Into the Abyss (Tom Swift, Young Inventor) (3 page)

“Um … well …”

“And that nuclear spill?”

“Okay, okay,” she said. “I get your point. Just be really, really careful, okay?”

I patted her on the shoulder. “You know I always am.”

2
 
Shark Food

I lowered the helmet onto my head, and Yo locked all the seals, making the entire suit airtight. “Testing, testing,” I said. “Can you read me, Bud?”

His voice came through the helmet’s communications system. “I read you loud and clear, Tom.”

“Cool. Well—here goes nothing.” I gave my friends the thumbs-up sign and climbed over the side of the tank.

Taking a deep breath, I let go of the railing, working the regulator so that I sank gradually to the bottom.

All around me, like slow-moving dancers, the sharks circled. There were smaller ones—the babies and juveniles called “dogfish”—as well as a couple dozen larger ones.

I’m no expert, but I could easily pick out several tiger sharks, a few makos, a pair of hammerheads with their weird rectangular heads, and to top it all off, an enormous, terrifying great white—the kind from the movie
Jaws
. You know—the one that eats the whole boat?

For the first time that night, I felt a shiver of fear go through me. I knew the sharks were checking me out, even if they didn’t change course. Each of them was sending out electromagnetic pulses that bounced off the material of my shark suit, sending back signals about the strange, shimmering fish that had suddenly appeared in their midst.

See, sharks never really sleep. They have to keep moving in order to breathe—which they do by filtering oxygen from the water that passes through their gills. So to get some rest, they close one eye at a time and, presumably, rest half their brain as well.

But nothing wakes them up like a little blood in the water—and I had come here to wake them up.

I took a deep breath, hoping my little experiment went as planned, and unsealed the bag.

I watched as the trail of blood expanded like red smoke into the green water. I had a pretty good idea of what the sharks were about to do.

The dogfish got excited first, as little children will. They quickly moved in on me, trying without success to bite through my shark suit. I could feel them nibbling, but they couldn’t get a good grip on the hard, slithery, flexible material.

It kind of tickled, to tell you the truth. I tried to hold still, though. I was waiting for the big ones to strike.

I sure hoped my Swift Kick Shark Zapper worked. My suit was designed to withstand incredible pressure, sure—but
evenly applied
pressure, like at fifteen thousand feet, not the
concentrated
pressure of a shark’s teeth. If the suit got punctured, its strength would disappear in an instant. The sharks could chew right through it—and right through me, too!

One of the hammerheads flicked its tail. A fraction of a second later the entire tank exploded into chaos, as all the sharks went ballistic at once.

I screamed inside my helmet and hit the zapper button for all I was worth.

Wow!

There was no sound, but the circle around me
instantly expanded, as the sharks retreated to the glass walls of the tank.

“You okay down there, Tom?” Buds voice crackled in my ear.

“Fine! The zapper works!”

“Congratulations, brother. Now come on up, okay?”

“Not yet,” I told him. “I’ve got to see how long it keeps them away.”

Sure enough, a minute or so later, they came at me again.

Once more, the zapper did its job. I breathed a huge sigh of relief, and smiled.

Not only was I still alive but it also looked like the Swift Kick was a winner.

And just then, wouldn’t you know it, my suits power shorted out.

First, the readout on the back of my left glove went dark. Then, I could hear the crackle of static as I lost voice contact with Bud.

Great. Just great. I now had no zapper, no contact with Bud—and I was surrounded by a tank full of sharks in the middle of a feeding frenzy!

I’m telling you, I felt like a total moron. Five minutes ago I’d assured Yo that I was always careful. Yet I
hadn’t even bothered to check and see if the suits battery was fully charged.

Ooof!

I felt the air get knocked out of me as the first shark hit. Luckily it had only been a timid, halfhearted attack. Most of the sharks were still reeling from the zaps they’d gotten.

It would take them a few moments to get their courage back, but only a few. With all that blood in the water, nothing would hold them back for long.

I started removing the weights that had dropped me down to the bottom. But it was hard to bend over in the diving suit, and I kept getting body-slammed as the big sharks started coming in for the kill.

I had to get all the weights off before one of them clamped its jaws down on—

YEEOOOWWW!!

Just as the thought crossed my mind, a monster set of jaws chomped down on my midsection with incredible force.

It had to be the great white! It was tossing me around in its mouth like I was a little rag doll!

I thought I was going to pass out from sheer terror. I could hear my heart hammering in my ears, and I
could feel the blood rushing to my head.

Luckily, the material of the suit didn’t rupture. It resisted the shark’s jaw pressure just enough so that my body didn’t get totally squished.

Don’t get the idea it was a picnic, though. I had no air left in my lungs, and with Jaws clamped down on my abdomen, no way was I taking another breath any time soon.

I was all out of solutions. If Bud and Yo had any ideas, now was the time to try them.

Suddenly, just as I was about to pass out, the jaws of death released me! I greedily sucked in a lungful of air from my suit’s tank.

I wasted no time unhooking the remaining weights keeping me down. Then, without kicking around too much—I didn’t want to attract any more attention—I let myself rise slowly toward the surface.

Now I could see why the great white had let go of me. At the far end of the tank, Bud was chucking meat from his baggie into the water!

Good old Bud to the rescue! The shower of bloody hamburger had drawn the whole crowd of hungry sharks its way.

I waved my arm to get Yo’s attention. I wanted her
to come over to the railing and help drag me up and over.

Unfortunately, I also drew the attention of one of the sharks. It turned around and came right for me.

I threw up my left arm to protect myself, and the shark bit down on it hard. With my arm in its jaws, it dragged me back down toward the bottom of the tank.

The sharks teeth were embedded in the zapper’s control pad on the back of my glove.

No! My fantastic invention, totally mangled!

I realized now that I’d made the control panel too vulnerable—a definite design flaw. I made a mental note to correct it,
if
I lived through this nightmare.

What an idiot I was! How had I gotten into this mess? I gave myself a smack in the forehead with my free hand—and amazingly, the zapper came back to life!

The shark let go of me and sped away as fast as it could go. I kicked hard, rising quickly to the surface. At the same time I made for the edge of the tank. As I got there, Yo leaned over, grabbed me, and hauled me over the side wall to safety.

“Tom! Are you okay?” she cried as she lifted the helmet off me.

I sank back onto the floor, exhausted but thrilled to be alive. “I’ve been better,” I said. “My arm hurts, my stomach hurts—breathing hurts.”

“I can’t believe we let you go in there!” Bud said, glancing back at the tank. The water was still frothing, as the sharks fought over the last bits of steak.

“Hey,” I said, “I owe you one. You guys saved my life.”

Yo shrugged it off. “Like you haven’t saved ours a dozen times.”

I exhaled deeply. It hurt, bad. “I’m gonna have to … work out a few kinks.”

“You’re gonna have to take an X-ray,” Bud corrected me.

“I meant the suit ….”

He laughed, shaking his head, then looked at Yo. “He’ll live.”

“Yup,” Yo agreed. “Same old Tom Swift.”

3
 
 
An Ocean Voyage

The next afternoon we were all over at Snyder’s Ice Cream Parlor, chowing down on a Kitchen Sink Sundae (seven flavors of your choice, all the different toppings, enough for an army—their slogan should be “come hungry, leave bloated”).

My arm was still sore where the shark had bitten down on it, even though I’d been icing it overnight and all that morning. I could tell that nothing was broken, but the bruises hurt plenty. My chest was killing me too where the great white had grabbed me. The dozens of purple tooth marks on my chest made it look like I’d gotten a shark bite tattoo.

“Well, Tom,” Bud said as he glurped down a huge scoop of chocolate heaven. “I’ll bet you re glad that’s all over with.”

“Over with?” I lowered my spoonful of monster mint chip. “Who said it’s over with?”

“Oh, no, come on,” Yo said. “You’re not dragging us back there again. No way!”

I smiled. “We’re done at the aquarium,” I promised. “The zapper worked fine, apart from the power. But I’ve got to work on the suit’s design—especially the controls. And I might want to tweak it a little, to make it more puncture-proof.”

“Good thought,” said Bud. “Take your time fixing it, Tom. No rush. No rush at all.”

“Actually, there is a rush, kind of.” I leaned back in my chair and put my hands on my full stomach. “How would you guys feel about a little ocean voyage?”

“You mean like a cruise?” Yo asked, brightening. “I
love
cruises! My
abuela
took us on a cruise to Puerto Rico last year, and it was amazing! They had all kinds of entertainment. And the food? Fabulous!”

I shook my head. “This will be a little different. My dad’s going out for a couple of days on a research vessel next week, and he invited us to come along.”

“Oh.” Yo seemed disappointed, but Bud was suddenly interested.

“You mean, like that Cousteau guy? Can we go down in one of those deep-sea submersibles and find all new species of fish?”

“Uh, no. Not
you
guys, anyway. You’d be staying on the ship with the researchers and scientists and crew.”