Tom Swift and His Spectromarine Selector (8 page)

"In-co-redible!" Ham Teller gasped in Brooklynese, peering out in amazement at the scene.

"Calm down, Ham," remonstrated George Braun. "We’ve been here before, remember?"

"What’s the procedure now, Tom?" Zimby asked. He noticed that Miss Gabardine was listening intently.

"Bud and I will go over to the
Supermanta
and start the primary repelatron working, since it’s already been moved to the airlock, while you and the
Deepwing
get into position," Tom explained. "Take charge while I’m gone, Zim. And keep a sharp alert for enemy craft coming down the chute!"

The young inventor and Bud quickly climbed into Fat Man suits and propelled themselves toward the nearby cargo carrier. The boys entered through one of the freight airlocks and crawled out of their steel eggs. Greeting the excited crew, Tom gave instructions.

"We’ll need two men to help us set up the air machine, fellows. In the meantime, please finish prepping the big repelatron for the anchoring maneuver." He nodded at Hank and Arv, the technical experts aboard.

"Right, skipper!" Arv responded.

The young oceannaut took a moment to visit the two rescued crewmen in sickbay, who were resting in cots under the watchful eye of Doc Simpson.

"We surely owe our lives to you and your companions," murmured Professor Belam Centas, his accent showing his Spanish-French origins. He was a wiry man of late middle age, his hair thick and iron-gray, his skin very pale. "My dear
Hydra-Gaea
decided to betray me."

"We can discuss that later, sir, after you’ve rested."

The researcher nodded weakly. "Your Navy man has spoken to us. It seems it would be easier in many ways if we remained with your expedition until the completion of your remarkable project, which he described to us. A matter of secrecy, we were told. All very exciting, and we have no objection, if you will kindly inform the Foundation, in France, of these matters."

Tom promised to do so and turned to the other man, stocky and black-haired. He spoke with difficulty, evidently little tutored in the English language. "I am Mordo, his assistant and student. I must thank you also, Mr. Swift."

Tom, Bud, and their two assistants, Nina Kimberley and Mel Flagler, all clad in Fat Man suits, exited the mantacopter. They proceeded to set up the osmotic air conditioner machinery on the outskirts of the city. This device would draw dissolved oxygen and nitrogen from the sea water to provide an atmosphere for the air bubble.

When they returned to the
Supermanta,
the repelatron was standing ready for action in the open airlock. It consisted of a large metal sphere, some five feet in diameter, mounted on a thick platform, together with a console and electronic control panel. The sphere functioned as the radiator-antenna which beamed out repulsion rays in all directions. During the mission it would be connected by thick cables to the mantacopter’s atomic power plant.

"Okay, folks, let’s slide it out to the anchor point," Tom directed. Reaching a spot on the rise, the repelatron was set down and long anchor-screws drilled themselves into the solid rock beneath.

Tom adjusted several tuning knobs, then gripped the repelatron control lever, ready to switch on power.

"Ay-Oke, genius boy?" commed Bud.

"Here we go!"

Tom threw the master control switch, and a balloon of air began to form in the water around the radiator sphere. After checking the readouts, the mission leader increased the power, manipulating the dials with the fingers of the Fat Man’s robotic arms.

"Thar she blows!"
Bud grinned with excitement as the giant bubble of air expanded with a leap in all directions. Its inner air, temporarily at very low pressure, was being released from tanks in the repelatron’s platform.

Steadily the repelling waves forced back the sea water on all sides. The bubble grew bigger and bigger until it took in the
Supermanta
stem to stern and continued outward and upward to the canyon wall. As the other craft maneuvered away, the airspace swelled still more, becoming a domelike hemisphere as its lower reaches effortlessly penetrated the ground. When the bubble reached the point where the osmotic air conditioner had been set up, Tom sent a remote-control signal from his Fat Man. Instantly the machine thrummed into action, spreading a pleasant, less humid atmosphere through the bubble. A green signal light flashed as normal air pressure was reached.

Tom opened his hatch and climbed out of the Fat Man and took a deep breath. "We’re in business, fellows!" he announced, grinning. The air bubble now extended to a radius of one thousand feet, its limit. For the first time in millennia, blocks of the city of gold waited in eerie silence in the open air!

"Okay if the rest of us get out too?" asked Nina through her suit’s external speaker.

"I’m afraid not," was the apologetic response. "I just got out to give the air the old lung test. We need to help set up the other repelatrons."

Even the large-size repelatron was not powerful enough to establish an airspace over the entire site, which was much larger than Enterprises’ helium-extraction encampment. Tom planned to set up two further repelatrons. The hydrodome-bubbles produced would slightly overlap. Based on the mapping survey, they would cover about twenty percent of the sunken city, enough for this initial exploration.

Walking straight through the surface of the bubble with no resistance, the four Fat Men, joined by Arv and Hank, jetted over to the
Deepwing,
resting a ways along the periphery of the site. They set up the
Deepwing
’s freighted repelatron, then proceeded on further to the
Fathomer.
Within the hour, all three repelatrons were up and running, the resulting airspaces enclosed in domes of fine, invisible filaments. Necessary to stabilize the airspaces, the filament barriers flowed effortlessly around people or vehicles.

Crewmembers poured out of all three submersibles, and a sound of muffled cheering drifted across the ancient ruins. As the aqualamps were ineffective inside the airspaces, a bank of Swift Searchlights was set up at each mantacopter location, bathing the scene in daylike radiance reflecting back from the inner surfaces of the hydrodomes.

"Welcome to—er, welcome to
what?"
Bud interrupted his high-spirited cheer at midpoint. "What do we call this burg, anyway? Greater Downtown Atlantis?"

"Tlaan," stated George with a sly glance at his friend.

"I’m tellin’ you,
Tulayon!"
thundered Ham joshingly.

"Well, these ruins aren’t the whole sunken island, just a city or town," Tom pointed out with a peacemaking grin. "Let’s call the site
Aurum City—
‘aurum’ means gold."

Satisfied, Bud cheered: "Welcome to Aurum City!"

The pillared temples and once-magnificent buildings made a breath-taking sight, even though they were now encrusted with barnacles and other sea growths, and mostly shattered to rubble. But a few structures still stood proudly here and there.

A thrill of awe swept over Tom. "Just think, Bud," he murmured, "we’re the first humans to set foot in this city in thousands of years!"

"Gives me goose bumps!" Bud admitted. "But skipper—do you hear something? Tell me it’s just my juvenile imagination, not skeletons climbing out of bed!"

The air seemed full of faint, dull sounds, like whispers and distant mutterings, punctuated by an occasional muffled shout. Tom looked puzzled for a moment, then broke into a grin. "We should’ve expected it, pal—with no water around, everything is less buoyant. Aurum City is just settling in bit by bit, that’s all."

"I can understand. After a few thousand years, you’ve got to stretch a little!"

Excited and fascinated, Tom and Bud left the vicinity of the
Fathomer,
passing from the relatively bare landing area into grounds strewn with drying ruins and bits of the sea-bottom environment that the retreating waters had left behind. Eyes wide with awe the two boys strolled up one of the ancient streets, now rank with slime, ocean vegetation, and rippled hillocks of sand and loose rock. Stately columns lined the avenue on either side, the encrusted ghosts of ancient ambition.

"I wonder what that was," Bud remarked as they stumbled and crunched along. He pointed toward a once-splendid building, approached by wide stone steps leading up from the street. "City hall, maybe?"

Tom eyed the structure with keen interest. "Looks as though it might have been a palace," he commented. "Or maybe the main city temple."

As the boys turned off the avenue for a closer look, neither noticed that one of the cracked columns had begun to tilt on its base. But a moment later, Tom, warned by some sixth sense, glanced back toward Bud, who had paused to examine a heap of rubble. His face blanched in horror.

"Look out, Bud!" he shrieked.

The column was toppling straight toward them!

SPRINTING BACK, Tom grabbed Bud’s arm and yanked him out of the way in the nick of time. The wayward column landed with a rumbling crash, missing the boys by a fraction of an inch. The loud sound it made was answered by a hundred stone groans and murmurs from all directions, the echoes dying away quickly due to the cushioning muck and debris.

"Good grief!" Bud gulped as he steadied himself on legs that were shaky with fright. "Man, I could feel the breeze as that went by!" he gasped.

Tom grinned weakly and agreed. "If the column had beaned us, pal, we’d be flatter than Chow’s Rio Grande flapjacks by now!"

A voice made the boys turn their heads. "Are you all right?" Lieutenant Fraser cried out, running up anxiously.

Tom and Bud nodded, still a bit breathless. "Pulse rate slightly abnormal but otherwise okay," Tom quipped. "Let’s hope no other columns or buildings around here start getting wobbly!" He paused. "By the way, Lieutenant—Brian—how did you happen to be over here, in this part of the city?"

"Oh, I just walked over to the other sub along the edge of the bubbles," he replied. "A number of us did. I guess we’re all mighty curious to see the sights."

Tom nodded. "Sure, I can imagine. Well, as Bud and I just found out, it might be wise to hold off on the exploring for a little while, until all this old architecture makes up its mind just where it wants to be."

"Aye-aye!" Brian, spellbound by the wonders of Aurum City, could only shake his head in awe. "Tom, it’s a wonder
any
of this is still standing!" he said. "Imagine! A city that’s been lost for untold centuries beneath the sea! And here we are, walking its streets!"

"Tom may have put his name on one of the greatest archaeological finds in history," Bud remarked.

"But where did it come from? I mean—what civilization was this? Do we really know?" the lieutenant asked.

"We think it may be the lost island of Atlantis that Plato talks about," Tom replied. "That’s the working hypothesis, anyway. Ham and George have a whole lecture on the subject. I’m hoping this expedition may turn up some clues that will give us the answer."

He went on to explain the legend deciphered by the two oceanographer-archaeologists who had first helped him locate the sunken city. These two men had discovered ancient stories and inscriptions hinting that the original inhabitants of South America had received visitors from a civilization to the east very different from their own. The strangers told how they had come over the sea from a far-off land which had been engulfed by a terrible earthquake and flood.

"All sorts of evidence, from Africa and Europe as well as the Americas, pointed to this very spot," Tom ended. "It’s also near some peaks shaped like man-made pyramids which I had already spotted, as well as some gravitational anomalies suggesting dense underground masses which were more like a sunken island than a typical subocean ridge or seamount. But it’ll take a lot of work yet, Brian, to piece together an accurate explanation."

The two boys and the red-haired Navy officer strolled back toward the
Fathomer,
their shoes slipping and squelching in the ooze that covered the ancient street.

"I thought your machine was supposed to squeeze out all the water," Lieutenant Fraser remarked.

"The repelatrons are tuned to the most common mixtures of sea water in the area," was the response. "But some of the water always gets left behind. It’ll dry on its own. Actually, that’s why we have to get to work with the spectromarine selector as soon as possible, because it makes use of the remaining moisture in its process."

They returned to the
Fathomer
encampment, where Chow had already rolled out a portable electronic cookstove and was speaking with enthusiasm of
sea steaks
and
genuine sea salad.

"Sea
weed
salad is more like it," Bud gibed. "With real sea cucumbers!"

Most of the people from the other mantas were milling about. Tom noticed Professor Centas and his assistant walking among them, and approached Doc Simpson curiously.

"Their injuries weren’t all that serious after all," the medico reported. "They were getting restless, and I thought it might be good for their respiratory systems to move about."

"Which reminds me, I still need to sit down with the Professor and find out what happened aboard his sub," stated Tom.

Presently Bud noticed that Tom, standing off by himself, seemed plunged in deep thought.

"What’s going on in that hypersonic brain of yours, genius boy?" he asked with a grin.

"Oh, nothing much."

"Please! You can’t con a con, pal," retorted Bud. "From your questions I
deduce
you feel a little mistrustful toward our Naval observer. Right?"

Tom gave a wry shrug. "He appeared right after the column took a tumble. For all our background checking and verification, we can’t
absolutely
rule out the possibility of another Cromwell situation."

"True, I guess," Bud conceded. "But look, you know I’m as suspicious of outsiders as anyone. But I think Brian’s a trustworthy guy—gut feeling. If you want someone to worry about, how about that Gabardine gal? Or the two scientists from that sub?"