Victor Appleton - Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X

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"Wow! That's what I call fast service!" Bud exclaimed.

"It was sure a blamed sight easier'n I expected," Chow said. "Thought
fer a while we might end up feedin' the fishes!"

"You put on a real act, Chow!" Tom said, clapping the stout old cook on
the back. "Well, they've taken the bait. Now let's hope it pays off--for
us!"

The Americans swarmed below again, closed the hatch, and submerged. Tom
took his time in bringing the jet pumps up to speed. "Wonder if we
should pretend to proceed on course, or turn around and head for home?"
he murmured to Hank.

Hank's reply was cut short by a yell from Hanson at the sonarphone.

"Missile coming, skipper! Straight at us!"

CHAPTER XVI

A UNIQUE EXPERIMENT

"Bearing?" Tom cried.

"One-seven-five!" Arv Hanson sang out.

Tom gunned his port jet turbine and swung the _Swiftsure_ hard right.
The abrupt turn at high speed sent the craft sideslipping crazily like a
skidding race boat.

"Here she comes, skipper!" Bud yelled. He had rushed to the sonarscope
with the other members of the crew.

Tom's maneuver had carried them a good hundred yards off the missile's
course. Now he yanked a lever, pulling the cadmium rods still farther
from the atomic pile, in order to increase power and jet-blast their sub
still farther out of range.

But suddenly the men at the scope blanched. "The missile's turning too!"
Hank cried. "It's homing in on us!"

Unlike most Swift craft used on scientific expeditions, the cargo sub's
hull had not been coated with Tomasite. This would have insulated it
from all magnetic effects or any form of pulse detection. Tom had chosen
the _Swiftsure_ partly for this very reason, so that the Brungarian
rebels could easily pick up its trail after leaving Fearing.

How ironic if his choice should prove fatal! As the thought flashed
through Tom's brain, the missile came streaking into view through the
sub's transparent nose.

By this time, Tom had flipped up the _Swiftsure's_ diving planes. The
craft plummeted deeper into the ocean depths.

"Brand my whale blubber, she's turnin' again!" Chow gulped. The
missile's arc, as it veered around to follow, painted a streak of light
on the sonarscope.

Anxious moments raced by while Tom steered their craft in a deadly game
of tag with the sub-killer. Gradually the missile appeared to be losing
momentum.

"It's slowing down, all right!" Arv called out.

In a few minutes the missile had lost so much way that Tom was easily
able to outdistance it. The crew crowded to the scope, heaving sighs of
relief. The missile, its velocity spent, sank harmlessly toward the
bottom.

"Boy, what a close call!" Bud gasped weakly. "You played that thing like
a toreador sidestepping a bull, Tom! Nice going!"

The others echoed Bud's sentiments, with fervent handshakes and
backslaps for Tom's skillful evasive action.

"Jest the same," said Chow, "I'd sure like to make Narko an' them
Brungarian hoss thieves dance a Texas jig with a little hot lead sprayed
around their boot heels! Sneakin' bushwhackers! It's jest like I told
Hank about his airplane scheme--they'd try to gun us down, like as not,
soon as they got their hands on Exman!"

"I guess you had them figured right, Chow," Tom agreed wryly. "Well, at
least we've lost their sub!"

The Brungarian raider was no longer visible even as a faint blip on
their radarscope. Evidently Narko had thought the jetmarine a sure
victim and headed back to his own base.

Nevertheless, Tom steered a wary zigzag course back to Fearing. When
they arrived at the island, he immediately telephoned Bernt Ahlgren and
Wes Norris in Washington to report the hijacking of the space brain.
Both men praised the young inventor for his daring scheme to outwit the
ruthless Brungarian rebel clique.

"If your idea pays off, Tom, we should be able to checkmate every move
those phonies and their allies make!" Norris declared.

"I'm hoping we can do even better than that," Tom replied. "Part of my
plan is to help the Brungarian loyalists through Exman's tip-offs. With
some smart quarterbacking, we might be able to rally the rightful
government before all resistance is crushed out."

"Terrific!" Norris exclaimed. "Let's hope your scheme works!"

Tom had ordered the space oscilloscopes to be manned constantly, both at
Fearing and at Enterprises, in case of a flash from Exman. But no word
had yet been received when Tom and his companions arrived at the
mainland late that afternoon.

Mr. Swift greeted his son warmly at the airfield. Tom had refrained from
radioing the news to Enterprises after the hijacking and the missile
attempt. Any such message, Tom feared, might be picked up by the enemy
and bring on another attack. But the young inventor had telephoned his
father immediately after calling Washington.

Now Mr. Swift threw his arm affectionately around the lanky youth. "You
look pretty well bushed, son. Why not hustle home and call it a day?
That goes for the rest of you, too," he added to Bud, Chow, and the
others. "You've just risked your lives and the strain is bound to tell."

Tom urged his companions to comply. "But I'm sticking right here," the
young inventor told his father. "I want to be on hand the minute Exman
contacts us."

Bud insisted upon staying with his pal. The two boys ate a quiet supper
in Tom's private laboratory and finally lay down on cots in the
adjoining apartment. But first Tom posted a night operator to watch the
electronic brain.

"Wake me up the second that alarm bell goes off," he ordered.

"Okay, skipper," the radioman promised.

No message arrived to disturb the boys' rest. Tom felt a pang of worry
as he dressed the next morning, and then relieved the man on duty at the
decoder. Had the Brungarians somehow outwitted him? Surely Exman should
have reported by this time!

"Relax, pal," Bud urged. "Our space chum's hardly had time to learn any
secrets yet. Besides, those Brungarian scientists are probably giving
him the once-over with all sorts of electronic doodads. Why risk sending
a message till he has something important to tell us?"

"That's true," Tom admitted.

Chow brought in breakfast. "You jest tie into these vittles, boss, an'
stop frettin'," the cook said soothingly. "I reckon Ole Think Box won't
let us down."

Tom sniffed the appetizing aroma of flapjacks and sausages. "Guess
you're right, Chow," he said with a chuckle.

As the boys ate hungrily, Tom's thoughts turned back to the problem of
how to equip Exman with senses. He talked the project over with Bud.
Most of his ideas were too technical for Bud to follow, but he listened
attentively. He knew the young inventor found it helpful to have a
"sounding board" for his ideas.

"Too bad I didn't have time to tackle the job before Exman was
kidnaped," Tom mused. "Think how much more he could learn with 'eyes'
and 'ears'!"

"Stop crabbing," Bud joked. "Isn't an electronic spy with a brain like
Einstein's good enough?"

Mr. Swift arrived at the laboratory an hour or so later. He found Tom
setting up an experiment with a glass sphere to which were affixed six
powerful electromagnets. Two shiny electrodes, with cables attached to
their outer ends, had also been molded into the glass. Bud was looking
on, wide-eyed.

Tom explained to his father that he had blown the sphere himself,
following a formula adapted from the quartz glass used for view panels
in his space and undersea craft.

"What's it for, son?" Mr. Swift asked, after studying the setup
curiously.

"Don't laugh, Dad, but I'm trying to produce a brain of pure energy. A
substitute for Exman, so we can go ahead with our sensing experiments."

Mr. Swift reacted with keen interest and offered to help. "But remember,
son," he cautioned, "at best you can only hope to produce an ersatz
brain energy--which will be vastly different from the real thing. Don't
forget, Tom, the mind of a human being or any thinking inhabitant of our
universe is based on a divine soul. No scientist must ever delude
himself into thinking he can copy the work of our Creator."

"I know that, Dad," Tom said soberly. "Man's work will always be a crude
groping, compared to the miracles of Nature. All I'm hoping to come up
with here is a sort of stimulus-response unit that we can use for
testing any sensing apparatus we devise."

The two scientists plunged into work. First, a bank of delicate gauges
was assembled to record precisely every electrical reaction that took
place inside the sphere. Then Tom threw a switch, shooting a powerful
bolt of current across the electrodes. The field strength of the
electromagnets, controlled by rheostats, instantly shaped the charge
into a glowing ball of fire!

"Wow! A real hothead!" Bud wisecracked, trying to hide his excitement.

Tom grinned as he twirled several knobs and checked the gauges. The
slightest variation in field strength triggered an instant response from
the ball of energy. Mr. Swift tried exposing it to radio and repelatron
waves. Each time the gauges showed a sensitive reaction.

"Looks as if we're in business, Dad!" Tom said jubilantly.

Bud left soon afterward as the two Swifts buckled down to work on the
problem of perfecting an apparatus to simulate the human senses. Each
concentrated on a different line of approach.

At noon they broke off briefly for a lunch wheeled in by Chow. Then
silence settled again over the laboratory.

Tom had rigged up a jointed, clawlike mechanical arrangement with
sensitive diaphragms in its "finger tips." The diaphragms were connected
to a transistorized circuit designed to modulate the field current to
the electromagnets.

Suddenly the young inventor looked up at his father with a glow of
triumph.

"Dad, I just got a reaction to my sense-of-touch experiment!"

CHAPTER XVII

AN URGENT WARNING

Mr. Swift looked on eagerly as Tom explained and demonstrated his touch
apparatus. By moving a pantograph control, Tom was able to manipulate
the claws like a hand with fingers. Whenever they touched any material,
the brain gauges instantly registered an electrical reaction inside the
sphere.

The swing of a voltmeter needle showed how firmly the substance resisted
the claw's touch, thus indicating its hardness or softness.

"With a computer device, such as we planted in Exman," Tom went on, "the
brain would also be able to assimilate the textural pattern of any
substance."

"Wonderful, son!" Mr. Swift exclaimed. "I hope I can do as well with
this artificial sense of sight I'm working on."

Another hour went by before Mr. Swift was ready to test his own
arrangement.

"You've probably heard of the experiments conducted with blind persons,"
he told Tom. "By stimulating the right part of their brain with a lead
from a cathode-ray-tube device, an awareness of light and dark can be
restored."

Tom nodded.

"Well, I'm using the same principle," Mr. Swift went on, "but with a
sort of television camera scanning setup."

He asked Tom to draw the drapes and shut off the room lights, throwing
the laboratory into complete darkness, except for the weirdly glowing
"brain" in the glass sphere. Then Mr. Swift shone a flashlight at the
scanner. The brain responded by glowing more brightly itself!

Next, after the drapes were opened again and the overhead fluorescent
lights switched on, Mr. Swift painted a pattern of black-and-white
stripes on a large piece of cardboard. He held this up to the scanner.

Visible ripples of brightness and less-brightness passed through the
glowing ball of energy inside the sphere. It was reproducing the striped
pattern!

"Dad, that's amazing!" Tom said with real admiration.

Mr. Swift shook his head. "Pretty crude, I'm afraid. The brain energy by
itself can't take the place of a picture tube in a TV receiver. What we
need is an analog computer to sum up the scanning pattern picked up by
the camera tube and then pass this information along in code form."

Before Tom could comment, the alarm bell rang on the electronic brain.
The Swifts dropped everything and rushed to the machine.

"Wonder if it's Exman?" Tom exclaimed.

The answer was quickly revealed as the keys began punching out the
incoming message on tape. At the same time, a flow of strange
mathematical symbols flashed, one after another, on the lighted
oscilloscope screen mounted above the keyboard.

Tom and his father read the tape as it unreeled.

SPACE BEINGS TO SWIFTS. REQUEST INFORMATION ON PROGRESS AND
RESULTS OF ENERGY SENT TO YOUR PLANET.

After a quick consultation with his father, Tom beamed out the reply:

WE ARE PLEASED WITH RESULTS SO FAR. FURTHER EXPERIMENTS NOW
GOING ON. REQUEST VISIT TO CONTINUE LONGER THAN TWENTY-ONE DAYS
AS PLANNED.

Hopefully the Swifts stood by the machine. Would their space friends
agree? As the minutes went by without a response coming through, father
and son exchanged anxious glances.

"They've _got_ to let Exman stay, Dad!" Tom said.

Mr. Swift nodded. "I'm afraid, though, the space beings have decided
otherwise. They--"

He was interrupted by the ringing of the alarm bell. "Message, Dad!" Tom
said tersely.

A moment later they were overjoyed to see three words appear on the
tape:

VISIT EXTENSION GRANTED.

Relieved, the two scientists went back to work on their sensing
experiments. Twenty minutes later the signal bell rang again on the
electronic brain.

"This time it _must_ be Exman!" Tom cried.

The unreeling tape quickly bore out his guess.

EXMAN TO SWIFTS. TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR EARTHQUAKE UNDER HIGH LOYALTY.

"What!" Tom stared at the tape, his brow creased in a puzzled frown.
"That 'twenty-four-hour earthquake' bit must mean he's warning us that a
quake will occur in twenty-four hours. But what about the rest of it?"

"Hmm... 'Under high loyalty.'" Mr. Swift was as baffled as Tom. He
studied the message for several minutes. It seemed highly unlikely that
the electronic brain had made an error in decoding. Any new or
untranslatable symbol caused a red light to flash on the machine.

"I think the only thing we can do is signal Exman and ask for a
clarification, Tom," Mr. Swift decided at last.

Tom agreed. He beamed out a hasty code signal:

EXPLAIN MESSAGE.

Seconds later came Exman's reply. It was identical with the first
message:

TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR EARTHQUAKE UNDER HIGH LOYALTY.

Tom and Mr. Swift stared at each other anxiously.

"Good night, Dad! This is horrible!" Tom exclaimed. "Exman sends us
ample warning of a disaster and we're stymied!"

[Illustration (Tom Jr. and Tom Sr. read a message from Exman)]

"Hi! What's going on, you two?" asked a merry voice. "More heavy
thinking?"

Sandy Swift stood smiling in the doorway. The smile gave way to a look
of concern as Tom explained the crisis.

"How dreadful!" Sandy gasped. "We _must_ figure out what it means!...
Wait a minute!"

Tom looked at her expectantly. "Got an idea, Sis?"

"Well..." The pretty, blond teen-ager hesitated. "You don't suppose
Exman might have been translating some foreign words with a meaning
similar to 'high loyalty'? For instance, high loyalty could mean 'good
faith.' I know that in Latin 'good faith' would be _bona fide_."

"Sandy! You've guessed it!" Tom crossed the room in a single bound, gave
his sister a quick hug, and whirled her around. "Exman must mean the
Bona Fide Submarine Building Corporation! He didn't dare risk telling us
the exact translation."

"Of course!" Mr. Swift was equally jubilant. But his face was grave as
he added, "The company's located on the West Coast close to the San
Andreas fault. Tom, a quake in that area could be devastating!"

"You're right, Dad," the young inventor replied. "I'll call Dr. Miles
and Bernt Ahlgren at once!"

The telephone conversation that followed was grim with tension. Both
government men begged Tom to take personal charge of the
quake-deflection measures. Dr. Miles pointed out that tremors along the
fault might trigger off a chain of quakes amounting to a national
disaster.

After a hasty discussion, Tom agreed that he should station himself at
the Colorado site, rather than at the West Coast Quakelizor
installation. This would give him broader scope for damping out shock
waves across the continent.

"I'll fly out immediately!" the young inventor promised.

Ahlgren, meanwhile, would flash orders to the Bona Fide Company and to
civilian officials to have the entire area evacuated as soon as
possible.

Hasty preparations were made for Tom's departure. He telephoned the
airfield to have a jet plane with lifters readied for take-off. He also
had Bud paged over the plant intercom. The copilot came on the run. When
he heard the news, he was eager to accompany his pal.

"Listen, you two! I insist you have something to eat before you leave!"
Sandy declared.

Tom was impatient over any delay. When Sandy proceeded to call Chow, the
old Texan solved the problem by volunteering to go along as cook.

A short time later Chow came jouncing out to the airfield astride a
motor scooter, hauling a cart loaded with supplies.

"Good grief!" Tom said, unable to suppress a grin. "We'll be back
tomorrow, unless something goes wrong!"

"Bring food--that's my motto," Chow retorted, "like any good cook."

Minutes later, after a parting handshake from his father and a worried
kiss from Sandy, Tom sent the sleek jet racing down the runway for
take-off. Soon they were air-borne and heading westward. Chow served a
tasty meal en route.

It was still daylight when the jet landed vertically in the Colorado
canyon. The government crew manning the installation, and the Swift
technician who had relieved Art Wiltessa as trouble shooter on the
setup, greeted them eagerly.

"Looks as if we're in for a real test, Tom," said Mike Burrows, the
engineer in charge.

"Let's hope we pass!" said Tom, holding up crossed fingers.

He checked every detail of the Quakelizor, power plant, and the
communications gear. He opened an inspection panel in each of the
dual-control spheres and tuned the kinetic-hydraulic units so as to
step up the working pressure of the four powerful drivers.

"Well, all we can do now is wait," the young inventor muttered, wiping
his arm across his forehead.

Tom passed the night in a fitful sleep, half expecting to be wakened at
any moment by the stand-by crew on watch. No alarm occurred, however.

Dawn broke, and Chow delighted all hands with a hearty breakfast of
bacon, eggs, and corn fritters. More hours of waiting dragged by.

"What time do you think the attack will occur?" Bud asked.

Tom shrugged. "The 'twenty-four-hour' business may have been
approximate. But I'd say from two o'clock on is the danger period."

The young inventor checked frequently with Washington and the other
crews stationed around the country. Suddenly the radiotelephone operator
gave a yell.

"Your father is on the line, skipper!"

The scientist was calling from the receiver-computer headquarters at
Enterprises. "Exman has reported a quake pulse will be sent in seven
minutes--at 21.36 G.M.T."

"I'm ready, Dad," Tom said, then asked for various technical details
before hanging up.

He passed the word to the crew and glanced at his watch. A hasty,
last-moment inspection was carried out, every man checking certain
details of the setup.

Soon the pulsemakers began ticking inside the dual-control spheres as
they picked up the frequency signal by radio. Tom studied the gauge
dials.

Tension mounted rapidly among the waiting group. The same thought was
throbbing through every mind:

_Was the nation on the brink of a terrible disaster? Or would Tom
Swift's invention safeguard the threatened area?_

As the deadline approached, Tom pushed a button. The mighty hydraulic
drivers throbbed into action, sending out their pulse waves across the
continent!

CHAPTER XVIII

EARTHQUAKE ISLAND

Now came the hardest part of all for Tom and his companions--waiting to
learn if the shock deflectors had succeeded in blotting out the enemy
quake wave.

No one spoke. As the silence deepened inside the cave, the suspense
became almost unbearable. Minutes passed.

"When will we know, skipper?" a crewman ventured at last.

"Soon, I hope," Tom replied tersely.

But the waiting seemed endless. Bud's eyes met Tom's. The flier grinned
and held up crossed fingers, just as Tom had done to Mike Burrows the
previous evening. Tom managed a feeble grin in response.

Suddenly the telephone shrilled, shattering the silence of the cave. Tom
snatched it from the radioman's hands.

"Tom Swift here!... Yes?... Thank heavens! I guess we can all be
grateful, Dr. Miles!"

"Providence protected us, I'm sure, Tom," the seismologist replied at
the other end of the line. "But in this instance it worked through Tom
Swift's Quakelizors! The Bona Fide plant and the surrounding area never
even felt the tremor--your quake deflectors worked perfectly!"

There was no need to tell the others. Tom's words on the telephone and
the grin on his face told the story. A spontaneous volley of cheers
echoed through the cave as he hung up. Then the crew crowded around to
slap Tom on the back and shake his hand.

"I hope the whole country learns what you've done, Tom," Mike Burrows
said. "If it doesn't, I'll be the first to spread the word as soon as
the secrecy lid's taken off!"

"Shucks, I knew all along Tom's contraption would do the trick!" Chow
boasted, glowing with pride over his young boss's achievement.

Tom could only smile happily. "Guess we can go home now," he said to Bud
and Chow.

They were preparing to leave when another flash from Washington came
over the radiotelephone. A ship's captain, five hundred miles out on the
Pacific, had just reported sighting a great waterspout, accompanied by
considerable wave turbulence.

"It could have been the spot where the enemy shock waves and our
deflector waves met and damped out," Tom commented.

"Dr. Miles thinks so, too," the caller said.

Soon the sleek Swift jet was arrowing back across the continent. En
route, Tom radioed word of his latest triumph to Mr. Swift. As always,
he used the automatic scramblers to make sure any enemy eavesdroppers
would pick up only static.

"Great work, son!" Mr. Swift congratulated Tom. "I was confident you
could handle the situation with your Quakelizors."

"Thanks, Dad. See you soon."

When the jet finally landed at Enterprises and came to a halt on the
runway, the control tower operator spoke over the radio.

"Harlan Ames would like to see Tom Jr. at the security building. He left
word just a few minutes ago."

"Roger!" Tom replied.

Chow frugally carted off his leftover supplies. Tom and Bud, meanwhile,
went by jeep across the plant grounds to security headquarters.

Ames greeted the two boys enthusiastically. "Nice going on that
earthquake situation, Tom!" he said. "And now I have some more good
news. We've just nabbed the man who imitated your father's voice over
the phone the other night."

"What!" Both boys were excited, and Tom added eagerly, "Who is he?"

"An actor at the Shopton summer playhouse."

"How did you find out?" Tom asked.

"I had a hunch," Ames went on. "If the impersonator wasn't a plant
employee at Enterprises, then he had to be a person with a trained
voice. That gave me the idea of checking on all actors and station
announcers here in the vicinity. It paid off right away. The guy's name
is Brent Nolan."

"Have you questioned him yet?" Tom asked.

"I'm about to," Ames replied. "Radnor just brought him in."

The security chief led the way into an adjoining office. A slender,
good-looking young man with blond wavy hair was seated on a chair with
Phil Radnor on one side of him and a Shopton police officer on the
other. The actor was visibly nervous and perspiring.

"This is Tom Swift Jr.," Ames told him. "Brent Nolan."

Nolan nodded. "Yes, I've seen your picture in the papers many times."
The actor tried to force a smile but his face muscles twitched.
"I--I seem to have pulled a pretty dumb stunt by faking that phone
call from your father. I'm sorry."

"What was the reason?" Tom asked.

Nolan fingered his wavy blond hair uneasily and swallowed hard. "A man
named Professor Runkle paid me to do it."

"Professor Runkle?" Tom frowned. The name seemed vaguely familiar.

"He spoke with a foreign accent. Said he was doing research at Grandyke
University," Nolan explained. "He told me you might be expecting a rare
biological specimen from the East Indies. He said both of you were eager
to get hold of it for research purposes, but he was afraid that you had
outbid him. However, if he asked you straight out, you would guard the
secret very jealously. So he hired me to find out."

"Didn't it occur to you he might be an espionage agent?" Ames asked
coldly.

Nolan seemed shocked. "Believe me, I had no such idea!" he averred.
"Runkle seemed pleasant. He said it all was merely a short cut to save
him from wasting any more time on the project. If Tom Swift had the
specimen, he would quit. I--I guess I'm a little bit vain about the way
I can mimic voices, and this gave me a chance to show off. Besides,
I saw no harm in doing it."

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