Tom Swift and the Cosmic Astronauts (13 page)

Tom’s excited exclamation jarred Bud awake. "Wha-what—"

"Flyboy,
listen!
When we were looking for the
Charger
under water, I tried to defeat the Tomasite anti-sonar feature by looking for other effects, like temperature differences and agitation in the water. If we could cause some sort of secondary effect up here, something really big and spread-out—"

"I get it!" Bud cried. "Like shooting off a flare! Ground radar might pick it up!"

"Exactly!" Then Tom paused, his brow creasing. "Except… it would require that they readjust and recalibrate their radar system. I’m afraid they wouldn’t think to try it."

Bud squeezed his pal’s forearm.
"Unless
somebody down there has come up with the same idea. Someone who, somehow, just this once, happens to think like Tom Swift!"

Meanwhile, far away, Fearing Island was on full alert. Although the Space Kite’s disappearance from radar had been expected, its radio silence evidenced a problem, and the craft had not returned to near-Earth space as scheduled.

Hour after hour, Amos Quezada’s team sent its plaintive signals into space. "Fearing Control to Swift SK-1, please respond!"

Tom’s father did not wait in idle hope. He was already directing preparations to take the
Challenger
into space to mount a search. But Damon Swift knew as well as anyone the grave odds against success.

"Aw, what coulda happened?" Chow moaned. "They gotta answer, they just gotta!"

Mr. Swift lay a hand on the big cook’s shoulder. "We’ll find the answers, Chow. The disappearance, the silence—it’s very much like the disappearance of the
Sea Charger.
Perhaps Li Ching is behind it all! Tom and Bud may be perfectly safe, but captives in the scoundrel’s rocket."

"Ya think so? Well, mebbe…" And then, suddenly, a strange expression passed across Chow’s face. "Say! Say there! Somethin’s comin’ in!"

"What do you mean?" asked Mr. Swift in surprise.

"I mean, comin’ in t’ this ol’ sun-beat brain of mine! I jest remembered somethin’ Tom said, back when we ’as searchin’ around in that sub-copter the other day. Had t’do with how to get a sonar picture of somethin’ ya can’t see ordinary—jest like the blame Kite is right now!"

In a handful of minutes, hope renewed, the
Challenger
was racing into space on its repelatron force-beams. "I’ve done my best to adjust the space radar, Mr. Swift," reported Bryan Gettlars, a Fearing technician recruited for the rescue crew. "Mighty weird deal, if you ask me. Could work, though, I suppose."

"It
will
work!" declared Damon Swift, at the main controls. "Right, Chow?"

"Texas truth, Mr. Swift!"

The radar cast a wide electronic net through the general region of Earth-moon space in which Tom’s craft had been operating. Minutes passed, then an hour, then two. Suddenly an alarm sounded. "We’ve got something!" Mr. Swift cried.

"What you expected?" asked Neil MacColter, a veteran astronaut, with keen excitement.

"I think so!" came the reply. "A definite bounceback signature for oxygen, nitrogen, and water vapor—a spreading cloud running along at close to three miles per second. I’m sure we’ll find the spacecraft at the fore-end of that cloud!"

They were all frantic with anticipation. A question hung in the air. If Tom and Bud were alive and well in the Space Kite—why weren’t they answering the radio calls?

Far ahead, aboard the wayward kite, conditions were slowly becoming unbearable. "Good grief, this rig’s beginning to feel like a Turkish bath!" Bud gasped, wiping the sweat from his brow. "If anyone’s going to find us, they’d better hurry it up, pal!"

"I know," replied Tom weakly. "Whatever knocked out the radiocom must’ve affected the temperature system too."

"Can’t we turn the ship around, away from the sun?"

"It’s not the sun, flyboy," Tom explained. "It’s our own body heat, mostly. We’re basically stuck inside a great big thermos bottle."

"Oh
man!"
The boys’ muscles were numb from long confinement in the tiny cabin, and the slightest movement in the humid heat left them bathed in perspiration. Weak and exhausted, they could scarcely do more than move their heads listlessly.

"Whew! This is worse than wriggling down a chimney," Bud panted. "What a time to leave the ice-chest behind, genius boy. I could sure use a cold cola."

But Tom had stiffened in his seat, gazing out into space. "I—I see something. It’s moving!"

"The
Challenger?"

"It sure is!"

The huge spaceship, with its boxlike cabin suspended in a spherical framework of rails, was hurtling along at blinding speed toward the source of the radar reflection. Mr. Swift gunned the repelatron units in a desperate all-out burst of power, levering against the moon as well as the earth.

"There’s the Kite!" a crewman yelled.

Tom’s craft had at last become visible on the
Challenger
’s radarscope, and now it was visible to the naked eye as well. Soon it loomed into view dead ahead. As the rescuing ship drew nearer, the boys’ gold-suited figures could be seen slumped limply behind the moisture-fogged viewdome. The oppressive heat had weakened them almost to immobility.

Everyone prayed silently that Tom and Bud were still alive. Guiding the ship smoothly into orbit alongside the Kite, Mr. Swift sent two crewmen in space suits jetting across to the stricken craft to attach towlines. The Kite was quickly hauled into the hangar compartment.

"I
think
I saw them moving," signaled one of the space-walkers. "But the dome’s pretty fogged up."

Damon Swift turned the controls over to MacColter and dashed below, Chow not a footstep behind. They reached the hangar deck just as a breathable atmosphere had been reestablished.

Suddenly the viewdome creaked open, hissing as its airtight seal was broken. "Tom! Bud!" cried Mr. Swift joyously. Then it was all hugs and a few tears.

The two were taken to the ship infirmary as the
Challenger
put about to return home. After a quick examination the crew medic pronounced them to be in reasonably good shape.

"We reached you two jest in time, I guess," Chow Winkler said, heaving a massive sigh of relief.

"Pardner, Dad told me what you did," said Tom softly. "Somehow you knew I’d vent air and water into space to create a signpost. If it weren’t for you—"

"Aw now, son, don’t you make me turn red!" Chow protested with tears in his eyes. "Let’s jest get down t’ the ground. Don’t care if it isn’t Texas as long as it’s
down!"

"Water! Give me water!" Bud choked. "No lemon."

Tom and Bud took long draughts of water and leaned back on their infirmary cots with grateful sighs. By the time the
Challenger
landed back at Fearing Island, both boys felt rested and completely recovered from their ordeal. Tom phoned his mother at once to assure her with his own voice that all was well and he would be home soon.

As they flew back to Shopton in the
Sky Queen,
the Space Kite secured in the hangar hold, Tom radioed Harlan Ames.

The security chief expressed his relief at the rescue. "No news yet on the
Sea Charger,
I’m afraid," he continued. "But I have something else to tell you, Tom. There’s been a shooting!"

TOM was aghast at Ames’s news. "What are the details? Who was involved?"

"I’ll give you the quick and dirty version—full details after you and your Dad get in.

"When Felix Ming got home after work today, a message had been left on his voicemail. He recognized the voice; it was Olin Whaley. Whaley was agitated, kind of loopy—I’ve listened to the message. The guy was scared. He kept apologizing, saying how sorry he was to have cooperated…"

"Cooperated? With whom?" Tom demanded.

"Whaley called him
the snakeman
—Hobell used the same word. Obviously it’s Li Ching."

Thinking it over, Tom agreed. "I remember that he stylized his name-symbol to resemble a snake, for some reason. Guess it’s his trademark. Was there more to Whaley’s message?"

"The message said he knew where ‘that big ship’ is being hidden, what the plans are. Said there isn’t much time; he doesn’t want the deaths of a hundred men and women on his conscience. At the end Whaley said he was sure he was being watched, but was going to try to bring some documents to the police. He wanted Ming to know what he was trying to do—in case he didn’t make it." Ames paused for a moment. "That was all to the message. Felix Ming called me immediately, but there wasn’t much to be done, as Whaley didn’t indicate where he was. I told Ming that he himself could be in danger, and then—"

A frightful thought suddenly struck the young inventor. "Harlan! Was it
Felix
who was shot?"

"No—it was Whaley. According to a couple witnesses, he was climbing into his parked car in Shopton when another car roared by and shot three times. When Whaley collapsed to the sidewalk, the other car braked and a man ran over to Whaley and snatched up an envelope or folder that had been in his hand. Then they sped away. The parked car was registered to a ‘Sam Wah,’ but we think that’s just another alias used by Whaley."

Tom asked if Olin Whaley had been killed by the attack. "No, fortunately. The FBI had him ambulanced from Shopton Memorial to the big hospital in Mansburg, where they could keep a better watch on him, mostly for his own protection. He’s recovering now from emergency surgery, but the doctors expect him to be able to answer some questions in the morning. By the end of tomorrow morning we may know a lot more." Ames concluded by saying, "So I recommend a full night’s sleep for you, boss."

"I need it," Tom conceded. "But this time I’m not going to Dr. Emerson. He’ll keep Bud and me in bed for a week!"

The next morning Harlan Ames swung by and picked Tom up in his car. At Tom’s suggestion, he picked up Felix Ming as well. They drove to nearby Mansburg, to its big medical facility.

Said Ames wryly, "I had to call in a
lot
of favors to get permission for us to interview Whaley."

Tom nodded. "Imagine so. The
Sea Charger
theft brings NASA and the defense authorities into the picture."

"One thing helps, though," Ames added. "So far Whaley’s only given vague answers to questions by the FBI men assigned to him. From the message he left, I think he might talk more freely to you or Felix."

"Let us hope so," said Felix.

Wary FBI agents admitted the three to Whaley’s room in the intensive care section. The man seemed alert, though swathed in bandages and hardly able to move.

"Hello, Olin," said Felix. "Do you recognize me?"

The invalid studied Felix. "You haven’t changed all that much."

Felix introduced Tom and Ames to Whaley. "Will you talk to us?" Felix asked.

"Yes, I—I just want out of all this."

The man seemed nervous and agitated, and Tom thought it wise to try to put him at ease. "How did you get involved, anyway?"

Whaley gazed at the young inventor as if unsure what to say. "I guess I’m sort of a weak person. Never been too keen on resisting temptation. As Felix knows, I let myself get tempted into a smuggling operation back in Wichita. Got away with it for a while—in the end I was lucky just to get away."

Felix asked where he had gone. "Skipped the country and made for Taiwan, where my Mom’s relatives still live. They have an honor thing about family loyalty and were willing to help me. I called myself Sam Wah and got into some more… bad things.

"A couple years back I was approached by some guys who said they were working for the snakeman."

Ames interrupted. "And who exactly
is
this ‘snakeman’?"

Whaley managed a wry chuckle. "You expect him to let people spread his name around? Peons like me were never told—we just knew he was the man on top, and a tough character. You don’t cross him. I hear he’s Chinese."

"What kind of work did you do for him?" asked Tom. "I know you have an engineering background."

"Yeah. I’m pretty good, too. They had me working on cockpit design for some kind of aircraft. They called it the
Fanshen.
All I really know about it is that it can do hypersonic and lands in the ocean."

"It is a spacecraft," Felix noted. "A sophisticated rocket ship."

Whaled nodded. "Yeah, t’ tell the truth, I thought that might be it."

"And then they moved you back to the U.S.?" Tom prompted.

"After the cockpit was finished. I was supposed to—ordered to—hang around in Shopton to see if I could pick up technical info from some of the Swift Enterprises employees. My contact, a guy named Hilliard Lathron, called me the other week, said I should try to get a job at the Chinese restaurant."

"That makes sense," pronounced Tom. "Lots of Enterprises people eat there."

"I got the job. Then a few days back Lathron comes by the restaurant and says I should be on the lookout for a man who’d just made a reservation for that night, Mr. Ming. I didn’t make the connection, Felix."

"It is a common name," said the Chinese-American. "But what was the purpose in giving me that little card?"

"Just to spook you, soften you up so you’d cooperate later—see? That’s what Lathron said, anyway, when he gave me the card. He figured you’d be able to dope out what it meant."

"And then you changed your mind," Tom said.

"Like I told you, I’m
weak
. When I realized this was Felix, the nice kid from back at the college—I dunno, the whole thing started t’ bug me. I guess it kinda brought it home for me, all those people on that ship, nice people with families…" Whaley’s voice trailed off.

"Okay, Whaley," Ames snapped impatiently. "Now tell us how to save those ‘nice people’!"

"Right. Lemme think. I don’t know too much." The man was quiet for a moment, staring blankly at the wall. "I met this girl in Taiwan, name of Nang-Tsi Pi." Whaley smiled. "I called her Nancy-Pie. She worked for the snakeman too—in Accounting—and we got… you know."

Ames snorted. "Go on."

"She sneaked me a bunch o’ papers, sketches of machinery, technical specs, stuff she said I could use as ‘insurance’ in case snakeman’s people decided to go after me, like they end up doing to a lot of their people when they can’t use ’em any more. That’s what I was bringing to the police, when—"