Tom Swift and His Atomic Earth Blaster (14 page)

It developed that the metal-gray object was merely a cloth sack, weighted with rocks and containing a written message. The others gathered around as Tom read it aloud.

TOM SWIFT:

THE U.S. HAS NO RIGHT IN THIS PART OF THE ANTARCTIC. ABANDON YOUR BASE AT ONCE OR WE WILL ATTACK WITHOUT RESTRAINT!

Angry murmurs arose from the crewmen and Chow Winkler exploded with indignation. "Why, them jet-propelled polecats!" he raged. "Sounds like they’re fixin’ to start a war at the South Pole!"

"IF THEY want trouble, they can have it!" said Tom in iron-edged tones. "But first we’ll call their bluff."

"Will you be sending the return message the same way, skipper?" asked Arv Hanson.

"No, I have a method in mind that better expresses my feelings," declared Tom. He suddenly grinned. "C’mon, didn’t you ever practice your cursive writing in the snow?"

Bud looked incredulous. "Genius boy, you don’t mean—!"

"Watch me!"

After briefly logging on to a website that provided Kranjovian translations of certain common phrases, Tom carted one of the powerful water-spray pumps over to a broad slanting snowbank, as clean and white as a blank billboard, that the winds had frozen hard under a thin crust of ice. After slightly warming the water and dropping in a tablet of red dye, he turned the pump to full power. Carefully manipulating the nozzle with his hands, the sharp stream etched a single word in the snowbank:

B’TEVOKT!

As Tom examined his work, which would be easily visible for miles, Chow asked: "What’s it say, boss?"

"Oh, it’s a common Kranjovian term—a colloquialism."

"But what does it mean?"

Tom grinned mischievously. "Well, pard, it means
No!—
more or less!"

Chow nodded sagely. "I bet you wouldn’t want to say it to your old Kranjovian grandma, huh."

Bud laughed. "Chow, you win that bet!"

The entire crew reentered the
Sky Queen
as the craft’s radar beams searched the skies for danger. But all was still and quiet.

"No clever comebacks so far," Bud remarked tensely. "But something tells me it won’t last."

"Rude language is hardly likely to make our foes turn tail and run," Arv Hanson said. "I’m sure we can expect another attack."

"But look, guys—what are they after, anyway?" asked Slim Davis. "You suppose Bronich wants to beat you to the iron ore with some mechanical borer of his own?"

Tom shrugged. "We don’t know. He was collecting video info on the mechanical earth blaster. Maybe Kranjovia suspects that the U.S. will claim the vein and horde the ore. But that’s not what’s planned. After the costs of the mission are covered, it will become a world resource ultimately administered by the United Nations."

Roy MacGregor, the project meteorologist, now spoke up. "In my opinion, it might be a good idea to contact Washington right away about the threat. We pay the State Department to deal with things like this!"

"True enough!" Tom responded. But when he tried the radio, he could only receive a buzzing, whirring sound.

"Aw man!" cried Daryl Blake. "They must be jamming our signal!"

Tom made a number of adjustments and tried several instruments. Finally he turned back to the anxious group with a puzzled expression on his face. "I don’t understand this at all," he said. "I can’t get a fix on the source of the jamming."

"I will make a guess that they’re bouncing their interference signals off these mountains behind us, like radar," Colonel Eagle Friend suggested.

Voorhees assumed his customary smug inflection. "Have you ruled out the possibility that some defect in your instrumentation is the cause?"

Tom held back his temper with difficulty. "We’ll check everything out in due course," he replied evenly. "But static or not, we have to keep to our schedule."

Suddenly they were interrupted by Hank Sterling, arriving from the lower deck. "Colonel! Something’s going on with your dogs down below!"

Colonel Eagle Friend rushed down to the hangar deck, followed by Tom and Bud. Long before they slid open the panel door, they could hear the ragged sound of frantic barking.

"Come now, boys and girls!" scolded the Colonel. After a few comforting phrases in the Chinook language, the dogs became calm again.

"What got into ’em?" Bud asked.

"I have no idea," George Eagle Friend responded. "The flight itself did not seem to bother them." He gestured at a head-high crate strapped down near the makeshift kennels. "From the way they move and sniff, it seems they are disturbed by that box. What is it?"

Tom strode over to the crate and read the writing on the side. "It’s just one of the crates from that sporting-goods company—skis and things. Maybe the dogs heard some of the equipment shift."

Bud held up and hand, silencing the others, and pointed. A foil wrapper lay crumpled up near the crate.

"And what are these crumbs on the floor?" whispered the Colonel. "I don’t feed Klootch and the others such stuff!"

Tom’s face assumed the visual equivalent of
Oh, no!
Removing a large crowbar from a utility clamp on the nearby bulkhead, he started to pry at the lid of the crate. But before he could make any progress, the entire side of the container swung open like a door!

Bud winced. "Great. Anybody need their braces tightened?"

"Colonel Eagle Friend—I’m
not
very pleased to introduce you to Jerry Landis, DDS—also known as Dr. Sneffels!" proclaimed Tom.

Landis stepped out of the crate and straightened up. "I suppose it wasn’t difficult to dope out my real name," he said sheepishly.

Tom shook his head in half-amused resignation. "Let me take a guess. The Terranoids ordered you to stow away!—right?"

"I—I wouldn’t call it an
order,"
the man replied. "But when my ex-brother-in-law mentioned that you were going off on a polar expedition, I put two and two together!"

"What did you come up with?" inquired Bud sarcastically.

Tom briefly explained Landis and his concerns to the Colonel, who listened stonefaced. "Then is this man a danger?"

"Oh, no no no!" exclaimed Landis. "I meant no harm. I bribed a couple of Bob’s employees to rig up this little compartment for me. I just
had
to go along, in case your digging operations were to disturb the—well, you know. I thought that if I were on hand I might be able to help you communicate with them."

"The main danger was to you, Doctor," commented Tom. "You might have been exposed to low temperatures and dehydration."

"Oh, I had my fleece jacket, a water canteen, and a dozen energy bars. And I’ve been sneaking out now and then to use the little boy’s room."

"When you
snuck
back in just now, you dropped one of your wrappers," said Colonel Eagle Friend. "I used shiny objects in training my lead dogs, and the sight of it started them barking, which set off all the rest."

"I’m sorry," Landis said. "I’m only trying to protect our world, you know."

"I can’t spare a plane to send you back," said the young inventor. "Not even if we repackage you! But you are to stay in the open areas with other crew members from now on. We’ll be watching you."

Landis nodded meekly. "I understand. Thank you."

After introducing the new mission member to the astonished crew, Tom made ready for the next task—the all-important job of finding the precise site for the launch of the atomic earth blaster. The Flying Lab lifted off and hovered at an altitude of 500 feet as Tom used the ground penetrating geo-radar, scanning back and forth across the floor of Pluto Canyon.

Finally he said to Carol Heiden, the mission mineralogist and geophysicist, "How do those readings look to you?"

"I doubt you could do better," she declared. "A moderate thickness of snow, ice, and slush; a layer of gravel—then good solid granite."

Tom flew the ship over to the spot, then descended close to the ground. "Hold on, everyone!" he announced over the loudspeaker. What followed was like a ride on a pogo stick. First he fired up the jet lifters, bouncing the
Sky Queen
upward, then throttled back, allowing her to descend again. He did this more than a dozen times.

"Is this really necessary?" demanded Harold Vorhees.

"Feeling a little green, Hal?" needled Bud.

"I have a purpose," Tom explained. "I’m using the heat from the lifters to melt down a large depression in the snow and ice below us. When we pump out the water, we’ll set up the earth blaster right in the middle. The idea is to use the hollow to pool the molten iron when it comes shooting up the shaft."

"Quite ingenious," remarked Dr. Faber.

Finally the pit was large enough, and Tom directed the workers already on the ground to begin pumping out the water.

"Aren’t you going to land the
Queen?"
inquired Bud.

"First I want to take a hop up to the stratosphere," responded the young scientist, throttling up the jet lifters. "We should be able to rise above the jamming waves at that height."

The
Sky Queen
mounted up like an elevator into the pale sky, which gradually darkened as the air thinned around them. Tom leveled off in the mid-stratosphere, as several crew members crowded around to observe his efforts.

But it was futile. "The interference is as strong as ever," Tom declared. "Let’s head higher."

The search for clear channels was repeated several times, until the Flying Lab was hovering near its maximum altitude on the very edge of black space. But Tom’s efforts availed nothing. "It’s beyond me!" he exclaimed in disgust.

"Yes, I dare say it is," came an oily voice.

"Something you want to say, Voorhees?" snapped Arv Hanson.

Voorhees’ lip curled in a sneer.

"Don’t you think it’s about time you started facing the facts?" he inquired with a nasty edge to his voice.

"Such as?" asked Tom.

"Such as the fact that you’ve bungled this expedition from the word go!"

Bud shoved his way forward to stand face to face with Voorhees. "Maybe you’d like to back up that statement, Hal," he suggested, knowing the nickname would irritate Voorhees. "Tell us exactly how Tom has bungled this expedition."

"I should think that would be obvious, even to you, Barclay
—you,
who are only along for the ride as number one playmate of the boss’s son!" Voorhees jeered.

Tom took an angry step forward, but Voorhees plunged ahead in his rant. "While we’ve been wasting valuable time setting up a base here—on a site, by the way, which was chosen personally by young Mr. Swift and his handpicked team of ‘experts’—this Bronich has probably picked the ideal spot for drilling! And now you can’t even keep him from jamming your transmissions! So here we are, isolated and vulnerable in the middle of this waste of ice and snow."

Anton Faber and Daryl Blake both began to protest Voorhees’ accusations. But Tom merely held up a hand to silence them and stiffly turned back to the control panel.

Scarlet with anger, Bud stalked from the control compartment, followed by Arvid Hanson.

Hanson returned a moment later. "Where’s Bud?" asked Daryl Blake.

"Chilling out down below," Hanson replied. "I don’t blame him."

After a few more attempts, Tom announced that he was unable to break through the wall of interference. As he piloted the
Sky Queen
into the lower atmosphere, heading back to base, Bud’s voice suddenly erupted from the intercom.

"Tom! You’d better get down to the hangar pronto! Bring Voorhees with you—we’ve got a problem!"

"After you," said the young inventor to Voorhees, motioning for Arv Hanson to take over the controls.

They made their way to the ship’s flying hangar. Tom was surprised to note that Bud had swung open one of the smaller loading doors at the side of the large compartment.

"Well? What is it, Barclay?" Voorhees demanded, pulling on his thick gloves in the frigid air.

"A problem in low-temperature engineering," Bud said grimly. "I assume that’s right up your alley—Hal." Bud indicated a section of hull at the top of the portal.

"No doubt I’ll be able to handle it," sniffed Voorhees, moving closer.

"No doubt," said the young pilot. "Then try handling this!"

To Tom’s horrified amazement, Bud’s fist shot out in a punch that caught Voorhees in the middle of his back. The engineer flew forward and toppled through the hatchway into empty space!

HAROLD VOORHEES didn’t exit the stratoship with his dignity intact. He screeched like a squeaky hinge, arms flailing. The shriek was doubled as one of Voorhees’ arms hooked with Bud’s, pulling the young pilot off balance and yanking him out the hatchway at Voorhees’ heels!

Sick with horror and dread, Tom approached the open hatch—and halted in boggling surprise.

The Flying Lab was hovering only a few dozen feet off the ground!

Bracing himself and looking down, Tom saw two snow-draped figures struggling in a deep drift.

"Arv!" Tom cried into the intercom. "Shift one hundred feet to starboard and set us down! Bud and Voorhees have fallen out and are in the snow beneath us!"

As soon as Hanson had nimbly set down the craft well to the side, Tom hurled himself out the open hatch and into the soft snow. At an awkward trot he made his way toward Bud and Voorhees, who were staggering back and forth hunched over as if injured.

Something white and glittery arced by Tom’s head, then another. Then—
contact!
A snowball rammed the young inventor’s shoulder and burst like a dandelion puff.

Bud Barclay and the eminent Harold Voorhees were engaged in a furious snowball fight!
They were shouting incoherently, and—Tom suddenly realized—laughing wildly, like two children at play.

"Guys, what in the—!" The end of Tom’s shout was swallowed up in a pelting rain of snowballs from both combatants, which Tom Swift laughingly returned in kind.

Finally the three ended sitting down flat, legs extended, exhausted.

"Who won?" asked Tom.

"I did, obviously," responded Voorhees.