THE CAVE MONSTER
"Skipper!" Bud cried anxiously as Tom staggered back, his hands to his
face.
"I'm all right--no harm done," Tom assured his friend.
Both boys were a bit shaken by the accident, nevertheless. Chow came
rushing in as Bud was brushing the fragments of debris from Tom's
clothes and examining the young inventor's face.
"Brand my flyin' flapjacks, what happened?" Chow asked. The chef had
been bringing a tray of fruit juice to the laboratory and had heard the
explosion outside.
"The radio set just blew up in my face," Tom explained. "Fortunately,
the equipment was transistorized mostly with printed circuits.
Otherwise," he added, "I might have been badly cut by slivers of glass
from the exploding vacuum tubes."
As it was, the young inventor had suffered only a few slight scratches
and a bruise on the temple from a piece of the shattered housing. Bud
swabbed Tom's injuries with antiseptic from the first-aid cabinet while
Chow poured out glasses of grape juice.
"What caused it, Tom?" Bud asked as they paused to sip the fruit drink.
"Good question," Tom replied. "Frankly, I don't know." But he was
wondering if the set might have been sabotaged.
Tom was still eager to get in touch with his father and telephoned the
electronics department to bring another set to his laboratory. Chow left
just as the new set arrived.
Tom hooked it up quickly, donned a set of goggles, and tuned to the
space-station frequency. Then he picked up the microphone and stepped
well back from the set, waving Bud out of range at the same time.
"Tom Swift calling Outpost!... Come in, please!"
A moment later came another explosion! _The new set had also blown up!_
"Good night!" Bud gasped in a stunned voice. "Don't tell me that's just
a coincidence!"
Tom shrugged. "We can certainly rule out the possibility that anything
was wrong with the radio itself. Every set is checked before it leaves
the electronics department."
"So where does that leave us?" Bud persisted.
Tom shook his head worriedly as he took off the goggles. "Both times it
seemed to happen just as the reply was coming through from the space
station. There is no possibility that their signal was too strong--in
other words, that the explosion was caused by overloading the receiving
circuits."
"Are you implying that an enemy intercepted the message and sent some
sort of ray that caused the set to explode?" Bud demanded.
Tom's face showed clearly that Bud had pinpointed the suspicion in the
young inventor's mind. "Could be."
Bud was worried by this latest development. "Skipper, suppose I hop up
to the space wheel and talk it over with your dad. He may be able to
help us detect any enemy moves."
"Good idea, pal," Tom agreed. "The sooner the better, I'd say."
The boys exchanged a quick handshake and affectionate shoulder slaps.
Then Bud hurried out to one of the Enterprises hangars to ready a
helijet for the flight to Fearing Island. This was the Swifts' rocket
base, just off the Atlantic coast. From there, Bud would board one of
the regular cargo shuttle rockets operating between the space station
and Fearing.
Tom, meanwhile, plunged back to work on his shock-wave deflector.
At ten the next morning he called in Hank Sterling and showed him a set
of completed drawings.
"Hank, you did a fast job on the container for the brain," Tom began
apologetically, "but you'll really have to burn out a bearing on this
one!"
Hank grinned. "I'm geared to action. Say, what do we call it, anyhow?"
he asked.
Tom grinned. "Chow told me last night this gadget looked like a fireplug
under a rose trellis and I ought to call it Fireplug Rose! But I've
given it a more dignified name--the Quakelizor, which stands for an
underground quake wave deflector."
Briefly, Tom explained the various parts of his latest invention, which
consisted of a hydrant-sized cylinder to be inserted into the ground,
with magnetic coils near the top. A smaller hydraulic cylinder, mounted
above this, was wired to a metal framework and radio transmitter.
"This setup will detect any incoming enemy shock waves," Tom said.
"We'll need fifty of 'em, so turn the job over to Swift Construction.
And have Uncle Ned put on extra shifts."
The Swift Construction Company, managed by Ned Newton, was the
commercial division which mass-produced Tom Jr.'s and Tom Sr.'s
inventions.
Information from the detector-transmitters, Tom went on, would be fed
into an electronic computer at the Bureau of Mines in Washington.
The Quakelizor itself was housed in a massive cube-shaped casting with
two large spheres mounted on top. From each of its four sides jutted a
hydraulic piston.
"How does it work, Tom?" Hank asked.
"Dual-control spheres on top," Tom explained, "will receive by radio
signal the pulse frequency computed in Washington."
He added that inside each sphere was a "pulsemaker." This would produce
changes in the pressure of the hydraulic fluid by affecting the kinetic
energy of the fluid's atoms.
The pressure changes would then be enormously magnified in the four
hydraulic output drivers. When the unit was embedded in rock,
underground, the huge pistons would send out counter shock waves through
the earth's crust to neutralize the enemy waves.
"Wow!" Hank Sterling was breathless at the sheer scope of the young
scientist's newest invention. "I'll get hot on the job right away."
After forty-eight hours of round-the-clock work, the equipment was
ready. Tom conferred by telephone with both Dr. Miles in the Bureau of
Mines and Bernt Ahlgren in the Pentagon. He had already chosen the spots
for the detector-transmitter check points.
Tom told the men that he believed the best spot for the Quakelizor
itself was on a certain government reservation in Colorado. A deep
underground cave there would provide a perfect site.
"We'll be close enough to the San Andreas fault to prevent a really
huge-scale disaster," Tom explained. "And the Rocky Mountain structure
will give us a good bedrock medium for shooting out waves anywhere
across the continent."
Dr. Miles and Ahlgren agreed enthusiastically. Tom and the two
scientists spoke over a three-way telephone hookup--with automatic
scramblers to counter the danger of enemy monitors--laying plans to
install the equipment. Ahlgren agreed to fly a technical crew out to the
spot in Colorado which Tom had named.
The next day, Tom, Hank, and several top Enterprises' engineers,
including Art Wiltessa, took off in the _Sky Queen_. This was Tom's huge
atomic-powered Flying Lab. The massive plane flew at supersonic speeds
and was equipped with jet lifters for vertical take-off or hovering.
A Whirling Duck heliplane, loaded with communications equipment,
accompanied the _Sky Queen_. In little more than an hour, the two craft
touched down in a rugged Colorado canyon. The government technical crew
was already on hand.
"Glad to know you," Tom said, shaking hands with the engineer in charge.
He introduced his own men and added, "Better roll up your sleeves. This
job is going to take plenty of oomph!"
The parts of the Quakelizor were unloaded from the _Sky Queen_ onto
dollies. Then the group, armed with bull's-eye lanterns, flashlights,
and walkie-talkies, hauled the parts by tractor into the cave.
"Okay. Now let's pick out the spot for embedding the unit," Tom said.
The men had no sooner begun to look around the huge underground chamber
when a fearsome growl rumbled through the cave. Everyone whirled about
and the next instant froze in horror.
A huge bear reared up in the mouth of the cave! The monster snarled and
blinked its yellow eyes in the glare of lights.
"We're trapped!" Hank cried out.
The enormous bruin was now waving his huge head from side to side, as if
daring the intruders to step up and fight.
Several of the government men had brought rifles and shotguns. But in
spite of their peril, no one wanted to shoot the handsome old fellow.
"I'll send out an SOS," Tom said. "If help arrives before the bear
attacks, we won't use guns."
He radioed the local Forest Ranger post. After a nerve-racking wait,
with the group expecting a charge from the beast at any minute, two
rangers appeared and captured the bear with a net. One man of the
government work crew knocked together a stout wooden cage. The beast,
outraged, was loaded aboard the heliplane to be released in an area
remote from the cave.
[Illustration (Tom and Hank meet a bear in the cave)]
Now the grueling job of installing the Quakelizor began. First the cave
was cleared of debris, bats, and other small living creatures. Then a
site was marked out on the cave floor. Tom had brought along a midget
model of his great atomic earth blaster, which he had invented to drill
for iron at the South Pole.
With the blaster, Tom quickly drilled a pit of exact size into the
bedrock. Then the Quakelizor was assembled and lowered into place by a
portable crane. A power plant and radio antenna were set up and the
installation was finally completed.
"I must return to Shopton now," Tom said. "Art here will stick around
and help you operate the setup," he told the government engineers after
radio contact had been made with Washington. "If anything goes wrong,
just flash word to Enterprises."
The _Sky Queen_ and the heliplane sped back across the continent. As Tom
landed at Enterprises he was greeted by Bud, who came speeding out on
the airfield by jeep.
"Just got back from the space wheel about an hour ago," Bud said. "Your
dad's really worried about those exploding radio sets, Tom. He has no
clues, but he's sure the scientists working for the Brungarian rebel
setup are responsible. He thinks they may try to ruin all of
Enterprises' communications system by remote control."
Tom's face was grave as he listened. The two boys discussed the problem
as they drove to the Swifts' office in the main building.
"Boy, I sure wish I could think of some way to cope with it," Tom said
wearily, flopping down in his desk chair.
"Your dad said to give it the old college try," Bud reported. "And he
also said he'd be back in two days to help you on the problem."
Tom glanced at the calendar. "Which reminds me," he said, "on Monday the
brain energy will be due from space!"
The thought sent a thrill of excitement tinged with worry through the
young inventor's mind. Would the container he had devised prove
suitable?
"Hey! A call on the videophone!" Bud pointed to the red light flashing
on the control board. He jumped up and switched on the set.
Blake, the Washington announcer, appeared on the screen.
"Bad news, skipper," he said ominously. "An earthquake tremor was just
felt here in Washington. It centered in a shipyard on the Potomac and
caused great damage!"