TOM SWIFT

AND HIS ELECTRONIC

HYDROLUNG

CHAPTER 1

THE PIRATED PROBE

TENSE, excited men gazed spaceward from the ships and planes of the Mid-Atlantic task force, eyes striving to pierce the barrier of a lustrous blue sky. Other watchers waited breathlessly in the control room of the mammoth ship Sea Charger. Among these was Tom Swift, whose family’s fantastic invention factory in Shopton, New York—Swift Enterprises—had developed the advanced design of the high-tech vessel.

"How close to earth is the stardust catcher now?" Bud Barclay asked Tom excitedly.

The slender blond youth beside him, in striped t- shirt and slacks, shot a glance at the dials of the tracking equipment. "Three minutes closer from the last time you asked, Bud. Eight thousand miles from this spot. It should land here in fifteen minutes. If you think you can wait!"

"Sure. And ‘land’ is the key word, genius boy. Land, as opposed to hit the deck!"

Tom, his father Damon Swift, Bud, and a host of scientists, Navy officers, NASA representatives, and newsmen were crowded aboard the Charger, big as an aircraft carrier, floating calm as concrete in the Atlantic waters east of Barbados in the Caribbean. Most excited of all were the designers of the returning deep-space probe, a team of astronautics scientists and technicians from Japan who had launched the challenging venture on its voyage to the far-distant edge of the solar system nearly two decades previous. "We are greatly confident in immanent success for our mission, young man," admonished Hideki Moritsu coldly, the official chief of the team, representing the Japanese government’s investment in its national space program. "I am told all readings are precisely as they should be."

"No offense intended, sir. It’s just that this whole thing is pretty complicated for a guy like me to get his brain around. But just think!" Bud exulted. "Pretty soon you’ll have data that no one on earth has yet been able to get, from way out where the sun looks like a star!"

"If we recover the probe capsule safely," Mr. Swift spoke up hopefully. The elder scientist’s voice was quiet but taut with the strain of waiting. The two Swifts resembled each other closely—each had deep-set blue eyes and clean-cut features—although Tom was somewhat the taller and rangier, and his father definitely the grayer.

"You’re right, Dad," Tom agreed. "And I guess I’m as nervous as Bud. If we don’t catch the Gojira and set her down safely, the whole project will be a total loss to Mr. Moritsu’s space program! And I wouldn’t blame Japan for blaming us in that case, since we came up with the means of landing it."

At Tom’s words, the watchers and crewmen who were crowded into the Sea Charger’s control room stirred restlessly. Its bulkheads were banked with radar and telemetering devices. Tension had been mounting throughout the morning aboard the ships and observation planes of the task force as everyone awaited the climax of science’s deepest penetration into space so far.

Tom stepped away to stretch his aching shoulder muscles, clenched tight by the morning’s tension. Bud followed him. "What do you mean, a total loss?" Bud argued quietly, trying not to stare too obviously at the rather stolid Mr. Moritsu. "Even if the recovery operation’s a flop, the shot will still pay off in valuable information, won’t it?"

Tom shook his head grimly. "I haven’t explained all the details to you, pal. The main purpose of the mission wasn’t to record instrument data but to carry back its payload of Kuiper matter to Earth."

"Kuiper matter? You mean the cosmic dust?"

"It’s more than dust, chum. What we do know is that the Gojira probe found ice, rock granules, hydrogen compounds, even micro-sized particles of metal out in the Kuiper Belt—the leftover building blocks of the primordial solar system. But almost none of the info has been radioed back to us."

"How come?"

"Power problems," Tom explained. "Gojira was supposed to be mainly solar-powered, but the collector panels didn’t open properly. They’ve been running it off battery power throughout the mission and didn’t want to use it up on telemetry transmissions across billions of miles. Draining the batteries would have prevented completing the real goal of the mission—collecting the stuff and bringing it back home. It was a jerry-rigged emergency fix. and they had to make every volt count." Tom concluded by noting that digital recordings had been made by the probe’s instruments throughout the journey, to be studied after the landing.

"I get it," Bud nodded. "Kind of ironic, though. One of your Swift solar batteries would have made all the difference in the world. But it hadn’t been invented yet." The remarkable power source, compact and lightweight, was manufactured 22,300 miles above the earth at the Swift Enterprises outpost in space.

Tom leaned closer and lowered his voice. "There are a lot of things Enterprises might have done to assist this project, Bud. We could easily have met the probe out in space in one of our spacecraft. But Mr. Moritsu’s people wouldn’t hear of it. They want things to proceed as closely as possible to the original plan from the Stone Age of space travel—national pride, I guess. All we were allowed to do was to update and redesign the ‘catcher’ missile for them." Bud shot his friend a wry look to show he understood.

Outwardly calm, Tom was seething with inner excitement. Although to the eye he seemed no older than a teenaged youth—the same age as his husky, dark-haired pal and copilot, Bud Barclay—Tom was a world-famous prodigy in scientific invention. He had been first choice for the job of directing the recovery phase of the Japanese government’s Gojira Probe mission. The Swifts and their rocket research staff had built the special recovery missile that would intercept the probe’s payload package as it approached the earth and gently carry its fragile cargo to the deck of the Sea Charger.

"Whew!" Bud gave a nervous whistle as the two strolled back to the controls. "I’m about as tense as you are. With all our eggs in one basket, we sure can’t afford to get butter-fingered with the Kuiper probe."

Admiral Walter, a tall, distinguished man, graying at the temples, smiled. "It’s what we call in warfare a calculated risk, Bud," he said. "But with Tom in charge, I believe we have nothing to worry about."

Mr. Swift’s eyes shone with fatherly pride at the admiral’s remark and Bud whacked Tom heartily on the shoulder. "Better save your orchids and keep your fingers crossed, flyboy," the young inventor advised with a wince. "The rocket’s not home yet."

"I know," responded the ex-footballer. "But it’s just about time to go out for that long pass!"

Radio telescopes, both on land and aboard the ships of the task force, were following the probe’s progress as it drew closer to earth. All were feeding a steady stream of information to the ship’s computers. In addition, the Deep-Space Tracking Network was keeping watch from orbit by radar, as was the Swifts’ outpost space station with its powerful telescope.

"How soon will the primary retro-rockets fire, Tom?" Admiral Walter inquired presently.

"In about ten seconds, sir," Tom replied, eyeing the digital clock readout before him.

Moments later, a red light flashed on the master control panel. Far out in space, the retarding rockets in the nose of the probe capsule were triggered for a long and powerful burst. Returning from the outer solar system at tremendous speed, Gojira would hurtle to flaming destruction in the fringes of the atmosphere without this measure.

"We’ve picked it up on ship radar!" shouted a radarman.

Bud gave a whoop of excitement and everyone crowded around the bank of radarscope monitors. Tom’s steel-blue eyes checked the blip, noting that the capsule was slightly off the correct path. A new flow of information now began pulsing in as other ships’ tracking radars recorded its course. The data was being fed automatically to the "capture" computer which would calculate the correct flight path for the recovery missile, to be launched in moments from the Sea Charger’s floating launch platform. This mini-rocket was designed to seize the returning traveler from space in mid-flight and bring it safely home.

The excited buzz of voices in the compartment gradually quieted as the clock ticked steadily toward the next step in the recovery operation.

"Stand by for missile firing!" Tom snapped over a loudspeaker.

A seaman relayed the order over the ship’s intercom. An electrified silence fell as Tom’s eyes followed the patterns sweeping across an oscilloscope screen.

"All clear for blast-off!" came the report from the launch pad—from a reporter.

With a glance at his father and Bud, Tom pressed the master firing button that authorized the final ignition sequence. A split second later the listeners’ eardrums throbbed to a muffled roar from topside as the slender recovery missile shot skyward. Through the window they could see the launch platform rocking convulsively despite its inbuilt gravitex stabilizers. Then it steadied again as the advanced devices damped out the vibrations.

"Wow!" Bud heaved a sigh of relieved tension. Then he dashed from the compartment and onto the main deck for a quick look at the rocket as it disappeared into the blue.

Tom watched the catcher missile, the Recoverer, intently on the radarscope.

"Nice going, son," said Mr. Swift quietly.

In response to his father’s reassuring grip on his arm, Tom flashed him a hasty smile. For the first time, the young inventor realized he was beaded with perspiration and that his pulse was hammering.

"Quite admirable, I should say," muttered one of the Japanese scientists, Dr. Otsukora. His white-coated countrymen, standing together, murmured and nodded.

"It’s a case of wait and hope," Tom murmured in response. "We’ll know in a few minutes."

Across half the world, and 22,300 miles deep into space, eyes were glued to radar screens and electronic monitors. To Tom Swift’s eyes, two small blips were visible—one the incoming probe capsule, now barely beginning to skim the atmosphere; the other the recovery missile, moving on a course that would soon intersect its quarry.

One of the NASA observers suddenly spoke up. "Swift!—am I seeing things, or is Recoverer deviating from course?"

Tom checked the readouts. "She’s automatically compensating for changes in the Gojira’s trajectory, updating her course with her inbuilt tracking system."

The youth’s voice trailed off uncertainly, and Mr. Swift put a hand on his shoulder. "Such last-minute deviations are to be expected in a ballistic reentry, son."

"I know," replied the young inventor. "Except—the capsule hasn’t entered the denser atmosphere yet. I don’t like the look of what I’m seeing. The probe’s course seems to be flattening out considerably."

"Is this a difficulty?" demanded Mr. Moritsu.

"I’m hoping Recoverer will be able to compensate, as it was designed to do," Tom said. "Its onboard computer can virtually think for itself."

But just as Bud returned to the compartment, several of the watchers gave startled gasps. "You can’t call that a normal variation!" declared one of the engineers. The glowing line on the monitor, projecting the Gojira’s heading forward and back, had developed a noticeable kink!

"Telemetry still nominal," announced one of the flight engineers. "No problem with the retros or the vernier thrusters. Whatever’s affecting Gojira has nothing to do with its own instrumentation. There’s some external cause."

"It’s gone completely off course!" Admiral Walter exclaimed. "What’s happening?"

"I ask the same question, young man," grated Moritsu, not bothering to look Tom’s way.

Tom stared at the moving blips. The Enterprises recovery missile was clearly falling behind as the Gojira probe seemed to glide sideways across the screen. It was all too clear that by the time the Recoverer reached the newly plotted meeting point, Gojira would be somewhere else!

Damon Swift looked up from the monitor bank and gazed steadily at Mr. Moritsu and his colleagues. "I’m afraid we must face facts, gentlemen. We can not compensate sufficiently to intercept the probe with our recovery missile."

"It’s a thief missile! A pirate!" Tom cried out in fury. "Some enemy’s trying to steal the probe payload!"

"Good night!" Bud gulped. "Do you see it on the scope?"

"No," Tom muttered tensely. "But what else could it be? Some kind of interceptor vehicle with anti-radar protection must have latched onto the capsule. Gojira’s being dragged away to another landing site!"

"Pirated!" Admiral Walter sounded as if he had paled under his deep military tan. In stunned silence, the Navy officers and scientists of two nations watched as Tom’s sinewy hands manipulated the control dials.

"I’m trying to speed up our recovery missile," Tom explained as he focused his attention on the board. "Throwing everything we’ve got into it! Looks like a slim hope, though, from the way Gojira is pulling away."

"But at least the probe has slowed tremendously," Mr. Swift noted. "Whatever’s taken control of it isn’t letting it burn up."

Wordlessly admitting failure, Tom rose from his chair and began to pace angrily. "I can’t believe some enemy has access to all the precision data they’d need to catch the probe in midflight, as we’d planned to do. They may just be diverting it somehow, knocking it out of our hands so they can recover it later."

A newsman asked Dr. Otsukora, "What happens if it’s allowed to splash down? Will the matter-retrieval experiment be ruined?"

"If will not say ruined," was the reply. "The findings will have been compromised. But the contents will surely be of scientific interest, nevertheless."

Tom continued the thought. "If they let the probe capsule fall into the sea, and the impact doesn’t destroy it, there’s only one hope of recovery—to plot the exact geographical position and then get to the spot before the enemy does!"

"Roger!" Bud agreed with excitement. He was ready for the chase!

The Sea Charger’s radar dishes had been shifting constantly to keep their focus on the two targets. Now the chief radarman reported: "Gojira’s off the scope, over the horizon."

"The probe’s guidance system is no longer acknowledging our signals!" one of the telemetry scientists called out. "It’s blacked out. We’re not getting a peep back from her."

Admiral Walter was engaged in animated conversation with Mr. Moritsu and his technical team, and more than a few arms were making like dignified windmills. Then, as the admiral snapped out orders to his own Navymen, Tom exchanged a brief worried glance with his father. Each was pondering the same thought.

Could Tom find the priceless deep-space probe? Or would it soon be in possession of a mysterious enemy?

CHAPTER 2

SARGASSO LOOK-SEE

ADMIRAL Walter, grim-faced, flashed a questioning look at Tom. But what it expressed was not really a question. "Then recovery has failed?"

"I’m afraid so, sir."

The sole remaining blip, the Recoverer, was still visible on screen as the radar dishes tracked it, moving in a way that indicated the steep downward plunge of their target. Its desperate and futile race had finally exhausted its fuel. This missile, at least, would be buried at sea.

For a moment Tom felt numb with despair. But he set his jaw firmly and turned to the admiral. "Sir, I’d like helicopters readied for take-off immediately," Tom said. "As soon as we get data from the tracking instruments on the more distant ships and whatever the space station picked up, there’s a good chance we’ll know where Gojira finally comes down. If it’s not too far distant I’ll be able to lead the chopper fleet to the general location in my jetrocopter. There are special sensor instruments aboard that could make a difference."

Admiral Walter nodded tersely. "Very well. Then what?"

"It depends of the details," Tom replied. "If she’s gone into the water, we can mark the site with a constant-position radio buoy. Then..."

"Then you’ll do whatever you think up during the flight!" declared Damon Swift.

Crewmen were detailed for the trip. Meanwhile the international media crowd was milling about restlessly. "What about us?" asked a woman whom Tom recognized as a respected network broadcaster.

"You all have the right to report this matter as you see fit," responded the Admiral. "But I’d ask you to be responsible enough not to sensationalize what you’ve seen. This ‘pirate missile’ business is unconfirmed speculation. We still have every reason to hope for a complete recovery of the probe."

"In this case," muttered Bud with a wink, "every reason is one big reason—named Tom Swift!"

Bud’s best pal shrugged off the compliment, but the news people couldn’t help nodding. Ever since his first adventure in his Flying Lab, the youthful inventor had been involved in any number of daring exploits and thrilling situations. Time and again, Tom had had to combat enemy spies and vicious plotters bent on stealing the Swifts’ scientific secrets or foiling their bold endeavors.

Tom’s research projects had taken him from one end of the world to the other, far into outer space and into the depths of the ocean. His latest achievement, receiving the visitor from Planet X, had been to construct a robot body for the mysterious brain energy from that distant, nameless star-world. Now, Tom realized, he was on the brink of another adventure which might—surely would!—hold unexpected dangers. As a matter of fact, he thought wryly, the "unexpected" has already happened!

He and Bud rushed onto the deck where the craft that had brought them to the ship, named the Skeeter Two, awaited them. This was the most recent model of the jetrocopter line manufactured by Swift Enterprises’ affiliate, the Swift Construction Company. The jetrocopters were compact, streamlined vehicles that could hover on pulse-jet rotor blades like a helicopter or soar at high speeds by means of tail jets. The wingless helicraft was supported during forward flight by the unpowered free action of its rotor blades, which functioned in the manner of an autogyro to provide lift.

The youths lifted off at jet speed in the direction in which the Gojira capsule had disappeared, Tom on the stick and Bud taking the copilot’s chair. Other choppers from the Charger and the rest of the recovery fleet joined them. But Tom had soon left them far behind.

"Call me impatient," he murmured to Bud. "We’ll radio our position when we find something."

Readings on the course of the probe were pouring in from a variety of sources, fed into the craft’s guidance computer automatically. "So where to?" asked Bud as the Skeeter began to bank in a curve.

"A little west of due north, looks like." Tom brought up a map on the control board monitor screen. "In the direction of the Bahamas, roughly." Bud asked if the highjacked probe were still descending. "From the last reports, apparently so, though very shallowly. That’s reassuring, at least. Whoever snagged it must know that the particle collection cells can’t stand too much of a shock."

"We’re the ones who got the shock," Bud retorted.

Wryly agreeing, the blond-haired young inventor chuckled at his black-haired friend. "It’s all very weird. Gojira is clearly under someone’s physical control. Yet its speed and trajectory suggested that it was still following a modified ballistic course. Despite what I said about a missile, Gojira hasn’t been snapped up, just diverted and slowed."

Unfortunately, the jetrocopters were not designed for supersonic flight. It seemed to the boys that a great deal of time was oozing by. They continually corrected their heading as they received updated information. "Well, Gojira is now outside the ground-space radar window," Tom reported. "And the outpost scope can’t pick it up anymore either, even with electronic enhancement. Too deep in our muggy, murky atmosphere."

"Jetz!" grumbled Tom’s black-haired copilot. "What can we do?"

Tom brushed his hand through his blond crewcut. "By extrapolating the course heading and rate of descent, we have a general area to search. But that’s assuming the pirates don’t change its course toward the end just to throw us off. For the time being, though, it’s all we have to go on."

"Then let’s go take a look-see, skipper!"

Finally Tom slowed the Skeeter, switching over to hover mode. Bud craned his neck, gazing down intently through his half of the double-domed cockpit viewport. "Just where are we, Tom? The ocean’s a funny color, with big dark patches all over the place. What are they, rocks?"

Tom shook his head. "Sargassum, pal—great big tangled clumps of floating seaweed. Welcome to the Sargasso Sea!"

Bud had heard of the Sargasso, of course—the legendary, notorious "Sea of Lost Ships" that had awed and worried Columbus during his voyage. "Glad we’re not down there in a boat," he remarked. "I hear the stuff gets tangled in the screws. And if you try to cruise through it in a sailboat, be prepared to spend a few centuries as a skeleton!"

Tom managed what passed for a smile. "The Sargasso has quite a rep, even going back to the days of Roman triremes, who knew of its eastern extension near the Azores. Gojira’s floating somewhere below—or more than likely somewhere on the bottom and not floating. We’ve got to find it."

"C’mon, genius boy. You never fail! Like they say, it’s not a problem, it’s a challenge."

"Well," said Tom, "I’m glad you’re optimistic! So far this morning I feel like I’ve let down a whole country."

Bud gave his chum a look of affectionate wrinkled-brow sympathy. They sat quietly for a time as Tom guided the chopper back and forth over a range of hundreds of miles.

"There’s gotta be a way to narrow things down," Bud muttered. "Can’t you drag out a new Tom Swift invention or something?"

"Funny you should say that, flyboy." Tom gave a grin and jerked his thumb backwards over his shoulder. "Maybe it’s time to give our own ‘precious cargo’ a try!"

Bud twisted in his seat, looking for the first time into the open hold just behind the cockpit. Mounted on what looked like a swivel-base of some sort was a long flat-sided object, very narrow. "Hmm. Could be a box for some very long-stemmed roses. Or maybe a coffin for some guy who got caught in a taffy-pulling machine."

"Remind me to laugh after we find the probe. Anyway, it’s my new LRGM."

"Right," said Bud dryly. "Tom, whenever one of your gizmos has initials instead of letters, I get nervous. Know why? Because if it’s too complicated to give a real name to, chances are I won’t be able to understand it at all!"

"This one’s not so bad," was the response. "It just means Long Range Gravitoscopic Mapper."

"Just?"

The young inventor laughed. "Okay, pal, you got me laughing after all. Now listen."

"Uh-huh. A Swift-Barclay explanation moment."

"Its major intended use, a pretty important one, will be to detect fissile nuclear material from a distance—from a plane, for example. The gimmick is to detect the greater atomic weight of plutonium or other such stuff directly. Not by its radiation, in other words." Tom noted that the device would be much more sensitive and accurate than his previous radioactive ore detection invention, called the Damonscope. "That one sensed the effects of radiation in an indirect way, and wouldn’t work if the target material was too deeply buried or shielded. But the LRGM just laughs at barriers!"

"Good for it!" retorted Bud. "Do I dare ask how it works?"

"By gravitation." Tom explained that the long rectangular chassis enclosed several thousand precisely tuned laser beams running parallel to one another down its length, through a vacuum. "Now you’ve heard of the red shift, haven’t you?—the cosmic Doppler effect?"

"It’s how they came up with the idea that the universe is expanding."

"That’s right. When astronomically distant objects are receding from our instruments very rapidly, their characteristic spectrum-lines get shifted toward the red—the lower-frequency—end of the spectrum, and the degree of shift tells you how fast the source is moving."

"Just as I thought. I did read the first chapters of all those books, you know."

Tom continued: "What you may not know is that gravity also causes a similar shift. The wavelengths get stretched in a G-field, and the amount of stretching tells you how strong the field is. What the LRGM does is measure the slight shift of frequencies that can be attributed to variations in gravitational tension, which is exactly proportionate to local mass—the greater the mass, the stronger the gravitational effect. By measuring these variations along a straight line as we scan back and forth, the pattern of masses can be mapped out by a sort of triangulation."

"Which lets you pinpoint where the nuke slugs are." Tom’s pal gave an appreciative whistle. "You know, I followed that pretty well! So how do you use it to find the Gojira capsule?"

"You can use it to detect any sort of substance, not just nuclear material, provided the amount is great enough to produce a detectible ‘bump’ in the ambient gravitational field. The LRGM might be able to distinguish the metal of the capsule from the water around it, or the sea floor beneath."

"Fantazmatic!" exulted Bud. "But I know these gravity-bumps aren’t strong enough for a regular guy like me to feel—even if I do have the bod of an athlete who likes to play for fun! The thing must be pretty tightly calibrated, hmm? Real sensitive."

Tom gave Bud a familiar look that said: that’s a mouthful, pal! "Chum, the mass of the capsule is so slight compared to the surrounding ocean and the earth that it’s like trying to take a snapshot of a human hair on a barbershop floor—from Mars! But in theory the system is just that sensitive." He added that utilizing the gravitational effect offered a great advantage, as nothing could block or shield this fundamental force of nature.

After laying-in a search pattern on the Skeeter’s guidance computer, the young inventor activated his machine and oriented it downward to begin the scanning process. Its tiny electric motors whirred as it swung gently back and forth on its gimballed supports.

"Anything, pal?"

"Not nuttin’, flyboy," was the reply. "But we’ve just started."

The jetrocopter paced back and forth across the calculated target area, which was roughly 60 miles in diameter—188 square miles of water. "And that’s assuming she didn’t make any last-minute turns, or get gobbled-up by some sort of recovery craft," Tom noted in a tone of tired discouragement. "The pirates could have had a ship waiting on the surface."

"Don’t give up the waterlogged ghost just yet," counseled Bud. "At least your gravy-scope’s panning out fine."

Tom snorted. "Nice nickname. But you’re right. The LRGM is giving us some great topographical data. Not to mention a sunken ship or two!"

"Yeah," Bud added nervously, "with real Sargasso skeletons aboard. I never have gotten over—"

"Hey!" Tom interrupted. "What’s that?"

Bud looked past his chum’s pointing finger to the glowing readout monitor. Superimposed over the multicolored contours of the sea floor was a strange dead-white shape. It was somewhat triangular, like a broad and curving spear-head, moving along slowly across the scope.

"Looks like one of my old pals," Bud said. "A Devilfish. Seriously, is it a manta ray?"

Tom’s reply was faint with sheer bewilderment. "Ohhh, no—it’s not a fish. Look at the settings dial. The area of the monitor sweep is almost a mile square!"

"Good night! Then that thing must be about a half mile across!" Bud could hardly believe it. The object was larger than the Sea Charger—larger than the biggest of aircraft carriers!

Tom clenched his hand on the pilot’s stick. "I’m steering us closer, right over it." In a moment he half-turned to his copilot. "Its size isn’t the only thing that gets me, Bud. The shape shows on the scope as white because we’re not getting anything from it. Nothing! It’s not only not producing its own gravity distortion, it’s actually blocking out the ambient field from below! But physics doesn’t allow—"

His words were choked off as the Skeeter abruptly woggled to the right, then to the left. And then, her deck tilting violently, the chopper lunged downward in a merciless dive!

Tom fought the controls, but it was no use. "We’re going to hit!" he cried.

CHAPTER 3

THE TREACHEROUS TRIANGLE

THE Skeeter Two was foundering as if caught in the world’s champion downdraft! Despite the pulse of the rotors straining above their heads, the waves were drawing nearer by the second.

Suddenly Tom reared back as Bud’s arm shot across in front of him. The black-haired youth flopped a switch over with the back of his hand, grabbing the copilot’s stick with the other. Then he began, frantically, to manipulate the controls on the copilot’s board. The rotor jets fell silent as the craft’s tail engines came on line with a roar. Bud was trying to punch his way to safety!

It took a moment—too long a moment!—for Bud to use the jetrocopter’s gyros to reverse the slant of the deck. The Skeeter’s nose now angled skyward, her engines seaward. The powerful forward thrust would now work against whatever unknown force was dragging them down.

The little jetcraft shook, rocked, vibrated like a guitar string. Then with a sudden leap she broke free.

Climbing sharply, Bud put in a good vertical mile, then leveled off. "Figured the tail jets would give us more muscle than the hover blades," he explained to Tom, voice unsteady.

"Flyboy," Tom gasped, "that was—"

"You would have thought of it, skipper. I was just a nanosec ahead of you."

"No. I don’t think I would have, not in time." The young inventor’s voice was sober. "You came through, Bud—as always. I push us into danger; you pull me out."

Bud Barclay turned his gray eyes toward his friend. "The day I can’t be by your side anymore, doing whatever it is I manage to do, is the day I head for the clouds without a plane. You know that, don’t you? It’s not just your life, Tom." He looked away. "Control back to pilot."

They flew on for a time, taking care to avoid the area of the ocean that the mysterious craft seemed to have been heading toward. Tom’s "gravy-scope" revealed nothing else of interest. Finally they radioed the helicopter fleet, still en route, to turn back unless ordered otherwise by Admiral Walter. "There’s nothing here, folks. No sign of the probe." He then contacted the Sea Charger and reported to the Admiral and his father. Tom had decided not to mention the weird phenomenon they had encountered—not over the open radio frequencies.

The last leg of their search had taken them on an easterly heading. Now Bud remarked, "Boats down below, small ones."

"These are fishing waters," commented Tom. "Warm and pretty shallow in parts. They’re probably out of Dauphinville on Mer-Soliel."

"Are we close?"

"Mer-Soliel’s about 330 miles to the southwest."

Bud knew that the big Caribbean island sported a vigorous fishing industry. "You know, maybe we could ask around among the fishing crews. They might have seen the capsule come down."

Tom nodded. "Good idea. Hopefully the political problems on the island wouldn’t get in the way. I’ve heard things are a little hot for Americans right now. Anyway, we might as well head on home to Shopton, since Dad plans to stay on the Charger until she docks up north tomorrow." He added, "From the way he sounded on the radio, I think he’s doing a little damage control on behalf of Swift Enterprises."

"Enterprises nothing—on behalf of his genius son!" retorted Bud.

As the jetrocopter streaked northward at jet speed, Tom continued to scan the ocean with the LRGM. Fascinated, Bud watched the monitor screen with keen attention. "Looks like the sea floor terrain is changing down there," he said presently. "If I’m reading the contour colors right, it’s getting deep all of a sudden."

Tom glanced at the navigation readout. "That’s the Nares Plain below us. We’re a little south of the Tropic of Cancer." He switched his attention to the LRGM screen. "I see what you mean. Looks like the sea floor drops down a couple thousand feet or so. I think it’s what they call a ‘sinkhole’—big, from the looks of it."

In an hour the discouraged twosome landed at Fearing Island, the Enterprises facility off the coast of Georgia. Here they refueled the Skeeter for the last leg of the journey north. After some delays they finally touched down on the Swift Enterprises airfield. Darkness had fallen.

"Want to come over for supper?" Tom asked his pal.

Bud laughed. "Supper? It’s almost time for a midnight snack!" Drowsy, Bud begged off, planning to placate his stomach with a fast-food stop on the way back to his apartment in town.

Presently Tom’s low-slung sports car pulled to a stop in front of the Swifts’ big, pleasant house on the outskirts of Shopton. Sandra, Tom’s blond, vivacious sister, greeted him at the door.

"About time!" she teased. "We were beginning to think you two sea-searchers had taken off somewhere." Not wishing to worry his mother and sister, Tom had called home from Fearing during the stopover.

"Think I’d skip town while you and that fried chicken are in Shopton?" Tom grinned.

"What a line!" Sandy’s blue eyes twinkled. "We know it’s the fried chicken you’re really interested in, Tomonomo. But supper’s been over for hours. How does the genius inventor feel about cold mashed potatoes?"

Tom shrugged wearily. "San, today cold mashed potatoes is about all the ‘genius inventor’ deserves. Where’s the rest of that ‘we’ you were referring to?" he inquired. "Has Mom gone to bed?"

"Here I am, dear." Mrs. Swift, slender and sweet-faced, gave Tom a hug—with one arm, as the other bore a warm dinner plate. "Late or not, you don’t think I’d miss this rare opportunity to chat with my favorite, and only, son and daughter, do you?"

Over the delicious dinner Anne Swift had saved for Tom, the conversation turned to the mysterious theft of the Gojira capsule. "We have no real idea how they managed it," Tom explained. "But it was way too high for any kind of conventional aircraft. We assume it’s a missile."

"Who on earth could have fired it?" Sandy asked.

Tom shrugged. "No telling—yet. There’s more than one unfriendly country which would give a lot to embarrass the U.S. and mess up our relations with Japan."

"Is the Gojira valuable in a monetary sense? Some pirate may be planning to make a few doubloons off it!" speculated Mrs. Swift. Then her voice became serious as she added, "You aren’t expecting more trouble, are you?"

Her son grinned. "Mom, it’s the unexpected that I worry about!" He noted reassuringly that the probe thieves might now have everything they had been after, and would have no reason to target Tom or anyone else.

Tom had passed the question off lightly in order not to alarm his mother and Sandy. But inwardly he was none too sure of what his further recovery efforts might encounter in trying to locate the lost probe capsule. One thing was certain. Pirates or no pirates, he and Swift Enterprises were not about to accept defeat!

Next morning at Enterprises the young inventor spent hours in the office he shared with his father trying to work out the next steps in the search. The search area needed to be narrowed down if they were to have any real hope of success. Bud’s suggestion might be the best way to go, he thought. We might as well try to find someone who saw the Gojira come down—or something else suspicious. As he gazed at the models of his inventions that lined the office shelves, he decided that an undersea survey of the region would be the best way to start.

"We could easily combine a survey trip with trying to interview the locals," he murmured to himself.

Tom repaired to his personal lab in the building next door. Midmorning was heralded by a twangy foghorn.

"Tom! Tom!"

"What’s up, Chow?" Tom asked in surprise as the rotund ex-Texan, ex-range cook, and fast friend, came bounding into the lab in something of a panic.

"Boss, it ain’t what’s up that bothers me, it’s what’s down—down in th’ ocean!" gasped Chow Winkler in breathless excitement.

"You mean the lost probe?"

"Wa-aal, not the probe s’much as where it is! That feller Ned, the jet mechanic—he says he heard about what happened and figgered you’d be going down there agin to try’n find her with a sub. Is that true, boss?"

Puzzled, Tom nodded. "That’s the plan for now."

The westerner plopped down on a lab stool, which almost seemed to groan beneath him as it vanished from sight. "Lissen here, that there stretch o’ ocean is haunted—spooked! Ned gave me th’ address fer one o’ them websites, an’ I jest now looked it up on my kitchen computer thingy. Son, it’s the blame Devil’s Triangle!"

The young inventor gave his much-older friend a blank look. "What do you... Oh, what they also call the Bermuda Triangle? Is that it?"

"Abserlootly!" cried the cook vigorously. "An’ I read all about it. Boats go into it and show up gone. There was this plane that flew over it on a trainin’ flight, an’ all a-sudden they radioed back that they ’as travellin’ through another d’mension, not o’ sight er sound but o’ mind!" He shuddered. "Never heard from agin! And then there’s this big ship that up and disappeared and wound up in Philadelphia—Philadelphia, mind you! Kin you b’lieve that?"

Tom spoke with cautious affection. "Pard, those are just old rumors that a few people have sensationalized to sell books."

"I dunno, son. Sounds t’me like that there triangle’s a mighty treacherous place." Then he paused thoughtfully for a moment. "Though come t’think on it, I guess there were some books on that website thet they said you could order."

The young scientist-inventor put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. "Chow, thanks for the warning. Tell you what—come down there with us. Maybe you can steer us away from trouble."

"M-me?" Chow paled slightly. "Er, wa-aal—guess I’m not one t’turn you down. Been on enough o’ them exper-ditions to write one o’ them travel books. And I’m still alive, ain’t I?" After patting his midsection as if to confirm the supposition, he made up his big mind. "Right then, I’m in! Guess I ’as bein’ a mite foolish, wuzzen I."

"Not a bit, pardner," Tom reassured him. "As a matter of fact, ‘devil’ or not, it turns out there really is something strange and important about that part of the Atlantic. It just might have been the site of an attack from outer space that changed human history forever!"

CHAPTER 4

DEEP-DOWN JUNGLE

CHOW WINKLER’S eyes bulged out even further than before. "Now Tom, jest remember—I kin change m’mind about goin’ with you any time! You mean t’tell me some o’ them space friends of yours landed in th’ ocean just like they did over in Yucky-tan?"

While on a recent scientific project in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, Tom and his companions had found astonishing evidence that the friendly if mysterious extraterrestrials, with whom he had been in remote contact, had sent an expedition of their own to the jungle ages ago. The area was not far at all from the southernmost reaches of the so-called Devil’s Triangle.

But Tom shook his head with an apologetic grin. "No—this time I’m the one being ‘sensational’. The attack wasn’t an invasion by aliens, but a devastating strike by a meteor or some other kind of big object from space. It happened thousands of years ago. Here, Chow, I’ll show you."

The cook stood up, surprised. "You mean you got a picture of it?"

"Not a picture, but a computer simulation of the sort of thing that might have happened, based on the evidence used by the scientists who have advanced the hypothesis." The young inventor switched on his computer terminal monitor and accessed a program he had downloaded. "I was looking at it the other day—a reconstruction of the sequence of events, applying mathematical and dynamical principles and our knowledge of planetary space. Now watch and I’ll tell you what’s happening."

The screen first showed an "overhead" schematic of the solar system, with dots representing the planets whirling along in their orbits. "This hazy ring at the outer edge of the solar system is the Kuiper Belt, the same region the Gojira probe visited. As you can see, it’s full of all sorts of floating junk and fragmentary debris."

"Uh-huh," said Chow. "Sorta a great big junkyard."

"Right, or since you’re a cook you might call ’em leftovers. Anyway, all these millions and billions of things drift around in orbits of their own, one for each; and pretty often they cross paths and collide—see?" As he pointed, two of the objects came together and shattered into many pieces. One piece was sent on a curving trajectory toward the inner solar system. "That fragment looks small on the screen, but it could be huge, tens or hundreds of miles across."

Chow inquired, "What’s she made of? Hear tell it’s ice, mostly."

"Sometimes," agreed Tom. "But some of the larger chunks end up as the nuclei of comets, and we know now that such objects aren’t just ‘dirty snowballs’ as was once thought—they can be fairly solid, rocky masses."

"An’ yuh’re sayin’ that this one here came right down on our heads?"

"That’s the theory." Tom explained that such a long-orbit object would probably circle the sun thousands of times before passing close enough to a planet like Earth to be diverted by its gravitational field. But if the delicate orbital mechanics came out just right, its trajectory could eventually cause it to plunge deep into our atmosphere. "As a matter of fact," he continued, "that’s what probably gave us our moon. A massive collision splashed enough material out into space that it fell back together as a separate body."

Chow studied the screen, which had jumped to a much greater magnification, showing Earth as a disk. "Looks like this one’s gonna hit, all right."

The simulation showed the space stranger skimming the earth’s envelope of air at a flat angle. At first it broke into a few smaller fragments which rebounded back into space, making several high orbits before touching the atmosphere again. Eventually, though, a herd of fragments entered deeply. With the screen showing an outline of the American continents, the watchers could track the fragments on a shallow arc across North America from the northwest to the southeast. They finally plunged into the ocean beyond the Bahamas, due east of the Straits of Florida and well out in the Atlantic.

"An’ that’s right inside the Triangle," declared Chow. "Which means it’s also where you’ll be pokin’ around fer that rocket."

Tom switched off the monitor. "In fact, I think we passed close to one of the supposed ‘impact craters’ when we were flying home yesterday. There are two main ones, big oval depressions—and I do mean big! Almost the size of Cuba."

"Which makes them jest finger-food compared to Texas," pronounced the cook with satisfaction.

"Anyway it happened thousands of years ago, if it happened at all," Tom noted. "It’s just a theory. But it’s possible the spreading effects of the impact—monster-sized tsunami waves and fracturing ripples through the Earth’s crust, as well as steam and dust in the upper atmosphere that could have blocked the sun for years—well, it could have destroyed early civilizations emerging in the Americas. It might even be what sunk the island of Atlantis!"

"Yup—the sunken city o’ gold we went to." As Chow, thoughtful and momentarily calmed, went on his way back to the kitchen, the postulated ancient cataclysm stuck in Tom’s mind. I sure would like to look for scientific evidence while we’re down there on the ocean floor, he told himself. But finding the capsule has to be the first goal.

Early the next morning the majestic Sky Queen was lifted into daylight from its underground hangar berth. This mammoth, solar-powered skyship had been Tom’s first major invention. A three-deck craft known as the Flying Lab, it was equipped with complete laboratory facilities for research in any corner of the globe. Jet lifters in the belly of the fuselage enabled the craft to take off vertically and also to hover.

The ship roared skyward with Bud at the controls and Tom working out some ideas in one of the work cubicles. Along with a small crew, Chow was aboard and already cooking a late breakfast in his well-seasoned galley.

As Bud watched New York turn to New Jersey en route to Fearing Island, he was surprised by a familiar voice greeting him from behind. "Hey, Doc!" responded the youth as he swiveled to face Doc Simpson, Enterprises’ talented medic. "What’re you doing up here in the sky? Somebody got the sniffles?—or are you on hand in case Tom or I get conked on the head?"

"That’s a given!" the young physician gibed. "Actually, I invited myself along to Fearing to make one of my periodic checks on the undersea farm. Got to make sure the fish haven’t turned it into a cafeteria."

Bud knew what Doc was referring to. A researcher in medicine as well as a practicing medical doctor, he had recently been working on a project involving some plants that he had run across in New Guinea on one of Tom’s expeditions which had since been genetically altered. The hybridized, gene-spliced organisms were being grown underwater in the warm shallows next to Fearing’s shore, and Doc—like Tom and Bud an expert skin- and scuba-diver—monitored their development with frequent visits. His hope was to develop a medication that would counteract some of the physical effects on humans of work in extreme environments, such as under water or up in space.

"Have you had much luck in your project?" Bud inquired. "I heard you’d already begun some testing on animals."

"That’s right," was the reply, "and the results have been very promising, with no signs of toxicity. And by the way, speaking of rumors—I hear there’s been a secret test or two on a human subject. Namely the researcher himself!" As Bud chuckled, Simpson added with a wink, "Can’t do science without a few calculated risks. Those wonderful computer simulations only take you so far!"

"Yeah. Which is exactly why Tom and I get conked on the head every third Tuesday," remarked Bud dryly.

Time flew like a jet. It wasn’t long before the supersonic craft came in sight of Fearing Island base, a few miles off the coast. After transmitting the coded clearance signal to the fleet of drone mini-planes that guarded the aerial perimeter, Bud circled the island once. Though primarily the launch and control site for the Swifts’ various spacecraft, Fearing also served as a berthing and supply base for Tom’s advanced submersibles—the seacopters and jetmarines. Bud smiled as he saw the crimson Sea Hound seacopter gleaming in the Atlantic sun far below. The saucer-shaped craft had carried Tom and Bud into many an undersea adventure. It sported an enclosed central rotor well outfitted with reversible-pitch blades to switch from air-cushion lift to undersea diving. Superheated steam jets provided forward propulsion in either element.

The Sky Queen settled down on its special landing pad and its crew disembarked, and Doc Simpson headed off to suit-up for his underwater inspection. Tom supervised the transfer of a special piece of cargo from the Queen to the seacopter. For purposes of the subocean search, he was adding his new LRGM device to the seacop’s arsenal of detection instruments.

As the van carrying Tom, Bud, and Chow drew near the seacopter dock with the gravy-scope snugged away in back, two figures in the Sea Hound’s command compartment waved through the curving viewpane. One was Zimby Cox, a veteran seacop pilot. The other was husky Mel Flagler, a talented technician and deep-water engineer who, like Zimby, had recently been part of the Swift expedition to Aurum City, the undersea city of gold.

Zimby poked his head out the small hatch atop the flat hull. "All set on our end," he called. "Lead the way, Cap’n Tom!"

"Aye-aye!" Tom replied. "Just as soon as we’ve got the LRGM on board and battened down."

The atom-powered seacopter was able to travel through the ocean depths nearly as fast as a surface speedboat. They reached the search area for the lost probe before the sun had touched the top of the sky. Already on hand were ships of the Navy task force assigned by Admiral Walter to participate in the ongoing search operation. The Sea Hound buoyed up and settled onto the surface of the water, and Tom spoke to the Admiral for a time by radiocom.

Tom learned that as yet no sign of the lost far-space prober had been detected. "My men are disappointed, as you can imagine," Walter reported grimly from his post on the Sea Charger. "As for our colleagues from Japan—well, your Dad’s been sweet-talking them on the subject of the wonders of science and technology and future joint efforts. But I’d say we have a quiet diplomatic crisis on our hands. Moritsu has already flown out, back to home. Happy he’s not. Most of their technical team is still here, though." In reply Tom again promised to do his best. "I’ll gladly take you up on that, son," declared Admiral Walter. "I’m afraid all we can do up here is wish you luck."

Diving into the turquoise depths, the Sea Hound began a predesigned survey pattern. "I’m hoping we’ll get some help this time from some of our other detector instruments, now that we’re under the surface," Tom explained to Bud and Chow. "But I’ll still keep the gravy-scope active."

"Say," Chow remarked, "that there’s a right nice name fer an invention."

For several dull hours the effort proved fruitless, and all the crew could do was marvel at the weird submarine jungles of this shallow part of the fabled Sargasso. They were at the very margins of the subsea Great Bahama Bank, only a few miles from the cliffs that edged into the deep waters of the Nares Plain. The nearest landfall was the Turks and Caicos island group to the immediate southwest, then Mer-Soliel further southward.

"Man, look at that stuff!" Bud exclaimed as he gazed at the tangled expanse of subsea foliage. "Like they say, it’s a jungle out there!"

"Sure is," agreed Zimby. "I’ve studied up on aquatic vegetation. ‘Seaweed’ comes in all sizes and kinds, but it really is weed—tough, resilient, and it grows just about everywhere."

"It’s great big algae," Tom remarked; "like the gunk you get on your bathtub or in a swimming pool. But whatever it is," he continued, "if Gojira came down in shallow waters, we’ll have to deal with it."

Presently Mel Flagler called out that he had received an encouraging signal on one of the detector instruments, the sono-resonance locator. "The SRL’s getting something from portside, about 39 degrees. The frequency mix makes sense, but the source is all blurred out. I can’t pinpoint it."

"Still, it’s our first lead!" Tom declared excitedly. "Let’s cruise around and see if we can triangulate on it." The plan was only partially successful. The source of the resonance-tone, whatever it might eventually turn out to be, could not be localized to less than a region occupying several square miles of sea-bottom real estate.

"The densest part of the seaweed jungle, naturally," complained Bud.

"Maybe we’ll get lucky, flyboy," Tom told Bud. "Let’s try the Fat Man suits first." Turning to Zimby Cox, the young inventor added, "Take over, will you, Zim? Mer-man Barclay and I may cover quite a bit of acreage with our suit jets."

"Righto. We’ll stand-to and wait." Cox eased into the pilot’s seat.

"Got a job for me, skipper?" asked Mel.

"Just keep watch on the detector instruments, please. We can’t predict when something might happen to show up."

"I’ll sonophone you if anything shows."

Chow frowned. "Don’t hear you givin’ me a job, boss. Seems t’me I recollect you makin’ a point of askin’ me along on this here drive."

"I do have a job for you, pardner, and its important," replied Tom. "I hereby deputize you Acting Captain of the Sea Hound. If you catch Zim or Mel kicking back or goofing off, you’re authorized to clap ’em in irons!"

"You may think yuh’re joshin’ with me, Tom," retorted the cook; "but brand my submarine sixgun, these two young hoots better not test me!"

Making their way back to the Sea Hound’s cramped airlock hold, Tom and Bud each climbed into a Fat Man suit and went out through the hatchway. The suits, shaped like huge steel eggs with an ultrastrong Tomaquartz viewdome at the top, had mechanical arms and legs that responded delicately to the operator within. Several intense underwater lamps provided illumination, and small swivel-jets gave them mobility.

Entering the weed-jungle, the boys waddled about on their robotic legs, the built-in searchlights of their suits piercing the murky gloom surrounding the tall streamers of Sargassum bacciferum that dangled from above or rose from rocky anchors below. They seemed to be making their way through a dense forest of waterlogged weeping willow trees! But they saw nothing on the ocean bottom but the deep accumulation of sand and silt, which made the going even more difficult.

"This is too slow," Tom called over his sonophone in frustration. "We’ve been out a half-hour and we haven’t covered more than a few acres between the two of us."

"I know," came the reply signal. "Let’s try cruising along on the suit-jets a little higher up, where the weed thins out."

"Good idea," Tom approved. "I’ll head off eastward, you take the west. But remember, don’t get up too near the surface—the sun-glare in this murky water makes it like trying to see through a gauze curtain."

Setting off on his own, Tom prowled about for several minutes, alarming a few fish but accomplishing nothing else.

"Tom! Help! Help me!"

Tom’s blood froze. An alarm signal from Bud—and it sounded like a matter of life and death!

CHAPTER 5

IN SEARCH OF AN INVENTION

"BUD! Where are you? I can’t see you!" Tom’s sonophoned voice was frantic with alarm—the dark seaweed jungle blocked his view in all directions.

The young inventor ascended another fifty feet with his suit-jets. But as predicted, the wavering emerald sunlight from above only masked the distant gloom with a nearby glare.

He repeated his call again and again, receiving no answer back from his friend. Switching frequency, he called the Sea Hound and breathlessly explained the situation.

"Can you see Bud’s Fat Man on any of the instruments, Mel? Sonarscope, metal detector —anything?"

"Maybe, chief! Pretty strong readings delta northeast from you, 17 degrees."

"Distance?"

"About a half-mile, little less. But with all the weed, I can’t quite—"

"Never mind! I’m on it!"

Tom jetted in the indicated direction, ordering Mel to switch over to the LRGM. He realized with despair that neither Mel nor Zimby had been given more than the briefest instruction in the operation of the new invention. Nevertheless, Mel quickly called back—the gravy-scope showed what was almost certainly Bud’s Fat Man suit dead ahead!

"I see him!" Tom cried. "He’s all knotted up in the weed!"

Arm-thick streamers all but completely covered Bud’s suit top to bottom, wrapping about the metal egg like yarn about a yarn-ball. But though Tom could not see his pal’s face, the Fat Man’s metal arms were writhing and chopping frantically, trying to tear away the weed. But the stuff was tough as burlap, and the athletic young aquanaut seemed to be making little headway.

More alarming was the fact that a thick plume of bubbles was rising from the weed-masked bulk of Bud’s suit. Good grief! Tom thought in fear. The suit’s leaking air!

Jetting up close, Tom lent his own metal claws to the desperate struggle. The combination of forces turned the tide of war against the stubbornly clinging seaweed, and Tom was finally able to wrench his pal free. He was limp with relief to see Bud’s head through the viewdome, redfaced and panting violently but surrounded by open air, not shrouded in invading seawater.

"I—I couldn’t—catch my breath enough to talk," Bud gasped with heaving words. "I g-got cocky and—fouled the suit in the weed stalks. Trying to twist my way out just—"

"I get the picture," Tom sonophoned.

"Then I started getting a spray of water—"

"The bubbles are coming from a point on your hatch-seam, righthand side. How deep is the water inside?"

"Not deep. It mostly pooled down in the leg hollows." Bud added: "Sure is wet, though!"

"I’ll bet," Tom replied. "Let’s get the Hound to come pick us up."

A quick exam aboard the seacopter showed that Bud was damp but none the worse for wear. "But I didn’t see a thing out there, Tom," the youth admitted ruefully. "From up above you can’t see down into the weed, but down on the sea floor you practically need a machete to get anywhere."

"Yes, the Fat Men are just too big and bulky," the young inventor declared.

"I’m still getting my readings, but no luck zeroing in on the capsule," Mel reported.

Chow added officiously: "An’ I hereby certify that these two have been tryin’ their darndest the whole time."

Zimby asked what Tom planned to try next. The young inventor did not answer, deep in frowning thought.

"Kin I say somethin’, boss?"

Tom gave a distracted nod, and Chow continued. "Wa-aal now, whyn’t you set up one o’ them air bubbles over this whole stretch o’ land, jest like you did at the city of gold? Then mebbe you could go through an’ cut down all that snakeweed out there, so’s we could see."

"I gave some real thought to setting up a hydrodome, Chow," the young inventor responded. The dome was a huge underwater bubble of air, created by Tom’s repelatron device which actually pushed the ocean water away. The air supply inside was kept pure by one of Tom’s osmotic air conditioners which made use of the oxygen dissolved in the water. "It makes sense. But for all the advantages, there’s one big problem."

"Figgers. What is it?"

"If what we’re picking up on the instruments happens to be the Gojira, we still haven’t been able to pinpoint it. That means we’re going to have to comb over many square miles of sea floor, too much to just crawl along on one of the mobile platforms. And even the most powerful water repelatron, like the one we use in Helium City, can’t produce a bubble more than a few acres in area. Water’s just water, but when you start measuring it out by the mile it weighs far too much for our puny machinery to handle."

As Chow nodded his understanding, Mel added, "Even if you could build a great big repelatron and set it up next to its own atomic reactor, the back-pressure from holding up all that weight would drive it right down into the ground like a tent stake."

"Okay, scratch one idea," said Bud. "But there must be other things to try." Silence answered.

Finally Tom said, "Bud, we could skin-dive at this depth."

"With scuba tanks? Let’s give it a whirl," Bud urged.

The seacopter surfaced again, while the boys donned flippers, masks, and air lungs from the Sea Hound’s supply locker. The gear had been modified by Swift Enterprises ingenuity. Most prominently, the full-face Tomaquartz masks were unobstructed by the air-hose hookup, which was underneath the chin.

Tom and Bud dropped over the side and made their way slowly downward into the gray-green depths, accustoming themselves gradually to the increased pressure.

"A lot more freedom of action," Tom told his pal through the miniaturized sonophone unit in his facemask.

Bud replied, "Check! If only we could move along faster than flipper-speed. Jetz, we’ll empty our tanks before we’ve poked through a hundredth of this fish-feed factory!"

Tom conceded the point. Not only was the difficulty of merely getting around in the weed growths a daunting factor, but they didn’t even know if the vague detector-response was the probe in the first place! But our mystery rivals must know exactly where she came down, was his further grim thought. All they have to do is get together the right equipment and come pluck it up! The Gojira could be lost for good any day now—any hour!

"Back to the Hound, flyboy. I think this problem is going to take some inventing."

"Tom Swift, those are the words I’ve been waiting for!" Bud exulted.

The boys surfaced and reentered the bobbing seacopter. Tom spoke to Admiral Walter and his father, reporting with regret his lack of progress.

After Tom had signed off, Mel Flagler approached him. "Skipper, I sure don’t mean to add any discouraging words to the list, but..."

"Has something happened?"

"Nothing good. That resonance-source I was picking up on the sono-resonance locator has disappeared."

Tom groaned softly. "All of a sudden?"

"It just faded out in a blurry-flurry. Since then I’ve picked up a few more—some on the metal-detector, too—but they’re all over the place in this weedy region, and I can’t pin them down. At any rate," he concluded, "they can’t all be Gojira—and maybe none of them are."

Chow reacted sympathetically to the expression on his young boss’s face. "Now son, don’t get yerself discouraged. Mebbe that new gravy-scope’ll turn the trick!"

But Tom could only shake his head listlessly. "I’m afraid the ‘gravy-scope’ is just another Swift flopperoo, Chow. It does okay with larger bulks like the Fat Man suit, but it can’t separate out the mass-density gradients of smaller objects such as the probe—not with all that floating gunk everywhere."

Bud gave his chum a friendly nudge. "Just get a few circuit boards in front of you, genius boy. You’ll lick this thing by morning!"

With a wan smile, Tom ordered Zimby Cox to submerge and head back toward Fearing Island. "One day—lost," he muttered.

After an early supper Tom plunged into the work of invention in his private lab on Fearing.

It seemed to help him clarify his thoughts to carry on a running conversation with himself. "Okay. Definition of problem: finding a small metal capsule that might be somewhere inside a seaweed forest miles across. What are the options?

"Some more sophisticated kind of detector device? Hmm." He went through a little process he called checking in with my brain. "Nope. Don’t feel anything along that line up there waiting to pop out, and time’s a-wastin’.

"So maybe we’ll just have to eyeball it. If someone saw where Gojira hit the water, a thorough yard-by-yard search of the bottom could be practical after all. But..."

Tom visualized trying to mount such a search with several score aquanauts in Fat Man suits. He frowned disgustedly. "We’d spend half the time untangling the searchers from the seaweed, as with Bud. That’s not it. What’s really needed is..."

An idea was beginning to break through the murk!

Suddenly Tom was startled by a sharp rap on the lab door. He glanced at the wall clock—‘suddenly’ had taken up seven hours of concerted work! With a chuckle he set aside a knot of circuitry and opened the door. "Bud! And...?" He didn’t recognize the young man standing next to his pal.

"I’m Jay Willembart, Tom—night shift guy in the communications room."

Tom nodded, shaking hands, and turned to Bud curiously.

"Jay asked me where your lab was, and I walked him over," Bud said. "Besides, I was looking for an excuse to come bug you. And this is a good one, pal!"

Willembart held out a scrap of paper. "I thought it might be better to come here with the written message rather than call you. It came by radio from Mr. Swift on board the Sea Charger."

Tom read over the short message.

Tom, at four-twenty AM your time, go to the island videophone. Kaye will put you in touch with a woman from the State Department, Oriella Carne. Admiral Walter was just informed that the Japanese have received a ransom demand for the Gojira probe.

Tom gasped in Bud’s direction. "Ransom!"

CHAPTER 6

RANSOM DEMAND

AT THE appointed time a physically weary but mentally energized Tom Swift stood before the videophone console in the Fearing Island communications center. Here he waited for whatever details of the alarming event were to come through the private satellite-linked television network that served Swift Enterprises and its affiliates from sites across the country.

The newscaster at the Key West studio, Graham Kaye, appeared on the screen and introduced the attractive African-American woman seated next to him, who then introduced herself again. "Tom, good to meet you—at this late, or rather too early, hour. I’m Oriella Carne. I don’t suppose you’ve run across my name, have you?"

Tom gave her a polite nod and said, "Well, I know I’ve seen your name..."

She laughed daintily. "Thank you for being frank. Most people don’t quite get what my job is, and whom I work for. I actually earn my paycheck as a part of what’s called ‘the executive offices of the President of the United States’. So I report to the big guy when he wants me to. But I spend most of my day hangin’ around the Department of State."

"That’s pretty impressive, ma’am."

This brought another pleasant laugh. "Oh my, I’m talking to Tom Swift and he’s impressed with me!" But then, as if a button had been pushed, she lost her laughter and turned serious. "Let me explain what’s going on—I’m sure the Admiral and your father told you a bit of it." When Tom bobbed his head in confirmation, she continued: "Lately I have been working as a special liaison between our State Department and the American Interests office in Dauphinville, Mer-Soliel. As you know, a few years back the aggrieved citizenry burned the American Embassy to the ground—burned down several city blocks, in fact. So we now run a little office inside the Brazilian Embassy. Do you follow me?"

"I do, ma’am," was the reply.

"I’m quite sure I got this job because I look like the locals—maybe also because my father emigrated from Cuba as a child. They seem to like me, anyway. Even the head of the ruling junta, Colonel Maximille, seems to like me. I’ve never been bothered by the Voudon-Machete."

Responding to the puzzled look crossing Tom’s brow, she explained, "The Voudon-Machete are the personal ‘police’ the junta uses to maintain a nice, well-respected reputation among the populace. Street thugs and murderers on the government payroll, basically. In Mer-Soliel, you really can’t fight city hall."

Tom remarked wryly, "Sounds like a typical setup."

"Absolutely. And the point is, Maximille and his party deny their existence. Which means they can saunter away whistling when a message gets passed along by a known Voudon-Machete contact—to the Japanese Ambassador, Mr. Saikura, in the present case."

"I gather it had to do with the Gojira probe," prompted the young inventor.

Carne nodded. "It stated that the capsule had come into their possession, that they know it is of great value to the Japanese government, and that they would consider turning it over—if!"

"If a ransom is paid?"

"Not a money ransom, Tom," she responded. "A ransom in human form. They are demanding that Japan trade Jean-Sancte Léonide for Gojira."

That was a name Tom had definitely heard of! "Léonide! The ex-President?"

"Oh yes indeed," she confirmed, "the famous, controversial, much loved, much hated President of Mer-Soliel—democratically elected, deposed in a violent coup, flown to safety in his mother’s native country, Japan. Where he has lived ever since in a sort of cordial house-arrest situation."

"As I recall," Tom said, "he was sort of the champion of the poor in Mer-Soliel. Didn’t his followers charge the U.S. with being behind the coup?"

Oriella Carne gave an eloquent shrug. "Let’s not debate the mysteries of history, Tom. The poor people of Cité Quai, the slum district of Dauphinville—about four-fifths of the city!—worship their ‘Papa Sancte’. Others call him a complete fraud and demagogue who looted the National Treasury, such as it was. All we need to consider now is that the Maximille faction wants him extradited back to Mer-Soliel. Supposedly to try him on various charges; in reality to eliminate him as a symbol. In State we have a pool running—how many minutes after arrival before his assassination by those mysterious fun-loving guys, the Voudon-Machete?"

"Japan hasn’t cooperated, though."

"Not to date. But they might well be induced to do so if the reward is the return of their precious Gojira."

It was Tom’s turn to nod. "I see. Léonide’s life for Kuiper dust. But how do you know the claim isn’t bogus? Does anyone really think Mer-Soliel, or those Voudon-Machetes, have the technology to snatch the probe right out of the sky?"

"As to your first question, the ransom note was accompanied by some electronics parts that the Japanese are examining to determine if they were indeed part of the probe capsule. No conclusion yet. As to the question of high-tech—does the name Li Ching ring a bell?"

Tom couldn’t help groaning inside. A stateless international criminal specializing in technological theft, Li Ching had recently shanghaied the Sea Charger using some very high-tech methods indeed! Defeated by Tom, he had escaped by jet. His present whereabouts were unknown. "That puts it in a new light, ma’am," admitted the young inventor. "My father and I suspect Li has been able to get ahold of advanced scientific information from the extraterrestrials, the beings on what we call Planet X."

"Mm-hmm. And of course the quake-maker technology got into the hands of the Brungarians from a similar source." Miss Carne was referring to the recent crisis that transpired while Tom was involved with the visitor from Planet X. Unlike the group known as the Swifts’ space friends, who were stationed within the solar system, the authorities on their world of origin had shown themselves willing to interfere in Earthly society heedless of consequence as part of their scientific studies of the human species.

The memory of the huge gravity-free shape he and Bud had detected suddenly rose in Tom’s mind! Could the weird phenomenon be some sort of advanced craft designed on another planet and piloted by the Voudon-Machete gang?

But Tom was not yet ready to share the inexplicable sighting with anyone outside his circle of close and trusted associates. Instead he said, "I understand the general situation, Miss Carne. But what exactly are you asking Swift Enterprises to do?"

She smiled a cool and rather charmless smile. "Only to continue to use your scientific methods to search for the probe’s present location, at least until we confirm that the Mer-Solielans really do have their hands on it. I’ve provided this backgrounder so you’ll have all the current information. And of course, if you happen to run across any relevant evidence out there under the ocean, we’ll need to know about it immediately. This is an election year in Japan, Tom. Given the role of our Japanese colleagues in supporting us in the Korea face-off, the whole thing is a very delicate diplomatic matter."

"I realize that," replied the young inventor. "We’ll do everything we can."

The last thing Tom noted as the screen went dark was the strange, stern, half-hopeful expression on the face of Oriella Carne.

After a few hours of haunted sleep, Tom returned to work on his solution to the challenge of finding the Gojira probe. When Bud dropped in with a lunch tray Chow had prepared, he found his friend gazing into a large transparent tank with a froth of breaking bubbles at its surface.

"Feeding the fish, genius boy?" Bud asked as he set the tray down within Tom’s reach.

"Just putting my new underwater breathing apparatus to the test." The young inventor indicated a shoebox-sized bulk of wires and components resting on the bottom of the tank. "I call it my electronic hydrolung."

Bud bent down to scrutinize the device, which was producing a steady stream of bubbles. "Tell me something. Why do you need a new approach in the first place? We breath okay in the Fat Men."

"We sure do," agreed his pal. "But those ultra-compressed air cartridges require a lot of de-compression support equipment. Altogether it amounts to almost half the weight of the suit."

"Fine. How about the system we use in the hydrodomes?"

"The osmotic air conditioners?" Tom shook his head with a rueful smile. "They function on the principle of fish gills, drawing dissolved oxygen from the seawater. But have you noticed how big they are, flyboy? You have to move quite a volume of water through the machinery in order to extract enough oxygen to live off of—and the deeper you go, the rarer the dissolved oxygen is. Even the fish have to hold their breath when they dive deep!"

Bud crossed his arms with a smile of resignation. "Not like I didn’t know you had your reasons! So. What’s with Mr. Bubbly in there?"

Tom leaned close to the tank, his young face illuminated by the soft light from inside. "Do you know how semiconductors work?"

"A little bit. Sort of. No!"

"Semiconductor materials—we found some varieties in New Guinea, you remember—conduct electric currents, but weakly. You use ’em in circuit components when you’re looking for control and information transfer rather than raw power."

"Sure! Transistors."

"Among other types. The way semiconductors work is that loosely-bound electrons jump from one atom to the next—there’s your current. And each time they do they leave behind a gap or ‘hole’ which has many of the physical properties of an electron, but with a reverse charge." Tom explained how, under the influence of electrical "pressure," the electron-current would run in one direction along the material while a sort of "hole-current" would flow in the opposite direction.

"I follow you so far," Bud declared. "So how does that help a guy breath underwater?"

"It doesn’t," Tom conceded. "But the general idea sort’ve sparked off my creative instincts. I got this picture in my head of a kind of whole-atom semiconductor that would pry the oxygen atoms loose from the hydrogen atoms in water molecules—which have two atoms of hydrogen for one atom of oxygen. The idea, in other words, is a setup in which the separated oxygen flows one way, the hydrogen the other."

"But that stuff isn’t new," objected Bud with a head-scratch. "Back in high school chemistry, I remember a demonstration of how you could use an electric current to do the same thing, by putting the terminal leads in water."

"It’s called electrolysis," Tom said. "But that sort of approach wouldn’t be efficient or safe to use as part of the equipment of individual divers. What I want is something that produces a good volume of oxygen in an efficient manner, using very low power."

"And you’ve found it?"

The young inventor gave the tank a tap. "Inside the hydrolung are long strips of artificially engineered material that look like lengths of recording tape. They’re basically dense arrangements of nanotubules winding between microscopic chips made of rare-earths composites. When a low current flows down the strip, the atoms of the water molecules inside the tubules become ‘decoupled’ from one another and are forced to migrate in opposite directions by what are called Van der Waal forces, which are extremely weak except right at the surface of the material. As a result, oxygen micro-bubbles accumulate on one side of the strip, hydrogen on the other. Then we just sweep ’em together in opposite directions—and there’s your breath of air."

"Hmm!" Bud looked impressed. And he was impressed with himself for having understood! "That’s the oxygen. What about that leftover hydrogen?"

"It gets combined with carbon dioxide exhaled from the diver’s lungs, using what amounts to the same process, but in reverse. The resultant hydrocarbons are vented into the surrounding water in a very dilute form, safe and practically undetectable. The whole gizmo," concluded Tom, "is powered by just one of my little solar batteries."

Bud gave a couple claps of applause. "So when do we test her out—you and I?"

"Now that I know the system works, it won’t take long to miniaturize it. Give me a couple hours! For the test, we’ll just hook the hydrolungs up to a regular scuba air-feed and face mask." He added that an amount of compressed helium gas would be mixed into the oxygen flow, to replace atmospheric nitrogen.

The afternoon’s test took place in a large saltwater tank near the submersibles pier that was used to check out replacement parts for the jetmarines and seacopters. Tom and Bud wore the new hydrolung units, about the size of portable CD players, attached to their weight belts. Chow Winkler, wearing two big fretful eyes, insisted on standing by.

"I’m gonna jest wait at the top o’ this here ladder," he announced. "An’ if you two young’uns don’t come out when you say you will, brand my sea monkeys, I’m gonna dive right in after you!"

"That’s one quick way to empty the tank," Bud gibed.

The two dropped in feet-first and settled down to the bottom. Bud made the OK sign at Tom, and the young inventor could almost hear his thoughts: still breathing, pal!

Tom had planned the test to run for one hour. An hour underwater in a barren tank proved to be a long long time! After some playful aquabatics they sat down on the bottom, and Bud finally stretched out and pretended to fall asleep. When they climbed out at last they found Chow still at his post, looking fully as bored as they felt. "Wa-aal," said the cook sarcastically, "I sure hope you two had fun down there."

"Fun or not, I feel great!" Tom declared happily. "The hydrolungs worked perfectly!"

Bud clapped him on the back and chortled: "Now back to the briny deep!"

"But first," Tom said, "since you don’t seem to like ‘flipper-speed,’ chum—I have some ideas for a propulsion unit that—"

"Excuse me—Mr. Swift!" Tom turned as a man in the garb of Island Security came trotting up to him. He handed Tom a cellphone. "Got a call for you, sir, from the Sea Charger."

The caller proved to be Tom’s father. "Son, Admiral Walter just spoke to the woman from the State Department, Miss Carne."

"A new development?"

"Yes, new and disappointing, I’m afraid. The Japanese group in charge of the Gojira mission determined that the materials enclosed with the ransom note definitely came from the probe."

Tom groaned. "Bad news. That means we won’t be searching the bottom for the capsule itself anymore, but for clues as to where they took it."

"Tom, I’m sorry to say—that wasn’t all I meant by disappointing," continued Damon Swift gravely. "It seems the Japanese authorities have told the United States that they want to deal directly with the pirate group in their own way, through a process of negotiation. They may consent to making the trade. We are to keep out of it. The search is over!"

CHAPTER 7

HUMAN SUBMARINES

TOM was amazed, dismayed—and angry! "Dad, that’s terrible! There wouldn’t be any need to risk that man’s life if we could find—"

"I feel as badly about the developments as you do, Tom," Mr. Swift interrupted. "Admiral Walter is here with me, and he’s nodding—he regrets it too. But he has his orders." There followed a long pause. Tom waited curiously. Was there more? "Well, that’s all. I know you’ll do the right thing."

After the security staffer had left with the cellphone unit, Chow exploded! "Back off! Run away! Give in! Golsarn it, that sure ain’t the way we do it in Texas, Tom Swift!"

"Lay off, pardner," said Bud quietly. "Tom feels lousy enough."

Tom suddenly grinned! "Lousy? Hey, I feel fine!"

Bud was flummoxed. "Huh?"

"Did I hear wrong?" asked Chow. "Ain’t we supposed t’leave off the search?"

"Actually, mateys, Damon Swift, CEO of Tom Swift Enterprises, didn’t order us to do, or not do, anything!" Tom declared with a mischievous chuckle. "He was just passing along what Admiral Walter had been ordered to do! Did you guys overhear anything like ‘Tom, go home’?" As Bud and Chow shook their heads with vigorous excitement, Tom continued: "Neither did I! And what Dad said about doing the right thing—I’m taking that as a hint that we should go right ahead and see what we can do to find Gojira on our own."

"In other words," said Bud, "unofficially!"

"In other other words," said Chow, "we’re playin’ dumb!"

Tom just smiled. "I’d sure like to know if they’ve got that capsule in their little pirate paws."

"You and I both, pal!" Bud agreed as Chow bobbed his head enthusiastically. "Hey! Why wait? We could use the electronic hydrolungs for scouting around right now!"

"I intend to," Tom said. "But we’ll need speed to cover the area. So first I want to add an ion drive to our equipment."

"Say, I ’as thinkin’ that too!" declared Chow. "Meanin’ about the speed part, not th’ iron part."

"Ion drive? For underwater?" Bud, who was familiar with ion propulsion for spaceships, wrinkled his brow in a challenging frown.

"A goofy idea occurred to me, but I think it may work out," Tom replied. As the three strolled back toward the main facility buildings, he began explaining what he had in mind, thinking out loud. "The idea of so-called hydromagnetic drive—sending an electric current through water so the water can be pushed around by an electromagnetic flux—isn’t new. I think Great-Grandpa Tom did some work on it back in the Fifties, matter of fact."

But the device Tom had in mind would be rather different. The drive unit would take seawater into itself and pass it through a series of permeable membranes that would convey an electrical charge to the fine particulates floating in the water, such as salt, gold, manganese, calcium, and dissolved rock silicates.

"Now look here," Chow objected. "You mean t’say that when we go swimmin’ out in th’ ocean, we’re swimmin’ through all that gritty stuff?"

"You sure are pardner. Fortunately, the granules are mostly too small to be seen, except when they accumulate. The unit will expose the ionized—that is, charged-up—particulates to an electric field flux, which will push them along very powerfully. As the particles are thrust back toward the exhaust nozzle, the water that they’re still floating in will be swept along with them. Thus a stream of water will be forced out the rear thruster nozzle. In turn, that’ll set up a siphoning action through a central tube—in effect, creating a small but powerful water-jet motor." Tom added that high-conduction vanes inside the exhaust chamber would carry off the electric charge, leaving the granules harmless.

"We’ll be human submarines!" Bud exclaimed.

Approaching the residence units near the lab building, Chow announced that it was time to begin working on supper for the boys and the Fearing executive staff. "How about making it a fast-food delight, huh, Chow?" Bud asked. "Doing nothing for an hour gave me a big appetite."

Tom begged off. "I want to start in on my propulsion gimmick right away, while it’s fresh in my mind. You go ahead with our cowboy chef, Bud. I’ve still got half a sandwich in the lab fridge."

Tom plunged into work on his newest invention like a famished man wolfing down the most appetizing meal on Earth. The idea was simple enough in itself, Tom felt. The main problem would be the design job—laying out a compact, lightweight unit which a diver could easily carry on his back.

Fascinated, a little obsessed, the young inventor worked late into the evening, stopping only in response to his youthful body’s need for a few hours of rest on the lab cot. By midmorning the next day, Tom had assembled a pilot model of his ion-drive hydrojet. In appearance, it was a slender metal cylinder, two feet long. An inner concentric tube, flaring out at each end, extended its length a bit further. On one side of the unit was a small streamlined stanchion that would be fastened to crossing straps on the wearer’s back.

Tom had set up a tank in his laboratory to test the device. The long, narrow enclosure was filled chest-deep with seawater, and the hydrojet was mounted on a metal unitrack running the length of it on the bottom. Tom set up his control board alongside, with the main power switch within easy reach. The drive unit was connected to the board by a suspended cable.

He decided to enter the tank for the first run of tests, to make it easier to adjust certain mechanical elements in the device as needed. "Boy, this’ll be like playing with a speedboat in a bathtub!" Tom thought with a chuckle as he changed into swim trunks.

He climbed into the tank and slid the drive unit to one end of its track. Then Tom metered out power slowly. With a gentle whoosh, the ion-drive unit whizzed along the unitrack to the other end of the tank where it was caught by a cushioned bumper.

"Not bad," Tom muttered, a pleased grin on his face. "At least it works fine if you don’t want to get anyplace in a hurry! Now I’ll rev it up a little."

He slid the drive unit back to starting position at his end of the tank, then opened the power switch wider to what would be its standard setting. The ion-drive unit responded by taking a little jump down the track—and then the unexpected intervened! With a sudden gurgling roar, the hydrojet went violently streaking down the rail trailing a backwash of froth. Tom had just started across the tank when he found himself knocked backwards by an overwhelming force, powerless to move.

Tom was pinned helplessly against the end wall of the tank by the fierce water-jet exhaust! And the control switch was beyond his reach!

Good grief! I’m trapped! Tom squirmed desperately in a vain attempt to free himself. The ion-drive unit had hurtled to the far end of the tank, its nose pressed against the catcher. But its exhaust tube was still jetting out a current of water with stunning force, like the piledriver column from a water cannon. Tom could feel the near-crushing pressure against his chest, even the full length of the tank away!

"H-h-help!" Tom gasped. He could barely gulp enough air into his lungs to force out a peep. He felt as if his last ounce of breath were being squeezed out by the viselike pressure, as if the skin of his chest were being water-blasted away.

Moments dragged by in a cloud of agonizing spray. Suddenly a gravelly Western voice reached him, singing "Home on the Range." It drew closer, swelling into a foghorn drone as the lab door swung open.

Good old Chow! Tom thought. Thank heavens! The grizzled, bowlegged cook ambled cheerfully into the laboratory, pushing a midmorning snack cart. But, to Tom’s dismay, he cast only a passing glance at the figure in the tank on the far side of the room.

"Pastry break, son!" Chow announced loudly over the liquid roar. Evidently he had not realized the stricken young inventor’s dilemma! "Extra good today too, if I do say so m’self," the old Texan went on, pouring out a tumbler of chilled milk. "Fresh made! Wa-aal, come on, buckaroo! Them inventor chores’ll wait five minutes. Brand my cactus salad, if there’s one thing that riles a cook—"

Summoning all his foundering strength, Tom croaked out weakly: "Chow!... Help!"

At the strange sound of Tom’s voice, Chow jerked around. His eyes bugged out at the look on the young inventor’s face, the stark redness of his pummeled chest. Then he dashed to his young friend’s side. "Wh-what do you want me t’do?" Chow yelled. Tom couldn’t muster the strength to answer! The roly-poly chef was quivering in panic—and then his prairie eye caught sight of the control board. He dashed to the board and slammed shut the main switch, cutting off power to the ion-drive jet.

"Tom! Aw son, speak to me!" Chow cried in fear.

CHAPTER 8

PORPOISE TAG

THE VICTIM of high technology coughed violently—and moved! "Whew! Th-thanks, pardner!" Tom’s chest was heaving as he gulped in air to relieve his tortured lungs. Presently, muscles quivering like jello, he gestured for the cook to help him climb out of the tank.

"B-b-brand my rhubarb rockets," Chow stuttered. "What in tarnation happened?"

"Guess I gunned my new hydrolung-diver jet a bit too hard," Tom said sheepishly.

The ex-Texan gulped. "I should say! You sure one o’ them blame sea swimmers needs all that much throttle, boss?"

Still panting, Tom waggled his head. "No. Something went wrong. The drive unit started off just fine when I upped the power. Then a second later—whoosh! I’ve got to weed out the malfunction or the diverjet is useless."

Chow was staring at his friend with big eyes. "Say, Tom—did you useta have hair on yer chest?"

"Er, not much."

"Whew-ee! Guess it’s okay, then."

After fussing over Tom for a while and gently forcing a cruller down his throat, Chow left the aching youth alone to contemplate his wayward invention. An hour later Bud came bursting into the laboratory. "Hey! What’s this I hear about your getting hammerlocked by a water jet?" the muscular young pilot asked.

Tom laughed good-naturedly. "Nothing serious. In fact, I felt pretty silly," he told his chum. "My ion-drive gizmo—I’m calling it a diverjet—decided it didn’t like me. But I found what went wrong, thank goodness. The intense field-flux was creating an electromagnetic ‘hot-spot’ in the guide rail next to it, by induction, which interfered with the thrust damper. The overall shape of the rail was the main culprit."

"Can you fix it?"

"It’ll need to be re-thought, actually. But for now, all we have to do is stay at least a hand’s-breadth away from anything long, narrow, and metallic."

"Definitely!" Bud picked up the cylindrical assembly from the workbench. "This it?" he asked, his curiosity immediately aroused. "Sure weighs a lot less than those scuba tanks."

Tom nodded and demonstrated the device in the test tank—from which the offending rail had been removed. Bud whistled with glee. "Man! With this rig, we can scoot around like a pair of barracudas!" he exclaimed. "When do we slip under the waves for a real test?"

"Any time! Let me put together a second unit and we can do some diving off Radar Point, where Doc has his sea farm. He can watch over us!"

"Let’s make sure he has his doctor’s black bag with him!"

By four o’clock Tom had the apparatus perfected in duplicate. Carrying the equipment in a small jeep, he met Bud and Doc Simpson at the stubby promontory dominated by one of the island’s radar towers. "If you had three of ’em, I’d sure be happy to join you," Doc remarked with a smile. "The hydrolung would make my underwater harvesting a breeze! But I’ll just poke my head under and watch you through my scuba mask. Stay clear of my farm, by the way—those delicate plants are showing a lot of promise."

"That’s great to hear, Doc," Tom said.

Tom and Bud donned their torso straps and weight belts, with the hydrolungs attached, and connected the hydrolungs’ oxygen outlets to the air-hoses that snaked up to their scuba masks. Then they helped each other strap on the ion drive diverjets, which were controlled by knobs on a small box affixed to their weight belts on the side opposite the hydrolungs.

"Down we go, into the wilds of sharks!" Bud chortled lustily. "Watch your step, Tom."

"Just make sure you come up again in one piece," said Doc with a grin. "And don’t get carried away with that ion squirt gun and take off on a round-the-world underwater cruise."

"Who knows?" Tom joked. Adjusting his face mask, he plodded down the beach sand and slipped under the gentle waves. Bud followed.

Down they glided into the sea-green wilderness. Leveling off parallel to the ocean floor, they tried their drive jets. The effect was thrilling! Zip... Whoosh! They darted to and fro like human torpedoes.

"Hey, there’s Doc’s ‘Mermaid Gardens’," Bud called over his mask sonophone. Row after row of odd cactus-shaped plants could be seen behind billows of netting.

"Looks about ready to harvest," Tom remarked. "Let’s head for deeper water, flyboy—not too deep, though."

Bud added: "And watch out for those long, thin, metal objects!"

Tom twisted a control knob and immediately he swerved off to the north as the diverjet’s thrust nozzle slightly shifted. A reverse twirl sent him hurtling in the opposite direction. Bud, watching with wide-eyed excitement, began experimenting on his own.

Soon the boys were engaging in all sorts of underwater acrobatics. At one point Tom jetted off into the gloom and was lost to sight. Presently Bud felt a thumping nudge in the back that sent him hurtling, jet-propelled, a dozen yards through the water. Snuck up on me, eh, pal? he thought with a brain-chuckle. Okay, Tom old boy, here’s where the undersea terror strikes back!

Swooping around to return the compliment, Bud gulped in surprise. Instead of his chum, he found himself face to face with a bottle-nosed native of the sea! "Good night!" Bud said aloud. "A porpoise! So you’re the joker who nudged me!"

With a playful toss of its rounded comical-looking snout, the porpoise swam off, as if inviting Bud to join in the fun and games. A whole school of the creatures cavorted into view.

"Okay! If you want to play—!" Chuckling, Bud darted in pursuit, whacked the porpoise that had nudged him, and jetted off again. The porpoise gave chase, whistling and grunting audibly in his undersea voice. Returning, Tom joined in the fun, and soon a rollicking game of underwater tag was in full swing. The smoothly streamlined creatures seemed as playful and mischievous as small children.

Twenty minutes later the boys surfaced and hauled themselves up the sand to the beach. Both tore off their masks, shaking with laughter. "Hey, you fish stalkers, let me in on the joke!" Doc demanded humorously. When Tom told him about the dolphins, he too burst into laughter—then pointed out to sea. The school of dolphins had risen into view as if to bid their strangely shaped playmates goodbye!

Tom was so jubilant over the performance of the new hydrolung gear that he decided to press his unauthorized search for the lost—or captured—probe immediately. Soon after sunrise the following morning the Sea Hound took off from Fearing and jetted southward toward the Bahamas and the jungle of seaweed. Only Zimby Cox joined Tom and Bud. Chow had stayed behind, mentioning that he needed to prepare a welcoming meal for some visitors to the island that were expected by midday.

Dazzling morning sunshine sparkled over the sea when they reached the search area. As expected, the Navy fleet had departed, and Tom knew that the Sea Charger had sailed north to drop off Mr. Swift at the Enterprises dock facility on the Long Island coast. "None of those ‘official’ prying eyes," Bud said with a nudge.

The young inventor gave orders to submerge. As soon as the seacopter touched the shallow bottom, Tom and Bud swam out through the airlock with their hydrolungs.

"Jetz, what a fantastic feeling!" Bud sonophoned as he aqua-soared with his jet purring on his back.

But Tom was focused on the mission. "Up ahead’s where the weed starts getting really thick," he advised his pal. "We’re near the spot where you had your tangle with the Stalks of Doom."

"Let’s start off a ways up nearer the surface and see what we can see," urged Bud. "We don’t need to get down into the thick of things right away—with these hydrolungs we don’t have to stop until we get hungry!"

They probed about for another half hour, swerving around the hanging streamers at a height of a few yards above the denser sea-floor growth. Ranging further and further from the Sea Hound, they finally settled down on a small rise poking up from the endless jungle of Sargassum and cut their diverjets.

Tom stood looking off into the dark distance when he felt a touch on his arm. He turned and saw Bud pointing off excitedly to the right.

A strange, uncanny shape, looming impossibly huge, was moving slowly toward them!

CHAPTER 9

A CATACLYSMIC THEORY

TOM SWIFT could scarcely believe his eyes!

The object seemed like a huge thundercloud scudding over the submerged countryside. But it was definitely no natural phenomenon!

The sleek contoured hull of the sub-ship was not polished like metal but dulled, bringing to mind the shell of an egg or the brushy surface of a plant-leaf. Though the material was slightly phosphorescent, its color was hard to discern in the quivering gleam of sunlight from above.

It cruised along with an elegant, dreadful majesty, a lazy colossus of the deep, its shape molded of graceful curves, shallow and spreading wide, somewhat boomerang-like in overall form.

Other than its mountainous size, two things chilled the eye—a weird, intensely glowing circular depression like the eye of a cyclops, set in its underside—and its utter, ghostly silence!

Bud tapped Tom’s shoulder to get his attention, then raised a finger to his lips. In sign language he told his friend: Keep quiet. Get out of sight. Seaweed.

Keeping their diverjets silent, they swam down into the weed jungle, elbowing the stalks and streamers aside, finally pausing to see what they could of the ship.

Heading northeast, Tom thought, away from Mer-Soliel and the Caribbean. He wondered: could the sub be hunting him and Bud?

Tom’s thoughts were rudely scattered as Bud suddenly clamped a hand onto his forearm, painfully! Startled, the young inventor turned to look at his pal’s face. The youth was grimacing in silent agony! Before Tom could react, he himself suddenly felt a strange sensation up and down his bare arms, legs, and chest, as if sharp thorns were being dragged across his skin.

He and Bud began to shake violently, their breathing labored and panting. But if they tried to flee, or if the pain made them cry out, they would be detected and caught!

How long can we stand it? came Tom’s fearful thoughts.

He forced his wracked body to swivel, and he managed a glance through the gap in the seaweed. The giant ship had moved on out of view.

"Seacopter," Bud signed, and activated his diverjet, muscles knotting. The two hurtled away at top speed, staying low as they could, alert to any reappearance of the subocean phantom. After a few minutes, Tom risked using his sonophone to contact Zimby Cox.

"Zim, come meet us! We’re in bad shape—hurry!"

In six minutes the two were crumpled on the deck of the main compartment, muscles twisting, skin puckered as if burned. "Hold still, guys, if you can," Zimby pleaded, the seacop’s emergency medical kit in hand. He rubbed a lotion on their skin, then tried injections of an antidote to the paralyzing poison secreted by some common Caribbean sea-dwellers. Nothing worked!

"W-water!" Tom gasped weakly. "Fresh water—cold—not to drink—splash all over us!"

Zim wondered if Tom were becoming delirious, but complied with bottled water from the refrigerator in the Sea Hound’s stern compartment. The stricken youths yelped through chattering teeth at the shock of cold. But to the crewman’s delighted amazement, their skin seemed to be quickly returning to normal.

"J-Jetz, that was worse than... ohhh!" Bud gasped, still shivering—but from cold.

Tom sat up, rubbing his arms and torso, voice faint. "You probably just saved our lives, Zee."

"But what happened? What was it?"

Tom could only gulp the air for a moment before answering. "My guess—acid!"

Bud had now regained control of himself. "Acid from where? You think that sub was dumping it?"

"No," Tom replied. "My brain’s starting to chug again, and I think it’s something secreted by the seaweed in that area, that spot where your Fat Man got snared. In fact, it may have been a concentrated dollop, maybe from a bursting plant pod, that ate away a speck of the sealer in your suit hatch."

"Good grief, an acid that can do that to Tomasite?" Bud boggled. "You and I should be nothing but a pile of bones by now!"

"It may have a particularly strong reaction to some substance in the Tomasite formulation," Tom pointed out. "I’d guess we got a very diluted amount smeared on us when we took cover in the weeds." Tom looked at Bud’s skin and his own. "Yep, signs of a chemical burn, but very superficial despite how it felt. It must have reacted with the nerve endings. We’ll be fine if we dress in some of those healing-bandages overnight."

Zimby asked, "Skipper, how did you know cold water would help you?"

"I didn’t know," was the reply. "But I thought that since salty lukewarm seawater didn’t neutralize the stuff, maybe cold fresh water would. Lucky guess, huh!"

The seacop headed for home on Fearing, her crew discussing not only the bio-acid, but the eerie vessel they had watched, clearly several thousand feet broad at the beam.

"El Blanco may be a big blank spot to gravity," Bud remarked; "but not to the eye, at least."

"Not to sonar either," Zimby put in. "The scope picked it up, but it was so enormous I assumed there was a malfunction."

Bud continued, "You think it might have to do with Li Ching, Tom? Or brought to you by the good folks on Planet X?"

"Bud, I’ll say something very wise," responded Tom ruefully. "I have no idea!"

"Well, pal, I’ll wait. Think about it!"

Arriving at Fearing Island they stowed their equipment and changed into shorts and tanktops, then rushed to the base medic, Dr. Carman, who dressed their skin with the time-release bandages as Tom had suggested. They finally made for the big guest dining room to look in on Chow Winkler—and their jaws dropped as they opened the door!

"Sandy! Bashalli!"

"Greetings and avast, salty seamen!" called Bash. "We’ve been waiting for you."

"Yes, waiting, waiting!" Sandy said mischievously, "It was as if we were on a date."

"But how—" Tom turned to Chow, who had just entered with a big grin. "I get it. So these are the ‘important visitors’ you were expecting!"

"Called me last night, boss. Asked me t’keep my big mouth shut fer once," the westerner explained.

"We assumed we’d be a pleasant surprise," said Sandy as Bashalli nodded.

"Wow, you sure are!" Bud exulted. "Anything to get genius boy here away from his sea-search bit."

"Oh, we don’t expect to work miracles," Bashalli declared smugly. "But this is an island in the ocean, after all, with a beach and bright sun. It seemed we might vacation here for a couple days on our way to our real week’s vacation in Florida with those friends of yours, the Lawsons."

"We’ll try not to be too much of a bother," promised Sandy with a twinkle.

"It’s great to see you two," Tom responded, "though I guess I should warn you that the probe business is pretty urgent and a major distraction right now."

"My, what unexpected news, Sandra," commented Bash. "The boy inventor is distracted by a crisis." She gestured at their bandage wrappings. "And already, their supple young bodies are disfigured by injury. What was it this time, a shower of meteors? A rain of molten aluminum, perhaps?"

"Just some savage seaweed," Bud responded with a chuckle that he hoped sounded convincing. He didn’t want to alarm the visitors with talk of danger.

The four exchanged warm hugs. "I’ll try to make up for my ‘distractedness’ by letting you have a little fun with my new invention, the electronic hydrolungs. Between sessions in the sun, you can take a stroll on the ocean floor." Tom explained how the device worked, and Bud noted that he discreetly avoided mentioning the diverjets, which might prove a bit challenging for casual vacationers.

The girls were thrilled, but it seemed fate had other plans. The next morning, after the two of them and Bud had spent some time sporting about with Tom’s hydrolungs, the young scientist-inventor hailed them from an electric nanocar. "How’d you like to postpone your stay with the Lawsons for a couple more days?"

"Got a better offer, Tomonomo?" asked Sandy. "These hydrolungs are just incredible!"

"Well, what say we take a little trip to Madeira Island?"

"Ohhh!" The girls were stereophonically thrilled!

"So what’s up, skipper?" inquired Bud. "You’re famous for inventing—not for being spontaneous!"

Tom laughed at the sure truth of Bud’s statement. "Remember Professor Taclos, astronomer, marine biologist, and weather guy?"

"Barely met the man, actually," Bud retorted; "even though you and I saved his hide!" Taclos, a Portugese living on the outskirts of Porto do Moniz on Madeira, had become involved—greatly to his eventual regret—with murderous scientist-technicians working against the mission of Tom’s first diving seacopter, the Ocean Arrow. Tom and Bud had rescued the man from death in a captive diving bell. Taclos had later been cleared of any culpable involvement in the plot. "Planning to pay him a visit, Tom?"

"Sure am," was Tom’s reply, "given what I’ve come up with via the internet!"

Bashalli gave one of her signature sarcastic smiles. "Has that disgusting man involved himself in further scientific skullduggery?"

"Far from it," Tom declared. "It turns out that some years back he wrote an important paper on a subject that just might have a bearing on our Gojira search—an ancient oceanic cataclysm caused by a meteor strike, or something similar."

Bud Barclay’s forehead curled. "You told me about that seafloor crater business, and I know it’s supposed to have happened near our search area. But what’s the connection?"

Tom described for the girls the theory of the ancient earth disaster, and then proceeded to give a quick version of his and Bud’s encounter with the giant submersible. "It came to me that the ship wasn’t heading toward Mer-Soliel or the Bahamas or any other local landfall—but in the direction of the subsidence features, the ‘craters’."

"But so what?" asked Sandy skeptically.

"It may be nothing, just pure coincidence. But we ran into some, mm, peculiarities in the sea life in that area, as one approaches the crater slopes. And also, one theory says that the cataclysm was caused by the impact of cometary matter, and—"

"Ah!" exclaimed Bash. "The probe capsule was itself bearing a load of such material! You see, Sandra dear, the clues are mounting."

"At least there’s a slight connection," Tom agreed. "What if our enemies, whoever they might be—but probably the crew of that sub-ship!—what if they diverted the Gojira to that particular area for some reason? What if they have some sort of hidden base in the impact zone? There could be a reason nobody suspects, somehow connected to the ancient impact. I’m willing to spend a few hours talking with Professor Taclos about his own theories, and the information he has to back them up."

"Well, Tom, it’s mighty slim from an evidentiary point of view," sniffed his sister archly. "But I suppose Bashi and I wouldn