Tom Swift and His Space Solartron (15 page)

Eagerly Tom activated the ship’s powerful video-telescope and scanned the terrain below. Light-colored streaks radiated outward from the rim of the crater. Inside the towering rock walls, the bowl-like surface was strewn with gritty dust and rubble. The crater was fifty or sixty miles in width and the telescope showed every detail of its interior with needle-sharp clarity. Yet Tom could discern no evidence of movement, nor unusual marks in the aeons’ accumulation of gritty debris.

"See anything?" Hanson asked.

Tom shook his head. "Not a trace of a recent landing so far as I can make out. Still—I’m wasting time. Even if the whole outpost were set down on the moon, we’re not likely to happen across it the first place we look! Take us out to three-hundred and cruise around in widening circles, Bud."

Grim-faced with impatient disappointment, Tom turned the telescope over to Arv Hanson and went back to the main instrument panel. As the
Challenger
cruised along at a great altitude, yawning cracks and crevices, spiny mountain ridges, and rock in tumbled heaps slowly passed below them. Tom continued to probe the moon’s near-orbit space with radar and a host of other sophisticated instruments. It was not unlikely that the outpost had been lodged into orbit about Luna—if it still existed!

"Hold it, flyboy!" Tom cried abruptly. "Go back to that stretch of lava globules we just passed over."

"That stuff that looks like sand? Roger." Bud swiveled the repelatrons, most of which were now aimed at the lunar surface, then retraced his course slowly. "See something down there?"

"Not exactly," Tom responded. "But I picked up a blip on the signal analyzer, just one, on and off again.
–There!
Saw it again."

"Somebody down there tryin’ to get our attention, mebbe?" asked Chow excitedly.

Tom shrugged. "It’s not regular or continuous, pard. There’s no message. But if it’s a natural phenomenon, it’s one we’ve never encountered before. It just
might
be connected to the disappearance of the outpost."

"Then I say we take a look!"

"And
I
say—sure as shootin’!"

The faint signal-blip was received twice more, and Tom was able to conclude that its source was somewhere below, a rough broad region circled by the wide and distant horizon. There was no further signal, however, and Tom had been unable to get a fix by triangulation.

"Where are we, skipper?" inquired Bud.

"That flat area we just left was the Mare Vaporum. And this below us—" Tom checked his lunar map. "The region is called Rima Ariadaeus."

The crew stared down at the desolate landscape. It was dotted with fissures and jagged cracks, and the smoother areas showed a strange corrugation, or rippling.

"It really does look a little like sand," Bud said. "Dunes and all."

"It’s a lava splash—bubbling molten rock tumbling every which way through the vacuum and forming a pattern of long hillocks."

"Shall we set down?"

Tom hesitated, then slowly shook his head. "No need for the ship to land. For all we know, there may be more traces to follow in space. Arv, take over the controls and bring us down to four miles, then continue the search further east. Bud, let’s you and I get out on the Donkeys and look over some of those badlands and crevices. I need to know what caused that blip. It could be an important clue of some kind."

The Repelatron Donkeys were small disk-shaped platforms ringed by safety rails and held in flight by single repelatrons mounted underneath. Although interference effects prevented their use close to the surface, they were designed for higher-altitude surveys and could be operated easily by individual pilots.

Taking with them some hand-held detector instruments, Tom and Bud lifted off from the ship’s landing stage on their two Donkeys. They separated, flying in two directions as the
Challenger
left them both behind, quickly disappearing behind a curtain of mountains miles distant.

"Guess we’re really on our own!" Bud radioed over his suit transiphone.

"Remember, pal, don’t descend below—"

"I know—two miles!" On the first moon expedition, Bud had flouted the rule and nearly lost his life. "I’ll check the southern quadrant, Tom."

Tom watched Bud’s Donkey as it zoomed away at great speed, becoming a tiny metallic speck against the stars. He felt lonely, fearful, and bewildered. Switching off his radio, he said aloud to himself, "What if the space friends aren’t involved after all? What if some sort of cosmic magnetic vortex pulled the station out of orbit? What if…" His own voice failed to give him any comfort.

As agreed, Tom headed northward at an altitude of about twelve thousand feet. The cracked, uneven landscape skittered along beneath him.

Suddenly a brief spurt of sound rang once in his ear, gone in an instant. "Bud, I picked up the blip again!" he radioed excitedly.

"Do you see anything on the ground?"

Tom slowed his platform and looked about intently. "No. But there are some unusual surface features up ahead, crevasses and deep pits of some kind. Come join me."

In a minute the two young astronauts had rendezvoused and were approaching the area of tumbled, uneven ground. "What do you supposed caused all that, skipper?" asked Bud.

"Some kind of fracturing," was the reply. "If an incoming meteorite split in two along the way, the double impacts might produce a pattern of ground shock that—"

"Good night,
look!"
Startled, Tom turned and saw his pal pointing down and off to the left toward a tangle of deep, shadowed fissures. "There it is!" Bud shouted. "Tom, that’s got to be a rocket half-buried in the sand!"

Tense with excitement, Tom swerved his Donkey while Bud held his own platform hovering. Coming alongside, the young inventor examined the object with electronic binoculars. Though two miles below and wedged down inside the fissure wall, it was caught in a bright beam of sunlight and obviously the handiwork of intelligence, a curving metallic structure—possibly a rocket fuselage!

"You’re right, Bud," said the young scientist-inventor with a glint of hope in his voice.
"And
I just picked up another beep!"

"We’ve got to get down there, Tom," Bud said tersely.

"The
Challenger
can land nearby and let us down on ropes," Tom decided. The big ship’s array of multiple repelatrons rendered it immune to the interference effects of operating near the surface.

Tom started to retune his transiphone to the frequency of the spaceship. Before he could do so, a shout was jolted from him as the Repelatron Donkey abruptly began to drop groundward!

"What’s wrong?" Bud radioed. "Why’s the Donkey acting up? You’re nowhere near the surface!"

"I—I don’t know—I’m not getting any repulsion force out of the machine!"

"Here I come, pal!" called Tom’s friend, swooping toward the sinking platform on his Donkey, intent on a quick rescue. Then Bud gasped in startled alarm! "Aw, man!—my ’tron just died on me too!"

Despite the moon’s lazy gravitation, their powerless descent was gradually becoming a fall!

"What’ll we do?" signaled Bud. "Where’s Chow and his lariat when we need ’em?"

Tom frantically tried to contact the spaceship, but there was no reply.

"Listen, Bud! We have about two minutes until we hit—less, now. Close off the valves on your ox-he tank and air hose—both valves!—and unclamp the tank. Like I’m doing, see? You’ll still have enough air in your helmet for several minutes, easy."

Bud complied without question. "Now what?" he asked, his tank in his arms.

"Point the tank valve downward, open it up just a hair—and jump!" Tom demonstrated, leaping nimbly over the side of his falling platform.

Bud followed suit. They both held their tanks tightly against their chests. The fine, invisible downward spray of escaping oxygen-helium, highly compressed in the special tanks, produced a palpable upward thrust. It was not enough to counteract the moon’s pull, but it appreciably slowed their descents.

The fissure over which they had been hovering was hardly longer than it was wide, more like a well than a crack. From a height of two miles it had seemed a narrow target, easy to evade. But as they drew closer it spread wide beneath them.

"Skipper, we’re going right in," Bud transiphoned. "Should we angle to the side?"

"No—look at those boulders all around. Sharp as broken glass! Let’s try to come down near the object. We can climb out."

Their view of the bright surface was cut off as they descended below the lip of the fissure. After a further descent of several score feet they hit the ground with such force that they both rebounded, more than once. But finally they settled to a stop.

"Whew!"
Bud breathed. "Am I gonna ache tomorrow!"

"Hurry, pal—reconnect your tank!" Tom directed. They then checked their tank capacity gauges. "Three-point-one hours left," Bud murmured. "Well, that’s plenty of time for the
Challenger
to pick us up."

"Right," said Tom with a somewhat strained heartiness. He again tried contacting the spaceship.

"No answer? Are the rock walls blocking the signal?" Bud asked nervously.

"Probably," replied Tom. "I might have been a bit off-frequency when I tried up above. It was kind of a frantic moment!" He quickly changed the subject. "Anyway, let’s take a look at what we came to see, shall we?"

The curving, rocket-like object was protruding from a bank of avalanched globule-sand about a hundred feet distant. Scampering along in the weak lunar gravity, the youths hastened to examine the rocket more closely. It was definitely composed of machined metal, and a tubular rod, which Tom took to be an antenna, extended at an angle from its side. There was no hatch or other opening in the part sticking above the sand.

Bud touched it cautiously with his space gauntlet and looked at Tom. "Not very big. Do you suppose someone’s inside?"

"Let’s knock, flyboy. Maybe somebody will answer!" Eager to find out if the rocket held an occupant, Tom tapped out a message in International Code with a small metal tool. He pressed his helmet globe against the hull, but could detect no response, not a sound.

"Bud, help me turn it over!" the young inventor said urgently. "It shouldn’t take much to dislodge it."

Excitedly the two boys pushed and tugged at the rocket. But it had plowed too deeply into the ground to be loosened easily.

"Now what?" Bud asked.

Lacking digging tools, he and Tom were at a disadvantage.

"Let’s kick at the dirt," Tom suggested.

Together the boys clawed at the coarse lava sand with their boots. It was the labor of a minute to wriggle the capsule just enough for it to slide a ways, disclosing several more feet of its fuselage. Tom and Bud immediately exclaimed at what was revealed—a small decal of black, red, and gold!

"The Brungarian flag!" Bud gasped. "Are
they
behind this?"

Tom shook his head in grim disappointment. "Look at that hammer-and-sickle in the corner, pal. It’s the
old
Brungarian flag. This must be one of the automated test capsules they sent to the moon more than twenty years ago, back when they were trying to develop a manned lunar program. This hunk of space junk couldn’t have
anything
to do with the theft of the outpost."

"But what about that signal?" Bud objected.

"Good point," conceded his friend. "Let me try something." Tom began to slowly run through a series of frequencies on his suit transmitter. Suddenly they both jerked back as their headsets resounded with a loud, brief tone.

"There’s the beep!" Bud said. "Should we leave a message?"

"Its transponder must be set to answer an incoming signal of the right frequency, automatically."

"That’s what I call a
real
long-life battery, skipper!" joked Bud.

Tom nodded. "Probably uses a radium slug."

Now that the investigation was completed, the two commenced attempting to climb the hundred or so feet to the open surface. The matter proved difficult—and after a few attempts,
worse
than difficult! Even beginning with a low-G flying leap, they found it impossible to get a grip anywhere on the steep crevice walls, sliding back down each time in a shower of loose particles and rocks as the sides crumbled beneath their grip.

"This stuff’s as bad as sandstone with
real
sand!" complained Bud, panting with the effort. "Even the super-shoes aren’t helping."

"But we
have
to get up to the surface, pal," Tom declared soberly. "Because we can’t raise the ship, and it’ll take forever for them to see us down here by just cruising around."

"I know," Bud said, glancing at his tank meter with worry. "And as a matter of fact, we don’t
have
forever!"

"WHERE THE flyin’ grapeshot
are
they?" demanded Chow Winkler, beside himself with concern. Chow had been fussing and worrying ever since Tom and Bud had left the
Challenger
. "I think we oughta go after them young’uns!" he told Ted Spring.

"Relax, Chow. They’ll be all right," Ted replied.

"I sure wouldn’t bet on that," Chow said. "Suppose they run into them sidewindin’ space-nappers? We cain’t see ’em anywhere, and now Arv says he can’t pick ’em up on the radio neither." It had been more than an hour and a half since the majestic craft had left the young astronauts on the other side of the jagged lunar horizon.

"So what? T-man and Bud can take care of themselves," reasoned Ted in calming tones that belied his own concern. "Sterling said the rock strata around these parts could be blocking their transiphone signals."

"Wa-aal, I’d feel a heap better if we could keep an eye on ’em, or at least hear ’em," Chow insisted.

Finally Ted gave up and grinned at the big cowpoke. "Okay, okay, now you’ve got
me
worried. Let’s go talk to Hanson—he’s in charge."

Discussing the situation on the control deck, Arv Hanson finally agreed. "We’re sure not detecting anything in space or on the ground—not so far. There’s got to be a better way to go about this. Sure, guys, let’s go round up Tom and Bud and take it from there."