Tom Swift and His Diving Seacopter (3 page)

In order to write down as many of them as they could from memory, he and Mr. Swift worked far into the night. Meanwhile, plant engineers stood by in case any messages started coming through from the space people. But morning dawned without any communications being received.

At ten o’clock Tom and Bud rendezvoused at the huge metal block that was Pressure Tank 3, one of several tanks used for aquatic testing. The top of the tank had been swung aside and, as Tom and Bud watched, Compartment B of the new seacopter was gently lowered inside by crane. Separated from its other half, the section had a stubby, curving arrowhead shape, a half-circular notch showing where the central well for the diving blades would be. Bud remarked on the bright crimson hue of the gleaming craft.

"That’s the look of our translucent Tomasite coating over the new alloy of magtritanium that we’re using for the outer hull." Magtritanium was a superstrong lightweight metal developed by Enterprises materials-science technologists for Swift rocketcraft, including Tom’s
Star Spear.
Tomasite was a tough, flexible plastic resistant to most forms of radiant energy, as well as absorptive of radar and sonar waves.

Dropping down from a catwalk the youths strode across the flat top of the hull to a small round hatchway and entered the interior of Compartment B.

"Not very big, is it," noted Tom apologetically. "Each compartment is designed for a crew of three."

Bud clapped him on his t-shirted back. "Skipper, it’s like a hotel lobby compared to your jetmarine. And with picture windows!" Bud gestured at the clear plexi-quartz viewport than curved around the fore-edge of the craft.

Closing the overhead hatch, Tom contacted the support crew outside the tank. "Everything is ready," a workman reported. The tank interior turned dark as the lid swung back into place, then light again as the seacopter’s external lamp, mounted on the hull just above the middle of the viewpane, was switched on. The tank was already filling with water, formulated to match salty oceanic seawater in chemical composition. In minutes Compartment B was completely submerged.

Seated side by side in comfortable contour chairs, which were attached to recessed tracks set in the deck that allowed them to slide right and left, Tom activated the controls in the bow. At his signal the exterior work crew fed power into the hydraulic pressure piston, and the pressure on the hull began to build.

"Well, we haven’t been squashed flat so far," Bud remarked presently. "How far down are we?"

Reading a gauge on the control panel, Tom said, "In pressure terms we’re one hundred fathoms under, Bud!"

"That’s six hundred feet," Bud mused. "Tom, this is great! You’ll revolutionize underwater travel."

Suddenly Bud felt an icy-cold spray of water against his wrist. Looking down, he exclaimed in horror, "Tom!
The cabin’s leaking!"

A moment later water began to gush in at a terrifying rate!

INITIALLY a narrow jet surging into the cabin from beneath the control board, the stream of water was rapidly broadening out into a wedge-shape coming from all along the seam that joined the deck to the sloping wall of the cabin. Fragments of material, forced out of place by the pressure, were shooting into the air like shrapnel and pinging against the far wall.

Tom grabbed the microphone from its holder in front of him. "Guys—drain the tank! We’re leaking!" he shouted. But before the last syllable was sounded, the overhead lights began to flicker.

"Did they hear you?" asked Bud with a gasp.

"I don’t know," said Tom, forcing himself to remain calm. The water inside the compartment was already ankle-deep! "Bud, stand on your chair seat. If the water’s gotten through to the generating system somehow, there’s a danger of electrocution."

The two stood up on the seats, hunching their shoulders down as their heads bumped against the low ceiling.

Bud cast a glance at the hatchway. Set in the ceiling next to the starboard bulkhead, it was yards away. "Electricity or no, as soon as the pressure’s equalized we’ll have to open ’er up and make—"

"The pressure!" Tom interrupted. He pointed at the gauge, which could still be made out in the dim, flickering illumination. "It’s dropping, and fast!"

Bud sighed with relief. "They got the message, pal."

Emergency high-volume pumps were soon brought into play, draining Tank 3. Then the tank lid was unsealed and the frantic work crew made their way onto the hull and forced open the hatch.

"What’s going on down there?"
cried a voice.

"A major leak," Tom called back. "We’re flooded." Now that the cabin was open to the outside air, Tom was able to kill the electric power completely, removing the danger. He and Bud sloshed through the flooded compartment and made their way up through the hatch. In a moment they were standing in the morning sunlight.

"I was afraid the system had started shorting out before I had finished my message," Tom told the crew chief. "Thank goodness I was wrong."

He gave Tom a blank look. "Message? What message? We started draining the tank when Art Wiltessa came running up and told us that orders had got fouled up and the high-pressure sealant had been left off some of the seams!"

Bud raised his eyebrows high. "Man, I guess somebody up there was watching out for us—and I don’t mean your Space Friends."

Tom was glad, and immensely relieved, to know that there was nothing wrong with the basic design of his seacopter.

The damaged compartment was drained and removed from the tank and returned to its berth in Hangar Four next to its twin. Tom, directing repairs on it the next day, asked Bud to check with Harlan Ames as to developments in finding the person who had sabotaged the space dictionary.

"No leads on him yet," the security officer reported in disappointment. "But we’re working on it. If Dr. Wickliffe is responsible, I’d sure like to know how he managed it." He added that agents of both the FBI and the Department of Defense were also investigating Wickliffe.

But lost Atlantis was the chief topic of conversation that evening in the Swift home. Bud had been invited to join them, and to meet Ham Teller and George Braun. Tom performed the introductions. As he shook hands, Bud sized up the two men.

George Braun, red-haired, had twinkling green eyes and an easy grin—and the physique of a man who rarely left his office chair. Ham Teller, a wiry six-footer, was prematurely gray except where he was bald, which was nearly everywhere. Both seemed relatively young men, no older than thirty.

Teller chuckled quietly. "S’matter, Bud? Expecting a couple old fogies?" Teller had a fairly noticeable Brooklyn accent.

"Manners, Ham!" cautioned Braun jokingly. "That word ‘fogey’ hasn’t been current for years now."

Bud laughed in response, slightly embarrassed. "I’ll admit I was expecting someone a bit on the high-domed side."

"Well, Ham is high-domed but nobody can call him a long-hair!" Both men smiled broadly and Bud decided he approved of their casual, bantering ways.
Tom and Bud in later life,
he thought.

At dinner, they introduced themselves in more detail. "George is an oceanographer with an interest in archaeology, and I’m an archaeologist with an interest in oceanography," Teller explained. "And we both share an interest in the development of early civilization—and the persistent legend of Atlantis."

"It was a perfect stroke of good fortune to have met Tom at an academic conference last year, where he talked about his jetmarine trip to the Caribbean," added Braun. "We were turned on—do they still say that?—by that undersea canyon you two found."

"I remember," Bud said. "That’s the one that Tom thinks must have been formed in the open air."

Teller grinned. "Yeah, ’zackly so. Open air—meaning the whole sea floor must’ve sunk, and not so long ago neither. Maybe just a few thousand years back."

"That’s not exactly yesterday," commented Sandy.

"Aw, in geologic time—which is the only time we worry about these days—it’s nothing at all!"

As the dinner turned to dessert, the topic turned to Tom’s new diving seacopter. Tom’s mother, an attractive, gentle person, listened attentively. As she served warm pie, she looked first at her husband and then at her son.

"I wish you two advanced thinkers would invent things that weren’t so risky!" she said.

"If my latest invention turns out half as well as this pie, Mom, you haven’t a thing to worry about," Tom said, smiling. He knew that despite occasions of worry and, at times, real fear, she was very proud of his achievements as well as those of his father.

After dinner, the family gathered in the big, cheerful living room with Teller and Braun and talked about Tom’s promised expedition in search of ancient wealth under the sea.

"I’ve been meaning to ask about the ‘wealth’ part," Bud spoke up, lounging back in an easy chair. "Tom said something about looking for sea gold."

"Many of our ancient sources refer to the vast wealth of the lost city," Braun explained. "A few even explicitly refer to it as
the city of gold."

"You know, my illustrious grandfather found his own underground city of gold, in Mexico," said Damon Swift. "That was in 1912. He was hardly older than Tom here."

"We Swifts have a specialization in history," observed Sandy with a touch of irony. "Namely Swift history!"

"We’re familiar with that find," Ham Teller said. "There might be a connection between the ancient Mexican civilization and the one we usually call Atlantis. Some authorities think the forerunners of the old societies of the Americas, such as the Olmecs and the Maya, were Atlantean survivors."

"But we leave that sort of speculation to the cultists," put in Braun quickly. "Our ideas come from solid scientific sources."

Mrs. Swift spoke up. "Just where is the real Atlantis supposed to have been located?"

In reply the two men rose to their feet and walked over to the wall of the room, where there was a large, detailed map of the world which showed various suboceanic features.

"Somewhere in here!" exclaimed Teller with a laugh as he made a sweeping gesture with both hands that took in the entire map. “And I'm being serious! Over the years people have ‘located’ Atlantis all over the globe."

"We once made a list—remember, Ham? It ran on for five pages!"

Teller nodded. "Let’s see, there was Scandinavia, Cuba, Haiti, the Amazon basin—"

"Both lower and upper California, Indonesia—"

"The island of Santorini, near Greece; Turkey, around Mount Ararat—"

"Central Africa, Alaska, the Gobi Desert in China, the bottom of either the Mediterranean or the Black Sea—"

"The North
and
the South Poles, under the ice—"

"Oh, and my favorite—Ireland, just off the western coast!" concluded Braun.

"My goodness!" said Tom’s mother, as Bud and Sandy chuckled.

"Basically, all you need for
Atlantis
is enough water to cover it over!" Teller joked.

Sandy held up a hand. "But doesn’t the legend come from Plato? And didn’t he say Atlantis was somewhere around the Rock of Gibraltar?"

Mr. Swift nodded approvingly at his daughter. "Exactly. He said it was just beyond the Pillars of Hercules, as they used to call it."

Braun pointed at the Strait of Gibraltar, separating Spain from North Africa. Then he moved his finger a few inches westward. "That’s this area here. After having dallied with the Atlantic Ridge and the Cape Verde Islands, we took a look at the gravitic and thermal data being collected by space satellites, and guess what?—we think old Plato knew what he was talking about!"

Curious, Bud got up and approached the map, looking at the tiny lettering by the tip of George Braun’s finger. "The
Horseshoe Seamounts,"
he read off. "Just north of the Madeira Islands, and pretty much due west of Gibraltar."

"About 500 miles distant," Braun elaborated, "and about 300 miles from the southwest corner of Portugal, at a depth of around 60 fathoms."

As the men sat down, Teller added, "Actually, the main point of interest is a lowland area between the ‘arms’ of the ‘horseshoe.’ It’s where we get the most suggestive readings, and we think it may be the plain that Plato mentions in his—"

Suddenly a loud buzzing noise interrupted the conversation—which had turned into something of a lecture. "The alarm system!" exclaimed Sandy. "Wonder who’s calling?"

"I’ll see," said Tom, getting up.

The Swift residence was surrounded by a magnetic field which touched off a signal when broken. The family and their friends avoided this by wearing wristwatches containing small neutralizer coils. But the alarm always sounded at the approach of prowlers or unexpected visitors.

When Toni opened the door, he was surprised to see William Clyde, the pudgy, middle-aged mayor of Shopton. The man was excited and red in the face.

"Come in, sir," Tom invited him.

Hardly had the mayor entered when he burst out, "You Swifts have got to stop that rocket coming here from outer space! Otherwise, the whole town will be blown up!"

MAYOR CLYDE’S outburst caught Tom by surprise. Stunned into silence, he politely ushered him into the living room where the others waited expectantly. All ears had overheard what the Mayor had said.

The man nodded nervously to the others as Tom said, "Please sit down, sir."

The caller sank into an easy chair. As he mopped his brow with a handkerchief, he reiterated why he was there. "You must stop that rocket!" he insisted tensely. "Do you understand?"

Damon Swift regarded him quizzically. "Bill, there must be some misunderstanding here. Please tell us how you got your information."

"I received a phone call in my car just fifteen minutes ago," the official explained. "Whoever it was gave no name, but he told me the Swifts had received a message from those space aliens of yours—a message saying a rocket from outer space would soon land in Shopton!"

"That certainly doesn’t mean it will be an explosive rocket," Mr. Swift pointed out. "I’m quite sure from the message we received that it will not be."