Tom Swift and His Polar-Ray Dynasphere (21 page)

"A stupid overreaction," Tom had replied. "The plasma-transmission device was a twenty-year-old experimental weapon that proved unreliable and impractical for missile defense purposes. It was mothballed at the base, but the drug-runners decided to use it to knock out the GenRev."

"How come?"

"Because they thought the gravitational data would give away the existence of the underground pipelines and machinery. They figured that if they just rendered the satellite inoperative at an early stage, it would be taken as a technical problem and the data would never be collected by the mission scientists. But when we went up in the Kite—well, they had to try to stop us from the retrieval, didn’t they? And after that they were just plain panicked, not thinking clearly enough to realize that attacking the
Dyna
would just bring more attention to them and their installation."

"Jetz! Guess they sampled a little too much yorb along the way!"

It developed that one intermediary in the chain, Jaisit Radamantha, had affiliated himself with a rival Chullagar drug gang, a group that preferred to deal with the popular and easy-going Prince Jahan as King, rather than the straight-laced Vusungira. Radamantha had convinced Susak to secretly assist him by providing Rakshi, a political supporter of Jahan, with the means to discredit Vusungira. The supposed actors who had attempted to kidnap Vusungira were employed by Phudrim and his palace cronies, who had learned that the rival group planned to assassinate Vusungira in Mumbai. The kidnapping was actually a concealed attempt to protect the Crown Prince.

Tom explained, "When it looked like we were nosing too closely into the affairs of the enterprise, Mr. Phudrim had his men arrest and hold the innocent shop owner whose shop was being used to ship the disguised powder packets from Chullagar."

"Some of which were being ‘muled’ to America in the cockpit of the Indian commercial jetliner," Bud added, completing the story.

But long before the explanations came the challenge of Tom’s great project, eliminating the poison lake.

For days the
Dyna Ranger
floated high above Krei’i Bu in the daylight hours, its invisible dyna-field stretching out mightily over a huge area of sky. There was no interruption of sunlight, as the dynasphere had been tuned to deflect only infra-red rays to a central focusing point, from which faintly visible beams jabbed downward into the dark lake waters. The lake steamed and roiled, sending puffy white columns high into the cold skies.

Tom stood on the shore much of the time, monitoring the readings from the
Dyna
with his replacement Spektor unit, in constant touch with the rotating crews manning the craft in shifts hour after hour. The surface level dropped even faster than anticipated, revealing spiky masses of the yorb growths like a thick carpet of pine needles.

On the third day, carved blocks of stone began to poke above the water. "There it is, Your Highness!" Tom announced to Prince Jahan.

"
Shankaru
! But I think it will be quite a long time before we can strip off the dead yorb from its walls and begin serious investigation."

"Jah," giggled Sandy, "let me tell you about a little something Tomonomo has in stock called a spectromarine selector. It makes chisels and steel wool as old-fashioned as a caveman’s club!"

Added Bashalli Prandit, "A
wonderful
household appliance, easy enough for a mother to use."

"Not
my
mother," said Jahan dryly.

At last the project was ended, the
Sky Queen
cleaving the stratosphere in triumph with Shopton many horizons ahead. George Dilling had, for the moment, all the Swift Enterprises headlines he could handle. And soon enough the headlines would be heralding
Tom Swift and His Sonic Silentenna
the world over.

"It’ll be good to be home," Bud remarked to Tom; "me and my residual dueling scars!"

"I feel the same way, flyboy. There’s one thing I need, though."

"What?"

"A vacation."