Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X

A SUSPECT TALKS

The next morning Tom was up at the crack of dawn, grimly determined to find an answer to the earthquake menace.  He ate a hasty breakfast, then drove to his private laboratory at Enterprises.  He instructed the switchboard operator to shut off all incoming calls, then plunged into a study of the mystifying problem.

Earthquake activity, Tom knew, tends to occur in circular patterns, like bands around the earth—­for instance, the circum-Pacific belt, and another belt extending eastward from the Mediterranean through Asia and on into the East Indies.  Often these quake lines are visible as breaks or ruptures along the ground surface, called fault traces.  No doubt, Tom thought, there were many more uncharted ones.

Could an enemy scientist be making use of these earth faults to produce a man-made quake?  Tom mulled over the disturbing idea.

“How would I tackle the job myself, if I had to undertake such a project for national defense?” the young inventor mused.  He felt a growing sense of excitement as an idea began to take shape in his mind.

What about an artificial shock wave!

An hour later Bud Barclay walked into the laboratory and found Tom hunched over a jumbled pile of reference books on his workbench.

“What cooks, skipper?” Bud asked.

Tom looked up, his blue eyes blazing.  “Bud, I think I may have the answer!”

Tom got up from his stool and paced about the laboratory.  “Suppose the Brungarian rebel scientists have invented some sort of shock-wave producer—­a device for sending vibrations through the earth’s crust or the mantle underneath.”

“Okay, suppose they have,” Bud replied.

Tom snatched up a piece of chalk and made some quick diagrams on a blackboard.  “Just this, pal.  Let’s say they set up two or three stations around the world for sending out such waves in a definite direction.  Wherever the wave crosses an earth fault or another wave—­boom! An earthquake!”

Bud stared.  “No kidding, is that how those rats triggered off all these quakes?”

“It must be,” Tom declared.  “It’s the only possible explanation.”

“Good night!” Bud gasped weakly.  “What a weapon!  Just push a button every so often and you could blow up another country bit by bit—­and no one could ever prove who was behind the attack!”

Tom nodded.  “Enough to make every American shiver, if he only knew!”

“What can we do about it?” Bud asked.

Tom resumed his worried pacing.  “I’ll have to invent a shock-wave deflector, Bud.  It must be done in a hurry, too.  Our enemy may start to destroy American cities as well as vital defense plants!”

Immediately Tom put through an urgent call to an eminent scientist in Washington who was a member of the National Research Council.  Quickly he outlined a plan.

“Tom, I’ll talk to the president’s special science adviser at once,” the man promised.  “I’ll try to set up a meeting for ten o’clock tomorrow morning at Enterprises.”

Feeling relieved, Tom left the plant with Bud.  The two boys drove off to attend church with Mrs. Swift and Sandy.  Then, after the Sunday midday meal, Tom returned to his laboratory to work on ideas for a shock-wave deflector.

Bud and Sandy, meanwhile, drove to the Shopton Yacht Club to inspect the damage to the Sunspot.  Tom had arranged with a salvage crew to tow the disabled ketch back to its slip.

Monday morning, a sleek Air Force jet transport touched down at Swift Enterprises.  Aboard were a select group of top government scientists.  Tom and Bud greeted them as they disembarked on the runway, then drove them to a conference room in the Enterprises main building.

“I’d say your theory is right, Tom, about the quakes being produced by artificial shock waves,” said Bernt Ahlgren, a tall, hawk-faced man with a shock of red hair.  He was a member of the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency.  “But how do we stop them?”

“I believe they can be damped out by opposing waves,” Tom replied.  “This is assuming that I can design the right sort of equipment to do the job—­and also that we can set up a warning system to alert us of the enemy shock waves in time.”  The young inventor sketched out the sort of shock-wave deflector which he had in mind.  The government experts were very much impressed.  In the session that followed, the visiting scientists contributed many tips and suggestions.  Tom noted them down gratefully.

After a thorough discussion, it was agreed that the Defense Department would set up detectors at fifty check points around the country.  Tom would choose the exact spots.  Detection data from the check points would be fed to an electronic computer.  The computer would establish the pattern, if any, of incoming enemy shock waves.

Dr. Gregg Miles, a seismologist from the Bureau of Mines, agreed to take on the job of setting up the check points.

“Thanks for your prompt co-operation,” Tom said, smiling gratefully as the meeting broke up.

“We should thank you, Tom, for coming up with a plan to cope with this fiendish threat,” Ahlgren replied.  The others heartily agreed.

Shortly after lunch, Tom was hard at work in his laboratory when the telephone rang.  It was Chief Slater at Shopton police headquarters.

“You’d better get over here fast, Tom,” Slater said.  “Samson Narko is ready to talk!”

Tom needed no urging.  “Right, Chief!”

As he drove into Shopton, Tom wondered what the Brungarian agent would reveal.  Was it possible that he might tip off the whole secret behind the destructive man-made earthquakes?

Chief Slater was waiting in his office.  “Narko showed signs of cracking this morning,” Slater told Tom, “so I notified the Central Intelligence Agency.  They’re flying a man up here—­in fact he should be here by now.  Narko won’t talk till he arrives.”

“How come?” Tom asked.

“Narko wants a bargain,” Slater explained.  “If the government will promise to deport him at once without trial, he’ll spill what he knows.”

Tom whistled.  “I sure wouldn’t want to be in his shoes when he gets back to Brungaria!  His bosses aren’t stupid.  They’ll know he must have made a deal to get off scot free!”

Just then a taxi from the airport pulled up outside police headquarters, and the CIA official was ushered into Slater’s office.  He proved to be John Thurston.

“Narko’s waiting in his cell,” Slater said, after an exchange of handshakes.  “Let’s hope he hasn’t changed his mind.”

The Brungarian spy rose from his cot as the turnkey unlocked his cell door.

“You are from Washington, eh?” Narko said to Thurston.  “Very well.  I presume the police have told you my offer.  Is it a bargain?”

Thurston was poker-faced.  “You know the penalty for spying!” he snapped.  “In your own country it would mean death.  Why should we let you off?”

Narko’s calmness evaporated.  Beads of sweat burst out on his forehead.

“I have done no harm and I know little or nothing of my superiors’ plans!” the spy said excitedly.  “Why should I lie to you with my life at stake?  After all, I am only an insignificant agent.  But one important thing I do know—­and this I will reveal if you promise to deport me at once!”

Thurston eyed him coldly.  “Very well,” the CIA man decided.  “You have my word.”

Narko sat down on his cot, breathing heavily.  Then he looked up at the three Americans.  “Your nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., is going to be blown up!” the Brungarian asserted.

His words struck like a bombshell.  Chief Slater and John Thurston stared at Narko in open-mouthed astonishment.

Then Slater scowled.  “What a preposterous story!  I suppose they’re going to fly a plane over and drop an atom bomb—­just like that!” He snapped his fingers.

Thurston was also inclined to doubt Narko’s story.  Any such bold move by the Brungarians, he declared, would amount to an act of war.

“It is the truth!” Narko shouted.  “Do not forget—­you have made a promise.”

Tom Swift did not share Chief Slater’s and Thurston’s skepticism.  Narko’s words had chilled him with dismay.  He called the other two aside and gave them a quick whispered briefing on the theory he had discussed with the government scientists, asking them to keep it confidential.

If the Brungarians indeed had a means of producing artificial shock waves, Tom pointed out, they could easily destroy Washington without the slightest risk to themselves.

Both Thurston and Chief Slater were alarmed.  Turning back to Narko, they grilled him for clues.  But it seemed obvious that the Brungarian was telling all he knew—­or, at any rate, all he intended to reveal.

“We’re wasting our time,” Thurston said finally, with a look of disgust.  “But I made a promise in the name of the United States government and the promise will be kept.”

Turning to Chief Slater, the CIA man added, “Turn him over to the FBI and have them take him to New York.  I’ll arrange for a seat on the first plane for Brungaria.”

Tom drove back thoughtfully to Enterprises.  Bud was waiting in his laboratory with news.

“Your dad went from Washington to Fearing Island and has gone up to your space outpost,” Bud reported.  “He has to do some experiments for the government project he’s working on.”

The outpost was a space station which Tom Swift Jr. had built 22,300 miles above the earth.  It was a production factory for his famous solar batteries, and also an immensely valuable setup for space research and exploration.

“Think I’ll radio Dad and let him know what’s going on,” Tom decided.  “He may have some good suggestions.  He usually does!”

Tom warmed up his private transmitter-receiver and beamed out a code call through the automatic scrambler.  Seconds later, the loud-speaker crackled in response.

But just as the outpost operator’s voice came through, the radio set exploded in Tom’s face!