Tom Swift and His Jetmarine (4 page)

"Wha—what happened?" gasped Wes, almost inaudible. "Bud?"

"Dunno—" He took a step toward Wes, then stopped dead in his tracks. "Tom!
Tom’s down in the tank!"
Bud ran unsteadily to the tank control panel, and his face turned white. "The pressure! It’s—"

Bud frantically began to work the controls as Wes joined him. "We can’t lower the pressure too rapidly or Tom will get the bends," Wes said, putting a hand on Bud’s shoulder.

Bud shook him off. "Just tell me how to work this thing!"

Sid Baker joined them. Everyone was now regaining consciousness. "Listen to me, Bud. Even if we reduce the pressure now…" Sid didn’t finish his thought.

"I’m not giving up," said Bud. "Tom Swift wouldn’t give up on me."

"No," came another voice, softly. "He wouldn’t." It was Tom’s father.

They lowered the tank pressure as rapidly as the machinery would permit, meanwhile informing plant security of the strange blackout. The phenomenon appeared to have affected everyone throughout a large fan-shaped area at the north end of the plant, which included the warehouse-like test complex. But persons in the control tower and administrative offices had not been affected. The plant infirmary team was already beginning to treat those who had been injured while collapsing during the siege, which seemed to have produced about twelve minutes of unconsciousness.

"I’d give anything to see inside that there tank!" Chow muttered, rubbing the swelling bruise on the side of his forehead. "But what I really want is a ding-dang miracle."

Mr. Swift squeezed Chow’s arm. "We’ll know soon."

Just then the speaker mounted on the control panel crackled to life.
"Is…is anyone there?"

"Tom!"
cried Bud, so overcome that he couldn’t speak for several moments.

Mr. Swift took the microphone. "Son, how are you doing?"

"Not bad—now. I’m inside the jetmarine. My brain is a little fuzzed out, but it looks like the pressure’s close to normal out there."

"You stay where you are," commanded Damon Swift. "We’re going to completely drain the tank."

Within five minutes the pressure tank was empty and its lid removed. Dripping and surrounded by shallow puddles, the sub waited to be boarded. She showed not a sign of her high-pressure ordeal.

A crane arm swung out over the jetmarine and lowered Bud to the main topside hatch in a medical lift-chair. He entered the craft, and Tom soon emerged to shouts and applause, Bud following behind. After they were conveyed out of the tank, Tom was given a preliminary examination by medics from the plant infirmary who declared him fit.

"Guess I’m lucky this time," Tom said.

"Guess so," Bud agreed.

"And now there’s a couple mysteries I’d like solved," Tom continued. "What caused the blackout, and what caused the tank pressure to get screwy?"

"You think we got another o’ them spies here, boss?" asked Chow.

Mr. Swift answered. "We can’t rule it out as far as the blackout effect, since it suggests the
modus operandi
of the Sea Snipers. But there’s a simpler explanation for Tom’s problem in the tank."

"Way
simpler," said Sid Baker, somewhat shamefaced. "When I started to lose consciousness, I remember falling across the pressure controls."

Tom clapped him on the back reassuringly. "Don’t take it hard, Sid. Now that I’m several inches smaller all the way around, maybe I can buy cheaper clothes!"

"Say there," said Chow, "mebbe that’d work with me!" The hefty cowpoke angled his chin down to eye his generous waistline.

As Mr. Swift and the others attended to the reberthing of the jetmarine in the underground hangar, Tom and Bud hurried to the airfield control tower to check the automatic record of the large radarscope mounted there. As Tom played back the data on an auxiliary monitor, Bud looked over his shoulder anxiously. "What do you see, genius boy? Anything with a skull-and-crossbones on it?"

"No," Tom replied. "Nothing in the sky, and nothing on the ground except a lot of blips that stop moving just before noon."

"Then maybe it’s an inside job after all," Bud commented.

"Let’s try another approach," responded the young inventor. "The ground-hugging radar scan doesn’t cut off precisely at the perimeter fence. We get a bit of a reflection for another hundred feet or so, but it’s weak and distorted. But I have some powerful image-enhancement software on my lab computer which I can access remotely, from this terminal."

"Sweet!" exclaimed Bud with a grin. "So you’ll pump the raw data into your lab computer, and the result will come out here."

The processing and fine-tuning took only a matter of minutes. A radar shadow from the strip beyond the north perimeter fence began to form on the monitor.

"There it is!" Tom cried triumphantly, pointing at a squarish blip on the screen.

"What is it?"

"A car," Tom replied. "And not a big one, either—maybe a sports car. Look, you can see how it slowed and pulled over on the old Mansburg road."

"Hardly anybody uses that road," Bud remarked, "not since the new throughway was finished."

Tom advanced the electronic record slowly, second by second. "There he is, stopped off the road. He’s waiting…oh, he wanted that car to pass by. Look, the reflectance signature changed—he must’ve opened a door on the driver’s side. Getting close to the time now—there! See that flicker?"

"I guess so," said Bud. "Just barely."

"The scope was reacting to some kind of interference. It must be the Snipers’ blackout device!"

"And there he goes!" Bud exclaimed. "Man, he must’ve peeled out at seventy!"

Tom nodded. "Sure. He stays just long enough to make sure the device had its effect—he probably had binoculars trained on somebody visible on the field—and then he jumps back in his sporty machine and makes his getaway."

Knowing that it was not possible as of yet to prove that the car that stopped had been involved in a crime, Tom passed his data on to Harlan Ames for "off-the-record" investigation by Enterprises’ security.

"I’ll share whatever we’ve got with the Shopton PD," Ames said, "and with ONDAR. It’s quite a development, the Sea Snipers trying an attack on land."

"Yep," Tom agreed. "But fortunately, it doesn’t seem they broke into the plant grounds."

"Strange. It almost seems like an act of mischief."

"Yeah, in fact—a prank!" A new thought had struck Tom. The capricious nature of the incident reminded him of his peculiar encounter with Sidney Dansitt. Could there be some connection between Dansitt, son of a shipping magnate, and the attacks on ocean vessels?

Tom spent the afternoon reviewing the tapes of the pressure test, his father at his side in their shared office. The instrumental results disclosed not the slightest hint of any hull deformation or weakening, and microspectrometer readings confirmed that the Tomasite sheathing had been unaffected by the pressure, assuaging a major concern. The only negative result was a minor one, involving a slight compression of the dome sealant. A new sealant compound was already being applied to the jetmarine to rectify the flaw.

"I’d say the jetmarine is ready to get its gills wet in the salty sea," Mr. Swift said, pride in his voice.

"Her shakedown cruise is going to be in the Gulf of Mexico," declared the young inventor. "I’m itching to take a look at that ‘mystery spot’ off Cuba."

Damon Swift nodded, suddenly thoughtful. "I know you are, son. And I think you should. But don’t demand miracles of yourself. Mrs. Sterling has accepted that Hank probably went down with the ship without regaining consciousness. The investigators feel certain that some sort of demand would have been made by now if he had been kidnapped."

"Not that that will stop me."

"Not that that will stop you," chuckled Mr. Swift, throwing an arm about his son’s shoulders.

Tom and his father strolled out into the afternoon sunlight, where they were met by Bud Barclay. Bud gestured off toward the far airfield. "Planning another trip in the
Sky Queen?"
he inquired. The huge metal doors that covered the underground hangar had been opened to the sky, as they were when the Flying Lab’s berthing platform was about to be elevated to ground level.

"No, Bud," Mr. Swift replied, "I just had them open the overhead doors to improve the air circulation while we’re replacing the sealant around the sub’s view-dome. The chemicals can be toxic in concentration."

Suddenly Tom put a hand on his father’s forearm. "We have a visitor!"

They had been hearing the subdued whine of a distant jet for several moments. Now the jet had tracked into view over the treeline, flying low and slow.

Bud grimaced in disgust. "Don’t tell me!"

"It’s Dansitt’s jet, all right," said Tom, shading his eyes against the sun.

"He’s been officially warned away from this airspace," declared Mr. Swift angrily. "I’ll see him grounded!"

The jet made a casual circle around the plant, not crossing the property line. Tom could imagine the control tower personnel sternly ordering him away—and Dansitt making arrogant, mocking replies.

"He’s lowering something from the fuselage," Bud observed. A dark, streamlined object was now suspended beneath the cockpit. "Good night, he’s going in for a bombing run!"

The jet had broken pattern and was streaking low, straight across the grounds of Swift Enterprises!

THERE WAS HARDLY time to react. Tom stiffened as Dansitt’s jet shrieked over him, expecting an explosion. But in the back of his mind he also remembered his thoughts from earlier in the day. Could the device beneath the plane be, not a bomb, but the blackout-ray transmitter?

Neither was the case. After its single low pass over the Enterprises airfield, Dansitt’s craft veered off and away, rapidly gaining altitude before it was lost to sight.

"Can you beat that?" said Bud. "What’s that jerk up to?"

"I’m afraid I know exactly what he’s up to," Mr. Swift responded. "I recognize the mechanism beneath the cockpit. It was the centerfold a few months ago in
Invention & Technology
."

"What is it, Dad?" asked Tom.

"A new high-definition digital camera for aerial spying," answered Mr. Swift. "It has a ‘smart’ processor that removes blurring and distortion due to motion, recording the image data on a tiny cartridge."

Tom rammed an angry fist into his open palm. "He’s taking pictures of the jetmarine!"

As Mr. Swift contacted Ames via televoc, Tom drew Bud aside and spoke in angry but muted tones. "You know, Bud, I think we’ve treated that poor misguided boy with gentleness and understanding more than long enough."

"I agree, Tom. I’m leaning toward a tough-love approach at this point."

"I want those image files in my hands before he can pass them on," said Tom with steel in his voice. "And the only way to do that—"

"Is to catch him!" finished Bud with a whoop.

The Enterprises ground crews were trained to move with lightning coordination, and a suitable jetcraft was already fueled and available. Not fifteen minutes had ticked away before Tom and Bud were aloft in the
Kangaroo Kub
.

This innovative jet plane incorporated a number of revolutionary design elements, including a pair of extensible secondary winglets that allowed the craft to amble through the air as slowly as a prop-driven Piper Cub while still under jet power, and to take-off and land on even the shortest of airstrips. But with its winglets folded back into the fuselage, the jet was fully capable of mach-level speeds. The craft was ordinarily carried along as a "baby" vehicle in the hangar-hold of the
Sky Queen,
but was easily unloaded for separate use.

"Now what, bloodhound boy?" asked Bud, who was in the pilot’s position.

"Now we make Sid one sick and sorry rich kid," replied Tom with determination. "We’ve captured the radarscope silhouette of his jet, and the
Kub
is outfitted with trans-horizon radar. If he’s not more than two states distant, we’ll get an echo."

"But he may have landed already," Bud cautioned.

"Not a problem," commented Tom with a grin. "About a week ago Gina Emiliotti’s shop finished the new thermospectron identifier and installed it on the
Kub
for testing—and this will be the best test imaginable!"

Bud shot Tom a wry sideways glance. "A new Tom Swift invention?"

"Oh, I just came up with the basic concept," responded Tom modestly. "It was Gina and her crew that made it work. Here, I’ll show you the goods."

As the
Kangaroo Kub
continued in the direction of Dansitt’s last known heading, Tom switched on a newly-installed instrument panel. "Y’see, flyboy, flying craft that leave exhaust trails—jets and rockets, basically—leave behind a heat signature in the air that’s as distinctive as fingerprints, in theory. The thermospectron identifier uses a computer to extract specific thermal-frequency profiles from the radar bounceback, allowing us to ‘see’ the heat trail of one particular vehicle and follow wherever it goes, even down to a landing. The only variables are time and the wind—the trail eventually dissipates and becomes unreadable. But it hasn’t been too long yet, and the air is fairly calm today."

Tom activated and adjusted the device. Several hazy bands appeared on a small readout screen. Most of the bands were wavery and diffuse, but one was relatively straight and well-defined. "There’s our boy!" Tom exclaimed happily. "The trail passes right over the plant, then off to the north."

Bud made a baying sound as he swerved the
Kub
in the proper direction and gunned the throttle. Almost immediately the trans-horizon radarscope registered the telltale
ping!
of Dansitt’s Harrigan Eaglet.

"The poor doonko doesn’t know what he’s up against," laughed Bud, pouring on the speed.

In minutes the
Kangaroo Kub
had sighted the target visually, and within a minute more they were flying abeam of it. As Dansitt sneered at him through the cockpit dome, Tom signaled the pilot to land. Dansitt’s reply was a universally recognized digital signal, the gist of which was
No!
Then, without warning, he threw his stick forward and went into a screeching dive. Leveling out a few yards off the ground, he headed straight for a large red barn.