Tom Swift and His Deep Sea Hydrodome (14 page)

"It’s inflating," Tom declared. "The valve blew off, releasing the gas carrying the toxin."

"You’re a very brave young man," said Tom’s helper, whose name was Lt. Andre. "We didn’t have a second to spare." He jerked a thumb toward the bunker’s door. Only now was it open wide enough for the others to begin to scramble free.

Outside the chamber, Tom modestly acknowledged the thanks of the men, then said: "This proves that the
Mad Moby
boys know what we’ve been up to. If any more caches are found, whoever finds them had better beware of booby-traps!"

When Tom repeated the phrasing of the note in the chest, Bud commented, "Sounds to me like it was put together by someone who doesn’t know the language very well. My old English teacher wouldn’t let ‘you have not long to live’ get by her."

Tom nodded and said, "I’m pretty sure the ultimate plotters are working for a foreign power. Old subs may be getting cheaper on the black market, but the
Moby
is a mighty impressive piece of work. I think only a national government could afford to develop it."

Lt. Andre gave Tom a sharp look. "That’s logical, Tom. You may be right. In fact, I’m sure you are."

That night, as the Flying Lab approached Shopton under a cold canopy of stars, Bob Anchor mentioned that he had spoken with Arthur Clisby by phone prior to leaving Fearing Island. "He’s rarin’ to go, Tom. But are you willing to go ahead with the hydrodome project?"

"I sure am!" the young inventor declared fiercely. "Now more than ever! I won’t let these murderous maniacs deprive the whole world of this new source of helium."

Bud cheered softly and said, "That’s the ol’ Swift spirit, Tom. How long do you think it’ll be before you’re ready to start setting up shop down on the bottom?"

The
Sky Queen
banked smoothly under Tom’s steady hand, aiming toward the Enterprises airfield and the craft’s special landing platform. "The dome sections are nearing completion. The thing remaining is to test the big hydrodome repelatron in an ocean environment. You and I are scheduled to go down Wednesday, Bud—if it’s convenient, pal!"

The young pilot laughed. "I’ll pencil you in!"

The next day, after a night of deep and well-deserved sleep, Tom was waiting for his father to arrive in their shared office when their efficient secretary, Munford Trent, poked his head in the door apologetically. "Tom, Gib Brownell is waiting out here to speak to you. Do you have a moment to see him?"

"Sure," said Tom. "Show him in, Munford."

The secretary’s expression turned frosty. "I really
do
prefer—"

"Sorry.
Trent!"

Gibson Brownell was one of the older engineers who had come to Enterprises from the Swift Construction Company, and Tom knew him to be a talented one. He walked in with a nod, and Tom motioned him into a chair.

"I’d like to ask a favor, Tom," he said. "It’s a pretty big one and may be a good bit of trouble, but there’s a lot at stake—a two-hundred-million-dollar industrial plant, in fact."

"You’ve got me interested," said Tom. "Tell me about it."

"Do you recall reading about the sinking of a ship called the
Funston
some miles off the Jersey coast? You would have been just a kid back then."

"I do remember," was the reply. "It’s lucky that most of the passengers were saved."

"Well, my uncle was on board," Brownell continued, "but he died of injuries before they could get him to a hospital." Brownell went on to explain that his uncle’s dispatch box had been left in the safe, and had gone down with the ship. In it were a revised will, together with various letters and other papers relating to the industrial plant.

"My family didn’t anticipate it at the time, but some dicey issues have come up between the family and my uncle’s partner, who took over running the company. Unless that dispatch box is recovered," Brownell concluded, "the plant will pass into new hands. The ship has been located and is pretty much intact, but it’s lying too deep for regular salvage operations. But if you could go down in a Fat Man suit, Tom, the company would pay you a big fee."

Tom smiled thoughtfully, drumming his fingers on the desk. "Forget the fee, Gib. It happens I’m just about to test a new invention of mine with my friend Bud Barclay. I needed to test it in the open sea anyway; this will give me an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone."

"You’ll do it?" asked Brownell eagerly.

"Sure, be glad to. Have the company wire me all the details about the ship’s depth and location, and also how to open the safe."

"Tom, my family and I will never forget this!"

As Brownell was leaving, Tom’s father came in the door and took a seat behind his desk. Tom began to describe the engineer’s request—and the office door flew open again.

The Swifts looked up in surprise as a determined-looking Amelia Foger came sweeping into the office like an irresistible force, trailed by Munford Trent—apparently a very moveable object.

"I tried to tell her to wait!" exclaimed Trent. "But—but she—"

"That’s all right, Munford," muttered Damon Swift, waving him off. Trent hesitated, then withdrew with a disapproving glance.

Amelia Foger lowered herself into a chair. It was less a graceful lowering than an ominous plop.

"Amy," said Tom with forced calm, "this is my father. I don’t believe you two have—"

"So—finally I meet the boss of bosses," she said sharply. "And at the last possible minute, too."

"Excuse me?" reacted Mr. Swift.

Amy snapped open the purse she carried under her arm and yanked out an envelope, which she tossed down on Mr. Swift’s desk. "My walking papers," she stated, "from me to you. As of the end of this sentence, gentlemen—I resign!"

"MISS FOGER," said Damon Swift, "if something has happened, if you have any complaints—"

"Any, Mr. Swift? Try
many!"
she retorted. "Did you really think I wouldn’t notice your men spying on me with their x-ray cameras, tailing me to and from the plant, tapping my phone?" She turned her wrath in Tom’s direction. "And
you
—did you think I wouldn’t be able to guess what’s behind it?"

Tom began to flush, both with anger and with embarrassment. "Amy, please cool down. Give us a chance to explain what’s going on."

"I suppose that outing on the island was just to see if you could trip me up," she muttered. "Look, I didn’t grow up in one of your Tomasite containers. What do you suppose it was like, having your classmates—not just your classmates, your
teachers
—taunt you because of those old stories, where Great-Uncle Andrew gets trotted out as the villain whenever they couldn’t come up with something more original?"

"Those stories were popular fictionalizations of my grandfather’s experiences," declared Mr. Swift; "and some aspects were greatly exaggerated. But they were based on fact."

"Whose
‘fact’?" she demanded. "The Swift family’s? Which of you climbed into Andy Foger’s head to report on the state of his soul, hmm? He died in Mexico, dead broke, an alcoholic. Doesn’t that balance the ledger? Or is it your theory that it’s in the blood—
my
blood?"

"Amy, my family never treated Andy Foger unfairly—just the opposite," Tom said. "As for you, we tried not to be unfair. Nevertheless, after what happened with Rube Niffman, Dad and I had good reason to wonder about you. You
could
have started out by telling us frankly about your relation to Andy Foger, you know."

"True, Tom. I
didn’t
tell you, ‘frankly’ or otherwise. But then again, I didn’t deny it, either." Amy Foger seemed to be fighting to calm herself—a losing battle. "Every member of my family with the last name of Foger has been subject to distrust, suspicion. I’ve had to live with it all my life. Yes, it’s true—I knew Bud Barclay was visiting San Francisco, and I worked things so that we could meet. Why?
I wanted to work for you at Enterprises,
to show I could be trusted, to clear the family name."

Tom winced, taken aback and feeling ashamed. "I’m so sorry, Amy. Lives are at stake in this matter. We might have jumped to some conclusions in a prejudiced way—I see that. I wish you’d—"

"It’s too late for wishing," she interjected bitterly. "I’m out—I’m history. I’ve applied for a position over in Thessaly. Is that far enough away from Shopton for you two? Or should I try hitching a ride to Nestria?"

She rose to her feet. "You’ll be receiving a request for a letter of reference from my new employer. As an attorney, I’d strongly advise you to provide a fair and neutral report. And in this case ‘fair and neutral’ means
glowing!"
As she stalked out of the office, Amelia Foger dispensed a final word: "Because if you don’t, Swifts—
I’ll sue you!"

As the office door shushed shut, there was a silence between Tom and his father.

"Oh dear," said Damon Swift finally. "I’m not sure we lived up to our own principles, Tom."

"We’re not perfect," Tom responded.

"No," agreed his father. "But we
are
Swifts."

Putting the painful matter aside, Tom went to "the Barn," where he spent several hours working with Hank Sterling and his engineers, who were transforming the new repelatron circuitry of the portable model into the real thing—the powerful master repelatron that was to sit at the center of the hydrodome maintaining its airspace.

"The load on the radiator sphere is tremendous," Hank observed. "The back-pressure from all that water will be focused on a very small area, the surface of the sphere. And then there’s the problem of the sheer voltage she’ll require."

"Inside the hydrodome, we’ll be able to tap the veranium reactor for power," noted the young inventor.

"You won’t have an atomic pile tomorrow, for your test," one of the engineers pointed out.

"No," Tom agreed. "But then again, we won’t need a bubble with a two-hundred foot radius, either. We can test it out adequately on a smaller scale."

The test was set for the following evening, after sunset. Tom preferred to carry out operations in the dark of night, to avoid any mention of his repelatron getting into the newspapers. It might arouse the interest of enemy agents eager to steal the invention or sabotage the project!

The new repelatron, unbreakably clamped in the middle of a new bubblevator platform, was loaded aboard the
Sky Queen
. Tom, Bud, Hank, and a crew including Gib Brownell took off in the direction of New Jersey. Half an hour later the huge skyship was hovering on its jet lifters over the exact spot of the
Funston
wreck. The plane’s elevator-like hangar hatch opened and the square bubblevator, Tom and Bud behind the safety rails, was lowered on its guide cables. Far below the waves, at the bottom of the cables, a magnetic grappling unit anchored the system to the deck of the
Funston.

Just before the boys reached the surface of the waves, Tom switched on the powerful floodlights mounted on the four sides of the platform and opened the repelatron control to full power.

"Good night, genius boy!" Bud exclaimed in amazed admiration. "It’s repelling the water for at least eighty feet all the way around!"

Tom grinned, breathlessly excited and highly pleased. He slid the control bar forward slowly and they descended as the repelatron bubble drew nearer.

They moved downward smoothly and gently, and the sunken wreck emerged from the blue-green shadows below them. Fortunately, the
Funston
had settled upright in the mud, so its deck provided a level landing stage.

The bubblevator clanked to a stop on the deck. Tom immediately pressed a button that caused the platform to grip the magnetic anchoring device beneath it. "Otherwise we’d just head for the surface when I open her up again," explained Tom.

"Yeah," said Bud. "This time I’ll do without the bends or the deep-freeze, thank you!"

Tom took a deep breath. The moment had come! He fed power to the repelatron, which glowed with an eerie phosphorescence. The glassy walls of their bubble receded foot by foot as the airspace crept across the deck, shoving every drop of water ahead of it. In seconds they stood at the center of an arching round space big as an auditorium and dry as a bone—yet located at the bottom of the sea!

"According to the diagram, that’s the captain’s cabin over there," Tom noted. "Okay, chum, eyes on the controls. Here goes!"

Tom swung open the railing and stepped down onto the deck. By good fortune it was almost clear of sea muck and debris. The air around him, released from the bubblevator’s compensation tanks, was rapidly filling with the strange odors of drying sea life. He strode forward cautiously. It was an unearthly feeling to be walking on board a sunken hulk with fish gaping down at him on all sides, yet with no water even touching its hull or superstructure. The white glare of spotlights, reflected back from the bubble walls, lit up the weird scene.

Tom made his way into the captain’s cabin without incident and opened the safe, using the combination which the company had provided. It took several tries at the dial before the inner tumblers finally shook loose the lethargy of years and clicked into place.
I’d never be able to do this with the Fat Man’s gripper-claws,
Tom thought. He swung open the safe door, which took more than a little effort. Inside, along with a number of other valuables, was the dispatch box, plainly stenciled.

Tom carefully put the safe’s contents into a pouch looped to his belt and emerged back onto the ship’s deck.

A shift in the light caught Tom’s eye, and he gave a gasp of startled horror. The air bubble in which he stood was sagging, bulging inward, as if it were being pushed out of shape by the water. It looked as if the repelatron were working only on one side. The bubble was flattening out.

Soon there would be no air space! The invading water would crush Tom and Bud flat!

TOM raced toward the waiting bubblevator platform. Bud was wide-eyed with panic.

"What’s happening, skipper?" he cried. "Is the repelatron losing power?"