Tom Swift and His Aquatomic Tracker (9 page)

"What I enjoyed," Alix Tuundvar chuckled, "was the clever business of flying an igloo. It made for quite an episode in the fiction book. Did it really happen?"

"Oh, more or less," Tom declared suavely.

"I don’t see any igloos down here," sniffed George.

"I was thinking more in terms of balloon travel."

"What!"

Tom walked over to the discarded sack, wide as a sofa cushion, that had enclosed the spool of isobraid. "This material is a lightweight, somewhat stretchable plastic. It’s not just waterproof, but
air
proof—it should be able to contain pressurized gas without leaking."

"I’m with you so far, I guess," Dan Walde spoke up. "But where do you plan to get your lift gas? From those scuba tanks we found on the slope?"

"They were empty," Tom replied. "And there’s no practical way to connect up to the oxygen produced by the hydrolungs. So how about using hydrogen?"

"But..."

Bud interrupted. "I get the idea! You can use that whatchamacallit electrical process on the water to separate the hydrogen from oxygen!—er, right, genius boy?"

"Right! It’s called
electrolysis
. We can get plenty of juice from the suit batteries, and it’ll be nothing at all to set up an anode and cathode. I can see a way to collect the hydrogen bubbles in the bag. Then we’ll seal her up!"

"Ah, fantastic!" exclaimed Alix. "But why not simply use the balloon to lift
ourselves
to the surface? Or even just one of us?"

"The volume of the bag isn’t great enough to produce that much lift—even one person would be too much for it," Tom explained. "But this isobraid has neutral buoyancy! It’ll weigh almost nothing as it unreels at this end and hangs down from the bag."

"Well, I’ve heard of a lot of crazy things in my time," laughed Ham Teller; "and I love ’em all!"

Each of the hydrolung diversuits had a compact kit of tools in its sealable pouch, including a sharp-edged wirecutter. Working methodicaly, Tom cut two short lengths of the isobraid, then extracted the solar battery from his unusable ion-drive unit and made crude connections to the battery’s positive and negative terminals, which were sealed from the surrounding water. Instantly a fizz of bubbles began to rise from the free ends of the two wires! "This one’s the cathode," Tom said, pointing. "This is, the electrode with a net negative charge. This is the hydrogen stream; the bubbles from the anode are oxygen. Gotta keep ’em separated― "

"Unless you plan to recreate the landing of the
Hindenburg
," wisecracked Ham Teller, a comment which drew a puzzled glance from Alix Tuundvar.

"Looks more like rising cigarette smoke than a stream of bubbles," observed Dan.

Tom nodded. "The pressure down here keeps the individual bubbles super-small."

Even without the young inventor’s explanation, it was easy to tell which stream of bubbles was the hydrogen, rushing toward the surface in an upside-down cataract as if jet propelled. With Bud’s help Tom placed the open mouth of the sack over the stream and anchored it with isobraid cable. Hydrogen began to collect inside.

"How long before it fills up?" asked George Braun.

"Not long," Tom replied. "—if you consider several hours ‘not long’."

Bud groaned. "
Hours
? Good night!"

"Hydrogen’s extremely compressible, flyboy. It’s going to take a lot of it to shove out the water against the pressure at this depth." He added that in his estimation the bag would have to be nearly full to lift its own weight. "But at least this buoyant isobraid won’t add to the overall weight."

The inflation time was more than long enough for each hydronaut to develop a yawning gulf of hunger. Nothing was said, but Tom knew they were all becoming weaker.

Finally the bag tugged upwards against the isobraid line, which they had fastened to the bag’s carrying loop after running it through one of the metal rings on the slab. "The end of the wire doesn’t have to extend into the air," Tom said. "Just as long as it’s more or less at the surface."

"Let ’er rip!" said Bud. The six gave weak cheers as Tom released the hydro-balloon and it floated upward, quickly whisking out of sight in the dimness. All they could do was watch the isobraid pay out, yard after yard.

Tense minutes later the line ceased to move. "It must’ve broken the surface," Tom declared. "Now let’s make a few calls!"

After anchoring the line firmly, he made a connection to his diversuit radiocom antenna output, doing what he could to boost the signal. When Alix asked if Tom would be able to receive incoming messages, the youth shook his head. "Outgoing only—and just beeps at that. I’ll be transmitting Morse code, ‘SOS,’ and ‘TSE’ for Tom Swift Enterprises."

Dan murmured, "Let’s hope somebody’s up there listening."

"I think we can count on that!"

Yet as one hour followed another, their hope began to leak away into the icy waters. "The power must not be enough to overcome the resistance over such a great length," Tom said in discouragement. "Or there might be an internal break in the line."

Bud snorted. The predicament had roused the young flier to anger! "Look, I was able to make it a little ways up just by swimming. If I went hand over hand on this cable― "

Ham spoke before Tom could. "Take it from a scientist, Bud, it wouldn’t work. Your weight would just haul the bag back down again."

"Yeah? It had a little extra buoyancy after countering its own weight. Otherwise it wouldn’t have risen at all. Isn’t that so, Tom?"

"You’re right," Tom confirmed; "but so’s Ham. You might make a some progress upward, but you’d run into the sack end before you were even halfway."

Dan Walde’s boyish face showed the fear that was mixed with discouragement. "A few more of those sacks and we could have made a bundle of balloons.
That
would have been enough to lift one of us."

Alix pointed out calmly, "But we looked for more. I looked myself. Not a one."

Suddenly Tom made a muffled sound. He picked up one of the aquatometers from the ground and held it in front of his visor, staring at it intently. Then he shifted his gaze to Bud.

The black-haired youth knew instantly what was running through the mind of his genius friend! "
The aquatometer cases!
Lightweight—and waterproof!"

"Of course!" George Braun exclaimed happily. "We pull the mechanism, fill the cases with gas― "

"Instant balloons!" chortled Ham. "Six of them!"

Tom was calculating volumes and water displacement in his head. "Yes. I
think
the total will be enough to lift one person."

"All we can do is try," observed Alix. "For, you know, we are getting weak. I am speaking of our young comrade in particular." He nodded toward Dan Walde.

"I—I guess I’m just a little spooked by all this," the Nebraskan said.

Tom said sympathetically, "Not what you were expecting, was it."

They labored for hours, but in due time the six cases had been filled with hydrogen and resealed. It was Bud who would make the ascent, arguing that his muscular strength and swim experience might prove critical in handling rough conditions at the surface.

Straining against their individual cables, the cases were tied to the young hydronaut one by one. Four cases seemed to reduce his weight almost to zero. After the remaining two, he was straining upward against the long line to the surface, which he was grasping with his diversuited fingers.

"Jetz, I look like one of those balloon vendors at a carnival!" he joked. "All ready for liftoff, Tom?"

"Ready!" was the answer. "Good luck, pal. Your suit radiocom won’t reach Sweden, but you should be able to contact seacraft—maybe Iceland."

"I won’t give up until you’re all up there with me," Bud said gravely. Then he loosened his grip slightly and bobbed upward out of sight, though the glowing bead of his lamp would allow them to track his progress.

"Ah, amazing!" muttered Alix. "Who could have dreamed such a story, hmm? My girlfriends will not believe it."

"How many do you have?" asked Ham Teller.

"Not many. A handful."

"I imagine they would be."

Dan suddenly signaled, "Take a look at your scope, Tom!"

The young inventor glanced at his sonarscope mask image. A strange blip was projected on the curving screen.

"Too big for a sub, isn’t it?" George queried.

Tom agreed. "I’d say it’s definitely more than one object. Might be a school of fish."

Alert but curious, the five divided their frazzled attentions between the readouts on their visor-screens and the dimming point of light high above. Soon they could make out a number of large dark creatures swimming straight toward them.

Tom’s eyes widened in fear. "
Bud
!" he sonophoned.

"What’s up—
down
—Skipper? I see the blips on― "

"Killer whales!" Tom warned over his suit mike. "The most dangerous things we could meet underwater!"

To the herd of great sea beasts, Bud would be a tempting morsel dangling on a line!

THERE appeared to be at least a dozen monsters in the pack. Dimly visible, the killers were black on top and whitish below—the colors slit by their wide, ferocious-looking mouths.

"Wh-what’s the drill, Tom?" Dan asked tensely.

"Cut the lamps—sonar pulse too," Tom ordered, knowing his words would reach Bud as well. "And lie flat, guys."

As he spoke, Tom plucked from the utility pouch that ran along his upper arm an object that looked like a metal arrow. He aimed the device toward the approaching killer whales and slightly ahead of them, and adjusted his suit controls. Instantly the undersea arrow shot off into the gray-green at high speed. At a coded sonar-signal, a stream of blue-black dye jetted from the front end and spread through the water in an inky cloud.

"What is it?" sonophoned Alix. "A repellant?"

"More like an
attractant
! I ‘dialed-in’ a chemical combo with a scent. The whales’ll think it’s something wounded, maybe bleeding, and follow after it." Tom lay flat next to the others, but turned over on his back to see. "I think it’s working. They’re turning aside."

"Thank goodness!" breathed Dan. "What was that thing you shot off, Tom?"

"Sort’ve a self-propelled torpedo, remote controlled. No warhead—but you see what it can do. I’d planned to test it when I had an opportunity."

"No diver should be without one!" gulped Ham.

"Lying flat, we were probably safe," Tom said, "but Bud wasn’t."

The silhouettes had disappeared. Tom switched on his sonarscope again, and after studying his screen, signaled all clear.

"Those babies have sharp hearing," he explained over the sonarphone. "They would have homed in on us easily if they’d detected any sound."

"From the sonar blips they weren’t as big as most whales I’ve read about," Bud sonophoned.

"Only thirty feet long," Tom said dryly.

Added Braun, "But that ‘killer’ tag is no joke, Bud. They like to bite chunks out of the bigger whales, and they swallow seals whole."

"Whew! Let’s be glad we’re not seals!"

"Don’t forget, our special sonar pulse makes us sound like porpoises—and they love those, too." Tom grinned at the stunned grunt Bud transmitted. "In fact, they’re one of the largest beasts of prey, and I doubt if they’re very choosy about what kind of meat they go after."

"They’re welcome to anything around," Dan Walde responded, "as long as it isn’t us."

Tom took the opportunity to reconfirm their position on his localculator, noting that the guyot was about 100 miles northeast of the extreme northern tip of Iceland. Then he used his sonarscope to locate Bud. "Almost there, flyboy!" he signaled.

"Can’t be soon enough for me," Bud transmitted in answer. "I think I have a problem, pal."

"What kind?"

"I’m slowing down—quite a bit. The cases must be leaking a little."

The five beneath waited with growing concern. If Bud couldn’t reach the surface, he would have to slip back down—and all hope would be lost!

"
Made it
!" Bud sonophoned, joyous and breathless. "Had to swim a couple vertical laps, though. Now I’ve got my arm latched onto the bag-balloon."

He reported that the early morning weather topside was rough. "It’s tossing me around like a cork. Can’t see a thing, either. But I’ve got my breath back—I’ll start transmitting."

In less than a minute Bud reported that he was in touch with a weather station in Iceland. "The guy didn’t speak English too well, but I gather there’s quite a search going on for the ‘lost Americans’."

"Knowing Dad, Swift Enterprises is leading it!"

It was a British naval vessel, the H.M.S.
Gemstone
, that ultimately managed the deep-sea rescue. Tom and his companions were hoisted up and aboard via a jerry-rigged jacob’s ladder, lowered from a crane on long cable. The cruiser’s small crew cheered and applauded as the captain met the weary hydronauts, masks finally open. "There must be a hundred seacraft and aircraft searching the Atlantic for you boys—the whole bloody world’s got into it!" he reported as he shook hands with Tom. "Your Flying Lab is among them—we radioed them immediately, of course."

"I’m anxious to speak to my family, Captain," the young inventor replied. "Where are we headed?"

"The
Gemstone
is bound for Southampton. Our deck is hardly large enough to accomodate your giant jet, but perhaps― "

Tom responded thoughtfully, "Sir, we all need some rest, and probably a little time in your infirmary. Rather than impose on you further, why not proceed with your schedule and take us to port? We can catch the
Sky Queen
at Heathrow in London."

"And lissen, buddy, when you speak to the bleating media out there," added Ham Teller, "be sure’n tell ’em it was Tom here who figured out how to make that call—and Bud Barclay over there who went up topside and made it!"

George Braun whispered to Bud, "For now, we’re not saying word one about Kong Dubya. Ham wants to think a little. And that’s something I’d like to see!" Already half asleep, Bud chuckled.