Free Tom Swift and His Aquatomic Tracker by Victor Appleton II Page B

were scattered by an exclamation from Ham Teller, who was standing some yards distant at the edge of the guyot’s tabletop. "I—I—I can’t believe it! There it is !"
    Electrified, the hydronauts struggled and shuffled to Ham’s side as quickly as they could manage. It was George Braun who arrived first. Following Teller’s gaze downward, the oceanographer sonophoned a gasp.
    "It’s real! The Conqueror Worm !"
     
CHAPTER 10
AN AMAZING ASCENT
    IN THE light of six aqualamp beams—reduced to a dim starlight by distance and murk—a gigantic, fantastic form could be seen scurrying across the ocean floor far below!
    "That’s no worm!" pronounced Tom Swift, stunned at the eerie sight.
    The bizarre creature was wide as a truck and long as a freight train, a sinuous line raising a cloud of silt and gouging a trail behind it. It seemed to have no distinct head, nor any legs, although hints of scuttling protuberences occasionally showed through between the separate segments of its body. What the hydronauts could make out was like a chain of pearlescent globules that flopped back and forth, jellylike.
    "Good gosh, it’s like an underwater centipede!" breathed Bud. "Look how fast it’s moving!"
    "Even if we can’t see any legs or claws, it must have ’em along its underbelly," observed Ham. "It has to be using something to grip the floor and give itself traction. Kong Dubya sure ain’t swimming."
    Alix repeated "Kong Dubya" under his breath. "It’s a nickname," explained Braun. "You know—‘Kong’ from Conqueror , ‘W’ from Worm ."
    The creature was barreling along in an arc, evidently curving around the base of the guyot. In moments the last bit of its tail-end had disappeared.
    "Did we really see it?" gulped Dan Walde as they turned away from the edge.
    "I know I did," stated Tom. "And now I have a great reason to get us topside. I’ve got to live long enough to study it!"
    Resting upon the concrete slab, the six batted about ideas for hours. Eventually they slept a little, half at a time so watch would be kept.
    When all were awake again at the same time, Tom noted that the search was almost certainly in full swing—somewhere. "We’re a good seven hours overdue," he said.
    "Let me be the first to say—I’m getting a tad hungry," grumbled Bud. "Good night, fish all around us and not a line to catch them with."
    Alix gestured contemptuously toward the spool of isobraid. "A line we have, and plenty. What we don’t have is a way to cook and clean whatever we catch."
    "Or get it into our mouths," added Bud.
    Tom rose and bobbled over to the spool, again taking its free end and examining it curiously. "This style of line isn’t just for tying things up or cable use," he sonophoned. "These colored bands at intervals― "
    "Yes," George interrupted. "It has a conducting core, basically a thin, flexible wire running the whole length inside the insulating plastic. It won’t carry much voltage, but it’s used in certain kinds of lowgrade underwater electrical work, such as connecting to remote instruments."
    Bud stared at his pal, then ineffectually tried to slam his palms together. "Hey, wait! Tom, couldn’t wire like that be used as an antenna? With a super-long antenna, maybe we could signal somebody out there!"
    "It could be adapted to use as a radio antenna," Tom confirmed, "and we could attach it to the output jack of one of our suit radiocoms. But there’s a big problem. Even with a long antenna, radio waves just don’t get much distance deep under water like this. In fact, the surface up there acts as a reflector to radio waves, as it does with light."
    "Ye-aah," groaned Dan. "The signals wouldn’t get anywhere."
    "Not from way down here," continued the young scientist-inventor, excitement touching his voice. "But what if we hoist the end of it all the way up, so it pokes a ways into the air?"
    "So how?" challenged Ham. "We can’t get ourselves up—and if we could, we wouldn’t need the