Into the Abyss (Tom Swift, Young Inventor) (13 page)

Down … down … down …

It’s amazing how fast you can fall when you’re underwater—not as fast as falling through air, but close. Especially when you’re weighted down.

I thought,
I could keep falling till I hit the center of the Earth and get melted into jelly.

I banged against a boulder—YOW, that hurt!—and then landed hard on another one—OOF!

I got up and looked around. Beyond the boulders was a flat abyssal plain. The aftershock must have raised the part where the
Jules Verne-1
was trapped, I realized, because it was higher up the slope. I had no idea how much higher, or how far I’d fallen. I figured maybe thirty feet, but it could have been three times that, for all I knew. It was too dark to see much of anything.

Well, looking on the bright side, at least my long tumble was over. Now, as the water began to clear, I took stock of my situation, beaming my helmets searchlight upward.

The slope was steep but not impossible to climb. Trouble was, it was mostly rubble—pebbles and sand—that might come loose at any time, sending me straight back down to the bottom.

Around the
Verne-1
, there had at least been some sea life. Here, there was nothing at all.

Strange
. I wasn’t that far away from it, yet it seemed like a whole different underwater realm—totally empty of life.

Had the aftershock scared the fish into hiding? If so, then they should be starting to re-emerge around now.

Where were they … ?

An eerie feeling came over me. I decided it was time to quit thinking so much and start climbing instead—especially since my oxygen meter was starting to run alarmingly low.

I clambered over the boulders that had stopped
my fall. As I crested the second and larger one, I thought I saw something move behind it.

Something
big
.

Maybe I imagined it
, I thought. I kept climbing, but I also kept checking behind me, to see if anything was following me. The beam of my searchlight pierced the inky blackness.

Nothing. Just boulders and endless, flat sea bottom.

Don’t be ridiculous
, I told myself.
What could be down this far under the surface that would be big enough, and mean enough, to take on a human being?

I tried to laugh it off, but it wasn’t happening. I kept climbing, making slow progress, losing a foot of ground for every two feet I advanced.

Once more I looked back—and a dark cloud blanketed my vision.

What the—?

Then, out of the swirling cloud, a gigantic tentacle emerged, snaking around me and tightening its grip before I even knew what was happening!

The black cloud cleared, and I found myself staring into the blank, hungry eyes of that most elusive of sea creatures—a giant squid!

The huge tentacle lifted me up with ease. Now the
beast rose from its hiding place behind the boulder and brought me toward its gaping mouth.

Was this bow I was going to end my days? As dinner for a giant squid?

“I don’t think so,” I said. With my free arm, I hit the button on my chest-mounted console and activated my Swift Kick Shark Zapper.

Yes, I know it was a stupid idea. A zapper designed to deliver a shock to a sharks unique electromagnetic locator organ should have had no effect on something so totally different as this giant squid.

But it was worth a try. The squids gigantic tentacle was squeezing the life out of me, pressure suit or no pressure suit.

ZZZZTTT!!!

To my total surprise, the zapper worked like a charm! The monstrous tentacle loosened, and the giant squid bolted away, leaving me alone and gasping in a cloud of its ink.

Ah, alone at last.

I stood there, waiting for the squids cloud of ink to clear, so that I could find the cliff and climb back up.

Nothing.

Why wasn’t it clearing?

In a flash of sudden horror, I understood—the cloud had cleared, but I was still standing in total darkness.

My searchlight was dead!

By gripping me so tightly, the giant squid must have ruptured one of the wires that fed power through the suits metallic fabric to the light on the helmet!

At this point, my oxygen and my time were running seriously low. I no longer had any idea which way the cliff was, or how far from it the squid had carried me before it let go.

The submersibles—and my salvation—might as well have been a million miles away!

I reached out blindly, stumbling a few steps in every direction, hoping to find the slope. It wasn’t there.

It wasn’t anywhere! Frantically, I picked a random direction and started walking blindly.

Where was I? And how was I ever going to get out of this mess?

12
 
 
Back to Work

“Tom! Are you there? Can you read me?”

YES—my dad’s voice!
I’d forgotten completely about the wireless connection with the
Verne-1!

“Dad! I fell down the ledge, and my lights out—I can’t see my way back.”

“Don’t panic, son. I’ll think of something …. How much oxygen do you have left?”

“I don’t know … fifteen minutes or so.”

There was silence on the other end of the line as he took in this dismal news. Okay … listen to me, Tom. We’re going to get you back up here, do you understand?”

“Not really …”

“Just LISTEN!”

There was no arguing with him. I just shut up and listened.

And what did I hear?

Something that sounded like pots and pans being banged over and over again. It was the crew of the
Verne-1
banging on the little submersible’s hull as hard as they could.

Good old Dad! I might be blind as a bat down here, but I could hear the noise they were making and could tell its direction and its distance.

The sound was coming from behind me. I’d been moving steadily off in the wrong direction!

Turning around and heading back the way I came, I soon found the boulders that were my landmark and began my climb back up through the inky blackness, toward life.

I wanted to respond to my dad’s questions—he was constantly asking me if I was okay, urging me on, and sounding more and more frantic when I didn’t answer—but to tell you the truth, I couldn’t spare the breath.

The slope was steep, and the debris it was made of
kept giving way as I struggled forward. My dive suit was functioning beautifully, but it was still awkward at this depth. With every painfully slow move I made, I was using up more and more of my scarce air supply.

But I couldn’t think about that—I had to keep going. If my air ran out, I would just die, that was all—quickly and painlessly. And so would my dad … and the others …

No! Keep going …. Forward … forward …

Let me tell you, you get exhausted really quickly when you’re exerting yourself underwater. When I finally crested the slope and saw the
Verne-1
’s lights glowing softly, it gave me hope—and somehow, I found the strength to continue.

It had taken me a grand total of ten minutes to climb the slope. That left me with all of about five minutes, maybe seven if I was lucky, to get back to the prototype and implement Plan B.

Believe me, it was taking every ounce of strength I had, just to put one foot in front of the other. And every breath I took left me with less air to reach the
Verne-0
.

In the near darkness only the rapidly dimming light of the
Verne-1
, filtering through the now-cloudy
water, gave me a sense of where I was. I could only hope my sense of direction was as reliable as it always was back on the surface.

I had shut off
Verne-0
’s power before I left her, conserving it for later. Because of that, I couldn’t see her down here in the darkness.
Verne-1
’s lights weren’t strong enough to cast a glow that far. Still, I knew where the prototype had to be in relation to the
Verne-1
, and that’s where I was headed.

Just when I thought I was going to pass out, I bumped smack into the
Verne-0
! Not a moment too soon, either.

I opened the outer door of the air lock and pressed the button that started draining the water out of it. As soon as it got down past my neck, I wrenched my helmet off and breathed in as much air as I could hold.

I was alive—but I had just barely made it. I had to sit down for a minute to recover, even though my dad and the others were running out of oxygen themselves.

As soon as I was able to move again, I tried to radio the
Nestor
. I was going to need their help pulling the
Verne-1
up, and I could only hope the worst of the storm up there was over.

“Hello,
Nestor
, do you read me?” I waited.

Nothing.

“
Nestor
!
Nestor
! Come in!”

Deathly silence.

“Bud! Are you there? It’s me, Tom!”

Crackling. And then, “Tom! You’re alive!”

I laughed out of sheer relief. “You’re still kicking too, I see.”

“Man, it’s been rough up here. We lost our radio antenna for awhile there, and they had to bolt it back up. The computers went on the fritz too—know who fixed ‘em? It was Yo.”

It didn’t surprise me. Yo is an unbelievable tech wrangler. She can fix just about anything computer-related—when she isn’t seasick, that is.

“Everyone okay up there?”

“Sort of. Your sister’s been barfing her guts up.”

“And not Yo?”

“No, man. She’s been so busy fixing the computer system she forgot to be sick!”

I had to laugh—but only for a second.

“Bud,” I interrupted him. “We’ve got a bad situation down here. I’ve only got about half an hour to get this right, and then I’m going to need you guys to
haul away on that cable and pull up the
Verne-1
as fast as you can.”

“You got her freed?” he asked. I knew Captain Walters had to be leaning over his shoulder, taking it all in.

“Um, not yet. But I’ve got a plan.”

“You’ve got a
plan
? Man, what’ve you been doing down there all this time?”

“I’ll tell you later,” I said. “Bud, this is the last chance any of us have of making it back up there alive.”

There was a short silence as he took my words in. Then, “What do you need us to do?”

“Like I said, in exactly one half hour, I want you to haul up the cable, as fast as it’ll go. Hopefully, I’ll have the
Verne-1
freed by then.”

“Okay, bro. You got it. Go get ’em, Tom.”

“Will do,” I said. “Um, Bud?”

“Yeah?”

“If I don’t see you again—well, it’s been great. Tell Yo for me, okay?”

“Hey, Tom, don’t talk like that. You’re coming back … aren’t you?”

“I’m planning on it,” I assured him. “Just … well, just in case, though.”

“Cool.”

“Okay, then. Let’s roll. Over and out.”

I took a moment to examine my diving suit. It sure didn’t look too good. The squids embrace, as well as my fall down the slope, had left it much the worse for wear.

The trouble was, I was going to have to trust it with my life.

To implement Plan B, I first had to link Q.U.I.P. directly to the prototype’s control systems. That took me about five minutes—not bad, but in this case, every minute used was one minute lost.