UNDERSEA SURVEY
With an effort, Tom forced all thoughts of failure out of his mind and
concentrated on the job at hand. In an hour he had the computer program
blocked out.
Mr. Swift and several of the other scientists checked his work. Each
nodded approval. By this time, the fused blip had long since disappeared
from the radarscopes, indicating that the Jupiter probe missile--or what
was left of it--had plunged to the ocean bottom.
"What's your next move, Tom?" Admiral Walter asked.
"No point in wasting time waiting for the computer results," Tom
decided. "Suppose Bud and I fly back to Swift Enterprises and organize a
search party."
"Good idea." As Admiral Walter extended a hand, his weather-beaten face
softened. "And don't feel downhearted, son. You rate a Navy 'E' for the
way you handled this operation. It would have succeeded if it hadn't
been for that confounded enemy missile!"
"Thank you, sir." Tom managed a grateful grin, in spite of his
discouragement.
Minutes later, the two boys embarked in a motor launch that took them to
an aircraft carrier standing by in the vicinity. From the flattop they
took off in a Navy jet for Shopton.
Meanwhile, Mr. Swift remained aboard the _Recoverer_ to supervise the
data processing. Tom, looking back from the soaring jet, could see one
of the helicopters on its way to the missile ship to deliver the first
batch of tapes.
It was late afternoon when the Navy jet touched down on the Enterprises
airfield. The Swifts' sprawling experimental station was a walled,
four-mile-square enclosure with landing strips, work-shops, and
laboratories, near the town of Shopton. Here Tom Jr. and his father
developed their amazing inventions.
Tom and Bud hopped into a jeep at the hangar and sped to the
Administration Building, where Tom shared a double office with his
father. Bud sank down into one of the deep-cushioned leather chairs,
while Tom adjusted the Venetian blinds to let in the afternoon sunshine.
The spacious office was furnished with twin modern desks, conference
table, and drawing boards which swung out from wall slots at the press
of a button. At one end of the room were the video screen and control
board of the Swifts' private TV network. Here and there stood scale
models of their inventions, a huge relief globe of the earth, and a
replica of the planet Mars.
"What are your plans for our search expedition, skipper?" Bud asked.
Tom ran his fingers through his crew cut. "Let's see. We'd better take
the _Sky Queen_, I think, and also--"
Tom broke off as the desk intercom buzzed. Miss Trent, the Swifts'
secretary, was on the wire.
"Your father's calling over the radio, Tom."
"Swell!" Tom flicked a switch to cut in the signal of his private
telephone. "Hi, Dad! We just got back. Any news?"
"Yes, son. We have the computer results," Mr. Swift replied. "Got a
pencil handy?"
Tom copied down the latitude and longitude figures as his father
dictated.
"According to the latest hydrographic maps, based on IGY findings," Mr.
Swift went on, "this area is a high plateau of the Atlantic Ridge--it's
near the St. Paul Rocks."
"What about the depth?"
"It averages between a hundred and three hundred feet," said the elder
scientist.
Tom gave a whistle. "Lucky break, eh?"
"Maybe and maybe not," Mr. Swift said cautiously. "The bottom there is
heavily silted."
"Oh--oh." Tom made a wry face. "In that case, we may have some digging
to do."
"I'm afraid so. However, no use borrowing trouble." After a short
discussion, the elder scientist added, "I'll probably fly home tomorrow,
son. Give my love to Mother and Sandy."
"Right, Dad. So long!" Tom hung up and reported the news to Bud.
"What kind of underwater gear will we use?" Bud inquired.
"I'm not sure myself," Tom admitted. "Guess we'll have to take along a
variety of equipment and play it by ear."
Before proceeding with his search plans, Tom phoned home to inform his
mother of his arrival. Mrs. Swift was sympathetic when she heard of the
failure to recover the probe missile.
"I'm sure you'll locate it," she said encouragingly.
"Some of your cooking will sure help brighten the picture," Tom replied
with a grin. As he put down the receiver a moment later, he told Bud,
"You're having dinner with us tonight, pal. Fried chicken and biscuits."
Bud licked his lips. "Lead me to it!"
Chuckling, Tom began drawing up a list of supplies for the expedition.
Bud helped with the details, after which Tom phoned the underground
hangar and the Swifts' rocket base at Fearing Island to give the orders
for the next day. Crewmen were also detailed for the trip.
It was six o'clock when the two boys finally piled into Tom's low-slung
sports car and drove to the Swifts' big, pleasant house on the outskirts
of Shopton. Sandra, Tom's blond, vivacious sister, greeted them at the
door.
"About time!" she teased. "We were beginning to think you two had taken
off somewhere."
"Think I'd leave town while you and that fried chicken are in Shopton?"
Bud grinned.
"What a line!" Sandy's blue eyes twinkled. "I know it's the fried
chicken you're really interested in."
"Where's the rest of that 'we' you were referring to?" Tom inquired.
"I'm sorry, Tom," Sandy said in a mournful voice. "Phyl couldn't make
it."
As Tom's face fell, she burst out giggling and a second later Phyllis
Newton emerged from the kitchen. Brown-eyed, with long dark hair, Phyl
was the daughter of Tom Sr.'s old comrade-in-arms and lifelong chum
"Uncle Ned" Newton. Like Sandy, she was seventeen.
"You didn't think I'd miss this rare evening, did you, Tom?" she said,
laughing. "After all, it isn't often we see you two."
Sandy and Phyl liked to needle the boys about their infrequent dates,
due to Tom's and Bud's busy schedules.
Mrs. Swift, slender and sweet-faced, gave Tom a hug and greeted Bud
warmly. Over the delicious dinner, the conversation turned to the
mysterious thief 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 for the data picked up on our Jupiter shot."
"You aren't expecting more trouble, are you?" Phyl put in uneasily.
Tom passed the question off lightly in order not to alarm his mother and
the two girls. But inwardly he was none too sure of what his survey
expedition might encounter in trying to locate the lost probe missile.
Ever since his first adventure in his Flying Lab, the youthful inventor
had been involved in many 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.
His research projects had taken him far into outer space and into the
depths of the ocean. With his atomic earth blaster, Tom had probed under
the earth's crust at the South Pole, and in other adventures he had
faced danger in the jungles of Africa, New Guinea, and Yucatan. His
latest achievement, receiving the visitor from Planet X, had been to
construct a robot body for this mysterious brain energy from another
world. Now, Tom realized, he was on the brink of another adventure which
might hold unexpected dangers.
Early the next morning the majestic _Sky Queen_ was hoisted from its
underground hangar berth and hauled by tractor to its special runway.
This mammoth, atomic-powered airplane had been Tom's first major
invention. A three-deck craft, 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.
As Tom supervised the loading of the equipment, a foghorn voice boomed,
"'Mornin', buckaroos!"
The chunky figure of Chow Winkler came into view. Formerly a chuck-wagon
cook in Texas, Chow was now head chef on Tom's expeditions. As usual, a
ten-gallon hat was perched on his balding head and he was stomping along
in high-heeled boots.
"Wow! A shirt to end all shirts!" Tom chuckled.
"Real high style, eh?" Chow twirled about to display his latest Western
creation. The shirt seemed to be made of silvery fishlike scales, which
glistened like a rainbow.
"I figured as how this was just the thing fer an ocean jaunt," Chow
added with a grin. "How soon do we take off, boss?"
"As soon as we get the rest of this gear stowed," Tom replied.
Twenty minutes later the _Sky Queen_ soared toward the ocean. Soon they
came in sight of Fearing Island rocket base, a few miles off the coast.
Once a barren stretch of sand dunes and scrub-grass, the island was now
the Swifts' top-secret rocket laboratory, guarded by drone planes and
radar. It served as the supply base for Tom's space station and as the
launching area for all space flights. Seacopters and jetmarines were
also berthed here.
A radio call from Tom brought a sleek, strange-looking craft zooming up
to join them.
It was the _Sea Hound_, latest and largest model of Tom's amazing diving
seacopter. It had an enclosed central rotor, powered by atomic turbines,
with reversible-pitch blades for air lift or undersea diving.
Superheated steam jets provided forward propulsion in either element.
As the _Sea Hound_ streaked alongside the Flying Lab, two figures in the
seacopter's flight compartment waved to Tom and Bud. One was Hank
Sterling, the blond, square-jawed chief pattern-making engineer of
Enterprises. The other was husky Arv Hanson, a talented craftsman who
transformed the blueprints of Tom's inventions into working models.
"All set," Hank radioed. "Lead the way."
"Roger!" Tom replied.
Flying at supersonic speed, they reached the area of the lost missile in
the South Atlantic soon after lunch. Already on hand were ships of the
Navy task force assigned by Admiral Walter to participate in the missile
search. The _Sea Hound_ settled down on the surface of the water, while
the _Sky Queen_ hovered at low altitude nearby.
Tom contacted the government craft and learned that as yet no sign of
the lost Jupiter prober had been detected. Then he made ready to begin
his own search.
"Let's try the Fat Man suits first," Tom told Bud. Turning to Slim
Davis, a Swift test pilot who was in the crew, the young inventor added,
"Take over, will you, Slim?"
"Righto." Slim eased into the pilot's seat.
"Got a job for me, skipper?" asked Doc Simpson, Swift Enterprises' young
medic.
"Yes. Help the boys, if you like, rig the undersea elevator, and then
assemble a tractorized air dome," Tom suggested.
"Will do," Doc promised.
A ladder was dropped. Tom and Bud excitedly descended to the _Sea
Hound_. The search for the lost missile was about to begin!
Once the boys were aboard, the seacopter submerged and dived quickly to
the ocean floor. Tom and Bud each climbed into a Fat Man suit and went
out through the air lock. The suits, shaped like huge steel eggs with a
quartz-glass view plate for the operator seated within, had mechanical
arms and legs.
The boys waddled about, the built-in searchlights of their suits
piercing the murky gloom. They saw nothing but the deep accumulation of
silt on the ocean bottom, which made the going difficult.
"This is too slow," Tom called over his sonarphone. "Let's try the air
dome."
The dome was a huge underwater bubble of air, created by a 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.
The air bubble, however, even with its jet-propelled platform, also
proved inadequate for the research job. Its caterpillar treads
repeatedly bogged down in the silt.
"Maybe the seacopter itself is our best bet," Bud suggested.
"Worth a try," Tom urged.
But the _Sea Hound_, too, had a serious drawback. Even with its powerful
search beam sweeping the ocean floor as it prowled along, the explorers
found their vision too limited.
Finally Tom said, "Bud, we could skin-dive at this depth."
"Let's give it a whirl," Bud urged.
The seacopter surfaced again, while the boys donned flippers, masks,
and air lungs. Then they 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 thought. "If only we didn't have to
communicate by signals!"
There was a sudden _swoosh_ somewhere on his right. A projectile, Tom
realized! Turning, his eyes widened in horror as he saw an uprush of
bubbles.
Bud's air tank had been hit!