Tom Swift and His Subocean Geotron (2 page)

By throwing his weight onto the cable, he now had a small, awkward, uncertain measure of control. The kite bellied out again, slowing and at last acting as a clunky glider-parachute. He began to curve around, back in the direction of the lake, now several miles off.

As for the ground, still below—and very near!

When the towline had split, the
Blue-Eyed Blitz
had nearly tumbled, nosing down into the water and sending a spray across the occupants. "Aw now, this ain’t s’ good fer my Stetson," Chow protested, hand on hat.

They were stunned to see the lower part of the line whipping down out of the sky! Twisting to look back, they watched Tom and the water kite briefly lunge downward—and then suddenly swerve and soar anew toward the lakeshore. "I—I don’t understand," choked Sandy. "Is he trying some kind of stunt?"

"Not intentionally!" Bud retorted grimly. He yelled at the top of his lungs:

"
Tom! Let loose! Drop!
"

"No,
no
!" cried Bash. "He’s passed the shore—he
can’t
drop now!"

The Shopton sky was sunny enough, but woolly with thin low clouds and haze. Tom and the kite soon became a small, speeding speck high in the distance. Unsure of what to do, Bud began to circle widely at high speed.

And then they saw Tom again, the water kite slanting lower to the ground, swerving and wiggling like a worm—but approaching Lake Carlopa. They watched in breathless suspense as the kite recrossed the shoreline.

"He’s got to drop," grated Bud. "If he hits the water strapped tight to the thing, he’ll be pulled under."

"Look!" Chow shrieked.

Tom was free of the kite and falling! They stared in helpless horror. The fall was long enough to slam Tom hard into the water with a tremendous splash—and with enough force to snap his neck!

GRAVITY showed Tom no mercy. He plunged into Lake Carlopa straight up and feet first like a man in a runaway elevator, raising a column of spray.

"He’ll be pretty badly stunned from the fall," Bud told the others in a tremulous voice. "He sure hit the water hard."

Seconds passed. When Tom didn’t reappear, Bashalli moaned, "Ohhhh—! What can we do?
He’s drowning
!"

"You take me over there, Buddy Boy!" Chow commanded. "I’ll jump in an’ bring him up even if I sink right down to the blame bottom!"

Bud gunned the boat toward the distant spot. "Just sit down, Chow. I can only handle one rescue at a time."

Reaching the spot Bud reversed the prop-screw, bringing the
Blitz
to a violent, bobbing stop—a skid on water. Telling Sandy to take the wheel and maneuver a safe distance away, the black-haired athlete ripped off his tanktop and threw himself into the water.

At almost the same instant Bashalli cried out frantically, "There he is!" Tom’s face had appeared at the surface, blowing water. He was struggling to stay above, but his movements were feeble and uncoordinated.

Tom sank from view. But powerful strokes brought Bud close to his pal. He dived under. Another moment and he had reappeared with the limp young inventor in tow. "I’ve got you, Tom," Bud gasped. "I’m right here—steady!" If Tom responded, Bud could not hear it.

As word spread the Enterprises employees had gathered at the water’s edge in a surging mass of fear. Now they broke into cheers.

The voice of young Doc Simpson, the plant medic, rang out commandingly. "Bud,
don’t lift him out
! Just keep his face above water!" Doc charged out into the low swells and cradled his friend and employer protectively.

"Can you hear me, Tom?" asked Doc.

Tom moaned faintly. "I... I don’t..."

"Listen, Skipper," persisted Doc gently. "Try moving your arms and legs a little—and your neck. Just a little!"

Bud and Doc exhaled with relief as Tom responded to the order. "All right, Tom," said Doc. "Let’s get you up on the beach. Let us float you."

"We’ll do all the work," Bud grinned, his face white. "We’re paid employees, boss."

A lifeguard met them and helped to lift Tom ashore, waving back the swarm of bathers and onlookers, which now included Bashalli, Sandy, and Chow.

"I’ve phoned for an ambulance!" a man shouted.

Tom was gently nudged into place on the sand, where the warm lake waters still lapped. Sandy and Bash watched anxiously as the lifeguard checked his condition.

"His pulse and breathing seem to be okay," the Dunes lifeguard reported. "We’d better cover him with a blanket till a doctor gets here."

"Oh, Bud, do you think he’ll be all—?" Bash started to ask.

Doc answered for Bud. "No visible bleeding. He has feeling in his extremities, and can move them. I don’t feel anything poking out. I think he was lucky."

"Ye-aah," sniffed Chow, "if’n yew call it
luck
to fall outta the dang sky!"

Tom’s sister held Tom’s hand. "Doc thinks you’re okay, Tomonomo." There was a tearful catch in her voice.

Tom stirred and murmured weakly. "Tell Doc I think he’s okay too."

Soon the wail of a siren could be heard in the distance, and an ambulance came shrieking across the sand. A white-uniformed intern jumped out, while two attendants hastily unloaded a stretcher. As Sandy and Bash described the accident, the medic opened his rig-case and began examining Tom carefully, strapping an oxygen mask on the young Shoptonian.

"You’re on the money, Dr. Simpson," he told Doc. "No broken bones, as far as I can tell. But he may have suffered other injuries." The intern stood up and spoke to the two attendants. "Okay, guys—get him into the ambulance."

Silent, Bud watched anxiously as his pal was placed in the ambulance, Doc climbing aboard as well, then told Sandy and Bash, "Change your clothes and we’ll drive to the hospital."

Sandy telephoned her parents before leaving the beach. Meanwhile, Bud had returned the
Blue-Eyed Blitz
and the downed kite to the boathouse. As they sped off in his red convertible, Bash said angrily, "Fly like a bird. Safe fun. So are we having fun yet? Do you two ever do anything safe?"

"I don’t know what happened up there," Bud grated. "That towline—I inspected it myself, every inch!"

"That break in the towline was no accident." Sandy’s declaration was firm. "It’s the beginning of..."

"Of
what
?" demanded Bashalli.

"Of the usual
something
."

Soon after Bud and the girls reached Shopton Memorial Hospital, Mr. and Mrs. Swift arrived. Tom had revived and was given a complete checkup, including X-rays, an MRI scan, and neurological tests. Except for severe bruises from hitting the water, he had suffered no major injury; but his ankles and knee joints were tender. "Rammed your feet into the lake bottom. Could have been much worse. Let’s keep you here overnight," said the medic in charge to the youth.

"You just hate that, don’t you, Dear," said Mrs. Swift with a smile.

Chow, who had also arrived in the meanwhile, bustled up to his beloved boss. "Here now, son, I got somethin’ for you."

He handed the young inventor his notebook.

"Thanks, pard," Tom muttered weakly.

Next morning, Sandy, Bash, and Bud came to visit the young inventor. They found him propped up with pillows, busy with pencil and paper. Sketches and computations were strewn about the hospital bed.

"Now see here, brother dear," Sandy said. "I thought you were supposed to be resting!"

Tom grinned, like a small boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "This is ‘resting,’ sis. You don’t see me up on my feet, do you?"

As the visitors pulled up chairs, Bud asked if Tom felt like telling what had happened in the air. They were all astonished at his account of the weird hook and line. "But Thomas, just who
was
this flying fisherman?" asked Bashalli. "Did you see the plane?"

The young inventor shook his head. "No, and I didn’t hear anything either. Of course, the wind was whooshing past my ears, and the sky was pretty hazy."

"And you don’t know how high up he was, or how far ahead of you," Bud pointed out. "Then again—if he was too far off, how in heck could he have guided that hook to the kite strut?"

"It seems impossible," Tom agreed. "If someone asked
me
how to do it, I’d suggest some sort of radar-imaging system using the hook as an antenna."

"And also something to manipulate the line and guide the hook into place," added Sandy thoughtfully. "Enterprises already has things like that on the market—your transifoil, for instance, or the ‘chain-mail’ you use in the diversuits."

"You’re right, sis. And there’s also the question of how the line was broken. If there was some sort of explosive squib, someone would’ve had to have inserted it beforehand. But― "

"We are getting ahead of ourselves," declared Bash. "Perhaps this was some sort of peculiar accident involving a careless pilot dangling a line for some absurd reason. —Now Sandra, do
not
give me such a look of scorn!"

Bud interjected, "I talked to the lab guys at Enterprises, the ones Security’s having look over the kite and the tow line. They say the line was cut clean through, Tom. No fraying or burning. It was a Tom Swift type invention—part guided missile, part flying buzz saw!"

"Harlan Ames is looking into the whole situation," Tom reported, naming the head of Enterprises plant security. "And Dad’s informed the aviation authorities."

The talk passed on to Tom’s plans for the next day—dogged plans he was not about to let his body countermand. "Bud and I will be flying out to South Dakota—Rapid City, in the Black Hills. That’s where Hidden Resource Inc. has its office."

Bashalli asked, "And you’ll be taking the new machine? The thing Budworth calls your Hungry Earthworm?"

"Yes, the lithexor—my repelatron lithextractor." Tom noted that this would only be a small demonstration model, compact enough to be carried in the hangar-hold of Tom’s Flying Lab, the
Sky Queen
.

"I don’t suppose your demonstration requires a lovely assistant this time?" suggested Sandy with a gleam.

"That’s what
I’m
along for," joked Bud.

The bedside phone rang. Sandy answered, then silently mouthed
Uncle Harl
. She passed it to Tom as the others bent close to listen.

As announced, the caller was Harlan Ames. "Strange stuff, chief," stated the former Secret Service man. "I’ve checked the records from the Enterprises airfield radar sweep—as you know, it covers the whole lake area—and also contacted the guys at Shopton Airport. Absolutely no sign of an overflight at that time of day, low or high. Nothing."

Bashalli noted quietly, "Ah, but our Sandra Swift is
quite
sure it was a ‘something’."

"How about a visual?" Tom inquired.

"I’ve asked as many of our folks who were there as I could find; also the Dunes employees. No one saw anything, no one heard anything."

"It’s not surprising they couldn’t see the line and the hook," mused the youth. "But I’d think the aircraft would have to have been cruising low and slow, like a small prop plane or a chopper. I’d think someone would have noticed."

"But you didn’t detect it either, Tom," Ames pointed out. "As I say—strange."

Tom hung up to find his companions exchanging sober glances. "It’s pretty obvious what we’re dealing with," said Sandy.

"For has it not happened before?" contributed Bashalli.

Bud agreed. "That camo-coating of his doesn’t just distort light, but cancels radar waves."

Tom Swift had long since commenced a wince.
He
was an old and persistent enemy, a Chinese turncoat and international master of technological espionage. Comrade-General Li Ching, who enjoyed the cachet derived from calling himself the Black Cobra, had first invaded the affairs of Swift Enterprises during Tom’s spectromarine selector project. He had subsequently proven himself a determined menace beneath the sea and above the air in space. He had dropped out of sight after his recent plot, a mass kidnapping and imprisonment of psychics, had been foiled.

"Okay. Li’s anti-energy sheathing could make an aircraft hard to make out in hazy clouds and glare, like we had over the lake yesterday," Tom admitted reluctantly. "And since the solar batteries came out, we’ve started seeing electric-run prop planes all over—we sell ’em ourselves."

"Very quiet, just like the
Blitz
," Bud noted.

"And old spyface sure has the technology to come up with a guided skyhook," Sandy added. "And plenty of motive to use it, too."

Tom shrugged—but it was laden with wry agreement. The Black Cobra would be only too happy to capture Tom in some spectacular, bizarre manner that would salve his ego and quiet his obsessions for a moment.

"Some people," pronounced Bashalli, "are badly in need of medication."

The next morning Tom was back on his feet and the
Sky Queen
up in the skies, the lithexor prototype lashed down in the hold.

A few Enterprises workers accompanied Tom and Bud to assist setting up the lithexor demonstration. One of them, Tom’s chief engineer, Hank Sterling, stood behind Tom and Bud in the spacious flight control compartment. "Can’t say I’ve ever visited that part of the country," he remarked. "Pretty rugged, isn’t it?"

"Sure is," Bud agreed. "The Black Hills and the badlands. I’ve backpacked there. Mighty cold in winter."

"It’s what’s underneath all that hard ground that Hidden Resource is interested in," commented Tom. "Lead, gold, uranium—nowadays, of course, oil and natural gas. Beryllium and mica, too. What this company wants to do is explore and mine at a much deeper level than is usual."

The Flying Lab’s jet lifters set the mammoth ship down between two hills, in a stark, rocky field owned by the company. A driver met them. Tom and Bud were driven from badlands to the office-lands of Rapid City, to the ultramodern company headquarters in an oasis of trees and fountains.

Milendro Brundage, CEO of Hidden Resource, had a luxurious waiting area, walls covered with nature photos and neat plaques bearing sentiments like
Sharing Nature’s Gifts
and
Today’s Resources—Tomorrow’s Treasures
. Also:
Tops in Investment Growth Three Years Running.