Free Into the Abyss (Tom Swift, Young Inventor) by Victor Appleton Page A

prototype sank deeper into the mid-ocean zone, there were fewer and fewer fish to talk about.
    It was dark in these depths, except for the ship’s searchlight, which played back and forth across a narrow slice of the view. Anything outside its range was blanketed in total blackness.
    “I see a—I see a giant squid!” I yelled.
    “Wow!”
    “Just kidding, Yo. Stay with me though—there’s one out there somewhere, I’m sure.”
    “I just can’t believe a word you say, Tom Swift,” Yo muttered.
    “Quit messing around, huh?” Bud said. This is serious business.”
    As if I needed reminding. “Okay, okay.”
    Just as I said that, the weirdest creature I’d seen yet floated past my porthole. It looked like a red eel, except it had a crown like a rooster and a big, bright red fin across its top. Below, it trailed two long fins—which acted as bait to draw prey closer. And it was bioluminescent.
    Chasing the two “bait” fins was a school of see-through fish with glowing skeletons.
    “Well?” I heard Yo say.
    “Never mind,” I said. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”
    Q.U.I.P’s tiny radar dish rose from the center of my wristwatch and swiveled toward the porthole. “It’s a roosterfish,” Q.U.I.P said. “And those are hatchet fish.” He uses his radar as his “eyes”—and it serves him pretty well, too.
    Thank you,” I said, “Mr. Know-it-all.”
    Thank
you
,” said Q.U.I.P, missing the humor in my voice.
    The cable kept unwinding, lowering me deeper and deeper beneath the surface of the sea. My gauges told me that I was now at four thousand feet.
    It was taking
forever
to get to the bottom! At any moment, my dad could be breathing his last! Couldn’t they lower me down any faster?
    Of course I knew they couldn’t—not without risking snapping the cable or damaging the prototype. Still, it was agonizing.
    Outside the porthole, there now appeared an even weirder fish. Only two inches long, it looked like a sharp-toothed lizard sitting on a rock, except that the rock was a part of its body. “Okay, Q.U.I.P,” I said. “What is that?”
    The tiny radar dish swiveled at the porthole again. Q.U.I.P beeped softly, computing the data that was coming across its optical sensor. “Chiasmodon niger. It can swallow prey up to twice its size.”
    I looked again at the “rock” underneath the “lizard.” Obviously, it was the fish’s stomach.
    “Fierce,” I said.
    “Fierce indeed.”
    “What?” Yo’s voice came over the speaker. “What now?”
    “I couldn’t even begin to describe it,” I said. “But the prototype is capturing digital video the whole time. You can watch it later—when this is all over.”
    If I ever get back to the surface,
I thought.
    “How’s the weather up there?” I asked.
    “Raining,” Bud said. “We’re starting to rock again.”
    “You okay, Yo?” I asked.
    “Don’t talk about it,” she said. “Let’s stick to the mission, huh?”
    Good idea. Only there wasn’t much I could do between now and when my ship hit the bottom.
    “Why don’t we just give it a rest for a while?” I said. “I’m tired of talking.”
    “Whatever you say,” Bud said.
    I sat there in silence, watching the watery world go by in my submersible’s searchlights. I couldn’t stop thinking about my dad. I wished I’d invented a time machine, so I could make this descent go faster!
    The minutes ticked by, and the wait was agony. My submersible had passed through the sunlit zone (from 0-660 feet down), the twilight zone (660-3,300 feet), and the dark zone (3,300-13,200 feet). I was now in the deep abyss, and it was as dark asanyplace on Earth—except, of course, for the narrow beam of light created by my ship’s searchlights.
    Still the
Verne-o
and I sank downward. Now, out the porthole, I could see a steep volcanic cliff. I knew from the charts we’d studied with my dad the night before that it marked the side of a seamount at the edge of the abyssal plain.
    The