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

cliff had jagged edges of newly formed lava rock. Everywhere there were ledges of sand and rubble that looked ready to cascade downward at the slightest shake of the Earth’s crust.
    I could just picture one of them falling onto the Jules Verne-1.
    No—can’t think about that,
I told myself.
    My console started beeping, and I scanned the monitor. A jagged green line marked the ocean bottom, a blinking, sinking green light was my tiny ship. The two were getting closer … closer … and …
    BANG!
    My ship hit the bottom with a thud and a shudder. For a second, I was sure that the groaning sound I heard was the
Verne-o
’s titanium shell buckling from the impact.
    But no. After a moment all was silent except thebeeping of the monitors, measuring oxygen flow, power usage, and carbon dioxide levels.
    I was at the bottom.
Finally!
    I stared out the Swiftglass porthole at the cloud of sand stirred up by my ship’s landing. Slowly, it began to clear.
    Nothing.
    No Jules Verne-1. Just flat, empty sea bottom.
    Now
what was I going to do?
    I flicked on the prototype’s holographic ground scanner. In seconds, a 3-D image of the sea bottom around me displayed itself.
    This was helpful, but only a little. The scanner could only see what I could illuminate by playing the sub’s searchlights over the surrounding terrain. The searchlights were adjustable, but they could only take in fifteen degrees at a time—a very narrow slice of pie.
    Where the holographic scanner helped was in collecting the slices as I swiveled the lights, and then, using smart technology, assembling them into an entire three-hundred-sixty-degree, 3-D landscape.
    The beauty of having this virtual, holographic landscape in front of me was that I could manipulateit, so that I got the view of the sea bottom from above, seeing past obstacles like rocks and ridges.
    It was something I could never have done by myself from inside the vehicle—and something I hoped would help me spot the
Jules Verne-1
.
    The ocean bottom was rocky—craggy, even—and mostly covered in black, mucky slime. The only natural light came from the bioluminescent creatures that live down here on the abyssal plain, eating whatever bits of food float down from above.
    Eyeless shrimp were hovering outside the sub’s two portholes, which had been flattened out by the ocean pressure. On the surface, they bulged outward.
    The holographic image seemed to show a ridge of rubble rising from the sea bottom at the far end of my horizon. Above it hovered the cliff I’d seen while being lowered down here.
    Could that pile of rubble be covering the Jules
Verne-1
? I sure hoped not—but it was definitely worth a look.
    My sub-to-surface video monitor blinked on.
Nestor
was remotely opening the link—draining my crafts precious power to check and see if I was all right.
    “I’m fine,” I said, “but we’d better not waste energy.”I wanted to conserve every drop of power my ship had left, so I could use it to save my dad and the others.
    I could see Bud, Yo, and the captain hovering over their monitor. They all wore worried faces.
    “You look green,” Yo said.
    “It’s just the light in here—the glow of the monitors.”
    “Oh. So … you’re okay?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Any sign of the
Verne-1
?” the captain asked.
    “Not just yet—but I do have a reading I want to go check out.”
    “Fine. We’ll play out the rest of the cable for you—we’ve still got about two hundred feet.”
    That ought to be enough,” I said. “I can at least get close to the spot.”
    Tom,” the captain added, “that storm’s getting worse, and fast. We don’t have much time to get this done.”
    “I understand,” I said. “We’d better shut the link now. I need to conserve power.”
    “Okay, then,” he said. “We’ll check back with you in a little while.”
    I waited for the rest of the cable to play out, thenmaneuvered my craft toward the mound of debris in the distance.
    My holographic display