Tom Swift and His Atomic Earth Blaster (2 page)

Tom fought desperately, but resistance ended when each man held one of his arms tightly.

"What’ll we do with him?" one of the captors asked, breathing hard from the effort to hold the prisoner still. "Know who this is? It’s the Swift boy himself." The other man had clamped one hand over Tom’s mouth to prevent his calling for help.

"Rope—in the auto," panted the gunman in a deep voice touched with a murky accent. "Hold him. We’ll tie him to that tree."

A moment later he returned with the rope. Tom was shoved back against the tree and lashed tightly to the trunk. As one of the men knotted the rope, the other gagged the young inventor with a bandanna handkerchief.

"Good! Now we get out of here!" said the man with the foreign accent. With his two henchmen at his heels, he ran back into the woods. In seconds the sound of an engine told Tom that the three men had made their escape.

In helpless fury, completely bemused by this strange and violent turn of events, Tom struggled to free himself. But he was helpless!

TOM WRITHED and twisted to free himself from his bonds. But instead of loosening the ropes, his desperate efforts only made them cut more painfully into his arms.

Failing in this attempt, Tom concentrated on working the gag out of his mouth. By pushing the bandanna with his tongue, he tried to force it out from between his teeth. But again his efforts were futile.

Almost three-quarters of an hour after the young inventor had been taken, he heard voices shouting his name. Then came the sound of snapping twigs in the underbrush. A few moments later Tom’s heart pounded with relief as Bud Barclay sprinted toward him, followed by one of the Enterprises repair crew.

"For the love of Mike!" Bud exclaimed, as he ripped away the bandanna. "What happened to you?"

"Get these ropes off me first!" said Tom, who was filling his lungs with deep breaths of fresh air.

The repair crewman pulled out a jackknife and handed it to Bud. "Here, use this," he said. "It cost ninety-four dollars! I’ll go tell the others we’ve found him."

As Bud cut the ropes he said, "You really got us nervous, genius boy! At first I figured you were just trailing the guy all over the map, but finally I decided it was time to trail
you."

"It’s a good thing you did. I was nearly choked." By the time Bud finished unwinding the rope from Tom’s legs and arms, others from Swift Enterprises had come up through the brush, having parked a company jeep on the nearby roadway. Among them were Hank Sterling and Harlan Ames, chief security officer at Enterprises, who had driven out to investigate the strange accident.

Tom quickly told them everything that had happened.

"That foreigner you saw, the one with the camera—" questioned Ames, "what did he look like?"

"He was very tall," Tom said. "Must have been well over six feet. And he was gaunt and lanky. But the queerest thing about him was his eyes."

"In what way?"

"They were light green, a weird shade—sinister-looking." He looked grim as he recalled the attack. "Boy, I’ll never forget the look he gave me when I grabbed him by the collar!"

"Crazed?" asked Bud.

Tom shook his head. "Not exactly. Like a man on a mission who’d do
anything
to reach the goal."

Tom then described the two other assailants, remembering that one man had a slight scar over his left eyebrow and that the other wore a fancy stone-studded belt buckle.

Harlan Ames reached inside his coat and pulled out a small photo. "See if you recognize this picture," he said, handing it to Tom.

"That’s the guy I grabbed!" Tom exclaimed. "The ‘tourist’ with the camera." He glanced at Ames with a puzzled expression. "Who is he? And why are you carrying his picture?"

"He’s a dangerous foreign agent," said Ames. "This photograph was circulated to all law-enforcement agencies by the FBI. He was tagged in Barcelona for meeting with a suspected terrorist group that was under surveillance, and then he was recognized entering the U.S. through Miami about three weeks ago, but the trail went cold. They suspect Bronich of trying to buy United States defense secrets for the Kranjovian government."

"What kind of defense secrets?" Tom asked, concerned about this new aspect of the mystery.

"Top atomic secrets," Ames replied. "Space weapons under development for Strategic Defense Initiative projects."

Bud gave a low whistle. "Tom! No wonder this Bronich dude was so anxious to get the low-down on your earth blaster!"

"I still don’t get it," Tom demurred. "It’s true that the blaster is powered by atomic energy. But there’s nothing very secret about that. Every nation on earth knows how to construct an atomic pile by this time—even the veranium type used in the earth blaster."

"Maybe so," agreed Ames, "but none of them knows how to harness atomic energy in the form of an earth-digging machine like yours."

"But think of what you’re saying, Harlan. This is just a glorified rock drill, not a death-ray or missile," Tom protested. "It’s not a weapon that could be used for fighting a war."

When Ames pointed out that the blaster might be adapted to military uses, Bud added: "Besides, from what I’ve read about the Kranjovians, those rats would steal the tin cup from a blind man if they figured it might help them!"

"And it’s not the first time we’ve come up against them," Ames added soberly.

Kranjovia, a collectivist dictatorship in north-eastern Europe shouldering the Baltic Sea, had not emerged from the shadow of Soviet communism despite the downfall and reform of their patrons to the east. The government had been connected with a number of plots against America, as well as the other nations of Europe. Within the preceding year, they had been linked to a scheme to illegally exploit the uranium resources of the South American country of Montaguaya, an intrigue foiled by Tom and his Flying Lab.

"I guess you’re right," Tom agreed in a troubled voice. "We have to assume they have a reason to study my invention."

"The question is, what are we going to do about it?" Bud pondered.

Tom thought for a moment but had no answer. "How about that break in the water main? Is it repaired yet?"

"All fixed," said Hank. "Old Greenup had nothing more to gripe about, so he went back to town."

"Thanks, Hank. You and your men return to the plant. The rest of us will try to pick up a lead on Bronich and his two henchmen."

Sterling gave a humorous salute and left. Tom, with the help of Bud and Ames, trekked to the small farm road in a search for clues. But there was nothing to see but a few drops of oil marking the spot where the getaway vehicle must have stood waiting.

"I’d guess they had a fourth person ready in the car," commented Ames. "Tom, was there anything noteworthy about the camera Bronich was using?"

"No," the young inventor replied. "Just a compact digital videocam. It’s widely available—I’ve seen that model in catalogs."

"Not much hope of catching them now," muttered Bud. "They’re probably miles away, and you never did actually see the car."

"There
is
one more thing to look at, flyboy. Though it may have nothin’ to do with nothin’, I’d still like to examine that map you were using," Tom said with half-hearted hope.

"The map from Shopton Water? How does that figure in?" asked the young pilot.

"Maybe not at all," was the response.

They returned to the truck-tractor and pulled out the map, which Bud had downloaded from the company’s public website. Nothing was obviously amiss—
except
that it was, obviously, inaccurate.

"Don’t worry," Tom said grimly. "They won’t get away with this. I’ll find Bronich and look him right in the eye. I’ll see his determination and raise him one!"

The others shared grins, knowing that Tom’s words were no idle threat. In the adventures that had become known as
Tom Swift and His Flying Lab
and
Tom Swift and His Rocket Ship,
the youthful inventor had turned the tables on other foreign agents seeking to harm the western world, and in
Tom Swift and His Jetmarine
he had brought to justice a gang of modern pirates and kidnappers. His most recent exploit,
Tom Swift and His Giant Robot,
concerned outwitting a crazed scientist bent on capturing Tom’s robot and destroying his father’s atomic energy research plant in New Mexico.

Tom drove the earth blaster back to Swift Enterprises, with Bud and Ames as his escort.

"I’ll alert the FBI and the police right away," the security chief said to Bud as the gate, activated by the coded signal of an electronic transponder, shut behind them.

With the new invention safely housed in the huge underground hangar that doubled as Tom’s experimental laboratory and workshop, the two boys took the plant’s moving walkway system, the ridewalk, to the office Tom shared with his father in the high-rise administrative building.

"This is a pretty alarming development, son," said Damon Swift after hearing the story in detail. "If this Ivor Bronich is involved with professional terrorists, the threat could extend to many others beyond you and I and Bud."

Just then Munford Trent stuck his head in the office door. "Mr. Swift—both of you—Lewis just called from the geophysics lab. The lithosonde readings are ready."

"Have him transmit them to the digi-fax here in the office," Mr. Swift directed him. He turned back to Tom. "A little light reading for tonight at home!"

"I’ve heard Tom mention the lithosonde experiments," Bud remarked. "But I never had a chance to ask genius boy for his usual dumbed-down explanation—which is the only kind my brain can absorb!"

They shared a laugh and Tom said, "It’s pretty simple this time around, pal."

Damon Swift’s eyes twinkled as he added, "All we’re doing is listening to rocks."

"They say it’s good to keep your ear to the ground," Bud wisecracked. "What do you mean,
listening to rocks?
Real rocks?"

"The deep, deep underground kind," Tom said. "You’ve seen those cutaway diagrams of the earth, haven’t you? The ones that show the different layers of things?"

"Oh sure," Bud replied.

"Ever wondered how they get that info?"

"Not especially. I suppose they drill a hole and drop in a camera. Or—ask a gopher?"

"They use the shockwaves generated by earthquakes, or, sometimes, by underground H-bomb tests," Tom said. "The waves are reflected or distorted as they travel through the earth, just like sonar."

"Or like the sonograms they take in hospitals," continued Mr. Swift.

"Got it," Bud noted with a smile. "It’s like taking a sonogram of the whole earth."

"Exactly," said Tom approvingly. "But those big waves are hard to bring into focus. Our photos of the insides of Mother Earth are pretty blurred. We only really know about the main layers—the thin outer crust we walk around on, the thick mantle underneath that, and the core, which seems to be divided into an outer core of liquid iron and what they call the inner core, which is probably iron compressed into solid form despite the super-high temperatures."

"Okay. So what’s this new ‘ear’ all about?"

"It really
is
all about listening," replied Damon Swift. "We pick up higher-frequency vibrations—sounds—generated within the depths of the planet and use them to assemble a more detailed image, using computers."

Bud looked puzzled. "Guess I’m missing something. What’s causing those vibrations you’re listening to? Don’t tell me you’ve been setting off atomic bombs under Shopton!"

"Believe it or not, the vibes are caused by the sun and the moon," Tom said. "As the earth turns, the sun and moon create tides in the solid parts of the earth just as they do in the oceans—they’re just not as easy to notice, because we ride on top of ’em. As the tides pass, the earth eases back into place. But the uneven stresses produce the vibrational patterns that our sensors pick up. That’s why we call the system a lithosonde, which means
rock-sound."

Bud nodded sagely. "I knew
that,
of course. So now you’re going to take the output home to have a look, Mr. Swift?"

"Precisely," he replied.

At home that evening, Tom ate a late meal by himself. The rest of the family had finished dinner some time earlier, and Tom’s father was engaged in studying the readings from the lithosonde.

Rather than sit alone in the dining room, Tom preferred to eat in the big, cheerful kitchen of the Swift residence. As his dainty, attractive mother served the food she had been keeping warm on the kitchen range, Tom’s seventeen-year-old sister Sandra plied him with questions about the day’s events.

"Does this mean your earth blaster is ruined?" the blond, blue-eyed girl inquired anxiously. "Does taking videos count as spy-sabotage?"

"Not so far, sis," said Tom. "It’s just another factor, since we have no idea why they were doing it."

"Maybe they plan to dig a big hole underneath the Pentagon," Sandy speculated whimsically.

"Then they made a good choice, because the blaster could do it!" Tom came back. As he went on to explain the details of his invention, Mrs. Swift smiled at her son proudly. Even though most of the time she did not follow the technical aspects of Tom’s and his father’s work—though she herself had a degree in molecular biology—Anne Swift always listened attentively when they "talked shop" at home.

After supper Tom rejoined his father. Mr. Swift was seated in his comfortable private den, a large room on the first floor of the house, which opened onto a terrace through French doors.

"Any word yet from Harlan about that atomic spy?" Tom asked.

"Not yet. But the State Police and all sorts of alphabetical Federal agencies have joined in the search, so it should be only a matter of time."

"I sure would like to find out why that fellow Bronich wants the scoop on the earth blaster!" Tom went on. "But anyway, Dad, how did the lithosonde readings come out? Any sign of monsters at the earth’s core?"

"Not in the first batch of data," chuckled Damon Swift. "But it’s clear we’re getting a sharper picture of the earth’s interior than ever before. Look over the readouts yourself if you want, Tom. You know how to interpret them."