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

piece.
    The submersible appeared to be almost totally buried by the rubble from the undersea avalanche. Its rear portion—the twenty or so feet that was invisible to me, buried under the rock and sand—had to be damaged, if not totally crushed. And that included the ship’s communications, air lock, and propulsion system.
    Titanium is one of the hardest, strongest substances on Earth, and we’d made it even stronger by combining it with those patented alloys, designed especially for undersea pressures, that my special sensors had detected.

    But nothing could have held up to the force of that much rock, multiplied by the sheer depth of the ocean down here on the abyssal plain.
    Only the front portion of the
Verne-1
, containing its crew quarters, appeared to be intact. I guessed that my dad had ordered the lights turned on, at the risk of using up the ship’s remaining power, in the hope that someone would find them before it was too late.
    Well, here I was. I’d found them, all right. But I couldn’t get close enough to see through their porthole and determine whether they were still alive. For all I knew, their oxygen might have run out already.
    No … can’t think like that,
I told myself.
They just have to be alive.
    The
Jules Verne-1
had begun its dive with enough oxygen for twelve hours of undersea exploration. More than nine hours had already passed. That meant I had less than three hours left to save her.
    Assuming there were no leaks, I had every reason to think that the
Verne-1
’s crew was still breathing. But I couldn’t tell for sure. And even if I succeeded infreeing the
Verne-1
from the rubble, how would I be able to save its crew if the ship’s propulsion system was crushed?
    I couldn’t fit them on board the prototype, that was for sure—there was barely enough room for me and my diving suit.
    No, there was no way they could come on board with me, even if I could somehow dock our two craft together and make the connection air tight.
    The only way to do it was to transfer the steel cable from the prototype to the
Verne-1
, so it could be hauled up by the
Nestor
’s powerful winch. Once that was done, I could return to the surface inside the prototype under my own power.
    However, to do that I would first have to free the
Jules Verne-1
from the volcanic boulders that were piled on top of it. Even wearing my diving suit, it would be impossible to accomplish that by hand.
    If you asked me up on the surface how I would tackle freeing a submersible from a mountain of rubble, sand, and minivan-size boulders, I would say, “that’s easy—you just rig some explosives to a water-proof fuse, set them off, and away you go.”
    Unfortunately, I hadn’t thought to pack anyexplosives aboard the prototype. No fuses, either. Stupid of me, and it was too late now to go back up to the surface to get them.
    Then it came to me—I had two air tanks. Each was a canister of pressurized oxygen, together with helium and other inert gases to keep the nitrogen level low. In other words, compressed air, high in oxygen content—a perfect explosive.
    Ah, but how to set it off?
    “
Q.U.I.P
,” I asked, “is there anything on board that can ignite even in water?”
    “You might try the underwater blowtorch attached to the air-lock hatch.”
    “Of course!” I gasped. The blowtorch had been included in the ship’s inventory in case emergency repairs were needed.
    “What about a fuse?” I said. “I’ll have to fashion one that will burn underwater. Preferably manganese terfidium sulfate. Any of that on board, Q.U.I.P.?”
    “You might use some strips from the lining of the serial ballast levelizer. It should be soft enough to fashion into a long, thin string that will stay lit underwater.”
    The part of my ship he was referring to was criticalto keeping the
Verne-o
upright underwater. Without it, the prototype might end up upside down or on its side.
    But what other choice did I have?
    I went to work. First I