Depth perception, p.9
Depth Perception, page 9
“There’s plenty of room through there for us,” Noah said, his grin illuminated by the drone’s lights. “We can get out of here!”
I checked my phone. “We only have ten percent power left. We better hurry, or we’re going to have to do it in the dark.”
“Wait. I have an idea,” Noah said. “Let me see your phone.”
I handed over the dry bag, and Noah tapped at the screen. “I can have the drone lead us out—just go back the way it came.”
It was a brilliant idea. See, when Noah created the remote-control app, he’d designed it so the drone could follow preprogrammed directions, just like the flying drones that create light shows by hovering in formation. He’d also set it up so the drone could remember its previous path and backtrack.
Noah pulled the drone out of the water, spun it around, and aimed it at the mouth of the small tunnel. “Once I tell it to go, you can switch back to your flashlight,” he explained. “We can follow the drone’s light out of the tunnel if we lose power.”
“Good. Let’s get out of here.” Even though I wasn’t complaining as much as Noah, I was sick of being cold and wet too.
Noah tapped the screen and handed my phone back to me. The drone’s light moved away as it glided back into the tunnel. I switched on my flashlight as Noah moved closer to the opening and took a deep breath. Then he disappeared underwater.
As I gave him a few seconds’ lead, I glanced back at the pile of money bags and grinned. And Noah said there was no mystery here.
I took a deep breath before following my friend into the tunnel. Even though everything was blurry, I could easily make out the drone’s light in the distance. Noah’s swimming silhouette followed closely behind it. There wasn’t really room to kick (which was good, since I was worried at first about being kicked in the face by my friend) but that didn’t matter. The tunnel had plenty of places to grip. I easily pulled myself along, even one-handed.
For a moment, I thought maybe we had miscalculated. The tunnel suddenly seemed longer and tighter than I’d expected. Even though I couldn’t see clearly, my imagination made it stretch out for meters with no end in sight. My lungs began to ache, and panic slowly crept in. Am I going to run out of air before I reach the end? I couldn’t even see Noah or the drone anymore.
Then the tunnel suddenly widened out, and my hand fell on the edge. I cleared the entrance and pushed off the side of the island, rocketing toward the moonlight above, kicking as hard as I could. After what seemed like an eternity, I finally breached the surface, gasping for air.
I glanced back at the island but didn’t see Noah anywhere. Treading water, I spun around and let out a big sigh of relief when I finally spotted him, his head and torso poking above the surface, the drone tucked under one arm while the other held on to Mr. Jefferson’s kayak.
The man grinned as he dipped his paddle into the water, moving the boat closer to me. “I’d love to hear the story behind this one.”
14 The Impression Reassessment
NOAH AND I HELD ON to either side of the kayak while Mr. Jefferson paddled us over to the diving boat. Once we were all on board, he handed us big fluffy towels. We dried off as best we could, but mostly, it was nice to wrap up in them.
The three people we’d seen at the camp earlier filed onto the boat.
“Tom, Noah”—Mr. Jefferson pointed to the new arrivals—“this is Jim, Dana, and Hector. They work for me.”
We greeted them, barely looking up. Even though the rest of me was cold, my face felt on fire from embarrassment.
Dana’s eyes lit up. “Oh, these are the two with the sub. Jay showed us pics of your design. Nice work, guys.”
“Everyone’s inventions look great,” Hector added. “I can’t wait to see them in person.”
Noah shot me a look, and I shrugged back at him. I guess I had gotten a little carried away worrying about J. J. Jefferson’s photography.
Mr. Jefferson sat on a nearby bench. “All right. Let’s hear it. What made you two swim all the way out here?”
Noah and I glanced at each other. “Actually, sir, we didn’t swim,” I said. “At least, not at first.”
We took turns telling the group about our submarine trip, how we were trapped, bailed, and then were trapped again in the water-filled cavern. Mr. Jefferson’s eyes grew wider with every twist and turn. We ended up relaying every episode of our misadventure except the part about finding the lost money.
Jefferson shook his head. “Why in the world would you come out here at night, alone? You could’ve been killed.”
Noah and I exchanged another look. “You want to tell him?” Noah raised an eyebrow. “It was your big idea.”
“Thanks,” I said. I let out a long sigh, surveying my audience. “We were trying to figure out what you were up to, kayaking out to the island at night.”
Mr. Jefferson scowled, then nodded toward his crew. He pointed at Noah and me. “You see? This is what I was talking about.” He shook his head. “Your father warned me, trying to pull off something like this with all you little geniuses nearby wasn’t going to work.”
My jaw dropped. “My dad knew about this?”
Jefferson laughed. “Knew about it? It was his idea.” He sprang to his feet and lifted the lid of the bench he’d been sitting on. “Now, the question is what we’re going to do with the two of you.” He bent down and rummaged through the storage area.
My stomach tightened. Even though Noah was being sarcastic, had his suggestion been right? Was Jefferson looking for rope so he could tie us up and keep us on the boat?
“Uh, w-we… we w-won’t tell anyone,” Noah stuttered.
I nodded my head. “Yeah, we promise.”
I was shivering—though it could have been because I was soaking wet—when Mr. Jefferson pulled some kind of weapon out of the bench. Actually, my imagination ran a little wild on that one. What he really held was a large floodlight with a pistol grip.
He smiled. “Do either of you even know what you’re promising not to tell anyone about?” Before we could answer, he nodded toward the others. “Jimbo, do you mind?”
The younger man smiled. “No problem.” He climbed down the ladder and hopped onto the nearby island.
Jefferson motioned us toward the railing and pointed over the side. Noah and I shuffled forward, and I spotted Jim jogging toward four dark shapes floating in the water just off the island’s shore. Mr. Jefferson switched on the floodlight and washed its bright beam over them, revealing four tarp-covered objects. The tan shrouds looked like they could’ve been hiding Jet Skis, but really big ones.
When Jim reached the closest object, he lifted its tarp and revealed a sleek vessel with a glass dome. Its nose was decorated with rows of sharp teeth and one devious eye.
I recognized it at once. “Great White.”
Jefferson nodded and switched off the light. “I brought four of them for everyone to try out.”
“Way cool!” Noah said.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” I asked.
“Well, not only was it going to be a surprise,” he replied, “but I didn’t want to distract anyone from their projects.”
Noah nodded. “Oh yeah. Those would be very distracting.”
Mr. Jefferson shrugged. “Plus, even though I like to joke about stealing people’s ideas, I certainly didn’t want to steal the thunder from your sub.”
“You don’t have to worry about that now,” Noah said sadly.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “The Advance is now just another attraction for scuba divers.”
Jefferson shook his head. “Man, your dad’s going to be furious. What did you think I was doing out here that you’d take a risk like that?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “We thought you were looking for the Boldero Bandit’s money.”
“The loot from that old armored truck heist?” Dana asked.
Hector laughed. “You didn’t tell us we could be looking for lost money out here, boss.”
Mr. Jefferson gave a dismissive wave. “No treasure hunting on the job. Besides, it’s just an urban legend, anyway.”
Noah and I exchanged a look and smiled.
“Actually…”
15 The Retribution Resolution
“DUDE, I THINK THIS IS a dirty diaper. Gross!” Noah scowled as he chucked a grapefruit-size piece of litter into his garbage bag. It hit the plastic with a disgusting amount of weight to it. “You’d think they could give us some grabbers or those sticks with points on them or something.”
I pulled a half-buried, plastic six-pack ring out of the ground. “We didn’t even get those before we were in trouble.”
And we were so in trouble.
Mr. Jefferson had ferried us back in his large boat while everyone was still asleep. That gave Noah and me one last night before news of our adventure spread through camp like wildfire the next morning.
First, we got it from Mr. Edge, then from Mrs. Scott. They both gave us whirlwinds of lectures, containing words like “reckless,” “irresponsible,” “inconsiderate,” and “thoughtless.” We’d been put on permanent trash duty for the rest of the trip, and our teachers had both vowed to make us give safety presentations when we returned to school.
My dad’s lecture was somehow worse. He’d stood by patiently while the teachers scolded us, then expressed his disappointment and told me I’d shown myself to be untrustworthy. That stung most of all.
After that, he’d grounded me for an entire month, and it wasn’t just that I couldn’t go anywhere but to school and back home for thirty days. No, this was my dad’s seldom-used nuclear option. I’d be doing his chores as well as my own, and he suddenly had a long list of projects around the house that he’d been putting off, which were now all mine. But the worst part was, with the exception of homework, I wasn’t allowed screens of any kind. That meant no TV, no Internet, no video games, no phone, nothing. In fact, my dad said that unless it came from a tree, I couldn’t have any entertainment whatsoever.
I tried to look on the bright side. I loved reading, plus I was planning to use that time to come up with some kind of tool or invention to raise the Advance from the bottom of the lake. Like I said before, we came to Lake Carlopa to clean up litter, not leave more behind.
The good thing about having my dad on the camping trip was that I already knew what my punishment was. Noah had to wait until he got home to see how bad he’d have it.
“Ugh! I think this was someone’s underwear.” Noah held up a pair of not-so-white tighty-whities. “Are they planting disgusting stuff here to punish us more?”
“At least they let us keep our gloves,” I said.
“No kidding.”
The last round of reprimands had come from Sam and Amy. Our friends chose different words like “asinine,” “idiotic,” “insane,” and “pea-brained,” just to name a few of the tamer ones. Once we’d taken our medicine, we did get to tell them all about our adventure. I even showed them the drone footage on my phone after I’d charged it (since it wouldn’t be confiscated until I got home).
I found out that Amy had finally come clean to Sam about not wanting to camp anymore. Sam was understanding, as I’d predicted she would be, and since Amy no longer had to be camper extraordinaire, she came up with the idea to combine the caterpillar combs from the Beach Comber with Tony and Maggie’s Basker. The undulating tines were much more efficient at driving debris toward the Basker’s conveyor belt. That’s some Swift Academy collaboration right there!
“Check it,” Noah said, gesturing toward the lake. “Here they come again.”
We crept closer to the tree line and watched as the four Great Whites cruised into view. They had long tails that swished back and forth, propelling them along. And like their namesakes, they also dipped below the surface, before breaching with small jumps. From our vantage point, we could just make out the smiling students inside the clear canopies.
I think the worst part of our punishment was watching everyone have fun in Mr. Jefferson’s sleek subs. We had kept his surprise a secret until the big unveiling. After that, he and his crew took turns bringing everyone out in the cool watercraft, safely cruising around the cordoned-off scuba area. They even let each of the students drive—something we hadn’t even done with our sub! Noah and I hadn’t bothered asking if we would get a turn. Then again, we’d already had enough underwater adventure to last a lifetime.
Mrs. Scott caught us watching and glared at us, her eyebrow raised. Our smiles faded as we trudged back into the woods to collect more trash.
Noah picked up an old mason jar and poured out the contents. “I don’t even want to know what was in this thing,” he said before dropping the empty jar into his bag.
The shark boats hadn’t been the only aquatic entertainment during the rest of the trip. Mr. Jefferson and my dad had reported our discovery to Boldero Security. People from the company had come out in park rangers’ boats, transporting equipment to the island to recover the stolen money—or what was left of it, anyway. After they carefully removed the bags from the cave, we heard that a little more than half of the cash was salvageable. It turned out there was a reward, but my father talked Noah and me into donating it to the academy’s scholarship program. In our current situation, we could hardly refuse, especially after Mr. Jefferson offered to match the donation if we agreed.
We continued picking up litter until our bags were full. Like we had done countless times before, we hauled the heavy loads over to Jessie’s Super Sorter. As Noah emptied his bag into the hopper, Mr. Jefferson and my dad walked up from the lake.
“How’s it going, fellas?” my dad asked.
Noah shook out the rest of his bag and grabbed mine. “Still finding all kinds of nastiness,” he said as he poured.
The men chuckled and exchanged a knowing look.
“You know, guys, I feel partly responsible for your current predicament,” Mr. Jefferson began. “I mean, if I wasn’t so secretive”—he glanced at my dad, embarrassed—“or was better at hiding my surprise, then maybe a couple of curious students wouldn’t have felt the need to investigate.”
“And since his surprise was my partly my idea…” My dad rolled his eyes. “Well, Jay and I were thinking that maybe we’ve been a little too hard on you.”
I felt a glimmer of hope. “You mean I’m not grounded?”
My father burst into laughter. “Good one, Tom. Oh, no. You’re still very grounded.”
My shoulders slumped.
J. J. Jefferson clasped his hands together. “We thought that it was a little too harsh keeping you two from trying out the Great Whites.”
Noah and I looked at each other, eyes wide, mouths open.
Jefferson smiled. “In fact, Dana and Hector are ready for you at the—”
That was all I heard. Noah and I had already thrown our gloves to the ground and were running toward the docks before Mr. Jefferson finished, wide grins stretched across our faces. We may have been grounded when we got home, but in that moment, Noah and I had one last underwater adventure in us!
More from this Series
The Drone Pursuit
Book 1
The Sonic Breach
Book 2
Restricted Access
Book 3
The Virtual Vandal
Book 4
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On Top of the World
Rocket Racers
About the Author
VICTOR APPLETON is the author of the classic Tom Swift books.
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Read all the books in the TOM SWIFT INVENTORS’ ACADEMY series!
The Drone Pursuit
The Sonic Breach
Restricted Access
The Virtual Vandal
The Spybot Invasion
Augmented Reality
The Blurred Blogger
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First Aladdin hardcover edition March 2022
Copyright © 2022 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Text by Victor Appleton
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Appleton, Victor, author.
Title: Depth perception / Victor Appleton.
Description: First Aladdin hardcover edition. | New York: Aladdin, 2022. | Series: Tom Swift Inventors’ Academy; book 8 | Audience: Ages 8 to 12. | Summary: While working on a service project to clean up a local lake, Tom and his friends begin to question the behavior of famous inventor and project sponsor J.J. Jefferson, who seems unusually interested in the students’ inventions.
