Tom Swift and His Deep Sea Hydrodome (5 page)

Bud gulped. "I’m proof of
that!"

Returning at last to Fearing Island, Tom immediately contacted federal and naval authorities, alerting them to the presence of the toxin and the possibility that an unidentified submersible was involved in its release. He concluded by transmitting to them the recorded data from both sonarscope and spectroscope. After a troubled night’s sleep, the four flew on the
Sky Queen
back to Shopton, where Dr. Clisby and Bob Anchor would be residing for the duration of the helium project start-up, working with company scientists.

At Swift Enterprises Tom made a detailed report to his father in the office of Harlan Ames, the plant’s chief of security. "I’ll examine those sonar images, and see what my intelligence contacts have to say," Ames promised. "I’m not aware of any foreign nation roving the seas at such depth, in something of such a peculiar design. I can’t see what makes it go. Can you?"

Tom shrugged. "My guess would be some kind of electromagnetic reaction drive—utilizing the electrical conduction properties of the surrounding water, in other words. That’s been around for decades, you know. But obviously the bigger concern is the toxin business."

"Yes, and it’s not just a danger to your helium hydrodome, either. If even a small quantity of T-9-E got caught up in a cross-oceanic current, it could cause a worldwide catastrophe—many thousands of deaths." Ames thought for a minute, silent, as Tom and Mr. Swift waited patiently. "And yet—why would an enemy release trace amounts in the water, enough to be detectable and give away the game, but not enough to cause any harm?"

"They may not have realized that the other dissolved chemicals would weaken it," Tom suggested. "Or, I suppose it could have been some sort of industrial-waste accident."

"If so," said the security man grimly, "whoever is responsible will have every reason to cover it up! And given the high stakes, don’t think
murder
won’t cross their minds."

Damon Swift sighed. "I know you’re right, Harlan. Looks like this son of mine has managed to hand you yet another in an endless series of mortal crises."

"Don’t worry. That’s what ulcers were invented for."

As Tom and his father rose to leave and return to their own private office next door, Ames waved them back down into their chairs. "And there’s something else, gentlemen."

As the Swifts settled back down, Ames took out a manila folder and opened it on his desk. "Tom, you passed along to the legal office the card of this woman Bud met in San Francisco."

"Uh-huh. I thought Willis Rodellin might have an opening to fill."

"He does, as a matter of fact. He contacted her and received back a full resume, faxed. And then he asked me to do a background check."

"Did something problematic come up?" asked Mr. Swift. "I don’t need to review the matter personally, Harlan—Willis makes the decision."

"In this particular case you might want to get involved yourself."

"Why?" inquired Tom in surprise.

"That name of hers doesn’t ring any alarm bells for you two? Not you, Damon?"

"Her name?" Tom’s father frowned. "I don’t think Tom mentioned the name to me, actually."

"I don’t recall it, to tell the truth," Tom said. "I just handed off the card."

A wry, half-amused expression on his face, Ames turned the folder around and pushed it in front of his two employers. Mr. Swift glanced at it—and reacted. "Good grief—
Foger!
Are you trying to tell me—"

"The man was her great-uncle, her grandfather’s brother."

Tom was bemused. "Who are we talking about?"

"We’re talking about a man—a boy, I suppose—by the name of Andy Foger."

Tom shook his head. "I guess the name does seem a little familiar, Dad. But I don’t recall the details. Something to do with Great-Grandfather Tom?"

Damon Swift chuckled. "Quite a bit
‘to do’
!" He began to relate the story of the first Tom Swift’s conflict with Andy Foger, and as he did so his son began to remember what he had read and heard over the years.

Young Andy Foger, red-haired, squinty, and generally ill-tempered, was what some described as a pampered youth. The son of a local bank official, he had been in essence a spoiled rich kid able to afford anything he wanted, including a circle of friends willing to put up with him while professing adoration. He became something of the town bully, a pest to the police but protected by his father from any consequences, the well-deserved ones in particular.

When Tom Swift, whose father Barton was already an important name in Shopton, began to tool about on his first invention, a motorcycle, Andy’s jealousy boiled over. He commenced a years-long campaign of rivalry, mischief, innuendo, and outright sabotage against the increasingly famous boy inventor. Finally, he and his father, who had fallen on hard times, were publicly disgraced by their participation in what amounted to a smuggling operation.

"A sad case," commented Mr. Swift. "A prominent family spiralling down into criminality. Even the fact that your great-grandfather saved his life didn’t alter his resentment."

"What became of him, Dad?"

Harlan Ames responded. "I’ve done a bit of research. The Foger family seems to have moved away from Shopton around 1915—probably the smartest thing they could have done. There’s some evidence they moved to Mexico. I found an obit for someone of the right age, same middle initial, in Mexico City, dated September 3, 1960. If it’s the same Andrew E. Foger, it looks like he ended up working in the petroleum industry."

"Any mention of a wife? Children?" Mr. Swift inquired.

"None. But a cyber-trip to the Hall of Records allowed me to verify a younger half-brother, who lived with his mother in Mansburg —Amelia Foger’s grandfather. He’s deceased as well."

Tom rubbed his chin. "This is interesting stuff, but—do you think it matters much, Harlan? We’re talking about animosities between two families that are almost a century in the past. Amelia’s running into Bud looks like just a coincidence."

"Yes," Ames conceded. "And it’s true that she did nothing to try to conceal her name from us. She may know nothing about her great-uncle’s early life."

Damon Swift laughed gently. "I wouldn’t want to be held to account for my ancestor, poor Professor Blondlot."

Tom joined in the laughter. "Nor I, for good old ‘Dead-Horse Longstreet’!" Turning sober, he added, "But if Miss Foger decides to pursue the position here at Enterprises, maybe I’ll have a chat with her some day about family history—a friendly chat."

"From Bud’s account," remarked Ames with a wink, "Amelia Foger is very easy to be friendly to!" The next day he was able to report to the Swifts that upon Mr. Swift’s concurrence the San Francisco attorney had been offered the position in the legal office, and had accepted. She would be arranging a temporary living situation in Shopton, relocating immediately.

During the week that followed, Tom pursued various aspects of the helium-well project. Always in the back of his mind was the menace of the neurotoxin and the unidentified sub. Bud’s characteristic nickname for the phantom,
Mad Moby,
had caught on with everyone associated with the project, including Arthur Clisby and Bob Anchor.

While Hank Sterling’s engineering section completed the full-sized version of Tom’s well-capping mechanism, the young inventor worked with Arvid Hanson to develop a prototype for a newer, stronger hydrodome. The deep-sea habitat had now assumed a more hemispherical shape, though still completely closed off at the bottom. No longer made primarily of metal, the improved version was a dome comprised of a myriad of flat facets arrayed in geodesic form. The dome was now entirely of multi-layered Tomaquartz and transparent all around, with a complex internal structure of metal supports.

When the small prototype was finished, a crane lowered it into one of the huge block-shaped pressure tanks used at Enterprises to test experimental submersibles—the seacopter, Fat Man suit, and Tom’s earlier jetmarine.

"How optimistic are you feeling, Tom?" Arv asked, eyeing the dimlit image of the hydrodome on the tank’s interior monitor.

"Optimistic? I’ll cop to feeling confident!" was the smiling reply. "But we’ll have to get the confidence-meter up to one-hundred-percent before we risk letting people live in that thing."

Hanson agreed, and signaled the tank operator, Wes Beale, to commence increasing the inner pressure. A red line, like that on a thermometer, began its maddeningly slow creep up the control board. "Looks good," muttered Arv presently. "Already a good fifteen percent over the max test pressure of the earlier model."

"And she’s still standing tall," Tom said. "How’s the air pressure inside the dome?"

"Holding firm," was the reply. "And not a trace of moisture."

"Thank goodness!" Tom chuckled, his face aglow with the excitement of a scientific victory in the making. "I wouldn’t want to have to bother with an umbrella when—"

Suddenly the watchers gave a start as a loud alarm siren erupted in a piercing wail of warning! Before anyone could even ask a question, an explosive thundercrack split the air, and a narrow plume of white froth jetted skyward from one side of the test tank.

"The tank!" screeched Wes Beale, turning to run.
"She’s gonna blow!"

ARV HANSON whirled and had run several steps after Beale when he realized that Tom was hanging back. He paused and yelled over his shoulder, "Tom!
Come on!"

But Tom Swift resisted the panic that had overwhelmed the other two. His skillful hands darted over the test tank control board. Suddenly the jet of water diminished markedly, then began to gradually wither away, as did the automatic alarm siren.

Wes and Arv came trotting back to Tom’s side, somewhat shamefaced. "Tell me how you did that, chief!" demanded Wes. "There’s no way to drop the pressure that rapidly!"

"One way, Wes," said the young inventor. "I blew the main sealer flanges on the hydrodome model."

"You mean you flooded it?" asked Arv in amazement.

Tom nodded soberly. "Had to. Letting the tank water expand into the space reduced the overall pressure to below critical. If we’d let the side wall fracture, the pressure would have hit us like a piledriver—even on the run."

"Good grief!" Wes exclaimed with an admiring half-laugh. "There’s a solution that wouldn’t have occurred to me in a million years."

Hanson put a hand on his young boss’s shoulder. "You saved us, all right. But the dome prototype is ruined. We’ll have to start from scratch."

"Don’t bother," Tom said quietly. "Look at these numbers—the final readings before I flooded her."

Arv read them off with a wince. "The dome structure had started deforming at the middle of the facets."

Tom nodded. "The support props couldn’t handle it. If we’d kept upping the pressure, the hydrodome would have collapsed." He gave a sigh of discouragement. "I don’t have a clue as to how to proceed further. It won’t be practical to try to work that site living in Fat Man suits and submarines, not in the long run." He gave his friends a rueful look. "I guess the helium project will turn out to be just a pipe dream after all."

"What I’d like to know is—what caused the tank to fail like that?" muttered Wes. "The material is inspected thoroughly by the TeleTec machine before each use."

"Including this time?" Tom inquired. "Are you absolutely sure?"

Wes proceeded to make a series of calls. Eventually he reported to Tom that the mandatory inspection had not taken place. "It’s my responsibility," he said. "But I don’t understand what happened. I remember informing the team, by the usual instant-messaging alert, that we were going to do a Level 8 test today. I even have an automatic acknowledgement message on my computer, showing that the message went through. Yet there’s no trace at the other end, and my guys deny that they were ever informed. And they’re an honest bunch, Tom."

Thinking of his mysterious foes, the crew of the
Mad Moby,
Tom asked Wes if any of his team were new hires, or newly assigned. "Not a one," Wes insisted. "We’ve all worked together for years now."

"Then it’s unexplained," Tom declared; "just like the moving of that buoy anchor. But please forward to me whatever you find out when you analyze the tank wall. It’s
quite
a coincidence, failing like that on an occasion where any weakness wouldn’t have been caught in advance."

Though Tom was baffled and discouraged, Clisby and Anchor, as well as his father and the ever-enthusiastic Bud, urged him to proceed with other aspects of the helium well project. "Chum, you’re sure to figure a way around this roadblock—you work best under pressure!" Bud exclaimed.

Tom gave him a sharp look.
"Under pressure?
That’s got to be one of those notorious Barclay puns!"

"Maybe," admitted the dark-haired pilot. "It’s gotten so bad my mouth does it even when I’m not paying attention!"

Tom agreed to continue whatever forward motion he could make.

Soon enough came the day to drill at the base of the mountain. Returning to the site in the
Sea Hound
with Bud, Clisby, Anchor, and chief engineer Hank Sterling, Tom used his earth-probing penetradar system to determine the overall shape and depth of the natural fissure and the likely location of the chain of interconnected gas pockets. "Man, is it deep down, and right under the mountain!" Tom pronounced. "But we should be able to go at it at an angle."

"And, as they say—how’s the water out there?" asked Clisby.

"No sign of the toxin for miles around," said the young inventor. "No sign of
Mad Moby,
either."

"Unless he’s in hiding," noted Hank.

After selecting a spot for drilling on the plain just below the ledge, they unloaded the earth blaster’s compact launching platform from a stowage bay that opened to the exterior, and fastened it into the rock below the ooze with spread anchors. Next, the torpedo-shaped machine itself was maneuvered into place and quickly set up.

"Because of the likelihood of pockets of flammable gases in the area, we’ll be using the ‘cool’ mechanical version instead of the ‘hot’ arc-field model," Hank explained in answer to an objection from Bud.