Tom Swift and the Cosmic Astronauts (14 page)

Tom put a firm hand on Whaley’s wrist and looked him in the eye. "Whatever you
do
know, tell us."

"Okay, okay," he gulped. "Snakeman’s got a way to put a coating on things that refracts any form of radiant energy. Refracts, get it?—like in a prism."

"Any
form of energy," Tom repeated. "But how is that possible? Sonar waves are totally different from radar waves, and the repelatron linear field has nothing in common with either one. The principle is completely different."

"You wanna hear this or not?" demanded Whaley. "My voice is goin’. I don’t know how the gimmick works, or where he got it. Probably stole it, like everything else he has. I just know he gets up close to whatever he wants to coat—in his sub, in the case of the ship—and shoots this stuff out in a big cloud. It’s supposed to sorta flow around whatever’s nearby and then settle on it, sticking like paint."

Except in the middle of a solar fare-up,
Tom commented silently. He said: "Of course his own vehicles are already coated with it."

"Sure. He intercepted the ship when it went below, had the hull coated before they knew what hit ’em. He’s got this cobwebby stuff, like mosquito netting, that he pulled over the whole topside. It’s got that same coating on the threads, and makes the whole thing look like ice—an iceberg. That’s what I hear tell, anyway. After that he headed way up north."

"And you think he’s decided to scuttle her?" demanded Ames fiercely.

"That’s what Lathron said, one time last week when he was pretty well sauced—man’s got a problem. The snakeman’s ripping out all the special machinery, the techno stuff he thinks he can use or sell. Then—down she goes! Don’t know when. Soon, I think." Olin Whaley paused, sighing at the effort of speaking. But then he added: "Listen, kid, if you try to take the ship, don’t count on that Tomasite stuff of yours to protect you. Snakeman’s supposed to have electronic detectors that can punch right through it. They’ll see you coming, far as the horizon."

His heart pounding, Tom asked Whaley if he knew where the
Sea Charger
was now positioned. In response the man gestured feebly for a sheet of paper and a pencil from his bedside table. He scrawled a few words and handed the sheet to Tom. "I don’t know if I spelled ’em exactly right."

Tom read the words aloud.
"Cape Ghuskavko, Ostrov Zhokhova island."

"It’s between those two places, in the Siberian Sea. Icebergs all around. Lathron says the ship’s on the surface. I know it’s a lot of ocean, but this is the best I can do."

Tom exchanged tense glances with Harlan Ames. "It narrows the search area, anyway. But it sounds like we may only have days left. If that! We’ve
got
to find her!"

TOM SWIFT made his plans, working like a rapid-fire machine, barely pausing to eat or to sleep. He drove Swift Enterprises as hard as he drove himself. Everyone knew the stakes.

Two days after the interview with Olin Whaley, the giant
Sky Queen
touched down on a broad beach within walking distance of Space Central on Loonaui. In the shipboard workshop, Bud said to Tom:

"I’m not going to be stupid and say,
Do you really think it’ll work, Tom?
But I
am
going to say,
What are the odds?"

Tom looked at his friend affectionately—but without a smile. "And
I’m
going to say: the odds are pretty good. Because if I don’t believe
that,
Bud, then I have to believe 141 people are going to die."

Bud put a warm hand on his friend’s shoulder. "Then you know something? The odds just turned in our favor."

Chow stood nearby next to Felix Ming, who had asked to accompany the flight. The big cowpoke picked up a small object from Tom’s metal workbench and examined it skeptically. "So this here’s the little thing that’s gonna send that snakeman right down the drain."

The object was rounded in profile, flat-sided, about the size of the ex-Texan’s thumb. A finlike triangle swept back from one end of it.

"A miracle of micro-electronics!" exulted Felix. "The spirits of my ancestors applaud you, Tom."

"Applaud Arv Hanson’s team, and the guys at Swift Construction who cranked out eighty-four of those little ‘miracles’," Tom responded. "Mini aqua-drones running on solar batteries."

"Robot fish," declared Bud. "There’s no way Li Ching will think anything about seeing a school of
fish
on his super-sensors."

Felix scratched his head. "But if I might ask, I’m not clear on one point. You now know, within several thousand square miles, where the
Sea Charger
is anchored. But it cannot be seen with the eye, because it maintains its illusory iceberg among a great many others. Nor does it appear on radar or sonar. Nor, apparently, does it produce a detectable wake or heat signature—certainly not when it is stopped in the water. How do you find it, then?"

"It’ll feel good to talk about it, Felix," Tom said quietly. "Look." The young inventor picked up a polished piece of aluminum from a shelf and held it near one of the bright halogen work-lamps. "See the reflection it makes on the wall? Watch it."

Tom moved the piece of metal slightly, and the spot of light streaked across the wall. "Doesn’t that remind you of something, Chow?"

"Brand my silver sparklers!" exclaimed the cook. "It moves jest like that ghost we saw on the sonar screen!"

"Or the one Felix and I detected aboard the cycloplane." Tom set down the aluminum and slouched onto a stool. "Apparently this anti-energy sheathing Li Ching uses works perfectly on radar and repelatron wave-forms, but not quite so well when it comes to sonar. The refraction effect produces a pinpoint sonar phantom some distance out from the surface. When the surface shifts even a little, the ‘ghost’ just slides off the screen."

"So how do you trap that ghost?" Bud asked.

"Both times before, we were using just a single receiver at a single position—one point of view. But
all
these drones contain sonar transceiving devices. We’ll spread them out miles apart across the area. When a phantom ping scoots by, the transceivers should pick it up sequentially, one after another. We’ll be able to put together information from dozens of viewpoints, and use computer analysis to home in on the source."

"Uh-
huh."
Chow looked unconvinced. "But boss—"

"Sorry, pard, but I want to get going. I’ll try to explain it as we go along—maybe it’ll relax me." Tom led his friends to the dock where the
Emeraldina
awaited, her hold well stocked with Tom’s electronic fish. Ted Spring and many of the staff of Space Central were on hand to wish Tom luck. The young scientist-inventor choked up as he shook their hands and modestly endured their cheers. They were a loyal team, as were all Swift Enterprises employees. He thought of them as friends.

For all its risks, I owe them this mission,
Tom thought. But he also thought of the mortal danger he was placing his best friend in.

As the seacopter could move faster beneath the waves than above them, Tom submerged and headed north at top speed. After a voyage of hours they had passed through the Bering Strait. The
Emeraldina
curved westward toward the frigid Siberian Sea.

Finally Tom called a halt. "This is far enough," he said. "I don’t want the instruments aboard the
Charger
to detect us."

"Time to turn the fish loose!" declared Bud excitedly.

The watertight hold was flooded and the outer door opened. At a coded sonar
bleep
from Tom’s control board, the eighty-four drones began to stream out into the sea at a rapid pace, which soon accelerated further. Their "tails" whirled like highspeed propeller-screws, the rotation countered by delicate but powerful gyros the size of shirt buttons. In minutes the robot armada was miles away from the seacopter; in an hour, hundreds of miles out, dispersed over a wide triangle of ocean.

Felix helped Tom watch the monitor, which showed the computer-processed output from the myriad of sonar transceivers. "Icebergs and whales!" groaned Felix in disgust.

"We haven’t yet covered even a fourth of the area," Tom pointed out. "Keep watching for that special refraction signature I showed you. It should stand out from the junk pretty clearly."

One tense hour later—success! "It’s the signal!" Bud cheered. "We found her!"

"How’s she lookin’?" Chow asked. "Kin you tell, boss?"

"Our little ghosts can’t tell us much—just the location," Tom replied, poring over a navigational chart. "But the
Charger
is definitely riding up on the surface. She’s not submerged."

Felix Ming commented quietly, "May she remain there."

"Ready for the low-down sneaky part?" Bud asked his pal with a big grin.

"Ready!"

With a brief sonar burst, Tom now remotely activated a stored program recorded within each drone’s marble-sized "brain." In his mind he could envision the drones homing in on the coordinates he had transmitted to them, drawing closer and closer to the stolen ship.

A light flashed once on the board, then again, then began to flicker vigorously. "They’re making contact with the hull," Tom explained. "Their suction ‘mouths’ will hold them in place."

"I heard o’ sucker-fish," Chow remarked with big eyes. "But why have ’em hang on like that, boss?"

The young inventor turned around in his seat. "Each drone contains a phono-wave analyzer, which I originally developed for those personal communicators we used to use. Think of it as a super-sensitive microphone. It can pick up and record extremely faint sound vibrations transmitted through the hull from inside. Without engineering-in special high-tech soundproofing, it’s hard to totally damp them out."

"Even through Li’s sheathing?" Bud inquired.

"I believe so, as long as direct contact is maintained. I’m guessing—hoping—the coating material only refracts radiant energy."

"So yuh’re eavesdroppin’, is that it?" was Chow’s question. "What fer?"

Tom held up a computer flash-memory chip. "I have digitized voiceprints of several of our crew aboard the ship, including Bob Jeffers and Nina Kimberley. And the French authorities had a snippet of Li’s voice from a planted bug. So when the fish transmit to us what they’ve recorded, the computer should be able to disentangle and enhance the vocal tones of those persons, at least—maybe more. We need to know how snakeman intends to sink the ship, Chow, and when. We can’t just send in a battle fleet to handle it, not with 141 hostages, and potential victims, aboard."

Felix now asked if Tom were concerned that Li Ching might detect the sonar-phonic transmissions from the aqua-drones. "Sure, Felix. But the drone signals are holographically divided up between the various units, and the direction of transmission is outward, away from the ship. Chances are good we can avoid detection."

Felix smiled. "I’m convinced! My venerable ancestors—"

"Felix," Bud interrupted, "there are no girls here."

"As I said, I’m desperate!"

The
Emeraldina
began to receive coded signals from Tom’s fish fleet almost immediately, and the onboard computer went to work. Relieved that his approach seemed to be working, Tom listened keenly to the computer output by means of a headset. "I can hear Bob!" he reported happily. "He must be all right—he’s talking about pancakes."

"Hmmph!" snorted Chow.

"I’m listening to one of the scientists now…" Tom was silent for a minute. "It sounds like they’re all locked in, probably in the crew cabins.
Wait!"
Another tense pause. "I’m picking up Li Ching’s voice tones! But he’s talking in Chinese."

Tom quickly handed the headset to Felix. "All right then. He is speaking to someone he calls Captain Yao. Li speaks as if Yao is his personal lieutenant, his second in command. Something about preparations. Yao replies—" The engineer looked up at the listeners in sudden alarm! "He says,
The bomb has been positioned in…
I believe he means the main driveshaft cowling. Yao says,
Comrade-General, do you still wish to detonate by signal, not by timer?
Li answers,
Do not question me as to my reasons! I myself will send the signal from the escape plane when we are airborne!
Now… I think I heard a door slam."

"We have little time," said Tom grimly. He moved to the controls. "I’m recalling my returnees."

Bud looked puzzled. "Returnees?"

"Some of the drones are equipped to scrape off samples of the anti-energy coating material. I need to analyze its composition if we’re going to use it to make
ourselves
undetectable."

"Right!" The dark-haired youth grinned. "Even Comrade-Generals have an Achilles Heel!"

After the designated sampler drones had returned to the seacopter, Tom surfaced and radioed the
Sky Queen,
which was already en route to the rendezvous point Tom had selected, an American naval base on a flat island off the coast of Alaska. Hank Sterling was piloting the ship, accompanied by Arv Hanson and a crew of technicians from the Swift Enterprises chemical and materials-fabrication departments.

As the
Emeraldina
streaked along beneath the sea, the young inventor studied the samples in a Swift Spectroscope, then with an instrument he called an MHD resolver, a kind of microscope. "This is amazing!" he muttered aloud. "The sheathing consists of tiny polymer globules doped with piezoelectric crystal filaments—that much I can figure out. But the way they’re linked up…"

Bud chuckled. "Mr. Science at work!"

"The material seems to function at a very fundamental physical level," Tom said in awed amazement. "It’s as if it produces nucleon-scale fluctuations in the spacetime field. But even if Li stole it from somewhere, how could anyone on Earth come up with something so advanced?"

"On Earth? Genius boy, you’re making an assumption!" Bud pointed out. "Space travel works in both directions, you know." Tom nodded.

Tom transmitted his data to the
Sky Queen
before arriving in the seacopter, and the technicians went to work formulating a coating to be applied to the Space Kite, awaiting its paint job in the hangar-hold like an old beat-up auto. The plan to rescue the
Sea Charger
crew, and perhaps the ship itself, required the use of Tom’s remarkable spacecraft.