Tom Swift and His Spectromarine Selector (10 page)

"What a sight this place is," added the other jetmarine crewman, Red Jones. "Neat-golly, it’s better than the Parthenon, the Roman Coliseum, and the Great Pyramid rolled into one!"

"Stay a while," Tom urged. "The boss gives his approval! You can do a little exploring with us, and see the spectromarine selector in action."

They agreed enthusiastically. "We were hopin’ for an invite," laughed Billy.

After reporting the stayover to Fearing via the aqua-rad, the technical team began to unload the spectrosel from its padded cradle in the
Deepwing
. Shipped in three sections, the cannon was quickly assembled outside the mantacopter’s freight hatch. Tom stepped aboard the platform to make a final instrument check before the device was wheeled into action. Bud and Hank Sterling joined the young inventor, finding space to stand on either side of the big intake cylinder.

"Hey, boss!" Tom looked up and saw Chow’s bald head bobbing side to side as he looked over the machine he had named. "Kin I come aboard, too, an see how she works?"

"Sure, if you can squeeze in, pardner!"

Beaming, Chow hoisted his rotund bulk up onto the platform, which had been raised somewhat on the extensible tractor treads. His eyes bulged admiringly as he watched Tom’s fingers move about the control board, adjusting various dials.

"Brand my biscuits, boss," Chow murmured, "you kin play this lil ole contraption like it was a pipe organ!"

Tom grinned without speaking. But the growing crowd of onlookers picked up the leathery Texan’s remark and began needling him jokingly. As the cook blushed, Bud followed up with an off-key rendition of an old song, "When the Organ Played at Twilight."

Brian Fraser grinned and called out, "Hey, Tom, I think your invention has just been given a second nickname."

Tom chuckled. "Suits me, Brian. Just as long as it makes sweet music when I try it out!"

The mood was broken by a dryly determined female voice. "If the gaiety is over for the moment, I really must request a place on board alongside your cook. I cannot do my job unless I am allowed to accompany you in your primary activities."

"You could just walk behind like everyone else," muttered Bud, unheard by the target of his barb.

"Hop aboard, Miss Gabardine," Tom invited her politely. "There’s still a place to stand next to the particulate compressor."

"I do not
hop,
Mr. Swift," she responded. Hank offered a gallant arm and helped her onto the platform.

With his checkout completed, Tom started the electric traction motor, powered by solar batteries. The spectrosel rolled forward on its flexing treads a few dozen feet, and Tom brought it to rest, the intake facing a group of tall objects rearing high on square bases. They stood in a row before what had once been a lofty porticoed building.

The crowd of the curious had trooped along behind the cannon. "Whattaya think those deals are?" asked Ham Teller loudly. "Monuments of some kind?"

"Probably just the lower parts of a row of decorative columns," responded George Braun.

"You’re a real romantic, Brauny," retorted Ham.

"Suppose we see what’s what!" Tom called back, hands on the controls.

"Hard to believe you can peel off all that gunk," remarked Bud to his chum. The objects were completely encased in blobs of green and brown materials of every kind and description—and, increasingly, smell. Almost nothing of their shapes could be made out.

Switching on the twin maser thermal units, Tom moved a lever which actuated the spectron-wave pulsers inside the mouth of the cannon. After carefully adjusting the moleculetron unit, he aimed the intake at the nearest of the objects. Instantly it began to whisk off the slimy coating like a giant invisible razor in action! The onlookers broke into excited applause. Chow stole a glance at Julienne Gabardine.
Hmmph!
He thought.
Fer once she’s so impressed she’s not writin’ in her dang notebook!

Tom grinned at the crowd’s outburst as he fingered the moleculetron controls, changing the molecules of the gaseous waste into compact, easily stored forms.

The encrustation melted away moment by moment. The watchers gasped as the beslimed bulk was gradually transformed into a glittering gold animal god! The human face had a hawk’s beak and folded wings on a catlike body. As Tom proceeded, the other objects were revealed as further statues—crouching lions or jaguars with men’s features. One depicted a huge serpent coiled around a goddess.

"The gods of the city!" George exclaimed.

"They’re solid gold!" Fraser gasped.

"They may have just a golden shell over some other material," Tom said cautiously, after jumping off the platform to examine the statues more closely.

"What type of people could have made them, skipper?" Doc Simpson put in with keen scientific curiosity. "They’re exquisitely carved."

"They look something like those Mayan carvings we saw in Yucatan, don’t they?" Bud said. "Snake Woman here reminds me of that dude Kukulcan, with his double head."

Tom nodded thoughtfully. "Their form is similar. But I’d say their faces are more like a mixture of the Oriental and South Sea sculptures on display in the museum in Manhattan."

"I have seen such art forms in the islands of the Pacific, near Japan," declared Professor Centas.

Continuing with the cleanup process, Tom uncovered the front wall of the ruined building. Its still-majestic outlines, gleaming with gold, brought awed murmurs from the project team.

"Must have been a temple," Billy commented.

"Probably," Tom agreed. "But its architecture is different from anything I’ve ever seen pictured."

"Well, actually, I’ve seen—" began Ham.

"They don’t need your resume right now, Brooklyn Boy," interrupted George teasingly.

Tom approached the platform. Miss Gabardine had gotten over her brief awe and was making notes.

"I trust we’re operating efficiently," Tom said with a smile. The woman pointedly ignored the comment.

Tom now turned the cannon over to Hank. "Aim down and try it on that flat area, won’t you," Tom directed. "I’d like to watch the process from the other side."

Hank nodded and began to resume the process as Tom hurried over to look back.

The flat area, an intersection of two streets, began to disclose stone paving, not golden for a change. But suddenly, Tom noticed that the clearing process seemed to have halted. Looking up, his eyes widened in surprise and alarm. To his amazement, Hank and everyone on the spectrosel platform were behaving strangely. They were moving in slow, jerky fashion and clutching their throats.

"Good night!" Tom gasped. "What’s going on?"

He ran toward the group. Almost instantly, his nostrils caught a whiff of a flowerlike odor.

"Flowers?" Tom halted, puzzled, trying to identify the odor.

Then his face went pale as the answer clicked in his mind. Cyanogen gas!
The deadly vapor could wipe out every person in Aurum City within minutes!

"Hank!" Tom yelled. "Turn off the machine!"

HANK seemed unable to respond to Tom’s command. But fortunately Arv Hanson, watching from the crowd, was not yet affected by the slowly spreading gas. Holding his breath inside his big-chested body he leapt onto the platform and switched off the spectromarine selector.

Like a flash, Tom sprinted toward the air machine and purifying equipment next to the mantacopter and sped up both devices. Their droning hum rose to a high-pitched whine. Without pausing, Tom circled the temple on a dead run, shepherding everyone to safety.

"All hands, back to the manta!" he shouted.

"Tom, we’ve got to help the people on the platform!" shouted Zimby Cox. Panting, his heart thudding, Tom saw that everyone—Bud, Hank, Chow, Miss Gabardine—had collapsed to the deck, helpless and struggling to breathe!

Tom didn’t need to call for volunteers; a number of the men yet unaffected sprang forward to help carry their friends to safety. Fortunately the deadly wisps were already dissipating. Bud, Chow, and Hank all managed to regain their feet and stagger along once away from the platform. Only Miss Gabardine was completely unconscious. She was lain down on top of a squishy mass of seaweed, several shirts serving as a mat beneath her.

Even Professor Centas helped, rushing up with an emergency oxygen mask and portable tank from the
Fathomer
. As Gabardine began to regain consciousness, Doc and Mordo came trotting over to render further aid.

Doc administered a stimulant, and the woman moaned. "She’s coming around."

"Thank goodness!" gulped Tom earnestly. "Bud and the others look all right, too."

As soon as all were finally aboard the
Fathomer,
Tom ordered an immediate muster on the three submarines. Mel Flagler reported that none of those few who had been working near the
Supermanta
had been affected, and Slim Davis made the same report from the
Deepwing.

Presently Doc Simpson came from the
Fathomer
’s small sickbay to report on the victims. "They’re okay," he informed Tom. "The ones next to the machine were the only ones who inhaled a significant amount, but I’ve administered oxygen and a heart stimulant. They should be back on their feet soon with no ill effects other than a scratchy throat."

Tom, sweating with anxiety and exertion, wiped his arm across his brow.
"Whew!"
he muttered thankfully. "That was a close call, Doc!"

"
Close
is the
only
kind of call he has, Doc!" came the wavering voice of Bud from the sickbay.

"No worries about ‘Buddy Boy’!" Simpson chuckled. "Tom, where did that cyanogen come from?"

"I don’t know for sure yet," Tom admitted. "But obviously it must have been formed by the action of the cannon. I’d say the moleculetron system is our main suspect."

As soon as the hydrodome atmosphere was fully purified, Tom checked the device. His suspicions seemed to be borne out after careful testing. "The moleculetron was processing carbon and nitrogen too slowly," Tom explained to Bud, woozily by his side. "Kind of a molecular traffic jam. They combined to form the cyanogen gas."

"Any way to fix it?" Bud asked.

Tom ran his fingers through his crewcut hair, while his forehead puckered in a worried frown. "For the moment I’m stumped, pal. But I’d better come up with an answer fast, or our whole project here will be stopped cold!"

Returning to the
Deepwing
, where Tom had established a tiny lab-workshop compartment for use by the science team, the young inventor worked on the problem steadily for several hours, not even pausing for the evening meal. At midnight Bud and Doc Simpson found him slumped over his work counter.

"Poor guy! He’s passed out from sheer exhaustion," Doc commented.

"Come on! Let’s put him to bed," Bud said. When Tom awoke in a
Deepwing
bunk the next morning, his brain held a clear answer to his problem. "I’ll simply alter the compounder so that the hydrogen and nitrogen from the organic waste can be combined to form fuel gas," he told himself. "The carbon can be combined with oxygen to form carbon dioxide and pumped off into the ocean when the tank is filled!"

Elated by the simple solution, Tom leapt from his bunk and began to dress.

"Hi, Doc!" he exclaimed with a grin a moment later as the medic walked into the compartment. "Guess I conked out last night, but I feel fine!"

"That’s good. You’ll need to be in sound shape to deal with our Miss Gabardine," Doc Simpson replied. "She’s up and around and threatening to shut down the project."

"Aw
no!"
Tom winced. "I’ll head over to the
Fathomer
and ask her to speak with me privately, in my cabin."

"Better have some of Chow’s breakfast first," advised Doc.

"Guess I need to keep up my strength."

"Yes, but my real concern is to calm Chow down—he’ll fret himself to death until he sees that blond genius head of yours!"

Tom waited patiently in his cabin for some time before Julienne Gabardine knocked and entered, notebook in hand. "We have that in common, Julienne," Tom said with a smile. "I carry a notebook with me almost always."

She glared at him. "Please don’t attempt to sweet-talk me, Mr. Swift."

"I understand you have some concerns?"

"Very grave ones, I must say," she responded. "It has become abundantly clear that this project compromises the standards of my office with respect to the use of human subjects in experimentation."

Tom was flabbergasted.
"Human subjects?
We’re not experimenting on—"

"Call it what you like," she snapped. "I am willing to push the regulatory definition a bit if it will shut down this dangerous operation of yours. Can you deny that we have met with one threat to life after another, completely unanticipated? This is entirely inconsistent with your funding agreement."

Tom found himself reddening as he tried to hold his temper in check. "Julienne, I—I have to say—"

Miss Gabardine leaned forward abruptly—and rested her hand on his! "Please, Tom. I know how difficult this is. Imagine what it is like for me, to feel your eyes on me, to sense the feelings that I have come to… to share. Oh… how often do I have to suffer through this?"

Tom forced shut his dropped jaw. "This—it—it’s happened before?" He couldn’t do anything with his bulging blue eyes!

"Please don’t feel any distress over that," she urged gently. "It just happens. Repeatedly. Every time, in fact. Something about me, my strength, my integrity—what can I do? But Tom… the difference in our ages…"

"Y-yes, that occurred to me as well."

"Of course, that may not really matter, if the chemistry between two people is right."

"Um, yes, but, you know, the risk to your career, your
reputation!"
Tom warned in great haste.

She sighed a long and miserable sigh. "You’re right, Tom. Of course you’re right. It couldn’t work. Let’s try to maintain the pathetic fiction of a purely professional relationship. Miss Gabardine. Mr. Swift." She sniffled, then dramatically ripped a couple sheets from her notebook and tore them to pieces, tossing them into the air like confetti. "There. All gone, all forgotten. Nothing I’ve seen
yet
requires the termination of your project. It means a great deal to you, doesn’t it?"