Tom Swift and His Triphibian Atomicar

THE TOM SWIFT INVENTION ADVENTURES

TOM SWIFT

AND HIS TRIPHIBIAN ATOMICAR

BY VICTOR APPLETON II

This unauthorized tribute is based upon the original TOM SWIFT JR. characters.

As of this printing, copyright to The New TOM SWIFT Jr. Adventures is owned by SIMON & SCHUSTER

This edition privately printed by RUNABOUT © 2011
www.tomswiftlives.com

"TOM, your new atomic sports car is absolutely dreamy!" enthused Bashalli Prandit.

Young Tom Swift grinned at the pretty, dark-haired girl’s excitement as his sleek, bronze racer glided along the highway leading out of Shopton. "Don’t forget, Bash, it’s not actually an
atomic
sports car—not just yet. But thanks for the compliment."

The Pakistani managed to combine a nod with a frown. "Every now and then I run across an English term that I don’t quite understand, I fear. Does not ‘dreamy’ mean ‘like something seen in a dream’?"

"Well, in a way. Say, you’re not withdrawing the compliment, are you?"

Now she smiled reassuringly. "Of course not, Thomas. I am in love with this car. Even its peculiar dreamlike shape. That is,
eventually
." As her companion laughed, she went on: "You see, as an artist I am very attuned to shape and form. And this car of yours—how could one describe it? Rather like a lady’s high-heeled shoe. With fenders and a cockpit dome, of course. Stylish? I am not so sure!"

Tom was well aware that his new invention had drawn its share of puzzled looks from the passing parade of Shoptonians. They were accustomed to encountering the strange engineering products of Tom Swift Enterprises, the huge world-famed invention factory run by Tom’s father. They had seen the strange parade of wingless cycloplanes, terrasphere tractor-tanks, hulking robots, and, not long before, Tom’s giant multi-ringed moonship the
Challenger
. But they had seen nothing like this four-wheeled stalker of the highways, with its teardrop-shaped dome that swept back to meet the high finlike tail of the car, which rose to a pointed apex. It looked a little like a jet plane that had somewhere misplaced its wings.

"She may look a little ‘out there,’ but the body shape has been developed on computer and tested in a windtunnel," declared the young inventor.

"I have no doubt of that."

"It has two planes of airstream stability, you know, at right angles to one another. She’ll cut through the air like a knife!"

"So you have said. But I must say, in my life I have met many people with enviable airstream stability—
and
homely looks." Bashalli leaned back in her contour seat, languidly gazing out the dome at the passing scenery. They had now left the main part of the little town and were humming down the long lakeside road that ultimately joined the Interstate. Lake Carlopa, lazy and sparkling in the afternoon sun, rolled along past them only yards from the roadside. "At least she is silent—‘unlike many women,’ as you are surely thinking. You should call her the
Silent Streak
!".

"Good name, Bash," Tom agreed, "but George Dilling’s publicity releases will call her a triphibian atomicar.
When
she’s ready for her official debut, that is." George Dilling was Swift Enterprises’ chief of Communications and Public Interest.

The two young people shared a friendly, contented glance, Bash thrilled with the exciting life that came with knowing an inventing prodigy with a taste for high adventure. But the glance was interrupted by a shrill buzz from the car’s low-slung instrument board, spread wide in front of Tom at waist level. A red warning light was flickering like a strobe, demanding urgent attention!

Bashalli gasped. "Tom!"

An oncoming minivan had drifted across the line and was barreling toward them like a brick wall on wheels!

The young inventor forced himself to remain calm. One finger moved, pushing the slider-switch on the side of the unicontrol joystick in his right hand. With a
whoosh
! the
Silent Streak
curved smoothly up from the highway and took to the air. Her dangling tires cleared the top of the minivan with inches to spare, soaring out over the lake and looping back in a lazy half-circle.

Before settling back down on the pavement the atomicar cannonballed across the bow of the speeding van, and the startled driver dropped his cellphone and honked out his indignation at the air hog. Bashalli replied with a few apt comments in English and Pakistani, concluding with: "
Can you hear me now?
"

"May he lose his connection and suffer exorbitant roaming charges!" she fumed. "Alas, he cannot hear me through your sealed dome windshield."

"I—I think he got the gist!" Tom pronounced, wide-eyed. His thoughts added:
Bash sure has mastered the language!
Then he suddenly realized that his friend was trembling.

"Oh, my g-g-goodness!" she quavered weakly, bravado exhausted. She was white-faced and breathless from the near accident—no more so than Tom Swift himself.

Hoping to comfort her, Tom essayed a tentative joke attended by an unconvincing chuckle. "This is what’s known as getting the bugs out of a new hot rod—the hard way!"

"Please! Let’s not joke about it!" said Bashalli. "And do not
dare
tell me how much vital information you have learned from this experiment." But after a moment she relented. "Still, Thomas, in serving as a guinea pig I have spent more time in your company than on our last two dates!"

"And our drive isn’t over," Tom added sheepishly.

They soon forgot the frightening experience in the sheer exhilaration of spinning along as quietly as a breeze. The lack of engine noise, Tom explained, was due to the car being driven by four small electric motors, one mounted at each wheel.

"And that steering lever does everything?" Bash asked, nodding at the unicontrol stick springing from the driver’s right armrest.

"Practically everything," Tom said. "Accelerates, slows, stops, turns, or reverses—depending on how you move the stick. And you’ve seen my demonstration of the lift-off control."

"And your safety buzzer. Which I must say is much more useful than those annoying seatbelt beepers your American cars are required to have."

"The system is an adaptation of the cybertron we use in my cycloplane," explained Tom, not bothering to conceal from Bashalli a note of pride. "It uses radar—a kind that can see around obstructions—to create a ‘mental map’ in its electronic brains, a three-dimensional simulation that is updated four thousand times a second!"

"Ah! My current pulse rate."

Passing motorists goggled admiringly—or more often just goggled—at the bubble-hooded phantom. As Tom drove farther into the country, the highway skirted pleasant green woodland on the left, allowing only an intermittent glimpse of the blue waters of Lake Carlopa beyond.

"How about that
tri
phibian feature you mentioned, Thomas?" Bash asked. "I know that ‘tri’ signifies
three
. Driving on the ground is the first of the phibians, flying is the second. What of the third? Can the
Silent Streak
fly to the moon, perhaps?"

"Just wait!" the young inventor shot back happily. "You know what
am
phibian means—something that works on both land and water? For example, the Marines make amphibian landings, and amphibian planes like our Whirling Duck jetrocopters can take off from land or water." When the young Pakistani nodded, Tom continued: "Well, my atomicar is
tri
phibian—meaning it can get around on land, through the air, or in water."

To demonstrate, Tom again slid the switch on the lever, and again the car’s wheels soared gently up off the road. "A bank of mini-repelatrons does the trick," he explained. The repelatron was a highly selective repulsion-ray device which Tom had utilized to drive his revolutionary spaceship, the
Challenger
.

"But I understood that your magical machine could not be used for propulsion so near the surface of the earth," objected Bashalli.

"Very true," he conceded. "There’s a lag effect that prevents the repelatron from adapting itself to the changing mixtures of compounds so near the ground. And so—I’m not using it to repel the ground! Instead, the force-radiators are attuned to the mix of oxygen and nitrogen in the atmospheric air, forming a stable ‘cushion’ of high pressure just underneath the body, between the wheels. It’s the
air pressure
that lifts the atomicar up."

"I see! Like bringing your two palms together to enclose something from both sides. But― " She suddenly broke off with wide eyes. "What are you
doing
?"

Tom had dipped the nose of the
Silent Streak
and was now lunging toward the surface of the lake! "
The third phibian!
" he exclaimed as the atomicar settled onto the mild waves, bobbed calmly for a moment, and then, at the touch of a control, began smoothly to submerge.

"Oh Tom, this is—this is
fantastic
!" breathed Bashalli in awe as the blue-green waters closed in over the top of the viewdome. "It is indeed like something from a dream!"

The car sank lower into the shallow waters, coming to rest on the bottom. The dome of the passenger compartment was as transparent on top as all around, and the waves above sent diamond-shaped patterns of light across their faces. "A little too much shade down here on the bottom," commented Tom. "But I can do something about that." He manipulated a trackball under his left palm, selecting an option from a list that appeared in glowing letters on the inside of the dome, right before his eyes. Instantly a powerful glow lit the lake bottom in front of them.

"Much better!" Bashalli congratulated him. "Now we can avoid underwater potholes."

Tom fed power to the wheel motors, and the
Silent Streak
bounced forward over the uneven floor of sand, mud, and clay. "Just in case you’re wondering how we can get such good traction down here, the atomicar has a couple of my gravitex machines built in to it. They push it down firm against the ground, and my special ‘gripper’ tires do the rest."

Bash’s eyes were pretty and luminous against the background of green-blue light. They twinkled as she said, "I do presume, professor, that you have a means to get us back up onto dry land? Or shall we simply drive across the lake to the pier?"

Tom adjusted the controls with a warm smile. The
Silent Streak
bobbed up to the surface, then up into the air again. "She has a buoyancy control setup of the sort we use in our underwater escape suits, the Fat Men."

"The big steel eggs, high fashion beneath the seas."

"Yep. And these long pods running the length of the body on either side are actually pontoons filled with plastic aero-foam, to let us ride high when we want to make like a boat."

"Great for a fishing trip!" said Bashalli.

"It’ll be great for all sorts of transport purposes," Tom said in response. "But its real
scientific
purpose, Bash, is exploration. There’s a whole lot of Planet Earth that can’t be thoroughly investigated by satellite mapping, or even from a plane or helicopter."

"Uh-huh. The great deserts, jungles, polar ice ... "

"Sure! This baby can cross rivers and operate in, or
over
, any terrain—swamps, wild bush country, even mountainous areas."

"Can it also deliver little children to kindergarten?"

"One scientific challenge at a time, please!"

Tom flew the car back to the lake road. Finally rounding the end of the lake, they headed back to the parking lot at Swift Enterprises, where Bashalli had left her car for the afternoon.

Bash pointed. "A reception committee!"

"Sandy and Bud! Something’s up." Sandy was the famous inventor’s year-younger sister, as blond and animated as Bashalli Prandit was dark and exotic. Athletic Bud Barclay was Tom’s dark-haired best friend and constant comrade-in-arms on his many scientific adventures.

Sandy glanced elaborately at her wrist watch as Tom and Bash exited the viewdome. "About time! We were ready to launch a search by radar-bloodhound!"

"What
have
you kids been up to?" needled Bud. "All science and no play, I trust."

Tom raised his eyebrows, puzzled. "Good to see you too! Was I supposed to
be
someplace, for something?"

Suddenly Bashalli groaned. "Gracious! How foolish! This ride’s been so thrilling, I completely forgot to give Thomas the message. Sandra, I’m so sorry."

Tom was still puzzled. "Message?"

Bud chuckled as Sandy replied. "We’re to meet Cousin Ed at the airport at four-fifteen!"

Tom whistled. "Ed’s coming in?"

"Mother took the call this morning, after you and Daddy had left. Our Miss Prandit here was supposed to― "

Bashalli hung her head at the mock-scolding. "I expect grave punishment for this."

"An hour of genius boy’s science lessons is more than enough of a penalty," Bud joked. "But we’d better get a move on! Shall we take the atomicar and dazzle the natives?"

Tom shook his head. "Not if we plan to give Cousin Ed and his luggage a lift! She only seats two."