Tom Swift and His Spectromarine Selector (4 page)

The trail ended in a clearing next to a ravine that was almost invisible behind a wall of overhanging trees. Tracks, gouges, and oil droplets gave testimony that a vehicle had been parked there recently. "Oh, no!" A tense cry escaped Bud’s lips as he pointed off beyond the clearing. Broken branches showed that something or someone had made its way through tangled underbrush edging the ravine!

Had it walked—or had it been dragged?

Sick with fear, the searchers scrambled down the sloping bank, Bud and Mr. Swift in the lead. "Maybe Tom was dazed by the accident," Bud suggested hopefully. "Perhaps he’s wandering around somewhere close by!"

Mr. Swift was in no mood for false hope. "There was no sign of an accident, Bud."

"Tom! Tom Swift!"
The repeated calls rang through the darkness.

Suddenly a yell from Bud electrified his companions. Within moments all of them had rushed to his side. Ames arrived last and gave a startled gasp.

Tom lay unconscious on the ground, caked and drying blood on the back of his head and neck. His father knelt beside him. The glow of their flashlights revealed a square white object, like a card, pinned to his t-shirt.

Mr. Swift scarcely trusted himself to speak. He gestured that someone should look at the note.

"No words," grated Ames. "Just some kind of figures or symbols."

"Figure it out later!" Bud commanded. "We’ve got to get Tom to a hospital!"

Mr. Swift had slipped one arm under Tom’s shoulders. "He’s had a blow to the head, obviously," he muttered after a quick examination. "No sign of anything else. He’s breathing—strong pulse."

Suddenly Tom sucked in his breath. "He’s coming around," said Slim Davis.

The young inventor’s blue eyes fluttered open. He blinked at the faces bending over him.

"Tom! Do you recognize us?" Bud asked, his voice quavering.

"Sure I do," Tom breathed. "You’re Sandy—right?"

Bud snorted in joy and relief. "He’s fine!"

Presently Tom recovered enough to tell what had happened. "Did you get any glimpse of the person who hit you?" Ames inquired.

Tom shook his head painfully. "No. But it must have been the driver of that Tioga. I’m sure the woman was his crony—a real actress."

"Did you notice the license plate?" asked Arv Hanson.

"I’m afraid not."

When Ames showed him the strange note, Tom looked it over and frowned thoughtfully. "These two symbols look like Chinese writing. It must be some kind of warning or threat."

"Whatever the point of it was, they didn’t intend to kill you, it seems, thank God," said Tom’s father.

"Hey!"
shouted Hank Sterling, who had strode a few paces away. "There’s something further on down the slope!"

Ames trotted over. His sharp eyes followed Hank’s pointing finger.

"It’s a body," he pronounced grimly.

STARTLED by Harlan Ames’s words, Tom tried to rise to his feet. His father gently held him back. "No, son, stay put."

Ames worked his way down the side of the ravine about fifteen feet further. "Male caucasian, early middle age, balding." He spoke loudly enough for the others to hear. "Unarmed. No wallet. And very dead." He stood and climbed back to the others, rejoining Tom and Mr. Swift. "He was shot, then picked up and tossed down the embankment."

"Oh man," said Bud. "Must’ve been an innocent bystander who saw too much."

But Ames shook his head. "Not the way I read it. Near the body is a short length of copper pipe—probably what he used on the back of that concrete skull of yours, Tom. There was a little grease on the pipe, and the guy had the same stuff on his right palm."

"It could be a ruse," Tom said, "but it sure looks like the victim was the man who attacked me."

"Then what the heck’s going on?" exclaimed Slim. "Two teams fighting each other to take out Tom Swift?"

"Forget all that right now," demanded Tom’s father impatiently. "I’m driving Tom to Shopton Memorial."

"I’ll switch seats with you, Bud," offered Hank Sterling. "Go along with Tom. We’ll all wait for you back at the house."

Hank and Slim half-carried the young inventor back to his father’s car. Mr. Swift rushed Tom to Shopton’s main hospital. Slim Davis volunteered to drive Tom’s car back to the Swift residence.

Almost before Mrs. Swift and Sandy had had time to absorb the distressing series of events, Tom was back home, head bandaged but in good spirits. The doctors had pronounced him free of concussion, but prescribed, sternly, two full days of bedrest,

It was a daunting prescription for Tom Swift. By morning he felt fine and was bursting with energy. He greeted his mother and sister with a smile as he sat down to a late breakfast. Mr. Swift had already left.

"Please stay at home today," Mrs. Swift urged anxiously.

"Can’t, Mom! Honestly!" Tom grinned and hugged her. "But I promise I’ll—"

"Darling, when I said ‘please’ I was just being polite," said Mrs. Swift sweetly. "I’m prepared to use strong-arm tactics if necessary."

Tom gave her a sheepish look. "Gee, I think I’ll head back to bed. I’m feeling just a little—faint."

"I have
such
smart children."

As the restless invalid lay in bed reading, his nightstand telephone rang. Harlan Ames was calling. After asking Tom how he felt, Ames said, "I thought you might like to hear the report I just gave your Dad. The police and the coroner have confirmed what I said about the man’s death. They’ve run fingerprints and dentals; it seems our late friend was one Gilly Murchison, a gangster, somewhat low in the food chain."

"That’s the man suspected of playing pilot for Judson."

"Yes. I’m sure Joe will be broken up, losing a pal like that. We haven’t had any luck tracing the woman or the Tioga. And guess what?—the bullets used on Gilly were expertly plucked out of his body, so there are no leads in that direction."

"What about the note, Harlan?"

"Nothing unusual about the paper. Just a blank for a business card print run. No fingerprints, of course. But we do have a lead, or at least something interesting to consider."

"The writing?"

"Right. That was a good hunch of yours, about its being Chinese. We took it over to Arv’s assistant, Linda Ming. It’s a little weird and a lot melodramatic, Tom."

Tom laughed. "Always is!" He listened with keen interest as the security chief continued.

"One symbol was easy. It means
Death.
The other was unusual. Linda thinks it’s the ideogram for a man’s name, Li Ching. But it’s been stylized in a funny way—looks a bit like a snake."

"It must be his trademark, so to speak," Tom mused. "Does that name mean anything to the authorities?"

"He’s not a wanted criminal, not in the US anyway," replied Ames. "But they’re looking into the possibility of a foreign connection. I’ll let you know if anything pops up." He added that Joe Judson, now in Federal custody, had been interrogated. "But it was a waste of effort," Ames concluded. "Judson still won’t talk."

Tom mulled this over. "Hmm. Maybe if Longneck Ebber is found, it’ll solve the mystery."

"I hope so," Ames said glumly. "But the FBI has no lead on him yet. He seems to have dropped out of sight."

Shortly after Ames’s call, Doc Simpson, the young Enterprises physician, arrived at the house to perform his own examination of Tom. He firmly ordered Tom to remain in bed. "No use pleading, boss," the medic said. "That was a nasty blow you got, concussion or no. If you overdo things, it could have some aftereffects. Now you stay in bed and take it easy—at least for today."

Tom fumed but complied, secretly thinking:
Well, at least I’ve shaved one day off my captivity!
Sandy did her best to keep her brother amused throughout the day. But it was hard for someone as keen and active as Tom to stay cooped up like an invalid when he felt well and sunshine was pouring through the upstairs windows. Besides, there was so much to be done on the undersea project!

Fortunately Bud stopped by during the afternoon, bringing Bashalli Prandit in his red convertible. Bashalli was Tom’s favorite date—in fact, his only regular companion among the eager young ladies of Shopton.

"What a break!" he exclaimed with a grin. Bash’s dark eyes twinkled as she produced a gift she and Bud had brought. "I think the major break was to your skull. But here, Thomas—get well soon!"

She held out a tempting basket of glazed fruits and other delicacies.

"Wow! This is worth having to stay in bed for!" Tom chuckled with delight at the girl’s thoughtfulness. "Thanks a million, you two!"

"We’ll help you eat it," Sandy volunteered. Tom tore off the cellophane and passed the basket around. As they nibbled the fruits, Bashalli asked how Tom had been passing the time. "Other than recuperating in bed—which you
do
seem to do quite a lot, I must point out."

"He beat me so often at chess that he got bored," Sandy replied. She giggled. "Then he started working out theorems in rubber-sheet geometry."

"Good night, what’s that?" Bud asked.

"Don’t ask me!" Sandy retorted mischievously. "He says it deals with such problems as whether the hole is inside or outside of a doughnut."

Tom laughed at Bud’s popeyed stare. "The real name for it is topology, a form of mathematical analysis having to do with shape. It’s a little tough to explain."

"Okay! Don’t bother," said Bud hastily with a wink in Sandy’s direction. "I suppose it has something to do with your cannon."

Bash’s eyebrows arched prettily beneath her raven-black hair. "Tom has invented a cannon?"

"Oh, that’s just what Bud calls it, Bashi," explained Sandy with a teasing roll of the eyes. "Look, there’s the working model right over there."

Bashalli curiously examined the intricate miniature resting upon Tom’s desk. "I see. It does look a bit like a cannon, doesn’t it."

"It’s called a spectromarine selector," Tom said with a smile, half-apologetic over the somewhat tongue-twisty name.

The device sat upon a rectangular platform with small tractor-tread units attached beneath. "The full-sized version will be twenty feet long and eight feet across," the young inventor explained, "and the tread units will be able to be extended downward on pistons to accommodate uneven terrain, just like the ones on the seacopters."

Bashalli pointed to the silver, cannonlike unit swivel-mounted on a pedestal and pointing forward. "And this fearsome cannon—what is it for, protection against whales?"

Tom broke out laughing, then winced, touching the bandages around his head. "I’ll tell you all about it, ladies—Bud’s already had his usual briefing. First of all, the purpose of the spectrosel is to help marine archaeologists, which is a specialized profession nowadays, explore subocean ruins by safely and selectively cleaning off the thick coatings of gunk that accumulate over the centuries. Most of it consists of organic remains: dead seaweed, layers of plankton, coral—that sort of thing."

"Maybe a few leftover tentacles from a dead octopus," Bud put in.

"And pirate bones," Sandy added.

"All right, then," said Bashalli. "And so, how does this de-organic-izer of yours actually work?"

"Look, I’ll show you the main components." Bash handed Tom the model. "These little units mounted above and below the mouth of the ‘cannon’ are synchro-phased masers—microwave lasers. They produce two focused beams. You can stand in front of them and barely feel a thing, but at the point where they combine, right on the surface of the material to be removed, a real hotspot is created."

"Since you’re talking about waterlogged stuff, that must cause steam," Sandy remarked.

"Yep. In fact it causes a tiny
explosion
of steam at the point of focus, strong enough to peel off the outermost layer and literally blast it away into the air. As the beams scan back and forth, the entire underlying surface will eventually be exposed."

Bashalli shrugged. "Very nice, but you will have quite a pile of debris to sweep up, even if it
has
been steam-cleaned."

"Not at all, Bash," responded the youthful scientist-inventor. "That’s where this cannon part comes in." He indicated the round opening at the front. "These panels just inside the mouth generate spectron-field pulses, basically the same sort of technology we use in the repelatrons. But they don’t cause a repulsion effect; the spectron waves bounce off the surface the machine is aimed at, like a radar beam. The returning waves give a little nudge to the dislodged particles and carry them right into the intake cylinder, where the particles—it winds up as a powder—get compressed into a storage reservoir here at the rear of the platform."

"And it won’t accidentally strip off all that gold?" inquired the young Pakistani.

"Let’s hope not! Like the repelatrons, the impeller-waves can be tuned to affect certain materials and ignore others. That’s the ‘selector’ part."

As Bashalli nodded pertly to indicate that she understood, Sandy pointed out another part of the device which Tom had not yet mentioned. Suspended from a long overhead boom, it was shaped like a funnel and hung a few feet above the front end of the cannon. A jointed hose spiraled back from the narrow neck of the unit, branching out to connect to a number of cylindrical metal tanks. "And what’s this for, Tomonomo?"

"I call that part the moleculetron," Tom answered.

Bud interrupted with, "I haven’t come up with a nickname yet, but I’m workin’ on it."

"What it does," Tom persisted, "is separate and process the gaseous products arising from the treatment. The spectronic beams can be made to reflect back at slightly different angles. It’s like the way a prism separates rays of light into different colors. The heavier particulates go into the cannon, but the lighter free molecules—gases—are conveyed into the moleculetron, which selects-out the various elements and basic compounds for more efficient storage. For safety, we don’t want to leave anything floating in the air."

"Don’t you mean, in the water?" Bud pointed out.

"Nope. We’ll be using the spectrosel inside the hydrodome airspace created by the repelatron."

Bashalli noted the delicately crafted miniature control panel next to the rear of the cannon-cylinder. Studded with tiny levers and dials, it appeared extremely realistic. "It ought to be," commented Tom with pride. "This is as accurate a scale model as Arv and Linda can make, and it’s fully functional."