Tom Swift and His Space Solartron (8 page)

"I see. So what’s your approach?"

Tom picked up a series of sketches to show the modelmaker. They showed a pair of rectangular gratings, or grilles, comprised of a multitude of narrow criss-crossing tubes. "They look like garden trellises," Hanson commented. "How big do you want the first models to run?"

Tom grinned. "Oh, not too big—about four acres ought to be plenty for test purposes."

"Four acres!" Arv gasped. "For the
prototypes?
How in cosmic space do you expect to load them aboard the ship?"

The young inventor laughed pleasantly at his friend’s reaction. "I have a trick up my sleeve. The tubes that each of the atom-collector lattices is made of will be molded from a new kind of super-malleable metal foil I’ve developed—I’ll give you the formula. It’s really pretty amazing. It’s tough and durable even when milled down to a thickness less than a tenth that of a human hair! You can fold it into a tight bundle and then, by running a weak electrical current through it, the material will completely unfold itself and return to its original shape. Reverse the current and it folds up again. By my calculations each four-acre bundle of transifoil will fold down into a cube just a yard or so across, and so light in weight—"

Crash!

The two looked up with a start to see a cascade of bottles and equipment tumbling from a big metal shelving unit next to the lab door. At almost the same instant the door, which had been standing half-open, slammed shut.

"Someone was hiding behind those shelves!" Tom cried out in alarm and anger. "And listening to every word we said!"

JUMPING up from their chairs, Tom and Hanson rushed out into the corridor of the laboratory building, leaping across the slow-moving conveyor pathway, the ridewalk, that ran down its middle. But there was no sign of the mysterious eavesdropper in either direction. Checking the other laboratory rooms that fronted the long corridor, they found that no one had seen anything unusual.

"But he could have slipped into a lab not in use and forced open one of the windows," noted Tom. "We have openable windows in some of the labs that have to be isolated from the air conditioning system."

"He must have sneaked into your lab to get the lowdown on the plans for your new invention!" Arv said uneasily.

Tom nodded, his face grim. "Maybe. And he also must be an employee of Swift Enterprises." It was an unpleasant thought that some trusted worker might be a spy. Yet no outsider could have slipped in past the ingenious radar system that monitored all visitors entering the grounds of the experimental station. And in truth, the company had dealt with disloyal employees on more than one occasion.

"I’ll call Security and ask Ames to make a check," said Tom, returning to the lab.

But the resulting security check turned up nothing worthwhile. "As far as I can tell, nobody was out of place anywhere on the grounds," Ames told Tom an hour later. "But tell me this, boss. Is there something about your solartron, or this new atom-collector component, that would make spying or stealing worth the risk of getting caught?"

The young inventor shrugged. "The machine itself has a great potential for use in space colonization," he replied. "But I don’t see much use for it in daily applications here on Earth. It’s not like you can manufacture gold or diamonds with it. Just oxygen and nitrogen is hard enough!"

Yet by the noon hour the purpose of the lab break-in had become all too apparent. "The digital chip has been stolen!" Tom exclaimed over the phone to Ames. "I had left it here in the lab last night, for downloading and analysis today. It’s gone! It looks like somebody riffled through the cabinets until he found it."

"You almost caught him in the act," noted Harlan Ames. "When he heard you approaching in the hall, he ducked out of sight, then made his way behind the shelving and out the door."

"That’s the way it must have been," agreed Tom mournfully. "I was a chump not to lock that chip away securely."

"How do you suppose they knew you’d made the recording?"

"Not a clue, Harlan," said Tom. "You and I talked about it earlier—do you think your office might be bugged?"

"Not
this
office!" snorted the former Secret Service agent. "My office, and yours next door, are electronically secured from any invasive electronic equipment of that kind." The matter remained a frustrating mystery.

The remainder of the busy week passed quickly for Tom as he worked with Arv to create the prototype atom-collector screens. There were no further incidents—and no explanations, either. Even the cause of the problems on the
Sky Queen
was unaccounted for, although Hank Sterling pronounced himself satisfied that it had originated in the control computer and had been corrected by completely reprogramming it.

At the back of Tom’s thoughts was a further mystery. Bud seemed to want to discuss something with Tom that was evidently weighing upon his mind. The first few times he had joking tried to pull his friend aside, Tom had politely put him off, pleading the special demands of his current work. After a few such attempts, Bud appeared to abandon the effort. When Tom was finally able to give him some time, Bud shrugged off Tom’s queries and engaged in his usual banter.

Reaching home late one night after an especially long day of arduous work, the young inventor forced himself to retire at once. He fell asleep almost as soon as his grateful head accepted the invitation of his pillow.

It seemed only minutes later when Tom was awakened by the muted but piercing chortle of his bedside telephone. He groped sleepily for the instrument and glanced at the luminous clock readout above the keypad.

Twenty past two!
he groaned inwardly. "Hello?—Tom speaking."

A man’s muffled voice spoke. "Don’t think you’ve outfoxed us, Swift. We know exactly where you’ve stashed the Spring family. Until we get what we want, the Springs aren’t safe—or you and your family either!"

"Who is this?"
Tom snapped, now thoroughly awake. He was trying to figure out if the speaker was one of the men he had overheard in the woods.

The man gave a growling chuckle. "I’ve been listening to that neat little recording you made the other night, Tom. I’ll put your mind at ease—it wouldn’t have helped you. In fact, it would have scared you, hearing our plans.

"Now I’ll let you get back to bed. I’m sure that big brain needs to cool down and rest. Maybe you’ll think over what I’ve said. We don’t want any more
accidents,
do we?"

The receiver clicked off at the other end of the line, replaced by the dial tone. Realizing there was no way to trace the call, Tom hung up as well. He lay awake for nearly an hour, mulling over the threat.
"Accidents"!
There was no question now but that he, as much as Ted Spring’s family, had become involved in some mysterious plot that could quickly turn deadly!

But what exactly is the reason?
he kept asking himself.
What are they after? What do they want from Ted?
He recalled that the voices in the woods had mentioned "docs"—documents. What sort of documents? Something concerning Dakin Spring’s jet crash?

The next morning, conferring with his father and the other key personnel trying to unravel the conundrum—Enterprises attorney Willis Rodellin, Ames, and Ames’s assistant Phil Radnor—it became clear that progress, if any, was coming with aching slowness.

"I still haven’t been able to confront Hampshire," said Rodellin angrily. "Now his office says he’s off on vacation and unreachable. By the time this is over with, I’ll see him disbarred!"

"Harlan and I are pursuing an idea as to your mystery lab intruder, Tom," Radnor reported. "Better not get into it just yet, but we may have something to tell you soon."

Two days later, after making final preparations for the trip to the orbiting outpost, Tom, Bud, Ted, and Mr. Swift flew to Fearing Island aboard the
Sky Queen
for the liftoff into space. The other skyship passengers included Sandy, Bashalli, Chow Winkler, and Doc Simpson. Tom’s father was making a second trip to the outpost to resume an experimental project he had been working on, while Simpson, on his first flight into the void after completing his training, intended to make some space medicine observations.

Fearing Island, the Swifts’ spacecraft research base and rocket-port, was a thumb-shaped stretch of sand dunes and scrubgrass. It lay not far off the Georgia coast and was guarded by drone planes and the Swifts’ patrolscope radar security system.

Landing at the island airfield, the travelers drove immediately to the special launching area for the
Challenger
as a large crew of workers began shuttling the solartron equipment from the Flying Lab’s hold to the spaceship. The great craft gleamed in the Atlantic sun with tones of silvery bronze and a bright trim of yellow and red.

Both girls were electrified by the exciting adventure awaiting them. "Just think," murmured Bash, gazing in awe at the powerful yet strange-looking craft, "the
Challenger
has actually been to the moon!"

Bud added proudly, "She may not look very streamlined, but this baby can travel like a comet."

A multistory boxlike crew cabin, poised between hydraulic struts above and below, was encircled by a framework of sturdy, gracefully arching rails. These served as tracks for the radiator antennas which beamed out the repelatron force rays that propelled the ship. This drive system could be used to push the ship in any direction by exerting a repulsion force against the earth, moon, or other heavenly object near at hand.

"All aboard!" Tom called, after a last-minute check with the mechanics and ground crew. "We can wait inside the ship for the loading to finish."

Bud called attention to a pair of bulky-looking greenish cubes that were being unloaded from a truck bed. "Are those your folded-up
atom-snatchers,
genius boy?"

"Right," he replied, grinning at Bud’s nickname from the collector lattices. "Made of transifoil. And
you
were part of that discovery, Bud! The material includes chains of piezoelectric crystals—which change size and shape when electricity passes through—from that rare-earths mine we found when we went after you and Slim Davis in New Guinea. Matter of fact, flyboy," he added, "I almost called it
Barclaytium!"

"Oh?"

"But I knew it would offend your natural modesty."

"Rrrrright," Bud responded darkly.

Inasmuch as the several elevators that descended from the underside of the cabin fuselage were being used by the loading team, passengers and crew trooped up the extensible accommodation ladder to the landing platform which projected from the front of the cabin. The landing platform was used for small auxiliary craft which could be berthed inside the ship’s adjacent hangar compartment.

"Brand my achin’ elbows!" Chow huff-and-puffed. "Nobody said we ’as gonna
climb
our way up t’ space!"

Entering through an airlock, the space voyagers were whisked upward by elevator to the flight deck one level above the hangar. Here a pair of bucket seats for the pilot and copilot stood in front of twin view windows of lightweight, unbreakable Tomaquartz, coated, like the rest of the vessel, with transparent Inertite to ward off the dangerous radiations of space.

"Jeepers!" Sandy gasped. "Just looking at all those dials and control levers gives me a thrill! Tomonomo, do you
really
think I can learn to fly this ship?"

"Sure you can, sis." Tom grinned. "You’ve been doing great in the simulator. Remember, the real work of flight control is done by electronic brains in the computer room."

"I do not require the
jeepers,
as I am quite confident in myself," Bash remarked. "But Thomas, I
am
glad we don’t have to be strapped down on acceleration cots, like the first astronauts with the crewcuts. That’s what scares me about these rocket ships—the awful shock at the blasting-off."

"Scares me too," put in Chow. "Had more’n enough of it flyin’ up to the space station when we ’as buildin’ her, and when we went up to that there phantom satellite."

"On this ship you can relax in perfect ease," Mr. Swift assured his daughter and her good friend. "I have taken the ride several times now. The repelatron force rays apply a smooth flow of power so we can accelerate gradually, instead of in a few terrific bursts."

"And," Bud added with a wink, "you don’t need to wear spacesuits, so you won’t muss your hairdos!"

"Budworth, your thinking is
most
retro," commented Bashalli. But she smiled at him warmly.

A warning buzzer sounded, and they all took their assigned positions, most merely standing behind Tom and Bud, who operated the controls. There was no need to be strapped in.

A voice from the Island tower crackled over the speaker: "Fearing Flight Control to
Challenger
. You are cleared for liftoff. Have a good trip!"

"Thanks, Amos," Tom replied. "Hold down the island!"

Tom switched on the repelatron circuits, and a pattern of glowing color flashed onto the element selector panel on the control board in front of him. "Sandy, now that you’re an expert, why don’t you narrate what I’m doing?"

"Watch those lights, lady and gentlemen—and Bud," Tom’s sister told the watchers. "Those colored patches show where the target elements are, and their distribution. Each one of the repelatrons has to be fine-tuned to the chemical make-up of the object it has to repel—in this case, the different parts of the ground below and around us. The pilot and the computer work together to get the best mix."

As she spoke, Tom’s hands flew busily over the controls. "What I’m doing now," he added to Sandy’s explanation, "is sliding the different repelatrons along their rail-tracks to create the most efficient and balanced array for ground thrust. Get ready!"

Everyone could tell the moment Tom fed power to the repelatrons. Like a sculpted cloud of gleaming metal, the
Challenger
soared upward into the blue with a smooth, powerful motion!

"This is known as a bouncing-ball take-off," Bud wisecracked to the girls as they gasped in pleasure and awe, gasps shared by Ted Spring and Doc Simpson.