Tom Swift and His Subocean Geotron (15 page)

The explorer held up a beefy hand. "Now, now, let’s be pleasant. I’ve not spoken of any such thing. And incidentally—do remember that in such a pathetic case as my own,
any
publicity is
good
publicity. Look at any newsstand, Tom."

"What exactly do you want?"

"To continue to accompany you, to play a role in this project to its end. Allow me to be present during the recovery of the memory crypt—won’t you? For otherwise, when I say on my website that the great Ruykendahl was there, I will be lying. I’m sure you realize that deliberate lying is to be deplored!"

Tom decided not to waste time unraveling the man’s peculiar logic; and suddenly he remembered his promise to Ona Matopoeia to give Ruykendahl a chance to reveal his con-artistry. "All right. We’ll fly you back to Shopton with us and keep you involved in the recovery. In return, you must refrain from interfering, and allow us complete access to Artifact A."

"Of course!" said Nee heartily, slapping Tom on the back. "Now you see?—best to be pleasant!"

After Cousin Ed’s grateful farewell, the
Sky Queen
rose majestically under Bud’s touch and turned toward New York and Shopton. "This time, pal, maybe you’d better alert the National Guard when you feed a little current through the new lump," urged the athletic youth wryly. "You’re planning to push the ‘send’ button on it, aren’t you?"

"Sure am," nodded Tom. "But not until I get some sort of word from the X-ians on how to transmit its data without setting off that knockout blow!"

"Well, you already set it off once down in that hole. It seemed pretty mild—for something that just about killed you!"

"You and the seacop weren’t affected at all; but don’t forget, this was just its own programmed response to my presence in the fissure—maybe something like a motion-sensor alert. Who knows
what
will happen when I try sending a pulse-current through a complete object."

Bud swiveled to look at his friend, face clouded. "Even though we don’t talk about it, that ‘destruction’ crisis is still out there. What do you suppose it’s all about? I mean—the crypt’s been lying around somewhere for millions of years, right? Why the sudden urgency?"

Tom rubbed his chin, but no answer came forth from Aladdin’s Lamp. "The X-ians haven’t told us. Maybe it’s one of those things they
can’t
explain in the space symbol language. But I don’t think the data-cache itself is the threat—it’s not a ticking time bomb, flyboy. I think the threat comes from those ‘Others’ who are after it too."

"Like business competitors stealing a big breakthrough."

"Or enemy agents making off with blueprints for a doomsday weapon."

"You have this
reassuring
way of putting things, Tom."

As the
Queen
flew across Mexico, Tom phoned Veracíta Jualéngro at the police station in Las Mambritas. "Well now, Tom—I have news!" proclaimed the Chief. "The shoddy little motel where your cousin stayed—you know, the ‘El Tres’ motor-court—it is burned to ruins!"

"What!"

"Three days ago. Arson, clearly. But now there are no more clues, no records, nothing but ash. Fortunately there were no casualties. The owner and his son made an insurance claim immediately—and then dropped from sight. Nowhere to be found."

Tom sighed, shaking his head. "Figures. The owner or his son may have been recruited by the man we saw tailing us—his name is Breeman Halspeth—to keep an eye on my cousin."

"Let me tell you, Tom, nowadays thieves and burglars are as technologically savvy as Tom Swift," she replied.

At last, past midnight, the
Sky Queen
settled down into its underground hangar at Swift Enterprises and the three weary travelers went their separate ways—Bud to his apartment in town, Ruykendahl to the hotel he had called from the air, and Tom to a troubled night’s sleep at home.

By the time Tom awakened the next morning, his father had already left for the plant. When Tom arrived at their shared office, he immediately saw excitement on the elder scientist’s face.

"During the night we received a message over the magnifying antenna, son!"

"Wow! From the Space Friends?"

"Or at least from the X-ians," corrected Damon Swift pointedly. "I’ve been working on it for hours. Here, take a look."

He handed a notebook sheet to Tom.

TOM SWIFT. WE CONFIRM THAT WE HAVE RECEIVED THE ACTIVATION SIGNAL FROM AN EMITTER OF COMPLETED UNITY.

Mr. Swift had written a sidenote of interpretation:
completed unity = beacon object with both halves joined together
.

WE POSIT AS STRONG PROBABILITY THAT YOU HAVE THE EMITTER IN YOUR POSSESSION. WE ARE NOW ABLE TO PROVIDE YOU WITH THE ENERGIZATION MODE PARAMETERS TO TRANSMIT TOTAL DATA TO US WITHOUT ILL EFFECT AS PREVIOUS. RECOVERY OF CRYPT IS NOW URGENT AS OTHER LOCATION SOLVERS WILL ALSO RECEIVE THIS DATA AND WILL ATTEMPT CAPTURE OF MEMORY.

Tom smiled slightly. "And Bud says
I
have a way of putting things! But I gather they’re going to tell us how to activate the new beacon safely."

"That’s clear, Tom. We’ll be able to send them everything they require to determine where the data cache is."

"‘
Capture of memory
’," Tom repeated. "We call it
data
, Dad, a bland scientific term. But they call it
memory
. I can’t help wondering—are we
just
recovering a recorded data file?"

Mr. Swift looked puzzled. "I don’t see what you’re getting at."

"
Is
it a data download and transmission? Or are we activating the memories of a
living brain?—one 254 million years old
!"

THERE was no point in discussing Tom’s disturbing possibility. The two Swifts knew that the answers might be soon to come.

The set of symbols Mr. Swift had translated were followed by another section of pure numerical data, the instructions for safe application of the pulse-code that would cause the new object to transmit its contents into space, a signal that, in some manner unknown to Earthly science, was evidently able to span the light-years to the distant star-world called Planet X.

This time the transmission would originate in Enterprises’ high-energy lab. Tom had Hank Sterling and Arvid Hanson remove the artifact, which had already been cleaned and examined by the plant’s technicians, from its ultrasecure storage vault and hand-carry it over to the lab, where Tom and his father awaited with a printout of the X-ians’ detailed instructions.

"So this is it!" gulped Hank. "Maybe we should kill the phones—Mayor Clyde’ll probably burn up the lines if there’s another reaction!"

"My guess is that this time’ll be pretty dull," was Arv’s rejoinder.

Tom wrinkled his brow. "Let’s
hope
for some boredom."

"All right, I’ve programmed in the pulse sequence," announced Mr. Swift.

"Connections in place," Tom said. "Power on. Go ahead, Dad, send the activation code."

Mr. Swift touched a button, and they all winced subconsciously. But other than a few waggles from an oscilloscope, nothing happened.

Hank looked disappointed. "That was it?"

Arv shrugged. "Dull, all right."

But Tom was grinning. "Hopes fulfilled!"

"The current definitely passed through the object—both halves, I’m certain," pronounced Mr. Swift. "Now to wait for the X-ians to confirm that they received it. I imagine it’ll take some time for them to decipher it, though."

"And even the confirmation might not come for days," warned Tom. "Conditions for communications seem to vary greatly from time to time."

But in this instance they were in for a startling surprise. Tom had barely finished his comment when the plant interphone buzzed. "This is Nels in the communications room. We’re receiving a space message over the antenna—something big!"

The four exchanged glances of pleasure and amazement and hastened to the communications center. As they arrived, space symbols were marching across the monitor, tentative computer translations beneath them.

TOM SWIFT. YOUR TRANSMISSION RECEIVED. EMITTER DATA COMPLETES PARTIAL DATA FROM EARLIER TRANSMISSION. MEMORY CRYPT WAS IMPLANTED INTACT CONTINUANCE BY NECESSITY.

"What does
that
mean?" asked Arv Hanson. "I mean—‘
implanted intact continuance by necessity
’?"

Mr. Swift chuckled. "It’s just a raw early translation, based on general principles that we’ve embedded in the Space Dictionary software."

"But I already have a notion of the meaning, based on eyeballing the symbols," Tom declared. "The general idea seems to be that the cache, the data storage unit, was affixed—in a firm, stable manner—at its location. And then they go on to say that it’s indestructible by its very nature."

"You mean because of what it’s made of, how it’s put together?" Hank inquired.

"Not sure. It seems to be more basic than that."

There was more to the message.

WE HAVE KNOWN OF THIS MEMORY CRYPT FOR A GREAT TIME DURATION AND HAVE MADE EXTREME EFFORT TO LOCATE IT. DATA CONTENT ENCODES

The next cluster of symbols had no translation beneath it. "The computer doesn’t know what to make of it," Tom observed. "But some of the symbols have been used before, in reference to biological processes."

"In other words,
life
!" breathed Arv.

HIGH PROBABILITY ALTERNATE SOLVERS HAVE INTERCEPTED YOUR TRANSMISSION BUT LACK IMMEDIATE CAPACITY TO EXTRACT CRYPT LOCATION COORDINATES. COORDINATES FOLLOW. ESTIMATE MINIMUM NINE OF YOUR PLANET ROTATIONS TO THEIR FULFILMENT. OPPOSED GROUP CAN NOT INTERCEPT THIS MESSAGE THAT WE CONVEY TO YOU. TOM SWIFT, YOU MUST ATTAIN MEMORY CRYPT TO FORESTALL NEGATIVE LIFE CONSEQUENCES.

"Four clusters of numerical data conclude the transmission," stated Mr. Swift.

"Holy Mo, this
is
mighty big stuff!" gasped Hank. "Negative life consequences—you don’t have to be a champ interpreter to read that as a life or death situation!"

"The X-ians give us nine days to get the crypt," Tom noted grimly. "Nine! And that’s just an estimate."

"But you won’t really need that long, will you?" observed Arv. "Now that you have the location data, you can just go pick it up."

"I’m afraid it won’t be that easy," said Damon Swift, as his son nodded.

Tom explained. "The first two clusters provide lateral coordinates, which we ought to be able to translate into latitude and longitude. The third cluster gives measurements perpendicular to the plane of the earth’s surface—in other words, distance along the planet’s radial axis."

"Depth," pronounced Mr. Swift, "given in their system of units, which we can translate into miles."

"Miles," Hank repeated. "That sounds a little ominous. At worst it’s just a few miles down on the ocean floor, isn’t it?"

"I wish that were so, Hank," replied Tom. "I can already tell—with their symbol system you translate generalities first, then specifics—that the general location is the Yupanqui Basin region, the same part of the Pacific we’ve been looking at. But the depth indication reads as several miles beneath the waves!"

"I’m very much afraid that the store container may be out of our reach," Mr. Swift added slowly. "And if that’s the case, terrible consequences may follow."

"Damon, Tom—I don’t understand," said Hanson with a puzzled look. "Even if it’s deeply buried, you could surely get to it with one of the earth blasters."

The young inventor responded, "Dad’s not talking about literally getting
to
it. If the crypt is buried that far beneath the surface, excavation would be impossible. Earth blaster technology doesn’t allow us to grab a sizable object and bring it back up intact. Even the new lithexor system couldn’t do something like that."

"Well, boss, you
are
called a ‘young
inventor
’," Hank noted wryly.

Tom’s reply held no optimism. "But there’s a further problem. The fourth cluster is a reference to time. It seems the location coordinates are not updated automatically—the beacons just ‘sleep’ when they haven’t been activated. They don’t tell us where the crypt
is
, but where it
was
254 million years ago. In an area of the world where the crust has shifted and folded by thousands of miles!"

The two Swifts could not afford to yield to despair. They studied the message from the X-ians hour after hour. "According to our best geophysical data, the crypt’s original site would have been about a mile beneath what was at that time the ocean bottom. But now it could be much deeper."

Tom agreed. "And that’s why we couldn’t find it with our probe instruments. Even the gravity-mapper would have a problem distinguishing it at a depth of miles."

"The device may have been entirely automated, landing on Earth and embedding itself for longterm preservation until those who created it could retrieve it," mused Tom’s father. "The transmitter beacons—there must be a number of them—were designed to remain near the surface in hopes that at least one of them would survive long enough to provide the recovery mission with the crypt’s location."

"They probably expected to reach Earth a little more quickly than a span of millions of years," noted his son dryly. "Or it may have gone completely off course."

"
However
it got to
wherever
it is, son, it’s clear that we have to recover it. And we have nine days to do it."

"A deadline where ‘dead’ really means something." The youth passed a trembling hand across his blue eyes—and then, suddenly, it was no longer trembling.

"Dad!" he exclaimed. "I think—maybe—I have the solution!"

AS ALWAYS, Tom Swift’s solution was an inventive one that promised to take mankind to new, unexplored places. It was at the end of the day, as Chow Winkler served a light supper to Tom and Bud, that the young inventor described his approach to his friends, showing them his early designs on his lab flatscreen.

"That’s
it
, hunh?" said Chow, squinting. "Looks like some kinda boat."