Tom Swift and His Diving Seacopter (7 page)

Tom turned to look at his father, astonished. "Dad—this can’t be a coincidence!"

"The exact area your two friends want to explore for the sunken city!" Mr. Swift marveled. "This makes no sense to me at all. The only connection between these two projects is the involvement of Swift Enterprises. Is it conceivable that our space friends anticipate your upcoming seacopter operation? That they have the ability to actually
see into the future?"

"If the rocket did come down here, that would agree pretty well with earlier reports on its course," said Tom.

Mr. Swift nodded. "You’re right, son. As scientists we can’t fight the facts, however mystifying they may be. But I’m afraid that still leaves a vast area of the Atlantic in which to search for the rocket."

As the two sat thinking, the telephone rang with an internal call. Mr. Swift picked it up. The scientist’s face was troubled as he hung up a few minutes later.

"What’s the matter, Dad? Something wrong?" Tom asked, worried.

"That was Harlan Ames," he answered. "His contacts just reported to him that Munson Wickliffe and two of his employees flew out by private jet early this morning, just before daybreak. Their announced destination is—"

"I can guess," Tom said, his face grim. "Madeira Island!"

"Precisely."

Tom stood at the window for a moment, looking out over the vast experimental station. "You know what that means. Wickliffe knew about the revised destination of the rocket before we did. He may even have suggested it." He turned to his father, every muscle primed for action. "We can’t afford to wait a minute longer, Dad. I’ve got to get the seacopter in the water and beat those renegades to the punch—or some of the most important scientific secrets in human history will be lost to us!"

TOM SWIFT and Swift Enterprises shifted into high gear to meet the new objective. The determined young inventor turned his attention to the center unit of the diving seacopter, a remaining problem. Tom was not fully satisfied with the performance of the rotor blades in a tank test. Close examination had revealed hairline cracks in the blades.

"Perhaps," he mused, "the mechanism for changing the blade pitch could be improved along with the blade design." For the balance of the morning and into the afternoon he struggled with the problem, using a hydrodynamic test chamber to study the play of fluid around various shapes and types of prop blade. By two o’clock he had sketched out a new design. The blade was slightly more slender and more squared-off on the end than the old version. Tom immediately sent the new design over to Hank Sterling, his chief engineer, a fast and reliable worker and a good friend. "Have a new set of blades cast and machined according to these drawings, will you, Hank?" he directed. "And tell Art Wiltessa to stand by for some changes in the blade-pitch mechanism."

"You don’t want to make a prototype for testing first?" asked Hank in surprise.

"No," Tom said brusquely. "We’ll have to trust my figures—and my instincts."

Working round the clock, a new set of blades was cast, machined, and installed. Then the rotor section of the seacopter was doused in the pressure tank and a test run off under high speed and pressure. When Tom checked the blades in the gamma-ray fluoroscope the following day, there was no sign of any crack or flaw.

Bud clapped Tom on the back. "Congratulations, pal! Looks like you’ve done it again!"

In the meantime Tom had perfected the scheme for controlling the blade pitch of the improved rotors. Art Wiltessa promised to have the equipment installed and running within two to three days.

"I was hoping for two to three
hours,
Art," responded Tom. "But I’d settle for ten."

"Done, boss!" Art came back. "Don’t ask me how."

"I won’t!"

By lunchtime the next day, Tom Swift’s revolutionary diving seacopter was assembled and gleaming in the Shopton sunlight!

"Brand my pie tins!" Chow cried, standing next to Tom and Bud. "That thing looks like a combination flyin’ saucer and fry-skillet. You sure it won’t leak this time?"

"It’s passed all its tests, Chow," answered Tom. "At least, the three sections have individually—the two compartments, and the prop-rotor unit. But we’ll have to wring the kinks out of ’er on the way to the city of gold!"

"She got a name?" asked the cook. "Every ship’s got to have a name."

"Yep," was the answer. "I’m calling her the
Ocean Arrow."

"Each half does look a little like an arrowhead," Bud observed.

"Yes, but that’s not the only reason for the name. Great-Grandpa Swift named one of his first inventions, his motor boat, the
Arrow
. This is kind of a tribute to him." Tom ran his fingertips along the crimson hull. "But don’t go looking for a champagne bottle to christen her with, Chow—we don’t have time. We leave this afternoon!"

"I shore hope that-there
we
includes
me,"
said Chow in a slightly plaintive tone of voice.

"Sure does," laughed Tom. "We have room for a crew of five—you, me, and Bud, and George Braun and Ham Teller. But George and Ham will have to do their archaeological work during the off-hours until we find that space rocket."

Bud asked, "Why only five? Didn’t you say the seacopter could hold six?"

"Yes, but I’m taking along a lot of extra equipment—my new Eye-Spy camera that I showed you, the Damonscope radiation-detector, and a device Dad came up with to detect the presence and precise composition of metals from a distance, under water."

By late afternoon the three
Ocean Arrow
sections had been separately loaded aboard a convoy of special wide-body flatbeds for transportation to a pier Enterprises had rented in Ogdensburg. From there the seacopter would fly up the St. Lawrence River to the Gulf, and then on out into the Atlantic Ocean.

At the pier, large mobile cranes swung the sections of the craft together, and automatic locking bolts and a sealer flange drew the seacopter together into a single watertight unit. The
Ocean Arrow
was ready and waiting for her maiden voyage!

As the cranes began to drive off, Chow said to Tom, "Say, boss, where’re they going? Won’t you need ’em to put your sub into th’ water?"

"No, Chow—get on board and watch how we do it." Chow, Bud, George, and Ham clambered up on to the top of the hull by means of an extensible metal ladder, which folded up into a sealed locker in the hull when not in use. Then they entered through the two topside hatches, George and Ham into Compartment B and Bud and Chow, followed by Tom, into Compartment A, which would normally serve as the main control deck.

Tom waved at his father and Hank Sterling, who stood on the pier, and then turned his attention to the controls. They heard a soft whirring sound, then a
thunk!,
and then with a slight jolt the forty-foot craft began to move toward the edge of the pier.

"Brand my sea monkeys!" exclaimed Chow, craning his neck as he looked out the viewport. "Is somebody pushin’ us?"

"The
Arrow
has two sets of small, flexible tank treads made of Tomasite, one set per compartment," Tom explained. "Each set consists of three tread units, which can be extended or retracted as needed. Most of the time we’ll keep them hidden away behind panels on the bottom of the hull."

The seacopter crawled down a broad ramp and, without hesitation, continued on into the waters of the St. Lawrence River. There it settled down a ways, floating with the waterline about a foot below the lower rim of the viewpane.

"She rides a little low in the water," Bud remarked.

Tom nodded. "That’s because of the weight of the prop-drive section. Each individual compartment would float quite a bit higher." The young inventor now intercommed Compartment B. "How’s it going in there, guys?"

"Ship-shape, Cap’n Swift," came the voice of Hamilton Teller. "The water’s staying outside where it belongs."

"Let’s go under," said Tom. The ship began to vibrate as powerful steam turbines started the blades spinning. The river water was flung upward through the central prop well, and the seacopter lurched downward, the blade pitch adjusting automatically as the blades bit more deeply into the water.

Bud cheered as the viewpane was completely submerged. "From tank to boat to submarine!"

"It’s a might wonderful thing," said Chow in awe. "We could go up the Rio Grande under water one o’ these days, mebbe."

"Mebbe," Tom agreed, thrilled at the performance of his new invention. Now he activated the steam jets. With a rush of bubbles the
Ocean Arrow
shot forward into the river.

Bud pulled his seatbelt taut. "Fast as a greased barracuda!"

"But I don’t want to travel all the way downriver while submerged," Tom said. "So hang on." He cut the power to the blades. As they slowed, the seacopter seemed to leap upward and broke the surface.

Tom eased one of the control levers forward, and the rotor engines began to sound again. "Now we’ll become a
flying
seacopter!"

With the pitch of the blades reversed, the ship mounted up higher and higher on its cushion of downthrusting air, departing from the water completely. After a moment its ascent slowed, and Tom checked a near-range radar altimeter. "Eight feet up!—better than I expected."

After radioing his father with a report on the performance of the
Ocean Arrow,
Tom turned to his companions and announced, "Well, crew, let’s go rocket hunting!"

He opened up the steam thrusters, and in less than a minute the seacopter was jetting along the river at high speed—destination: Atlantis!

HURRIED HOURS later the
Ocean Arrow
was skimming along above the cold Atlantic swells on an east-southeast heading.

"You gonna fly ’er the whole way, son?" Chow inquired. "That ocean view out there is gettin’ a mite monotonous, if’n you wanna know the truth."

"Aw come on, pal, look at those stars!" Bud teased. "People pay good money for picturesque ocean voyages." It was mid-evening, and the sky was alive with sparkling light.

"That they do, buddy boy," the Texan conceded. "But I got caught in one o’ them ocean storms once—a typhoon!—and it shook me up right bad. Say there Tom, how’d this air-boat handle a storm like that?"

"Like a dream," Tom replied. "Remember, we can go under the storm any time we want to." He glanced back at Bud. "And by the way, flyboy, doesn’t this look a little familiar?"

"Should it?"

"We’ve been here before—admittedly quite a bit lower down and further south. We’re crossing the Atlantic Ridge!"

Bud grinned and nodded, remembering the sight of the vast range of rugged peaks that splits the Atlantic floor in two. "That was quite a sight when we crossed over in the
Nemo,"
he remarked, naming Tom’s jetmarine.

Their immediate goal was the town of Vila da Praia da Vitória on the island of Terceira in the Azores. Here the
Ocean Arrow
would be berthed for the night at a dock rented by Swift Enterprises. The arrival of the expedition had purposefully not been publicized, but when the seacopter approached the dock—Tom having set it down on the surface like a conventional marine craft—he was dismayed to see that a small crowd had gathered to watch, though it was well after midnight.

"I guess word gets around," Bud remarked.

"Especially where Swift Enterprises is involved," was Tom’s rueful comment.

The five were greeted effusively at the nearby bed-and-breakfast where they were to stay the night. In halting English, with many interruptions in frustrated Portuguese, the proprietor asked if they had come to "search in the ocean for the great sky-rocket."

"Why do you ask?" Tom inquired.

"Ah, Senhor, everyone knows of the thing that fell from the sky!" the man replied. "But I must tell you, here in Terceira you are too far north. It fell closer to the Madeiras, our rivals to the south. Alas, they will get the tourists from it, I think."

Bud asked if any others had come to the island in recent days, seeking information about the rocket. "For example, there’s a friend of ours, Dr. Munson Wickliffe, who thought he might meet up with us here. Have you heard of him?"

The proprietor squinted his eyes and scratched his head. "No, no others have come—and I know everyone—and if I do not, my cousin Boli does! But I tell you what, this man you seek, this Wickliffe—you should ask Professor Taclos."

"Who’s that?" George asked. "What sort of Professor is he?"

"You have not heard of him? He lives on Madeira, on the sea coast outside Porto do Moniz. He works for, how do I say?—the Institute for the Study of Weather, at the University of Lisbon."

Chow snorted. "We don’t need t’ talk about the weather."

The man shook his head. "You do not understand. He has an astronomy-observatory, and much equipment. Also a special scientific boat, a big one, with a—" He thought for a moment, finding no words. "Well, it is round, like a metal gourd, and you let it down into the deep waters on cables, with people inside."

"A diving bell!" exclaimed Tom. He glanced at his companions. "That could be how Wickliffe plans to reach the rocket!" He warmly thanked the proprietor for his information.

By sunrise the next morning, with only a few hours sleep, the five oceannauts were on the move as the
Ocean Arrow
sped above the waves in the direction of the large stretch of the Atlantic where the subocean search would commence. Before submerging, Tom radioed Harlan Ames in Shopton and asked that he try to contact Professor Taclos.

"I’ll do my best," responded the security chief. "And if I can’t get in touch with him, I’ll at least get an address for you, so you can pay him a visit."

Reversing the blade pitch, Tom now sent the seacopter diving down into the shadowy turquoise depths. It plunged at a thrilling pace, like an elevator.

"This is marvelous!" Ham Teller exclaimed. He had traded places with Chow in Compartment A for the day, as Tom wished everyone aboard to become somewhat familiar with the ship’s control procedures. "I only wish more light penetrated down here. The view would be tremendous."