Tom Swift and the Asteroid Pirates (11 page)

When the call was ended, both youths felt despondent. "I had really hoped that the magnetic deflector would be enough to get at least a small cargo capsule through to the base," Tom murmured. "
Safely
through. Now... " Seeing the look on his friend’s face, the young scientist-inventor straightened. "
Now
we send up our sample-scooper!"

Bud thumped him on the back. "You’ll lick it, genius boy."

Tom went home for a few hours sleep, rising early to do some work on his computer. At the breakfast table he reported to his family: "I’m sure I’ve got the field-contouring worked out for the sampler rocket."

"Do you have to wait for the next time they pass through the shadow?" his mother asked.

"Not in this case, Mom," Tom replied. "We’re not trying to penetrate the barrier, just to skirt around its outer edges. Art Wiltessa expects to have the payload section finished by noon," he went on. "It’s too big and heavy to launch from Enterprises, so Bud’s going to jet it down to Fearing. It’ll be launched on one of our Workhorse booster rockets."

Sandy put in: "Dad says you’ll be having your Super Scooper land in the ocean."

"Right, sis. Our samples will be microscopic, but if even one grain of antimatter gets loose from the internal containment field it’ll cause a huge explosion."

"We can’t risk a ground landing," said Mr. Swift. "Once we verify by telemetry that everything is intact, one of the seacopters will pick it up. Then Bud will fly it back to Enterprises."

"We’ll have it in hand tomorrow morning," Tom concluded with a show of confidence.

The young inventor’s confidence proved well founded. The probe mission came off without a hitch, and at nine the following morning a bulky many-sided container was delivered to Swift Enterprises Analysis Lab Four, where two excited young men awaited it.

Tom rolled the container into a test chamber and used a repelatron to produce a perfect vacuum inside. Then robotic arms connected several sensors and analysis devices to ports on the side of the container.

"This is fantastic!" Tom muttered in awe, his eyes pressed to a binocular-like viewer.

"Is it what you expected?" asked Bud.

"It’s definitely Diracinium—or rather,
anti
-Diracinium. But the atoms have been molded into some kind of molecular construct that I’ve never seen before. And according to the spectronalyzer... Wait, I’ll pump the data into the computer and bring up a simulation."

In a moment they were gazing at a weird multicolored shape on the computer monitor. "Good grief, they’ve twisted it into a pretzel!" exclaimed Bud.

"It’s a molecular chain inter-looped like a knot," his friend said. "And it’s continuous—see where the ends connect up?"

"I gather it’s too small to see, hmm?"

"Yep, about a tenth the size of a salt crystal. But what’s unbelievable is what it’s doing!"

"It’s doing something?"

Tom grinned. "Something normally seen in biology—in nerve cells. The linked molecules are producing what are called action potentials at their points of contact, which end up separating negative and positive ions. When the potentials become too strong, the reservoirs discharge into one another and the process begins again. And then—look."

The young inventor touched several controls to bring up a new simulation, one which showed several dozen of the twisted molecules. "Hey!" said Bud. "What’s making ’em spin around like that?" Each of the molecular chains was now rotating like a top, with a start-and-stop motion.

"It’s a reciprocating electromagnetic effect," explained Tom. "Each buildup-discharge cycle produces a pulse which yanks the nearby chains into a half-circle rotation. But don’t get the wrong idea, flyboy. I had the simulation run slow. In realtime the chains are spinning more than a billion times a second!"

Bud Barclay discharged a deep breath. "So—do we know how to get through the barrier?"

For some time Tom was silent, the shifting glow of the screen playing across his pensive face. When he finally spoke his voice was low. "We know how the barrier is kept stable. The pulsed magnetic interactions hold the particles at a set distance from one another, and their individual hyper-rotations turns them into little gyrostabilizers. But flyboy ... "

Tom suddenly switched off the monitor, and Bud was alarmed to see his hopeless, dejected expression. "Bad?" Bud asked.

"Bad," Tom confirmed dully. "Now I see why the magnetic deflector wasn’t able to hold back enough particles to keep the test missile from getting fried by radiation. Good idea. Not good enough. The general approach just won’t work on stuff like this. What I’m—what I’m saying, Bud― " He looked sadly into his friend’s gray eyes. "—is that my invention’s a flop. I’ve failed."

Bud’s muscles knotted with fierce emotion. "You’re crazy! You can’t fail!—not with all those men and women trapped up there." His voice softened. "Okay, look. Maybe your magnetic deflector can’t do the job. But you know a lot more than you did an hour ago, right?"

Tom smiled wanly. "Right."

"So you just have to wait for another idea to tumble down out of that attic of yours. The one under your crewcut!"

The crewcut nodded. "Point made. And as a matter of fact, there
is
something else we can do. It could solve the whole problem without another brilliant Tom Swift invention!"

"Now you’re talking!" exclaimed Bud.

"Don’t cheer yet. What I mean is, we could handle the space crisis here on Earth. All we have to do is go after the Black Cobra!"

Bud grinned. "That’s all, huh."

"It’s enough!" laughed Tom. "But obviously Li Ching has some way to disperse the antimatter cloud, or at least create a safe passage for his ship. Otherwise he’d be unable to make use of the asteroid for whatever plan he has in mind—such as doping out the Lunite deatomization effect."

"Sure! If we can find the guy, we could steal
his
technology for a change, just like he steals ours."

"Which may be exactly what was behind Mr. Fun’s gift to us—the cobra cube," pointed out Tom. "The big idea wasn’t to penetrate the Nestria barrier, but to penetrate Li’s organization."

Bud flopped down on a lab stool. "First we have to figure out where it is."

"It’s where those missing scientists are." Then Tom brightened and snapped his fingers. "In fact, I just realized that we have a lead!"

"To where?"

"Africa!" The youth began to pace the lab excitedly. "Diracinium, and its antimatter twin, have only been found in one place on Earth—the big cave gallery under Mount Goaba in Borukundi! For the B.C. to have gathered enough to make the disintegration cloud, he would have to have set up some sort of extraction operation right there, under the noses of the international research facility."

"Then Africa it is!" cheered Bud. "So what do we do, pal? Fly over in the
Sky Queen
and drop a secret agent on the mountain?"

Tom threw his best friend a sly, even mischievous, look.

"Not
a
secret agent," pronounced Tom Swift. "One if by land—
two if by sea!
"

TWELVE MILES off the coast of the nation of Cameroon, continent of Africa, the Swift Enterprises seacopter
Sea Hound
hovered above the ocean floor in deep water. A hatchway opened and two dark-clad figures jetted into the water like human torpedoes.

"See you soon, Skipper!" sonophoned crewman Zimby Cox. "And please make it
real
soon!"

"I’ll sure try, Zim," replied Tom through his diversuit communicator. "Hang tight. It may take a couple days."

"I’ll be listening for your signal."

"Got the cave opening ahead, Tom," commed Bud as he aqua-soared alongside his chum. "The sonarscope’s painting a nice glowing blotch on my helmet screen."

"I see it too." Tom touched his sleeve control, increasing the force of the ion-drive diverjet on his back. Anxious, impatient, he sped toward his target. In minutes it became visible to the eye—a black gash in the side of the subocean floor as it began its rise to meet the shoreline.

The previous day Tom and Bud had scouted a circular pattern in the sky, centered on Mount Goaba. As the young inventor guided the cycloplane back and forth, one of his inventions, a sensor device nicknamed the gravy-scope, scanned the earth below for the slight gravitational anomalies that could indicate deep cave systems linking to the caves of nuclear fire beneath the mountain. The boys knew that many such caves existed, and the presence of a flow of seawater at the bottom of the well-like main cavern, rising and falling with the tides, proved that some part of the network of caves eventually linked to the distant Atlantic.

But which cave? Where? Numerous possibilities made a hopeful appearance on the scope, only to peter out as the
SwiftStorm
pursued them westward. But at last they found what they sought, a series of deep natural tunnels that ran with water. They followed the trail across Camaroon and finally to the sea, piercing the floor a few miles beyond a little-inhabited part of the coast.

"There’s every likelihood they’re mining the Diracinium close to where the cave runs into the big cavern," Tom had told Bud. "It would have several advantages—including the fact that the underground tidal river gives them an undetectable route for coming and going."

"And a great route for a couple divers to sneak up on them!" Bud had agreed with enthusiasm.

Now the hazardous underwater invasion of the Cobra’s domain commenced. With Tom’s electronic hydrolungs supplying the youths with air for however long they might need it, they jetted through the opening and into a long passage that twisted and turned abruptly, but always returned to its eastward heading.

Now and then they paused and broke the surface, using their special suit-lamps to pierce the unending darkness of the cave. Once Bud pulled open his facemask—then pressed it shut again with a cough. "Good night, that cave air’ll kill you faster than the Black Cobra! It’s full of moisture and smells like a fish factory."

"If they barge the Diracinium along the river, they probably wear oxygen masks," Tom remarked. "And look downriver." Tom pointed. There were clear signs that the tunnel had been widened by human effort—and recently.

"Hypothesis confirmed," commented Bud. "We’re on the right track, genius boy."

Hours passed beneath the water. Occasionally they surfaced to rest, keeping their masks shut and their forms well hidden behind rocks. Sometimes they nibbled nourishment from their sealed suit pouches. Once they slept, a brief night.

There were many forks and junctions. They had a crude map that the gravy-scope had created, which was projected in glowing lines upon the insides of their masks. But in some places the map lacked detail. Twice they made a wrong turn and had to double back in frustration.

"Getting close," Tom promised.

"We must be," carped his pal. "You’ve said it about twenty times."

An hours-long silence was broken suddenly by the appearance of a faint luminance that was not their own. A light was approaching them from some distance to the rear!

In a minute they could hear the throb of a motor. "Heading toward Goaba," declared Tom. "Maybe an empty barge coming to pick up cargo."

"Or—a passenger boat full of missing scientists!" added Bud. "Bet they have sonar on constant scan to watch for rocks. Thank goodness these suits can’t be detected."

"The Antitec sheathing should do the trick," Tom agreed. Yet his mind added:
Assuming, of course, that Li hasn’t figured out a way to overcome it yet!

They waited tensely on the bottom. The vessel drew near and passed over their heads. It was longish and narrow, partially supported by pontoons running along its sides, lashed by cables to the hull.

"Feeling lazy, flyboy?" asked Tom. "Wouldn’t be hard to catch a ride the rest of the way."

"All for it, Skipper!" was the reply.

They hooked themselves to the pontoon cables and were dragged along. Ironically, the move lengthened the duration of the journey—they could move much faster in the jet-thrust diversuits.

Two hours later the outboard motor slowed, and the boys could see light shining down ahead of them. A bump, and they stopped. Wooden pilings, new looking, rose next to them.

Turning on their hydrophones they could hear, through the hull and the water, the shuffle of footsteps—many feet. "Passengers it is," said Tom. "Ready, pal?"

"Ready, waiting, and gulping air," Bud sonophoned back.

Using their suit sonar they found a small cove a few hundred feet further along, dark and apparently secluded. Rising into the dank air they clambered up on the rocks and pulled off the diversuits and carefully stashed them away, retaining small flashlamps. "So how do I look?" asked Bud.

"Passable." Beneath the diversuits the two wore simple, lightweight work garments. They also wore disguises—makeup, thick glasses for Bud, a realistic mustache and darkened hair for Tom.

"You know," Bud commented, "if I ever I get to be twenty years older, I really hope I look a lot better than
this
."

Tom chuckled quietly. "Looking older is the whole point—older,
and
like stereotyped lab slaves."

They examined the little cove, and Bud pointed to a faint splash of light on the far wall. "We connect to the main tunnel, at least. Any sign of a dry path?—or do we pull our boots back on and wade over?"

"I think we can just work our way over those rocks. Come on."

Atop the rocks they had a long view of the underground channel. The boat floated at a small aluminum pier, clearly intended for human traffic only, illuminated with floodlights. Beyond was a big hollow, like the front of an open arcade, cut into the rock wall. No one was visible, but they could hear the sputter of many voices echoing from rock.

They inched closer, trying to keep to the shadows. Pressed against the rock that framed the arched opening, Tom used a tiny periscope to peer around the corner. "Doorway, guard, line of people," he whispered. "The guard’s not looking up, and the people mostly block his view. Walk naturally."