Chapter 24 Tom Swift and His Sky Train by Victor Appleton
THROUGH STORM PERILS
“This is too bad, Tom,” remarked Ned.
“What is?”
“Having these Acton birds flying after you this way. I’m sure they never thought of building a sky train to rival yours until they heard what you were doing. And then, I’ll wager, that hard-boiled egg of a Lester Willam put them up to it. I’m going to take our account out of his bank—if we’ve any account left after this is over. Golly, but it’s tough!”
“Nonsense, Ned,” and Tom almost laughed. “You wouldn’t want me to have a walkover for that prize, would you? Get it without competition?”
“Sure I would! We need that money and need it bad, Tom! I’m telling you, boy!”
“Well, we’ll get it!” Tom predicted. But he did not have quite the confidence he voiced as he saw how speedily the Dirigible Flyer was coming along.
Tom called through the telephone to his airplane pilots:
“See if you can speed her up a little.”
“Right, Mr. Swift!” back came the answer. Almost at once the progress of the sky train was greater. Tom knew, however, that he was close to the limit. It was one thing to force a single aircraft to the utmost, but this could not be done when it was pulling more or less loose units in the shape of gliders. If a coupling broke, and a glider came loose, it would not necessarily mean disaster, for the glider could be safely piloted to earth. But it would spoil Tom Swift’s reputation and indicate that his sky train could not be relied upon. So he had to stop speeding the Eagle short of the limit of which she was capable.
But if Tom hoped to shake off the Dirigible Flyer by going faster he was disappointed. For those in charge of the Acton craft let out a few more propeller revolutions, and the big bulk came on fast. It had been travelling a different course from that of the sky train, which accounted for it not having been sighted before. But now, since Tom was laying a direct route for San Francisco, it behooved the Dirigible Flyer to proceed along the same line to cut down distance.
So close was the Dirigible Flyer now that she was in plain view to all aboard the Eagle and the greatest of excitement over the race was manifested. Those sportingly inclined began to lay wagers on the result, and Mr. Damon blessed everything he could think of to bring Tom Swift luck.
“They imagine they have a sky train,” Ned remarked, pointing to the rival outfit, “but they don’t drop gliders and pick ’em up as we do. They ought to be handicapped in this race.”
“Look!” some one suddenly exclaimed, pointing. “She’s had an accident! Part of the dirigible has broken off!”
“No,” said Tom, “they are only releasing one of their units. They must do that to comply with the rules.”
“Why don’t they pick one up?” asked Ned.
“I guess the answer to that is they can’t,” said Tom.
From the tail of the Dirigible Flyer a sort of balloon car went drifting lazily down to the ground. It could probably land as safely as could one of Tom’s gliders. Otherwise there was no comparison.
“Well, it’s going to be a race all right,” observed Tom as he noted that the other craft was flying about two miles from him, at about the same height. It was, also, going at about the same speed, for they were almost in line, as nearly as could be told.
“And may the best sky train win!” exclaimed Ned, fervently. “That’s us!”
The hours were passing. San Francisco lay not far ahead, computed in air travel terms. But the most dangerous part of the journey lay before each contestant. This was the region over the Rockies, with the sudden, hidden storms, clouds, fogs and treacherous air currents. Tom was more anxious about this part of the trip than any other.
It was just after Ned had observed the Dirigible Flyer through the glasses, noting with some alarm that she seemed to be a little ahead, when the telephone indicator from the Eagle motor room showed that Tom was wanted.
“What is it, Lacter?” he asked.
“The Rockies are just ahead, Mr. Swift. And I’m afraid we’re going to run into a storm!”
“Well,” said Tom, more easily than he felt, “I guess the only thing to do is to run into it and hope for the best. Are the motors running all right?”
“Never better.”
“Then hold about this speed and go up a bit. We may get above the storm.”
“Right!”
But it was soon evident, even though the Eagle began to pull her gliders higher, that there was no escaping the storm. In a short time the sky train was above the first of the Rocky range and in the midst of a violent outburst. First came a great blast of wind, careening the Eagle and her following gliders to such an extent that many of the passengers showed signs of fear. But Tom calmed them and in a short time the automatic stabilizer gyroscope had brought all the units of the train to even keels. On they flew.
Suddenly the sky grew dark. There was the rumble cracking of thunder so loud as to be heard in the Eagle cabin above the throb of the motors. Then the blackness of a premature night was glaringly split by vivid lightning flashes. All at once the Eagle began to go down. Tom Swift leaped away from the cabin instrument board.
“What’s the matter?” asked Ned in a low, anxious voice.
“Nothing, I hope,” answered Tom. “But I’m going forward to find out. I’m going to take charge of the Eagle myself. Do you see anything of the Dirigible Flyer, Ned?”
Ned looked out through the lightning illuminated blackness of the storm, across to where the Acton craft had last been sighted. A vivid flash showed her outlined against tossing wind-torn and rain-lashed clouds. And then Ned cried:
“Tom, she’s ahead of us!”
“She won’t be long!” exclaimed Tom Swift as, with a grim look on his face he passed forward through the door of the cabin communicating with the motor room. “I’m going to beat her, storm or no storm!”
The first disconcerting dip of the Eagle had been checked, and all in the sky train breathed easier now. And it was evident, soon after Tom Swift took the piloting of his train into his own hands, that the speed had increased.
On through the perils of the storm rushed and roared the Eagle, pulling after her the glider units. If one of them broke loose now, there might, indeed, be a disaster. For it would test a pilot’s skill to the utmost to land a glider amid the mountain peaks in such an outburst of the elements as now raged.
But Tom Swift had built his sky train well. The couplers were the weakest link in it, but they had been constructed to stand an immense strain. Nevertheless this was a supreme test, and Tom knew that if he could bring the outfit whole and undamaged through such peril as this that success was assured for future trips.
“I’m glad you’re going to take charge, Mr. Swift,” remarked Lacter as the young inventor went to the wheel.
“Same here!” echoed Turtan. “This sure is fierce! Worst storm I ever rode through.”
“We aren’t through, yet,” said Tom grimly.
Then began a battle the like of which Tom Swift had never before experienced. It needed all his skill to pilot the Eagle along over the mountain peaks, through the driving rain and, at times, actually through storm clouds, charged with lightning bolts which broke and cracked all around the sky train. And through it all fell the drenching, whipping rain.
Back in the cabin some timid souls openly expressed their fears. One man insisted that Tom Swift be communicated with and the train turned back.
“We are in danger of our lives!” he cried. “I demand to be set down on the ground where it’s safe!” His panic was affecting the others until Koku, sensing what was wrong, came and stood towering over the frightened coward and roared at him,
“Now you sit down on yourself an’ I hold yor hand! Den you not be ’fraid anny more!”
In spite of the peril and the tenseness of the situation, the others in the cabin could but laugh at Koku’s gentle, sarcastic remark. And the coward slunk off by himself, nursing his fears in solitude.
Meanwhile, even with the help of Lacter and Turtan, Tom Swift in the motor compartment of the Eagle was having all he could do to hold the craft on her course. At times the sky train was forced up, and again down until, on one of these dips, it was feared she would crash upon a mountain top, seen for an awful moment in the lightning glare. But the powerful motors pulled her up and on and away they roared. By another lightning flash Tom suddenly had a view of the rival dirigible train. It was within half a mile of him, and so far ahead, now, that Tom only glimpsed the tail unit.
“Looks as if they were going to beat me!” he grimly murmured as his hands grasped, more firmly, the steering wheel.