The Tom Swift Megapack

by Victor Appleton

  “Come on!” cried Tom. “Make for the airship! We’ve got to get the start of them!”

  Leading the way, he sprinted toward the road that led to the place where the airship awaited them. He was followed by Mr. Damon and the detective, who had Mr. Petrofsky between them.

  “Are you all right?” Tom called back to the exile. “Are you hurt? Can you run?”

  “I’m all right,” was the reassuring answer. “Go ahead; But they’ll be right after us.”

  “Maybe they’ll stop when they see this,” remarked the detective significantly, and he held his revolver so that the rays of the newly-risen moon glinted on it.

  “Here they come!” cried Tom a moment later, as three figures, one after the other, came around the corner of the house. They had not taken the shorter route through the window, as had Mr. Petrofsky, and this gained a little time for our friends.

  “Stop! Hold on!” cried one of the guards in fairly good English. “That is our prisoner.”

  “Not any more!” the young inventor yelled back. “He’s ours now.”

  “Look out! They’re going to shoot!” cried Mr. Damon. “Bless my gunpowder! can’t you stop them some way or other, Mr. Detective?”

  “The only way is by firing first,” answered Mr. Trivett, “and I don’t want to hurt them. Guess I’ll fire in the air again.”

  He did, and the guards halted. They seemed to be holding a consultation, as Tom learned by glancing hastily back, and he caught the glisten of some weapon. But if the three men had any notion of firing they gave it up, and once more came on running. Doubtless they had orders to get their prisoner back to Russia alive, and did not want to take any chances of hitting him.

  “Leg it!” cried Tom. “Leg it!”

  He was well ahead, and wanted the others to catch up to him, but none of the men was a good runner, and Mr. Petrofsky, by reason of being rather heavily built, was worse than the other two, so they had to accommodate their pace to his.

  “I wonder if we can make it,” mused Tom, as he realized that the airship was a good distance off yet the guards, though quite a way in the rear now were coming on fast. “It’s going to be a close race,” thought the young inventor. “I wish we’d brought the airship a little nearer.”

  It was indeed a race now, for the guards, seeming to know that they would not be shot at, were coming on more confidently, and were rapidly lessening the distance that separated them from their recent prisoner.

  “We’ve got to go faster!” cried Tom.

  “Bless my shoe leather!” yelled Mr. Damon. “I can’t go any faster.”

  Still he did make the attempt, and so did the exile and the detective. Little was said now, for each of the parties was running a dogged race, and in silence. They had gone possibly half a mile, and the first advantage of Tom and his friends was rapidly being lost, when suddenly there sounded in the air above a curious throbbing noise.

  “Bless my gasolene! What’s that?” cried Mr. Damon.

  “The airship! It’s the airship!” yelled Tom, as he saw a great dark shape slowly approaching. “Ned is bringing her to met us.”

  “Good!” cried the detective. “We need it I’m about winded!”

  “This way, Ned! This way!” cried Tom, and, an instant later, they were in the midst of a brilliant glow, for Ned had turned the current into the great searchlight on the bow of the air craft, and the beams were focused on our friends. Ned could now see the refugees, and in a moment he sent the graceful craft down, bringing it to a halt on the ground near Tom.

  “In with you!” cried the lad. “She’s all ready to start up again!”

  “Come on!” yelled Tom to the others. “We’re all right now, if you hustle!”

  “Bless my pin cushion!” gasped Mr. Damon, making a final spurt.

  The three guards had halted in confusion on seeing the big, black bulk of the airship, and when they noted the gleaming of the searchlight they must have realized that their chances were gone. They made a rush, however, but it was too late. Over the side of the craft scrambled Tom, Mr. Damon, the detective and Ivan Petrofsky, and an instant later Ned had sent it aloft. The race was over, and the young inventor and his friends had won.

  “You’re the stuff!” cried Tom to Ned, as he went with his chum to the pilot house to direct the progress of the airship. “It’s lucky you came for us. We never could have made the distance. We left the ship too far off.”

  “That’s what I thought after you’d gone,” replied his chum. “So I decided to come and meet you. I had to go slowly so as not to pass you in the darkness.”

  They were speeding off now, and Ned, turning the beams of the great searchlight below them, picked up the three guards who were gazing helplessly aloft after their fast disappearing prisoner.

  “You’re having your first ride in an airship, Mr. Petrofsky,” remarked Tom, when they had gone on for some little distance. “How do you like it?”

  “I’m so excited I hardly know, but it’s quite a sensation. But how in the world did you ever find me to rescue me?”

  Then they told the story of their search, and the unexpected clue from Russia. In turn the exile told how he had been attacked at the breakfast table one morning by the three spies—the very men who had been shadowing him—and taken away secretly, being drugged to prevent his calling for help. He had been kept a close prisoner in the lonely hut, and each day he had expected to be taken back to serve out his sentence in Siberia.

  “Another day would have been too late,” he told Tom, when he had thanked the young inventor over and over again, “for the papers would have arrived, and the last obstacle to taking me back to Russia would have been removed. They dared not take me out of the United States without official documents, and they would have been forged ones, for they intended trumping up a criminal charge against me, the political one not being strong enough to allow them to extradite me.”

  “Well I’m glad we got you,” said Tom heartily. “We will soon be ready to start for Siberia.”

  “In this kind of a craft?”

  “Yes, only much larger. You’ll like it. I only hope my air glider works.”

  By putting on speed, Tom was able to reach Shopton before midnight, and there was quite an informal celebration in the Swift homestead over the rescue of the exile. The detective, for whom there was no further need, was paid off, and Mr. Petrofsky was made a member of the household.

  “You’d better stay here until we are ready to start,” Tom said, “and then we can keep an eye on you. We need you to show us as nearly as possible where the platinum field is.”

  “All right,” agreed the Russian with a laugh. “I’m sure I’ll do all I can for you, and you are certainly treating me very nicely after what I suffered from my captors.”

  Tom resumed work on his air glider the next day, and he had an additional helper, for Mr. Petrofsky proved to be a good mechanic.

  In brief, the air glider was like an aeroplane save that it had no motor. It was raised by a strong wind blowing against transverse planes, and once aloft was held there by the force of the air currents, just like a box kite is kept up. To make it progress either with or against the wind, there were horizontal and vertical rudders, and sliding weights, by which the equilibrium could be shifted so as to raise or lower it. While it could not exactly move directly against the wind it could progress in a direction contrary to which the gale was blowing, somewhat as a sailing ship “tacks.”

  And, as has been explained, the harder the wind blew the better the air glider worked. In fact unless there was a strong gale it would not go up.

  “But it will be just what is needed out there in that part of Siberia,” declared the exile, “for there the wind is never quiet. Often it blows a regular hurricane.”

  “That’s what we want!” cried Tom. He had made several models of the air glider, changing them as he found out his errors, and at last he had hit on the right shape and size.

  Midway of the big glider, on
which work was now well started, there was to be an enclosed car for the carrying of passengers, their food and supplies. Tom figured on carrying five or six.

  For several weeks the work on the air glider progressed rapidly, and it was nearing completion. Meanwhile nothing more had been heard or seen of the Russian spies.

  “Well,” announced Tom one night, after a day’s hard work, “we’ll be ready for a trial now, just as soon as there comes a good wind.”

  “Is it all finished?” asked Ned.

  “No, but enough for a trial spin. What I want is a big wind now.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  IN A GREAT GALE

  There was a humming in the air. The telegraph wires that ran along on high poles past the house of Tom Swift sung a song like that of an Aeolian harp. The very house seemed to tremble.

  “Jove! This is a wind!” cried Tom as he awakened on a morning a few days after his air glider was nearly completed. “I never saw it so strong. This ought to be just what I want I must telephone to Mr. Damon and to Ned.”

  He hustled into his clothes, pausing now and then to look out of his window and note the effects of the gale. It was a tremendous wind, as was evidenced by the limbs of several trees being broken off, while in some cases frail trees themselves had been snapped in twain.

  “Coffee ready, Mrs. Baggert?” asked our hero as he went downstairs. “I haven’t got time to eat much though.”

  In spite of his haste Tom ate a good breakfast and then, having telephoned to his two friends, and receiving their promises to come right over, our hero went out to make a few adjustments to his air glider, to get it in shape for the trial.

  He was a little worried lest the wind die out, but when he got outside he noted with satisfaction that the gale was stronger than at first. In fact it did considerable damage in Shopton, as Tom learned later.

  It certainly was a strong wind. An ordinary aeroplane never could have sailed in it, and Tom was doubtful of the ability of even his big airship to navigate in it. But he was not going to try that.

  “And maybe my air glider won’t work,” he remarked to himself as he was on his way to the shed where it had been constructed. “The models went up all right, but maybe the big one isn’t proportioned right. However, I’ll soon see.”

  He was busy adjusting the balancing weights when Ned Newton came in.

  “Great Scott!” exclaimed the lad, as he labored to close the shed door, “this is a blow all right, Tom! Do you think it’s safe to go up?”

  “I can’t go up without a gale, Ned.”

  “Well, I’d think twice about it myself.”

  “Why, I counted on you going up with me.”

  “Burr-r-r-r!” and Ned pretended to shiver. “I haven’t an accident insurance policy you know.”

  “You won’t need it, Ned. If we get up at all we’ll be all right. Catch hold there, and shift that rear weight a little forward on the rod. I expect Mr. Damon soon.”

  The eccentric man came in a little later, just as Tom and Ned had finished adjusting the mechanism.

  “Bless my socks!” cried Mr. Damon. “Do you really mean to go up today, Tom?”

  “I sure do! Why, aren’t you going with me?” and Tom winked at Ned.

  “Bless my—” began Mr. Damon, and then, evidently realizing that he was being tested he exclaimed: “Well, I will go, Tom! If the air glider is any good it ought to hold me. I will go up.”

  “Now, Ned, how about you?” asked the young inventor.

  “Well, I guess it’s up to me to come along, but I sure do wish it was over with,” and Ned glanced out of the window to see if the gale was dying out. But the wind was as high as ever.

  It was hard work getting the air glider out of the shed, and in position on top of a hill, about a quarter of a mile away, for Tom intended “taking off” from the mound, as he could not get a running start without a motor. The wind, however, he hoped, would raise him and the strange craft.

  In order to get it over the ground without having it capsize, or elevate before they were ready for it, drag ropes, attached to bags of sand were used, and once these were attached the four found that they could not wheel the air glider along on its bicycle wheels.

  “We’ll have to get Eradicate and his mule, I guess,” said Tom, after a vain endeavor to make progress against the wind. “When it’s up in the air it will be all right, but until then I’ll need help to move it. Ned, call Rad, will you?”

  The colored man, with Boomerang, his faithful mule, was soon on hand. The animal was hitched to the glider, and pulled it toward the hill.

  “Now to see what happens,” remarked Tom as he wheeled his latest invention around where the wind would take it as soon as the restraining ropes were cast off, for it was now held in place by several heavy cables fastened to stakes driven in the ground.

  Tom gave a last careful look to the weights, planes and rudders. He glanced at a small anemometer or wind gage, on the craft, and noted that it registered sixty miles an hour.

  “That ought to do,” he remarked. “Now who’s going up with me? Will you take a chance, Mr. Petrofsky?”

  “I’d rather not—at first.”

  “Come on then, Ned and Mr. Damon. Mr. Petrofsky and Rad can cast off the ropes.”

  The wind, if anything, was stronger than ever. It was a terrific gale, and just what was needed. But how would the air glider act? That was what Tom wanted very much to know.

  “Cast off!” he cried to the Russian and Eradicate, and they slipped the ropes.

  The next moment, with a rush and whizzing roar, the air glider shot aloft on the wings of the wind.

  CHAPTER IX

  THE SPIES

  “We’re certainly going up!” yelled Ned, as he sat beside Tom in the cabin of the air glider.

  “That’s right!” agreed the young inventor rather proudly, as he grasped two levers, one of which steered the craft, the other being used to shift the weights. “We’re going up. I was pretty sure of that. The next thing is to see if it will remain stationary in the air, and answer the rudder.”

  “Bless my top knot!” cried Mr. Damon. “You don’t mean to tell me you can stand still in a gale of wind, Tom Swift.”

  “That’s exactly what I do mean. You can’t do it in an aeroplane, for that depends on motion to keep itself up in the air. But the glider is different. That’s one of its specialties, remaining still, and that’s why it will be valuable if we ever get to Siberia. We can hover over a certain spot in a gale of wind, and search about below with telescopes for a sign of the lost platinum mine.

  “How high are you going up?” demanded Ned, for the air glider was still mounting upward on a slant. If you’ ever scaled a flat piece of tin, or a stone, you’ll remember how it seems to slide up a hill of air, when it was thrown at the right angle. It was just this way with the air glider—it was mounting upward on a slant.

  “I’m going up a couple of hundred feet at least,” answered Tom, “and higher if the gale-strata is there. I want to give it a good test while I’m at it.”

  Ned looked down through a heavy plate of glass in the floor of the cabin, and could see Mr. Petrofsky and Eradicate looking up at them.

  “Bless my handkerchief!” cried Mr. Damon, when his attention had been called to this. “It’s just like an airship.”

  “Except that we haven’t a bit of machinery on board,” said Tom. “These weights do everything,” and he shifted them forward on the sliding rods, with the effect that the air glider dipped down with a startling lurch.

  “We’re falling!” cried Ned.

  “Not a bit of it,” answered Tom. “I only showed you how it worked. By sliding the weights back we go up.”

  He demonstrated this at once, sending his craft sliding up another hill of air, until it reached an elevation of four hundred feet, as evidenced by the barograph.

  “I guess this is high enough,” remarked Tom after a bit. “Now to see if she’ll stand still.”

  Sl
owly he moved the weights along, by means of the compound levers, until the air glider was on an “even keel” so to speak. It was still moving forward, with the wind now, for Tom had warped his wing tips.

  “The thing to do,” said the young inventor, “is to get it exactly parallel with the wind-strata, so that the gale will blow through the two sets of planes, just as the wind blows through a box kite. Only we have no string to hold us from moving. We have to depend on the equalization of friction on the surfaces of the wings. I wonder if I can do it.”

  It was a delicate operation, and Tom had not had much experience in that sort of thing, for his other airships and aeroplanes worked on an entirely different principle. But he moved the weights along, inch by inch, and flexed the tips, planes and rudders until finally Ned, who was looking down through the floor window, cried out:

  “We’re stationary!”

  “Good!” exclaimed Tom. “Then it’s a success.”

  “And we can go to Siberia?” added Mr. Damon.

  “Sure,” assented the young inventor. “And if we have luck we’ll rescue Mr. Petrofsky’s brother, and get a lot of platinum that will be more valuable than gold.”

  It would not be true to say that the air glider was absolutely stationary. There was a slight forward motion, due to the fact that it was not yet perfected, and also because Tom was not expert enough in handling it.

  The friction on the plane surfaces was not equalized, and the gale forced the craft along slightly. But, compared to the terrific power of the wind, the air glider was practically at a standstill, and this was remarkable when one considers the force of the hurricane that was blowing above below and through it.

  For actually that was what the hurricane was doing. It was as if an immense box kite was suspended in the air, without a string to hold it from moving, and as though a cabin was placed amidships to hold human beings.

  “This sure is great!” cried Ned. “Have you got her in control, Tom?”

  “I think so. I’ll try and see how she works.”

  By shifting the weights, changing the balance, and warping the wings, the young inventor sent the craft higher up, made it dip down almost to the earth, and then swoop upward like some great bird. Then he turned it completely about and though he developed no great speed in this test made it progress quarteringly against the wind.