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

changed, shifting to reflect my sub’s position. The virtual view was better than staring out the porthole into the dim depths, where everything tended to flatten out.
    My tiny submersible had been designed to use as little power as possible. Its hydrogen cell was small and lightweight—the only way it would fit on a craft as tiny as the
Verne-o
. And that meant the ship could only travel at five miles an hour—a speed that seemed impossibly slow right now. Especially since I could only spend four hours down here—three hours outside the
Verne-o
, using the air in my tanks, and one hour inside it (not counting going down and coming up)—before the
Verne-o
itself started running out of air, and I had to head back to the surface.
    It was a drop-dead timetable—I couldn’t stay down here any longer than that, even if my mission wasn’t complete.
    I floated past translucent, jelly-like creatures, fish that looked prehistoric but had no eyes (who neededthem in this totally dark realm?),· and pulsating, hairy worm-like things. I wasn’t sure if they’d ever been seen by human eyes before.
    Too bad the video link was shut down. If it had been switched on, the scientists back on the
Nestor
would have had a good time looking for new deep-sea species. But this was a rescue mission, and every ounce of power had to be conserved.
    I passed close to a rock “chimney”—an undersea volcanic vent. It was belching black smoke straight from the earth’s core into the murky water. Attached to its sides were tube-like creatures that looked a little bit like sea cucumbers, but I knew that these animals fed off the sulfurous minerals that belched out of these “black smokers.”
    These creatures lived, it seemed, not on oxygen like most life we know of, but by breathing in sulfur dioxide instead.
    The mound of rubble I was looking for now came into clear, well-lit view. I wanted to circle the entire area in the submersible to get the view from the far side of the mound—but I was now at the very end of the cables reach and could go no farther.
    I tried circling the mound in the other direction. If this didn’t work, I had no idea what I was going to try next.
    I could, I suppose, power the prototype to the northwest—the direction my dad had said they were going next. The
Nestor
would have to steam in the same direction along with me, at the same speed, so as not to snap the cable. It would be a delicate maneuver, to say the least—especially if the storm was churning up big waves.
    I saw nothing in or near the mound. No light or movement at all. No signs of life.
    If the
Verne-1
was here, it was completely buried and all was lost.
    I tried my sonar, playing it off the side of the mound.
    Nothing.
    Then I tried my high-tech sensors, a last resort before I gave up on this spot and moved on. The sensors were made to detect the chemical signature of the artificial alloys Swift Enterprises had used to make the titanium shell of the
Verne-1
harder and more pressure-resistant.
    The sensor blipped once, twice, three times—then started going crazy.
    Eureka!
I’d found the
Jules Verne-1!
    But where
was
it?
    Just then, the sea bottom started to shake and rumble. “Dust” flew up from the ocean floor, and part of the debris mound slid downward, tumbling off the edge of a rock ledge I hadn’t noticed before and revealing the faint glow of some large, bioluminescent creature.
    Wait … no … that wasn’t bioluminescence. It was … it was a porthole!
    It was the bow of the submersible!
    That meant the
Jules Verne-1
still had power left—which was great news, because that also meant its hull hadn’t been punctured, and its resistance to the incredible pressure at these depths was still intact.
    But that didn’t answer the most important question:
    Was its crew still alive?

9
 
  Buried Alive?
    I had found the
Verne-1
. Now came the really hard part of my mission—somehow, I had to get it back up to the surface in one