Tom Swift and His Aquatomic Tracker (4 page)

The SubMoBahn was brightly lit, as far as the eye could see, by the diamond rays of a line of powerful Swift Searchlights. It was an awesome sight, yet also eerie, like some glowing sea-snake stretching on for miles in the violet-tinged black. Only one of the paired tubeways was near completion. Construction on the second one, to run alongside, had scarcely commenced at the distant Sweden terminus.

The bubblevator touched down and the three strode through the intangible, invisible membrane of nanofilaments that helped control the humidity of the airspace, so near to the ocean’s waters. This newest segment of the SMB was alive with human activity, which proceeded in shifts round the clock. Technicians and construction workers roiled back and forth across the eight-lane highway.

"But now I’m surprised!" exclaimed Rutgar. "They have already painted the lines on the pavement? One would think the pavement would come at the end of it all, after both tubes are completed. Hmm?"

It was Alix’s turn to look wise. "Now now, Spirss, it isn’t pavement, you know, but textured plastic, set down by that wheeled machine over there next to Biede."

"It’s like a coarse fabric—Tomasite burlap," explained Bud. "Car tires grip it better than asphalt. It even has some ‘give,’ to smooth the ride."

"Hah!" snorted Rutgar. "Who needs tires!"

The other members of Alix Tuundvar’s crew soon joined them, all clad in their diversuits, their contoured full-face visors hanging open on their chests. As their suboceanic work was to be done some several miles north of current construction, they crowded into four of the midget electric vehicles manufactured by Enterprises’ Shopton affiliate, the Swift Construction Company. The group of nanocars hummed off up the SubMoBahn at high speed.

"Okay, guys, here we are," signaled Bud presently. "Access hatch 79." The little convoy braked to a halt and the men clustered around Tuundvar, awaiting his instructions.

"As you know," he began, "we are to make adjustments to the cables of transifoil which hold us up above the bottom and anchor us there. They must bend and curl in a coordinated manner, adjusting to currents and any motion in the seafloor, may God forbid. Also, we must naturally keep the roadway perfectly level, eh? And so the calibration― "

A sudden sharp motion by Bud caused the crew chief to break off in surprise. The young Californian said nothing, but the intent expression on his face flashed an obvious sign of alert. He was staring further up the brightly lit SMB tunnel, which ran to the horizon.

One of the men followed Bud’s gaze. "Up there—what is it?"

"What is what?" demanded Alix.

Rutgar squinted into the distance. "Far away in the tube. Look now, Tuundvar—see it? Something flimmerting? At the end?"

"The air..." murmured Bud. "Where’s this wind coming from, anyway?" Suddenly his face turned white as he answered his own question! "
Jetz
! Get back in the nanos and turn ’em around! Everyone!
Peel out!
"

Startled into action, the men rushed to comply—except their leader, who held back with a frown. "Kindly inform me― "

Bud jumped forward and yanked the Swede toward his seat in the nanocar with tough muscles. "Get in here! Good grief, don’t you get it?
The tube’s collapsing!
"

It was a concept they could all grasp—instantly. Rubber squeeled on Tomasite as the nanos struggled to reverse direction, and they began streaking back toward the tube-end at frantic speed. They were pursued by surging, unrelenting danger from the further reaches of the SMB, a wall of high-pressure seawater. Still miles away, it was closing on them with every second, driving the air in the tube ahead of it.

"What—what shall happen?" choked Alix. "To ourselves, to the others? Can we outrun it?"

"I don’t think so," grated Bud. "Although—if the air pressure builds up enough to― " But then he remembered how much counter-pressure would be required to halt the advancing deluge in its tracks. And what such pressure would do to fragile humans! "No... the walls’ll pop like balloons! The trons are only tuned to water, not air." The youth clicked on his radiocom and broadcast a shrill emergency tone. "This is Barclay! Evacuate the tube immediately! Anybody with a diversuit, seal up and jet as far away as you can. The rest of you― "
Did the suitless workers have any hope of survival?
"Divide up among the bubblevators and make for the surface. The SMB is flooding and it’s headed your way!
You’ve only got seconds!
"

Bud glanced in the rearview mirror, dreading what he would see. Dread was rewarded: the driving, foaming water-wall was now only a few hundred yards behind them!

The tunnel was filled with a shrill roaring sound, high-pitched—fingernails raking a chalkboard. "You see, the tube is becoming a whistle," muttered Rutgar through the communicator built into his sealed facemask.

"Can we do nothing?" Alix asked Bud. "If we go out into the sea, through a hatchway― "

"Jetz, we can’t even
slow down
, much less
stop
!" barked Bud. "Everyone, make sure you’ve switched on your hydrolungs. Get ready to jump. When the water hits, don’t fight it, go with it. Kick free of the nanos and try to use your suit jets to guide you. Keep to the middle of the tube. If you—if you make it to the end, jet out into open water at top speed, right through the Inertite barrier. Remember, your suits are made to resist force and pressure, and they’ll cushion you, too."

"Nice. Oh, but, you see..." A calm smile on his face, Rutgar twitched the tiniest of shrugs. "It is here."

There was little reason to consider safe driving and the rules of the road. Bud twisted about and stared behind him. The water was so close on his tail that he could almost see his face staring back at him!

He had time to take the barest, briefest glance forward. The cars were nearing the end of the tube. Bud could see the abandoned machinery, and a few figures frantically elbowing onto the several bubblevators that serviced the site. Beyond that, the open end of the tube yawned wide, the worklights reflected from the glassy surface of water held back by repelatron force—which, by the design of the SMB, was only directed
outwards
!

Oddly enough, the column of hurtling water behind them never touched the nanos. The front of pressurized air, pile-driven before it, was finally strong enough to cannon vehicles and occupants into the open space of the tubeway, which was almost as high, along the middle, as it was wide. Bud kicked free of the tumbling nanocar, made a desperate effort to streamline his body like a diver—a horizontal one!—and slammed violently into the high blue-gray cliff that was, simply, the Baltic Sea.

It was at the top of the stratosphere, hurling itself eastward at multimach speed, that news of Bud Barclay’s fate reached Tom, hunched forward in the wide cockpit of the
Sky Queen
. "Tom, this is Captain Jacobs," came the radio voice, crisply professional. "I wanted to be the one to tell you― "

"
Tell me!
" Tom snapped.

"Barclay’s alive. He’s okay. A jetrocopter is bringing him back."

"Th—thank― " Then Tom fell silent. Jacobs was saying something about false reports, inital confusion, apology. It went unheard. For a moment Tom Swift could not speak. At the sound of blubbering behind him, Tom reached back and patted what lay within reach—a Texas beltline.

Jacobs continued, "Good thing this big ship has a big infirmary, Tom. It’s mighty full-up."

"Any casualties, sir?"

"None. Injuries, though—bruises, hypothermia, a broken arm, two concussions. Plain old water packs quite a punch when you hit it the wrong way, hmm? A few near-drownings, obviously. Barclay was one of the unconscious ones; we tracked him from the chopper with instruments as he just jetted along underwater like a torpedo. Not a care in the world. But now he’s complaining, they tell me."

"I’ll bet!"

The Flying Lab made it to the deck of the
Sea Charger
in record time, however slow that time felt to those passing through it. Tom’s reunion with his best friend below deck was emotional.

"Hey, Tom, let up!" Bud yiped. "
Ouch
! Every bone and joint in my body has something to say!"

"Buddy Boy,
what
th’ ding-danged flyin’ sea monkeys
happened
to you folks down there?" Chow Winkler demanded, wiping his bag-laden eyes. "They make it sound like the blame tunnel jest got
squozed-up
like a toothpaste tube!"

"I don’t exactly
know
what happened," Bud said. "Just ‘water, water, everywhere’."

"No one does," declared Tom gravely. "Not yet. I’ve been getting updates from the ship ever since I left Shopton, but all we know right now is that SMB-A is ruined from one end to the other. We have hydrolung divers inspecting it section by section."

One of the workers from Enterprises, a friend of Tom’s named Dick Hampton, stirred in his nearby hospital bed. "Tom, do you mean it’s flooded?"

"Not just flooded," the young inventor corrected him; "but
completely wrecked
. As the water surged in at some point in the middle, the advancing pressure blew the sides out and basically peeled the thing like a banana! All that’s left are Tomasite shreds, empty-handed lengths of transifoil, and eight lanes of ‘wet conditions’!"

"Good night, Skipper, how could it happen?" fretted Bud. "You told me the repelatrons had all sorts of emergency backups, and each unit was independent of the rest in terms of power."

"Right, pal, thanks to the neutronamos." Tom explained that as successive sections of the tube walls failed, the repelatrons were knocked out of orientation, no longer squarely focused on the surrounding ocean. "Remember, these are not the all-directional models, like we use at Helium City and on the bubblevators. We had to use focused beam-type generators because we couldn’t risk the possibility that the field would affect water in the cars—or in people, for that matter."

"Yeah—a
safety
feature!" The black-haired youth’s words were ironic and bitter.

"But now lissen boys, that ain’t the whole story," Chow objected. "I mean t’ say, what started it? How’d the
first
o’ them
ree
-pellers get fouled up, hunh?"

"Great question, pardner," replied Tom. "Offhand, I don’t see how any of them could have failed without deliberate interference."

"And you don’t have to be a ‘genius boy’ to know who
that
means!" Bud snorted. "Those ‘drowning Roman’ guys must’ve got wind that Tom Swift was on their tail."

But Tom shook his head thoughtfully, unconvinced. "It would be no surprise for the plotters to have found out they’d been
busted
. But I’ve pretty well finished my part in it, now. How does destroying the SMB project help them? Whatever brand of crazed fanatics they might be, would they risk the exposure of their whole operation for personal revenge? Unless..." He was rubbing his chin now. "Unless the SMB was the mystery target all along! —But then where does the
Centurion
come in?"

Tom’s comment gave raise to a pair of puzzled looks, which Chow gave a voice to. "
Who’s
comin’ in?"

"Haven’t had a chance to tell you or Bud," responded Tom. "It’s a new wrinkle."

"Uh-huh. Brand my space biscuits, I got a few new ones myself!"

Speaking in low tones, Tom gave an account of the foundering of the supertanker and Harlan Ames’s suspicions. When he had finished, Bud whistled softly. "We’ve fought shipwrecking pirates before."

"That’s what they say about pirates an’ rustlers an’ the like," Chow stated. "Beat ’em once, beat ’em twice, they don’t never give it up, no-how! Sumpin in the blood."

Tom spent some time speaking with the other men and women in the infirmary, thanking them and giving such comfort and information as he could manage.

Presently an intercommed request called the young inventor to the ship’s communications center.

"This is Mr. Swift?" asked the accented voice on the radiocom speaker.

"Yes, this is Tom Swift, Mr. Sondriesson." Tom had a gulp in his voice. The Chief Executive Officer of Lor-Sofviio Teknos, the Swedish firm in overall charge of the SMB project, had never been less than pleasant, but Tom didn’t relish having to give an account of the suboceanic catastrophe.

"It seems you have encountered a difficult situation beneath the sea."

"How much have you been told, Mr. Sondriesson?"

"I wish you to proceed as if the answer to your question is,
nothing
. Do go ahead, won’t you?"

"I’m happy to, sir. I just want you to understand that we know very little at this point."

Hegg Sondriesson responded a bit too quickly. "Yes, but what I already know is most interesting. Your transitway corridor has collapsed, has it not? And it seems this incident may very well constitute the end of the project. A total loss for Lor-Sofviio, for Sweden and Germany, for the investors of many countries. Is my account accurate thus far?"

"Yes sir. I’m afraid it is."

"Then it seems we are on the same page. As it is said." The man’s voice suddenly hardened. "And so, Tom, tell me why we should not hold you and Swift Enterprises responsible for the negligence that produced this disaster!"

TOM SWIFT was stung by the CEO’s words. "
Negligence
! Mr. Sundriesson― "

"My choice of words is hardly inappropriate, my young man, when we review the facts. Was Swift Enterprises not hired to provide scientific expertise, training, consultation? Were you yourself not obliged to provide direct oversight of the technical aspects of construction?"

"That’s absolutely true, sir," conceded Tom. "Obviously, I can’t claim to have done a great job, given what happened."

"Ah, ‘given what happened’—yes. And indeed,
given that you were not even present to do your job
! For I must tell you, Tom, we have been informed that you were away from your assigned post aboard your science ship. Do you deny that you have just now returned from Shopton?"

Tom hung his head, as if the man could see him. "No. I don’t deny it. But please believe me, I had to attend to something urgent. If you knew what it was― "