Tom Swift and His Atomic Earth Blaster (6 page)

Suddenly he noticed a steam-cloaked glass door marked STEAM SAUNA, leading into a square cubicle with walls of redwood planks with narrow spaces between them from which wisps of steam were rising. Entering, he made his way through the cloud of steam and pressed his cheek against the wall nearest his quarries.

Over the sounds of the showers, Bud could hear the two men talking back and forth in a guttural language he could not understand. He strained to catch what he could of the foreign words.

"Must be Russian,"
said a close-by voice, and Bud jumped. The sauna was occupied!

"Oh, uh… guess so," Bud murmured quietly to the man seated further down. "Just curious."

"Then again, we do have some Norwegian members," the man continued. "I’m—wait now, haven’t we met?"

Bud half-turned and groaned inwardly. His comrade-in-steam was Mr. Greenup!

The young pilot brushed a lock of his dark hair down across his forehead and hoarsened his voice. "No, no, but I was just leaving," he rasped, heading sideways toward the door and pushing through it.

He tiptoed toward the other section of the shower room. The showers were still running, though he could no longer hear any conversation.

Well,
he told himself,
right now
they’re both about as vulnerable as a person can be!
He tensed his muscles and strode forward.

The two shower stalls were empty! The showerheads had been left running—probably to muffle the men’s stealthy escape.

Bud ran light-footedly back to the locker room, quickly looking down each aisle in turn. Then, alerted by a slight noise, he turned and saw two towel-draped figures, side by side, exiting the locker room into the hallway. One was tall, the other short!

Bud hurdled a bench, sprinted across the concrete floor, and grabbed both men’s towels from behind, trying to pull them back.

"Gentlemen!" Bud exclaimed, ripping the towels from around their waists and spinning them both around to face him.

There were three gasps and a shocked pause. Then Bud choked out:
"Mr. Martinberry!
How great to, um—see you!" The tall man was the head librarian of the Shopton Public Library!

"Barclay, isn’t it?" responded Mr. Martinberry, thoroughly perplexed and thoroughly unclad. "Have you—that is—" He paused, staring at the towels in Bud’s hand. "This is Mr. Byrnes. Tyler Byrnes."

Byrnes gave a broad grin and stuck out a hand obviously accustomed to glad-handing. "Howarya, Barclay. Ty Byrnes, Apex Real Estate. Say, you own or rent?"

"Rent!" Bud replied as he tossed the men their towels and backed away toward the door.

"On our way to massage," Byrnes continued. "Why don’t you—"

"Nice. Pleasure. Bye!" Bud stammered, pushing past them and out into the hallway.

On the floor above, Harlan Ames was engaged in vigorous conversation with the manager of the Excelsis Club. Next to Ames stood Tom, who had found access to the building through the terrace.

"Let’s all keep our voices down, please," said the manager nervously. "These are very serious matters."

"You bet they’re ‘serious,’ you lump-nosed pencil pusher!" fumed Ames. "We can have this club of yours shut down in a minute if—"

"Mr. Keiverlav," Tom said, "we’re trying to be reasonable. This man Bronich was seen entering your building by the side door just minutes ago. You say you don’t recognize him?"

The man shook his head. "I can’t be expected to recognize all our members by sight. Furthermore, he might be a guest—members can sign in personal guests, you know."

Suddenly the man’s eyes widened. Tom and Ames spun around.

"Bud!"
Tom cried. "What—where—"

"Sir!" Keiverlav said coldly to Bud. "You
must
be properly dressed to walk about on this floor!"

"Properly
dressed?" Bud gave him a woozy grin. "Hey, this is one of your own towels!" He pointed to the embroidered logo.

As the manager tried to block him from the sight of the curious public, Bud related his adventures on the floor below. "So I guess I lost ’em," he finished ruefully.

"Young man, you
really
must put some clothes on!" demanded Keiverlav.

"Oh, yeah." Bud winked at Tom. "Lemme see now. I
know
I put them someplace…"

An hour later, after the police had searched the Club thoroughly and Mr. Keiverlav had retired to his office in search of sedation, Tom, Bud, and Ames sat on a bench in front of the building discussing the strange affair as Bud made notes in Tom’s notebook.

"This is the best I can do," said Bud, handing the notebook to Tom. "Those words sounded
something
like this, phonetically spelled. At least that’s all I can remember."

"Thanks, pal," said Tom. "We didn’t find Bronich and his friend, but at least we’ve got this to play around with."

"Well, I’m going to follow a few hunches back at Enterprises," Harlan Ames said, rising to his feet. "If you two know anybody who speaks Kranjov, maybe you can make something out of all this."

As Ames walked away, Tom frowned thoughtfully. "You know, flyboy—weren’t we talking about somebody who spoke Kranjov a few weeks ago? When we got back from New Mexico?"

"Say, that’s right!" Bud thought for a moment, then snapped his fingers. "I remember! Bash was telling us about that woman she babysits for. She was born in Kranjovia!"

Pakistan-born Bashalli Prandit was a close friend of Tom, Bud, and the Swift family. She and Tom frequently double-dated with Bud and Sandy.

Without waiting the boys drove to The Glass Cat, the Shopton coffee house where Bashalli worked. She brightened as they walked in.

"Ah, the scientific rover boys!" was Bash’s humorous greeting. "In the mood for a Danish?"

"No," Bud replied, "a Kranjovian!"

Tom briefly explained their need for a translator, taking care not to go into detail about his project or the threat against his family and friends.

"Well, Mrs. Zalvonyov is very nice," said Bashalli. "I imagine she’d like to help you. Her story is quite dramatic, how she escaped from Kranjovia with her son and little granddaughter. Let me telephone her."

Mrs. Zalvonyov was agreeable. Within minutes Tom and Bud were ringing for entrance at her rented house at the edge of town.

She proved to be a small, white-haired woman with a very determined manner and a fairly dense accent. She ushered them into a parlor decorated with photographs and memorabilia from her homeland, and bade them sit down on a threadbare sofa. "Alright now," she said brusquely. "For me, what do you have?"

Tom pulled out the notebook sheet of phonetically-spelled words and phrases and handed it to her. "We assume it’s in the Kranjov language, ma’am. Bud had to spell it as it sounded, but we thought you might make something of it."

"It’s a conversation between two men," Bud added. "I couldn’t remember who said what, though."

Mrs. Zalvonyov put on a pair of bifocals and examined the sheet. "This—nonsense, gibberish!"

"I did the best I could," responded Bud in an apologetic tone.

"Not very good," she said. "Like little Latvian boy in school trying to learn, eh?"

"Is there anything at all that—" Tom began. But Mrs. Zalvonyov interrupted him with a dismissive wave.

"I do not say there is nothing. Only that it is bad." She studied the paper closely for a minute, nodding now and then. "Okay, okay, now I tell you what it means—at least in teeny bits."

Tom gave an appreciative smile. "That would be a great help, ma’am."

"Yaa, yaa. Okay, I think someone says ‘too cold is the water’ and someone says ‘so you turn handle’ and someone says ‘be strong-trunk’—that is how we say, what?—
get used to it.
Our way of saying. So someone says ‘good wish, to have easy-handle for cold in weather.’ Then I think they are making vulgar jokes. Blah-blah. Now, what? Something about—I think it’s a name, Detar. Common name." Mrs. Zalvonyov paused and looked up. "They do not say it with formal politeness, but as if he is a friend. See?"

Tom nodded. "I understand."

"Not much more I can understand. Soap; say hello; some foreign word
ek-sell…"

Bud looked embarrassed. "Great—Excelsis! I should have noticed."

"Means nothing, eh-eh," said their translator. "Last part here, something about going under a
cap of glass."

"Is that a Kranjov idiom—an expression?" asked Tom.

"Not as I have ever heard," Mrs. Zalvonyov replied. "But there is a sound-like word, would make even less sense. Word for…what is it?…" She moved her palm back and forth parallel to the floor, as if it were sliding across a smooth, flat surface. "When top of pond is frozen hard. Ice!"

"‘Cap of ice,’
huh." Bud’s face fell with disappointment. "Maybe one of the guys was getting a headache. Guess all I heard was a lot of chit-chat."

Tom was silent, and Bud glanced his way. The young inventor looked tense and thoughtful—and alarmed! "What
is
it, genius boy?"

"Don’t you get it, Bud?" asked Tom evenly, not wanting to provoke any hard-to-answer questions from their hostess. With a feigned smile he leaned over closer to Bud’s ear. "Cap of ice—icecap!
As in Antarctica!"

Somehow their deadly adversaries had learned of the Swift Enterprises plan to drill deep into the earth from the South Polar region—placing the entire massive operation in danger!

IT WAS LATE in the afternoon when Tom and Bud were able to sit down with Harlan Ames in his office and discuss what they had discovered.

"It seems we just can’t manage to keep a secret around here," commented Ames wryly.

"I suppose we can’t be absolutely sure that Mrs. Zalvonyov got the translation right," Tom reminded him. "She did say it could be either ‘ice’ or ‘glass’."

"And I was trying to hear it over the sound of a shower, anyway," added Bud.

Ames made a dismissive gesture. "Okay. But ‘ice’ sure fits in with all that other talk about cold—doesn’t it? So let’s be smart and assume for the moment that Bronich and his buddies have a very up-to-date source of information about what we’re doing here behind these walls. How are they working it?"

Bud pointed out, "We’ve had turncoat employees here before, you know. Maybe Enterprises is skimping on someone’s dental plan!"

Tom and Ames laughed. "If they just knew about the second version of the blaster—I can see how that might have leaked out," said the young inventor. "But the Antarctic project is only known to a few of us."

"Most of them here in this room," commented Ames. "Plus your family and Chow Winkler, and Jake Aturian over at the Construction Company."

"Hey!" exclaimed Bud. "I forgot about Uncle Jake. Maybe he’s let it get around among his employees—or maybe his office is bugged!"

Ames shook his head negatively. "Ever since some of our recent problems, I’ve had my people do sweeps of both plants on an almost daily basis with long-range detectors. I’m confident any listening devices on the premises would be located right away."

"Guess you’re right," Bud admitted. "That’s why we had to stop using the televocs."

The televocs were ingenious private communication links allowing near-range person-to-person transmission. Unfortunately, Ames had concluded that it would be too easy for a technologically sophisticated enemy to tap into them, endangering Enterprises security. He had persuaded the Swifts to discontinue their use for the present.

"And Uncle Jake told me just an hour ago that he hadn’t needed to mention the project—he calls it Project X—to anyone over there. He’s sure he hasn’t let it slip to anybody." Tom’s voice expressed the confidence he felt in the Swift circle of family and friends.

"Your father is meeting with a Congressional subcommittee right about now, Tom. It’s supposed to be a closed, confidential environment—but that’s not something we can count on," Ames noted. "However, that couldn’t explain what’s
already
leaked out."

"So far, the only key we have to all this is the Excelsis Club," Bud reminded them. "They say they’ve never heard of Bronich, and the police couldn’t find a trace of him and his friend, but I don’t trust those hoity-toity club types. For all we know, Old Man Greenup could be involved in all this."

"By the way, Bud, that reminds me of something," Ames said. "Did you see that second man, the shorter guy, in enough detail to have a police sketch artist draw him?"

The young pilot shrugged. "Maybe. It was just a glimpse, but I have a pretty good memory for faces. Want to try it?"

Ames nodded and said, "I’ll have someone out here tomorrow."

The informal meeting broke up on an inconclusive note, Ames mentioning that he might bring in a security consultant with whom he was personally familiar.

The next day Tom was at work at Swift Enterprises when he received a call from Ames. "I was finally able to get a reliable list of the Excelsis Club membership."

"Anything interesting?"

"Nothing in particular—on the surface," replied the security chief. "But it seems they also note the names of guests for a period of one year. I’d like you to look it over. Maybe you or Bud will recognize a name."

"Will do, Harlan."

Just as Tom was passing the news along to Bud, Sandy and Bashalli Prandit walked into the laboratory dressed attractively in shorts and nautical garb.

"Well, are you two all set to go?" asked Sandy gaily. "But aren’t you going to change clothes?"

"Go where?" said Bud blankly.

"Oh,
Tom!
Didn’t you tell him?" Sandy turned to her brother with a puzzled frown.

"Gosh, Sandy, I’ve been so busy that it slipped my mind!"

Bashalli rolled her eyes. "We should have known, Sandra. Like water through a sieve!"

Bud looked from brother to sister to Bashalli. "So don’t keep it a secret. What’s up?"

"Sandy cooked up a double date for us," explained Tom. "We were all supposed to go sailing on the lake this afternoon in the
Mary Nestor."

The
Mary Nestor
was Sandy’s sleek new sailboat, named in honor of the wife of the first Tom Swift, Sandy’s and Tom’s great-grandmother.