Tom Swift and His Atomic Earth Blaster (5 page)

"Brand my bunsen burner!" exclaimed the rotund westerner. "All this fuss made me drop my snack tray!"

It was a half-minute after the explosive arc-burst before Tom, dazed and shaken, managed to pick himself off the floor. His face stung and smarted. Groggily, the young inventor brushed one hand across his cheek. When he brought it away, it was streaked with blood.

"You brought me down pretty hard, Bud," Tom murmured.

At that moment Hank Sterling burst into the lab, accompanied by several plant workmen.

"Holy snark!" Hank exclaimed. "What’s going on in here?"

"You two young’uns all right?" Chow demanded anxiously.

"Still in one piece," said Tom. "But I guess we could do with a little cleaning up. Hank, m-maybe you could… tell maintenance… to shut off the f-fire sprinklers..." Tom’s voice was weak and hesitant.

Both Tom and Bud had suffered slight burns from the flying droplets of flash-melted metal, and their clothing was splattered with a wet sooty mixture, but otherwise they were uninjured.

Damage to the laboratory was also slight. Other than the ruined sprinkler system plus some broken test tubes and other minor chemical equipment, little would need replacing. The sturdy earth blaster had suffered no damage at all.

After leaving orders to have the debris cleaned up, Tom accompanied Bud to the Swift Enterprises infirmary, where their cuts were treated by the company nurse. Then they adjourned to the spacious private office in the main building which Tom shared with his father.

Tom’s half of the office displayed models of Tom’s most important inventions, hand tooled by Arvid Hanson, chief modelmaker of Swift Enterprises. Among them was a large, perfectly scaled model of his Flying Lab the
Sky Queen,
a silver replica of Tom’s rocket ship resting on its fins with its nose pointing skyward, and a copy of his jetmarine, the
Nemo,
in blue plastic. The largest item in the collection was a model of Tom’s giant robot.

Tom and Bud showered and changed in the bath connected to the office. Over a tasty lunch of soup and sandwiches, which Chow brought them, the boys recounted the horrific experience to Tom’s father and Hank Sterling. Tom was able to explain the sequence of events.

"The safety sprinkler setup uses a purely optical detector," he said. "There’s no need for hot air or fumes to reach the sensor in the ceiling—it ‘sees’ the wavelength of fire and opens the valves immediately."

"It sure does!" Hank commented. "It’s gone off twice over in my shop at just a tiny spark. Very irritating!"

"And so you allowed the spray of water to disturb the air," prompted Mr. Swift.

"Yep—but up
above
the electrodes. The discharge arc followed the droplets back to their source."

Sterling nodded. "From lesser to greater conductive density."

"Right," said the young inventor. "Now we’ve got one melted sprinkler head, instead of two vaporized employees!"

Tom’s father looked thoughtful and uncharacteristically troubled. "We never would have known what had happened," he said slowly. "What caused the accident, do you think?"

Tom had to smile. "Mr. Greenup does a whole routine when you say
‘accident’
."

"I don’t care about Greenup!" Damon Swift said sharply.
"Was
this an accident? Or a terrorist act orchestrated by Bronich?"

"I guess I don’t know," Tom admitted. "I can’t figure how the electrode system could power up by itself like that."

"If it was sabotage, it just shows how little the Kranjovians care about human life," Bud declared grimly. "Not that we didn’t know that already!"

Hank Sterling suggested that he examine the control circuits and try to identify the source of the malfunction. Mr. Swift was just thanking Hank when the office door opened and Harlan Ames strode into the room. "Big news!" he exclaimed.

"What’s up?" Tom asked the security chief.

"Looks like they’ve nailed those two thugs working with Bronich—the ones who tied you up! The State Police caught two men today who answer the description! Captain Rock wants you to identify them."

"Now we’re getting somewhere!" Bud exclaimed. "Let’s go, Tom."

Twenty minutes later Police Captain Rock greeted them in his office in downtown Shopton police headquarters. "Sit down and I’ll have the men brought in. They were picked up breaking into a convenience mart that had closed for lunch."

Their wrists handcuffed, the two men entered the room with a husky state trooper as guard.

"How about it, Tom?" said Captain Rock. "Are these the men?"

Tom got up from his chair and went over to study the prisoners closely.

"No doubt about it," he announced. "I can identify this fellow by the small scar over his left eyebrow. And the other one was wearing the same belt he has on now." The belt was unmistakable.

"Not too
swift
on the concept of disguising yourself, huh guys?" Bud mocked.

"All right Bank, and you too Dutt," Captain Rock said. "Start talking. And you’d better make it as convincing as your police records!"

"Just put us in our cell, man," mumbled Bank, the one with the scar.

Bud clenched his fists. "Maybe you two would like the same kind of a going-over you gave my pal!"

"Take it easy, Bud," Tom said, putting a restraining hand on his friend’s shoulder. "It’s true they tied me up, but they didn’t try to
rough
me up."

The prisoners shot him a grateful glance as the young inventor continued speaking.

"Look," he said to them, "there’s no sense in taking the rap for someone else. I’m fairly sure the whole thing wasn’t your idea, anyhow. So why not tell us who put you up to it?"

"It was just some guy," said Dutt with a nervous glance at his crony.

"It’s too bad if you can’t help us. Because that gunman with the video camera is a foreign agent. If you want to cover up for him, you may both end up in prison on charges of treason and espionage—and aiding and abetting terrorism!"

The prisoners looked at each other apprehensively, then back at Tom and Captain Rock.

"What do you want to know?" growled Bank.

"Who hired you?" asked Tom.

"The dude you were just talkin’ about. He picked us up at a bar down in Meadowview. Guess he knew we had records."

"Where can we find him?"

The man shrugged. "Search me. He wouldn’t even tell us his name." Bank paused and shifted his weight uncomfortably. Dutt stared at the floor.

"Come on, speak up!" snapped Captain Rock. "We haven’t got all day!"

"Yeah? I thought this was your day job!" sneered Bank.

"Well, there is one thing I can tell you," Dutt said. "I heard him gabbin’ on a cellphone once. Most of the time he was jabberin’ away in some foreign lingo I couldn’t understand. Like Russian er somethin’, you know?"

"That’s all you can tell us?" pressed Captain Rock.

"Look," said Bank, "he said he was gonna rob a couple driller boys at a construction site, that’s all. Never mentioned Swift-boy here. Said he might need a little help if they got feisty, and we were s’posed to wait outside the car and watch for him to come out through the bushes and wave if he needed us. That’s the whole bit."

Bud shook his head. "No it isn’t. How about the fourth guy, the one driving the car?"

A wave of surprise passed across the men’s faces.

"How did—" Dutt began, but Bank cut him off.

"Let me. Okay, yeah, there was this one other guy. Never seen him before and he never said a word. All he did was drive. Kind of a short, dumpy middle-aged dude—nothin’ special."

"Okay, take them back to their cells," the police chief said to the guard.

Bank was led through the door. Just before he exited the office, Dutt turned to Tom.
"95 Western Drive,"
he said in a terse whisper, obviously not wanting Bank to hear him.

As soon as the prisoners were led away, Captain Rock ordered two of his men to Western Drive.

"Wait a minute, Captain," Tom said. "Two uniformed police in a squad car might tip off the man we want. Let me take Bud here and Harlan Ames to scout the place. We’ll report back to you."

The captain agreed. "Harlan’s a good man. He’ll handle it well."

Western Drive was a broad, spacious thoroughfare that wound through Shopton and along the shore of Lake Carlopa. Tom and Bud met up with Ames a block away from their destination.

"Mighty nice afternoon to get incinerated!" Bud joked, gazing at the blue, sparkling lake waters as they walked along toward the address. "But they say smoking’s hazardous to your health!"

Harlan Ames was watching the numbers of the houses and apartment buildings. Suddenly he exclaimed, "Look! There’s the place!"

Both boys gaped in astonishment. The building which bore the address of 95 Western Drive was the Excelsis Club, a favorite haunt of wealthy sportsmen and their wives! Its front faced the street and the rear of the property backed onto the lake shore.

"Now what would Bronich be doing in a place like this?" Bud exclaimed. "Isn’t it a little rich for a spy’s blood?"

Harlan Ames smiled. "Must be one of those elegant, upper-crust-type spies."

"Let’s inquire inside," Tom said. "At least we can find out if anyone knows him."

At that moment a man emerged from a cluster of cars in the club’s private parking lot and headed toward a side door of the building. Just before entering, he turned his head for a glance at the lake, and Tom caught a brief glimpse of his face.

"That’s Bronich!"
Tom hissed. "I’m sure of it!"

Tom made a dash for the side entrance. Bud and Ames followed.

The heavy door, marked PRIVATE, had already slammed shut by the time they reached it. Tom and his friends pounded on it loudly and rattled the handle but got no response. The three hurried back around the corner of the building and ran up the flagged walk.

Under a striped awning, a towering doorman in a gold-braided uniform stood guard at the entrance. As Ames and the boys tried to rush past him, he stuck out his right arm to bar the way.

"May I see your cards, please?"

"Hang it all," Ames said impatiently, not quite in those words. "We have no cards, but we’re here on very important business!"

The doorman assumed a frozen, supercilious expression.

"I
am
sorry, sir," he replied firmly, "but my orders are to admit no one to the Excelsis Club except regular members—in
proper
attire!"

Fuming with impatience, Harlan Ames told the doorman who he and the boys were, and demanded to see the manager.

The doorman looked Tom up and down. "The famous Tom Swift, hmm? We’re honored. As to the manager, he’s not available," the man said icily.

"We’re trailing someone who’s wanted by the police!" Tom explained. "He’s a dangerous foreign agent and we saw him enter this club through the side door!"

"Sorry, sir, but I have my orders." A smirk touched his lips. "Perhaps one of your inventions could help you—Mr. Swift."

At a nod from Tom, Bud and Ames followed the young inventor in a search of some other means of entrance to the club. "That frozen-faced doorman!" raged Bud, as they circled the building. "We should’ve grabbed him by the seat of his plush pants and tossed him in the lake!"

"Never mind him," Tom said. "The important thing is to collar Bronich before he can slip away again. Listen, I think I might be able to work my way down to the side patio from the bridge over there. Harlan, maybe you could work on gently persuading that uniformed goon that it’d be in everybody’s best interest to cooperate."

"A pleasure, Tom," Ames nodded.

"I have an idea," Bud said. "In back there’s a big overhang—that part of the building is up on stilts ’cause of the way the beach slopes. Bet there’s a door or something underneath for access to the beach area!"

The three separated. Trying not to be noticed, Bud made his way to the shoreline. He saw that there was a private bathing beach for club members behind a fence—deserted for the moment.

Barclay, you’re on to something,
Bud told himself. He made his way into the deep shadow of the overhang—and stopped dead.

Directly in front of him a door was propped open, with a flight of steps leading upward!

Bud,
said his inner voice,
I think you just made the club!

THE FLIGHT of steps opened at the top onto a long windowless hallway of polished wood and indirect lighting. No one was in sight. Bud made his way forward along the plush carpet until he came alongside a pair of swinging doors. Opening one a crack, he could hear the sound of showers running and locker doors slamming.

Say, that’s right,
he thought.
The Excelsis Club has a health spa, a gym, and a restaurant!

He pushed the door open further and edged his way inside—only to beat an immediate and red-faced retreat. "Sorry, ladies!" he murmured through gritted teeth.

Further along, the hallway took a hard left. Beyond this was another swinging double-door. Inside Bud found the men’s locker room and men’s shower area. Though the locker room seemed empty he heard a mutter of voices near the showers and tried to creep closer without being seen. Quickly darting behind a row of metal lockers, a wall mirror afforded Bud a glimpse of two towel-clad men—one tall, one short—ambling toward the showers, talking softly.

Bud recognized the taller man immediately—Bronich!

He realized he would have to get much closer to the pair. All the lockers were unlocked when not in use, as members were expected to provide their own locks. Bud quickly pulled off his clothes and stuffed them into a vacant locker, whipping a towel off a shelf nearby and wrapping it about his waist. As he passed the wall mirror, he paused.
Hmm,
he told himself, flexing his muscles.
A natural athlete!
Then he cautiously entered the shower area.

As he did so, two showers began to hiss somewhere ahead. The room was large and L-shaped, divided into dozens of showers by chest-high tiled partitions. Bud realized that the moment he stepped round the corner, he would be in full view.
Even if Spy Guy doesn’t recognize me, ten to one they’ll both shut up in front of a stranger,
he thought.