Tom’s voice trailed off. His head was spinning. A wave of nausea swept over him.
“Skipper! Are you all right?” Arv called.
“Yes … I’m okay,” Tom replied. “Feeling a bit sick, though. The poison in the water must be getting through into our oxygen systems!” Suddenly he jerked around. “Bud!”
As he spoke, Tom began stroking his way, one-handed, toward his partner.
“D-don’t worry… . I’m all right,” Bud responded. “But whew! I sure feel w-woozy!”
“I’m coming down after you!” Arv phoned.
“No need… . We can make it, I th-think.”
Flicking their density controls, the boys bobbed upward-clawing aside the weeds. In a few moments they sighted the seacopter. The air-lock hatch opened to admit them, and soon eager hands were helping the boys into the cabin.
“Thank goodness!” Bud murmured, and Tom said, “Thanks.”
Doc Simpson took charge immediately. After examining and treating Tom and Bud, he ordered both to rest.
Luckily only minute traces of the poison had filtered into their hydrolungs, and neither Tom nor Bud suffered more than passing effects. In an hour they were eager for a second try at plugging the lake inlet.
THE LAKE MONSTER 145
“This time we’ll use Fat Man suits,” Tom said.
This type of diving gear consisted of a huge steel egg, gyrostabilized, with a quartz glass window and mechanical arms and legs. The operator sat inside and worked the Fat Man’s limbs through an electronic control board. Tom had invented the ingenious deep-sea escape gear while building his jetmarine.
The Fat Men had elaborate oxygen supply and purifying systems. The thick steel shells would protect them in case of attack by the lake monster. As an extra safeguard against the poison, Tom added special filters.
This time the two young divers started out from shore. The Vishnapurian students grinned and applauded as the steel-egg Humpty-Dumpties waddled out into the water. Each carried an electrogel tank in one mechanical arm and powerful cutters in the other in case of entanglement by the jungly underwater growth. Tom’s Fat Man also carried two insulated cables which unreeled from a drum on the beach.
Tom kept up a running account over the sonarphone speaker. Twenty minutes later he reported, “We’re at the lake inlet again… . Bud, plant your tank on that ledge below the opening. Mine can go in this niche… . Okay, open the tank valve… . The stuff’s foaming out now, filling the inlet channel with purple gel. It’ll set and be
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stiff in a few minutes. Meantime, I’ll insert these cables. When they are connected to a B.C. source and the power is turned on, the plug should be watertight.”
Finished, the boys rose. Jahan asked if they had glimpsed the monster again.
“Not a sign of him,” Tom replied.
Back on land once more, Tom and Bud squirmed out of their suits and Tom connected the cables to one of his solar-charged batteries.
“Try calling the Dyna Ranger on radio,” he told Arv Hanson. Arv did so from aboard the Sea Hound and presently reported that the salvage craft would arrive in an hour or so.
Tom and Bud ate a quick lunch and waited restlessly. At last the spacecraft was sighted, zooming down toward the lake. It landed and Hank Sterling climbed out.
“How’re we doing, skipper?” he asked.
“So far, so good, Hank. We’re all set to boil the lake dry!”
CHAPTER XVII
KALI’S SECRET
THE Dyna Ranger climbed steeply as Tom, at the controls, poured power to the repelatrons. The figures below became specks and the Lake of Kali shrank to a dark-greenish pool. Chogyal, with its icy ranges, stretched to the north.
“How high are we going, skipper?” Bud asked.
“Just high enough for a good angle with the sun,” Tom replied. “This should do it,” he added a few moments later.
Setting the controls, Tom started up to the observation dome. Bud followed.
Topside, Tom sighted the sun’s altitude, took bearings on the lake, then fed the information into the dynasphere’s aiming computer.
Tom’s fingers moved back and forth over the electronic console, flicking switches and twirling voltage controls as he conned the dials.
Presently the ship’s great crystal sphere glowed 147
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bluish red. Tom tuned it to infrared frequency. A vast, curving electrical field began to deflect solar heat rays onto the lake.
“Okay,” Tom murmured tensely. “Now break out the electronic binoculars.”
Within minutes, wisps of vapor could be seen rising from the lake’s surface.
The boys gazed down in fascination. The wisps became spouting columns of steam, roiling the lake into a seething caldron. In an hour the valley was almost hidden under the billowing vapor clouds.
“The level’s down at least ten feet,” Arv radioed. “Boy, what a fantastic spectacle!”
Hour after hour the lake continued to boil under the intense radiation. Tom shifted the ship’s position several times as the sun sank lower. Late in the afternoon Arv reported that two-thirds of the water had boiled away.
As Tom gunned the repelatrons for more altitude, Bud asked, “Think we’ll finish by sundown?”
“Sure. We’ll go as far up as necessary to keep the sun’s rays in focus.”
Gradually the steam clouds began to thin out, and at last Arv radioed that the lake was dry. Jubilantly the two boys zoomed down and landed near the shore.
The student engineers cheered.
“Magnificent!” Jahan told Tom. “The greatest scientific feat ever seen in Asia!”
“Thanks, but the job’s not finished yet.” Tom
KALI’S SECRET 149
grinned modestly and strode to the beach with Bud to view the results of their work.
Daylight was fading, but the boys could see well enough to be breathless at their accomplishment. The entire lake bottom lay exposed. The weedy, poisonous plant growth had sunk downward as the water evaporated. Tangled, matted layers of the stuff now covered the immense basin, which sloped down sharply from the rocky shores to the plugged inlet.
“Wow! That’s a lot of gunk!” Bud muttered. “Can you clean it out?”
“May take a while, but I don’t see why not.”
“What’ll you use?”
“The thing Chow named the organ.”
The de-organic-izer, dubbed “organ” for short, was Tom’s spectromarine selector. The young inventor had built this machine to strip away the barnacles and slime from the undersea city of gold, which he had discovered while cruising near the Atlantic Ridge.
“There’s something interesting up near the north end of the lake,” Hank Sterling said. “Looks like an underwater formation.”
Tom looked where Hank was pointing. A curious cluster of high, bumpy protuberances thrust upward from the bottom of the northern slope. But plant growth covered them too thickly to make out what lay beneath.
Tom gazed at the odd sight intently. “Let me
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use your binoculars, Arv,” he said, a note of suppressed excitement in his voice.
As Tom took the glasses and studied the formations, a strange thrill shot through him.
“What’s under there?” Bud asked, puzzled, using binoculars himself. “The monster’s lair?”
“I have an even wilder hunch, Bud!” Tom exclaimed. “Is the organ set up yet, Arv?”
“Sure, it’s all assembled. But you’re not going to tackle the job now, are you?
It’ll be dark in another fifteen minutes.”
“We can work under floodlights.”
“Now listen, boss, I got the vittles almost ready,” Chow broke in.
Tom grinned and patted the cook’s shoulder. “Okay, old-timer, lay it out while we’re rigging the lights and we’ll pitch right in.”
Tom’s eagerness spread to the others, and everyone assisted in setting up a row of powerful floodlights along the lake shore directly opposite the mysterious formations. A hasty meal followed aboard the Sky Queen.
Chow fumed. “Brand my biscuits, it’s a waste o’ time cookin’ good grub if you’re goin’ to gulp it down like a pack o’ coyotes!”
The boys grinned and hurried outside. They climbed aboard the spectromarine selector, with its operators’ platform mounted on tractor treads. In front was the control pedestal with a cannon-like tube projecting forward. A vacuum hose was
KALI’S SECRET 151
suspended from an overhead boom. Through the hose the gases from the cracking process were drawn aft into tanks.
Tom threw the engine into gear and the selector rumbled along the shore toward the spot where the lights had been set up. A white brilliance shone out across the lake bed.
Doc Simpson made his way through the group of students and technicians who had gathered to watch. “Here! Strap on these oxygen masks,” he told the boys. “The air out there among all that poisonous gunk may not be too breathable.”
Tom and Bud donned the oxygen gear and started out over the lake bed.
The heavy tractor ground its way downward over the thick, slimy carpet of plant growth. Tom steered within the beams of light until they reached the nearest formation, and then maneuvered the machine into working position on the slope.
“Man! Whalever’s under these weeds is huge!” Bud remarked, pulling aside his mask to speak. “The tops of these formations must reach up to within twenty feet of the surface.”