Tom Swift and His Atomic Earth Blaster (13 page)

As Tom and his father breathed their relief, Ames continued: "Actually, there
was
a bit of concern for about a day. Our senator apparently received quite a pile of letters, telegrams, and emails protesting the trip as a threat to the environment."

Mr. Swift was amazed. "But there’s been no public announcement! Do you think someone here at the plant leaked the information?" Tom’s muscles tensed, knowing that both his father and Ames would wonder—for a moment at least—if the source had been Bud Barclay.

But Ames explained. "When the authorities investigated a bit further, it turned out that most of the handwriting was similar, and most of the typed sheets showed signs of having come from the same typewriter. We think it all originated with one person."

"Any idea who?" Tom asked.

"Well, let me put it this way," Ames replied with a grin. "You know that sporting goods chain that just donated all that stuff? The president turns out to be the ex-brother-in-law of a certain prominent Shopton dentist."

The young inventor gave forth a humorous groan. "Don’t tell me!—good old Jerry Landis, DDS."

"Right the first time. Your crackpot pal with the obsessions. Though he hasn’t actually broken any laws, the police did go to his home to question him, but it appears he’s left town. But the happy ending to my story is that the Feds gave final approval—so get going!" ordered Ames.

For the next day and a half, all hands worked furiously in making final preparations for the take-off. The
Sky Queen
was checked and double-checked from nose to tail. The two blasters and other equipment were carefully inspected. Then the job of loading the three support jets began.

Tom decided that one of the jet cargo planes would piloted by Arvid Hanson, the other by Slim Davis. Both men, like Bud Barclay, were expert fliers familiar with Swift Construction Company jetcraft. Slower than the majestic Flying Lab, the three planes would take a slightly different route for safety’s sake.

On board the
Sky Queen,
Tom would carry Blake, Faber, Voorhees—who was adamant about his right to a comfortable flight along with his tools and instruments—, Chow, Colonel Eagle Friend and a crew of five technicians including Hank Sterling. Bud, Hanson, and Davis would carry two crewmen each on their jets.

The evening before departure a small farewell party was held at the Swift home, attended by Bud and Hank Sterling’s family, as well as Bashalli Prandit. There were gay decorations, rousing songs, and other entertainments of indescribable wholesomeness. But there was an underlying note of sadness in the air.

"Do you think you can be home by Christmas, son?" Mrs. Swift asked, trying hard to keep her voice cheerful.

"I’m afraid not, Mother," Tom replied. "But you can be sure of one thing—I’ll come back just as fast I can, even if I have to dig right through the center of the earth!"

Tom had arranged to have Sandy buy Christmas presents both for relatives and friends—particularly Bashalli. And he had commissioned Bud to buy a present for Sandy.

Early the next morning the
Sky Queen
was taken from the underground hangar and readied for its cross-world flight. Tom’s family came by to watch the take-off. They were momentarily joined by Bud, who was on his way to the jet he would be piloting.

"Wish I were going with you," said Bud wistfully to Tom. "I’m a pretty handy guy to have along in a plane crash!"

"Don’t I know it!" laughed Tom. "But you’ll be joining us down at the bottom of the world in just a few hours—I’ll hold off on crashing till then, flyboy."

"It’s a deal!"

The young inventor bade goodbye to his mother, father, and sister, then entered the Flying Lab and took his place in the forward pilot’s deck. In seconds the solar-powered engines stirred to life. With a fearsome blast from the jet lifters the great silver ship soared up into the blue on a due-south heading.

Traveling through the skies at fourteen hundred miles an hour, Tom watched cities, jungles, and mountains unfold below, then broad stretches of ocean.

"Young Tom, I won’t know how to begin to tell my wife the tale of all this," commented George Eagle Friend in awe. "And a good thing too—she would never believe me!"

Ten hours later Tom caught his first glimpse of the vast and perilous south polar land!

The sky was gray and foggy, and the sea looked the color of lead. But the awe-inspiring spectacle of the rugged, towering mountain peaks of the sinuous Antarctic Peninsula more than made up for the gloomy atmosphere.

"Brand my iceberg lettuce, there’s a sight we don’t have even in Texas!" Chow exclaimed.

"Ah yes. Stupendous. And the whole peninsula is actually a part of the Andes Mountains," commented Anton Faber.

"Huh? The South America ones? Y’don’t say!"

"Indeed so. But you can’t see the connecting peaks, because they are beneath the ocean."

The stratoship flew on, passing over a corner of the Weddell Sea. The shores far below were edged with pack ice. As Tom and his companions watched through powerful electronic binoculars, they made out numerous flocks of penguins, as well as several spouting whales.

When Daryl Blake handed the binoculars to Harold Voorhees, the engineer handed them back with disdain. "Never mind. I’ve seen the sights before, thank you."

The
Sky Queen
followed a curving course over the Ronne Ice Shelf toward the interior of the Antarctic. In a matter of minutes Tom called for everyone’s attention.

"Look down, folks! Right over there—
the South Pole!"

Voorhees glanced at Chow, who was gazing down at the glittery white landscape in open-mouthed fascination. "Of course there’s no actual pole there, you know," he told the Texan.

"I know’d that!" declared Chow indignantly. "And there’s no pole in a polecat neither." As Voorhees turned away, Chow added under his breath, "—ceptin’ maybe when they
fly!"

Tom’s destination was a broad, flat canyon in a low mountain range close to the Earth’s southern magnetic pole, which was displaced from the geographical pole by some 800 miles. According to the lithosonde readings, this was the point on the earth’s surface closest to the vein of molten iron that Tom planned to tap.

As the
Queen
drew close to the location, Daryl Blake cried out, "Look! Huskies!"

Using his own binoculars, Tom scanned the whiteness below and quickly spotted a string of sled dogs! Banking sharply, he swooped down for closer scrutiny.

Suddenly his view was blanked out as if a white curtain had been drawn across their path. The stratoship shuddered violently as winds of tornado velocity shoved it aside from its course. They had run head-on into a force of tremendous, deadly power—a massive Antarctic blizzard!

"EMERGENCY stations, everybody!" Tom yelled as the Flying Lab pitched and yawed like a runaway bronco.

"W-what’s wrong with the gyros?" cried one of the technicians.

"The winds—changing too quickly!" gasped the young inventor in reply.

Dr. Faber was trying desperately to strap himself in. "My word!" he cried as Daryl Blake moved to assist the older man.

"Get us out of here, Swift!" demanded Harold Voorhees. "This will damage my instruments!"

Tom did not bother answering but let the
Sky Queen
do his talking for him. He fed power into the jet lifters and the ship roared upward into the tumult of the skies above them. The roiling snow and clouds fled downward past the viewports. Then with a final shock that was felt throughout the craft, polar sunlight broke in on all sides. They had risen above the blizzard!

Tom’s heart was thudding as he set the controls on automatic and turned to his companions. "I apologize, folks. I should have been keeping an eye on our weather radar instead of looking at the ground."

"Ultra-high-altitude storms like that are fairly rare," commented Anton Faber, straightening his eyeglasses. "No one can blame you for being unprepared."

"We’ll discuss
blame
on some later occasion," Voorhees said coldly. "I’m going below to check my materials."

Tom quickly contacted the three supply jets and warned them of the blizzard.
"Thanks, pal!"
Bud radioed back.
"We’re doing fine, though—just crossed the Antarctic Circle. I can see Slim’s and Arv’s planes off to starboard."

Scrutinizing the weather radar data, Tom realized that the fast-moving blizzard had already moved beyond the area of their planned encampment. He brought the
Queen
back down again and looked for signs of the dogsled team. But he could see nothing but undisturbed whiteness below.

"Mebbe the snow covered ’em up," said Chow.

"No, I don’t think so," Colonel Eagle Friend countered. "Most of the storm activity was in the upper air, and the snow was carried off by the winds. I say, if you wish my opinion, that we are looking down at what is call a ‘white-out’—a weather phenomenon in which low-lying mists and icy fog reflect back the sunlight and reduce visibility to zero."

After noting an absence of motion on the down-sweeping radar, Tom could do nothing but proceed to the base location. Presently he called out, "There it is!"

"Does our little canyon have a name?" asked the colonel.

"No," Tom answered. "Just map coordinates."

"Then we gotta name her!" Chow pronounced. "How’s about Pluto Canyon?—cause I hear tell Pluto’s the old god of th’ underworld, an’ that’s where we’re headed!"

Tom laughingly accepted the suggestion. Riding low to the snow-blanketed ground, he maneuvered the great craft into the canyon, then made a quick check of some instruments on the broad panel in front of him.

"Another radarscope?" inquired Daryl Blake.

"Yes," Tom confirmed. "Phase-diffraction ground penetrating radar, to be exact. Just making sure we land on a relatively thin layer of snow over solid rock, not a hidden lake." He found an adequate spot to land and eased off on the lifters.

The shock of landing was somewhat severe. "I had to make it a little rough," he said apologetically. "The lifters were shut down higher than usual, so as not to melt the snow and land us in a pond."

"Leastwise we’re here," remarked Chow. "Ever’body, welcome to Camp Pluto!"

Most of the crew suited up and jumped to the ground, clad in their heated parkas. Like a small battalion they went to their appointed tasks, and soon Camp Pluto was alive with a frenzy of activity. There was considerable work to be done in the hour or so before the supply jets arrived.

There was fog in the air, and even simple tasks seemed lengthy and grueling, working with gloved hands in the bitter Antarctic cold. But by the time the thunder of jets could be heard, the fog was lifting rapidly. Strong winds sweeping up from the Pole helped scatter the last shreds of it toward the distant Antarctic Ocean.

Using the ski undercarriage, Bud landed first, followed by Hanson and, minutes later, Slim Davis. They taxied in close to the
Sky Queen
and cut their engines. Soon Tom and Bud were clasping hands through their thick gloves.

When Tom described the dog team they had seen, Bud gave a half-growl. "Our Excelsis Club pals must’ve already established a base somewhere close—which means trouble for us."

Tom immediately put all hands to work building the planned series of large igloo-like structures for housing the planes, stores, and equipment. Each igloo consisted of an open netting stretched over curving prefabricated beams. A powerful pump then shot a watery mist over the netting, creating a layer of dark ice which the polar chill would keep solid for many days. After further layers were applied, each structure was lined with sprayed-on Tomasite foam and lighting was installed.

The sun, pale and ivory-colored, moved in the sky but never set, remaining in sight at all times and providing the travelers with a continuous glow of weak, watery light. The passage of time seemed to have been suspended, and only Chow’s amplified "dinner bell" divided afternoon from evening. With the men assigned shifts, work continued around the clock, and twenty-four hours after Bud’s arrival the job was nearly completed.

As all hands gathered in the crew’s quarters of the
Sky Queen
to eat a hearty, steaming-hot meal, Daryl Blake sat down next to the roly-poly cook.

"We’re trying to figure out a riddle," Blake said, giving Tom a wink. "Chow, there’s one place on earth where you’d face north, no matter what direction you turned. Do you know where that is?"

The likeable cook scratched his sparsely-haired head as Tom grinned. "I’d say deep in the heart o’ Texas!"

Everyone laughed heartily and Blake said, "No, here at the South Pole!"

"You mean every direction is up? That’s more’n I kin take, podners! I’m going back to my pots an’ pans!"

Chow was just finishing the cleanup when an excited crewman ran up to Tom, shouting: "There’s a plane coming! I just picked it up on the radar! Looks like a heavy bomber!"

All work stopped as the men came dashing up to hear the news. Bud looked at Tom in dismay. "Bronich!" he gasped.

There was no time for speculation. Tom already had assigned each crewman to a special post in case of emergencies. Now he barked an order:

"All hands to stations! Stand by to repel attack!"

As the men raced to their emergency posts, they heard the drone of the approaching plane. An instant later the strange ship arrowed down out of the brooding gray skies. It was a jet bomber!

As the plane swooped low over the camp, the bomb-bay doors flashed open and a metallic-colored object plunged earthward.

"A bomb!" Chow cried out. Shutting his eyes tight, he clamped both hands over his ears. But the expected blast never came. The object merely plummeted into the snow. Then the enemy plane zoomed upward and whined away over the mountains.

Tom waited a full two minutes to make sure the plane would not return. Then he emerged from the laboratory igloo, shouting and fanning his arms back and forth in a signal of "All clear!" Everyone made a dash toward the object in the snow. But Tom warned them back until he’d had time to inspect it and make sure that it contained no booby trap or time-delayed explosive.