Tom Swift and His Atomic Earth Blaster (16 page)

"Then the upshot is, no backup earth blaster," Bud declared. "Which just means we’ll have to make a perfect shot the first time!" Tom grinned at the reassuring sentiment.

Tom heard a voice calling his name and trotted to the arched opening of the half-wrecked igloo. It was Arvid Hanson. "Skipper, the Kranjovians may be coming back to demand our surrender!"

"Why?"

"A team is approaching—a dogsled!"

But it proved to be George Eagle Friend and Daryl Blake returning from their expedition. "We heard the booming and saw the flashes from miles away," said the colonel. "It wasn’t hard to imagine what was happening."

"Especially after what we saw on our way to the lake bed!" Blake continued. At Tom’s excited urging the young botanist described how they had been traveling unseen in the deep shadows of the mountains when the helicopter gunship suddenly sprang into the sky as if from thin air! "I think their whole camp is covered over by camouflage—a huge tarp, like a circus tent, made up to look like a snowfield."

"About twenty-three miles from here," explained Eagle Friend. "I believe I could find the exact spot on a map by referring to the lay of the mountains."

"We ought to pay them a visit in the
Queen!"
grated Bud. "Do we have any fresh ‘bolts of vengeance’ on hand?"

"They have missiles, pal," Tom pointed out. "My priority is to get the earth blaster launched."

Feverish hours passed as the tense mission team worked to complete the launch tower, three stories in height, and raise the atomic earth blaster into its vertical cradle at the top. And in addition to his concern over the Kranjovians, Tom had another unwelcome matter occupying his mind: Jerry Landis. The true believer had last been seen outside when Hank Sterling had called everyone into the ship just prior to the attack. In the ensuing confusion he had not been watched, and now he was not to be found.

"The fool must have wandered off into the snow," declared Voorhees contemptuously.

"He may be lying somewhere injured," Tom retorted. "We’ll have to spare a few of the nonessential crew to search the area."

"I will take Klootch and conduct a search," Colonel Eagle Friend volunteered. Slim Davis, with Chow as an extra pair of eyes, also searched from the air with the
Sky Queen
. But after hours of careful searching, no trace had been found. It seemed there was nothing more to be done.

But finally came zero hour!—the historic launching of the atomic earth blaster downward into the hidden, mysterious bulk of the planet. As the machine waited in its tower, nose down, Tom stood outdoors next to the control unit at a safe distance, nearly all the mission crew knotted around him at the highest pitch of excitement. All were wearing the anti-rad suits as a precautionary measure.

Tom had passed out darkened goggles to everyone present. "What’s with these, boss? Y’kin hardly see through ’em!" objected Chow. "Bad enough we hafta wear these here suits—feller could trip over his own legs!"

"Don’t worry, pard—in a minute you’ll see plenty!" promised the young inventor. "This is it, Hank. Are we ready?" The engineer gave Tom a thumbs-up.

Tom’s finger stabbed a series of buttons. "Power-up sequence initiated," he called out. "Arc-field—active!" He struck another button and the entire crowd shrunk back, murmuring in awe.
A crackling ball of intense blue-white brilliance—a miniature atomic sun—had sprung to life around the down-thrusting electrodes on the nose of the blaster!
The new electrodes had tremendous power. Despite the goggles, the watchers had almost to cover their eyes.

Tom counted down, eyes darting between the monitoring instruments and the machine itself.

"Four!—Three!—Two!—One!
Release!"

Strong clamps on the tower flipped open, and the shining metal cylinder fell toward the bare ground that made up the floor of the collector pit. But the earth blaster never actually touched that floor: the arc-field vaporized the rock as it drew near, creating a round shaft about a foot wider all around than the radius of the fuselage. The earth blaster dropped into this shaft with a flash of sparks and electrical fire, and in a split instant Tom Swift’s great invention had vanished from human sight forever en route to the inner world.

To an accompaniment of wild cheering, Tom cried,
"She’s away!"

AFTER THE great haste involved in preparing for the launch, the ensuing hours seemed to drag by slowly—though tainted with the ever-present danger of another attack. Tom’s monitoring operation now occupied the main command deck of the
Sky Queen,
and most of the mission team found reason to pay a visit at least twice every hour.

"I’m a little old to be pestering you like a child, with
‘are we there yet?’
every five minutes," began Anton Faber hesitantly.

Tom chuckled. "But you want to know if we’re there yet!"

"I’m afraid so. Even age and wisdom can’t keep curiosity at bay."

The young inventor smiled. "I’m delighted to talk about my baby. Let’s see… according to the triangulation coordinates, at the end of three hours and twenty minutes she’s reached a depth of 69.9 standard miles ‘as the mole digs’ which means she’s averaging slightly over twenty miles per hour."

"Twenty miles an hour!"
boomed the foghorn voice of Chow Winkler. "Brand my cow ponies, you c’n do better’n that in an old jalopy—even on them California freeways."

Tom laughed and said, "True. But the mechanical version only managed about three miles per hour through solid bedrock, and the Pine Hill setup barely doubled it."

"So you see, my friend, relative to where we were, we are plunging down into the depths like a falling meteor—albeit a rather sedate one," kidded Faber.

"But seriously, Tom," said Otami Karugi, one of the electronics technicians, "is it just falling freely down the hole it’s making?"

"No, Tami," he replied. He pulled out his notebook and made a couple quick sketches. "The arc-field, projected several feet in front of the nose electrodes, vaporizes everything it touches in an ongoing explosion. And
explosion
is just the word for it—a tremendous amount of back-pressure is generated, which would keep the blaster from moving an inch if we didn’t
push
it forward—downward, that is."

"Okay, boss," interjected Chow, "but how’re you pushin’ it? Didn’t see no wheels on this model!"

"No wheels," Tom confirmed. "But the new-type electrodes don’t just create the arc-field, but shape it as well. Instead of bumping the solid nose of the blaster, the exploding gases are funneled into two open ports and conducted right through the length of the chassis to the back end where we have a pair of big exhaust nozzles—the cones you saw. In effect, this turns the machine into an underground rocket!"

"Sure makes a nice round hole, anyway," commented Daryl Blake.

"Actually, the sideways pressure of the rock strata closes up the hole in seconds—at least that’s what would happen if we hadn’t anticipated the problem."

"Cover your eyes! Here’s where we see the latest blinding light of Swift genius," called Bud from the other side of the compartment, where he was lounging with a sandwich.

"Don’t tell me you’re dragging along sections of pipe, as you did in the Pine Hill operation," Blake exclaimed skeptically.

"Nope," Tom responded. "But you might say we’re manufacturing our pipeline as we go along! The contoured arc-field allows an outer fringe of exploding gases to escape the intake ports; instead the gases are squeezed sideways around the body of the blaster, where they hit the walls of the shaft with such enormous force that the particles are actually driven several inches right into the hot semi-solid rock. This creates a super-hardened ‘shell’ of dense silicoid matter that coats all sides of the shaft. It won’t last for more than a few days—but that’s enough!"

"When exactly do you expect to strike your vein of molten iron?" asked Dr. Faber. "You see? I’ve returned to my original pestering question!"

Tom glanced at a chart of calculations. "My best guess would be, in five and a half hours, at a depth of one-hundred eighty-eight miles. And
then,
don’t stand too close to the pit—the molten ore is under such humongous pressure that it will shoot its way back up the shaft in a matter of minutes!"

"By the way," said Hank Sterling, poking his head into the compartment, "instruments at the pit are showing slowly increasing traces of radiation in the gases coming up the shaft."

"Contamination from the atomic pile?" asked Daryl Blake.

Tom’s eyes shown with the excitement of challenging new discoveries. "Something more exciting than that, I think! We’re on our way to confirming—"

Tom’s account was interrupted by the loud buzzing of an automatic alarm. The young inventor took a quick look at a ground-level radarscope readout, and his face blanched.
"We have visitors!"

Bud was at his pal’s side in almost a single bound. "What? How many?"

"Big vehicles—probably snowcats of some kind, but moving very rapidly. Three of them!"

Hank Sterling entered the compartment on a run. "Tom, we could lift off and be miles away before they reach us!"

Tom Swift pressed his fingers to his brow, trying to summon the inspiration to make the right decision. But before he could respond, Bud pointed out the viewport and yelled, "Heads up! Missiles!"

The air above was full of contrail plumes from small missiles, fleetingly glimpsed. The trails criss-crossed as if forming a cage over the
Sky Queen.

"That answers that!" Tom declared. "We can’t lift off into the path of those missiles."

Chow Winkler pulled off an imaginary ten-gallon hat, whipped it down to the deck, and stomped down hard on it in furious frustration. "Blasted snow sidewinders!"

Tom abruptly gestured for Bud to follow him, ordering all other members of the crew to remain in relative safety aboard the Flying Lab.

"What’s the big plan, skipper?" Bud whispered tensely as they descended to the hangar deck.

"We’ll take two impulse rifles and head for the hills," Tom replied. "We can conceal ourselves among the rocks and pick off the Kranjovians as they get out of their vehicles."

Working at frantic speed the boys jumped into two helmeted anti-rad garments, grabbed the rifles, and threw themselves out the hatchway, which Tom had set to close automatically behind them. They plodded through the deep snow, conversing in monosyllables over the suit radios, barely able to hear one another due to the ever-present static.

Suddenly their path in the snow was cut by a neat line of well-placed bullets! They whirled. Clad in a warm jacket and parka, holding a powerful conventional rifle, Jerry Landis, DDS, stood in front of one of the ruined igloos.

He motioned for Tom and Bud to ditch their impulse rifles in the snow, backing up the silent command by aiming his rifle directly at Tom’s head. The boys could do nothing but comply.

Landis directed them through the arched door, following them into the igloo. Ahead the pale sunlight fell through the hole in the ceiling upon the ruined duplicate earth blaster. Finding that Tom and Bud could not hear him, he gestured for them to unseal their transparent helmets.

"Guys, I’m supposed to do what I can to secure the base," Landis said. "So I guess that’s what I’m doing, eh?"

"Who gave the orders?" asked Bud Barclay. "The Terranoids? Or was that story as phony as you are?"

Landis shook his head violently. "The Terranoids are
real—
and so’s my story! Believe me, I don’t like working for those Kranjovians, not a bit! But they intend to stop your drilling project, and if that’s the only way to prevent a war between the overground and underground worlds, so be it."

"I understand, Jerry," said Tom soothingly. "You’re only doing what you think is best."

"Right!"

"But Bronich and his comrades—they’re just exploiting you. After all, the earth blaster has already been launched. It can’t be turned around, or even switched off. Once launched it works independently of our control."

Landis grinned broadly. "Oh, sure, I know that, Tom. But see, the plan is to set off a bunch of grenades—I think they’re called thermite incendiary bombs—up on the mountain next to the base here."

"Okay, so you bring down the mountain on Camp Pluto. So what?" demanded Bud. "Burying us won’t stop the earth blaster."

"We won’t
bury
you—not exactly." Landis’ brow crinkled apologetically. "Now try not to get too upset, you two, but the real idea is to drown you!"

Bud gaped. "Huh?"

"Right. See, those bombs produce a lot of concentrated heat. The heat melts the snow, the water floods the base—covering the two of you, it looks like—but the main thing is, it runs down that shaft, and—"

Tom winced. "I get it. As the molten ore rushes upward, it meets a shaft full of water. Instant steam—instant explosion all the way to the top!"

"That’s why your friend calls you ‘genius boy’!" exclaimed Landis admiringly. "When Bronich and his associate first got in touch with me at the Excelsis Club, I didn’t believe a word of what they were saying—that Swift Enterprises was in league with the Terranoids, digging a route to the earth’s surface for them. But my night visions have confirmed it! I’m absolutely committed to bringing that shaft down on their heads—if they
have
heads!"

Landis interrupted himself and glanced out the doorway. "Here they come now."

"The Terranoids?" asked Tom politely.

"I’d rather you not make fun of me," said Landis, frowning.

The big snowcats, evidently carrying many men apiece, had arrived in camp and come to a halt. Two figures—one tall and gaunt, one short and rather dumpy—came trudging into the igloo, high-powered rifles in hand.

"Bud, you’ve met Ivor Bronich," Tom said. "And now I’ll introduce you to Drurga Leeskol, mercenary scientist."

Leeskol managed a weak smile. "Yah, mercenary by necessity, and underpaid at that. And boys, it all goes to alimony payments—I have many ex-wives!"

"Do not get drawn into conversation, Leeskol!" commanded Bronich sharply. "The less said the better." He turned to Landis. "And you, Jerome, you did very well indeed."