Tom Swift and the Cosmic Astronauts (8 page)

BOOK: Tom Swift and the Cosmic Astronauts
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"From Li Ching?"

"Assume so."

"Has Fell been picked up?"

"It shouldn’t be long—the police have staked out the hotel room since before midnight. The desk clerk said he’d gone out."

Tom’s expression became sober. "What has this Hobell said about the
Charger?"

"He says the snakeman had planted one of his guys on board, who took over control at gunpoint after they submerged. I gather the comrade-general wants to harvest the technology the
Sea Charger
is carrying. The plan was to steer her north, which goes along with the message the radioman picked up."

"Which tells us nothing about her present location," said Tom grimly. "And it seems they’re considering killing the crew!"

"We don’t have much time to find her," Ames agreed. "I hate to say this, Tom, but I know you’ve thought of it already. Once Li and his gang have stripped the ship of whatever they’re after, it’s very likely that they’ll sink her—along with everyone on board!"

 

CHAPTER 10
ROCKET MARAUDER

ONE hour brought further surprises. After receiving a call from Captain Rock that the stake-out police had apprehended Antoine Fell, Tom and Harlan rushed to police headquarters in Shopton to see the suspected agent brought in and booked. But as the vociferously protesting man was led past Jack Hobell’s cell to gauge his reaction, the confessed murderer barely glanced up and showed no interest.

"Not going to greet your crony, Hobell?" asked Rock sarcastically. "We brought Fell by just to see you!"

"Aaa, what’re you trying to pull now?" grumbled Hobell. "That ain’t Fell."

Rock chuckled derisively. "Still trying to con us? We’ve got the guy’s prints, driver’s license, even his signature. And the desk clerk confirmed who he is."

"I’m telling you," cried Antoine Fell, "I’ve never seen this man in my life! I don’t know a thing about any murder contract!"

"He’s right," said Hobell. "Ya caught a false fish, Rock."

Tom drew Captain Rock aside. "Captain, what if he’s telling the truth—both of them?"

"Tom, we
know
this man is Fell."

"Yes. But how do we know Hobell’s contact, who
called
himself Antoine Fell, wasn’t just using his name?"

"And his hotel room?"

Tom acknowledged the difficulty. "But consider this possibility. The impersonator might have picked Fell as his identity because the real man had very regular hours—a job that always kept him away in the evenings, for example. He could have had a key made and used Fell’s room to meet Hobell in."

"I suppose that could be, Tom," admitted the police officer. "The Trellis Arms isn’t exactly a modern hotel with electronic door cards. It’d be fairly easy to pull the gimmick."

Having taken Fell to an interview room, Tom, Ames, and Rock asked Jack Hobell if he’d care to provide further information. He proved willing. "Why not? Hate to see an innocent man go to jail. Look, I met Fell, or whoever he was, about eight times since the first of the year. He always set it up, and it was always in the evening, seven-thirty or so. He’d get a report from me and tell me what I was s’posed to do, and I’d make some notes. He never gave me a thing—I even had to go buy my own revolver! It was done kind of casual-like, you know? Relaxed. We’d hang around for an hour drinkin’ beer and talking it all over, then he’d look at his watch and shoo me out."

"Describe the man," urged Ames.

"Oh, kinda short, dirty blond hair, pug nose. He’d never make it in commercial modelin’, I can tell you! Didn’t look a thing like that other guy."

It was soon verified that Antoine Fell was a newly hired reporter for a newspaper published in nearby Waterfield. "I kept telling you, I work the night desk almost every night," the man exclaimed. "Call my editor! I don’t think I’ve missed a shift in months." He added that he had been living at the hotel pending the completion of a house he was having built in the countryside.

Ultimately Captain Rock ordered the man released. "We don’t have anything on him," he stated in disgust. "I don’t want to think about the headline in the
Waterfield Herald
tomorrow morning."

"Lousy luck," said Ames. "But there was good reason to think he was the man we wanted. I understand there were no other fingerprints in the hotel room, just his and Hobell’s."

"Yeah, that’s right. The other guy must’ve been careful—and taken his empties out with him."

His empties…
Tom repeated in his mind. "Captain, if he spent his time drinking with Hobell… well, you can think of a spot where a man might leave overlooked prints time and again. Can’t you?"

Rock stared at the young inventor. "Oh boy. And I’ll just
bet
Milly-Ann didn’t think to dust on the underside. It’s not much like television around here, you know?" He ordered the matter checked out.

That afternoon, at Enterprises, Ames was able to report to Tom that his suggestion had born fruit. "Some excellent sets of prints. The man is left-handed, by the way."

"Have they run the prints?"

"Sure have, boss. They belong to a Canadian named Hilliard Lathron, formerly of the Vancouver police. He was fired for excessive force, drunkenness, and falsifying arrest reports. That was twelve years back, and he dropped out of sight."

"At least it’s one step forward," Tom pronounced. "Maybe something’ll pop while I’m at the outpost."

The young scientist-inventor had decided to take a trip up to the Swift space station to test out a small version of his cosmic reactor under space conditions. When Bud dropped by the lab, Tom told him: "I’ll be able to test the subtrino reaction in the presence of other forms of cosmic radiation. Want to come along, space-flyboy?"

Bud clicked his heels and snapped a handsome military salute. "How soon do we take off, commander?"

"First thing in the morning," Tom replied with a grin. "So hit the sack early."

The news of Tom’s upcoming trip spread quickly through the Enterprises grapevine. When Chow wheeled in some supper for Tom and Bud at the end of the workday, he had the rumor in mind. "Heads up, you hombres! Here comes the chuck wagon!" boomed a gravelly Western voice at five minutes to six. A white chef’s hat perched on his balding head, Chow rumbled on in to Tom’s lab like rolling thunder, trundling his cart.

Tom looked up from his design screen in surprise. "Good night! Is it six already?"

"Five minutes to, boss. Brand my pemmican pie, you ought to stop workin’ your brain so hard! All them squiggles an’ numbers you been figgerin’ out is enough to turn a bull into a milk cow!"

As Bud laughed at Chow’s colorful expression, Tom grinned and set aside his computer mouse. The Texan uncovered the supper dishes. Said Tom, "Mm! Hot roast beef sandwiches with your Rio Grande sauce, and lemon meringue pie! This is more than I bargained for, Chow."

"Eat up, buckaroo. You need nourishment when you use the old head so much!" He gave his beloved boss a look of suspicion. "What’s this here rocket ride I hear a bunch o’ yappin’ about?"

"We can’t give you all the details, old timer," responded Bud with a glint in his gray eyes. "It’s a secret space project of Tom’s to figure out how to shield astronauts from cosmic cerebro-rays."

"Huh?"

"Space radiation that conks out human brain waves," Bud replied with a straight face. "It could even turn us all loco."

"Hmm!" The grizzled Texan winked at Tom. "Conkin’ out brain waves, eh, Bud? Wa-aal, I reckon that means you’re in no danger, buckaroo!"

Bud laughed at Chow’s comeback. "Guess yuh got me, pardner," the copilot drawled with a chuckle.

"Doncha never fergit, buddy boy, yer dealin’ with a trained gunslinger!" Chow eased his rotund bulk onto a lab stool across the workbench from Tom. "Rafe Franzenberg says you’re takin’ off for the outpost. That so?"

Tom nodded. "I’ll be gone for a few days. Have to work on something for my space kite."

"Then take me along, boss," Chow pleaded. "From what I hear, you may be headin’ into trouble—like as usual! B’sides, I never did finish practicing my no-gravity lariat tosses."

Tom shot an affectionate glance at the westerner. Chow had developed a strong and loyal attachment to the young inventor ever since the Swifts had first met him on a scientific trip to the Southwest. "Okay, Chow," Tom said with a smile. "You’re welcome to come along. But you’ll have to shake a Texas leg. I’m leaving for Fearing Island sunrise tomorrow."

"Ya-hoooee!" Chow, who had never lost his zest for adventure, gave a bronc-buster whoop and sent his chef’s hat sailing toward a wall hook. "Far as I’m concerned, I’m ready to haul my freight soon as I shuck this hat an’ apron."

"Your
freight?"
asked Bud.

The westerner patted his ample midsection. "That’s what I call it. Bein’ polite to myself!"

At dawn the next day Tom flew to Fearing Island in the
Sky Queen
with a small crew that included Bud, Chow, Arv Hanson, Hank Sterling, and—as repayment for the favor he’d done—Felix Ming. "I have always envied you your tales of space marvels," exclaimed the young engineer, eyes shining.

"Tom used to put all astro-wannabes through a torturous training program," Bud noted. "You’re lucky we have the
Challenger
now, Felix. It’s a feather bed to ride in."

"So I have heard."

Fearing Island was located a few miles off the coast of Georgia. The Swifts’ rocket base, once a bleak stretch of sand dunes and scrubgrass used by the U.S. Navy, was now a scene of neatly laid out barracks, workshops, and gantries. Space vehicles and future satellites bristled from the launching pads, and piers for submersibles zigzagged along the island waterline.

Tom radioed for clearance and landed on the island’s airfield. The crew sped by electric nanocar to the
Challenger
’s launching area where mechanics were checking the space-worthiness of the enormous craft, high as a multistory building and surrounded with circular rails in the manner of a gyroscope.

"She’ll be cleared for liftoff within an hour, Tom," a technician reported.

"Great! That’ll give me plenty of time to batten down the equipment we brought from Shopton." Tom supervised as the small test cosmic reactor was swung aboard by crane and lashed down securely in the broad storage hangar.

Fifty minutes later, blaring sirens announced the liftoff of the
Challenger.
Its repelatron radiator dishes aimed earthward, the spaceship rose majestically on beams of repulsion force in a gradual acceleration that caused no discomfort to those aboard.

The sky blackened and the stars came out. "What do you think of it, Felix?" asked Hank, who had gotten to know his fellow engineer.

"Most impressive! We float like a lotus on a stream."

"Say, Felix," Bud remarked, "you were born in Kansas like your sister, weren’t you?"

"Indeed so," he replied.

"But you two don’t talk much alike. I mean, your style—it’s sort of, well…"

Felix laughed. "Very Chinese, eh? ‘Honorable ancestors’ and so forth?"

"Nothing wrong with it, of course, I just—"

Ming drew Bud aside and spoke confidingly. "I’ll tell you my secret, Bud. I have been told by some who should know that that sort of quaint manner is irresistible to women."

"Yeah? Do you date a lot?"

"No. They were lying!"

"Then why do you keep doing it?"

"I’m desperate."

Bud thumped him on the back as they shared a good laugh.

The
Challenger
eased into a long arc that would carry it to the distant orbit of the space outpost, about one-tenth of the way to the moon. The travellers enjoyed the sights, gazing through the twin viewpanes of the big control deck.

"Lookit all them stars!" mused Chow dreamily. "Same ones y’ kin see from Texas. Makes a feller feel a mite homesick."

"Hey!" Bud sang out abruptly. "Something just appeared on the scope!"

Tom trotted up to his pal’s side. "You mean it just came within range?"

"No, I mean it
just appeared!
Nothing there, then there it was, closing on us fast!"

"A missile?" asked Hank in alarm.

"I don’t think so," Tom replied thoughtfully. "It’s pretty large, and showing a lot of maneuverability."

"Gosh’n gravy!" Chow exclaimed. "Mebbe it’s them space folk, the ones with th’ flyin’ saucers!"

"This isn’t a saucer," Tom said. "Look, you can see it now. It’s an Earth rocket craft of some kind."

A strange vehicle was rapidly approaching the
Challenger
. Bullet-shaped and sleek-nosed, the craft was outfitted with backswept aerodynamic fins and a vertical "rudder" of the kind used in hypersonic flight through the upper atmosphere.

"Designed for a powered reentry," Arv commented tensely. "But whose ship is it?"

"Look at those markings on the side," Tom responded in a low voice.

"Chinese characters!" gasped Felix.

"Can you read them?"

"They are in the pin-yin short form of ideogram, the modern style. I am not familiar with the word, though—
Fanshen!"

Before Tom could react to the word, Bud called out, "What’s that? What’s he doing?"

A long tube, like a pipe, had swung down from the craft’s hull. With a flash of light a long vaporous form shot from the end of the tube, dead-on toward the
Challenger!

 

CHAPTER 11
TWO LOST TREKKERS

THE WEIRD plume of material, glittering in the harsh space sunlight and slightly luminous against the ebony background, spread rapidly in all directions.

"Nothing on radar," Tom murmured. "The telespectrometers read blank."

In moments the hazy cloud had rushed against the hull of the
Challenger.
It bounced off like a fine spray, swooshing up, down, and around until the spaceship was completely surrounded.

"I can hardly see it now," stated Felix as the cloud spread and thinned.

"But I’m sure it’s still there," Tom said.

"Wa-aal brand me fer a liar, boss, ain’t we got repelly-trons all over this space scow?" demanded Chow. "Let’s jest slough it off!"

Hank answered for his young employer and friend. "Chow, we can’t tune the repelatrons to it if we can’t tell what it’s made of."

BOOK: Tom Swift and the Cosmic Astronauts
11.42Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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