Tom Swift and His Jetmarine (13 page)

Bud veered sideways, the bike only scraping his arm. Unfortunately, the move caused Bud to crash into the line of bicycles, producing an impressive slow-motion collapse as one bike upset its neighbor, and so on to the end.

Tom now took the lead, chest heaving, as Dansitt plunged into the middle of the street. The meandering crowds, unfazed and oblivious, looked on with mild curiosity, as if wild chases were an ordinary sight in downtown Kingston, Jamaica.

Tom began to close in on Dansitt. Hurling himself forward, he grabbed for the flying tail of the latter’s unbuttoned shirt. It was almost in reach. His fingers touched it, and—he stumbled. Tom’s feet went out from under him and he might have broken a bone had he not been able to convert his fall into an awkward, but serviceable, shoulder-roll. The athletic move put him back on his feet, but his adversary had regained some distance, and Tom’s jarred muscles were beginning to fail him. His sprint became an uneven trot, echoed just behind him by Bud Barclay.

"F-forget it, Tom," Bud gasped. Gulping the air, the two stumbled to a halt, heads down, hands on their knees.

Looking up after a moment, Tom was startled to see that Dansitt had stopped his headlong flight. He too was trying to catch his breath, half a block ahead. Their eyes met, and Dansitt gave forth his customary leer.

"Hey Tommy!"
he called.
"Some fun, huh?"

Suddenly a large figure stepped off the sidewalk and loomed behind Dansitt, who flinched when a pudgy hand came down on his shoulder near his neck.

"Brand my hoss thieves!" said Chow Winkler. "What the Rio Grande’s goin’ on here?" The cowpoke now took a good look at Dansitt’s face. "Say, ain’t you that Dansitt pokey-poke that Tom—?"

But the leathery Texan could get no further. Dansitt twisted himself free, causing Chow to lose his balance in the process. Chow sat down hard on the pavement with an explosive grunt, and Dansitt charged off between two buildings, shooting Tom and Bud a last look that bespoke both fear and arrogance.

Helping Chow to his feet, the boys tried to see where their quarry might have gone. But it was no use.

"I’as jest coming out of a store when I saw you two down the street a-runnin’ along my way, with this other owlhoot ahead o’ you," Chow explained. "Didn’t know till I took a good look that he ’as the same as that picture-drawin’ you showed around."

"Still, we almost got him," said Tom, "thanks to you, pard!" Chow beamed.

The three quickly rendezvoused with Mr. Swift and the others and told what had occurred. Mr. Swift in turn contacted the Kingston police and the U.S. authorities involved in the Sea Snipers case. Finally, Mr. Swift called George Dansitt at his hotel. The elder Dansitt seemed shocked.

"Sid’s here in Jamaica?"
he exclaimed. "Why didn’t he try to contact me? He knows where I always stay."

"Perhaps he’s afraid you’ll alert the authorities," remarked Mr. Swift.

"Well, he’s right," responded Dansitt. "He broke the law and ought to pay the price. Don’t worry, Swift, I’m not hiding him myself."

"It never crossed my mind," said Damon Swift—though indeed it had, on more than one occasion.

In light of the presence of their enemies in Kingston, as well as the new project at Swift Enterprises, Mr. Swift decided it would be best to postpone the remaining several days of the Jamaican holiday. He contacted Arvid Hanson and the several other Swift employees, explaining the situation. To carry the party back to Shopton, a comfortable commuter jet, owned by the Swifts, would fly down to Kingston from the Citadel, the Swift atomic research facility in New Mexico. Tom and Bud would be piloted back to Puerto Rico on a Navy jet, leaving Jamaica almost immediately.

The short flight over the Caribbean was without incident, landing at the former Coast Guard base in late afternoon, the sun still high in the sky.

But when Tom and Bud asked to be driven to the dock where the jetmarine was berthed, their uniformed driver shook his head curtly. "I’m sorry, gentlemen. I’ve been ordered to take you to Commander Adland without delay."

"Must be something big," whispered Bud as he sat next to Tom.

As they braked to a stop before the Commander’s office, Adland himself hurried out to greet them.

"Has something happened?" asked Tom.

"A major development," said Adland pointedly. "We think we’ve received a message from Hank Sterling!"

"WHAT DO YOU mean, Commander—you
think
you have?" Tom demanded.

"What I mean," continued Adland, "is this. While you were en route back from Jamaica, one of our men was approached by a resident of Palmitas, which is a little beach town near Humacao, about sixty miles distant on the east coast. It’s mostly seasonal rentals and that sort of thing. This man, a ham radio enthusiast, said he’d been getting interference on his setup throughout the morning—bursts of static in a regular rhythm. He thought it was just some kind of repetitive machine static at first, which motors sometimes produce. But then it occurred to him that part of the rhythm sounded like Morse Code for ‘S O S,’ which unfortunately was the only bit of Morse Code he knew. He decided to make a tape of it, but after just a few minutes it stopped dead."

"You have the tape, then?" asked Bud excitedly.

"Yes, and it’s Morse Code all right. Basically someone is sending the distress signal over and over for twenty reps. Then comes
‘Sterling...sub...to Trinidad...ex PR today.’
Then he starts the cycle over again."

"Leave it to an electronics engineer to figure out how to send a wireless message from prison!" Tom exclaimed. "Do you have any idea where the signals were coming from?"

"We do indeed, because they were also picked up by some others in the general area, and we were able to roughly estimate distance and direction. It probably came from one of the beach houses a few miles north of Palmitas."

"You’ve got to get your men there quickly!" Tom cried. "They may be putting out to sea today!"

"They may have already done so," cautioned Commander Adland. "That may be why the signals stopped abruptly. But when we identified the likely transmission area, we were able to contact one of our sea patrol boats and order them ashore to conduct a house-to-house search. They’re armed. Of course we already have aircraft and seacraft on the lookout for the pirate sub."

Tom nodded thoughtfully, but looked worried. "How long ago was this?"

The Commander glanced at his watch. "The men put ashore about ninety minutes ago. They’ve reported in a couple times since then."

"Very recently?"

The Commander seemed to pale beneath his weathered exterior, realizing the import of Tom’s question. "It’s been...perhaps...a bit long now."

"Did it slip your mind, Commander?" Tom asked bitterly.
"These guys have the blackout pulsator!"

"What can we do, Tom?" asked Bud.

"We can get there in minutes in the jetmarine," replied the young inventor, "and get our distorter as close to the pulsator as possible, to nullify it!" He turned to the Commander. "Forgive my outburst, sir. Please have your driver take us to the
Nemo
. We’ll radio you when we’re in place. Oh, and I’ll need good maps of the area, both land and undersea!"

Frowning but seeing no alternative, the Commander agreed.

Within minutes the
Nemo
was again cleaving the currents beneath the sea, hugging the coastline of Puerto Rico, her jets throttled up to the maximum.

"Do you think you can find the right place, Tom?" asked Bud.

"Going by what I’m seeing on these charts, I think so," Tom replied, not looking up. "There’s only a very short length of coast—less than half a mile—where the adjacent seabed is deep enough to easily accommodate a full-sized submersible. Four houses front that stretch, and I’d bet we’ll be able to tell easily which is the one we’re looking for."

Tom’s prediction proved to be exactly the case. Arriving at their destination and bringing the
Nemo
to a halt only a hundred yards out, Tom brought her up to just beneath the surface and raised periscope.

"I see it, Bud!" he cried. "One house has an oversized floating pier in front of it, a pontoon job with a kind of canvas tent in the middle of it. I’m guessing the tent hides a trap door."

"I get it—the sub comes up almost all the way to the surface underneath the pier, and as they rise the conning tower pushes up through the trap door and pokes it open." Bud’s voice took on the edge of a growl. "They figured everything—except Tom Swift!"

Tom zoomed in closer with the periscope and uttered a gasp. "There’s a man in a Coast Guard uniform lying flat in the driveway. Another on the porch. I think—yes, I see a woman in uniform collapsed by the end of the pier." Tom lowered the periscope and moved to blow ballast and surface the jetmarine. "We’ve got to get up there and start covering the place with the distorter."

Upon breaking the surface Tom activated the distorter and checked its detectors for incoming signals. "Yep," he said. "A pulsator is in operation. The wave center is in the house, high up—probably the attic."

"Then someone’s home," Bud cautioned.

Tom shook his head. "I doubt they’d stay once they knew the cavalry was coming. The one in the attic is probably a reserve pulsator that the Snipers left running to keep their victims unconscious. Now that the distorter is protecting them, they ought to come to as quickly as you did on the day of the pressure test."

At the surface the
Nemo
floated high enough for Tom and Bud to be able to see over the waves to the beach. In less than a minute, Bud nudged Tom and said, "The Porch Man—he’s getting up."

As the other two pulsator victims woozily staggered to their feet, Tom guided the
Nemo
up to the pontooned pier and threw open the upper hatchway.

"I’m Tom Swift," he called. "My machine is jamming the blackout device. Can you tell me what happened?"

One of the men approached the jetmarine. "I’m Captain Warren. We’d been going door to door for an hour or so when we came here. Fitzgerald—" He indicated the woman Coast Guardsman. "She noticed an oil slick in the water and a scent of diesel fuel. We used the polarized binocs, and it looked like we had a hull just below surface about a half-mile out, outbound. I remember we were going to radio-in and approach the house..."

Warren’s voice trailed off.

"You probably tripped an alarm system," Tom explained. "Then someone on the sub turned on the blackout transmitter by remote control—and left it on."

Captain Warren glanced at his watch. "It’s hardly been more than forty minutes since we saw the sub—you could still catch up and trail them. Just give me a few minutes to get up to that attic and switch off the machine. I’ll rip it apart with my bare hands if I have to!"

The three battered in a side door of the house. Minutes later, Warren yelled from an upstairs window that the pulsator had been disabled. Tom immediately dove down the hatchway and submerged the jetmarine again, bringing it about and heading at high speed in the direction indicated by Captain Warren.

"Think you can pick up the trail, skipper?" Bud asked, holding tight to the railing as Tom up-throttled.

"We know they’re making for Trinidad, if Hank was right," Tom replied. "The last sighting was consistent with that direction."

The minutes that followed were tense. The
Nemo
’s powerful sonar system, designed to guide the high-speed craft safely along the seabed, had a long range and an eagle eye. Tom knew that if nothing were picked up soon, it would mean the enemy had changed course after all.

But just as hope was fading, the automatic sonarscope alarm announced acquisition of a large bulk, resonant like metal, cruising along at a depth of twelve fathoms, miles ahead.

Bud cheered. "We got ’em now!"

Tom poured on the power, and very soon they could see the enemy sub up ahead. Tom immediately cut all internal and external lights.

"We’re invisible to their own sonar, aren’t we?" Bud asked. "Because of the Tomasite?"

"That’s right," Tom confirmed. "Any echo is weak and distorted, and won’t indicate size and shape. We’ll approach inside their wake—they’ll assume they’re getting some bounceback from the temperature differentials."

"So we’ll tag them all the way to Trinidad?"

"Nope," Tom responded with determination. "They may have an army there. As far as I’m concerned, their pleasure cruise has just about come to an end!"

TOM DREW THE jetmarine closer, until its nose-dome seemed dangerously near the quarry sub’s whirling propellers. Then he dropped a dozen feet and upped the hydraulic thrust. The
Nemo
lunged forward, moving parallel to the much larger craft that was now overhead. The jetmarine cautiously advanced along the length of the sub until they were under her prow. Tom then throttled back slightly and rose just enough that the top of the
Nemo
was only a few feet below the underhull of the sub.

"You know, Bud, since we’re in the neighborhood," Tom remarked, "the polite thing to do is to knock."

Tom twisted the knobs that controlled the gyros, altering the setting that determined the
Nemo
’s longitudinal orientation. Immediately the jetmarine nosed upward like a playful porpoise, banging the tip of its view-dome against the bottom of the sub—once, twice, three times!

"What do you suppose they’re thinking?" Tom asked as Bud whooped with glee.

"Probably wondering if they should open the door!" laughed Bud.

Now Tom advanced the position of the jetmarine a bit further and gently brought the
Nemo
into contact with the sub’s hull, making no sound. Then, using both the gyros and a swivel of the hydraulic jet thruster, Tom caused the
Nemo
’s nose to rise slowly, pushing upward against the adversary above. As the force was directed against the very tip of the submarine, the leverage was more than sufficient to lift the sub’s prow. Up and up went the prow of the enemy sub!