Tom Swift and His Jetmarine (7 page)

"The
Vostok!"
Tom interjected.

"Yes, young Swift, our lost submarine. She did not know what it was, nor its value to the government of Russia, which would like to retrieve its radioactive cargoes—and to finally lay to rest its mystery. She thought she was seeing, on her sonar-photograms, part of a building buried beneath the sands. We became aware of these images when she attempted to form a consortium to descend to the ocean floor and explore the area more thoroughly. We knew very well what she had found."

"Where is this Madame Ozkhodskaya now?" inquired Tom. He could not keep a note of suspicion from his voice.

Dr. Nemastov responded with a smile. "I understand what prompts your question, young man. She was never approached at all by the government or its agents. Her proposals attracted no ‘takers,’ and I believe she now resides comfortably in Madrid, and is looking for the Ark of Noah!"

Now Admiral Krevitt took over the conversation. "Swift, Tom, the Russians have agreements with the U.S. involving the control and disposal of their nuclear materials. We want to help them get down to their lost sub and determine what would be involved in a salvage operation."

"And you’re asking us to run the job?" asked Mr. Swift.

"We ask you to become underwater ghost hunters, to lay the ghosts of past follies," Dr. Nemastov said.

Krevitt continued, "You have your fancy new deep-immersion submarine, and I understand you have some high-pressure diving gear as well—am I right?"

Tom replied for his father. "That’s right, Admiral."

"We’re asking you to make a survey of the area during your shakedown cruise. We can provide the general location, from the woman’s records." The Admiral held up a chart with a section outlined in color. "If you see something, get out and take a look around, that’s all. Naturally you’ll test for radiation leakage and so forth."

"Naturally," said Tom. He looked at his father. "Dad, there’s no reason why we ought
not
do it, none that I can think of."

"Very well," said Mr. Swift to Admiral Krevitt. "Transmit to us all the information and authorizations we’ll need."

After a round of small talk and goodbyes, the teleconference screens blanked out.

Tom turned to his father. "Dad, the area marked on Admiral Krevitt’s chart is right in the middle of Rita Scheering’s mystery area!"

"Which may mean—
may
mean—there’s a connection between the Sea Snipers and the lost submarine," Mr. Swift said thoughtfully. "That would explain their concern that by sheer happenstance someone might have used some sort of imaging device while passing over the
Vostok
. The thefts of valuables may just be a ruse! The true purpose is to recover the image records before the owner understands what they are."

"There
has
to be a connection," Tom urged

"Yes. And that indicates yet one further link—to Sidney Dansitt! All very puzzling."

With Chow providing a late dinner, bereft of anything too Texas-exotic, Tom worked into the evening in his lab, adjusting the itinerary of the voyage of the jetmarine in light of its new goals. He then moved on to his attempt to "crack" the seemingly blank image cartridge Dansitt had handed over.

An unexpected insight gave Tom a new approach to pursue, and suddenly he began to make real progress. Almost immediately he found signs that the cartridge, though superficially blank, was inscribed with traces of latent data.

The cartridge
was
used before, then erased over,
he thought excitedly.
Dansitt probably stuck it in with a bunch of blank cartridges, not remembering it wasn’t totally clean.

In minutes he had extracted what appeared to be several fragments of text, all severely degraded and incomplete.

"This is as tough as trying to break that space code!" he murmured to himself, thinking of the symbols on the missile from space.

Finally he had isolated one fairly lengthy, continuous chunk of text, which appeared on his monitor as:

FO S B CRA T CAPT E FROM RO C NVO TO EW JER HA F BY OU MEN RE DY AT RIGG ES CH LCOTE S RO SELL FU HER INS

A more powerful enhancement program was applied to the untranslated code segments within the chunk. The result made Tom’s jaw drop in anger and astonishment.

FOR SUB CRAFT CAPTURE FROM ROAD CONVOY TO NEW JERSEY WHARF BY OUR MEN READY AT TRIGGER YES CHILCOTE YES ROSELLO FURTHER INS

"They know all about our plans!" exclaimed Tom in alarm. The decision had been finalized only days before!
"And they aim to carjack the jetmarine before it even hits the water!"

Tom immediately emailed the results to Harlan Ames at his home, then phoned the security chief.

"Chilcote and Rossello sound like names," Ames commented. "Ring any bells?"

"No," Tom replied. "They could be place names, though, not people."

"That’s true," Ames agreed. "
Yes Rosello
could signify approval from a certain location, perhaps their headquarters. But the main thing now is to call off the overland sub transfer."

Tom thought for a moment, then shook his head. A sly grin broke out on his face. "Harlan, I’m not so sure!"

In the ensuing dark hours before dawn there was feverish activity at the Swift plant. The jetmarine was raised and carefully lowered by cranes onto a special wheeled cradle so that it could be moved more easily, and the crane assemblages themselves were taken apart and packed away, to be used later when the sub was placed in the water. At the same time, Tom was holding a council of war in his private office. The young inventor sat at his desk, with his father, Harlan Ames, his chief engineers, several trusted workmen, and Bud Barclay gathered around him.

"This has turned into a dangerous project," Tom began. "The Sea Snipers gang—which probably means Dansitt and his spies—intend to wreck our plans to launch the jetmarine. I have no doubt they know in general what we are doing."

"Do you really think there’s that much danger?" Bud asked skeptically.

"More than you think."

Ames nodded in silent agreement.

"They know we’re ready to move our atomic sub," Tom went on, "but there’s one little item they don’t know."

"What’s that?" Bud asked eagerly.

Tom smiled
. "How
we’re going to move it," he responded. "That’s where I hope to fool them."

Bud scratched his head and frowned. "We’re going to truck it to Stillman’s Wharf, aren’t we?"

"That’s what everybody thinks," Tom said. "including everybody here at the plant. And our enemies think so too."

"You mean you’re not going to ship it by truck?" Bud looked incredulous, then he added, "I suppose we’re going to put wings on it and fly it down to the coast!"

Arv Hanson smiled. "Barclay, you’re a budding genius."

Bud grinned. "Yeah, I know what you mean. All
sap."
Then he turned to Tom again. "Okay, just how are you planning to get the thing to Stillman’s?"

"It’s simple," Tom said. "I’m going to load her into the
Sky Queen."

The murmur that arose from the men indicated they did not believe that Tom’s solar-energized skycraft, huge as it was, would be able lift the additional load of submarine and the cranes which would lower it to dry dock.

"I know what you guys are thinking," he said, "but Dad and I, and Wesley Beale, worked it out."

As Tom rose and moved toward the door, the others followed him.

"I have a trick up my sleeve," the young inventor said. "I’m going to try it before we roll the sub into the hangar-hold of the
Queen
later this morning."

As the others listened, their eyes grew wide and grins spread over their faces. Tom explained that he had had a dummy framework hastily constructed. Covered with canvas, it would look very much like the jetmarine.

"I’m going to mount that on the trailer and send her out when the sun comes up," Tom said. "If the pirate gang is as watchful as I think they are, they’ll be lying in ambush for it somewhere along the route. Meanwhile, the Flying Lab will be on her way to the launch site with the real McCoy."

Tom led the way to the plant’s huge carpentry shop, where the dummy jetmarine lay ready for its journey, quickly put together by the overnight shift.

"There’s only one thing bothering me," Bud said. "This will be a dangerous run. Who’s going to drive the trailer?"

"Mr. Gautchah," Tom said. "You remember him."

"Sure.
Mr. Gautchah.
I don’t get it, genius boy," Bud remarked. He theatrically grabbed his head in his hands. "Come, nurse, put me a strait jacket and take me to the booby hatch!"

Tom grinned at his pal. "Welcome to the world of millennial wonders, Budworth! Now I’m catching some shut-eye—we roll in three hours."

At the appointed time, the sky a pale yellow, the reinforced main gate of Swift Enterprises slid open and a long flatbed trailer, its bulky load covered by a tarpaulin, pulled out and turned right, heading in the direction of the main highway. Back in Harlan Ames’ office, a small, tense crowd was gathered in front of the security chief’s oversize wall-mounted monitor screen.

Ames switched the view from the feed transmitted by an Enterprises security camera, which gave a distant view of the departing truck, to a scene showing the road itself from the viewpoint of the cab of the truck.

"Those new self-contained minicams work just fine," Ames commented.

"What will we do now?" Bud asked after a dozen minutes without event.

"Harlan has already phoned the police to follow the truck at a good distance," Tom said. "I've decided to wait and see what happens."

"I expect action fairly soon," Ames commented. "They’re not likely to try anything on Route 11, certainly not on Highway 71. So I’m guessing somewhere along Lakeview Road, probably at a spot where visibility is restricted by a curve or a hill."

"Plenty of those," Arv Hanson noted.

The words were hardly off his tongue when Tom received a signal on Ames’ radio link, which he had adjusted for general audibility.

"T for tomato, T for tomato," came the call.

"Okay," Tom answered. "What’s going on?"

"Something fishy," was the reply. "I’m ten miles out. A car has just pulled up ahead of the trailer and another in back of it. They’re closing in tight now. Yep, these are our guys—they’re trying to force the trailer to the side of the road!"

"We can see ’em on the screen," Tom said. "Guide her to the side of the road and park. Tell me what’s happening."

"Police are converging," whispered Harlan Ames to Tom, not wanting to interrupt the report from the truck.

The radio voice grew louder with excitement. "Tom, men have jumped out of each car. Drawing guns! They’re approaching the cab…"

Ames switched to the feed from a minicam within the cab. Grim-faced men approached the driver’s door, guns drawn, and yanked the door open. The leader began to bark out an order—and his face went slack with surprise.

Ames immediately switched to a different angle, showing the cab interior. The figure in the driver’s seat, hands still tight on the wheel, swiveled his head toward the open door and dropped open his gaping mouth.

"Gotcha!"
came a recorded voice, followed by idiotic laughter. The driver, "Mr. Gautchah," was a lifelike plastic dummy!

"I’m so glad I kept Mr. Gautchah after the Halloween party," chortled Arv Hanson.

His laughter found a subdued echo in the voice from the radio speaker. "Are they mad! They’re cussin’ you from here to the Pacific!"

Tom chuckled. "I’ll bet!"

"They seem confused as to how the truck was run. A couple of them are hurrying away from it as if they’d seen a ghost. They don’t guess I’m here inside the dummy jetmarine with my monitors and controls."

"Jeffers did a fine job," noted Mr. Swift to Tom, naming the hidden driver of the flatbed. "He put himself in quite a bit of danger."

"Here come the police," Jeffers said. "They’ve hemmed in the two cars—I guess it’s all over!"

"Great work, Bob," Tom said. "Get back here as quickly as you can with the trailer—and Mr. Gautchah. Harlan Ames will get the police report later." Then he turned to the others around him.

"It’s time for us to go," he said. "while the enemy is distracted. We’ve cleared the way. Everybody ready?"

After Tom spoke briefly to the state police and verified that the four would-be carjackers were in custody, the boys hurried to the underground hangar. Tom beamed his electronic key on the hidden lock, and the door swung open silently.

"Hop to it, men," Tom said, beckoning his ground crew.

Ten minutes later the gleaming
Sky Queen
rose on the huge elevator from her underground nesting place to ground level, Tom’s atomic sub stowed safely in the hangar in the aft section of the great aircraft.

"It’s easy when you know how," Bud said admiringly.

Tom and Bud mounted the central boarding ladder which extended down from the belly of the giant craft, well forward of its banks of jet lifters.

"Where’s Chow?" Tom remarked as he made his way to the flight deck.

"You don’t have to ask where I am," came a foghorn voice from inside the big ship. "Your ole chuck-wagon cook’s been waitin’ an hour."

When Tom was in the pilot’s seat, Bud next to him in the copilot’s position, he switched on the ship intercom and talked to crewmen in the rear of the Flying Lab, verifying that the jetmarine was secure in its special cradle.

The Enterprises control tower radioed that the
Sky Queen
was cleared for takeoff. Tom cast a glance at Jane Lenning at the flight engineer’s station behind Bud.

"Take ’er up, Chief!" she said jauntily.

Tom throttled-in the jet lifters, and the stratoship rose like a majestic fin-tailed elevator into the early morning sky. The adventure had begun!

You sure were right, Tom," Bud said. "This ship handles the jetmarine like she was a toy."

Tom smiled modestly but did not reply. He gestured toward the cockpit’s broad, downward-facing viewport. "Look down there, flyboy. What do you see?"