Tom Swift and His Aquatomic Tracker (2 page)

"Ahlgren’s people picked it up yesterday from an untraceable satellite transmission on a channel we’ve been monitoring."

"How was it transmitted? Video signal?"

"No—digitized in a ciphered format we’ve been able to break. This is the output; we’ve got the actual number-string under top security. We’re sure that channel is being utilized by some sort of espionage cell operating in Europe. We know essentially nothing about them, but our European colleagues have reason to suspect a terrorist action in the making."

"Good gosh!" muttered Tom. "You don’t know who they are?"

"For convenience we’ve labeled them
GOG-Image
. ‘GOG’ has become a common classification term in the intelligence community—
Group of Guys
, believe it or not."

"Have you doped out anything about what the image might signify?"

"I’m afraid not. We’ve been working all night to try to link the image, which may be some sort of insignia, to agent groups we’ve penetrated. We’ve come up dry, Tom. It may be a trigger message."

With a slight hesitation, the youth made a suggestion. "How about Collections? Do they have a take on it?" This was the nickname of a highly secretive government agency dedicated to technological threats of the gravest kind. Tom had received information from the group on several occasions, marveling at their unaccountable ability to uncover secrets that their possessors wished desperately to remain
covered
.

Thurston responded quickly—and coolly. "Let’s keep our discussion focused, please. What we have here is an unknown threat, perhaps a command for immediate action, being passed along in electronic disguise."

"And you think Enterprises might be able to help you figure out what it means?" The young inventor was troubled by the request. "Mr. Thurston, I don’t know if codebreaking is considered a science, but we sure don’t have a department for it at Enterprises."

"Then you might give some thought to starting one," Thurston stated bluntly. "Because if your Swift science can’t drag some information out of this little picture, hundreds of lives could be lost by the end of the week!"

TOM SWIFT was thunderstruck by Mr. Thurston’s words—and horrified at the thought of the responsibility being placed upon his shoulders! "Sir, I—I don’t know what to― "

The section chief overrode him. "I’ll use three-channel fractionated encryption to transmit the complete string of digits—to your Shopton office, I presume. The string consists of eleven repetitions of the same identical sequence; the
image
, in other words. Reiteration of that kind is common as a way to get around the minor disruptions of natural interference—static."

Tom had already commenced mulling over the problem. "Which implies that they needed to get the image across with absolute precision."

"Correct. Ahlgren thinks something in the underlying formatting data must act as the cipher-key to the real message. But it may involve obscure mathematical transformation formulas that you might be familiar with in your scientific work. We’ll continue to work on it, naturally. But Bernt thinks it’s vital to pull you into the loop, and I agree!"

"Then I’ll do my best, Mr. Thurston. I’ll arrange to be back in Shopton by mid-afternoon, your time." Somewhat uneasy, Tom considered whether he wanted to provide Thurston, and the CIA, with direct access to his research and invention files. Deciding, Tom asked that Blake switch over to an electronic data-ceiver that could record complex information in a matter of nanoseconds, to be relayed on to Shopton by the trusted, long time employee. "Blake, I’m sending you the access sequence that opens my secured server at the plant. Go ahead and send Blake the complete image data, Mr. Thurston, and I’ll begin work on it as soon as I get there."

"We knew you would, Tom. I’ll send you everything we have. But I beg you—
remember
your promise of secrecy. Give out no more information than is absolutely essential. You never know what tiny scrap of data might put someone’s life at stake."

Bud and Chow were amazed when Tom informed them that he would be flying home to Shopton within the hour, and their amazement turned to dismay when the youth proceeded to summarize—vaguely, with a view to keeping his word—the worrisome situation. "I’ll take the
Sky Queen
back," Tom explained. "It’s due here soon from the Fearing training facility with the next squad of the Swedish company’s subsea workers. We’ll make Enterprises the return destination instead of Fearing Island."

"You said ‘
I
.’ Seems to me that nice big Flying Lab has room for quite a few ‘
we
’s, pal," objected Bud.

"Sorry, flyboy, but while I’m away I need you here on the
Charger
. The new diving crew is inexperienced. They may have questions you can answer easily. You’ve been dealing with the hydrolung diversuit since I invented it."

As Bud nodded reluctant agreement, Chow piped up: "Wa-aal, brand my calamari, boss, you can’t say that about ole Chow—I can’t even
fit
inside them plastic shark suits. So I’m goin’ back with you—and
don’t
bother arguin’, son." Tom didn’t.

Designed by Swift Enterprises for oceanic research of all kinds, the
Sea Charger
’s deck was as big as that of an aircraft carrier. It could easily accommodate the huge three-level Flying Lab as the wingless craft settled to a stop on its vertical-thrust jet lifters. Tom welcomed the dozen new workers, and within ten minutes the
Sky Queen
was again in supersonic flight.

The skyship was taking the great-circle route to North America, bringing it over the island nation of Iceland. As he stood musingly by the tall windows of the upper-deck lounge, he gazed down at the rugged terrain of sparkling white and half-hearted green. "You know, Diana," he remarked to one of the crew, on break and reading a magazine, "Iceland is the one big stretch of land on Earth where the mantle layer, the layer below the crust, protrudes out into the open. This whole sub-Arctic region of the North Atlantic is folded and upthrust."

"Mm-hmm," was Diana Mulvey’s fascinated response. "Tom, could a person really make a bullet out of
ice
? You think?" She glanced up over the edge of her crime-fiction magazine to see Tom shrug. It seemed both minds were otherwise occupied.

Landing at Enterprises, Tom immediately went to his fully equipped personal laboratory, which adjoined the Flying Lab’s underground hangar. Thurston’s relayed transmission awaited him, and he worked on it for hours, calling in the plant’s resident expert in higher mathematics, Omicron Kupp, for whatever obscure help he could provide.

At last, brain-weary, he left for a late dinner at the Swift home with his family.
Maybe it’ll recharge me,
he thought, frustrated. He had made no progress.

Slender, attractive Anne Swift tried not to show alarm over her son’s story—ominous enough even when related in polite generalities. Tom, who knew how his mother worried over his usually hazardous scientific adventures, did his best to reassure her. Danger was nothing new to the Swift family, beginning with Tom’s same-named great-grandfather a century before.

After a delicious fried chicken dinner, Tom and his father spent some time discussing the Baltic Sea project and the "drowning Roman" image. All Tom’s life father and son had worked as a team, and Tom knew John Thurston wouldn’t expect him to withhold the details of the grave matter from the man who had taught and inspired him. "I sure wish I knew how to go forward, Dad," Tom said. "This makes deciphering the Space Friends’ symbols seem easy."

Damon Swift nodded, but chuckled with wry understanding. "Allow me to disagree, son. I suspect it will prove easier to crack a code created by our own species than something cooked up by extraterrestrials—whose thoughts are a cipher from the start!"

The two scientist-inventors batted around ideas for a time, but Tom finally trudged upstairs to his bedroom. Even then his churning mind would not allow him to sleep. He switched on his computer and accessed the data on his secured server at Enterprises.

He stared blankly at the image for a time. Then, abruptly, things became much less blank! "Good night!" he breathed excitedly. "All along I’ve been looking for a verbal message in the underlying code string. But what if the message isn’t words but
another image
?"

Instantly Tom began to follow the lead. He now sought clues to line-morphing commands hidden inside the number string—and found them! Running the new routine, he was rewarded by the sight of the Roman becoming weirdly distorted, as if inscribed on tortured rubber. Soon it was unrecognizable. "Topological transform matrices," he muttered—cryptically.

Yet when the morphing hesitated, Tom could make nothing of the jumble of lines and curves that filled the monitor.
The transmission static must’ve scrambled the data sequence beyond recovery
, he told himself despairingly.

Static!

"Gosh, that’s it!" he almost shouted. "It’s the perfect disguise!" He and the others had been seeking systematic variations from segment to segment, the giveaway sign of a code being transmitted in serialized form. But the seemingly random static interference would be
expected
to vary over the eleven image repetitions. The bursts of apparent "interference" hadn’t been included in the code analysis!

Tom plunged into the problem with renewed energy and solved it in a few Swift minutes. A new image appeared on the screen—and this one made sense! "It’s a map!"

But a map of
what
? There were no words, no numbers, no lines of latitude or longitude, no compass indications. The simple diagram showed an irregular, somewhat circular feature that resembled a lake, with long, wandering lines of varying thickness spreading out from it in all directions. Could they represent rivers? Here and there were sets of thin-lined elliptical figures, many of them nested inside other larger ones. Elevation markings? Variations in climate or temperature?

Was
it a map after all?

Tom’s bed suddenly looked very inviting. "Well," he told himself, "at least now we have
something
!—I think."

The next morning Tom remained home but contacted John Thurston with the news of his progress, using his ultra-secure Private Ear Radio. Thurston was delighted and grateful, but forcefully urged the young inventor to remain in Shopton to work on the problem, using all the available resources of Swift Enterprises even as Thurston’s own team plunged into work on the new angle. "I’d planned to, sir, for a few more days, at least," he reassured the CIA leader. "But at some point I’ll either solve it or reach a stopping point, and Enterprises is contractually bound to provide technical supervision at the Baltic site. Lives will be at stake
there
, too—and that’s not just guesswork!"

"I understand, Tom. We can live with that."

A full day at home of stretching, crunching, twisting, and rotating the maplike diagram brought forth no conclusion. It couldn’t be made to correspond to any geographical feature, anywhere. Tom had to consider that he might be on the wrong track. But all his instincts decreed otherwise.

That night brought some welcome relaxation as Bashalli Prandit joined the Swift family for supper, as she often did. Tom always looked forward to her breezy—and bracing—personality.

"How soon will this new northern ‘chunnel’ be connected up, Thomas?" asked Bashalli. "I assume I shall be invited to the ribbon tying ceremoney?"

"Ribbon
cutting
," Tom corrected her with a warm smile. "And yes, of course you will. The whole family will."

"You heard him say it, Sandra, my dear," remarked the young Pakistani with a twinkle. "I have at last made the family."

In the middle of lively conversation in the living room, the foyer telephone rang.

"For you, Tom—it’s Chow," Sandy reported.

Tom was surprised. "He told me he was going to check out that new French restaurant tonight. Wonder what’s up."

"No doubt he found a snail in his appetizer," Bashalli suggested has Tom headed for the phone.

"Boss, you gotta come over here right away!" the Texan babbled excitedly, trying with minimal success to keep his gravelly tones even closer to the gravel. "Sumpin’s goin’ on, and I shor don’t mean any o’ them
purty-fer-grass
French snails!"

Tom was instantly alert. "Okay, pardner. But what is it? Where are you calling from?"

"Can’t explain now, but I’m at that classy French restaurant I toldja about, over here in the hoity-toity section—you know, Carlopa Heights. The Quel Fromage. But lissen, don’t go callin’ in th’ posse, cause it’ll make him bolt fer sure!"

"Make
who
bolt?"

"Cain’t talk now. Hustle here fast, boss, ’cause the varmint may leave soon!"

Tom heard the receiver click. He returned to the living room. "It seems Chow’s trapped a varmint in a French restaurant. Sorry, but I― "

"—have to leave," finished Sandy, sourly.

Bashalli had a wry suggestion. "Perhaps he should have it printed on cards."

Meanwhile, Chow hurried back to his table, brushing his considerable
broadside
, for the fourth time, against the low-cut back of a widely seated woman. "Sorry there, ma’am," he muttered, ignoring her glare. "Tables’re a mite close, ain’t they?"

Clumping down at his own elegantly appointed table, the ex-Texan sat fidgeting impatiently. His quarry—a wiry, muscular-looking man with a dangly mustache and tinted glasses—was seated some distance away with two companions. Chow craned for a better look, but his view was partly blocked. He could see the man only in profile.

"Brand my turkey giblets, they’ve finished that blame fancy
dee
-sert," the Texan fretted. "I gotta get a squint at that hombre’s face! They’ll be gone afore Tom gets here!"

"Monsieur is enjoying his
crepes suzette
?"

"Huh?" Chow looked up with a start and saw a waiter hovering at his shoulder. "Oh—er—sure, sure! It’s a great suzette all right. Allus in th’ mood fer good flapjacks, even little bitty ones like these here." Chow reached for more sauce to put over the sugar-powdered pancakes, but instead he absent-mindedly picked up the vinegar and proceeded to pour it on lavishly.