Tom Swift in the Caves of Nuclear Fire (2 page)

"Trent couldn’t locate me, and Craig offered to call back in fifteen minutes, which is about now," said Tom. The boys continued to put away the experimental apparatus, and locked down the tube from space in a secure cubicle.

The phone rang again. A deep, pleasant voice said, "Hello, Tom? Surprised to hear from me?"

"Surprised?"
Tom shouted. "Craig, I can hardly—"

"Yeah, yeah, that’s the usual reaction. Listen, Sci-Fi, I’m calling from your home. Just got here. I want to talk to you and your father."

"Craig! It’s really you!" Tom exclaimed. "Bud and I will be there in less than half an hour. This is wonderful news." Hanging up, he turned to Bud. "It’s Craig, all right. He always called me ‘Sci-Fi’."

Bud gave a shout of laughter. "This is turning into one of those ‘what a day’ days!"

The sun was setting as the two friends set off for the Swift home in Bud’s convertible. A few minutes later they parked the car in the garage and strode across the lawn and through the magnetic alarm field which surrounded the house. Special coils built into their wristwatches allowed Tom and Bud to pass through without setting off the alarm system.

Inside the large, comfortable home, the boys were met by Tom’s father. The tall, distinguished-looking man, with twinkling blue eyes, was an older edition of the young inventor. Mr. Swift led the way into the library where Craig Benson was waiting. Craig, a tall, husky man of twenty-four, had light-brown hair and blue eyes which were accented by his deep tan.

"I’m really here in the flesh," he said, grinning, as Tom and Bud greeted him with warm enthusiasm. Then he added soberly, "I came to see you as soon as I got to this country because I have a story that I think will astound you. I thought it best not to make contact by telephone from Africa, because… " Here he paused. "Well, let me tell it right. I found something in the jungle I can’t understand, something you’ll certainly want to investigate."

Before Tom could reply, his mother entered the library and announced that dinner was ready. She was a slim, attractive woman with sparkling eyes and a charming smile. "I’m sorry to interrupt you," she added, "but would you mind continuing your discussion at dinner?—Oh, Craig, it’s so good to have you back with us!"

She led them to the dining room where Tom’s pretty seventeen-year-old sister, Sandy, who was a great favorite of Bud’s, was waiting. Like everyone else, she was overjoyed at the flier’s reappearance.

As soon as everyone had been seated and grace had been said, Damon Swift asked eagerly, "Now let’s hear your story, Craig!"

The pilot smiled. "Well, it concerns the greatest and strangest disappearing act in the history of the world!" Then he added with a broad grin, "And I
don’t
mean
me!"

"Did your plane crash, as everybody thought?" asked Sandy.

"Yes and no, Lo-Fi," he answered. "As you know, I was on assignment for the UN’s Special Commission on the Repatriation of Refugees. What you didn’t know—I agreed to keep it confidential—was that I had been asked to take an unusual course to scope out any signs of guerrilla encampments in Borukundi."

"Borukundi!" gasped Mrs. Swift.

"You mean where that awful general is in charge?" Sandy inquired. "It’s in the news all the time."

"Yes, and it has been for years now," said Benson.

Bud asked, "What awful general are we talking about? I get my news from TV."

"He calls himself Supreme Commander Osa Kotto Boondah," Craig explained. "He’s pretty much a typical tin-pot tyrant, out to settle old tribal scores and make a name for himself—and money for his cronies."

"Same old story," said Tom.

"Yes. He gets away with it because Borukundi isn’t exactly a country—it’s a region of about 3000 square miles tucked away where three countries come together. Naturally, they all claim it, and now and then they fight over it. So General Boondah is left to fill the vacuum, so to speak."

Sandy grimaced. "I read that he
eats
his enemies!"

"He’s bad enough in reality without those rumors, which are spread by the very guys he’s supposed to have eaten," Craig observed with a smile. "Anyway, Borukundi is mostly dense tropical jungle and marshland, with a few scattered mountains. I was flying low when something—probably a missile from a shoulder-mount launcher—tore right through my plane. Took out my radio, too. I was too low to eject, so I managed a ‘treetop landing’ as best I could, which wasn’t much."

"Your plane was never found," Mr. Swift put in.

"I’m not surprised," said Craig. "Not much of it reached the ground in one piece, and I was quite a ways from my registered flightplan. But somehow I survived."

"How’d you manage that?" Bud asked. "Tom and I get into wrecks all the time, and I could use some pointers."

Benson laughed. "Get yourself rescued by some friendly natives. The local Maba tribe cared for me in one of their villages. But they were pretty much under siege by Boondah’s boys—no phone lines, no roads or airstrips, and a jungle full of guerilla mercenaries to keep the world from paying a visit. They had been forced to return to the impoverished lifestyle of their ancestors. Still, they had some medical supplies and nursed me very effectively.

"When I recovered," Craig went on, "the Mabas wouldn’t let me leave."

"I understand," interrupted Sandy with enthusiasm. "Since you were still alive after falling from the sky, they considered you to be some sort of minor god!"

The Swifts and their guests smiled and Tom said, "Somehow I can’t see
anybody
worshipping old Craig here."

"It wasn’t like that, Sandy," Craig corrected her. "The Maba are poor, not primitive. The village used to have electricity a few wars ago. What they really had on their minds was the possibility that I might be a spy working for the General, who is of a rival tribe. So at first they kept a strict eye on me. But they tried to be good hosts and told me many tribal secrets. One concerned a nearby mountain that was taboo."

The pilot described a religious ceremony he had been allowed to attend one night near a small, craggy mountain several miles from the village. Noticing that all the natives were bowing toward it in awe, Craig had looked up just in time to see a strange sight. "Some sort of gas was issuing from a crevice in the slope," he said.
"It glowed—literally glowed—with a weird greenish light!"

Tom was leaning forward, intrigued by the story. Everyone had stopped eating.

"It’s hard to describe what it looked like, or the way it made the whole mountainside shimmer with phosphorescence. The natives could tell me nothing about the gas," said Craig, "except that it was the sign of the ancestral spirits who lived under the mountain. I had been in the village for a year and had recovered from my injuries, so I decided to try finding out what the phenomenon was. They had gradually stopped watching me so closely, so one night I managed to slip away and explore the mountain."

"Did you find out what the gas was?" Tom asked.

"No. That’s the job I thought you’d take over. But it will be the most difficult thing you’ve ever attempted."

"Why?"

Craig said he had salvaged an oxygen container from his wrecked plane to capture some of the gas for analysis. "And since it was a long hike, I took my water flask and an earthen jar containing some food."

Craig told how he had waited hours for the gas to erupt, then had left all the containers at the crevice and gone off to a sheltered spot to sleep.

"In the morning I returned, but there was no sign of the containers, and no footprints near them but my own," the pilot said. "I figured that they must have been disintegrated by the gas."

"African black magic!" Sandy said excitedly.

Craig chuckled. "Seemed that way, Lo-Fi, I’ll admit. To make sure, I got other containers and tried the experiment again. This time I watched until the glowing gas did appear. Sure enough, the containers vanished—in an intense burst of white light. They just sort of melted away, from the outside in!"

"Sounds fantastic," commented Mr. Swift.

Tom and Bud exchanged glances. Both were thinking of their experience in the laboratory. The objects there had begun to change shape. Would they have disappeared completely if the experiment had continued? And, Tom wondered, was an incredible phenomenon taking place under the mountain in Africa which produced a substance like the isotope-gas inside the tube he had received from another planet?

At this point in the story, the whole group adjourned to the library where Craig recounted the story of his forced leave-taking from the native village—because he had ignored the taboo—and the long, terrible ordeal of his trek back to civilization. Many months passed before he had been able to return to America.

"An amazing story," Mr. Swift remarked, and Bud asked, "What does the mountain look like?"

"I have some pictures of it," Craig replied, explaining that he had managed to save his camera from the plane wreck.

Eagerly the others glanced through the pictures he produced. Tom and his father noticed that the area around the mountain was totally without plant life and that all the closer shots were badly fogged. The two exchanged meaningful and worried glances.

"The gas you describe must be caused by some type of nuclear reaction," Damon Swift said slowly. "Everything points to that—the vanishing containers, lack of plant life, and the fogged pictures."

"Yes," said Tom. His face grim, he turned to Craig and asked, "How long did you stay in the area of the glowing gas?"

The pilot seemed startled by the question. He frowned for a moment, then answered, "I must have been around there for a total of ten hours. Why?"

"We don’t want to alarm you," Mr. Swift said, putting a hand on Craig’s shoulder, "but Tom and I have reason to think that you may have been exposed to some powerful radiation from that gas."

He suggested that the young man go with Tom to the laboratory and submit to a test with the radiation detector. Craig readily agreed.

While he and Tom rushed to Enterprises, Mr. Swift phoned the home of the newly hired company physician, Dr. Simpson, and asked him to meet the two there. The youthful doctor arrived just as Tom finished attaching the wires of the detector to Craig’s arms.

Tom introduced the two men, then adjusted a control dial. The indicator flickered to life and the three stared at the pointer as it climbed to over 200 milliroentgens.

"You seem to have absorbed more than a moderate amount of radiation," Dr. Simpson declared.

Craig paled and turned questioning eyes to the physician. "A fatal amount?" he asked.

"Not that, Craig," the doctor said, smiling. "It’s not as serious as I may have made it sound. A few days’ rest, together with some medicinal treatments, should put you back in healthy shape."

"Whew!"
Craig swallowed hard. "You had me scared for a minute!"

After Dr. Simpson had administered a treatment of chlorides to Craig in the company’s infirmary, he instructed Tom to see that his friend had plenty of rest and fresh air for at least a week.

Tom telephoned his mother to inquire if Craig might use the guest room at their home. "Of course," she said warmly, "and how wonderful that he’s going to be all right!"

When Tom and Craig returned to the Swift home, the young pilot announced that there was more to his story.

"I must admit that I’m intrigued by it," said Mr. Swift, as Tom and Craig sank deep into comfortable chairs.

"You were going to explain why you felt you couldn’t contact anyone by phone," Bud reminded Craig.

"Ever since I reached civilization in Africa, I’ve had a feeling that I’m being followed," the pilot began. "I lived in Bangui for a few months, mostly in a hospital recovering from an infection I’d picked up in my trek through the jungle; then I moved on to Libreville on the coast. There was nothing very significant I can put my finger on, but a few unexplained incidents."

"Like what?" Tom prompted.

"In the hospital I was told that a man had inquired repeatedly as to when I would be released. From his description, I think he might have been another patient who shared a room with me for a few days when I first arrived, an English-speaking Nigerian named Leopold Mkeesa, who said he was a registered dealer in small arms."

"Perhaps he was just showing a friendly interest, since he had become acquainted with you," Tom’s mother commented.

"Oh, Mother,
no one
shows a ‘friendly interest’ over and over like that," Sandy put in excitedly. "The man was probably a smuggler!"

"Were there other incidents?" asked Tom.

"Well, just as I was about to board the jetliner to return to the States, I was detained by the local police. Something about an anonymous phone call warning them that I was carrying ‘war diamonds’ out of the country. Luckily I managed to prove my innocence before departure time.

"Then on my flight two men seemed to go out of their way to make friends with me. They introduced themselves as Karl Taylor and Eric Cameron. They kept pumping me about my business in Africa—subtly, of course, but they were persistent enough to make me uneasy. Then, during the sleep period, I woke up to find Taylor tampering with the latch on my suitcase in the overhead bin!"

"What happened?" Tom asked.

"Naturally I asked Taylor what he wanted," Craig replied. "Tom, he’s a smooth operator! He gave me such a convincing line about mistaking my suitcase for his in the dimmed light that I dropped the subject."

"Did you see much of the men after that?" Tom queried.

"No. They kept to their seats. Then, after we landed, I didn’t see them again until yesterday when I arrived at Shopton. I’m positive I spotted Cameron in the bus station, but he vanished before I could hail him."

Tom picked up a Shopton directory. Neither man was listed. "Of course, Cameron’s being here may not mean a thing, but just the same we’d better be on guard. I’ll alert our security chief, Harlan Ames. He’ll want you to describe these men.

"Taylor is about five feet nine, black hair—" The pilot reached for a pencil and paper. "Maybe I can sketch a picture of him."