Tom Swift and His Ultrasonic Cycloplane

THE TOM SWIFT INVENTION ADVENTURES

TOM SWIFT

AND HIS ULTRASONIC

CYCLOPLANE

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

"YOU mean this little gadget can rev up a big enough storm to fly your new cyclone-plane?"

Through the greenish quartz-glass window of his protective helmet, Bud Barclay stared in amazement at his best friend, Tom Swift. The young inventor grinned. "An ultrasonic storm, Bud. You can’t see it or hear it, but it packs a terrific wallop! By the way, pal," he added, "it’s
cycloplane.
Don’t make it a worse tongue-twister than it already is!"

The two youths and Hank Sterling, the blond, rugged chief engineer of Swift Enterprises, were in one of Tom’s private laboratories, testing a small ultrasonic wave generator which the young prodigy had designed. All three wore special fiberglass helmets, aprons, and gauntlets to protect them from the dangerous but invisible pulsations of silent energy.

"As the electric current oscillates, this device beams out intensely powerful sound waves—far above the range of human hearing," Tom explained. All eyes focused on the gleaming steel cylinder, encircled by slotted openings, which housed the generator.

"Sure looks harmless enough," Bud remarked.

"Don’t let its looks fool you, flyboy!" Tom retorted. "Those ceramic disks in there are vibrating over five
million
times a second. With waves of that frequency, you can—"

"Tom! Look out!" The sudden yell of warning came from Hank Sterling on the other side of the workbench. As he spoke, he flicked off the master switch on the electrical control panel. Glancing down, Tom saw a jagged tongue of fire dart up his shop apron. A second later the whole apron front burst into flames.

"Jetz!" gulped Bud. Hank vaulted over the corner of the workbench to help Tom beat out the flames. But Bud acted even quicker. Grabbing the laboratory fire extinguisher off the wall, he upended the tank and sprayed Tom with a lather of chemical foam which instantly doused the flames.

"Th-thanks, Bud—and you too, Hank!" Shuddering with relief, the young scientist-inventor sank down on a laboratory stool and pulled off his helmet. Hank and Bud followed suit.

"Whew! Close call!" Tom muttered, managing a sickly grin. His face was pale and clammy with perspiration, and the air was draped with wispy wreaths of smoke that stung the eye. Hank helped him remove the blackened remains of his shop apron while Bud switched the lab air-circulation system to high power.

"Sure you’re all right, pal?" Bud demanded anxiously. Tom nodded and Bud chuckled. "I always knew your inventions were hot stuff, genius boy, but not that hot!"

As Tom flashed back an appreciative wince, the strongly-built, dark-haired youth heaved a sigh and gave his friend a serious look. "All kidding aside, what made your apron catch fire?" Bud asked in a puzzled voice. "I was half afraid we were dealing with more of those antiproton effects—you know, the rays that disintegrate you while making a nice fireworks display!"

"Blame the ultrasonic waves," Tom replied ruefully, "not to mention some carelessness on my part. The nodes of concentrated energy heated the cotton fabric right up to the kindling point. I told you these high-frequency vibrations were dangerous!"

"Want to go on with the test, skipper?" asked Hank.

Tom shook his head. "Not now, Hank—I’ve had it for this morning."

"Can’t blame you for being a little shook up!" Bud punned.

"Before we do any more work on the ultrasonic generator, we’d better have some fireproof suits made of the new asbestalon formula." Tom jotted down a few calculations on a sheet of paper. "Yes, I’d say asbestalon-four should be sufficient."

"I’ll take care of it pronto!" Hank promised.

As Hank left the room, the phone bleeped. Tom scooped up the receiver. "Tom Swift speaking."

"This is Dad, son," came a quiet voice over the line. "I’ve just had some interesting news. Can you come over to the office?"

"Sure thing, Dad—right away!"

After cleaning up a bit and changing his jersey, Tom waved so-long to Bud and hurried out of the laboratory, hopping into a small waiting vehicle called a nanocar. Gunning the electric engine, he threw in the clutch and went humming across the grounds of Swift Enterprises. This four-mile-square enclosure, crisscrossed with airstrips, was the experimental station where the famous father-and-son team of scientific innovators developed their new inventions.

A few minutes later Tom strode into the big modernistic office in the main administration building which he shared with his father. In addition to the broad executive desks, drawing-board flatscreen terminals, and comfortable leather lounge chairs, the office contained models of many of the Swifts’ greatest inventions—not only those of Tom and his father Damon, but inventions going back almost a century to the era of Tom’s famous great-grandfather, the original Tom Swift. Among the models were a motorcycle, a winged dirigible, an antique photo-telephone, and a spacesuit replica designed by Tom’s father for use in the American space shuttle.

One long shelf was devoted to Tom’s own accomplishments. There was a silver, needle-nosed replica of Tom’s
Star Spear,
the rocket ship in which he had pioneered a successful journey into outer space, and a blue plastic model of the jetmarine, a craft which he had used in hunting down a ring of undersea pirates. The largest model displayed Tom’s giant robot in miniature, but the newest addition was a replica of the spider-shaped atmosphere-making machine that Tom had taken to Earth’s new moon, the phantom satellite Nestria—a peril-fraught voyage from which he and Bud had only recently returned.

"What’s up, Dad?" Damon Swift turned from his work with a smile. There was a close resemblance between father and son, especially noticeable in their deep-set blue eyes and clean-cut features, although Tom was the taller and rangier of the two—and his hair was still blond.

"Sit down, son. How long has it been since you’ve seen Cousin Ed Longstreet?"

"Must be a couple years!" Tom grinned as he settled his lanky frame into a deep-cushioned green leather chair in
faux
-50’s style. "What far corner of the globe is he poking into these days?"

"I haven’t kept up with his latest travels. But here—read this message I received this morning." Tom took the email hard copy which his father handed him.

HEY DAMON, ANNE, TOM, SANDY—HOPE I DIDN’T LEAVE ANYONE OUT—ARRIVING SHOPTON AIRPORT 2:30 P.M. TODAY FROM CHICAGO. GOT SOMETHING UNUSUAL WHICH I WOULD LIKE YOU BOTH TO EXAMINE WITH YOUR SCIENTIFIC MINDS!

ED LONGSTREET

"‘Something unusual’?" Tom’s forehead puckered into a frown. "What do you suppose it is, Dad?"

Mr. Swift shrugged and replied with a chuckle, "Haven’t the faintest idea. But knowing Cousin Ed, it might be anything from a new species of tropical butterfly to a shrunken head!"

As Tom burst into laughter, the elder scientist added, "The point is, I’m taking off for the Citadel right after lunch. Could you meet him?"

"Sure—be glad to, Dad." The Citadel was the Swifts’ atomic energy plant in the Southwest. Research work for the government required frequent trips there from Shopton in upstate New York, where Swift Enterprises was located.

Promptly at 2:21 that afternoon, Tom and Bud Barclay arrived at the compact Shopton airport. In order to carry an extra passenger, they had taken Bud’s red convertible—license plate TSE TSE FLY—instead of Tom’s two-seater sports car. Minutes later, a big silver jetliner swooped in for a landing and discharged its passengers.

Tom pointed to a slender, bareheaded figure coming down the rampway corridor. Ed Longstreet was a slightly built man, about twenty-five years old, with blond, thinning hair.

"Sorry Dad couldn’t be here," Tom apologized, after introducing Bud and explaining Mr. Swift’s absence. "So what’s all this about a mysterious object you want us to examine?" he added with a twinkle.

"Right here in my briefcase," Ed replied. "You can examine it when we get to the plant."

Bud shot Ed a shrewd look. "That’s a pretty narrow briefcase, Ed. Just how small
are
they making shrunken heads these days?" The world traveler laughed in response—but wouldn’t divulge his secret.

On the way back to Swift Enterprises, Tom chatted with his cousin. From their conversation, Bud learned that Ed, whose family was well off, was a seasoned wanderer and tourist, a dabbler in various fields of science, and an expert linguist.

When they arrived at Tom’s office, Ed Longstreet unlocked his briefcase and took out a strange figurine. About twelve inches high, its shape was half human, half animal, crudely rendered. The queer object shimmered with a beautiful yellow-orange iridescence.

"What is it?" asked Bud, staring in fascination. "Some kind of kangaroo-woman?"

"That’s what I’m hoping Tom can tell me."

"Looks like some kind of primitive animal god or tribal figure," Tom remarked in a slow, puzzled voice. "Where’d you get it, Ed?"

"Picked it up in a San Francisco curio shop on my way back from Japan," his cousin replied.

The young inventor pointed to the figure’s kangaroo-like stomach pouch. "It’s meant to represent a marsupial, obviously. That may mean it came from the South Pacific area, somewhere around Australia."

"What I want to know is, what’s it made of?" Bud inquired.

Tom shook his head, pinching his lower lip thoughtfully. "That’s what has me stumped. So far as I recall, I’ve never seen any substance quite like this. Of course this yellow-orange color may indicate some kind of an oxide, due to weathering."

With his fingernail, Tom scratched the bottom of the figure slightly, then hefted and tapped the object, noting its metallic ring. "Wait a minute!" he exclaimed suddenly. "I may be wrong, but I’ve got a hunch about this. Let’s hop over to the materials lab." Using the ridewalk moving-ramp system, they were effortlessly conveyed to an all-glass laboratory devoted to materials fabrication and analysis. Here the young inventor examined the statue quickly under an electron-wave spectroscope. When he raised his head from the instrument, his blue eyes sparkled with excitement.

"Well give out, genius boy!" urged Bud tensely. "What is it?"

"It’s an ore of holmium—pure holmia—one of the rare earths!" Tom replied.

Bud’s face remained blank. "Rare
earths?
What are they?"

"A group of very rare metals with tongue-twisting names like dysprosium, praseodymium, ytterbium—"

"Okay, okay, professor!" Bud put in hastily. "Just tell us what’s so unusual about them."

"For one thing, they practically never occur in ore deposits all by themselves—at least not so far as modern science knows," Tom explained. "Ordinarily they have to be separated, in tiny quantities, from other substances like monazite sand, which is used in atomic energy production. Some of them develop an unusual magnetic property, ferrimagnetism, under certain conditions."

"Then where would the primitive people who made this statue get a whole hunk of this stuff?" Bud demanded. "Or is this really modern art from Manhattan?"

"Good question. I wish I knew! It ‘reads’ as ancient, though."

"Does holmium have any value, aside from being so rare?" Ed Longstreet asked.

"Yes," Tom replied. "It can be used in making alloys, special glass and electronic parts, not to mention the various hush-hush applications that are rumored. And scientists could probably find a lot more uses if there were a large enough supply."

"Hey!" Bud exclaimed, bouncing off his laboratory stool. "Then if we could find out where this object came from, it might lead to a valuable strike—a rare earths strike!"

Tom nodded. "It could be a tremendous discovery. But that leaves us with our big question, guys—
where in the world
did it come from?"

THE THREE were silent for a moment, contemplating the mystery—and the intriguing possibilities. "Afraid I can’t be of much help," said Ed Longstreet apologetically. "I questioned the curio-shop owner, but the only thing he could tell me was that it arrived in a consignment of art objects he’d bought at auction. He says he’d never run across anything like it."

Tom drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the workbench. "Maybe an art expert could help us." Picking up the phone, he put through a long-distance call to Grandyke University, which was located in the next county. He spoke with Professor Feeney, a specialist in the traditional art of the South Pacific cultures, who promised to come out and examine the strange figure. Tom then contacted Dr. Gorde, the curator of the Museum of Historic Sculpture and Carvings in New York City.

"So you called Ward Feeney first, eh?" he grumped humorously. Tom knew the two men were close friends. "Well, when that old quack is done looking at it, swing around my way and I’ll give you the
real
lowdown."