Tom Swift and His Subocean Geotron by Victor Appleton II Page B

further news before ending the contact. "Yesterday evening we received a call at Enterprises that was rather unusual. The man said he was calling from a ship in the Pacific near Easter Island!"
    Tom’s eyebrows flew up. "That can’t be a coincidence! What did he want?"
    "To speak to the famous Tom Swift! He said he’d learned that you were in the area, and wanted to know how to call up to the Sky Queen . His name is Cyrus Springthorpe."
    "Did he say why he needed to contact me?"
    "Only that it was most important that he speak to you while you were still close by. I’ll give you the information he left—I have no idea whether it’d be worthwhile to call him."
    "Might as well," sighed the young inventor. "We’re sure not making any progress on the memory crypt business."
    Before placing the radio call to Springthorpe, Tom extended the search for a few hours more. He applied the advanced craft’s full armamentarium of detection devices—the radiation-sensitive Damonscope, his father’s metal detector, a telespectrometer, the gravity-gradient mapper nicknamed the gravy-scope, and "MAD"—a magnetic anomaly detecting device. None gave any clue to more of the beacon-objects or the space cache itself.
    Tired and discouraged from the fruitless search, Tom joined Bud in the command compartment. "Look, Skipper," Bud said with apologetic reluctance, "how do we know the crypt is still here? If it was planted millions of years ago, the ocean floor might have shifted, or the cache could have been washed away by undersea currents. The recorded info the beacons spew out might be aeons out of date—the crypt might have been destroyed!"
    Tom frowned thoughtfully and shook his head. "No, I doubt that, Bud. The beings who left the crypt and the beacons surely knew it might be a great span of time before anyone could activate the data transmissions—the ‘pirate’s treasure map’. My hunch is that technologically advanced beings would program the beacons to stay continuously linked to the crypt and monitor its status. We have no choice but to take as current whatever data we get, even if it isn’t very specific."
    Bud said gloomily, "Maybe the rival space creatures, the X-ians’ mystery competitors, have already beat us to the punch and grabbed the cache. They’re supposed to have picked up that transmission too." He added as an afterthought, "And if you want even worse, pal—maybe the Cobra’s already snapped it up."
    Tom looked worried. "We can’t rule it out. But it makes a bigger mystery out of why those masked riders kidnapped us. They wanted the objects badly, and that means to me that they hadn’t yet doped out the location data."
    Suddenly Tom grasped his chum’s wide shoulder as a thought struck him. "Bud!—that fellow Springthorpe is here in this area, in a ship! He might be trying to contact me because he saw something unusual going on at sea!"
    " Jetz !" Bud exclaimed. "Such as— someone trying to raise a space cache from the sea floor! Er—not that I have any idea what that’d look like."
    There was no more hesitation. Tom immediately radioed the man, as instructed.
    "I’m so gratified to receive your call, Tom," said the man who identified himself as Cyrus Springthorpe. "It makes things so much more convenient. My friend on Rapa Nui, Rogerio Moreno, happened to mention your visit and your search plans when he radioed the other day, so I directed the Luciente toward that area."
    Bud saw disappointment flash across Tom’s face. Whatever Springthorpe had in mind, it didn’t seem to be urgent after all. "Well," Tom replied, "my father said you wanted to speak with me."
    "Yes, Tom, face to face if possible. Would it be possible for your Flying Lab to land you on our ship?"
    Tom expressed surprise and said in response, "Unless the Luciente is an aircraft carrier, I doubt you could accommodate a landing by the Sky Queen . But we do have smaller craft aboard."
    After assuring the young inventor that the proposed