gosh, Sandy, I’ve been so busy that it slipped my mind!"

Bashalli rolled her eyes. "We should have known, Sandra. Like water through a sieve!"

Bud looked from brother to sister to Bashalli. "So don’t keep it a secret. What’s up?"

"Sandy cooked up a double date for us," explained Tom. "We were all supposed to go sailing on the lake this afternoon in the Mary Nestor."

The Mary Nestor was Sandy’s sleek new sailboat, named in honor of the wife of the first Tom Swift, Sandy’s and Tom’s great-grandmother.

"I want to try it out for speed," she said, turning to Bud. "You see, the yacht club is hosting the final race of the season is next Saturday, and I’ve signed up. This’ll be my last chance for a trial run before the race."

"Wonderful!" Bud exclaimed. "What are we waiting for? Let’s go!" The dark-haired young flier, whose parents lived in San Francisco, loved all forms of outdoor sports but was especially fond of sailing.

Tom, however, held back. "I’m sorry, gang, but I have a million things to do! I’m afraid I’ll have to beg off this time." He caught Sandy’s eye and gave her a special look, reminding her not to mention the drilling project in front of Bashalli.

The girls let out a wail of protest.

"Tom, you can’t let us down like this, after Bashi and I have been counting on you!" Sandy protested. She hastily pulled a copy of the racing announcement out of her shoulder bag and added: "Just look at all the people who’ve signed up for the race! It’s not just members of the Yachting Society, but all sorts of local clubs and organizations. We won’t stand a chance against competition like that unless you figure out the angles for us!"

"And I have no doubt half of them will be out on the lake this morning practicing," commented Bashalli entreatingly. "Do you wish us to look like also-runners, Thomas?"

Tom looked helplessly at Bud. "Did Einstein have to put up with this?"

"Don’t know," Bud responded. "Did Einstein have a sister?"

In Bud’s convertible, the four young people were soon on their way to the Shopton Yachting Society on Lake Carlopa. As they drove past the Excelsis Club, the boys exchanged veiled glances but said nothing.

The Mary Nestor was moored in the club’s boat basin. She was a graceful little craft with a gleaming hull and sleek lines.

As they hoisted sail and got under way, Tom settled himself in front and prepared to scan the lake with his field glasses. Sandy and Bashalli were to captain the craft and control the tiller, Tom and Bud serving as front-seat advisers.

It was a perfect day for sailing, with a hot sun sparkling down on the water and a brisk, spanking breeze. As predicted, the lake was dotted with sailboats, skimming across the blue like graceful white sea birds.

"They think they’re so smart," Sandy said. "Well!—just wait."

As Sandy handled the tiller, Tom, with his glasses, studied the occupants of every craft that came into view. Not that Bronich is the boating type, he thought. But you never know!

The Mary Nestor picked up speed, and soon they were breezing along past one craft after another, and the girls noted more than a few envious glances.

"That was Heather Quinn," Sandy whispered gleefully. "The girl next to her—with the bad hair—that’s Lauren Desmars. Did you see those expressions? You just know they’d give an arm to have a boat like this."

"Maybe," commented Bashalli smoothly. "Or boyfriends like these!"

They sailed lithely further out into the middle of the lake, where they would have more space for a speed test without contending with the other boaters.

Suddenly Tom lowered the field glasses as if he couldn’t believe his eyes, and then looked again.

"Someone you know, Tom?" Bashalli inquired.

Tom did not answer, but wordlessly handed the glasses to Bud, pointing.

"Bash, let Bud take the tiller!" Tom commanded breathlessly. "Hurry!"

"Tom, what in the world—?" gasped Sandy.

Tom spat out a single word. "Torpedoes!"

Trails of white foam—the wakes of five surface-cruising torpedoes—were rapidly converging on the Mary Nestor!

"They’re homing in on us, skipper!" Bud cried. "Abandon ship?"

"They’d plow right over us," responded Tom with a negative head-shake. "Or they might home in on anything in the area."

Sandy touched her brother’s arm. "About how long before—"

"Less than a minute," he said. "They’re still a ways off."

"But there’s no way we can outrun them in a sailboat," Bud said quietly. "I just might get us around the first one, but the rest—we’re sitting ducks."

Having no alternative, the four watched in horrified resignation as the first torpedo bore down upon the Mary Nestor.

Abruptly Bashalli called out, "Tom, Bud—look!"

With a roar, a highspeed motorboat jetted past them to portside, going into a smooth arc that took it across the bow. A figure rose to a standing position in the prow, cradling something in his arms.

"A shotgun!" Tom exclaimed.

The boat pilot braced himself and took careful aim at the nose of the first torpedo. The crack of a shot split the air—and the torpedo seemed to swerve out of control.

Bashalli cheered. "Direct hit!"

The torpedo tumbled wildly stern over stem, finally gouging into the waves as it headed for the lake bottom.

The other four were now closing in as a group. The powerful gun roared four times in rapid succession, and for a moment the calm waters of Lake Carlopa were stirred to a froth by the death throes of the destructive engines. Two of the torpedoes collided, and suddenly the air was full of hot spray and spinning fragments of metal as a thudding explosion rolled over the lake from one end to the other.

"He’s got ’em all!" Tom cried in happy astonishment. "But who is it?"

The small, swift cruiser slowed and executed a lazy figure-eight, puttering up close to the Mary Nestor. Their rescuer could now be seen more clearly—a compact figure in sunglasses, a dark tank-top shirt, and a cap pulled down low. He carefully set down his gun and bent down, reaching behind the seat.

"Mister, where did you come from?" called Sandy gratefully. "You saved the day!"

"That was great shooting, pal!" Bud added.

But the man didn’t acknowledge any of this. Without a word he reared back and tossed a small shiny object in their direction.

Bashalli shrieked. "It’s a grenade!"

TOM DUCKED down and lunged for the object, which was bouncing across the deck beneath their feet, intending to bat it overboard. But when he stood upright again, it was to nervous laughter.

"Just a pop bottle!" he said disgustedly.

Meanwhile the powerboat had throttled up again and straightened its course. As Tom and his friends watched in bewildered amazement, it skimmed away at top speed toward the far end of Lake Carlopa. In minutes it was lost to sight.

"What was that?" Bud demanded. "Some kind of sick gag? I was ready to shake hands with Davy Jones!"

Without warning Sandy began to sob. "I—I can’t stop shaking!" she whispered. Bud threw a comforting arm around her.

"Are you all right, Bash?" Tom asked.

"I am shaking on the inside," she replied. "But at least we are still boating on the lake, not the River Styx."

"Those torpedoes were plenty real," Tom declared. "And my guess is they were launched from someplace close to the Excelsis Club!"

"But why would a high-class club try to sink us?" quavered Sandra.

Bud essayed a joke. "Maybe they’ve declared war on the Yachting Society!"

As Sandy and Bashalli guided the Mary Nestor back to berth, Tom contacted the lakefront authorities by cellphone.

"So that’s the story," said the woman who answered. "In the last five minutes we’ve been swamped with calls!"

Tom asked, "Did anyone report seeing where the torpedoes came from, anything about a strange motorboat?"

"Not so’s I can tell," she answered. "But it’s all pretty confusing. Torpedoes in Lake Carlopa! If the report didn’t come from one of you Swifts, I’d hang up on you."

After docking the sailboat, Tom put in further calls, first to Captain Rock of the Shopton Police, then to Harlan Ames.

"Mighty dangerous stuff," whistled Ames. "I suggest you get the wind in your sails and get back to Enterprises right away."

Arriving at the Swift Enterprises parking lot, Bud let Sandy and Bashalli off at Sandy’s car, then promised Tom he’d follow behind to see that they got home without further incident. "Thanks, pal," responded Tom with gratitude. "I’m worried that they may be too shook up to drive safely."

Bud snorted. "Like I’m not?"

It was after noon when Tom entered the grounds of the sprawling experimental station by the small side-gate. In the main building, Munford Trent bustled up to Tom and said, "Your father just got back from Washington. He’d like to see you at once!"

Tom hurried to their private office.

"That was a quick flight, Dad!" he exclaimed, in response to his father’s greeting.

"Tom, I have great news!" announced Mr. Swift. "That’s why I flew back to Shopton immediately. The government officials I talked to are very much interested in your proposed expedition to the South Pole."

The young inventor was thrilled. "Have they given us the go-ahead?"

"They have indeed; even granted permission for us to survey any part of the Antarctic under United States oversight to determine its suitability as a site. And Uncle Sam will also lend us funds to help finance the expedition, provided we take along several government scientists, just as you proposed!"

Tom gave a whoop of delight and pumped his arm up and down in a burst of joyful enthusiasm. "Dad, that’s wonderful! Let’s start planning for the trip right now!"

Mr. Swift smiled at his son’s excitement. He fully shared Tom’s reaction to the promise of high adventure. But he added a note of caution. "Don’t forget this will be a tremendous undertaking. And it all depends on your perfecting the new model of your atomic earth blaster!"

Then he pressed the switch of his intercom. "Trent, please phone Mr. Aturian at the Swift Construction Company. Ask him to set up a teleconference call with us as soon as possible!" Both Swift facilities contained special teleconference rooms providing a lifelike video link between the locations.

While they walked down to the teleconference room, Tom told his father about the latest developments in the case of Bronich and the hired thugs, ending with the morning’s incredible occurrences on Lake Carlopa. He also described the progress he had made earlier in the morning on the new blaster, including some new ideas about its onboard guidance system.

"Fantastic work, son!" Mr. Swift congratulated him. "At this rate, your new blaster may be ready for testing even sooner than we’d expected."

Shortly after that, Uncle Jake appeared by electronic magic in the teleconference room, as if seated at the same polished mahogany table as the Swifts—though he was miles away.

The three got down to business. First Mr. Swift gave a detailed report of the news from Washington. Knowing well the Swift reputation, the members of the subcommittee had been almost as wildly enthusiastic as Tom had been. But Uncle Jake reserved judgment until he had time to study the details of their proposed arrangement with Swift Enterprises.

"There are some conditions," Mr. Swift explained. "In order for them to be willing to waive the usual bidding procedures, the government will substantially control the ore-processing station once it is established. Long-term management will be contracted out, and most of the profits will go to the Federal Treasury—as we anticipated. Enterprises is in this for the science, and to open up a better source of steel."

The expedition was discussed from all angles. Tom frankly pointed out the hazards they would be facing. Uncle Jake drew up a rough estimate of the total cost. Even with government financial backing for the expedition, it would amount to a staggering sum!

Uncle Jake and Damon Swift faced each other soberly across the table. The risk was tremendous. But finally they came to a decision. They agreed to undertake the South Pole expedition, with the investment of large sums of money and equipment from both the Swift Construction Company and Swift Enterprises!

"It’s only fair to warn you, Tom," Uncle Jake added, "that we’re staking everything on the hope of success. If your project fails, our firms will be ruined!"

Tom’s heart pounded, but he managed to reply calmly, "I’ll do my best to make sure the expedition succeeds, Uncle Jake!"

Tom realized that success of his venture would necessarily mean the loss of the blaster, which would disintegrate upon striking the vein of molten iron. But this loss would be only a fraction of the value of the endless source of pure iron obtained!

"And that’s not all," continued the young inventor. "We’ll be opening up, to scientific investigation, a whole new world—our own!"

At the conclusion of the teleconference, Tom went to one of his laboratories to finally eat lunch and change out of his sailing clothes and into something more suitable for the rest of the workday.

"Got lunch right here!" announced Chow, meeting him at the lab. "A nice cool cucumber soup, and an ex-perimental sandwich!"

"What kind of sandwich?" Tom asked in mock suspicion.

"You’ll never guess, boss," replied the Texan. "Marinated Penguin!"

Tom gave him a startled look.

"Naw, boss, jest a-kiddin’," Chow said. "It’s tuna—what they call dolphin-friendly tuna!"

As Tom changed out of his clothes in the bathroom, something in one of the deep side pockets of his shorts bumped against his leg.

That’s right! said Tom to himself. That stupid pop bottle the guy tossed at us!

He held up the bottle in the light and looked at it closely for the first time. The top was open and there was no drink inside—yet there was something within it after all. Tom shook the bottle and it slid out into his hand. It was a piece of white paper, carefully folded into a thin packet.

Tom finished dressing, then unfolded the sheet, a single sheet with lettering printed neatly in the center. The sheet of paper appeared to be a business letterhead, though Tom noticed immediately that the printed name at the top was subject to smearing, as if it had just been freshly manufactured by a computer-printer. At the top was DR. MONTROY SNEFFELS, SHOPTON, NEW YORK, followed by a local telephone number. The message read:

"OH MAN!" Tom muttered to himself in a tone that suggested—correctly—his internal eye-rolling.

After some thought and hesitation, Tom let his curiosity get the best of him and called the number.

The ringing phone was promptly answered, "Hello—Mr. Swift?" Tom knew then that the phone number had been established for his use only.

"Hello, Dr. Sneffels," Tom said. "I received your message, of course. Kind of an unconventional way to deliver it."

"Yes," the man replied. "I apologize, but it was absolutely necessary for my personal safety, and yours. No one must know of this connection between us."

"You don’t think playing shooting-gallery with torpedoes on Lake Carlopa might excite some interest?" Tom commented dryly.

"That was unavoidable," he said. "I saw that your sister had entered the Yacht Society race, and I’d been watching for days for her to go out on the lake in her sailboat. I planned to motor up to her and pass the message to her that way, to be passed along to you, Tom. Admit it, if you had received such a message in the mail, you’d have thrown it away—if it got to you in the first place."

"That’s true, I suppose," Tom conceded. "But what do you mean when you say—"

"Not over the phone," Dr. Sneffels interrupted. "Even this dedicated line may be unsafe. Let me meet you somewhere within your installation, Swift Enterprises. You have your ways to check-out visitors, I know. I’ll be disguised, but we’ll both feel secure."

Tom couldn’t help sighing. "Very well. Tomorrow?"

"I was hoping for this evening. You can alert your security staff that a visitor is to be expected. I will give them my name; I presume they can be trusted."

"I’m afraid the question is whether you can be trusted," Tom replied. "But all right."

To Tom’s surprise Dr. Sneffels hung up the phone immediately without a time having been set. We’ll see if he shows, Tom thought, and informed Harlan Ames of the note, the call, and the visit.

As Tom finished changing clothes and re-entered the lab, he suddenly broke out laughing. "Chow! Were you waiting for me all this time?"

"Sure was!" said the Texan ominously. "Specially when I saw’d you hadn’t taken a nibble ’r bit o’ your sandwich!"

Tom apologized. "Sorry, Chow—I thought I’d change my clothes first, and I guess I got sidetracked, and—I forgot!"

"I’ll get you some fresh soup," Chow said. As he turned Tom thought he heard him murmur, "Water through a sieve, shore ’nuff."

The young inventor worked hard on various aspects of the earth blaster all through the rest of the day, summarizing his progress in his electronic journal, which his father had access to. Dad will be pleased at how far I’ve gotten, Tom said to himself.

A knock on the door announced the arrival of Bud Barclay. "Feel like dinner in town tonight?" Bud asked.

"Sure," his pal replied. "But you may have to wait a while. I’m expecting a mystery visitor sometime after six."

Bud glanced at his watch. "Almost seven now."

Tom was surprised at how the time had flown. He quietly gave Bud a brief account of the telephone conversation with Dr. Sneffels, and showed him the message.

"Shall I leave?" Bud asked. "Sounds like he may be antsy with others in the room."

Tom shook his head. "Let him be. I’d like you here, flyboy—you may have to help me toss the guy out!"

At seven-sixteen the gate guard informed Tom that his guest had arrived, and presently he was shown into the lab by plant security.

"Just buzz if you need anything, Tom," said the security staffer meaningfully.

Tom shook hands with Dr. Sneffels, who was wearing a white toupee and large thick-framed eyeglasses, which he removed with a glance at Bud. "Dr. Sneffels, this is—"

"I know who he is," said the man.

"Thanks for the rescue yesterday," Bud offered as they shook hands.

"I’m a fair marksman; it’s a hobby," Sneffels responded. "Along with boating, and—but I’ll get to that."

Tom asked him to take a seat and bade him go ahead with his story.

"And quite a story it is," said the man. "You won’t want to believe it. But I’m absolutely sincere.

"I’m something of an amateur spelunker—a cave explorer. Done it since I was a young boy. Pretty good at it, too. Tom—Bud—have you ever run across the Great Pawnauck Mountain Mystery?"

"Did the Hardy Boys solve that one?" cracked Bud.

"I’ve heard of it," Tom answered.

"A reporter wrote a book about it some forty years ago. There was a little flap—then it was forgotten. Everyone assumes it was just a hoax. The man talked about old legends going back to the 1800’s concerning the area of Pawnauck Mountain in the Appalachians. There were sightings of mystery lights, half-seen figures that disappeared, mining operations that were plagued by unexplained disasters. A whole village of miners supposedly vanished overnight—twenty-two families, men, women, children."

"What you’re describing sounds like a typical urban legend," Tom commented.

The man nodded. "Of course, yes. The reporter said he’d had a strange experience of his own while exploring the area. He claims he was exploring deep in one of the natural caves when a landslip opened up a new extension, which he entered. Inside he claims he found a huge sealed room, obviously artificial, lit by a weird light-green luminance. In niches along the walls were the mummified corpses of…"

He paused and Bud almost fell forward from his chair. "Of what?"

"Of strange creatures. Like nothing ever seen on earth. You can read the book for a description."

"Were these ‘creatures’ supposed to have been intelligent beings?" inquired Tom.

"They were all wrapped in some sort of metallic drapery, like a cloth of metal."

Bud had resumed a skeptical attitude. "And I suppose this guy lost the cave and couldn’t get back again, right?"

"No," Sneffels responded. "He deliberately blocked up the entrance and returned to the surface to get scientific help. But when he and his team went back down again, that whole extension of the cave had collapsed. Digging through the blockage was impractical."

"And then he wrote his book, and made a nice profit," Tom commented.

"He’s been dead for a good many years now, Tom." The man paused; he was ready to move on to the next episode. "As a teenager in Lexington I read the book. It made an impression on me. But it wasn’t until just a few years ago that I took a