Tom Swift and His Subocean Geotron (13 page)

Ed noted, "The pieces don’t fit anyway."

Tom, listening, turned from the sono-resonance monitor. "But he didn’t
know
that, Ed. I’ve been mulling it over—maybe it helps me go to sleep!—and I have something of a theory."

Ruykendahl raised his eyebrows. "Ah! Then let’s hear it."

"Tom doesn’t exactly
need
to be asked, Nee," laughed Bud.

"Here it is," said Tom. "First of all—Bud, I think we need to work on finding a better way for you to order things over the Net."

"Hunh?"

"I’ll bet the Comrade-General picked up on your ordering the water kite, flyboy. The Enterprises picnic at the lake wasn’t a secret; he’d calculate that we’d be trying the kite out. So when I took to the air, he sent out his blurry plane to snag me. Not exactly a straightforward way to kidnap somebody, but― "

"But admirably colorful," Nee commented. "For it seems
he
also has a reputation to consider."

"Yet for all that, the Cobra is cautious. The truth is, he could pretty much snatch any of us any time he wanted to, if he thought it advantageous. The question is, why did he particularly want to risk the attempt at
that
time?" After a round of shrugs, Tom continued: "And we
have
the answer; we just didn’t put it together because when the incident happened we didn’t yet know about the artifacts. Evidently the Cobra somehow knew Nee was on his way to the U.S. and carrying his object with him."

"Somehow..." repeated the explorer. "After the failed meeting I was no longer emailing my plans, of course. The man’s spies must have kept on my trail from Mambritas onward."

"Sure, but it’s more than that," retorted the young inventor. "The Cobra must have known about your find while you were still in South Africa. It’s
because
he knew of your artifact that he started in with the bogus messages."

"Yet I made no public announcement. For once Ruykendahl was silent!"

"Something to chew on. But anyway, Nee, once he knew you were flying from Mexico to the U.S. it’s no great leap to guess you would end up coming to Enterprises—to me—for an analysis."

"These things always end up in your lap, genius boy," agreed Bud. "So that must be why the BC wanted to get you out of the picture."

Glancing back at the readout screen, Tom nodded. "To forestall what ended up happening—my activating Artifact A at Enterprises, which caused the X-ians to contact me."

"Guess the Cobra knows by now that Tom Swift means trouble!" chuckled Ed.

"After what happened on Easter I feel pretty certain his top priority is to get his hands on the objects, probably because his space contacts have doped out how to energize them to unlock the coordinates of the memory crypt."

"But this all started months ago," Bud objected. "How
not
in the world would the Others, the rival space gang, find out about the recovery of the beacons? Like you said, the X-ians only knew about them because of the accidental signal you sent just the other day."

Tom conceded that his chum’s insight was a good one. "But it wouldn’t be too surprising if just
moving
the objects, as Nee and Ed did when they discovered them, caused them to transmit some sort of alert-‘
beep
’ picked up by the Others― "

"A cosmic version of Longstreet’s security alarm!" interjected Nee.

"Maybe the X-ians received it as well, but they didn’t make a connection to
us
until they received the big transmission originating at Swift Enterprises."

"Wait, wait a sec!" interrupted Ed. "Slow down for me. I haven’t
lived
all these complicated, super-duper-scientific Tom Swift plots—just read about ’em in the books. Go back a little."

Tom grinned. "Sorry, cousin. I guess Bud and I have gotten used to this stuff."

"That and getting knocked out," Bud wisecracked.

"Okay. Nee aside, just how did this snake guy find out about
my
artifact in the first place? You can’t tell me that little lump of corrugated seashell knew who’d picked it off the ocean floor and was toting it around. So who tipped him off?"

"I think I know."

"Someone from the
Wascala
trip?"

"Yep. One of the divers."

"Who?"

"You!"

ED LONGSTREET stared at his cousin. "Me, huh. I don’t get it. Are the bad guys now monitoring me as standard procedure—because I’m your cousin?"

"I don’t know about
that
," grinned Tom. "But it suddenly struck me—you had your object professionally disencrusted and cleaned by a lab in Mexico City on your way to Las Mambritas."

Ed squeezed shut his eyes and groaned. "Oh, good lord. I casually gabbed the whole story to the staff there!"

"The Cobra has his feelers out to science-related and techno-support establishments around the world," Tom explained. "He’s an expert at bribing and corrupting employees, usually by means of third parties so the connection can’t be traced. Let’s say the Others told the Comrade-General that they’d found out that some of the beacon objects had been discovered on Earth—the keys to finding something they’d been after for
aeons
. Once the Cobra knew Nee was one of the possessors of an artifact—I don’t have a theory about how he managed it—and the need for its corresponding half, he’d be ‘advertising’ in likely places to find out if any similar finds had been reported. I’ll bet Li had the whole story in hand within hours!"

"I see no strategy in this deception," objected Ruykendahl. "Those bribed informants would pass along Ed’s plan to meet me for the comparison. If making the match was the goal, why not simply allow it to happen in its own time?"

"Because that was exactly the problem. The key factor was
time
! If Li was working with the rival extraterrestrials we’ve called the Others, he’d have known that they wanted the memory crypt location data absolutely as soon as possible—to beat out the space group Enterprises is in contact with. They couldn’t just
wait
for Ed to get to it in his own sweet time."

"Aw, good gravy. I’ve got an
interplanetary
rep for being lackadaisical!" groaned Ed.

"All right now, let’s look at the big picture," urged Nee excitedly. "These villains came to know of the two objects, one with Ed and—yes, I see it!—the other still in South Africa, in my home. And so a meeting, a
false
meeting, was engineered. And why? Yes!
Why
!—And like you, I too have an answer. My answer is:
I have no idea.
"

Bud looked at Tom. "You’re on, pal."

"There’s only one explanation I can think of," replied the youth. "The point was to get the two artifacts in the same vicinity—
and
not to risk tipping their hand by an actual theft
unless
they turned out to be corresponding halves."

"Of course!" exclaimed Ruykendahl. "A robbery always entails a degree of risk, and in this case, it would be especially difficult. Not a mere burglary, for I had the object in my possession, in my metal carrying case, at all times. I even piloted the rented airplane myself, so as to travel to Mexico without the necessity of others handling the case. The Cobra’s agents would have known a theft would be impossible if, as it seems, they wished to avoid taking the little object outright, at gunpoint. Hah! With me, the once-famed Ruykendahl, lying dead in the street! I would be a celebrity again, but at some risk of exposure for the Cobra."

Ed nodded vigorously. "And you know how I protected mine. That magtritanium travel-safe has one of the finest locks in the world, and anyone opening the safe or moving it would have set off the alarm in my cellphone. Even if I couldn’t get back to the bungalow fast enough, I’d have known what had happened and got the authorities involved."

"Not to mention Tom Swift," Bud noted.

Tom held up a hand. "You both had your artifacts well secured. Li would only undertake a double theft—probably with murder—if he were certain that possessing the artifacts was necessary. If they didn’t match, there was no point."

"
Bah
!" erupted the adventurer, as if the triumph were his own. "Obvious!—now that you have worked it out, eh? But now, my friend, do tell me this.
How
could he determine that the halves fit together? What could he do, short of seizing them outright? To attempt fitting them together, he would have to have both in hand, would he not?"

"Which is just what you two would have done yourselves, when you got together," observed Bud, "Maybe the space guys told Li that just fitting the pieces together, without electricity, would broadcast a signal of confirmation, like a fax ‘handshake.’ His cronies would pick up the signal and
then
jump you both!"

Ed was already shaking his head. "Great theory so far. Except—I never
was
told to go anywhere. The meeting didn’t happen. In Mambritas, close but no cigar."

Tom turned again to the instruments. His chum saw something in the frown on Tom’s face. "Skipper, is there more to it?" Bud asked.

The young inventor glanced up. "There
has
to be more. Let’s say they knew Ed wasn’t set up to receive email, so they couldn’t work the same trick on him that they did on Nee. They might’ve just sent him a message—maybe a cell text message or a disguised phone call—on the day Nee was waiting, telling him to come join Nee at the library. Why didn’t they? It’s as if something unexpected happened, to change the plan right then, that very morning."

"Well," said Bud, "maybe the Cobra found out in some other way, at the last minute, that the pieces didn’t match, that they wouldn’t fit together after all. So he called it off before the final move."

"And yet... he
did
try to kidnap me, Bud. If he or his contacts still thought Nee’s piece, Artifact A, was valuable enough to go to some real trouble to prevent my activating it..." Tom suddenly turned pensive, struck by an uninvited thought. "How do we know the two artifacts
don’t
fit?"

"Hmph! I surely put all my muscular force into the effort," declared Ruykendahl.

Ed seemed to understand. "No, look—Tom’s saying something else, aren’t you, cuz?"

"I’m afraid so," sighed the youth, "and it should have occurred to me earlier. These two objects don’t click together like puzzle pieces. So we say they ‘don’t fit.’ But maybe that’s just
Earth-thinking
—wanting to physically join together two similar objects that look incomplete
to human eyes
."

"
Good night!
" Bud exploded. "The pieces don’t have to be joined together! They just
have
to be brought to within a few miles of one another!"

Tom’s confirmation was grim. "The data may have been transmitted then and there, but only the Others, not the X-ians, were primed to receive it because they knew
when
the transmission would take place!"

Nee Ruykendahl frowned. "The objects lay close to one another under the sea for millions of years."

"They might not have been primed to transmit until they’d first been activated, by being moved from their long-term resting places. By the time Artifact B was moved by Ed, Artifact A was out of range in South Africa. And now, since it seems there was no reaction at all when we brought the objects close together a second time in Las Mambritas, it may be that their internal ‘batteries’ have been drained and will require an external current. We’ll get the specs on that from the X-ians—I hope."

"Okay," said Ed doubtfully. "Except—you said that the BC is still trying to get his hands on the two artifacts. If the transmission has already taken place and his space clients have what they wanted—why?"

Bud added: "Not only that, Tom. What about that wheel of light? If it’s some kind of search beam, why are they still searching for the memory crypt? Wouldn’t they have the coordinates?"

"Shifts in the crust may have made those coordinates a few hundred million years out of date. They’d only know the general search area." The young inventor paused, rubbing his eyes. "But here’s another possibility."

"What?" demanded Ruykendahl.

"My theories," said Tom, "may be all wet!"

Disgruntled, lost in thought, they continued the search. It still was important to try to find further clues as to the location of the crypt—or even to uncover the treasure itself by happenstance.

At the end of two days, there was nothing to show for their effort—no sea-ghosts, no beacons, no space cache. Not one of Tom’s advanced instruments disturbed itself with so much as a yawn, much less a buzz of discovery. "There can’t be much of the bottom in this area that we haven’t eyeballed. So much for Springthorpe’s big lead," muttered Tom, discouraged. "Let’s head south to your location, Nee."

Arriving at the place where the
Wascala
customarily dropped anchor for its guests to scuba dive and explore the shallow bottom, Tom made an instrumental survey over a wide area, again to no result.

"But this is the place," Nee pronounced without hesitation.

Ed agreed readily. "I recognize that submerged reef over to portside." He pointed to a distinctive outcropping. "It was right next to the base that I found my artifact."

"The sensors don’t show anything interesting," said Tom. "The two pieces you found may be all there is."

But Bud pointed out, "They may have been carried a ways and dumped here by a freak current, Skipper. There still could be a whole slew of the things out there somewhere."

"I hope so, pal. The two objects we have may turn out to be defective or incomplete. I’d sure like to have some more as backups."

After a few more loops, Tom had Bud pilot the
Angler
in a northerly direction, taking them to a region somewhat west of the Ghost Sea. Hydrographic charts suggested that deep currents might regularly sweep down southward from this area.

The ocean floor began to dip downward, gently at first, then in a sharp slope. Tom sped the rotors for diving and moved the control wheel forward. "Down we go! I’d like to hug the seafloor as much as possible." The seacopter plunged like a porpoise into the blue-green depths.