TOM SWIFT

THE RED SIGNAL flashed on the remote control box of the Swifts’ private TV network. A blond youth of eighteen with deep-set blue eyes unhooked his long legs from the rungs of a stool and swung away from a drawing board to which was tacked the blueprint of a submarine. He flicked on the videophone.

"What’s up?" Tom Swift asked Kaye, Swift Enterprises’ Key West telecaster, as the man’s grim face settled into focus on the screen.

"Another Caribbean ship attack, Tom. It’s the ninth so far." Walking in front of some palm trees, the telecaster continued, "I’m at Marlin Bay, talking to survivors. I have bad news. A passenger freighter, the Nantic, has been sunk. Your chief engineer is among those missing!"

"Hank Sterling!"

"He’s reported lost along with the captain and purser. The rest were picked up in lifeboats." Kaye passed the microphone to a stout man who was saying nervously, "—but I really don’t know what happened. Neither does anyone else on board. I was sitting on deck reading when—poof!—everyone blacked out! As I came to, the ship was sinking and I got into one of the lifeboats. A schooner picked us up."

"Did you hear any gunfire, any explosions before the blackout?" Kaye asked him.

"No. Nothing like that. Just a sort of buzzing noise, like you hear around those big electric transformer stations."

"Do you think the missing men might be in other boats that weren’t picked up?" Kaye questioned.

"It’s possible."

A Coast Guard officer stepped into view. He told Kaye that survivors of similar attacks on other vessels had also mentioned hearing an odd sound just before everyone had blacked out.

"In those attacks the robbers took various valuables before the passengers revived," the officer said. "But they didn’t sink the ships." The officer paused, looking off-camera. "I’ve just been told that the captain and purser have been located among the survivors. But no word on the other one."

"Thanks, Graham," Tom said to the video newscaster, his voice husky with emotion. "I’m signing off now." Switching off the videophone, Tom dashed out of the lab-office, which was annexed to the huge underground hangar that lay beneath Swift Enterprises’ private airfield. Reaching the aircraft runway above, he leapt onto one of the moving ridewalks that criss-crossed the four-mile-square facility and was whisked rapidly toward the office he shared with his father. His anxiety for Hank Sterling increased by the minute.

"The news will be a shock to Dad," Tom murmured worriedly. Hank Sterling’s late father had been Damon Swift’s closest friend for thirty years. They had worked and fought their way together through countless tight situations concerning Swift Enterprises and its numerous affiliates. In the several branches of Swift Enterprises throughout the country they had installed a private satellite-linked TV network, each videophone staffed by Swift employees who, like Graham Kaye, were broadcast professionals. Recently, John Sterling’s son Hank had become Enterprises’ chief of engineering, and a good friend to Tom. He and Tom had just returned from a dangerous trip to the Andes in Tom’s Flying Lab.

At this moment Tom’s usual smile of pride in his family’s accomplishments was absent. His thoughts were centered entirely on the terrible climax to Hank Sterling’s business cruise to the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean. Hank had intended to discuss some engineering concerns, regarding the licensed local manufacture of Swift aircraft, with the Dominican government in the relaxed, vacationlike environment of the cruise. That accomplished, he was now the latest victim of the strange attacks that had plagued not only the Caribbean, but the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic seaways off America’s southeastern coast.

Arriving at the multistory main administration building, Tom made for the office like a whirlwind. His mad dash was stopped by Munford Trent, the Swifts’ efficient secretary.

"Your father’s not here," he said. "I’ve been trying to reach him by televoc at the underground hangar but he doesn’t answer."

"That’s where I’m just coming from," Tom responded. "I thought I ought to speak to Dad face to face, instead of using the televoc." The televoc device, a Swift invention, was a microminiaturized personal communicator that allowed the speaker and listener to be inaudible to others. The transciever was concealed in a silver pin usually clipped to the collar.

"Well," continued Trent, "an urgent phone call from the Defense Department has just come in—specifically from ONDAR."

Tom’s eyes widened at this calm announcement. "The Office of National Defense Applied Research?"

"That’s the one," was Trent’s dry rejoinder. "Anyway, I have Admiral Krevitt cooling his heels on hold, so I had better—"

"I’ll take it," Tom offered. Calming himself and picking up the phone, he greeted Krevitt, to whom he had spoken several times in the past. Tom explained that his father was temporarily away from his desk.

"I see," Krevitt said briskly. "Well, you’re certainly perfectly adequate to convey the purpose of this call to your father."

"What can we do for you?"

"Tom, we need the Swifts’ scientific help on these Caribbean attacks. Frankly we’re baffled by the blackout technique." The admiral explained that his department had been unable to figure out by what method persons on the victim ships were knocked unconscious just before the looters came aboard.

"We’ve proven it’s not an inside job," he said. "All passengers, as well as the ships, have been thoroughly searched for the stolen items after the attacks. But that only makes the problem worse. Who are these mysterious raiders, and how can they disappear so quickly after plundering the ships? You know, we’ve tried to develop nonlethal ‘blackout’ weapons ourselves, but so far we haven’t cracked the nut. I’m a practical man, but I can almost believe the attacks were engineered by space pirates!"

Though his caller could not see it, Tom nodded. "We’ll certainly help you all we can, Admiral Krevitt. Dad and I have a special reason of our own for wanting to clear up this mystery."

This would not be the first mystery Tom had solved. In his Flying Lab he had tracked down a group of clever spies responsible for the kidnapping of several scientists, returning to the United States from South America only weeks before.

"I’ve just heard about the attack on the Nantic, Tom, and the loss—that is, the disappearance—of Mr. Sterling." The officer expressed his concern and sympathy, stressing the efforts of ONDAR to investigate and counteract the attacks. He said that since the Nantic was the first ship to be sunk, his department believed that it might be because something had gone wrong in the attackers’ plans.

"It’s possible your Hank Sterling might not have blacked out for some reason," the admiral suggested.

"Which would mean," Tom added, "that the pirates, fearing he’d guessed their secret blackout method, took him prisoner."

"If it’s true, and we can locate Mr. Sterling," Admiral Krevitt replied, "it may lead us to the hideout of those devils!"

"Nothing would suit me better than to find them," Tom said. Promising to put his father in touch with ONDAR, Tom concluded the conversation and he strode rapidly from the office.

I think I know where Dad is, Tom thought as he stepped back on the ridewalk. Moments later he was using his electronic key to beam open a sturdy door marked HIGH-PRESSURE LAB. Stepping within he was relieved to see his father look up from a workbench littered with notes and blueprints.

"I figured you had to be here, Dad," Tom remarked. "With all these metal pressure tanks around you, it’s no wonder the televoc signal couldn’t get through."

"Yes," replied Damon Swift. "I had an impulse to come here after lunch and do some work on the jetmarine intake configuration rather than going back to the office as I’d planned. Why, is someone looking for me?" Mr. Swift couldn’t help noticing the disturbed expression on Tom’s face.

Tom briefly told him the alarming news. Mr. Swift listened intently, his face turning pale with concern. "Hank missing!" he murmured. "Oh no!" Then he added, "But you say there’s some hope?"

"Yes, according to Admiral Krevitt of ONDAR." Tom recounted the telephone conversation. "So there’s a good chance he’s alive and being held captive by the ‘sea snipers,’ as the papers call them."

"It’s also possible he was set adrift," said Mr. Swift thoughtfully. "We don’t know yet whether all the lifeboats on the Nantic are accounted for, or if other floatation devices might have been on board."

"We don’t know much at all," agreed Tom. "Let’s take up the Sky Queen and scope out the general area of the ocean where the Nantic was attacked and sunk. That’s step one."

"And step two?"

"Step two is to speed up finishing the new two-man sub and go after those pirates! I don’t think they can be tracked and taken by a surface vessel or aircraft."

"You think the pirates may be operating with a sub?" Mr. Swift questioned. "I assumed a plane or high-speed boat was involved."

"Maybe I’ve just got submarines on the brain," Tom replied, "but it makes sense, doesn’t it? A sub is pretty invisible underwater unless you’re in a sonar-defended region, and these vessels were all attacked in the open commercial sea-lanes. Maybe they get close to the surface and extend some sort of ray-projector like a periscope. A blackout ray knocks everyone out, then the pirates board the ship from a sub and loot it."

"Quite a system," Mr. Swift reflected, "and devised by men who won’t be easy to capture."

"Suppose I warm up the Sky Queen while you phone Mother and the office to let them know the situation," Tom suggested.

Twenty minutes later the majestic solar-powered, jet-lifted craft, outfitted with a small crew, took off from Swift Enterprises’ private airfield. The stratoship zoomed toward the Caribbean area at transonic speed, and in an amazingly brief time the search was on—high over the ocean one minute, then so low the Sky Queen barely cleared the waves. It did not miss an inch of the territory on which a lifeboat from the Nantic might be bobbing.

"I guess we’ll have to admit defeat, Tom," Mr. Swift finally announced, dejected. "Turn her toward home and let’s hope that Hank is still alive. Your mother was going to speak to Mrs. Sterling, and I should give her a call myself." Not a word passed between the two Swifts until the Sky Queen was being berthed at four o’clock. Then Tom spoke.

"I feel sure Hank Sterling’s being held a prisoner by those pirates, Dad. With the atomic sub I could beat them at their own game."

"You certainly could, Tom," his father agreed. "I wish I could feel more hopeful than I do."

As Mr. Swift returned to the office he shared with Tom in the administration building, Tom decided to resume his work in the underground hangar annex, which was only steps away from the Sky Queen. Entering the lab, the young inventor was delighted to find his pal Bud Barclay draped on the arm of a comfortable leather chair, awaiting him with a humorously quizzical look on his face.

A handsome, dark-haired youth with a well-built, supple body, Bud was the great-grandson of Ned Newton, the close comrade of the first Tom Swift, who had gained worldwide fame as an inventor. Having moved to Shopton from San Francisco while in high school, Bud had worked with Tom at the Enterprises plant for a couple years under a special internship program. He was not only Tom’s personal pilot and best friend, but Tom’s "sounding board." His quips and questions helped Tom clarify his thoughts.

"Hi, Bud!" Tom greeted him. "Glad you’re back, pal." Bud had made a morning run by air to Minneapolis to pick up a specially machined part for use on Tom’s jetmarine.

"Glad you’re back," Bud retorted wryly, "after running off to the Caribbean in that overgrown jet of yours."

"I would have waited for you, Bud, but—"

"I heard about Hank," said Bud soberly. "If there’s any chance he’s alive, you can count me in on the rescue."

Tom nodded, grateful.

After an awkward silence between the two dedicated friends, Bud said: "Is that your new sub over there?" He gestured toward a plastic model on a nearby workbench.

"That’s her," Tom said, "my two-man baby atomic sub."

Bud rose from his chair and picked up the model to examine it. "Baby is right. Isn’t it a little small?"

Tom burst out laughing. "It’s a model, bonehead! The real jetmarine is 28 feet long, 10 feet high at the highest, and 6 feet wide—which is still mighty small. It’s near completion over on the far side of the hangar. You can’t see it from here because the Queen’s fueling trestle is in the way."

"Tell me more. I’d like to get the full pitch on the jetmarine and help you try it out, since we’ll have to wait a while until the rocket is finished for our trip into space."

Some time before, an artificial meteorlike object had plunged into the Swift Enterprises grounds, as if directed there with uncanny precision. On the missile’s side were mathematical symbols. When Tom and his father had deciphered the code, they discovered that it contained a message from the inhabitants of another planetary civilization who appeared to have a base on Mars. Ever since, Tom had dreamed of visiting these space beings. He didn’t know that very soon, in an adventure to be recounted in Tom Swift and His Rocket Ship, he would make the important first step toward that goal—but first his newest invention, the jetmarine, must be perfected.

Tom’s two-person submarine was to be manufactured and sold as a speed craft for safe ocean travel, opening the possibility of underwater commuter traffic to distant points such as Africa and Australia. The submarine was to operate on an entirely different principle of propulsion from the standard propeller type. A stream of water forced through special tubes under great pressure would be its means of propulsion.

"A hydraulic jet," Tom explained.

"Give it to me in first-grade science," Bud begged, renewing Tom’s laughter.

"Remember when we were kids and filled balloons with water, then let go of them? Same kind of propulsion."

"All I got was a soaking!" Bud remarked. "But I get the general idea."

Tom took the jetmarine model from Bud and opened it up, pointing to its various features. The young inventor explained that the craft contained an atomic reactor utilizing Veranium, the scientifically baffling radioactive isotope which the Swifts had discovered in South America.

"As you can imagine, pal, it took a lot of doing to get permission to put even a midget reactor on an experimental high-speed sub," Tom noted. "But without it we wouldn’t have the power to run the engines."

In order to protect the occupants of the jetmarine from deadly radiation, the whole power plant had been encased in a three-inch thickness of Tomasite. This strong, durable plastic with silicoid-ceramic characteristics had been developed by Tom and Mr. Swift on the basis of their spectrometric studies of the impenetrable shell of the space missile. Tom’s mother had named the new substance in honor of Tom’s namesake, his famous great-grandfather. Tomasite was not only light in weight but almost totally impervious to destructive gamma rays, and to infra-red heat rays as well. Furthermore, the complex molecules of the material had been artificially "sculpted" into interlaced microscopic cells that absorbed radar-frequency pulses and acted as a baffle for the sound frequencies used in sonar.

"Sounds terrific," Bud reflected. "But it looks like a wild genetic experiment to me—like a flattened cucumber, sitting upright on its narrow side, trying to give birth up front to a glass egg!"

"Right. With the small end of the egg facing forward, to decrease water resistance," Tom continued. "The nose is molded of transparent Tomasite." The outer hull was also sheathed in Tomasite, to prevent reflection of sound waves. Thus, the jetmarine could not be detected by sonar devices.

"This is wonderful, genius boy," said Bud, grinning. "But you still haven’t told me what makes your water baby go."

Tom laughed. "I haven’t? Well, ionizing radiation in the atomic pile charges up a set of semiconductor plates, producing a powerful electrical potential."

"Mucho electricity, in other words."

"Very mucho. It takes a lot of current to drive my new hydro-turbine, which has to attain extreme rates of rotation. The turbine sucks in water through intake vents in the front of the jetmarine, above and beneath the view-dome, and then flings the water out the rear thrust tubes at bullet speed."

"I’ll take a dozen!" Bud quipped. "Is there room for me in that thing?"

"There’ll always be room for you, Bud," said Tom seriously. "And thanks for lifting my spirits—I needed it."

Tom showed Bud the full-sized jetmarine, which was all but finished. Then, supper time coming on, the two left the underground hangar and headed toward the private dining room used by Enterprises management.

Suddenly Tom paused in midstep and touched a small, nondescript silver pin attached to his collar. "Tom here," he said, responding to the alert signal from his collar televoc pin. After a brief conversation with several glances skyward, completely inaudible to Bud, Tom signed off and turned to his friend. "The control tower has a small private jet on our radar approaching Enterprises. The pilot says he can’t make the city airfield and needs to set down here!"

A caravan of emergency vehicles was already rushing onto the field, alerted by the control tower.

"There he is!" Bud cried, pointing.

A tiny speck in the eastern sky grew rapidly into the form of a compact single-engine commuter jet, which Tom and Bud recognized as a Harrigan Eaglet.

"Pretty high-class," Bud commented enviously.

The jet was descending in a broad, lazy circle that did not suggest any emergency situation, but the boys knew better than to attempt to judge the circumstances on such superficial evidence. They watched, fascinated, as the plane set down gently on runway four.

"He’s not braking!" Tom exclaimed. "He’ll run down the emergency crew!" The jet seemed to swerve toward the phalanx of vehicles, crossing several runway lines. Then, at the last possible moment, the little jet swerved the opposite way again and screeched to a halt, sitting crosswise on runway eight.

"That stunt looked deliberate," muttered Tom angrily. Before Bud could respond, his friend had trotted off toward runway eight with clenched fists.

As the young inventor approached the Eaglet, he was surprised to see the shimmering heat signature above the engine exhaust. The pilot hadn’t even cut his engine! As Tom came within thirty feet of the craft, the pilot throttled up and the jet rumbled off, keeping its distance as if mocking Tom. Through the cockpit dome Tom could see a sneering, youthful face under a flight helmet.

That crazy pilot! Tom thought. I’ll wrap his wings around his neck! With a bound Tom broke into a full run, and in seconds was only a few yards from the plane.

"What do you mean, coming in—" he shouted out, but did not finish. Without warning the jet throttled up and pivoted, its deadly tail-blaze shooting straight at Tom!

Bud stared horrified at the drama playing out on runway eight. There was no time for Tom to dodge out of the way!

Tom threw himself down flat on the runway tarmac. The jet’s blazing exhaust passed above him, singeing his hair and the back of his t-shirt. He gasped for breath, his lungs burning with the pungent odor of jet fuel. Yet the worst was already over. The mystery jet accelerated away from Tom’s prostrate form and in seconds was airborne on an eastward heading.

Bud ran up just as Tom was struggling to his feet. He steadied his friend. "You’re all right?"

Tom coughed violently, wincing. "I’m okay," he gasped, "no thanks to that juvenile jet jockey!"

"Juvenile?"

"He looked about as young as you or I," Tom responded, "plus he acted like a spoiled kid with a toy. I had the impression this was all some sort of prank."

"Unbelievable!" Bud exclaimed. "He could have killed you, Tom. There must be more to this than meets the eye!"

"At any rate, the tower will have electronically recorded the jet’s registration number, so we’ll know shortly who our friend is—unless the plane’s stolen!"

Proceeding to the control tower, Tom and Bud were soon in possession of the desired information. The Harrigan Eaglet was owned by the McIntosh and Dansitt Shipping Company of Baltimore. Its registered pilot: Sidney Dansitt.

"Sidney Dansitt," mused Bud. "Co-owner of the company?"

"More likely the co-owner’s son or grandson," Tom commented.

A check of the Internet in Tom’s office revealed that Sidney Dansitt, formerly of Baltimore, was now a resident of Walderburg, New York.

"Just down the highway," Bud commented.

Tom nodded. "College town—Grandyke University."

"You think old Sid is a student at the University?"

"He looked about the right age," Tom replied. "I’ll ask Harlan to find out what he can. If Dansitt is registered there, I’ll have him served with a complaint for his recklessness." Harlan Ames, a former Secret Service agent, was Swift Enterprises’ reliable chief of security.

No longer in the mood to work late at the plant, Tom drove home to have dinner with his family, joined by Bud. An unexpected but pleasing dinner guest was Bashalli Prandit, whom Tom had just begun getting to know.

Bashalli’s dark eyes flashed as Tom told of the trials and adventures of the day. "What a wonderful thing it must be, to be a part of the Swifts!" she exclaimed. "When your hair is not being parted by falling meteors, you can be kidnapped, or roasted by a jet engine—who can resist such a life? But of course, with your friend missing, that is no joking matter," Bashalli added quickly.

"I call him Uncle Hank," said Sandy, Tom’s sister, "even though he’s just a few years older than I am. He always laughed." Sandy’s eyes began to fill with tears.

Seeing that Tom’s father was silent with his thoughts, Tom’s mother spoke up. "His family has played a great role in all our lives. Lauren is taking the situation bravely, but Jonny is quite shaken—and Lauren has the new baby now." Lauren was Hank’s wife, and Jonny his gradeschool-age son.

"I know Jonny," Bashalli commented. "He comes into The Glass Cat for coffee, and to ask me out. Skateboarding, you know." At this Tom looked up from his mashed potatoes. "But unfortunately he is not to my preference," Bashalli added.

"That little boy drinks coffee?" asked Mrs. Swift.

"No, he comes in for coffee—in a bag, to take home, with a fist of money."

"He’s ‘not to your preference,’ Bashi?" asked Sandy with a mischievous gleam. "Why’s that?"

"Alas," replied the Pakistani, "he is not very clever. Perhaps he will improve in fifth grade. I rather think people get along best with people who do not seem stupid to them. Is that not a good rule?"

"Sounds good to me, Bash," Bud responded with a wink.

All eyes turned to Tom.

"I don’t think you can make rules about who matches who," said the young inventor with a smile. "It’s sort of a chemical thing."

Sandy rolled her eyes, but Bashalli said, "Absolutely! A very chemical thing." After a calculated pause, she added, "And so, perhaps you can turn the problem over to your chemical department."

Everyone joined in the laughter that ensued.

Working on some stubborn jetmarine problems in the hangar annex the following morning, Tom took a call from an unfamiliar name.

"This is Tom Swift."

A woman’s voice came on. "Tom, you won’t have heard of me—though everyone has heard of you, of course—but my name is Rita Scheering. I’m a reporter for Backgrounder magazine. You’re familiar with Backgrounder?"

"Who isn’t?" Tom retorted. "The magazine has been around since my great-grandfather’s time."

"That’s true—technically. We call ourselves the nation’s leading news-weekly. Now, I’m not calling you for an interview—"

"Good, Miss Scheering, because I haven’t the time."

"It’s just that…well, I’ve come across some information that might have bearing on the Sea Snipers. And I know Hank Sterling is a family friend…"

Tom frowned, suspecting a hoax. "If you’re trying to exploit this for some sort of personal gain, Miss Scheering—"

"Oh no," said the other party smoothly. "Well, maybe a bit of a gain, in that I want you to promise me exclusive rights to any interviews that might come about. You know, that sort of thing. And call me Rita."

Tom sighed. "For the sake of Mr. Sterling, I’ll keep talking. But I like to see who I’m talking to."

There was a brief pause. "I’m at my computer, Tom, and I have a webcam. I’m sure you do too. We can talk that way."

"Very well."

The computer link was established, and in a few minutes Tom was able to look his caller in the eye. Rita Scheering turned out to be a robust, handsome woman of middle age, resembling a high school teacher more than a news reporter.

After Tom had acquiesced to her conditions, Rita resumed the discussion. "Now then, the Sea Snipers. Everyone wonders how they do it and where they go. But I started wondering: How do they pick their victims? Why those particular ships?"

"Wrong place at the wrong time, I guess," said Tom.

"Maybe—a crime of opportunity. But what if it’s something else? What if it doesn’t have to do with the ship and its location, but with the passengers?"

Tom shook his head impatiently. "You should read your own magazine. The FBI and the other investigators have been all over that angle. The various ship passengers and crew have nothing in common. Different home towns, different vacation destinations, different employers—nothing matches. Even the stolen goods are pretty much random, whatever can be carried off quickly and resold for value."

Rita smiled. "Yes. And here we see the difference between a reporter’s mind and a police-type. Reporters are used to probing the backgrounds of things, to looking into all the dark—"

Tom interrupted her. "Please. Let’s cut to the chase."

"Okay, the chase. Nine ships have been boarded. Every one of those ships had one passenger who had traveled through a particular spot of ocean some time within the preceding year and a half. Not during the cruise that was attacked, you understand, but a separate previous trip."

Suddenly intrigued, Tom squinted at the monitor screen. "What ‘spot of ocean,’ Rita?"

"A small one. I can give you the precise coordinates, but it’s basically a little thirty-mile-square section in the Gulf of Mexico, in the Yucatan Channel just west of the extreme northwestern tip of Cuba. It’s not on the common routes, but lately some of the shipping companies and cruise lines have taken to passing through it."

"But what’s there? What’s the significance?"

"Nothing’s there! Just a few uninhabited rocks and a lot of water. As to the significance—that’s the mystery." Tom waited quietly as she lit a cigarette and exhaled a plume of white smoke. "And there’s more, Tom."

"What else?"

"Here’s the clincher," Rita declared excitedly. "Despite the impression that’s gotten around, only a small percentage of the passengers on the boarded ships had anything stolen from their cabins. But every one of my ‘targetees’ was a theft victim!"

"Except in the case of the Nantic—where they scuttled the ship." Tom’s forehead bowed under the weight of the puzzle. "What could it mean? What are the Sea Snipers looking for?"

Miss Scheering gave a smug smile and waved her cigarette nonchalantly. "I was hoping that genius head of yours might have some ideas."

Tom shrugged. "There’s no interest in the people themselves, it seems. Hank Sterling is the first kidnapping…"

"So we can safely rule out some mad scientist out to collect the best brains on earth."

"What we can rule in is the idea that the Snipers are looking for something that a person just might happen to have, because of where they traveled. Maybe something in a travel photo that somebody, some group, finds threatening. It could be the other thefts are just a blind."

"That’s where I’d got to too, Tom," remarked Rita. "Pretty cloak-and-daggery."

Tom rubbed his chin, as was his habit when a problem resisted conquest. "Guess I’ll have to let it percolate."

After promising to keep in touch with one another, Rita ended the call and the monitor went blank. Tom called up his father and then Harlan Ames, carefully detailing the conversation to each of them.

"I’d say your Miss Scheering is a pretty imaginative thinker," Ames commented, "but that doesn’t mean she’s wrong. I’ll pass her findings along to the authorities investigating the attacks—including Admiral Krevitt at ONDAR."

"Thanks, Harlan," Tom said. "Don’t forget that I gave my word that she would get an exclusive at the end of the process."

"I won’t. And by the way," continued the security chief, "I’ve doped out some info on Sidney Dansitt. Just as you suspected, he’s a grad student at Grandyke, in the Marketing Department. Lives off-campus in a rented house; stows his jet at a private airfield used by executive types outside Torrington. I chatted with his graduate advisor, who got very chatty after we warmed up."

"What did he have to say?"

"Basically that Sid is a sad case. He had top grades as an undergraduate in Maryland, and continued to do well when he was admitted to the architecture program at Grandyke. Then last year he moved off-campus and got himself switched to Marketing."

"That’s quite a change of direction," Tom remarked.

"Sure is," Ames agreed. "His attendance and course work started falling apart, and there were complaints about him. I was able to get a rap sheet on our boy—he’s been repeatedly stopped by the Walderburg police for various road violations. And this is all in the last year or so."

"Sounds like he’s spinning out of orbit," said Tom. "I almost feel sorry for him."

Ames snorted. "Don’t feel too sorry, Tom. Remember, his personal drama almost cost you your life!"

TOM DECIDED that his plan for finding out more about Sidney Dansitt would have to be postponed temporarily. He had an appointment with one of the engineers, Sid Baker, for eleven that morning to test the maximum pressure which the hull of the jetmarine could withstand. It was already ten fifteen.

"Better get a move-on," he murmured to himself.

Leaving the underground hangar area, Tom hopped into his electric "nanocar," picked up Sid Baker, and drove across the grounds to the testing complex. Beaming his electronic key at the massive sliding door, he waited for it to open, then walked into the buzz of machinery and calm, yet intense, voices. Here all aspects of the jetmarine, and other inventions in the early stages of development, were being tested.

"They’ve lowered the sub into the big tank already," said Baker after consulting with the test foreman. "We’re ready to go when you are, Tom."

Concentrating on the important test, Tom was about to switch on the tank’s high-speed immersion pumps when he was startled by a booming voice coming from behind him.

"Hey, Tom!" the unmistakable voice cried. "How’s about a Texas snack afore you sink that new sub o’ yours?"

Tom turned about and laughed. "Chow Winkler, you ole Texas panhandler! You know a feller ain’t s’posed to eat when he’s about to go in the water!"

Chow stopped so abruptly the submarine sandwich in his hands almost jolted to the concrete floor. "Why, thet’s right, boss! You fixin’ to get inside that thing?"

The arrival of the former chuck-wagon cook, who was now chef for the Swifts, was always an "occasion," any time, any place. One of Tom’s closest friends, the roly-poly man was known equally for his outgoing manner and his predilection for gaudy western-wear.

As Tom walked over to greet him, the cook. said:

"How come you talkin’ Texas talk, Tom? If’n you’re makin’ fun o’ the Lone Star State, I may jest cut your tabasco ration!"

"Don’t do that, Chow," Tom cried. "I need the tabasco to give me the strength to look at your shirts!"

"Now this’n here," said Chow, "this’n comes from a li’l old shirtmaker outside o’ Pampa. Ordered it off the Net." The shirt featured rows of highly reflective silver scallops against a background of robin’s-egg blue.

Tom pretended to cover his eyes, but Chow continued unfazed. "So’re you really goin’ into the submarine today?"

"Sure am," Tom replied. "First comes the big pressure test. Then if we haven’t sprung any leaks, I’m going to scuba down to her and test the underwater hatchway, which has an emergency mechanism for opening it by hand."

As the tank was filling, Tom had a few bites of the special submarine sandwich the colorful cook had prepared. Though he wasn’t especially hungry, he didn’t want to hurt Chow’s feelings.

"Wanna know the secret of that yew-nique flavor, boss?"

"Sure."

"To th’ peanut butter I added jest the littlest scootch o’ chili powder. Mighty rich, if’n you ask me."

"Definitely!" said Tom wanly.

"Now Tom," continued the Texan, "you told me all about your jetmarine, an’ it’s a honey all right, but look here, if you’re goin’ to scout around the Gulf and the Caribbee, won’t you need a galley on board an’ a cook to work her?"

"Sure would like to have you with us, Chow," Tom said affectionately. "But you’d better stay ashore holding a line to pull us out!"

The banter ceased when Sid Baker called out to Tom that the tank was full and ready for pressurization.

"Let’s get started," Tom said excitedly. He then used his televoc to get in touch with two of his special friends in the plant, Arvid Hanson, head of the model-making division, and Wesley Beale, metallurgical engineer and chief of the materials science section. Both had expressed an interest in observing the test and interpreting the results. He also alerted Bud and Mr. Swift that the crucial test was about to begin.

While the others were making their way to the test complex, an overhead crane had lowered the multi-ton steel "lid" onto the tank, which was now filled with water that matched the composition of the oceans. With the lid latched into place by powerful motors, a carbon-steel piston was gradually forced into the waters of the tank by means of a screw-motion ramrod thick as a tree trunk. As more and more water was displaced by the piston, the pressure within the tank rose with aching slowness.

"Pressure equivalent, 500 feet down," Sid called out as Mr. Swift joined the knot of observers gathered next to Tom.

"Everything A-OK?" he asked his son, who gave a vigorous nod in reply.

The pressure climbed, punctuated by Sid’s periodic announcements. One-quarter mile…one mile…two miles…

Wes Beale looked wide-eyed. "How much load do you plan to put on the sub?"

"Well, I could shoot for the equivalent of seven miles deep—the bottom of the Mariana Trench!" responded the young inventor. Then, as Wes’s jaw dropped in amazement, he added, "But today I’ll content myself with four miles, about 21,000 feet."

"So how do you know the jetmarine doesn’t look like a squeezed-out toothpaste tube about now?" challenged Bud. "There’s no window on the tank, and no TV monitor."

"We didn’t want to introduce a weak spot into the wall of the tank, and a conventional camera wouldn’t withstand the maximum pressure," Tom explained. "But we’re getting a feed from various instruments inside the jetmarine."

"For example, criss-crossed lasers will tell us if the hull bows-in by as little as three angstroms," added Arv Hanson.

"A hair-breadth?" guessed Bud.

"Try three ten-billionths of a meter," said Mr. Swift with a smile.

"Look at it this way, Bud," Tom said. "At the degree of pressure we’re dealing with, by the time you can see any deformation of the hull, it’s way too late to do anything about it. The entire jetmarine could be turned into a metal pancake in a few milliseconds."

Bud gulped. "Carry on, Captain!"

A hush fell over the watching group as the pressure levels approached the maximum.

"Brand my fish fritters!" muttered Chow. "Whether or not the sub can take the pressure, I ain’t so sure I can!"

"What’s the verdict, Sid?" Tom asked softly.

"Tom," he replied, "the needles haven’t budged from nominal all morning. Are you sure we remembered to plug ’em in?"

The group cheered loudly at Tom’s success.

The first test over, the pressurizing process was reversed. Tom suited up into a scuba suit with airtanks. When the big tank had finally reached near-surface pressure, he awkwardly climbed a ladder onto a catwalk and lowered himself through a sealable access hatch in the tank lid, plunging down into the cool water.

"All okay in there?" came Arv Hanson’s voice over Tom’s mini-headset.

"All okay," Tom answered.

He switched on a pair of tiny flashlamps attached to either side of his faceplate. The jetmarine jumped out of the darkness at him like a lunging shadow. There was no light from its transparent nose, as the interior lights would have compromised the laser setup.

His weight belt keeping him on the bottom of the tank, Tom trudged slowly toward the secondary hatchway in the side of the craft, where he was to test the emergency manual mechanism. He was reaching for the spring-activated latch cover when he paused. A strange sensation swept over him. He found himself staring at his right arm. Funny the way it hangs in the water like that, he said to himself. Funny—and indeed, Tom felt amused by it. All too amused! He waggled his fingers, as if waving to himself. But then he caught himself. Good grief! What’s wrong with me? he thought, alarmed. With surprising effort, he lifted his left arm, as if he had somehow forgotten just how to make it work. Attached to his forearm were a number of instrument indicators, which Tom glanced over. He gasped—one indicator was in the red zone!

“Hey up there, guys!” Tom exclaimed into his microphone. “The tank pressure’s almost tripled! Ease off!”

He repeated his message several times, increasingly frantic as his legs tingled and a feeling of vertigo took possession of him. “W-Wes... Bud... I'm developing nitrogen narcosis from the pressure! I—I can't focus my thoughts!”

But there was no answer! Tom tried to pivot and make his way to a position beneath the tank hatchway. To his horror his feet refused to respond. Guess they've got a mind of their own! The thought evoked a fit of shrill, gasping laughter.

The tank pressure continued its slow, inexorable rise!

TOM’S BODY was failing him under the effects of pressure, not because the narcosis was affecting his muscles, but because his mind was no longer focused enough to command them.

Yet the mind of the genius young inventor refused to surrender! He made a great, strenuous effort to clear his thoughts. I can’t make it to the lid hatch, he thought. Besides, with this pressure difference the automatic safety lock will have cut in.

The possibility of somehow blocking the pressure piston drifted across his swirling brain. But he had nothing available strong enough to resist it—and at any rate, his feet could no longer carry him the required distance. But he knew, vaguely, that had nothing available strong enough to resist it—and at any rate, his feet could, would no longer carry him the required distance.

Fighting myself! Fighting myself! And myself is winning. Where's my arm? Hey, hi! I can still move my left arm a little, his thoughts continued. Again he broke into helpless laughter, and again managed to choke it off. Okay, okay now. If I’m going to get out of this alive, it will be with something already in arm’s reach. You listening, arm?

Repeating his urgent plea to the surface over and over—but pausing frequently to catch his breath, for he was becoming oppressively weary as well as woozy—Tom resumed his original task. By wrenching his shoulder blades and curving his back, he found it easier to use his left arm like a tool and force his hand against the spring release. Working the release with fingers dead as sausages was hard enough, but the real trial came when he had to grasp and pull down the lever behind the protective panel. There seemed to be no way to compel his rebellious hand to curl around it.

Finally, desperately, he released the tension in his leg muscles and allowed himself to fall forward against the hull. As hoped the action crunched his fingers against his open palm, with the lever in between.

That’ll have to do, Tom, he thought, fighting a feeling of indifference to the final fate of someone named Tom Swift.

With the last of his fading strength, he wrenched his slumping body into a turn. It wasn’t much of a turn, but it managed to pry the hatch lever down and away from its holding clasp. The reward was immediate as a dark, inch-wide strip appeared at the edge of the secondary hatchway, next to the lever mechanism.

It seemed like a journey of a thousand years and a thousand miles to reach that strip of darkness. Tom was able to squeeze his right elbow into it, forcing the hatch to open further. Then came his shoulder; then his chest.

You're blacking out! he thought. Funny, funny way to die, Tom. But just at that moment he realized that his whole body was now within the emergency airlock. The controls were near his faceplate, and he could nudge the system into operation with small movements of his head.

If he didn’t lose consciousness first.

Topside, Bud Barclay forced his eyelids open. His drifting thoughts slowly congealed: That’s the test complex ceiling. He groaned and sat upright, the back of his head throbbing from its rendezvous with the concrete floor. Staggering to his feet, he saw Wes Beale leaning against a pylon nearby, barely conscious. The others were littered about the floor like discarded manikins—Damon Swift, Arv Hanson, Chow Winkler, Sid Baker, and several other Swift workers.

"Wha—what happened?" gasped Wes, almost inaudible. "Bud?"

"Dunno—" He took a step toward Wes, then stopped dead in his tracks. "Tom! Tom’s down in the tank!" Bud ran unsteadily to the tank control panel, and his face turned white. "The pressure! It’s—"

Bud frantically began to work the controls as Wes joined him. "We can’t lower the pressure too rapidly or Tom will get the bends," Wes said, putting a hand on Bud’s shoulder.

Bud shook him off. "Just tell me how to work this thing!"

Sid Baker joined them. Everyone was now regaining consciousness. "Listen to me, Bud. Even if we reduce the pressure now…" Sid didn’t finish his thought.

"I’m not giving up," said Bud. "Tom Swift wouldn’t give up on me."

"No," came another voice, softly. "He wouldn’t." It was Tom’s father.

They lowered the tank pressure as rapidly as the machinery would permit, meanwhile informing plant security of the strange blackout. The phenomenon appeared to have affected everyone throughout a large fan-shaped area at the north end of the plant, which included the warehouse-like test complex. But persons in the control tower and administrative offices had not been affected. The plant infirmary team was already beginning to treat those who had been injured while collapsing during the siege, which seemed to have produced about twelve minutes of unconsciousness.

"I’d give anything to see inside that there tank!" Chow muttered, rubbing the swelling bruise on the side of his forehead. "But what I really want is a ding-dang miracle."

Mr. Swift squeezed Chow’s arm. "We’ll know soon."

Just then the speaker mounted on the control panel crackled to life. "Is…is anyone there?"

"Tom!" cried Bud, so overcome that he couldn’t speak for several moments.

Mr. Swift took the microphone. "Son, how are you doing?"

"Not bad—now. I’m inside the jetmarine. My brain is a little fuzzed out, but it looks like the pressure’s close to normal out there."

"You stay where you are," commanded Damon Swift. "We’re going to completely drain the tank."

Within five minutes the pressure tank was empty and its lid removed. Dripping and surrounded by shallow puddles, the sub waited to be boarded. She showed not a sign of her high-pressure ordeal.

A crane arm swung out over the jetmarine and lowered Bud to the main topside hatch in a medical lift-chair. He entered the craft, and Tom soon emerged to shouts and applause, Bud following behind. After they were conveyed out of the tank, Tom was given a preliminary examination by medics from the plant infirmary who declared him fit.

"Guess I’m lucky this time," Tom said.

"Guess so," Bud agreed.

"And now there’s a couple mysteries I’d like solved," Tom continued. "What caused the blackout, and what caused the tank pressure to get screwy?"

"You think we got another o’ them spies here, boss?" asked Chow.

Mr. Swift answered. "We can’t rule it out as far as the blackout effect, since it suggests the modus operandi of the Sea Snipers. But there’s a simpler explanation for Tom’s problem in the tank."

"Way simpler," said Sid Baker, somewhat shamefaced. "When I started to lose consciousness, I remember falling across the pressure controls."

Tom clapped him on the back reassuringly. "Don’t take it hard, Sid. Now that I’m several inches smaller all the way around, maybe I can buy cheaper clothes!"

"Say there," said Chow, "mebbe that’d work with me!" The hefty cowpoke angled his chin down to eye his generous waistline.

As Mr. Swift and the others attended to the reberthing of the jetmarine in the underground hangar, Tom and Bud hurried to the airfield control tower to check the automatic record of the large radarscope mounted there. As Tom played back the data on an auxiliary monitor, Bud looked over his shoulder anxiously. "What do you see, genius boy? Anything with a skull-and-crossbones on it?"

"No," Tom replied. "Nothing in the sky, and nothing on the ground except a lot of blips that stop moving just before noon."

"Then maybe it’s an inside job after all," Bud commented.

"Let’s try another approach," responded the young inventor. "The ground-hugging radar scan doesn’t cut off precisely at the perimeter fence. We get a bit of a reflection for another hundred feet or so, but it’s weak and distorted. But I have some powerful image-enhancement software on my lab computer which I can access remotely, from this terminal."

"Sweet!" exclaimed Bud with a grin. "So you’ll pump the raw data into your lab computer, and the result will come out here."

The processing and fine-tuning took only a matter of minutes. A radar shadow from the strip beyond the north perimeter fence began to form on the monitor.

"There it is!" Tom cried triumphantly, pointing at a squarish blip on the screen.

"What is it?"

"A car," Tom replied. "And not a big one, either—maybe a sports car. Look, you can see how it slowed and pulled over on the old Mansburg road."

"Hardly anybody uses that road," Bud remarked, "not since the new throughway was finished."

Tom advanced the electronic record slowly, second by second. "There he is, stopped off the road. He’s waiting…oh, he wanted that car to pass by. Look, the reflectance signature changed—he must’ve opened a door on the driver’s side. Getting close to the time now—there! See that flicker?"

"I guess so," said Bud. "Just barely."

"The scope was reacting to some kind of interference. It must be the Snipers’ blackout device!"

"And there he goes!" Bud exclaimed. "Man, he must’ve peeled out at seventy!"

Tom nodded. "Sure. He stays just long enough to make sure the device had its effect—he probably had binoculars trained on somebody visible on the field—and then he jumps back in his sporty machine and makes his getaway."

Knowing that it was not possible as of yet to prove that the car that stopped had been involved in a crime, Tom passed his data on to Harlan Ames for "off-the-record" investigation by Enterprises’ security.

"I’ll share whatever we’ve got with the Shopton PD," Ames said, "and with ONDAR. It’s quite a development, the Sea Snipers trying an attack on land."

"Yep," Tom agreed. "But fortunately, it doesn’t seem they broke into the plant grounds."

"Strange. It almost seems like an act of mischief."

"Yeah, in fact—a prank!" A new thought had struck Tom. The capricious nature of the incident reminded him of his peculiar encounter with Sidney Dansitt. Could there be some connection between Dansitt, son of a shipping magnate, and the attacks on ocean vessels?

Tom spent the afternoon reviewing the tapes of the pressure test, his father at his side in their shared office. The instrumental results disclosed not the slightest hint of any hull deformation or weakening, and microspectrometer readings confirmed that the Tomasite sheathing had been unaffected by the pressure, assuaging a major concern. The only negative result was a minor one, involving a slight compression of the dome sealant. A new sealant compound was already being applied to the jetmarine to rectify the flaw.

"I’d say the jetmarine is ready to get its gills wet in the salty sea," Mr. Swift said, pride in his voice.

"Her shakedown cruise is going to be in the Gulf of Mexico," declared the young inventor. "I’m itching to take a look at that ‘mystery spot’ off Cuba."

Damon Swift nodded, suddenly thoughtful. "I know you are, son. And I think you should. But don’t demand miracles of yourself. Mrs. Sterling has accepted that Hank probably went down with the ship without regaining consciousness. The investigators feel certain that some sort of demand would have been made by now if he had been kidnapped."

"Not that that will stop me."

"Not that that will stop you," chuckled Mr. Swift, throwing an arm about his son’s shoulders.

Tom and his father strolled out into the afternoon sunlight, where they were met by Bud Barclay. Bud gestured off toward the far airfield. "Planning another trip in the Sky Queen?" he inquired. The huge metal doors that covered the underground hangar had been opened to the sky, as they were when the Flying Lab’s berthing platform was about to be elevated to ground level.

"No, Bud," Mr. Swift replied, "I just had them open the overhead doors to improve the air circulation while we’re replacing the sealant around the sub’s view-dome. The chemicals can be toxic in concentration."

Suddenly Tom put a hand on his father’s forearm. "We have a visitor!"

They had been hearing the subdued whine of a distant jet for several moments. Now the jet had tracked into view over the treeline, flying low and slow.

Bud grimaced in disgust. "Don’t tell me!"

"It’s Dansitt’s jet, all right," said Tom, shading his eyes against the sun.

"He’s been officially warned away from this airspace," declared Mr. Swift angrily. "I’ll see him grounded!"

The jet made a casual circle around the plant, not crossing the property line. Tom could imagine the control tower personnel sternly ordering him away—and Dansitt making arrogant, mocking replies.

"He’s lowering something from the fuselage," Bud observed. A dark, streamlined object was now suspended beneath the cockpit. "Good night, he’s going in for a bombing run!"

The jet had broken pattern and was streaking low, straight across the grounds of Swift Enterprises!

THERE WAS HARDLY time to react. Tom stiffened as Dansitt’s jet shrieked over him, expecting an explosion. But in the back of his mind he also remembered his thoughts from earlier in the day. Could the device beneath the plane be, not a bomb, but the blackout-ray transmitter?

Neither was the case. After its single low pass over the Enterprises airfield, Dansitt’s craft veered off and away, rapidly gaining altitude before it was lost to sight.

"Can you beat that?" said Bud. "What’s that jerk up to?"

"I’m afraid I know exactly what he’s up to," Mr. Swift responded. "I recognize the mechanism beneath the cockpit. It was the centerfold a few months ago in Invention & Technology."

"What is it, Dad?" asked Tom.

"A new high-definition digital camera for aerial spying," answered Mr. Swift. "It has a ‘smart’ processor that removes blurring and distortion due to motion, recording the image data on a tiny cartridge."

Tom rammed an angry fist into his open palm. "He’s taking pictures of the jetmarine!"

As Mr. Swift contacted Ames via televoc, Tom drew Bud aside and spoke in angry but muted tones. "You know, Bud, I think we’ve treated that poor misguided boy with gentleness and understanding more than long enough."

"I agree, Tom. I’m leaning toward a tough-love approach at this point."

"I want those image files in my hands before he can pass them on," said Tom with steel in his voice. "And the only way to do that—"

"Is to catch him!" finished Bud with a whoop.

The Enterprises ground crews were trained to move with lightning coordination, and a suitable jetcraft was already fueled and available. Not fifteen minutes had ticked away before Tom and Bud were aloft in the Kangaroo Kub.

This innovative jet plane incorporated a number of revolutionary design elements, including a pair of extensible secondary winglets that allowed the craft to amble through the air as slowly as a prop-driven Piper Cub while still under jet power, and to take-off and land on even the shortest of airstrips. But with its winglets folded back into the fuselage, the jet was fully capable of mach-level speeds. The craft was ordinarily carried along as a "baby" vehicle in the hangar-hold of the Sky Queen, but was easily unloaded for separate use.

"Now what, bloodhound boy?" asked Bud, who was in the pilot’s position.

"Now we make Sid one sick and sorry rich kid," replied Tom with determination. "We’ve captured the radarscope silhouette of his jet, and the Kub is outfitted with trans-horizon radar. If he’s not more than two states distant, we’ll get an echo."

"But he may have landed already," Bud cautioned.

"Not a problem," commented Tom with a grin. "About a week ago Gina Emiliotti’s shop finished the new thermospectron identifier and installed it on the Kub for testing—and this will be the best test imaginable!"

Bud shot Tom a wry sideways glance. "A new Tom Swift invention?"

"Oh, I just came up with the basic concept," responded Tom modestly. "It was Gina and her crew that made it work. Here, I’ll show you the goods."

As the Kangaroo Kub continued in the direction of Dansitt’s last known heading, Tom switched on a newly-installed instrument panel. "Y’see, flyboy, flying craft that leave exhaust trails—jets and rockets, basically—leave behind a heat signature in the air that’s as distinctive as fingerprints, in theory. The thermospectron identifier uses a computer to extract specific thermal-frequency profiles from the radar bounceback, allowing us to ‘see’ the heat trail of one particular vehicle and follow wherever it goes, even down to a landing. The only variables are time and the wind—the trail eventually dissipates and becomes unreadable. But it hasn’t been too long yet, and the air is fairly calm today."

Tom activated and adjusted the device. Several hazy bands appeared on a small readout screen. Most of the bands were wavery and diffuse, but one was relatively straight and well-defined. "There’s our boy!" Tom exclaimed happily. "The trail passes right over the plant, then off to the north."

Bud made a baying sound as he swerved the Kub in the proper direction and gunned the throttle. Almost immediately the trans-horizon radarscope registered the telltale ping! of Dansitt’s Harrigan Eaglet.

"The poor doonko doesn’t know what he’s up against," laughed Bud, pouring on the speed.

In minutes the Kangaroo Kub had sighted the target visually, and within a minute more they were flying abeam of it. As Dansitt sneered at him through the cockpit dome, Tom signaled the pilot to land. Dansitt’s reply was a universally recognized digital signal, the gist of which was No! Then, without warning, he threw his stick forward and went into a screeching dive. Leveling out a few yards off the ground, he headed straight for a large red barn.

"You fool, you’ll kill yourself!" Tom muttered.

Dansitt hopped the barn deftly and disappeared up a narrow valley. Bud hung on his tail, the Kub showing its agility. The valley narrowed further, splitting off in two directions ahead of the racing jets.

"Which way’s he going to go?" Bud asked.

"When he starts to show his hand, pretend to follow," Tom answered tensely. "Then at the last second, flip to the other valley."

For a chilling instant both jets seemed to be headed straight into the first of the low hills that separated the left extension of the valley from the right. Then Dansitt banked rightward with the Kangaroo Kub hot on his tail. Just as the Eaglet appeared committed to the rightward course, Bud pulled back on the stick and veered left. The Kub seemed to barely clear the hillside brush, but when Bud shoved the stick forward and leveled off, they were safely shooting down the leftward valley. Bud whooped as he saw that Dansitt’s craft had made the same risky maneuver at the same moment, and was still in view ahead of the Enterprises craft.

The little valley continued to narrow, and for a few moments they followed a sparkling creek. But the valley was becoming shallower as well as narrower, and Tom and Bud knew that their quarry would soon have to break off and gain altitude.

Suddenly the radio burst to life.

Tom activated his microphone. "Dansitt, you know this jet can fly rings around yours, and I’m prepared to follow until I can force you down. Why not save yourself some trouble and cooperate?"

There was a pause as the Eaglet gained altitude, the Swift jet following tight.

"What I want, pal, is the digital output from that spy camera," replied Tom heatedly.

Dansitt’s response was brief. "Forget it, Swift."

Tom switched off his headset and turned to Bud. "How ’bout we make Mr. Dansitt reach for his air sickness bag?"

Bud gave a wicked smile and leaned forward into the controls. In a burst of energy the Kub suddenly leapt like an aerial jackrabbit, thrusting over the top of the Eaglet and resuming level course just ahead of it. Then, guided by the jet’s rear-scanning radar, the Kub began bobbing and weaving right and left, up and down, whipping Dansitt’s jet with wave after wave of backwash. The boys burst out laughing as the scope showed the Harrigan Eaglet tossing like a buoy in rough seas.

Tom switched his helmet back on. "Say there, Sidney, the beautiful blue sky may be looking a little green to you about now. Ready to set her down?"

"Ready," came back Dansitt, weakly. "Back to your airfield?"

"Not a chance. Just follow me on a new heading. The Fowler drainage control channel is ahead. It’s got a nice flat concrete bottom, and it’s dry this time of year. Once we get there, you set down first and get out. Then I’ll circle back and land next to you."

"Affirmative," replied Dansitt.

"Sounds a little shaken up, doesn’t he?" commented Bud, gleefully shaking hands with his pal.

Dansitt landed in the channel as directed. As the Kangaroo Kub flashed by overhead, Tom and Bud could see him below, a forlorn ant-sized figure next to his parked Eaglet. He had taxied toward the left side of the channel, and as the channel was more than one-hundred feet wide, there was sufficient room for Bud to land the Kub nearby.

Tom was the first to exit the jet, but Dansitt didn’t wait. By the time Bud had begun to climb out, Dansitt had taken to his heels and was sprinting away from his plane.

"Stop!" Tom cried. "I want those pictures!"

Dansitt paid no attention to Tom. The young inventor darted after his enemy, and being more fleet-footed than Dansitt, soon overtook him.

Dansitt, however, wheeled about suddenly and lashed out viciously with his fist. But Tom nimbly dodged the intended blow and knocked the other to the ground with a cross-body block.

"Where’s the cartridge?" Tom gasped as he pinned down his adversary’s arms.

Instead of answering, Dansitt gave a sudden upward lurch, forcing Tom to loosen his grip. But before his wiry opponent could slip completely from his grasp, Tom clamped Dansitt’s arms in a steel-like vise of muscle. This time he straddled the other pilot. In doing so he felt a hard square object press against his thigh. Was it the digital cartridge holding the image files?

Bud trotted up next to Tom. "Tee him up, Tom—I think I can manage a field goal!"

"Give me the pictures!" Tom demanded fiercely.

"Okay," snarled Sidney Dansitt, sullen. "Let me up and you can have the cartridge."

Tom bounded to his feet and waited. Dansitt took a small object, the size and shape of a book of matches, from under his jacket and handed it over. Tom recognized it as a giga-density image file memory cartridge.

Handing the cartridge to Bud, Tom said he wanted to look inside Dansitt’s pockets. The disheveled young man leered at Tom.

"Why sure," he replied, showing a row of jagged teeth. "Whatever floats your boat, Tommy."

Tom felt inside his pockets and patted him down. No other cartridges were evident.

"Satisfied?" he snapped. "I haven’t run out of hidin’ places yet."

"Okay for now," Tom conceded. "But you had no business flying over Swift Enterprises," he added hotly.

The other sneered. "The air’s free and I was just having a little fun. It’s not like I dropped a bomb on that baby boat of yours. Anyway, you got the files, so what are you moaning about?"

"There’s another matter I want to settle with you, Dansitt," Tom said. "Your little performance the other day, trying to fry me—what’s up with that?"

Dansitt smirked and looked off into the distance, running a hand through his dark auburn hair. "Too much time on my hands, I guess, huh?"

Just then, startlingly, the concrete ravine echoed with the growl of jet engines! Tom and Bud whipped their heads around behind them.

"The Eaglet!" Bud cried. "He’s got a crony inside!"

The distraction was just enough for Dansitt to take quick advantage. His eyes gleaming cold and cruel, he lunged at Torn and drove a smashing uppercut to his chin. The young inventor staggered backward, and for several seconds everything was lost in a foggy whirlpool. Tom’s vision cleared in time to see Dansitt scramble into his jet, assisted by an unidentified man in the cockpit.

Bud, shirtless, was running full speed toward the Harrigan Eaglet. He had peeled off his shirt and bunched it under Tom’s neck before bounding after Dansitt.

But Bud was too late. He could only rear back and watch helplessly as Dansitt’s jet roared away down the flood control channel and took to the air.

"But the important thing," said Bud when he had returned to Tom, "is that I still have that little cartridge in my pants pocket!"

Tom scrambled to his feet. "Still, I would have liked to have examined that camera—and the cockpit. It’s just possible Sidney is mixed up in the Sea Snipers somehow."

Bud growled. "Now there’s somebody I’d just love to feed to the sharks!"

Tom and Bud flew back to the plant, anxious to examine the image cartridge. But when they did so, they were in for a disappointment. The cartridge was blank!

"We were rooked," Tom groaned. "The guy’s always one step ahead of us. I’ll bet running away from his jet was carefully calculated to make us assume that what he had in his pocket was something valuable."

"Wait a sec, Tom," said Bud. "I may not be a phenomenal young scientist-inventor with deep-set blue eyes, but I do know that when computer files are erased, the data isn’t really gone, not right away. It just gets written over as the disk is used. If he palmed an old used cartridge off on you, maybe there’s still something we can get from it."

"Maybe," said Tom. He didn’t want to hurt his friend’s feelings, but he had already scanned the cartridge for such pre-overwritten files. Then a further idea came to him. This was a new kind of storage medium, not a conventional computer disk. Could there be hidden files of an entirely unexpected sort?

Tom gave Bud’s shoulder a squeeze. "I’ll try some new methods on this cartridge before I give up. And—stupid not to have thought of it—I’ll have Harlan take fingerprints and look for other traces first."

"In that case," said Bud, "let’s fuel our brains with a little grub."

When they reached Chow Winkler’s kitchen, the cowpoke took one look at Tom and cried, "Brand my lariat, you sure ran into a tough critter. Who was he?"

"A pirate with a bolo punch."

"You jest don’t know how to stay out o’ trouble, do you?" The cook wagged his head.

He prepared a hearty early supper for the boys, telling Tom a good square meal was the best way to restore one’s fighting strength.

"But what do you do when it hurts to move your jaw?" Tom countered.

"You hand your plate over to me," Bud spoke up with a grin. "Three squares a day is hardly enough to keep me at fighting strength."

After supper Tom parted from Bud and paid a call on Harlan Ames, and then went to his hangar-annex laboratory. When he arrived, he noticed that he had received a video-email message from Rita Scheering.

A few clicks later, he was viewing the stored message. "Well, Tom, here I am again, and you can look me in the eye if you need to. I just thought you’d like to know that I’ve discovered a little more about that area of the Gulf that I mentioned the other day. I said there was nothing there, just some rocks. But that’s not entirely true. According to the most detailed maritime atlas I could get my hands on, there’s a real island there—if you call a few dozen acres of swamp grass and palm trees a real island. It’s called Isla Espaniella—Spaniel Island. And I have a reporter’s hunch it has something to do with the Sea Snipers!"

TOM WASTED no time in contacting Rita Scheering. Intending to leave her an email message, he was surprised when she came on-screen.

"So what’s the connection between this tiny island and the Snipers?" he asked, facing his web-camera.

"You mean, besides the obvious?" Rita blew a luxurious puff of white smoke. "It’s the only piece of solid ground in that region that’s bigger than a houseboat."

"It’s uninhabited?"

"Let me read you the blurb from the atlas. ‘Isla Espaniella, mistranslated into English as Spaniel Island. Recorded 1543, Spanish Royal Claim. Approximately 25 acres extent with tidal variance. No habitation or permanent structures as of 2001. Deep anchorage, southeast quadrant only. Class L approachable. Possession Cuba.’ And no photo."

"All right," Tom agreed, "it sounds like it ought to be visited. But I’m sure we’ve had satellite photo coverage of it for decades, as it’s owned by Cuba."

"No doubt," she nodded.. "But the relevant branches of the U.S. government don’t share that data with their sister branches that easily, much less with young inventors, much much less with reporters."

"Maybe it isn’t important," said Tom. "I’m within days of going on an underwater scouting mission in the Caribbean and the Gulf. I’ll make Spaniel Island a port of call."

Rita smiled at Tom challengingly. "Can I come too?"

"Nope," Tom replied.

"Didn’t think so. But remember our agreement, young man."

Tom worked late into the evening, studying the tenth-second burst of static that had interrupted the plant’s security radar. Carefully analyzed, the burst had peculiar phase and frequency characteristics that Tom found intriguing.

It was after eleven when Tom finally arrived home, physically exhausted but mentally racing. He found Sandy reading a book in the living room.

"Hi, Sis," he said. "Is that one of those bare-chested romance novels?"

Sandy set the book down on her lap. "Nonsense. And so what? Anyway, it’s pretty dull. Have you found the pirates…or…?" Her voice trailed off sadly.

Tom lowered himself onto an ottoman. "A little progress, maybe—I hope. That reporter, Rita Scheering, contacted me again. Looks like Bud and I will be paying a visit to Spaniel Island, a luxurious ocean resort—if you’re a seagull!"

"Do you know how those blackbeard types make everyone black out?"

Tom tried to grin, but found himself yawning instead. "I think so. You know what keeps you awake, San?"

She pondered the question. "Lima beans with anchovies?"

"You have a structure in your brain—all primates do, I think—that regulates your waking and sleeping patterns. Right now we’re both yawning—" And they both did. "—because that little organ is telling our bodies to conserve oxygen and start shutting down. See?"

"Uh huh. So the Sea Snipers shoot deadly rays at the sleep organ?"

Tom chuckled. "That’s kind of a simplification. It looks like the Snipers use pulsed electromagnetic waves in the ultralow frequency range to induce an entrained resonance effect in the body’s natural electrical—"

Sandy interrupted with a vigorous shake of her head. "No, brother, this is not the time to try to impress me. Speak English, not Swiftish."

"Okay. One Hertz means one cycle, or beat, per second. AM radio broadcasts in kilohertz—‘kilo’ means ‘one thousand.’ With FM radio you start into the megahertz range—one million. Then you have radar frequencies, optical frequencies, X-rays, and so on."

"This I know."

"Well, scientists have been studying the effects of very low frequencies on living organisms for years now, mainly to determine if living near power lines is bad for health. What they’ve found is that some low frequencies can affect how the brain produces the neurochemicals that make it go. My guess is, the Snipers have discovered a frequency that induces a chemical ‘flood’ that overstimulates the part of the brain that controls consciousness."

Sandy frowned. "If it stimulates it, wouldn’t we become sharper—not fall over?"

"Not necessarily. Sometimes externally-induced stimulation causes a reverse reaction, a kind of self-defense mode for the body. So when the brain gets signals that trick it into thinking it’s too awake—it compensates by shutting down consciousness for a while."

"I see, Tom," said Sandy thoughtfully. "And what’s the Swift solution?"

Tom leaned forward, his blue eyes aglow with excitement. "Even though I couldn’t squeeze enough data out of the radarscope record to determine the precise frequency-mix the Snipers use, I think I’ll be able to build a jamming device that will respond to, and ‘scramble,’ whatever they put out."

"So from now on, will people have to wear these things around their necks—like vacation tourists wear leis in Hawaii?"

Tom could help laughing at the image, and Sandy joined in. "No. I’m thinking more in terms of mounting the devices on ships—and maybe a few other places, like Swift Enterprises! But I won’t really be satisfied until I have one of their actual ‘pulsators’ in my hands to take apart."

Sandy nodded. "One more question."

"What?"

"Who would you rather spend the rest of your life with, Bashalli or Daphne Mullenwasser? You have three seconds."

Tom jumped to his feet. "Whoop! My brain just shut down for the night!"

Sandy picked up her book. "Chicken!"

The next day was a busy one for Tom, and for Swift Enterprises. Even before Tom’s encounter with Dansitt, Tom and his father had decided to launch the jetmarine in two days time. The midget craft would be hauled by enclosed van from Shopton to a wharf at Crescent Point, New Jersey, not far from the Spindrift Island tidal flats. The wharf had been leased by Swift Enterprises in secret some weeks before in an effort to avoid crowds, publicity—and evil-doers. Tom had to keep tabs on the loading of the sub.

And there were other irons in the fire. Tom had worked out a basic version of his anti-blackout distorter device, which needed to be installed within the jetmarine, its output antenna inserted in the small transmitter bay just beneath the upper hull. In addition, Tom continued to search Dansitt’s captured memory cartridge for hidden information.

In mid-afternoon, Damon Swift knocked hesitantly on the door to Tom’s private office. "It’s okay, Dad," said Tom. "I’m taking a mental breather."

"Well, I’m here on a mission from your mother. She phoned and asked me to remind you about testing those emergency escape suits, the ones you told her about the other day."

"Mom doesn’t show it, but she’s always a little worried, isn’t she?" Tom slid to his feet off his padded workstool. "As a matter of fact, going to our ‘final fitting’ is next on the agenda for Bud and I."

Bud had dubbed the gear the Fat Man suit. The body of it was egg-shaped, wide end down, about six feet tall, five across its rotund midsection. The upper third of the "egg" was transparent, offering the occupant a 360-degree view. It was composed of the same lightweight quartz-Tomasite meld as was used for the jetmarine’s nose dome.

The entire front-facing half of the metal suit, including the dome, swung open like a book to allow easy access, closing into contoured slots that could be fully pressurized. Because of space restrictions on the jetmarine, the two suits would be stored in open configuration, side by side and ready for use, next to the decompression airlock. There would be scarcely enough room to swing them shut.

When in use underwater the suit was propelled by tiny aero-hydraulic pressure jets that gave it maneuverability similar to an astronaut’s spacesuit. To control its vertical position without the need to dump ballast, Tom had devised a buoyancy adjuster, which he described to Bud as "sort of an electronic sponge."

But the main innovation involved in the Fat Man Suits was their workable arms and legs, hands and feet. The tubular arms, which could be retracted telescope-style, were given strength by small electric motors connected in series. The suit wearer operated the arms, and the lifelike fingers on the end, by inserting his hands and forearms into a pair of sleeve-and-glove mechanisms hanging inside the capsule. Every movement of the occupant’s hands and arms would be mimicked by their mechanical counterparts.

The suits legs, extending down beneath, worked on a simpler principle. The suit wearer stepped down into them, his feet extending down to the halfway point of the hollow legs. As the wearer walked, the metal legs would replicate his actions.

"Those suits of yours are not only like one-man microsubs, they’re almost human," commented Mr. Swift as he ridewalked with Tom to the test site. "How do you keep them from falling over?"

Tom replied, "Micro-sized supergyros, based on the Flying Lab’s stabilizers."

"Impressive work," Mr. Swift pronounced with an affectionate snort. "But it’s one thing to test an invention in the abstract and another to foresee actual experience."

"Excuse me, folks," said a deep voice from behind them. Chow had caught up to them on the ridewalk. "I jest come to tell you my chuck wagon’s over by that test site, itchin’ to feed you all." The cook grinned. "If you won’t come an’ get your victuals, well, brand my charcoal stove, I’m forced to fetch it to you."

As Tom and his father joined Bud Barclay at the outdoor test tank, Chow wheeled over a cart with several covered metal dishes kept warm over a flame and began to serve from them.

"I’d hate to starve, of course," Bud said with a grin, "but I’d rather do that than be—er, poisoned. What’s that funny colored stuff in the bowl, Six-Gun Slim?"

"Soup, an’ it’s not—"

"Purple soup!" Tom’s exclamation was softened by a wink. "What did you put in it, iodine?"

Chow feigned looking hurt. Then he appealed to Mr. Swift. "You know what it is, sir?"

"I’m afraid I don’t," the older inventor replied.

"Well brand my ole bean patch!" the cook said in amazement. "You jest taste that special o’ mine. It’s snapping turtle right from the Rio Grande, stewed up with red cabbage."

"What a fate for a poor turtle," Tom groaned.

"No wonder it’s snapping," added Bud.

Chow made no reply to this, and after a dark look from the Texan, Tom put his spoon into the concoction and tasted it. The cook grinned in relief as Tom conceded that it was pretty good after all.

The afternoon snack completed, the Fat Man suits were carted out and positioned next to the test tank. They had already been thoroughly tested, without occupants, in the high-pressure tank. This final test in the open-air tank was only to make whatever slight adjustments remained.

"Boys, I just remembered that I have to return a call to Admiral Krevitt before he leaves for the day," said Mr. Swift. "Good luck with your ‘fitting’."

"I’d wait for you, but we’ll have to hurry things along so we can get started on our pirate hunt," Tom responded.

Beside the test tank stood what looked like two prehistoric dinosaur eggs, gyrostabilized to stand on their thick legs without toppling. Tom swung open one of the suits, Bud the other.

"Your attention, folks!" Bud mimicked a circus barker. "Watch while we transform these Humpty Dumpties into men!"

They backed into the suits with a bowing-like motion, stepping down into the leg-hollows, and after quickly checking the mechanical devices, slammed the hatches shut, which latched and pressurized automatically. A few moments later the boys’ audience beheld two grotesque creatures gleaming in the late afternoon sun, their long fingers and flat toes giving them an uncanny appearance.

When the Fat Men began to walk, the onlookers grinned at their peculiar waddling gait. Reaching the tank, which was filled with salt water, Tom and Bud were hoisted in by pulleys. They bobbed around like corks for several seconds, playfully splashing each other, and then began to descend.

The watchers, aware of Tom’s recent frightful experience, waited intently as Sid Baker flicked on the in-tank lights, which were color-modulated for better visibility in water. Through the thick viewpane the boys could be seen slowly walking around on the bottom, apparently untroubled.

"Where’s the oxygen hose?" asked one of the technicians.

"Everything’s inside the Fat Man," Baker replied. "It’s not dependent on outside help. Lithium hydroxide is taking care of what the boys are exhaling, though you’ll see air bubbles come out of the vents. And you’ve got about three hours’ worth of oxygen crammed into a little tank about the size of a picnic thermos bottle, thanks to one of the Swifts’ inventions."

"Man, I do love working here!" remarked the technician.

After forty minutes the period for the test was up, and the two Fat Men bobbed to the surface and were helped from the water. Again the boys’ audience smiled as Tom and Bud awkwardly emerged from the suits. It took them several minutes to do so, their muscles somewhat cramped from unfamiliar use, but Tom had asked that they be given no assistance unless it was absolutely necessary.

"What’s it like, Tom?" came a voice from the crowd.

"Like walking around in a dream," he replied, hair matted with perspiration from his efforts. "The kind where you can’t move as fast as you want to, like you’re walking through molasses. But still, these are escape suits, not luxury liners."

"I’d say your Fat Men are ready for the big time," Bud joked. "All we need is—Tom?"

Bud interrupted himself because his pal had suddenly shifted his gaze off to one side, an intent look on his face. Tom’s neck muscles twitched slightly, and Bud realized the young inventor was engaged in a silent conversation over his muscle-reading televoc communicator.

After a moment Tom gave a slight nod and turned to Bud. "That was Dad. He wants me to clean up and meet him in the Teleconference Room at 5:30 sharp."

"What is it?"

"I don’t know," Tom replied. "Maybe one of our suppliers needs some details from me."

"Well, since you don’t need me right now, I think I’ll put in some time in the flight simulators."

Tom watched as Bud departed on the ridewalk, feeling somewhat guilt-ridden. He hadn’t lied, but he had been discreet. Mr. Swift had specifically asked Tom not to bring Bud, or anyone else, along with him to the Teleconference Room. They were about to engage in a highly confidential meeting with not only Admiral Krevitt, but with Dr. Yuri Nemastov, a top-level representative of the government of Russia!

AT THE STROKE of five, Tom and Damon Swift, pressed and dressed, were seated side by side at a large wooden table in a darkened circular room. The table was round and ten feet in diameter, and the far side of the table butted up against the wall that faced them, which matched the table’s curvature.

The far wall flickered and became illuminated in two places. The glowing shadows suddenly condensed into the images of two men, detailed and almost three-dimensional.

"Hello Swift, Tom." It was the image of Admiral Krevitt who spoke. "I have the honor to present to you Dr. Yuri Nemastov, Chief Minister of Applied Sciences and Technology of the Russian Federation, and Special Consultative Officer to His Excellency the President."

Dr. Nemastov was a white-haired, heavyset man with eyes that twinkled behind thick spectacles. He nodded, but with eyebrows raised comically. "I would offer my hand," he said, "but even this advanced tele-cinematic system of yours cannot yet accommodate flesh and bone." He spoke flawless English, with a cultured intonation.

"We met three years ago, Dr. Nemastov, in St. Petersburg," noted Mr. Swift. "You were gracious enough to address the convention I was attending, and we spoke afterwards."

"Indeed yes, I do remember," Nemastov replied. "And now we meet again. Or rather, now we sit at three separate spots upon this earth and pretend to be together in one room."

After a pause, Krevitt spoke up. "When Dr. Nemastov approached ONDAR with his problem, representing his government, I knew this was the sort of thing you Swifts could help us with."

"More than likely," said Mr. Swift smoothly. "A technological problem?"

"Oh, in a way, in a way," replied Nemastov. He then added what seemed to be a non sequitur. "I understand young Tom is planning a voyage to look beneath the waters of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico."

"That’s right, sir," Tom responded, puzzled.

"Then perhaps you will be the one to assist us. But let me tell you a story."

Nemastov took a deep breath and settled back in his chair. "Damon Swift, my friend, do you remember the incidents of October of 1962?"

Mr. Swift gave a brisk nod. "I surely do. I was in grade school. I went out onto the playground and looked up at the clouds, wondering what it would be like to never see them again." He half-turned to Tom. "The Cuban missile crisis."

"Yes, so it is called," agreed Dr. Nemastov. "Your country and the country I was born in, the Soviet Union, now deceased, almost came to nuclear blows."

Tom began to see the connection. "In the Caribbean and the Gulf!"

"Indeed," said Nemastov, "where you are to be going. A terrible moment—and I tell you, young man, not all has been revealed about that year, that month. It has now become known in my circles that a Soviet submarine, bearing missiles and powered by an atomic reactor, was diverted from the North Atlantic to a posting in the Caribbean Sea. This was the Vostok. During passage through the Yucatan Channel, near to Cuba, all communication was lost—it fell silent. An extensive but discreet search availed nothing. And so the matter stood."

"Then it was presumed lost at sea, I take it?" asked Mr. Swift.

"That is correct. Now we move forward in time thirty years. My poor Soviet Union has expired. A man in Moscow, a black-market czar, dies and leaves his widow a great deal of money. Her name is Aia Ozkhodskaya. She decides to travel the world and indulge her fancies, one of which is the search for the lost lands of myth, such as Atlantis. Did you know, my friends, that lost Atlantis has been sought everywhere in the world by the cultists and adventurers? Well, she read a book and came to think Atlantis was on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. And so she purchased a great deal of specialized equipment, photographic and sound-based, as well as a large yacht; and she began to explore. She did not find ruined temples. Instead, something ominous and unexpected."

"The Vostok!" Tom interjected.

"Yes, young Swift, our lost submarine. She did not know what it was, nor its value to the government of Russia, which would like to retrieve its radioactive cargoes—and to finally lay to rest its mystery. She thought she was seeing, on her sonar-photograms, part of a building buried beneath the sands. We became aware of these images when she attempted to form a consortium to descend to the ocean floor and explore the area more thoroughly. We knew very well what she had found."

"Where is this Madame Ozkhodskaya now?" inquired Tom. He could not keep a note of suspicion from his voice.

Dr. Nemastov responded with a smile. "I understand what prompts your question, young man. She was never approached at all by the government or its agents. Her proposals attracted no ‘takers,’ and I believe she now resides comfortably in Madrid, and is looking for the Ark of Noah!"

Now Admiral Krevitt took over the conversation. "Swift, Tom, the Russians have agreements with the U.S. involving the control and disposal of their nuclear materials. We want to help them get down to their lost sub and determine what would be involved in a salvage operation."

"And you’re asking us to run the job?" asked Mr. Swift.

"We ask you to become underwater ghost hunters, to lay the ghosts of past follies," Dr. Nemastov said.

Krevitt continued, "You have your fancy new deep-immersion submarine, and I understand you have some high-pressure diving gear as well—am I right?"

Tom replied for his father. "That’s right, Admiral."

"We’re asking you to make a survey of the area during your shakedown cruise. We can provide the general location, from the woman’s records." The Admiral held up a chart with a section outlined in color. "If you see something, get out and take a look around, that’s all. Naturally you’ll test for radiation leakage and so forth."

"Naturally," said Tom. He looked at his father. "Dad, there’s no reason why we ought not do it, none that I can think of."

"Very well," said Mr. Swift to Admiral Krevitt. "Transmit to us all the information and authorizations we’ll need."

After a round of small talk and goodbyes, the teleconference screens blanked out.

Tom turned to his father. "Dad, the area marked on Admiral Krevitt’s chart is right in the middle of Rita Scheering’s mystery area!"

"Which may mean—may mean—there’s a connection between the Sea Snipers and the lost submarine," Mr. Swift said thoughtfully. "That would explain their concern that by sheer happenstance someone might have used some sort of imaging device while passing over the Vostok. The thefts of valuables may just be a ruse! The true purpose is to recover the image records before the owner understands what they are."

"There has to be a connection," Tom urged

"Yes. And that indicates yet one further link—to Sidney Dansitt! All very puzzling."

With Chow providing a late dinner, bereft of anything too Texas-exotic, Tom worked into the evening in his lab, adjusting the itinerary of the voyage of the jetmarine in light of its new goals. He then moved on to his attempt to "crack" the seemingly blank image cartridge Dansitt had handed over.

An unexpected insight gave Tom a new approach to pursue, and suddenly he began to make real progress. Almost immediately he found signs that the cartridge, though superficially blank, was inscribed with traces of latent data.

The cartridge was used before, then erased over, he thought excitedly. Dansitt probably stuck it in with a bunch of blank cartridges, not remembering it wasn’t totally clean.

In minutes he had extracted what appeared to be several fragments of text, all severely degraded and incomplete.

"This is as tough as trying to break that space code!" he murmured to himself, thinking of the symbols on the missile from space.

Finally he had isolated one fairly lengthy, continuous chunk of text, which appeared on his monitor as:

A more powerful enhancement program was applied to the untranslated code segments within the chunk. The result made Tom’s jaw drop in anger and astonishment.

"They know all about our plans!" exclaimed Tom in alarm. The decision had been finalized only days before! "And they aim to carjack the jetmarine before it even hits the water!"

Tom immediately emailed the results to Harlan Ames at his home, then phoned the security chief.

"Chilcote and Rossello sound like names," Ames commented. "Ring any bells?"

"No," Tom replied. "They could be place names, though, not people."

"That’s true," Ames agreed. "Yes Rosello could signify approval from a certain location, perhaps their headquarters. But the main thing now is to call off the overland sub transfer."

Tom thought for a moment, then shook his head. A sly grin broke out on his face. "Harlan, I’m not so sure!"

In the ensuing dark hours before dawn there was feverish activity at the Swift plant. The jetmarine was raised and carefully lowered by cranes onto a special wheeled cradle so that it could be moved more easily, and the crane assemblages themselves were taken apart and packed away, to be used later when the sub was placed in the water. At the same time, Tom was holding a council of war in his private office. The young inventor sat at his desk, with his father, Harlan Ames, his chief engineers, several trusted workmen, and Bud Barclay gathered around him.

"This has turned into a dangerous project," Tom began. "The Sea Snipers gang—which probably means Dansitt and his spies—intend to wreck our plans to launch the jetmarine. I have no doubt they know in general what we are doing."

"Do you really think there’s that much danger?" Bud asked skeptically.

"More than you think."

Ames nodded in silent agreement.

"They know we’re ready to move our atomic sub," Tom went on, "but there’s one little item they don’t know."

"What’s that?" Bud asked eagerly.

Tom smiled. "How we’re going to move it," he responded. "That’s where I hope to fool them."

Bud scratched his head and frowned. "We’re going to truck it to Stillman’s Wharf, aren’t we?"

"That’s what everybody thinks," Tom said. "including everybody here at the plant. And our enemies think so too."

"You mean you’re not going to ship it by truck?" Bud looked incredulous, then he added, "I suppose we’re going to put wings on it and fly it down to the coast!"

Arv Hanson smiled. "Barclay, you’re a budding genius."

Bud grinned. "Yeah, I know what you mean. All sap." Then he turned to Tom again. "Okay, just how are you planning to get the thing to Stillman’s?"

"It’s simple," Tom said. "I’m going to load her into the Sky Queen."

The murmur that arose from the men indicated they did not believe that Tom’s solar-energized skycraft, huge as it was, would be able lift the additional load of submarine and the cranes which would lower it to dry dock.

"I know what you guys are thinking," he said, "but Dad and I, and Wesley Beale, worked it out."

As Tom rose and moved toward the door, the others followed him.

"I have a trick up my sleeve," the young inventor said. "I’m going to try it before we roll the sub into the hangar-hold of the Queen later this morning."

As the others listened, their eyes grew wide and grins spread over their faces. Tom explained that he had had a dummy framework hastily constructed. Covered with canvas, it would look very much like the jetmarine.

"I’m going to mount that on the trailer and send her out when the sun comes up," Tom said. "If the pirate gang is as watchful as I think they are, they’ll be lying in ambush for it somewhere along the route. Meanwhile, the Flying Lab will be on her way to the launch site with the real McCoy."

Tom led the way to the plant’s huge carpentry shop, where the dummy jetmarine lay ready for its journey, quickly put together by the overnight shift.

"There’s only one thing bothering me," Bud said. "This will be a dangerous run. Who’s going to drive the trailer?"

"Mr. Gautchah," Tom said. "You remember him."

"Sure. Mr. Gautchah. I don’t get it, genius boy," Bud remarked. He theatrically grabbed his head in his hands. "Come, nurse, put me a strait jacket and take me to the booby hatch!"

Tom grinned at his pal. "Welcome to the world of millennial wonders, Budworth! Now I’m catching some shut-eye—we roll in three hours."

At the appointed time, the sky a pale yellow, the reinforced main gate of Swift Enterprises slid open and a long flatbed trailer, its bulky load covered by a tarpaulin, pulled out and turned right, heading in the direction of the main highway. Back in Harlan Ames’ office, a small, tense crowd was gathered in front of the security chief’s oversize wall-mounted monitor screen.

Ames switched the view from the feed transmitted by an Enterprises security camera, which gave a distant view of the departing truck, to a scene showing the road itself from the viewpoint of the cab of the truck.

"Those new self-contained minicams work just fine," Ames commented.

"What will we do now?" Bud asked after a dozen minutes without event.

"Harlan has already phoned the police to follow the truck at a good distance," Tom said. "I've decided to wait and see what happens."

"I expect action fairly soon," Ames commented. "They’re not likely to try anything on Route 11, certainly not on Highway 71. So I’m guessing somewhere along Lakeview Road, probably at a spot where visibility is restricted by a curve or a hill."

"Plenty of those," Arv Hanson noted.

The words were hardly off his tongue when Tom received a signal on Ames’ radio link, which he had adjusted for general audibility.

"T for tomato, T for tomato," came the call.

"Okay," Tom answered. "What’s going on?"

"Something fishy," was the reply. "I’m ten miles out. A car has just pulled up ahead of the trailer and another in back of it. They’re closing in tight now. Yep, these are our guys—they’re trying to force the trailer to the side of the road!"

"We can see ’em on the screen," Tom said. "Guide her to the side of the road and park. Tell me what’s happening."

"Police are converging," whispered Harlan Ames to Tom, not wanting to interrupt the report from the truck.

The radio voice grew louder with excitement. "Tom, men have jumped out of each car. Drawing guns! They’re approaching the cab…"

Ames switched to the feed from a minicam within the cab. Grim-faced men approached the driver’s door, guns drawn, and yanked the door open. The leader began to bark out an order—and his face went slack with surprise.

Ames immediately switched to a different angle, showing the cab interior. The figure in the driver’s seat, hands still tight on the wheel, swiveled his head toward the open door and dropped open his gaping mouth.

"Gotcha!" came a recorded voice, followed by idiotic laughter. The driver, "Mr. Gautchah," was a lifelike plastic dummy!

"I’m so glad I kept Mr. Gautchah after the Halloween party," chortled Arv Hanson.

His laughter found a subdued echo in the voice from the radio speaker. "Are they mad! They’re cussin’ you from here to the Pacific!"

Tom chuckled. "I’ll bet!"

"They seem confused as to how the truck was run. A couple of them are hurrying away from it as if they’d seen a ghost. They don’t guess I’m here inside the dummy jetmarine with my monitors and controls."

"Jeffers did a fine job," noted Mr. Swift to Tom, naming the hidden driver of the flatbed. "He put himself in quite a bit of danger."

"Here come the police," Jeffers said. "They’ve hemmed in the two cars—I guess it’s all over!"

"Great work, Bob," Tom said. "Get back here as quickly as you can with the trailer—and Mr. Gautchah. Harlan Ames will get the police report later." Then he turned to the others around him.

"It’s time for us to go," he said. "while the enemy is distracted. We’ve cleared the way. Everybody ready?"

After Tom spoke briefly to the state police and verified that the four would-be carjackers were in custody, the boys hurried to the underground hangar. Tom beamed his electronic key on the hidden lock, and the door swung open silently.

"Hop to it, men," Tom said, beckoning his ground crew.

Ten minutes later the gleaming Sky Queen rose on the huge elevator from her underground nesting place to ground level, Tom’s atomic sub stowed safely in the hangar in the aft section of the great aircraft.

"It’s easy when you know how," Bud said admiringly.

Tom and Bud mounted the central boarding ladder which extended down from the belly of the giant craft, well forward of its banks of jet lifters.

"Where’s Chow?" Tom remarked as he made his way to the flight deck.

"You don’t have to ask where I am," came a foghorn voice from inside the big ship. "Your ole chuck-wagon cook’s been waitin’ an hour."

When Tom was in the pilot’s seat, Bud next to him in the copilot’s position, he switched on the ship intercom and talked to crewmen in the rear of the Flying Lab, verifying that the jetmarine was secure in its special cradle.

The Enterprises control tower radioed that the Sky Queen was cleared for takeoff. Tom cast a glance at Jane Lenning at the flight engineer’s station behind Bud.

"Take ’er up, Chief!" she said jauntily.

Tom throttled-in the jet lifters, and the stratoship rose like a majestic fin-tailed elevator into the early morning sky. The adventure had begun!

"You sure were right, Tom," Bud said. "This ship handles the jetmarine like she was a toy."

Tom smiled modestly but did not reply. He gestured toward the cockpit’s broad, downward-facing viewport. "Look down there, flyboy. What do you see?"

"You mean besides the usual? Nothing."

"Exactly," said Tom. "And yet it hasn’t been two months since the Sky Queen was stopping traffic for miles around. It’s amazing how quickly people can adapt to things they used to think were impossible!"

After they had gained ten thousand feet of altitude, Tom applied forward thrust and the plane headed for its destination. Within half an hour the dim grayness of the Atlantic came into view.

"We’re almost there," Bud chuckled, "and believe me, the sooner we get this precious baby down in dry dock, the better."

Tom gave Bud an apologetic look. "Actually, pal, we’ve got more than an hour of flying left before we set down."

Bud’s eyebrows leapt upward in surprise. "Huh? What do you mean?"

"I meant to tell you right after we took off. Dad and I decided to launch the jetmarine from our Key West facility, where Graham Kaye’s videophone setup is located. No one else was to know until after the Queen was underway."

"I guess it makes sense," Bud acknowledged. "You’re really keeping Dansitt and his goons in the dark!"

"Dad and I hate to mislead the hundreds of Swift employees who are dependable," Tom said, "but it’s obvious that information about our plans is getting out somehow."

Tom’s further thoughts were interrupted by a voice in his flight headset. "Swift control to Sky Queen!"

"This is Sky Queen, Swift control."

"Tom, an Admiral Krevitt is asking to be patched through to you."

"Go ahead," said Tom.

The Admiral came on line, relayed from ONDAR headquarters in Washington DC, which the Sky Queen was now approaching in its southward flight. "Tom, we’ve come up with some significant information on this person Chilcote. Dr. Herman Chilcote was a British national who worked on a joint British-American defense project in the early 80’s. After three years, he plain disappeared without a trace one day! Not a sign of him since."

"What was the nature of the project?" Tom asked.

"Do you recall my mentioning that the government had once worked on blackout technology? Well, this project was what I had in mind. Stimulation of the brain centers from a distance by phased electromagnetic pulses! But they could never make it work, and in fact the people involved came to believe that Chilcote had falsified some of his reported findings. He was on the verge of dismissal when he disappeared."

"I see," said Tom. "It sounds like he wasn’t entirely bogus after all."

"Apparently so," agreed Krevitt. "Now as to the other reference you gave us, Rosello, we have quite a number of people by that name in our files—and of course several whole countries are full of ’em! But nothing stands out in the present connection."

Tom thanked the Admiral and broke contact. The young inventor felt he was slightly ahead of the game—but not by much.

"The answer’s down on the bottom of the sea, I guess," said Bud. "But we’ll find it, Tom!"

Occupied with his thoughts, the time seemed to pass quickly for Tom. He was almost startled when Bud noted that the Flying Lab had crossed the long string of the Florida Keys and was ready to begin its approach to Key West. Five minutes later the crew were debarking onto the tarmac of the small private airfield maintained by Swift Enterprises at their Key West facility, the Swift Oceanic and Nautical Research Center. Even making a delicate vertical touchdown, the Sky Queen barely fit into the minute airfield.

After greeting Graham Kaye and the Director of SONRC, Dr. Eileen Mattengar, Tom turned to the task of the unloading and emplacement of the jetmarine.

"Shall we unload immediately, Tom?" one of the men asked.

"The quicker the better. We’ll get the jetmarine into the dry dock and slap on that camouflage before people are awake."

The young inventor watched with satisfaction as the special cranes, quickly reassembled, deftly slid the atomic submarine from the hangar of the plane, swung it across the sand that bordered the airfield, and cradled the jetmarine in the dry dock.

At that moment the camouflage crew sprang into action, unrolling prepared tarps from the Flying Lab. Minutes later Bud cried admiringly:

"Jetz! That covering looks just like a piece of seashore."

Tom agreed. "Any roving pirate will miss it."

After dismissing the unneeded Swift employees, who were to pilot the Sky Queen back to Shopton, Tom spent the balance of the day personally checking parts and supplies on his submarine. A quonset hut was set up next to the dry dock for the protected storage of parts, and to serve as temporary quarters. As usual, Chow was on hand to provide a tasty lunch, sumptuous supper, and tart advice. A call to Harlan Ames revealed that the incarcerated carjackers had volunteered no information, but were demanding legal representation.

In the evening Tom reviewed with Bud the intricate handling of the submarine. Standing before the myriad-lighted control panel, Tom said finally:

"Enough for now, pal, or we’ll see blinking lights in our dreams. Come on topside. Let’s hit the sack."

"Not me," Bud protested. "I’m sleeping right here—baby sitter for your brain child." He stroked the periscope handle and grinned.

"Okay, if you want to," Tom replied. "I’m just as bad—I’m sleeping in the shack twenty feet away!"

"Adios!"

The SONRC compound was afforded both radar and sonar protection that encompassed the inlet as well, and Tom felt that he had set up reasonable security. Two roving guards, equipped with televoc pins tuned to Tom’s receiver, were instructed to awaken him if they saw anything suspicious.

Tom kicked off his shoes and sat on the edge of his bunk. Except for the steady breathing of the other remaining employees from Shopton, it was just as quiet inside as out. The stars were a glowing milky tapestry, and the sea murmured not far away from the inlet where the dry dock had been set up. So far, things have gone well, Tom thought. My enemies have been shaken off, or at least they’ve lost the trail. He stretched out on the bunk. Maybe we’ll still find Hank Sterling alive. Maybe.

In a short time Tom was asleep, thoroughly exhausted.

It was after midnight when Tom jolted upright on his bunk. An alarm was blaring in the distance! He shook his head, trying to clear it.

His televoc beeped and a frantic voice came on. "Tom Swift!" shouted the startled voice of one of the patrolling guards. "I see something—something’s out there!"

"Where?" Tom demanded.

"In the water, the ocean—it’s moving this—"

The warning was cut short by an earth-shaking explosion as a crimson flash illuminated the shore. The ground under the quonset hut shook as if it had been caught up in the fierce anger of an earthquake, and the canvas floor was lifted like the back of a spitting cat. Tom and his friends were knocked from their bunks by the concussion.

The quonset hut was full of confused exclamations. "What happened? Anybody hurt?" the men cried.

"I’m OK, OK here!" came a chorus of replies, but none of them revealed the cause of the explosion.

"Follow me!" Tom ordered, grabbing a powerful flashlamp. "But keep low! The jetmarine! Oh, I hope Bud—"

Tom frantically scrambled out of the hut ahead of the others and aimed his flashlamp toward the dry dock. A dark curving shape was illuminated. The sub was unharmed!

"Good night, what was—?"

"Get down, Bud!" cried Tom,