Tom Swift and His Atomic Earth Blaster (3 page)

At eighteen Tom had inherited the Swift family’s scientific genius and resembled his father physically as well. Both had the same keen, deep-set blue eyes, but Tom was the taller of the two.

"By the way," remarked the elder inventor, "Uncle Jake is coming over tonight. He wants to talk over plans for manufacturing your earth blaster. He said he had some problems to take up concerning our jet production, too—materials problems."

A few minutes later they heard the sound of a car on the graveled side drive.

"That must be Uncle Jake now!" Tom exclaimed, jumping up from his chair. "I’ll go let him in."

Jake Aturian was his father’s oldest and most loyal friend. He was also the business manager and chief of operations of the Swift Construction Company, which had expanded to nationwide importance under his guiding hand. He, Damon Swift, and Hank Sterling’s deceased father had all struggled together to make the Construction Company’s high-tech offshoot, Swift Enterprises, into a renowned scientific installation.

Tom met Uncle Jake at the front door and led him back to Mr. Swift’s den. The two old friends greeted each other warmly. When Uncle Jake was seated in a comfortable chair, he turned to the younger Swift with a grin in his eye. "I hear you had a
slight
brush with Mr. Greenup."

Tom grimaced. "I just hope it doesn’t lead to trouble with the Town Council."

"You let me worry about that," Uncle Jake replied, and added with a chuckle, "I’ve handled that old curmudgeon before."

"What is it he has against Dad and me anyway?" Tom asked. "He seemed to be alluding to something, but it wasn’t clear."

Jake settled back, shaking his head. "It’s not clear to anybody, Tom—maybe not to Herb Greenup himself. Over the last few years he’s gotten kind of eccentric. At the last meeting he came up with this off-the-wall charge that Enterprises was throwing its weight around unfairly."

"To what end?"

"He thinks we’re maneuvering to take advantage of the drought situation to win a contract with the city to pump water in from the Fennisville reservoir through Pine Hill," Uncle Jake explained. "He thinks we’re going to drum up public support by rolling out some sort of high-tech approach to the problem."

"Oh man!" Tom groaned. "Inventing the earth blaster just feeds his paranoia."

"That, and today’s accident. Just the same, this water problem is getting serious," said Mr. Swift. "If the water company doesn’t find an answer pretty soon, we may have to curtail operations at the plant!"

The two older men discussed this situation and other production problems facing the Swift Construction Company. Tom submitted an occasional remark, but directed his attention to the lithosonde data.

"In my opinion," remarked Jake Aturian, "the worst problem facing the technological industries in this country is a threatened shortage of good iron ore. Without ore, the world’s mills can’t produce steel. And that could lead to a dangerous dependence on sources in some countries that don’t wish us well."

"What about the Ungava range up in Labrador?" asked Tom, not looking up.

"Almost played out," was the response. "Going the way of the Mesabi ore strike." He puffed thoughtfully on his pipe, then said, "Tom, since you’ve got your earth-borer machine up and running, can’t you figure out a new source of high-grade iron ore?"

The young inventor was staring intently off into space. It wasn’t the first time that he had given thought to this particular problem.

"I don’t have to figure it out," he said at last, almost dreamily. "I can name you a source of pure iron right now, one that’s never been tapped."

"Where?"

"The center of the earth."

Uncle Jake’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Impossible! No one could tap that!"

Tom disagreed. An amazing idea had just occurred to him.

"I think I could do it," he said quietly.

TOM’S quietly confident statement amazed Jake Aturian, but Tom’s father only smiled indulgently and shut his eyes. He and his son had debated the issue before.

"Are you serious?" Uncle Jake asked.

"Very much so," Tom replied.

"Serious about what?" put in a girl’s lively voice.

"Oh, come on in, Sandy. You too, Mom." Sandy and Mrs. Swift had come to join the others. Instantly Tom drew up a chair for his mother, while Sandy perched on the arm of Mr. Swift’s chair.

"Tom was just telling us he has an idea for tapping pure iron from the center of the earth," Uncle Jake explained. "I must say it seems a little farfetched, even from Tom."

"Tom likes farfetched ideas!" Sandy declared. "That’s how he exercises."

"That’s the truth, Sandy," Tom said, grinning.

"What is it you have in mind, dear?" Mrs. Swift inquired.

"Well, to begin with," Tom said, "scientists are agreed that the center of the earth is molten iron.

"The entire core of the earth is molten iron, isn’t it?" Uncle Jake asked.

"No one knows for sure," Tom replied. "However, based on slight deformations in the shape of the earth and theories about earth’s magnetic field, most scientists think the inner core is solid iron, with a layer of molten liquid in between that and the earth’s mantle, as they call it."

"You’re right," Mr. Swift agreed thoughtfully. "That theory agrees with most estimates of heat at the earth’s core."

"Anyhow," Tom went on, "it’s certain that if we burrow down far enough, we’ll strike molten iron."

"Goodness, it sounds as if you’d have to go miles down!" his mother exclaimed.

Tom nodded. "That’s true. But there’s one place where I believe the molten iron is much closer to the surface than anywhere else on earth."

"Where’s that?" Sandy asked. She was listening eagerly, her chin cupped in her hands and her eyes wide with interest.

"At the South Pole," Tom replied.

There was a stir of surprise as the young inventor went on to explain his reasons.

"For one thing, it shows up in the ground temperature. You see, up in the north polar regions, the soil is covered with a solid layer of permafrost all year round. But down south, in the Antarctic, you find spots that are warm and free from snow."

"Those are pretty good arguments," Mr. Swift conceded. "Your ‘theory’ is perfectly reasonable. But your mother is still right. Even at the South Pole, that molten iron must be a couple thousand miles down from the surface. And that would take a
lot
of digging, even for your atomic earth blaster."

"It would leave quite a pile of dirt to clean up, too, I’d think," put in Sandra with a laugh.

Mr. Swift pulled open the drawer in an ornate desk nearby. "Tom and I hashed over his idea just last week, and I still have our figures. Let’s see now. Suppose you dug a pit just three feet in diameter," he continued. "For every hundred miles you went down, you’d haul up enough dirt to cover an area six city blocks square, piled three times as high as the Empire State Building!"

"Golly!" Sandy gasped, and her expression showed that for the first time she felt some doubts about her brother’s plan.

But Tom had a solution. "We could get around that by using a more advanced version of the earth blaster that I’ve been working on."

"How?" Jake Aturian asked.

"Instead of using the atomic energy to power the penetrator vanes, we could tap it for a sort of external atomic ‘blast furnace’, making it a
real
earth-blaster. The process would release gaseous oxygen from the vaporized rock. And the superheated gas in turn would billow up the shaft and disperse. No dirt pile! And then the molten iron would shoot up to the surface like an oil gusher."

Mr. Swift tugged at his lower lip and nodded thoughtfully. Though he dissented from Tom’s conclusion and thought the project infeasible, he was proud of his son nevertheless. But Uncle Jake shook his head.

"Even if your general idea is sound, think of the tremendous expense involved in setting up a mining operation in Antarctica. I’m afraid we could never finance such a venture."

"I’m sure that the government would help out on the cost," said Tom. "Especially if we invite their scientists to go along on the expedition."

"There’s another objection, Tom," his father put in. "Suppose you did strike that molten iron. You’d have every government that ever staked a claim at the South Pole insisting the ore belonged to them too. Various United Nations resolutions effectively internationalized the whole region, you know."

Frowning, Tom got up and paced around the room. "Well, Dad, that’s a question the United States government would have to settle. But one thing I’m sure of. No government that hasn’t staked a claim at the South Pole should be allowed to interfere!"

"You mean like Kranjovia, for instance?" asked Sandy.

"Right!"

There was a long silence. It seemed even Jake Aturian and Damon Swift were swept away by Tom’s bold vision. But then Mr. Swift shook his head, as if returning to reality.

"Sorry, Tom, I just don’t see how it could work. The heat, the pressure at that depth—it’s impossible."

Tom’s eyes took on a gleam. "You’d pretty much convinced me of that, Dad. Until this evening!"

"What do you mean?" Mr. Swift asked, surprised.

Tom walked back to his chair and picked up the lithosonde readouts he had been studying. "I saw it right away in the middle of all the other data. According to this, there’s a narrow vein of molten iron that comes much closer to the surface than anyone ever suspected!"

"Less than two thousand miles?"

"Less than
two hundred!"

At that moment there was a loud buzz, accompanied by a whining, growling sound, as though a pack of watchdogs had suddenly caught a scent of danger. "The alarm system!" cried Sandy, jumping up from her chair. "Someone must be trying to break into the house!"

"You and Mother stay here!" Tom declared.

With the two older men, he made a dash to check on all doors and windows.

The entire house and grounds were surrounded by a magnetic detector field originally devised by Tom’s great-grandfather, the first Tom Swift. Any person entering this field disrupted its flux balance and automatically set off the alarm system, unless provided with some kind of deactivator mechanism.

The Swift family and their friends all wore little neutralizer coils in their wrist watches for this purpose. But prowlers or unexpected visitors unknowingly signaled their presence by touching off the alarm.

Tom flicked a switch near the front door and immediately the grounds were flooded by the glare of powerful spotlights, arranged to cover every bit of the property.

"This should flush out anybody hiding in the shrubbery," Tom said. He went outside by a side door, poking around the bushes with his father and Uncle Jake. The young inventor found several sets of partial footprints on the grass, but they faded out and led nowhere.

"Let’s use the bloodhounds," Mr. Swift said. The two dogs, Caesar and Brutus, were kept in kennels behind the garden. Straining at the leash under Tom’s and his father’s control, they made a complete circuit of the house and grounds.

But even the bloodhounds failed to locate the intruder. Puzzled and uneasy, Tom and the two older men returned to the house. Mrs. Swift and Sandra were waiting for them in the den.

"Who was it?" asked Sandra.

"I don’t know. He got away," Tom replied in a worried tone of voice. "Maybe just some kids."

When they resumed their interrupted conversation, Uncle Jake asked for more details about Tom’s plan.

Suddenly Mrs. Swift gave a startled gasp. Someone was tapping on the study window!

"Take it easy, Mumsy." Tom was hoping to reassure her, but he himself felt uneasy as he got up to open the Venetian blind and look out.

The window tapper was Bud Barclay!

Tom gave an inward sigh of relief. "Come around back to the terrace!" he told Bud. "I’ll let you in through the French doors."

"Hope I didn’t startle you folks," said Bud, entering the room. "It was awfully stupid of me, but I forgot that my wrist watch is broken and I’d left it, with its neutralizer, at home. Thought I’d better show myself before things went nuclear."

"What!"
Tom cried.

Bud looked at his friend in surprise. "For Pete’s sake, don’t get bent out of shape—anyone can make a mistake!"

"You don’t understand," Tom said. "The alarm system didn’t go off this time!"

"Huh?" Bud stared. "You mean I didn’t set off the alarm, even though I wasn’t wearing the coil?"

"That’s right," said Tom. "And the funny thing is, the alarm
did
go off about twenty minutes ago, but we couldn’t find anyone."

"We’d better investigate further," Mr. Swift said, rising.

Meanwhile Tom pulled open the concealed master control box for the detector setup and was performing some diagnostic tests with it. "There’s your answer," he announced grimly. "The whole alarm system is dead!"

Everyone present exchanged glances that bespoke concern and anxiety. What—or who—had wrecked the alarm system? Was it accidental, or a case of deliberate sabotage?
Was the Swift home about to be the target of a terrorist attack?

The young inventor continued to run various diagnostic routines. In a few minutes he had the answer. "It was sabotage, all right. Someone shorted out the main dispersion solenoid. And in my opinion, it was done by a clever technician—someone who knew
exactly
what he was doing!"

"Bronich!" exclaimed Bud.

Suddenly Uncle Jake stood up, his face turning pale. "Tom, if the system is dead—he could have broken into the house. He could be hiding inside right now!"

"Let’s not talk ourselves into a panic," said Tom’s mother with forced calmness. "You can make the rounds again with the bloodhounds—just to play safe," she said. "And this time, start out inside the house!"

They split up into two teams. Tom and Bud covering the grounds again with Caesar, while Mr. Swift and Uncle Jake searched the interior with Brutus.

"Anything?" Tom asked his father when he reentered.

"Nothing," Damon Swift replied. "And I’ve done a sweep for listening devices, too." Tom and his father quickly repaired the detector system.