Tom Swift and His Jetmarine (16 page)

Tom switched on the jetmarine’s underwater lamp, and the two submariners gazed down through the view-dome. They could just make out the slope that marked the extremity of the continental shelf falling away far below into the dim blue shadow of the deep ocean.

"Wish we could see it a little better," commented Bud.

"We can," replied Tom. He threw another switch on the instrument panel and made a small adjustment. Immediately a vast new scene was spread out in all directions beneath the
Nemo!
The predominant colors were no longer translucent blues and greens, but the normal hues of daylight on the surface.

Bud was struck with awe akin to fear. "This is—incredible! It’s like we’re flying over another planet in a rocket!"

Tom was silent for a moment, taking in this vista which no human being had ever seen. The jetmarine was now gliding, or soaring, far above the floor of the true ocean, relatively smooth in itself yet forested by colorful deepwater vegetation and inhabited by layer upon layer of darting sea creatures.

"The Hatteras Plain," commented Tom after a moment, "well north of where we were before."

"That new lamp is more powerful than the Swift Searchlight," Bud observed. "Must be quite a dazzling sight to the fish."

Tom shook his head. "No, it’s just a sort of hazy circle, if they see anything at all. On this setting we’re using a special combination of pulsed frequencies that penetrate water easily but are invisible to the naked eye."

"But
we
see it."

"No, pal, we don’t," replied the young inventor. "The dome has been lined with a thin film that ‘re-mixes’ the reflected rays from the illuminator, which I call an aqualamp. The result is light in our ordinary optical range—but it’s only inside the jetmarine."

Bud indicated that he understood. "I guess it was either that, or distribute eyeshades to the fish."

The
Nemo
had been accelerating for some time now, once again under the direction of its automatic program. Now Tom called Bud’s attention to the speed indicator. "We’re almost there," he said. "Just another couple percent." Tom’s voice was confident, but Bud knew that the upcoming milestone was fraught with danger.

What would happen when the jetmarine thrust itself past Mach 1—an astonishing 760 miles per hour?

Bud recalled from aviation history that the early jet pioneers had been unprepared for some of the strange phenomena that awaited at the borders of the transonic.

Tom ticked off the increasing speeds, an edge to his voice, as Bud waited silently.

"Here goes!" Tom cried. "And—
we’re there!"

"Over the sound barrier under the sea!" Bud cheered, relieved to feel no change in the jetmarine’s operation.

After some joking banter, Tom said, "Actually, down here 760 is more a symbolic barrier than a real one."

"How come?"

"Well," Tom responded, "don’t forget, we’re breaking Mach 1 as it is in
air.
In water sound travels quite a bit faster, and the Mach numbers are higher."

"How much faster?"

"Almost
five times,
pal!"

Bud gulped. "Let’s be glad old Mr. Dansitt was willing to settle for a
symbolic
victory!"

The
Nemo
was still accelerating, for Tom was determined to probe the limits of the Gervaise engine. He carefully monitored the emissions profile of his atomolecular decoupler and the drain on the Veranium atomic pile. At one point he deliberately downpowered the hydraulivane by a fraction of a percent. The sub reacted as if Tom had slammed on the brakes, almost throwing her passengers off their feet.

"I won’t try
that
again!" said Tom wryly.

The jetmarine’s appointed destination was a small modern dock near the coastal town of Sagres, Portugal, which the McIntosh and Dansitt company had rented for the demonstration. Although many factors were unknown, Tom had estimated that the Atlantic crossing would take a shade less than six hours total. But only the clock and the computer bothered to keep track of the time, Tom and Bud being fascinated by the varied subscape rolling along many fathoms beneath. Leaving the Hatteras Plain behind them they traversed the southern slopes of Bermuda and surmounted the Bermuda Rise; then onward to the Sohm Plain. At one point Bud asked Tom, "What’s that way off there?" He indicated a dark silhouette far to the north, at the very edge of visibility.

Tom consulted his charts. "It’s a formation called the Corner Seamounts," he said. "Which means we’re making great time!"

Near the halfway point of the voyage the aquatic terrain below became increasingly craggy and mountainous. The seabed had an odd, puckered appearance and was covered with long, miles-wide grooves, parallel valleys scratched in the floor of the Atlantic, running east to west.

"More of those river valleys?" Bud inquired.

"Not this time," Tom responded. "Those are the skidmarks left on the ocean floor by the North American continent as it peeled out from its date with Europe a few hundred million years ago. It’s called
continental drift
—the Americas to the west, Europe and Africa to the east."

Twenty minutes later Tom called Bud’s attention to a mammoth system of connected peaks, resembling the folds in a blanket, which the
Nemo
was beginning to cross. The long folds, and the slotlike valleys which separated them, ran on out of sight to the north and south. "The Mid-Atlantic Ridge!" Tom announced with awe. "No one has ever seen it the way we’re seeing it."

They were in the second half of the voyage, over the jumbled Azores Fracture Zone, when Bud had a notion to amuse himself by composing a sea chantey.

"Feel free to step outside if you don’t care to listen," he joked.

Across the sea transonic go

To meet the Mer-King’s daughter!

You’ll ne’er meet maiden fair, but Oh!

You’ll meet a ton of water!

"The
‘sea transonic’
?" teased Tom.

"Sure, skipper!" Bud exclaimed. "We conquered it—we get to name it!"

As the hours passed, the boys fell silent, overwhelmed by their experience. It was peculiar, knowing that they were jetting along far faster than any aquanaut in all history, yet feeling almost motionless, suspended high in a watery void with nothing nearby against which to measure their progress, the constant hiss of the atomolecular engines a backdrop to their wonder.

"Why don’t we see any fish going by the dome?" Bud asked at one point.

"Same reason you can’t see a bullet in flight," Tom explained. "We’re going
way
too fast for our eyeballs to compensate!"

"Lucky they’re not splattered all over our windshield."

"The hydraulivane takes care of that."

"Oh really?" remarked Bud. "Maybe you could invent one for my car!"

Bud yawned and stretched, taking a glance at his watch in the process. More than an hour to go. For all the novelty and thrill of their crossing, human nature had reasserted itself—the fantastic was becoming routine.

Tom knew his best friend well enough to pick up on his attitude, and he couldn’t help but be amused. He caught Bud’s eye and gave a wink.

"Don’t mind me," responded Bud. "I’m just ready for our celebratory dinner, courtesy of Mr. Dansitt."

"Then I’ve got some news you’ll be interested in," said Tom mysteriously.

"What kind of news?" asked Bud. "I thought we weren’t in communication with surface mortals down here!"

"Oh, we’re not," Tom confirmed. "This kind of news came from the navigational computer. I’ve known it for an hour now—but I guess I like surprises as much as you like sea chanteys!"

"Come on, give!" demanded Tom’s pal. "What’s the deal?"

"Just this. We make port in
just eight minutes!"

Bud was astonished. "I thought we were at least an hour away!"

"We would be—if we had stopped at air-Mach 1. But we overshot the mark by quite a bit. Bud, we’re traveling at almost
one thousand miles per hour!"

"Ho—ho—holy—" Bud sputtered, concluding with: "Brand my barracudas!"

"In fact, I think we’d better start slowing down," Tom continued, "or we’ll end up sticking like a sea dart in the side of the Rock of Gibraltar!"

At the Sagres dock it was now the middle of the night. The jetmarine was not expected for another hour, but fortunately most of the potential investors had already assembled, along with a small crowd of curious townspeople. On a bluff some distance back from the shoreline dozens of cars were parked, young people finding the event a sufficient reason to gather for a good time. Searchlights played across the rolling waves, ready for the first glimpse of the American sub.

But it was a television reporter who electrified the crowds by shouting, in Portugese,
"There! There!"

The
Nemo
, wet and sparkling, was crashing through the surf!

Immediately the dock was ablaze with light—flickering, flashing, swiveling light from all manner of cameras; while on the bluff above, the cheering onlookers switched on their headlights.

The jetmarine slid gently into the special docking rails that had been set up to receive her, and bumped to a stop. Tom and Bud waved at the frenzied crowd through the nose-dome.

An official from the McIntosh and Dansitt company stepped up to a microphone and made an announcement in English which was then repeated by others in several languages. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I have the high honor of declaring that the breadth of the Atlantic Ocean, from Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America, to Sagres, Portugal, has been crossed by the submarine
Nemo
in five hours, three minutes, forty-four seconds, by synchronized timepiece. The approximate average speed of the underwater crossing is calculated to be 896 miles per hour, or 779 knots—exceeding the standard speed of sound by 13 percent!"

The wild cheers that followed were redoubled as the handsome young aquanauts from America exited their craft, acknowledging the crowds with grinning modesty.

Bud elbowed Tom and whispered—loudly, "Genius boy, you’ve given me the greatest experience of my life, and I’m not even dead yet!"

Few noticed a uniformed man making his way through the spectators, a cellphone in his hand. He forced his way to Tom’s side and handed him the phone. "
Senhor
Swift?
Es importante!"
Tom took the phone, expecting to hear the voice of his father, or perhaps Mr. Dansitt. In the midst of the tumult it was hard to make out anything at first, and Tom asked the caller to repeat his first words.

"This is Admiral Krevitt, Tom. Can you hear me?"

"Yes, Admiral," Tom replied.

"You must return to your submarine immediately. Put out to sea, but do not submerge. This is an emergency situation! Contact me from the sub within two minutes! I repeat,
this is an emergency situation!"

"Yes sir! Wilco!" said Tom, his face turning pale. He handed off the cellphone and told Bud to follow him back into the
Nemo
. Seeing the look on Tom’s face, Bud complied without a word.

They used reverse thrust to back the jetmarine out of the dock, to the puzzlement of those on the shore. Then, standing out at one hundred yards, Tom radioed Admiral Krevitt at ONDAR headquarters.

"Tom, I’m here with Dr. Nemastov and—well, doesn’t matter. About an hour ago, a combined force raided the compound owned by Herman Chilcote in Trinidad. Chilcote and his staff were arrested; there were no casualties.

"As Chilcote was taken into custody, he said to the man in charge, ‘Be sure to tell Rosello I said,
Neptune wins!’
. We passed along the message immediately, thank God. Rosello started laughing and explained the meaning.

"Tom, Rosello claims that as we broke into Chilcote’s compound, he launched some sort of super-torpedo, like an underwater ICBM, toward the United States! Do you understand?"

"I do, sir," Tom responded, trying to maintain an icy calm. "What do we know about it?"

"Two things. First, according to Rosello, it is to strike a designated target on our Atlantic coast at precisely 10 PM our time. Rosello claims not to know the target. Second, Rosello claims the torpedo is carrying a small nuclear warhead!"

"No!"
cried Tom in horror.

"Dr. Nemastov thinks the scenario is plausible, having gone over your report on the uranium slugs that seemed to be missing from the
Vostok
. The bomb wouldn’t be very powerful, but could be especially ‘dirty’ due to the way it’s being delivered. Going off at the shoreline, it would create clouds of radioactive steam and fine particulates that would endanger the whole eastern seaboard!"

"And that’s
all
we know?"

"Absolutely all," the Admirable replied. "Of course, we’re interrogating everyone we have in custody,
vigorously.
And we’re trying to make sense of documents and computer files seized from Chilcote’s lab. But it’s clear he didn’t want the pieces put together until it was too late."

"I understand the situation," said Tom. "and I know what you are asking us to do. Even here on the other side of the Atlantic, the jetmarine is the only thing we have with the speed and mobility to have a chance of intercepting the undersea missile."

"Exactly," Krevitt agreed. "Of course, even you won’t be able to do anything unless we can identify the target. But if, somehow, we
do
—then we need you here!"

Tom thought for a second. "Admiral, transmit everything you have—everything!—to the
Nemo
via compression-encoded signal. I’ll give you the details. That will put it in the onboard computer here, so that I can study it en route. As soon as I radio you that we’ve received the data, we’ll submerge and make for our Key West facility at absolute maximum speed. We’ll surface hourly to receive any updates from you."

"We have less than five hours," cautioned Admiral Krevitt. "Can you do it?"

"Yes!" replied the young inventor simply.
Yes, because we have to!
he thought.

The jetmarine’s recrossing of the Atlantic was nothing like the first voyage. Bud was silent, alone with his thoughts, not wanting to distract his friend. Tom was preoccupied with the scraps of data Admiral Krevitt had sent—mostly various hasty analyses by government experts, as well as some observations by Dr. Nemastov.