Tom Swift and His Deep Sea Hydrodome

THE TOM SWIFT INVENTION ADVENTURES

TOM SWIFT

AND HIS DEEP-SEA

HYDRODOME

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

"SWING the searchlight around, will you, Dad? I see something unusual!"

Tom Swift’s blue eyes lit up with excitement as he steered the
Sea Hound,
the latest model of his diving seacopter, though the inky depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

"Port or starboard?" asked Damon Swift.

"Starboard, just a few degrees," Tom replied. The lanky, blond-haired inventor was cruising with his distinguished scientist father about a hundred feet above the ocean floor near the Atlantic Ridge, the great jagged chain of undersea peaks that splits the broad Atlantic in two. They were in the realm of eternal night, far below the depths to which the sun’s rays penetrate.

Mr. Swift gasped in surprise as he swiveled the forward aqualamp, the powerful electronic searchlight mounted on the hull above their heads. In its sunlike glare a myriad of huge bubbles could be seen billowing upward in a steady stream from the ocean bottom. The stream appeared to be issuing from a small fissure near the base of a blocky mountain whose unusual shape, squat and almost flat-sided, had attracted their notice moments before.

"Great Scott! This is unbelievable!" the elder scientist exclaimed. "The way those bubbles are jetting upward—!"

"I’ve never seen anything like it!" Tom agreed, as he stared in fascination. "This could be a fantastic discovery!"

On an earlier cruise in his first seacopter, the
Ocean Arrow,
young Tom had discovered an underwater city of gold in a hidden subocean canyon near the Madeira Islands, ancient ruins thought to be remains of fabled Atlantis. On that occasion, a pressing search for a lost space capsule had prevented a more detailed exploration of the ruins. Now he and his father were making a return trip to survey the strange sunken civilization and conduct underwater tests there. But only halfway to their goal, a new mystery beckoned.

"Dad," Tom said, making some quick calculations in his head, "those bubbles might be helium gas!"

"You mean because of the tremendous speed with which they’re rising?" remarked Mr. Swift, who was as intrigued as his son by the phenomenon. "It hardly seems likely."

Tom pointed out, "Other bubbles we’ve seen so far have been just lazily drifting up."

"You have a point there," his father admitted excitedly.

"I didn’t know helium could be found underwater," remarked the third member of the expedition, Slim Davis. An experienced pilot for Swift Enterprises, the Swifts’ famed scientific and invention installation in Shopton, New York, Slim had recently completed a course of training in guiding the seacopter, Tom’s remarkable "underwater helicopter" capable of probing the aquatic depths with unequalled maneuverability.

"It’s rare anywhere on earth," Tom agreed. "But radioactive decay can produce pockets here and there. By the looks of it, this could be a big one—maybe the biggest ever discovered."

"You can tell that it’s helium just by looking?" Slim persisted.

Tom’s father answered as he gazed out the viewport. "It’s a possibility. Helium, because of its low density, is very buoyant. That would account for the bubbles’ fast-streaming action." The elder inventor's keen eyes glinted as he added, "Son, if your hunch is right, this could be a discovery of top scientific importance!"

Tom gave a tense nod. "I know. At present our country can get helium only from certain natural gas wells in Texas and Kansas. Those sources don’t produce a great deal, and may fail completely. If scientists had an unlimited supply from under the ocean—"

Father and son looked intently at each other as Mr. Swift lay a hand on Tom’s shoulder. "Don’t get your hopes up too soon," he cautioned. "The gas is still deep in the ocean. And we don’t even know that it
is
helium."

Tom grinned. "Right. It
could
be hydrogen, or argon or neon or other gases."

"Can’t you use the long-range spectrometer on it?" Slim suggested.

"The streaming motion fluctuates too much to get a fix," was Tom’s reply. "But," he declared firmly, "I intend to get the answer another way. I’ll go out in a Fat Man suit and collect a sample for testing!"

"I was about to suggest the same thing," said Mr. Swift. "In fact, I’ll accompany you, Tom. I’d like to take a closer look at the sea bed next to that fissure."

Tom steered the
Sea Hound
closer to the plume of hurtling bubbles. Then, pulling a lever on the control panel, he cut the steam-driven directional jets. The seacopter slowed to a halt as its whirring central rotors held the sleek red saucer suspended motionless in the ocean depths, holding it down against its buoyancy.

"Are you sure this is such a good idea?" objected Slim nervously. "I mean, we’re right next to the base of this mountain, and its sides look pretty steep. I heard about—"

Tom finished for him. "You’re thinking of what happened to the
Ocean Arrow
when we found the city of gold."

"Well—didn’t vibrations from the rotors bring down the side of a mountain on top of you?"

"You’re right to be concerned," Tom responded with a reassuring smile. "But we’ve made some improvements to the seacop’s design since then. On the
Sea Hound
our two central rotors automatically keep themselves in sync with one another. They pretty much cancel each other’s vibrations. And the redesigned rotor well has a damping effect."

"You needn’t worry, Slim," Damon Swift added. "We should be safe from anything short of an undersea earthquake."

As Slim took over the controls, Tom and his father crossed the small forward cabin to the hatchway that led to the airlock compartment, where the Fat Man suits were stored. This expanded chamber for underwater access was another new feature incorporated into the
Sea Hound
’s design.

His hand on the hatchway lever, Mr. Swift glanced at the dials and gauges that monitored exterior pressure and temperature. "Our deep-sea excursion will be under pressures higher than even the Fat Men are used to. But they should handle it without difficulty." As he stepped over the hatch threshold, he suggested over his shoulder, "You’ll want a float balloon in case you want to send up a marker, son. If the flow diminishes we might have a difficult time finding the exact site again."

"Good idea. I’ll take one." Tom unlocked a stowage compartment and took out one of the "balloons," which actually was a hollow metal sphere filled with compressed air, and which included a radio-and-sonar locating beacon. He attached this to a portable pack containing a great length of fine-gage nylon cable rolled about a drum with a self-winding mechanism. Finally he picked up a metal vacuum flask, self-sealing, in which he would collect the gas sample.

"Now to climb into the thing—not so easy a task for a grown-up," murmured Tom’s father, eyeing his Fat Man.

"Want some help, Dad?"

"No, I can manage."

The Fat Man suits were egg-shaped one-person submersibles, sporting robotic arms and legs and a reinforced transparent viewdome on top. Completely self-contained, they were designed to withstand crushing subsea pressures. The front halves of the suits stood open like books while stored side-by-side in the airlock chamber. The occupant was to step into his suit backwards, then swing it closed and seal it.

"Watch your step in the ooze out there," Tom warned his father as Damon Swift squirmed into his suit.

"Roger, Captain!" Mr. Swift replied. "That is—aye-aye."

As Tom switched on his air supply, he glanced at his father. His feeling of family pride was mixed with a slight twinge of disquiet.
Seems funny to be doing this with Dad instead of Bud,
he thought.

Bud Barclay, an athletic youth Tom’s own age, was the young inventor’s best friend and constant comrade. During a recent encounter with criminals while on Swift Enterprises business in New Guinea, both Bud and Slim Davis had suffered physically. Slim had quickly recovered, but Bud had born the brunt of the enemy’s electric-shock weapon, and the effects had run deeper than first suspected. A brief hospital stay had been extended, and Tom—not wanting to proceed with his planned trip to the sunken city in the absence of his pal—had opted instead to make a return visit to Earth’s tiny new moon Nestria, there to make scientific observations of a strange device left by extraterrestrials.

When Tom returned to the earth he had hoped to find Bud fully recovered. But although the young pilot had been released from the hospital, the company physician, Dr. Simpson, had directed Bud to take two further weeks of complete rest. When Tom offered to postpone his undersea trip a second time, Bud had insisted that his friend go ahead without him while Bud recuperated at the home of his parents in San Francisco.

Without Bud at his side Tom couldn’t help feeling a little lost.

In the forward compartment Slim shoved the control wheel and the seacopter descended gently to the bottom. A moment later the hatch in the ship’s hull opened and Tom stepped out, followed by his father.

The two aquanauts used the air-jets built into their suits to glide closer to the fissure in the ocean floor. Landing, they began waddling cautiously through the muck, making their way forward into the bright cone radiating from the aqualamp. Guided by its beam, they headed toward the source of the bubbles.

The ocean floor was completely barren of vegetation at this depth. The only signs of life were occasional glimmers of eerie light from strange-looking fish and other sea creatures flitting and hovering in the dark outside the lamp beam.

The bubbles were issuing furiously from a spot on the broad ledge they were now traversing. There the ooze seethed like a giant stewpot. On their left the ledge fell away sharply, the slope of the undersea mountain ending abruptly a couple dozen yards further below at a wide, flat plain.

"The geology of this area is odd," Mr. Swift mused over his suit sonophone. "I see signs of some recent volcanic activity." Tom agreed.

Tom and his father tested each step with the Fat Men’s thick metal legs, at the same time probing the sea floor with their own built-in suit searchlights. Finally coming within reach of the bubbling area, they separated. While Mr. Swift moved closer to the mountain on the far side of the jet of bubbles, Tom approached the fissure at the center of the roiling ooze and stood, braced but precariously balanced, just outside the uprushing stream.

Maneuvering the mechanical arms, Tom planted a self-digging spike in the bottom and released the marker buoy, which instantly fled upward out of sight. Then he upended the vacuum flask just as a bubble was forming and caught some of the gas neatly inside.

"So far, so good," the young scientist signaled his father. "I just hope it
is
helium." After the bottle had capped itself, he turned back toward the
Sea Hound.

Suddenly the Fat Man began to wobble. It teetered precariously on its mechanical legs for a moment, then righted itself as the internal gyros brought the egg-shaped monster back into balance.

Hey, what goes on here?
Tom wondered, feeling a slight twinge of alarm.

"Son, did you feel that?" sonophoned Mr. Swift, hidden on the far side of the foamy plume.

Tom had no chance to answer. The next instant a violent lurch threw him sideways, slamming him against the curving inner wall of the suit. Quickly Tom pressed his face against the plasti-quartz dome to see what was happening beneath his feet. To his horror, the ocean bottom was shuddering in a violent upheaval!

"Good night! Dad, we’d better get out of here fast!" Tom muttered half to himself. Then a new shock came, even more violent. Tom’s Fat Man suit momentarily lost its footing, tipping to the side.

"Tom! Mr. Swift!"
sonophoned Slim Davis frantically.
"It’s a seaquake! I’ll try to—"
His words were lost in a confusion of static.

His keen eyes searching for a sign of his father, Tom gunned the minijets to propel his suit forward. But an upsurge of bubbles caught the Fat Man, rocking it from side to side. Tom desperately worked the controls, trying to keep the sub-suit upright. But then came another jolt as the whole sea floor seemed to explode! An immense geyser of water, gas, and mud erupted from below with the force of a dynamite blast. It struck Tom’s Fat Man and the seacopter, and hurled them upward.

Tom barely had time to glimpse the
Sea Hound
’s searchlight beam sweeping in a glittering arc when he was thrown backwards as the suit tumbled head over heels in the fierce uprush. His head crashed against the inner wall of the steel egg. With a moan of pain, the young inventor sank down, stunned.

When Tom achingly regained full consciousness, he found himself in total darkness. Only the glow of the instrument dials relieved the black gloom of the ocean depths.