Tom Swift and His Repelatron Skyway (12 page)

Tom nodded. "That’s what they told me. But when did you have time to go home and ask them?"

He whooped. "Go home? Not no never!" He reached down inside his jeans pocket and pulled out a small, sleek object. "Cellphone! Necessity these days!" As Tom laughed, Akomo pocketed it again. "But no good here in the Ulsusu lands. Pfoo on them."

The Flying Lab stopped in Huttangdala just long enough to send Akomo on his way, and to meet briefly with Mr. Jombilabu, as Mr. Kiuma glowered from a chair across the room. Jombilabu took Tom’s verbal report with skepticism. "Big reptiles in The V’moda, you say, Tom? Might it not be a hoax perpetrated by the Ulsusus and their foreign allies?"

"I saw them—well,
one
of them—with my own eyes, sir."

"Hmm. Something to be thought about, yes indeed, boy-son," he responded noncommittally. "So now, go back to New York, study these samples you have taken. I hope you will tell us soon whether you will take the project." Tom promised to provide Ambassador Onammi with a definite answer in a matter of days.

"That is well, Tom. Let us hope our brave new Ngombia will last those days. And no," he added, "
that
is
not
a joke."

The
Sky Queen
left Ngombia behind, and Ngombia left Tom Swift in deep thought.

Even if it were possible to build a roadway or transport-track across the bubbling muck of the V’moda swamp, science raised an objection.
Strange, interesting things are going on there
, Tom thought,
chemically, geologically, biologically—not to mention what it might mean to dinosaur hunters!
"We can’t just charge in there and start tearing things up," he muttered to himself.

Was he turning into Darcy Creel?

His thoughts were rudely scattered by a yelp over the intercom. "
Hey up there—Tom—someone—help!
"

Tom flipped the switch. "Bill? What is it?"

"
Snakes—eels—don’t ask me, boss, but I’m cornered down in the hangar!
" shouted Bennings.

Calling for Bud and Ted to join him, Tom clattered down the metal stairs linking the top-deck lounge to the bottom-deck hangar. Pausing at the access panel’s porthole, he gasped in amazed dismay—echoed a second later by his companions.

Weird snakelike creatures were slithering and darting across the broad hangar deck! They skirted the
Queen’s
auxiliary craft and slapped blindly against the load of ground-sample containers and the battened test equipment Tom had brought to Ngombia. The shiny, auburn-colored things were of different sizes, their tapering bodies divided into wriggling segments. Some were relatively small. But several were wrist-thick and at least six feet long.

"T-man! What th’ ho-hey
are
they?" demanded Ted.

Bud answered before Tom could. "Jetz! They’re worms!—great big monster
worms
!"

"Bill’s up on top of the cycloplane fuselage," Tom said coolly. "He’s out of reach of the worms, but if he jumps down he’ll fall right in ’em." The young inventor’s brain churned. Exposing the hangar deck to the outer air would admit freezing cold and drop its air pressure. It would kill the bizarre worm-o-saurs—but Bill Bennings as well! Fire, foam, acid, electricity, all endangered the victim of the rampage as much as the rampagers.

What could they do? And how much time did they have to do it?—before a bizarre situation became a dangerous one!

"LOOK," said Ted Spring. "He’s already up on the cycloplane. If he could just get inside, he’d be protected. You could depressurize the hangar—whatever you want."

"It won’t work," muttered Bud. "The
SwiftStorm’s
cockpit is sealer-locked when it isn’t wide open. Bill can’t get in."

"I thought you had a remote control."

"We do," Tom nodded, adding dryly, "It’s sitting in the locker next to the plane."

Bud took another look through the porthole. "Well... after all, those guys are just
worms
. They may be Kong-sized, but they don’t really look all that dangerous."

"Neither does a boa constrictor!" Tom ran a hand through his crewcut. "They may secrete some kind of toxin. We don’t know
what
they can do."

"Hey now!" Ted exclaimed. "Why not do like you did when
I
was pinned down in the hangar that time? If you tilt the whole ship, the
SwiftStorm
will roll right up to the door here, and― "

"No," stated Bud. "The wheels are braked. She can’t move an inch."

"I have an idea—maybe," Tom said. He dashed up to the control compartment and began to work one of the secondary control panels, briefly and breathlessly explaining to Hank Sterling, in the pilot’s seat, the weird crisis and what he planned to do about it.

In moments Tom ran back down. Bud and Ted looked at their friend in half-amused wonder. "Okay, genius boy. What did you do? Whatever the heck it was—it worked!"

Not answering Bud, Tom looked through the hatch porthole. Though still twitching and quivering, the supersized worm-o-saurs had ceased their darting motions and were lying listlessly on the deck.

He pressed the intercom button, adjusting it to act as a public-address speaker. "Come on, Bill. You can slide down." Tom slid the hatch door aside to allow the shaken crewman to put the hangar behind him.

"Oh boy," breathed Bennings. "I was in the instrument bay when I heard sounds coming from the hangar—sort’ve a knocking, thudding noise. I was afraid Bushy, or your pangolin, might have got loose and started rooting around.

"The noises were coming from the big preservation container, the one that looks like a coffin... "

"Where we put the soil-sample flats," Tom noted.

"Yeah. I opened the lid, and... it was like one of those joke cans, where you open the lid and springy stuff comes shooting out!"

"I get the picture," said the youthful explorer.

Ted snorted impatiently. "Well
I
sure don’t, T-man. Alla sudden the worms just went limp. How’d you manage it?"

"By using something built in to the
Sky Queen
called the audiogyrex system," Tom explained. He turned to Bud. "You remember it, don’t you, pal?"

The black-haired pilot nodded. "Sure, now that you mention it. I’d forgotten all about it. There’re these little micro speakers all over the ship giving off a constant mix of sounds, frequencies you can’t hear."

"The system affects the inner ear, taking the edge off the sensation of sudden changes in motion," Tom continued. "What I did was alter the frequency mix in a way that I thought might have an effect on the worms’ skin, their outer shells, which are stretched like a tympanum and coated with oily secretions. It caused a sound resonance that made them feel, er,
discouraged
, you might say. Evidently they respond by going dormant."

"Great," muttered Bill. He was chagrined and red-faced. Tom realized he felt somewhat embarrassed—panicked and cornered by worms!

"It’s good this happened, Bill," Tom said reassuringly. "Thanks for investigating those sounds. Who knows what would have happened if we’d discovered the things after we’d moved the container out into the open, in Shopton."

"Well,
I
know
one
thing," Bud remarked. "Those ground samples sure didn’t have giant worms in them when we dug ’em out."

Tom agreed. "They must have been of normal size. Somehow, in the couple days since then, an unknown factor caused a tremendous acceleration in cell division and overall growth. I’m sure we’ll find that most of the edible material in our earth samples has been eaten up."

As the four climbed up to the middle deck, minds consumed by mystery, Chow Winkler greeted them. "There ya are! Still time t’ eat afore we land, boys. Got somethin’ extra-special, too—noodles Romanoff!"

Bill Bennings gulped. "None for me, thanks."

The young inventor, excited and intrigued, found he couldn’t wait until reaching Enterprises to talk the matter over with his father. "That’s the story, Dad," he said into his PER unit as he sat in the view lounge. "What do you make of it all?"

The elder Swift was silent for a moment. "Clearly this has something to do with the unique conditions prevailing in that swamp. Presumably the anomalous growth was triggered by the Niobium compound you’ve detected. There may also be a suppressive agent in the water that suffuses the local soil. When you removed the worms from their customary environment, the ‘bio-Niobium’ began to take effect."

"That sounds right. And Professor Kasten at Grandyke talked of Eldreth’s theories about a plant or mineral extract which could control the growth processes of living organisms. That’s why he went to that very region of Ngombia—The V’moda!"

"Then it seems the extract Eldreth was after is present in those soil samples."

"Exactly, Dad—the bio-Niobium." Tom’s eyes blazed with excited interest. He was sure his father’s, a thousand miles distant, were filled with the same light "Professor Eldreth disappeared into the jungle twenty years ago—but this backs up his theories!"

"It seems incredible—yet we have the evidence right there in the Flying Lab’s hangar-hold. Who knows what our Enterprises scientists might uncover when they study those worm-creatures!" After a pause, Damon Swift added, "And that giant saurian you saw in the jungle!—the phenomenon works on more complex organisms, too."

"It’s a fantastic discovery in a whole slew of scientific fields," agreed Tom. "It sure gives special scientific importance to the Ngombia project—and the details of just how we do it."

When Tom clicked off the PER unit, he found that Ted was standing nearby, face pensive. "What’s up, Ted? Not more worms!"

Ted Spring didn’t smile, and Tom knew instantly that whatever was on the young astro-engineer’s mind was serious. "T-man... I don’t know if I have the right to ask this, and I don’t know if you’ll understand, but—I’d very much like to continue working on this Ngombia development project with you, if you’ll have me. All the way through to the end."

Tom’s eyebrows raised. "Sure! You’d be a valuable addition. But what about― "

"I want to take a leave of absence from Space Central, Tom. I feel my place is here right now." He explained that when he had spent some time in Imbolu, he had made a point of getting to know some of the English-speaking Ngombians. "One woman, a schoolteacher, said something that stayed with me. When I described my job and mentioned that some of my ancestors might have come from Ngombia, her face turned sad. ‘
We call those like you the turn-aways
,’ she said, ‘
the ones who live elsewhere for money or education or a better life. It has always happened. And so Ngombia gets stupider and poorer and helpless like a cub in the mud. And here comes the crocodile.
’ That’s what she said."

"I see."

"I don’t know if these are really ‘my people’ or not. We’ve been Americans for gosh knows how long. But somehow... I guess it’d feel good to be able to
give
these folks something."

The young expeditioner laid a hand on his older friend’s forearm. "Mr. Spring—get ready to
give
!"

After landing back at Enterprises Tom immediately telephoned Miss Remple, the company’s librarian. He asked her to gather all the scientific journals in which Professor Eldreth’s technical papers had appeared, as well as other journal articles relating to the overall subject, some going back many years. That evening Tom and his father perused them avidly.

Both the Swifts had a keen grasp of all branches of science, including biology. They knew about recent research experiments in the field of growth, such as polyploidy or chromosome multiplication, surgical interventions in the cell nucleus, growth hormones, and of course DNA, the giant molecule which controls cell development. Judging by his writings, Eldreth seemed to have foreseen much of this work.

What caught Tom’s eye, however, was an article about the breeding of "throwbacks", or
atavians
—animals displaying atavism, having characteristics which resembled their ancestral kinds. Professor Eldreth was quoted as suggesting that extinct species of animals could be re-created by careful breeding of present-day animals to bring out the characteristics of the older beasts from which they were descended.

"Take a look at this, Dad." Tom handed the article to his father.

Mr. Swift read it rapidly. "Very interesting. Eldreth was certainly ahead of his time."

"He sure was! And I know of some examples of similar research. There was a fellow at the Munich Zoo in Germany who re-created the aurochs, or prehistoric European cattle, after the species died out hundreds of years ago. He picked out cattle which showed some of the same characteristics as the older type and kept breeding them together until he produced a whole herd that are exactly like the ancient aurochs. And he has done the same with the wild horse."

Mr. Swift nodded. "Yes, I recall those experiments. The Irish wolfhound was brought back the same way. And a scientist at the University of Chicago once bred guinea pigs with so many toes that their feet resembled fins—just like their ancestors who lived in the seas ages ago."

Tom sat bolt upright. "Dad, this sounds so crazy I’m almost afraid to say it, but― "

"Go ahead, son."

"Well, that dinosaur we saw—or whatever it was—do you suppose Professor Eldreth could have been experimenting along the lines we’ve been talking about and produced such a creature?"

Mr. Swift got up from his chair and strode about the room, looking deeply thoughtful. "A manmade dinosaur!" he murmured. Then he smiled. "Well—it works in the
movies
, you know. But in real life― "

His son smiled back. "I think it was Jules Verne who said something like ‘
What one man can imagine, another man can do
’. That’s a saying we Swifts have proven over and over."

Given their recent experience with the contemporary news media and its cyber-world mutations, the Swifts decided to keep the whole weird idea to themselves for the time being. But they hoped that Tom might uncover more evidence when he returned to Ngombia—for they had decided at last to accept the contract for the vast project. An amazing solution to the main problem had finally tumbled down from the brain of the young prodigy!