Tom Swift and the Mystery Comet (11 page)

"So I’ve heard," said Mr. Swift. "What’s your assessment?"

The youth sighed ruefully. "Maybe Dr. Sarcophagus is on to something about my ‘intuitive approach.’ I made some bad judgment calls. Volatile jet fuel molecules in the air were getting snatched up and combining in the first-stage chamber. The matter-lenses weren’t doing the job."

Damon Swift gave a sympathetic nod. "Son, you
did
anticipate that possibility; it’s just a miss on the mathematics. I’d say your machine is transporting significantly more material than you’d anticipated, more than the calibrations could cope with."

"In other words—a reassuring word from Dad that Son is more successful than he knows."

His father smiled broadly. "
That
is a father’s privilege. But don’t presume it’s just... what’s that word?... hype!"

Tom laughed. "I won’t. Science mustn’t be prejudiced! Anyway, I think it’ll be fairly easy to readjust the lenses."

They chatted for a time about Comet Tarski and the plans for the probe mission, set to begin the week following. "Still no certitude on whether you can land the
Challenger
on the core," reported Mr. Swift. "We’ve known from the start that the Repelatron Donkey shuttles would be too risky in that unsettled environment, but I’m afraid the surface of the nucleus is also turning unstable as Tarski gets nearer the sun. Take a look."

The circular megascope screen, electronically culling lightwave information from a beam-terminus only a few score miles from Tarski’s surface, disclosed a bizarre and violent landscape. The "ground" of the cometary nucleus was almost coal-black, but broken randomly by streaks of highly reflective material—chemical-laced water ice of all colors of the rainbow—that thrust up jaggedly like icebergs. White plumes of jetting vapor extended miles into space like quills.

The actual surface, irregular and pockmarked, was now in constant ferment. As fissures opened and closed, clouds of white steam blasted toward the megascope’s invisible Mighty Eye, spewing masses of ice and dust in all directions. Tom knew that most would escape the comet’s miniscule gravity and hurtle away into space.

"We didn’t expect this much
explosiveness
," commented Tom thoughtfully. "The ship couldn’t land there, that’s for sure. It wouldn’t even be safe to do a close flyby."

"Which makes your telesampler all the more important," nodded his father. "Spectroscopic readings show only the usual substances, more or less—about eighty percent water in its various forms, plus carbon dioxide and other carbonaceous compounds. The typical cometary hydrocarbons, some granular silicon, a narrow range of sulfates."

"But we’ve never seen a nucleus boiling that way. Even if it’s mostly subsurface water sublimation—steam bursts in a near vacuum―"

"Clearly there’s something further, of real scientific interest, going on up on Tarski," declared Mr. Swift. "If this is a true
interstellar
comet, there may be a mass of unexpected reactive compounds at a deeper level. The conventional instruments give too blurred a reading. We need your telesampler to retrieve physical samples from deep down."

Tom chuckled wryly. "My telesampler has already had some problems with ‘unexpected reactive compounds’, Dad!"

"You’ll fix it, Tom—as always. Take it as an
informed
reassuring word from a knowledgeable source!"

As Tom made ready to leave, his father reported that there had been no reply to the coded message he had sent spaceward earlier in the day. "Of course that’s not unusual. Our space friends are poor correspondents—it may take days before they transmit a reply."

The young inventor spent the next couple days working with Hank Sterling and Arvid Hanson on resolving the latest telesampler problem and getting the space model, to be used in the comet probe, up and running. Late one afternoon Tom’s ridewalk to the main assembly building was diverted, by phone call, to the small executive parking lot near the administration building. He watched in smiling excitement as Bud piloted the atomicar, floating on its repelatron-driven cushion of air, over the security wall to a deft touchdown. Tom could see two figures in the big, unbroken passenger dome of the oddly-shaped vehicle. Both waved.

As Dr. Feng stepped down from the
Silent Streak
, holding a bulky briefcase, Tom offered his hand. "Welcome to Shopton and Enterprises, Doctor!"

"Ah, Tom!" The little man’s wrinkled face creased into a tight smile, slitting the almond eyes which showed his half-Chinese ancestry. "So happy to see you again, if under rather dismaying circumstances."

"Please don’t worry about that letter, sir."

"I have brought it with me, as you asked."

"And how was your trip?" asked Tom. He added mischievously, "I hope Bud here didn’t try any aerobatic stunts?"

As Feng chuckled, Bud said: "I played nice, genius boy, but I’m surprised we didn’t get a little carsick along the way. Flying mode was a tad unsteady."

"Oh... really?" The young inventor couldn’t help a twinge of alarm despite his pal’s usual breezy demeanor.

"Wasn’t too bad," Bud continued, "just whatcha might call a little
squishiness
in—the repelatron system. At intervals, Tom." If Dr. Feng had possessed the ability to read faces, he would have noted the boys’ shared looks of worried concern. It seemed the repelatron problem had spread further!

"Right now our guest duplex is in use by... a couple visitors," Tom said, helping Bud with the scholar’s baggage. "But I think you’ll find the ‘first class’ accommodations in the
Sky Queen
entirely comfortable. We’ve parked her up on her dedicated airfield pad, and I’ve stationed a couple employees aboard to attend to your needs during your stay."

"It’s really great," Bud enthused. "It’s like a top-flight hotel that you can pick up and move around the world like a suitcase."

"
Himmel
! But I’m quite easy to satisfy, my lads," declared Feng. "And these impositions upon your hospitality won’t last more than a few days, after all. I could just as easily have taken a room in a motel. In my travels I’ve seen the insides of a great many of them."

"It’s not just hospitality, sir," Tom responded. "As you know, Enterprises is working on a project with an imminent deadline, our space trip to the comet. Having the pleasure of your company here at the plant will make things more convenient for all concerned."

Feng nodded, noting sagely, "Yes. And perhaps a bit safer for me, given the mysteries of our unknown ‘prankster’."

That evening Dr. Feng joined Bud and the Swift family at their large residence minutes from Enterprises. "What a fine meal, Mrs. Swift," complimented the German as dessert was concluded. "All three of these men have greatly praised your cookery, and they were surely right to do so."

"Thank you," said Anne Swift modestly. "I enjoy cooking as much as molecular biochemistry. I’m always careful to give my two hobbies equal time."

"Mother’s very inspiring," gleamed Tom’s pert sister Sandy. "I haven’t yet quite decided my entire future, but it will
definitely
include a dash of biochemistry!"

Bud looked sheepish. "I guess I’m more into, er—
applied
science," said the pilot-astronaut.

As they settled back in the Swifts’ spacious living room, over coffee, Damon Swift remarked: "This room of ours has seen its share of scientific discussions—and more than a little wild speculation."

"It’s here that we talked about going after molten iron deep in the earth," his son amplified. "We hashed over the location of lost Atlantis, the possibility of antiproton matter in Africa, technological development projects in Kabulistan and Ngombia..."

"With only an occasional interruption—things like penetrator bullets and flying spears. I’m afraid we live in a
rough
neighborhood," giggled Sandy.

"I’ve come to think an active imagination magnetically attracts peculiar situations," pronounced Damon Swift ruefully.

"And peculiar enemies," noted Bud.

"Yes—imagination. Imagination may at times be a scientist’s most valuable ally," Dr. Feng said quietly as he opened his briefcase. "Surely it is imagination that has motivated the comet probe which you are planning."

He removed a large padded envelope and carefully withdrew what appeared to be several sheets of tanned and torn parchment behind a layer of protective plastic. "But perhaps what I will discuss with you tonight will exceed your capacity for—the unorthodox."

"Tom’s given all of us a briefing on what’s in your book," said Bud. "I’m not so sure I ‘got’ it all, though."

Dr. Feng nodded. "Quite so. Nor would I expect it upon first acquaintance. Allow me to give a preface.

"As you know, my father and grandfather both taught at the University of Peking, where I too served on the faculty before I was forced to flee from Red China as a young man. My opinions were regarded as too much a deviation from standard scientific materialism, if you see." The listeners knew that after becoming a refugee, Dr. Feng had gone to his mother’s homeland in what was then West Germany and had eventually taken a post at the University of Heidelberg. "For a time I taught in the field of psychology, and maintained a private practice in town," he explained. "But we Fengs have always been keenly interested in the work of the ancient Chinese astronomers. To perhaps impress you, the old court writings speak of a great comet which was seen by them more than twenty-six hundred years ago, around 650 B.C. The chief imperial astronomer provided a very exact account of its movements through the celestial vault—the starry sky."

"In Europe at that time comets weren’t understood at all, though astrologers and fortune tellers cited them as omens of evil or disaster," Tom noted. "It wasn’t until Tycho Brahe, in the 16th century, that the western world realized that comets are objects in interplanetary space, not atmospheric phenomena like clouds or the aurora."

"Yet as I say in my book—and what I place before you here, tonight—my recent studies have to do, not with my illustrious ancestors, but with a secret order of monks, who called themselves the Brothers of Hermes. Hermes, the divine messenger of the gods, was regarded as the founder of the secret sciences, and specifically alchemy."

"I know you believe they made a connection between alchemical studies and comets," Tom nodded. "You say they believed that meditating upon alchemical symbols while a comet was visible caused a spiritual transformation." He smiled apologetically. "I’m sure I’m mangling your theory, Doctor."

"Not as badly as most, Tom," replied Karl Feng. "But let me move to the most significant part of that theory, which I have developed and investigated in detail since the book was published. It may well affect your comet probe mission, for it concerns a mystery of outer space—a mystery revealed by those equally mysterious lights in the skies known as Unidentified Flying Objects—UFO’s!"

TOM and his father were intrigued by Dr. Feng’s announcement. "A mystery of outer space!" Mr. Swift echoed. "You’ve certainly aroused our curiosity. Tell us about it, Karl."

"Especially the part about flying saucers," Bud urged. "
Sandy
here believes in that kind of thing."

"Budworth has this
boyish compulsion
to make jokes about my theorizing," sniffed Sandy. "Just because I
one time
alluded to the possibility that people from space were―"

"Does this have anything to do with those parchments?" Tom asked Feng with great haste.

The professor smiled. "Why yes, as a matter of fact." Dr. Feng explained that the parchment fragments were from some old manuscript pages which had recently come into his possession. "They seem to be part of a medieval book on alchemy, and have been so classified by historians and historiographers. Nothing too terribly interesting." He glanced quizzically around at the Swifts and Bud. "Perhaps you feel the ancient alchemists were merely frauds?"

"Not at all," said Mr. Swift. "Many were gifted scientific workers. They developed special tools and precise techniques that we still use today."

"For that matter," Tom said, "their ‘secrets’ may be more than just occult rituals. People who study things closely, generation after generation, sometimes stumble on things without knowing how to explain it to others in ordinary language. They may have known more of the secrets of nature than we realize."

Feng nodded gravely. "Their work was exacting, and they permitted themselves insights from inner resources, psychological and spiritual, that we have forgotten in our very logical, materialistic age—the age of
superficiality
, if I may so put it. That is one reason why these manuscript fragments may prove most important."

Mr. Swift frowned. "How so, Karl?"

Dr. Feng said he had translated the pages, written in medieval church Latin, and that they hinted at a secret "school" or center of alchemical study somewhere in Germany. "No such place has ever been found, but its existence is alluded to in several ancient sources, particularly ecclesiastical manuscripts presently housed in the Vatican. It was no doubt well hidden; in fact, if you ‘read between the lines’ using the Green Language, as I have learned to do, you discover that it was called the Sanctum Never Seen."

"Not to joke around," Bud put in, "but that sounds more like the name of a bar."

"I’m entirely serious. This cultic sect, the Brothers of Hermes, apparently carried out their studies under sworn secrecy for several hundred years. Their ‘invisible college’ was evidently located in a cave system, its entrances well-hidden, somewhere in the Bavarian Alps—southern Germany near the Austrian border. So I believe, based upon my recent research."

"It certainly sounds like fiction," said Mrs. Swift. "What’s supposed to have happened to these people?"

"I believe agents of the secular and church authorities—essentially Teutonic Knights employed as mercenaries and ‘enforcers’—discovered the location of the Sanctum. It is reported that they blocked up all the secret entrances with boulders and dirt while the monks were forced to remain inside. To be blunt, they were buried alive!"