Tom Swift and His Triphibian Atomicar (18 page)

Tom wandered over to one wall, where a white plastic tube, arm-thick, passed through the chamber at an angle. He put an ear against it. "You can hear the sound of the pumps—it’s a water pipe."

"Then I have a great idea!" Bud grinned. "It may already be
your
idea, genius boy—but I’ll say it first!"

The plan was set forth. Then, the three putting all their weight into it, they began to tug at the pipe until, suddenly, it gave. Water jetted into the room! It flooded the floor and deepened with each passing moment. Soon the three were afloat, treading water. The liquid roar made talking difficult.

"W-will it reach—all the way up?" gasped Provard.

"I think so, sir," Tom called back. "Looking at the colored strata in the rocks on the side of the shaft, I think the highpoint of the water table is just a foot or two below the rim."

Up they floated, all three of them. As they neared the grating Tom and Bud braced themselves against the shaft edge and commenced to force it free. At last, with a creak, one side pulled away from the wall. Soon they were rising up the shaft with the water, toward sunlight.

"Think they’ll be waiting for us, pal?" Bud asked.

"Who knows?" And Bud knew that Tom’s response meant
probably
. They would be like fish in a barrel—but there was no other way.

The rise of the water ended about two feet below the opening, as Tom had predicted. "Here goes," Tom whispered. "Me first."

"Of course," was Bud’s reply—as he thrust his pal aside and hoisted himself up ahead of him. Tom and Provard saw Bud push himself up on his elbows. "
Ohh!
... okay, guys. I—I’d say it’s just about as safe as it could be. Come on up."

Bud scrambled out onto the ground and helped the others up.

The view in the bright sunlight was sickening. The little cupped clearing holding the top of the airshaft was littered with human bodies! Blood was caking on innumerable bullet wounds.

Tom sank down to examine one of the bodies. "This is one of the men who led us here," he stated grimly.

Asa Provard spoke in a faint, horrified voice. "And this body—oh lord. This is Simon Wayne."

"They were all up here waiting for us to pop out," Bud said. "But someone else was waiting for
them
."

"And I guess I know who," pronounced Tom Swift. "I see the top of the atomicar dome over there."

Gursk appeared, automatic weapon in hand. "Again, I show mercy to you, Tom Swift, by saving you from these evil ones. And surely it is fair that I do so, for at last you led me to this lost mine of the Amir. We have sought this for quite some time, my employer and I."

"How did you trail us, Gursk?" Bud asked, playing for time as he looked for a route of attack.

"How? So easy. I had to do little but float above like a cloud, just out of sight. My employer, and others in his employ with certain precise skills, have made a very thorough study of this sorcerous car, Mr. Swift, even before your first flight in it." Gursk laughed cruelly, eyes boring into them. "A very good joke, I think! You have such a superb radar system, able to detect so much all about—and I merely permitted it to serve me, as you fled the camp, as you were captured and marched here."

Tom kept his face and voice expressionless. "What do you want of us, Gursk? You have the ruby mine now."

"And indeed, I have you as well. Come up here, Tom Swift. Join me. We shall take a nice ride in your
Silent Streak
. As to you others—shall I leave you to fend for yourselves in the Turq’ha Nur, to climb and wander through the maze until thirst overtakes you? Or shall I show mercy and shoot you now? No, my mercy does not extend so far, I think."

Tom worked his way up to the recessed ledge in the hillside where Gursk and the atomicar awaited him. In moments they were soaring high, Tom at the controls, Gursk sitting next to him with the tip of his rifle barrel braced inches from the young inventor’s head. Tom asked coolly: "Where to?"

"We are going to a meeting with someone who wishes very much to see you, sirrah."

"May I know his name?"

Gursk chuckled. "My employer? If it is his will, he will tell you his name by his own mouth. He is a businessman, one might say, a man of international interests. He wishes the wealth of the rubies—and such wealth as can be procured from the brain of young Tom Swift."

Tom found it wisest not to disclose that Simon Wayne’s excavation was as phony as a movie set. "All right. I’ll be cooperative if I can. But what about the work camp, the Provard people?"

"They have nobly served my purpose, have they not?" growled Gursk. "First, to serve as bait to draw you deep into the Turq’ha Nur, for we knew this Simon Wayne would not allow you to wander freely if you came so close—and so would capture you and thus lead us the rest of the way, the last little bit. For the mine entrance was well-concealed, eh? We knew where it was with much more precision than the old English writer Dalton, enough to urge you near by the counterfeit book I planted. Alas, not enough to lay hand on it, not in this land of mountains and bones. We thought the presence of the camp, captive in one spot, would panic Mr. Wayne into some visible activity that would give him away; how delightful that you escaped, to become our little bird with the green sprig in its beak—perhap you will understand if I say,
our Geiger counter.

"But still, the Provard workers are now serving as hostages. They will be fine hostages, eh? To procure your own services, however briefly my employer may require them. And then, what matter?"

"It mattered to the family of the man you killed with your landmines," Tom spat out bitterly.

"Poor man. But he had no future anyway, did he? To be a poor worker, that is not a future. But my employer, a bold and clever man—he is the future. It was by his ingenuity that we produced so quickly the false copy of your cousin’s book, containing further slight details that we had found from other sources to guide you as close as possible to the mine, and to Wayne. As I flew comfortably across the ocean with your cousin beside me, the book was being fabricated in Shopton, to await my arrival and my little ruse. Not enough, but at long last the web caught you, Mr. Swift. And did I not follow the thread?" He laughed.

The real Amir’s Mine is still hiding somewhere in these hills,
Tom thought.
If I get out of this, I could help the Kabulistanis find it again!

Suddenly Gursk muttered something in his native tongue. Then he said, "Look! Something approaches in the air, over there. An airplane? So fast—
ai
, a missile?"

The words seemed to leap by themselves from Tom Swift’s lips! "The
Sky Queen
!" Jets roaring, the mighty Flying Lab was winging right for them. "They’ve locked onto us, Gursk. No escaping now. There’s the radio mike."

"
Outrun it!
" Gursk demanded, poking Tom’s head with the rifle. "Do it! Or I shoot you now and take the control myself!"

Tom flashed the man a tense look. "I’ll take alternative number one. But hold on. And kindly keep that gun barrel out of my face if you want to live!"

Tom slammed on the atom-power, spinning the electromotor wheels like fan blades. It was nothing close to jet speed, or even the speed of a standard prop plane. Yet the
Streak
accelerated smartly. And as Gursk glanced aside, Tom secretly increased the passenger-restraining repelatrons, making the acceleration feel all the greater.

"Stop, fool!" shouted Gursk. "Idiot!"

The atomicar was streaking toward the nose of the oncoming skyship like a javelin!

The
Sky Queen
put on the brakes and tried to swerve aside. But Tom Swift did not. A shattering collision was now unavoidable, and Gursk shrieked in terror!

Then, for one instant, the
Silent Streak
was suspended mere feet from the Flying Lab’s fuselage, held in place by the anticrash system. And then, as it rebounded, Tom jerked the rifle from the clutch of the panicked Gursk. A single sweep of Tom’s hand switched control of the atomicar over to its cybertron.

"And now, Mr. Gursk, unless you’d like me to open your sidedoor and tip you out—I believe we have a few landmines to deactivate."

After the Provard camp was made safe again, Tom flew Gursk to confinement in the
Sky Queen
, then used the cycloplane to pick up Bud and Mr. Provard.

Back aboard the skyship, Bud asked, "Just how is it that the
Queen
was prowling the airways in the first place, Skipper? Didn’t you order them to stay put?"

"You can thank, or blame, Chow for that," explained Ed Longstreet. "He couldn’t stand the wait—beat up poor Slim Davis so much with that gravelly bellow of his that we were practically
forced
to try making an overflight, to see if we could spot anyone in the hills."

Tom grinned broadly. "Good old Chow!"

They radioed Col. Kazar to arrange to turn Gursk over to him in Shirabad. To their surprise, he provided other coordinates. "I am making an inspection tour some miles from the city, in my jeep. But there are trustworthy horsemen, officers, along with me. After I question this Mr. Gursk, I will continue my tour, and they will take the prisoner back to Shirabad on horseback, in handcuffs—not so comfortable for him, I think."

With matters settled, the Provard development project went forward, with much success. Eventually the participants were to receive rewards and honors conferred by the leader of the grateful country. In honor of Chow Winkler’s special part in the rescue of Tom, Bud, Provard, and indeed all the camp workers, His Excellency Habib Qassir presented the roly-poly cook with an ornate turban and a shimmering robe of rainbow-hued silk.

"You can’t top that getup, pardner," Tom whispered with a chuckle as flashbulbs popped and television cameras recorded the scene. "Better trade in your ten-gallon hat and all those wild shirts!"

Chow laughed gleefully. "Mebbe you’re right, boss. Jest watch me make ’em popeyed in San Antone, wearin’ these duds!"

Back in Shopton at last, Tom turned to new challenges. Yet one day, curious, he contacted Col. Kazar in Shirabad to ask about the trial of Gursk. "I still don’t know the identity of the man he called his employer," said the young inventor, doodling absent-mindedly.

"Alas, we may never know, sir," Kazar replied. "For you see, Gursk is dead."

"Executed?"

"No. It was a most strange occurrence. As I told you, he was taken back to Shirabad on horseback, by my mounted officers, who are recruited from the men of local tribes. When I myself returned, I received the disturbing news that Gursk had slipped off his horse along the way."

"The fall killed him?"

"In a certain sense. You see, he fell directly upon the spear carried by one of my men!"

Tom gulped incredulously. "Colonel, those men—were they of the Zadthar tribe, perhaps?"

He could almost hear the man’s smile. "As a matter of fact, they were. As am I. Indeed, my friend, I have a
suspicion
they were of the very group of tribesmen that watched you from the hills, as if watching over the foreign encampment invading their little valley. Ah, how it must have saddened them, the death of their fellow tribesman. Too bad, eh?—that the murderer Gursk escaped justice."

"I think justice can take more than one form," said Tom wryly.

Clicking off, he glanced down at the doodle on his desk pad that he had made, half-consciously, as he and Kazar were discussing the mystery of Gursk’s employer. It was a sinuous form that resembled a snake about to strike—like one of the devilish snakes on Sandy’s ruby ring.

The final chapter to Tom Swift’s triphibian atomicar adventure came weeks later while he was working to perfect his new remarkable invention, the
Megascope Space Prober
. A letter was delivered to the electronics lab, where Bashalli Prandit was visiting him.

The letter bore a familiar letterhead as well as a familiar signature. "It’s from Milton Isosceles!" Tom noted with eyebrows raised. "It’s about time we heard from Imperative Motorskill."

He read it and began to laugh, handing it over to Bash to read as well.

DEAR TOM SWIFT,

GREETINGS.

PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT WE HAVE EVALUATED WITH GREAT CARE THE PROPOSAL TO ADD YOUR ATOMIC CAR TO OUR FINE LINE OF MOTOR VEHICLES. WE HAVE CONDUCTED SURVEYS AND FOCUS GROUPS AND TABULATED THE RESPONSES.

PLEASE NOTE THESE SUMMARIZED RESULTS WHICH ADDRESS THE QUESTION OF THE PROFITABILITY OF THE PROPOSED VENTURE:

(1) IMPERATIVE MOTORSKILL: "COMMITTED TO CLEAR STEERING." IN VIEW OF CURRENT PUBLIC CONTROVERSIES AND THE REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT, OUR COMPANY PREFERS TO STEER CLEAR OF ISSUES RAISED BY THE USE OF NUCLEAR POWER.

(2) IMPERATIVE MOTORSKILL: "YOUR NEEDS. OUR BUSINESS". AIR OR WATER TRAVEL IS NOT RELEVANT TO THE DAILY COMMUTER NEEDS OF OUR TARGET CUSTOMER BASE.

(3) IMPERATIVE MOTORSKILL: "WE BELIEVE IN SAFETY." THE NOTION OF THE SO-CALLED "ANTICRASH SYSTEM" PROVOKES NEEDLESS ANXIETY BY SUGGESTING THE POSSIBILITY THAT MOTOR TRAVEL IS UNSAFE.

(4) IMPERATIVE MOTORSKILL: "LOOKS COUNT!" THE RATHER UNIQUE OVERALL STYLING OF THE SWIFT ENTERPRISES CAR FALLS WELL SHORT OF THE AESTHETIC DEMANDS AND EXPECTATIONS OF TODAY’S MOTORING PUBLIC. STUDIES HAVE LONG CONFIRMED THAT AUTOMOTIVE CHOICE IS LARGELY DETERMINED BY THE WILLINGNESS OF THE TYPICAL MALE DECISION MAKER TO IDENTIFY EMOTIONALLY WITH THE LOOK OF THE VEHICLE. YOUR DESIGN IS DESCRIBED AS RESEMBLING A WOMAN’S HIGH HEELED SHOE.

FOR THESE STATED REASONS, IMPERATIVE MOTORSKILL MUST DECLINE THE OFFER TO PARTICIPATE IN THE MANUFACTURE AND SALE OF THE ENTERPRISES VEHICLE, FOR THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE.

"As they say so aptly in this country, Thomas, now it is
back to the old drawing board for you
," Bashalli pronounced. "
Flatscreen
, that is."