Tom Swift and His Diving Seacopter (6 page)

Acton frowned. "Are you joking?"

"Oh, living abroad must be exciting!" Sandy exclaimed quickly.

"Ah, yes, it is indeed. After all, Europe is the home of cult-
yoor."
Acton waved his cigarette holder gracefully, like a conductor’s baton. "It’s a place where art and beauty are truly appreciated. I find America so crude by comparison."

"But you do enjoy your work at the Wickliffe lab, don’t you?" Sandy pursued.

"Oh, quite—in a different way. It offers a challenge to my scientific talents."

"I’m sure it must." Sandy’s face assumed an eager, fascinated look. "Of course it’s probably way over my head, but what exactly does your work consist of?"

"You mean, what do we
do?"
asked Price.

"Oh, we carry on research in many different fields," said Ferd Acton vaguely.

"Sure, we dabble in everything," boasted Price. "Electronics, plastics, computers, atomic physics—what have you."

"Then I suppose you’ve done some underwater research yourselves," said Sandy innocently. This time, it was Ferd Acton’s turn to smile. "Naturally some of our work may find application in the submarine field. Then again it may be connected with aircraft design—or it may be strictly earthbound."

From his reply, Sandy had the feeling that Acton was secretly making fun of her attempts to gain information. She felt annoyed but knew it would do no good to lose her temper if she hoped learn anything from him.

Bashalli seemed to guess what her friend was trying to do. In an effort to help, she inquired, "Have you men ever been down on a submarine dive? It must be a terrific thrill!"

Kelt Price gave a shrill chuckle. "Maybe so, but I prefer diving in a swimming pool. Always seems a lot safer—that is, if you don’t crack your head on the bottom!" He guffawed loudly at his own remark.

Acton exhaled another plume of exhaust in Sandy’s direction. Suddenly he exclaimed, "Oh, pardon me!" Sandy smiled weakly, and he continued: "Where are my manners? May I offer you a cigarette?"

"I don’t smoke," said Sandy.

Acton turned toward Bashalli. "You?"

"Thank you, but I prefer cigars exclusively," Bashalli responded tartly. "Sandra, allow me to help you in preparing the ice cream."

Sandy excused herself and went to the kitchen to fix plates of ice cream and cake for her guests. Bash followed to help serve. "What an evening!" whispered Sandy.

Bashalli nodded gloomily. "I thought it might be fun to tease Tom and Bud by having blind dates. But I guess the laugh has fallen on us."

When the girls returned to the living room with the dessert, Sandy asked Acton if he had any plans to go back to Europe on vacation.

"No," he replied, "but Kelt and I may be taking a trip together soon."

"To a land of romance and adventure!" Kelt added. "Not that I’m the type who goes in for this sun-helmet sort of thing," he added, laughing. "It’s business, mostly."

He did not offer to explain what the business might be. He did mention that a river at the spot he was going to was as big as twenty Mississippis and wound through miles of steaming jungles.

"Wait’ll you hear some of the more gory details," Price wheezed. "Tell her about the piranhas, Ferd."

"Ah, yes—the piranhas." Acton grinned at the girls slyly. "Most amazing little devils!"

"What are they?" asked Bashalli.

"Fish—cannibal fish—with bulldog snouts and razor-sharp teeth. Less than a foot long, but they’re probably the most vicious and deadly of all living creatures. They’ll slash at anything that moves. And the scent of blood drives them into a frenzy!"

Bash smiled. "I respond in much the same way."

Ignoring the comment, Acton went on. "Listen to this. An American scientist had a little too much of the bubbly, you know? So he passed out in a canoe and let his hand trail in the water. When he pulled it out, all he had left below the wrist were bones!"

"His own bones," added Price helpfully.

Acton smirked. "Maybe you’d like to hear about some of the twenty-foot snakes that squeeze—"

"Ah, the time, the time," said Bashalli. "How fast it passes. Sandy, what time is it?"

"Oh, it’s—" She turned in her chair to get a view of the large grandfather clock out in the foyer. A look of surprise crossed her brow. "What in the world—?"

Rising to her feet, she led the others into the foyer. Though the old clock was always kept well-wound, it had stopped. But what was uncanny, even frightening, was the sight of the heavy cut-glass pendulum. Rather than hanging down vertically, it was suspended off to one side at the high-point of its arc!

"What makes it do that?" inquired Acton.

"It’s shaking," murmured Sandy in wonderment.

"So is this punch glass," said Bashalli. "Something is pulling on it!"

Suddenly there came a loud crash. The ornate glass punchbowl had shattered
against the ceiling!
Punch dribbled down to the carpet below, but the pieces of glass remained pressed against the ceiling as if held in place by glue.

"My glasses!" shouted Ferd Acton. His glasses had leapt from their perch on his ample nose and flown upward, landing like a housefly on the foyer ceiling. "What is this, some kind of scientific—"

His words were cut short as a shrill, distant whine split the air, insistently rising and falling.

"It’s the emergency siren at Swift Enterprises!" Sandy gasped. "Something must be wrong!"

The family’s watchdogs, Caesar and Brutus, began baying in their kennel. Accompanied by Acton and Price, the girls rushed through the front door and down the steps. "Look!" cried Bashalli in awe, pointing skyward.

Through the starry night sky, from the northwest, sailed an eerie, silent object, glowing with all the colors of the rainbow. It was arrowing straight toward Shopton!

SANDY AND PHYL stood rooted to the spot as the strange object sailed majestically through the sky. But Acton and Price, after a quick glance, made a dash for their convertible, which was parked at one side of the drive. Gunning the engine, Ferd Acton sped off into the darkness with a screech of rubber.

Sandy and Bashalli paid little attention to their departing guests. Wide-eyed with alarm, they stared at the streaking menace in the sky. The object did not appear to be a plane, jet, or other kind of conventional aircraft. Inside the oval corona of multicolored light, a darker central object, like a hazy shadow, could be dimly made out. Unlike a rocket or missile, there was no sign of any fiery exhaust. But it seemed to be following a beam of faint, milky luminescence that extended in front and slanted downward like a bridge from sky to earth.

"Bash!" Sandy whispered. "I’m sure that glowing beam comes down right at Swift Enterprises!"

"It looks like it’s going to crash!" gulped Bashalli in helpless dread. "What if it blows up?"

Alerted by the siren, Mrs. Swift had hurried outside and now clung to the two girls. All three were trembling. Second by second the rocket of light drew closer.

"Do you suppose it’s the one from outer space that Tom was expecting?" Bashalli asked shakily.

"It must be!" Mrs. Swift answered. "Mr. Swift is on the phone trying to get in touch with the plant right now. If only we could tell where it will land, we might—"

She stopped, thunderstruck. Both girls exclaimed in surprise. The guiding ray of light had vanished! The glowing object stopped dead in the middle of the night sky, as if waiting. Then a new sky-trail appeared, curving off toward the southeast. But Sandy and Bash barely had enough time to register this fact. Moving like lightning, the weird craft had flicked across the sky and silently vanished beyond the far horizon.

"Oh, thank goodness—thank goodness!" Mrs. Swift murmured softly.

"It seems like a miracle!" Sandy nestled against her mother. "I wonder if Dad and Tom did something to keep the rocket from landing."

"Let’s check and make sure that they’re all right," Sandy’s mother urged.

Rushing back inside, they found Mr. Swift on the telephone talking to Tom. He passed the receiver to Sandy, who held it so the others could hear.

"Don’t worry, sis, everything’s under control," he assured her. "What’s that? No, we can’t take any credit for saving Shopton. In fact, we’re as mystified as you are about the rocket veering away. But remember that message we picked up about
‘continue course’
?"

"You think that’s the answer?"

"It could have meant to continue course beyond Shopton to another landing place."

As Tom hung up, Bud came rushing into the oscilloscope room, where he and Tom and posted themselves. He was waving several large photographic prints.

"Here are pictures of the rocket!" he exclaimed. "The department got some beauties."

Tom examined the prints eagerly. The enhanced photos showed a strange-looking vessel, far different from any missile designed on earth. Cigar-shaped, it had a series of round cuplike protrusions, running from small ones at the nose to large ones at the tail.

"Amazing!" murmured Tom. "I’ve never seen fins like that on any projectile, foreign or American. They’re worth careful study."

"Then you’re sure it’s the rocket from your space friends?" Bud asked.

"I’d say that there’s no doubt about it. It contains those specimens of planet life we’ve been expecting."

"Then why did the rocket keep going? I thought it was being sent right here to you."

The young inventor frowned, mentioning his theory about the "continue course" message. "Another move by our invisible enemy," he said. "Or—" Tom continued thoughtfully, "there’s another possibility. Our space friends may have decided on their own to have the rocket continue on toward the Atlantic."

Bud regarded his friend in surprise. "Why?"

"To cool it off," Tom explained. "They may have figured that was the only way to keep the specimens inside alive until we find out how to open it in the surface environment without injuring the contents."

The phone rang and Tom scooped it off the hook.

"George Dilling, Tom," came the voice over the wire. "I contacted the Coast Guard and had this flash."

"What’s the word?"

"The mystery meteor was sighted heading out to sea at 9:27! Here’s the estimated course, speed, and position—"

Dilling rattled off a set of figures. Tom jotted them down on his desk pad.

"Okay. Thanks, George. Keep contacting all ships, planes, air bases, weather stations, or any other observers who might be able to give us a report. This could be an all-night job."

Dilling chuckled wryly. "You’re telling me!"

"Bud’s with me. We’ll come over to Communications and help you," Tom said, then hung up.

When Tom’s father arrived at the facility, they began making hurried phone calls, contacting numerous individuals, government agencies, and points along the coast, hoping to garner further information.

"It was invisible to radar," Mr. Swift reported. "National defense didn’t go on alert until it had completely left U.S. airspace."

Bud was studying a breaking-news internet site. "Hey! A report on the rocket’s coming in!" he exclaimed suddenly.

Tom and Mr. Swift dashed to Bud’s side. The message was from a coastwise oil tanker, the
Petrol Queen,
and told of sighting a strange, meteorlike object in the sky. This was followed some minutes later by a similar report from a Greek freighter, the
Pantheon,
bound for Norfolk, Virginia. Both gave latitude and longitude at time of sighting.

Tom plotted all three positions on a huge wall map. The course of the rocket immediately became clear. "Heading very slightly south of due east," he commented.

"Trouble is," said Mr. Swift, "there’s no telling when or where the rocket may strike the water."

As the evening wore on, a steady stream of phone calls, radio flashes, and reports via the Swifts’ private videophone television system, came pouring in. Some were eyewitness accounts of the rocket from planes and ships at sea. Others were second- or third-hand versions relayed by microwave stations and ham operators. All indicated that the mysterious sky traveler had continued on a southeasterly course. They even received a report from Ken Horton, stationed in Swift Enterprises’ outpost in space, in orbit 22,300 miles above Ecuador. Horton relayed word from the space station’s astronomy staff that an anomalous fast-moving light had been observed over the Atlantic through a break in the cloud cover.

Although the reports trickled in at intervals, this did not reflect the actual times when the sightings were made. "It’s unbelievable!" Mr. Swift noted. "Sightings separated by thousands of miles were made almost simultaneously."

"The rocket—or whatever we ought to call it—must be traveling at hundreds of miles per
second!
That’s a serious percent of the speed of light!"

As midnight approached, the reports dwindled and nothing more was heard. Bud finally went home to bed, but Tom and his father remained at the plant, sleeping in shifts on their office cots. But no further messages came during the night.

"It’s odd no one has reported where the craft landed," Mr. Swift mused as he and Tom had a hearty breakfast served by Chow. The were watching the early morning news programs, which were full of excited reports of the mysterious "fireball," when the red signal light of the nearby videophone unit flashed on. "I’ll get it!" exclaimed Tom, jumping up from his chair.

He switched on the videophone and the face of Kaye, Enterprises’ Key West telecaster, appeared on the screen.

"Any news?" Tom asked eagerly.

"The payoff. A plane from Nantes, France, landed at Funchal on Madeira Island early this morning. The pilot reports that he saw a glowing object plunge into the sea about 300 miles north of the island."

"Did he spot the position?"

"He didn’t even take a bearing, so all I can give you is a guesswork range of latitude and longitude. I’ve marked the possible area on this chart." Kaye held it up for Tom to see, adding, "Don’t take too much stock in my figuring, though. It could be way off."

Tom copied down the information, thanked Kaye, and signed off. The elder Swift watched with interest as his son plotted the area on their own wall map.