THE TOM SWIFT INVENTION ADVENTURES


TOM SWIFT
IN THE RACE
TO THE MOON

BY VICTOR APPLETON II

CHAPTER 1

 

A FALTERING FLIGHT

“TOM! What’s wrong with your machine? We’re going into a dive!” Fighting the controls, pilot Bud Barclay risked a brief sideways glance at his cockpit companion, who was also his best friend.
     “I don’t know what’s wrong,” replied Tom Swift, his keen eyes tensely focused on the instrument panel before him. “The repelatron’s still operating at full power, but we’re losing force!” The blond-haired young inventor stretched forward a hand and ad- justed a control dial, once, twice, three times. “Not working — no change.”
     Forcing himself to remain calm as their aircraft, a Pigeon Special, began to nose down, Bud again flicked the ignition switch to restart the compact but powerful motor that normally drove the plane’s xxxxxxxxxxx

rear-mounted propeller. The youths had deliberately silenced the motor in order to give Tom’s invention the workout that was the reason for their flight. Now the motor refused to come back to life! “The instruments are still okay,” grated the young pilot in desperation, a lock of dark hair creeping down over his forehead. “But the electronics toward the tail are stone dead. I can’t budge the rudder.”
     As the ground slowly rolled before their eyes at a steepening angle, drawing frighteningly near, Bud suddenly yanked on Tom’s shirtsleeve. “Squeeze over to my side, Tom, all the way to the wall — hurry!”
     Tom burst free of his safety straps and scrambled across the top of Bud’s seat-back, flattening himself against the wall just behind and to the left of his pal. Bud also half-rose and pressed leftward as far as possible. The tiny, lightweight Special, uniquely designed to maintain aerial stability during sharp maneuvers and unusual conditions, responded as sensitively as a trained palomino, slightly dipping its wings and sliding into a corkscrew turn to port. For a moment the curve made the situation even worse — they were diving straight xxxxxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

groundward! But then, terrifyingly close to disaster, they swung through the low point of the arc and be- gan to regain altitude. The plane had now reversed course and was heading back the way it came.
     Tom made his way back to his seat as Bud continued to try to start the prop motor. Both young men were breathing hard. “We’re through the worst,” said Bud. “We’ll be able to reach the lake.”
     Tom nodded. “Plan to ditch her?”
     “No choice.”
     As the glittering crescent of Lake Carlopa drew close ahead, Tom radioed the Swift Enterprises airfield. Though located in Shopton at the far end of the lake, the Swift invention facility was nevertheless the closest site equipped for rescue. “Roger, Special,” replied tower control. “I’m dispatching a water crash team. We’re tracking you — won’t be long.”
     Signing off, Tom groaned in frustration. “Thanks for the ace flying, Bud. Believe it or not, I’m more worried about my repelatron going to the bottom than I am about our scrawny necks.”
     Bud managed a ragged grin. “Oh, I believe it!”
     The repelatron was perhaps the young prodigy’s  xxxxxxxxxxx
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most revolutionary invention, a device which generated an invisible beam of force that could repel any material it was attuned to. Some months before, while constructing his deep-sea hydrodome on the floor of the mid-Atlantic, the young inventor had used the machine to push back the ocean waters, creating a bubble-like airspace for workers to live in.
     Since that peril-fraught success, Tom had labored to overcome certain features of the repelatron that limited its practical capacity to switch rapidly from one substance to another. His goal was to develop a super-repelatron that could utilize its recoil-thrust for propulsion — specifically to propel a radically new kind of spacecraft into the stark vacuum above the earth’s atmosphere. Tom conceived this step as a key to interplanetary exploration, and had made well-publicized plans to make the moon his first port of call.
     Having finally hit upon a version of the repelatron that promised the sort of performance Tom required, the young inventor had anxiously had the new test model bolted into the cargo compartment of the Pigeon Special, a popular line of two-seat aircraft manufactured by the Swift Construction  xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx

Company, which was owned, like Swift Enterprises, by the Swift family. Soaring out over Lake Carlopa, Tom had had Bud cut the engines, phasing in the repelatron as substitute thrust. The boys had been thrilled as the device seemed to function perfectly, keeping them smoothly and silently airborne as they traversed the length of the long, narrow lake.
     But trouble had cropped up almost immediately upon crossing the shoreline and heading on out over farmland. With no warning or evident cause the repelatron seemed to become powerless, sending the Special into its dive.
     Now they recrossed the lakeshore at a low, faltering altitude, preparing to bail out just before the Special hit the water. Suddenly Tom and Bud reacted with surprise as the whole plane give a vio- lent shake and surged forward, putting on speed and altitude. The acceleration pressed the boys back into their seats.
     “What’s going on?” gasped Bud. “Tom! — the repelatron’s working again!”
     “Water,” Tom muttered. “That must be it. It’s repelling the water — nothing else.”
     The boys relaxed as the plane mounted higher and higher above the lake. Tom contacted Enterprises xxxxxxxxxxx x                           

again and explained the situation. “Have the crash team on standby,” he advised. “We may still have a problem getting back to the airfield.”
     “You’re right about that,” said Bud. “I still can’t start the motor or work the flaps or the rudder. The best we can hope for is a pancake landing, and that’ll be rough.”
     “Let’s try something, flyboy. Get ready to flip the switch again. I’m going to kill the repelatron.”
     Bud gave his friend a look of wide-eyed skepticism, but poised his hands above the controls as Tom switched off the power feed to his invention. Instantly the Special slowed and wavered, gliding along unpowered. Bud flicked the ignition.
     The motor jerked to life! The plane shot forward under full power and control.
     “Jetz! Everything’s back on line, Skipper,” Bud declared gratefully.
     “I think I know where the problem is,” com- mented Tom in a musing voice. “When the repulsion ray doesn’t find anything to interact with, there’s some kind of back-surge across the space-wave field with electromagnetic induction as a side effect. All the power cables that pass through the fuse- xxxxxxxxxxxx

lage near the machine were affected. But if I focus the field more narrowly, it won’t — ”
     Bud interrupted his friend with a laugh. “Please, genius boy, do your inventing on the ground — after we’ve landed!”
     They proceeded on to Enterprises without incident, and Bud, an expert pilot, brought them down in a perfect landing, taxiing into a waiting hangar. Disembarking, Tom directed the ground crew to unbolt the test repelatron and convey it to one of his laboratories on a handtruck as he and Bud ambled along beside.
     Reaching the lab they were surprised to find a small crowd of unfamiliar faces gathered in the hallway next to the slowly-moving ridewalk ramp. Tom recognized one face among them: the round, somewhat rumpled, perpetually harried face of George Dilling, longtime head of the plant’s Office of Communications and Public Interest. “Hi, George,” said Tom, curiosity on his brow and in his voice. “A tour?”
     “Ah, Tom! Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, you’re in luck! Here’s Tom Swift himself!” An unconvincing grin firmly in place, Dilling led the xxxxxxxxxxx

crowd in a wave of applause, accented by ooo-ing and ahh-ing. Dilling approached Tom and Bud and said softly, “It’s that Brungarian student group, two days early. Imagine my surprise.”
     I can just imagine, thought Tom.
     Swift Enterprises actively encouraged young people to explore their interest in science and invention, and to consider careers in that area. To that end Dilling’s office frequently set up special tours of the installation, usually for high school students. He considered it good public relations; Tom and his father valued it for its own sake and enjoyed meeting the students and answering their questions.
     This tour was unique. The students, some as young as fifteen, others in their later twenties, were visiting the United States from Brungaria, a newly democratic nation that in decades past had been unfriendly to the U.S. and its allies. The students, all carefully screened and selected for native ability, attended the Academy for Advanced Scientific Studies in Volkonis, the Brungarian capital.
     “I’m very pleased to meet you all,” said Tom with a warm smile. “Welcome to Swift Enterprises! What have you seen so far?”

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     The students looked at one another shyly, and for a moment Tom wondered if they had understood him. Then a young girl stepped forward and said, “Already we have seen your cowboy man.”
     The students all nodded vigorously. “He was most cool!” a boy piped up. “Do you sell the shirts?”
     Bud broke out laughing. “You’ll have to go to Texas if you want one of those Chow Winkler Brand shirts! Shopton has a city ordinance against selling loud colors like that!”
     Seeing that the students didn’t know what to make of Bud’s joke, Tom quickly explained. “The man you met is my friend Chow. He prepares our meals and travels with us around the world. He’s from Texas, where real cowboys live. Those colorful shirts of his are — sort of a hobby. We don’t sell them here.”
     “Not as of yet!” Dilling rushed to say. “But we do have Swift Enterprises souvenir shirts in the Visitor Center gift shop. If you want to impress the folks back home and show that you’re a real American inventor, pick up one of the blue-striped white tees, like Tom himself wears.”
     Tom answered a few questions and shook a few hands. Then the middle-aged man who appeared to xxxxxxxxxxx

be the tour leader and supervisor, a sour-faced type, said: “We have now seen the hangars and the great airship underground. The students were hoping to see one of the laboratories where you, as one might say, put together the inventions. This one, perhaps?”
     Tom nodded. “Why not? I’ll show you the machine I have that makes water fly!”
     “And soup, too,” Bud added.
     Inside the lab Tom demonstrated a small hand-held model of his repelatron and explained how he had used it to outwit some bad men who had tried to take over his undersea hydrodome. The students were wide-eyed with wonder at these American marvels.
     Suddenly a sharp, splintering crash caused Tom to whirl about. One of the young men, who had drifted somewhat away from the group, was bending down and holding his hand, a tray of shattered microscope slides on the floor by his feet.
     “Ow!” he cried. “I am bleeding, I — I think I — ” His face was white and he seemed about to topple over. Tom rushed up to support him, and the student leaned close against him.

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     “I’ll call the infirmary,” Tom said reassuringly. “Dr. Simpson will take care of your cut.”
     The young man bent his head down low to his chest. His back, and Tom’s, were turned to the rest of the group. “Tom, listen!” he whispered, almost inaudibly. “I must speak to you. Something horrible is going to happen! But the others can’t know that I’ve talked to you!”
     His voice was desperate — and terrified!
     

CHAPTER 2



             THREAT FROM THE
         COSMOS




“IS PETAR all right?” demanded the tour leader worriedly. “Is he ill?”
     “He’ll be fine,” said Tom, thinking furiously.
     “Shall I call Doc over?” Bud asked.
     “No, Bud. Listen, why don’t you go on with George and the tour — show them the observatory. I’ll take Petar over to the infirmary myself. We’ll join up with you.”
     “Sure, Skipper,” replied Bud. He sensed something in his pal’s voice that warned him not to ask any questions.
     Before the group could leave, Tom guided the student out into the hall and on to the ridewalk, xxxxxxxxxxx

which whisked them out into the sunlight. “Are you really hurt?” the scientist-inventor asked.
     The young man, who appeared to be about 20 years old, stood up straight. “No. I apologize for the glass things — it was necessary.”
     “I thought Brungaria was over all that thought-control, cloak-and-dagger stuff,” commented Tom wryly.
     “Brungaria has changed much,” said the student; “some things — they are slower to change. Mr. Atkossov watches over us carefully. If he reported I was talking to you secretly, the state police would ask me what we talked about, and it would not go so well.”
     Tom led Petar into an employee lounge, deserted for the moment. “We can talk here.”
     They sat down on a sofa and the young man fixed Tom in a serious gaze. “My name is Petar Nevolyan. I am in — you would call it the graduate level of instruction, in electrical technology. At the Aca- demy.”
     “Is there something wrong at the Academy?” asked Tom.
     “It has not to do with the school, no. It is this.” Petar paused, gathering difficult thoughts. “My older brother, Samimel, works for COSMOSA. You know of that?”

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     Tom nodded. “Yes, the agency of your government in charge of space and rocketry, like our NASA. I met people from COSMOSA up on Nestria — the astronauts with Col. Mirov.”
     Nestria was Earth’s tiny new moon, an asteroid that Tom had landed on and begun exploring in the name of the United States, as recounted in Tom Swift on The Phantom Satellite.
     “Samimel works there; computer work,” continued Petar. “Sometimes he hears things, or intercepts messages — computer messages. He does not try to, but it happens. Late one night, just before we left for America, he called me from a phone at a restaurant, a place in the country. He was very upset — what do you say? — distraught. You know?”
    “Yes.”
    “He said, one of the messages, he thinks it came from a secret group, scientists who work for COSMOSA but also meet in secret. There is a group in my country, i-Szentimentalya — that is to say, the Sentimentalists. They wish to bring back the old way, the government as it was before.”
    “I’ve heard of them,” Tom said. “It’s thought they

 

have sympathizers planted in the current go- vernment.”
     “Some say so, yes. The planted persons are those who think they would benefit if the new democracy were overthrown. But the point is, Samimel told me that this group has made radio contact with the space people, the ones you call your space friends!”
     Tom suppressed a gasp of surprise at the news. Ever since these friendly scientists from another planet had guided a missile to Swift Enterprises bearing a message, they had chosen to communicate only with Tom, whom they seemed to trust, or with the young inventor’s father. Though the world knew of the alien beings, their messages, now sent by radio in symbolic form, had normally been directed to special receiving equipment at Swift Enterprises or, on occasion, to Swift spacecraft. The thought that the anti-democratic Sentimentalists faction might be in touch with the space friends was deeply disturbing.
     Petar seemed to read the expression in Tom’s eyes. “It is bad, yes. But there is worse.”
     “Tell me.”
     “Samimel thinks a ship, a capsule, is being sent to us from space. Tom, it contains sick animals, animals xxxxxxxxxxx   xxxxxxxxxxx

dying of a disease that could pass on to the living cells of earth creatures and kill them — all of them! Like an epidemic!”
     Tom Swift felt the horror of the idea! “If it can really cross over from alien life-forms to our kind of life, we would have no defense against it. But why would the space friends do such a thing?”
     “I think — Samimel thinks — the secret scientists have made promises to help them, as if they knew about such diseases and could cure it for the space people. But Tom, listen to me, they will use it as a threat against the government, against the whole world!”
     “I understand,” said Tom quietly. “Does your brother know you were going to tell me all this?”
     “He knew I was to come here and begged me to tell you, to convince you! And then — ”
     “What else, Petar?”
     Tears sprung into the young Brungarian’s eyes. “I tried to call Samimel when I got to America, but they said he was sick, in a hospital. When I called there, they had no record! I — I am much afraid — they have killed him.” Tom grasped his hand in sympathy. “And now I have told you all I know. Take me back to the others now, please. Surely the xxxxxxxxxxx   xxxxxxxxxxx

professor, Atkossov, is already suspicious.”
     They stood. Tom looked the other in the eye. “You’re very brave, Petar. I hope your brother is all right, but whatever might have happened, I know he’d be proud of you.”
     In deep silence Tom guided Petar Nevolyan back to the tour group, meeting up with them at the big observatory dome at the edge of the plant. “The doctor says he’ll be fine,” Tom told the overseer of the group, who nodded but gave Tom a suspicious look.
     As the tour went on along its way, Tom motioned for Bud to stay behind. As they began to ridewalk back to the main lab building, Bud nudged his friend. “Okay, Tom, that fishy smell in the air isn’t from Chow’s catfish stew. It looked to me like that guy knocked over those slides deliberately.”
     “Ten points for Barclay,” Tom confirmed.
     “What’s it all about?”
     Tom told Bud the story, speaking carefully and calmly. “We don’t know how much of it’s true, if any of it is,” he concluded. “But if Petar was play-acting, he’s mighty good at it.”
     “An epidemic from outer space!” Bud boggled. “What do you plan to do?”

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     “The first step is pretty obvious,” said the young inventor. “Contact our space friends!”
     The two friends hurried to the space communications center that had been established in the airfield control tower. Here the imaging oscilloscope, which translated the signals received by the experimental magnifying antenna into visual form, was located. The center was staffed round the clock by specialists trained in the mathematical symbol-code used by the friendly beings, the team supervised by Nels Gachter, a brilliant student of the application of mathematical logic to communications theory.
     “Tom! Bud!” Nels exclaimed as the boys rushed in. “You have the look of someone expecting an im- portant message — or wanting to send one.”
     “I hope she’s all warmed up, Nels,” said Tom. “We need to transmit something immediately.”
     “The transmitter awaits you,” replied Gachter with a smile. “Mars is getting a bit low on the horizon, but you still have a fair window, perhaps forty minutes.” The alien scientists had hinted that they operated from a scientific base in orbit about the red planet.
     Tom frowned. “It may take longer than that xxxxxxxxxxx

just to put the message together. But we can relay the signal through the space outpost; they almost always have a line-of-sight to Mars.”
     “I’ll contact Major Horton immediately.” Ken Horton was the commander of the famous Swift Enterprises space station.
     Tom sat down to work at a computer flatscreen, Bud at his elbow. “What exactly are you going to say, Tom?” he asked.
     Tom looked at his friend soberly. When Bud called him by his first name, instead of a nickname like genius boy or Skipper, it was a sign the matter at hand was grave indeed! “I need to tell them, as briefly as possible, about the report we’ve received. And if it’s true what Nevolyan said, I have to make them understand that what they’re doing is dan- gerous!”
     “Who knows if these guys even understand concepts like danger or good and evil,” muttered the dark-haired young pilot. “We don’t even know what kind of bodies they have — if they have bodies at all!”
     “We know they understand danger in some sense or other,” commented the young inventor as he adjusted the computer controls. “Don’t forget,  xxxxxxxxxxx   xxxxxxxxxxx   xxxxxxxxxxx

they’ve warned us about it before. They attach some sort of value to life. But there’s another big problem on top of all that.”
     “What problem?”
     “If the Brungarian faction is already in com- munication with the space friends, they may be able to pick up our own outgoing signals as well. We’ve got to figure out a way to get our message through without saying anything that would put Petar or his brother in danger.”
     “I get it,” said Bud. But he lay a hand on his pal’s wrist. “And I know something else, Tom, and so do you. We may just have to take that risk. Because it sounds like it could come down to those two lives versus the lives of every living thing on Earth!”
     

CHAPTER 3


 

MIXED MESSAGES

TOM NOW set his formidable young mind to the difficult task before him. Communication between earthly humans and the other-planetary scientists was based upon complicated visible symbols that re- presented universal concepts in mathematics and logic, concepts that were presumed to be the same on any world, anywhere in space or time. As inter- preted by Tom and his father, these concepts paral- leled concepts in the natural languages of society.
     Yet it seemed there were many barriers to understanding, many unexpected difficulties. So much of human communication depended upon a prior familiarity with ordinary human institutions, human needs, and human emotions. The space friends had xxxxxxxxxxx   xxxxxxxxxxx

none of these, so far as was known. Their mode of society was as unknown as the form of their bodies, their scientific technology as strange and inexplicable as magic. Even their motives in making contact with our planet were far from clear.
     And now, somehow, Tom Swift had to construct a message of the gravest importance, un- derstandable to those meant to receive it, but completely opaque to mankind’s earthly enemies!
     He muttered, half to himself and half to Bud, as he worked out the various figures on the flatscreen, consulting frequently with the “space dictionary,” a computerized record of symbols previously used which had been compiled by Tom and his father, Damon Swift. “Let’s see, I can use the same cluster of symbols they used to signify ‘danger’ when they transmitted that warning to us in the Star Spear. And I can pair their symbol for negation, or reversal, with the shapes we’ve interpreted to mean ‘friend’ or ‘friendly,’ as when they say ‘we are friends’.”
     “I see,” Bud remarked, not intending to provoke an answer. “That’s their call-sign — like a signa- ture.”
     “They’ve talked about the environment for life often enough,” murmured Tom, “and here, I think I xxxxxxxxxxx   xxxxxxxxxxx

can abstract part of this cluster to represent bodily health… something like ‘completion’ or ‘satisfaction of the equation’…” Perspiration broke out on the young inventor’s forehead as he focused his concentration to the utmost. Finally he gave a sharp nod and flashed Bud a grin of triumph.
     “Done!” he exclaimed. “That wasn’t too bad. How long did it take, flyboy? About an hour?”
     Bud chuckled. “About three! So what did you come up with?”
     Tom showed his pal the translated message on the screen, reminding him that it was only an approx- imation of the intended meaning.

TOM SWIFT TO SPACE FRIENDS . DATA RECEIVED CONCERNING ARRIVAL OF LIFE FORMS UNABLE TO MAINTAIN LIFE FUNCTIONS . CAUSAL FACTOR MAY BE DANGER TO ALL LIFE HERE . NEW METHODS NECESSARY TO SOLVE PROBLEM . RESTRICT COM- MUNICATION TO THIS SOURCE !  AWAIT YOUR REPLY .

     “Wow! Not bad!” exclaimed Bud admiringly. “I almost understand it myself! You’re telling them the diseased animals are a danger to us, and they need a better plan.”
     “Exactly! And I’m hoping my wording will suggest xxxxxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxxxxx

 to any ‘eavesdroppers’ that we’ve already ex- changed messages with the space friends on the subject, as if this were a follow-up.” He pointed with his finger to the exclamation mark ending the next-to-last sentence. “I used their ‘exponentiation’ symbol to give emphasis and urgency, as they have done in the past.”
     “I remember,” Bud said excitedly. “So let’s send it off and see what happens!”
     With the assistance of Nels Gachter Tom fed the array of symbols into the messaging computer, which beamed it off into space via the big antenna. In moments they received confirmation that the signal had been relayed by the outpost in space.
     Then came the most difficult phase of all — waiting. As the long afternoon became longer, Tom and Bud grabbed sandwiches for a late lunch, but remained close to the communications center. At four eighteen the alert-bell rang on the translating computer, and the boys rushed up to the screen in great excitement. A cluster of the strange hiero- glyphs appeared on the imaging oscilloscope’s readout monitor. Beneath the symbols appeared the computer’s tentative translation, derived from the space dictionary.

RESPONSE FORTHCOMING

     “Good night!” Bud grumbled. “All that time for a dinky message like that?”
     Tom gave his pal a friendly poke. “Patience, space cadet! Most of that time was just transit time to their base and back again. With something this complex, it may take hours or even days for them to put together — ” Tom was interrupted in mid- sentence as the alert-bell rang again!
     Gachter’s eyes widened. “Another message already!”

TO TOM SWIFT. WE ARE FRIENDS . A CONDITION OF DANGER

     There the translation stopped and a buzzer sounded. Tom sighed. “No surprise — new symbols that the computer can’t even guess at! I’ll put them on the flatscreen and see what I can come up with.”
     Tom’s experience in interpreting the space beings’ mode of thought seemed to lend skill and speed to his efforts. By supper time he had put together what seemed a reasonable continuation of the interrupted message from space, which he showed to Bud and to his father, who had arrived in the meantime and had been briefed on the develop- xxxxxxxxxxx

ing crisis.

A CONDITION OF DANGER HAS DEVELOPED ON OUR PLANET OF ORIGIN . THE LIFE FUNCTIONS OF FORMS OF ALL KINDS HAVE BEEN IMPAIRED BY COMPONENT UNITS ALTERING MASSED LIFE STRUCTURES FROM WITHIN . ALTERNATE SOURCE ON YOUR PLANET REPLIED TO FIRST MESSAGE . IN CONSEQUENCE A SPECIMEN CONTAINER WAS SENT BY OUR - - - - . WE ARE NOT ABLE TO ACT TO PREVENT THE COM- PLETION OF ITS SEQUENCE. CONTAINER COURSE WILL TERMINATE AT - - - - SEVENTEEN ROTATIONS .  SOLVE FOR POSITIVE RESULTANT IF YOU ARE ABLE . NO COMMUNICATION PENDING RESOLUTION .

     “Great day!” muttered Tom’s father in grim astonishment. “A terrible predicament.”
     “What about those two squiggles in the middle of the translation?” Bud asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
     “Untranslatable symbol clusters,” explained Tom. “At least Dad and I can’t make them out on our first attempts.”
     “But we do have a few likely ideas, son,” Damon Swift reminded him. “The first term suggests some- thing dominating or controlling, perhaps a word like authorities or even masters.”
     “In other words, the guys in charge back home,” xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

Bud said.
     “Right,” confirmed Tom. “And it seems the local group of scientists — the ones based at the Martian station — won’t, or can’t, block what the others have already set in motion. As to the second unknown term — ”
     Tom exchanged glances with his father.
     “What is it? Where’s the thing going to come down?” Bud demanded nervously.
     “The most likely translation,” began Mr. Swift, “is along the lines of ‘the mass in orbital period of thirty rotations’.”
     “Thirty rotations,” Bud repeated. “Doesn’t ro- tation mean a rotation of the earth — a day?”
     Tom nodded. “That’s right. And the mass in orbital period of thirty days has to be the moon — Earth’s moon!”
     Bud gaped in amazement. “Then — they’re landing that animal capsule on the moon!”
     “Precisely, seventeen days from now. Which shows considerable wisdom and foresight,” noted Mr. Swift. “The sterile, airless lunar environment is a perfect place to land a vessel of animals bearing an unknown infectious agent.”
     “But — but — !” For a moment Bud’s excited thoughts outraced his voice. “So we take a trip to the moon. No big deal! But how do we find the xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

capsule? They didn’t give a location!”
     “Which is also pretty clever of them,” Tom mused. “They understand now — the local scientists, at least — that the gang that responded to their first message may not be helpful contactees after all. So they’re not broadcasting the precise location of the landing, assuming that we will be able to get up there first and can use our own technology to find the craft.”
     “I get it now,” said Bud. “It’s the seacopter hunt all over again — but on the moon this time!”
     Not long after the construction of the Swift space outpost, the space friends had transported a sealed capsule of plantlife specimens to Earth for Tom and his associates to study. As in the present situation, a rival communicator had interfered, and the vessel had been brought down in the Atlantic ocean. It had been up to Tom to search out the location of the lost rocket in his diving seacopter.
     The animated discussion continued as the two Swifts and Bud had supper in Tom’s nearby electronics lab, a meal provided by Chow Winkler — who listened in as a welcome participant.
     “So them space folks have got sick animals on their hands?” Chow said with a frown across his xxxxxxxxxxx

broad, billowy face. “When we had sick cattle back in Texas, we’d pull ’em out — quarantine ’em.”
     “This situation sounds a lot more serious, Chow, if we’re interpreting the message correctly,” Tom responded. “It seems this ‘disease,’ if that’s even the right word for it, is a sort of phenomenon we’ve never seen here on Earth — something very general that can pass from organism to organism without re- gard for species.”
     “There seems to be a suggestion that the phenomenon acts on living cells internally,” com- mented Damon Swift thoughtfully; “perhaps on the nucleotide chains of the cell nucleus itself. Even alien life would probably be based upon some such structuring element.”
     Bud gulped down a swallow of soda during the grim silence that followed, breaking it with: “Then what you’re saying is — the disease could affect life on Earth — animals and humans, too!”
     “Brand my cosmic cough drops!” gasped Chow. “It could be the gol-sarned end o’ the world!”
     “Especially if this renegade Brungarian faction gets their hands on it,” Tom declared. “Even if they intend to use it only as a threat, who knows if they’ll be able to contain and control it?”
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     “Who knows if we will!” Bud pointed out.
     As Chow began to clear the plates, Mr. Swift noted that a number of issues remained completely unresolved. “To name just one thing, where exactly is the container-vessel coming from? The message implies that it’s coming from the space friends’ home planet, but that’s surely in another star system light years distant. How could it be directed across interstellar space in the brief span of time since communication has been established with the Brun- garians?”
     Tom snorted. “Dad, you might as well ask how the Mars station communicates with ‘home’ so quickly! All we know is the same thing we’ve known all along — these beings have some sort of technology that allows them to manipulate space and time, matter and energy.”
     “Well,” Bud said, “us earthlings can do a little manipulating of our own — especially earthlings named Swift! But do you really think you can get your Gyro-Jumper up and running for a moon trip before those secret scientists beat you to the capsule?”
     Chow, tray in hand, shifted a puzzled gaze between Bud and Tom. “Gyro-Jumper! What in xxxxxxxxxxx

tarnation’s that?”
     Despite the grave situation Tom and his father couldn’t resist some soft laughter. “You know Bud, Chow,” Mr. Swift said. “He has a weakness for puns and nicknames.”
     Tom crossed the room and picked up a lightweight plastic model, holding it for Chow to see. “It’s the new spaceship, pard. I know you’ve seen photos of it in the papers.”
     The model consisted of a cube-shaped central cabin that gleamed like whitish chrome, suspended in the middle of a set of circling ringlike rail-beams. There were two vertical rings at right-angles to one another, which connected at the top and bottom, and another horizontal ring of equal size which girdled the “equator” of the strange craft. The overall configu- ration resembled a sort of gyroscope — hence Bud’s nickname for it.
     “Oh, you mean that there repelly-tron rocket you’re buildin’ out on Fearing Island,” Chow nodded. “But ya still don’t have a real name fer it, do you.”
     “Not so far,” Tom agreed. “But we’ve sure been getting a load of suggestions.”
     To promote interest in space exploration, George xxxxxxxxxxx   xxxxxxxxxxx

Dilling had come up with the notion of inviting the public to send in ideas for the name of the new Swift space vehicle, under construction at the Enterprises rocket and sub-craft base on tiny Fearing Island off the coast of Georgia. There was nothing secret about the huge, oddly-shaped vehicle; photos of it had appeared in world publications for weeks, and letters and emails from the public had flooded Swift Enterprises.
     “She’s officially named the XRTV-1, you know — the Experimental Repelatron Thrust Vehicle,” noted Bud. “That’s too much of a mouthful for me.”
     “Fer me too, buddy boy,” Chow agreed.
     Damon Swift picked up the thread of the conversation. “To go back to your question, Bud, the spaceship is already virtually finished. The last remaining problems have to do with — ”
     “These!” Tom concluded, pointing at one of a number of parabolic dish-antennas that were fastened to the circular rails. “We won’t be going anywhere soon unless I can figure out how to get the repelatrons to change their settings rapidly. Otherwise we’ll have the same sort of problem we ran into this morning in the Special — the mix of compounds and substances on the ground beneath xxxxxxxxxxx   xxxxxxxxxxx

the ship varies from place to place in such a complex way that the repelatron can’t re-tune itself with sufficient precision.”
     “And then down she goes!” Chow declared. “And down’s a might long way!”
     Mr. Swift drew the tense discussion to a close by observing that it would be prudent to add some specialists in life-science fields to the roster of personnel already selected for the planned moon voyage. “Tom, your mother has often mentioned one of her old professors — Glennon’s his name — who’s the world expert in the application of quantum physics methodologies to molecular biochemistry. And given the gravity of the threat, I’m sure our government would have no objection to lending us Dr. Faber.” Tom agreed enthusiastically. Anton Faber, who had accompanied the Swift expedition to Antarctica during the atomic earth blaster mission, was a renowned zoologist who had become a good friend.
     “It’ll be great to see him again,” said Tom. To which Bud added:
     “Let’s just hope scoping out outer-space animals isn’t a little too far out of his league!”
     By the next day plans to speed the preparations xxxxxxxxxxx   xxxxxxxxxxx

for the completion of the repelatron spaceship and the journey to the moon were proceeding apace. When Bud returned from an early-morning test flight of a new plane under study at Swift Construction, he was told by Munford Trent, the Swifts’ shared secretary, that Tom was already at work in the shielded high-energy test complex. Bud, an athletic youth, felt a need to stretch his muscles, so he avoided the cross-facility ridewalk and walked over to the building the old-fashioned way: by muscle power.
     It was a warm but overcast morning. “Hardly seems like the sun came up,” he murmured to himself as he approached the big, square building.
     Suddenly Bud stopped short — then broke into a run. A flash of brilliant blue-white light had burst through the row of small windows just beneath the line of the roof. At the same moment came a cry of fear from within — the voice of Tom Swift!
     

CHAPTER 4

 

BALL OF FIRE

BUD BARCLAY exploded through the unlocked double-doors of the test complex like the footballer he had been, not slackening his speed. His best friend was in danger! “Tom! Tom! Answer me!”
     It took only an instant to discover which room Tom occupied. Blazing light poured through the open door. Bud skidded to a stop, a hand shielding his eyes. The blue-white glare seemed as formidable as a solid object.
     He called out Tom’s name again, and this time was rewarded. “I’m here, Bud — next to the wall!”
     Bud spied a pair of heavily tinted work goggles hanging from the wall and hastily slipped them on. Now he could see. But what he saw was hard to understand!

 

     Tom, clad in a bulky protective suit with a helmet, was pressed against the far wall next to a complicated assemblage of equipment that Bud could barely make out. Between Bud and Tom the way was blocked by a weird floating object, a rounded mass of pure blinding light, crackling like a faulty electrical transformer and filling the air with the pungent smell of ozone.
     The object did not hang stably in the air, but bobbed and weaved in violent, jagged motion, like a toy balloon caught in a windstorm. Its shape seemed to be constantly changing, elongating, flattening out, twisting into a crescent shape with no rhyme or reason. Brilliant flashes pulsed from it each time it changed direction, bolts of electrical fire lashing any grounded piece of metal in the area.
     “Stay back!” Tom shouted desperately. “It’s unstable — it’ll fry you!”
     But Bud was not inclined to stay back, or even hesitate. He could see that the vicious-looking electrical effects were writhing agonizingly close to Tom. They seemed to be closing in on him! Bud’s eyes searched his surroundings, frantic to discover something that could help him rescue his friend. Finally he made out a broad coil of thick, un- xxxxxxxxxxx

insulated wire lying on a nearby workbench. It was the matter of a moment to clip the free end of the wire to a metal bar protruding up from the cement floor which he knew, from previous experiments, was well-grounded.
     Bud’s powerful arms sent the coil spinning through the air directly toward the ball of lightning, the coil smoothly unreeling as it arced across the big lab space. As the wire came within two feet of the phenomenon, there came a deafening bang and a blast of hot wind that almost knocked Bud off his feet.
     Dazed and dazzled, he steadied himself. The sphere of light had vanished completely, dissolved into nothingness!
     Bud ran up to his friend, but the young inventor lurched back. “No!” he warned in tones muffled by his helmet, which seemed to have turned almost opaque. “The suit’s hot and may have picked up a residual static charge. Give me a second — I’m all right.”
     Tom staggered a few yards and grasped one of the grounding-bars firmly. After a half-minute or so, he let go and began to shakily strip off the protective suit. “Good night!” he panted.

xxxxxxxxxxx 

     “Didn’t look like any night I’ve ever seen!” Bud retorted. “What in space was it — some kind of weapon?”
     Tom shook his head. “No, chum. Call it a sign of success.”
     “Huh?”
     “That’s right.” Tom gestured vaguely toward the equipment heaped next to the lab wall. “My new radiation converter — power for the spaceship.”
     “Just about powered you to a cinder!”
     “It created a self-sustaining high-voltage plasma, bottled-up in its own magnetic field, which is what prevented it from dissipating. Basically, ball light- ning!”
     “I’ve heard of that,” Bud said. “And that’s what you were aiming for in your experiment?”
     A weak grin spread across Tom’s face. “Not exactly. But the power produced by my machine was an order of magnitude higher than I’d expected. That great pass of yours really saved my bacon, flyboy — or maybe I should say, kept my bacon from frying!”
     Bud shook his head. “What’re we gonna do with you, genius boy? But anyway, does this mean your converter is ready for the flight?”
     “It’ll need some adjustment,” replied Tom rue- xxxxxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxxxxx

fully. “But it sure looks like it’ll produce enough power to run the Gyro-Jumper’s big repelatrons.”
     “Uh-huh. You couldn’t just stick with those solar batteries that almost vaporized us both a few ad- ventures ago?”
     “It’d take a thousand of ’em,” the young scientist-inventor explained. “The converters — there’ll be a pair of them — will be mounted outside the hull of the ship. What they do is capture and focus high-energy cosmic particles in a way that separates the charges by polarity, creating a voltage gradient that — ”
     “I’ll take your word for it, Skipper!” Bud interrupted.
     Later that day Tom and Bud drove to Shopton’s small, but rapidly growing, commercial airport to pick up Drs. Faber and Glennon. It had been arranged for the two scientists to fly in together so that they might become acquainted.
     Dr. Faber was first off the plane. The tall, keen-eyed scientist beamed at Tom and Bud  through his thick-lensed spectacles. “How delightful to see the two of you again,” he exclaimed, shaking the boys’ hands with gentle warmth. “Such a great deal has happened in, and to, our little world since the polar trip! And I do thank you for seating me next xxxxxxxxxxx

to Evan here, who turns out to be quite as voluble a talker as I myself.” Then he added humorously: “Though I fear one cannot always make out what he is trying to say — eh, Evan?”
     “Nonsense!” chuckled the other man good naturedly. “Sut hwyl, Tom Swift! And you too, friend of Tom! What cheer?” The professor greeted them heartily, seizing their hands in turn in a meaty grip. He was a short, thick-set, jovial Welshman with a shock of gray hair still streaked with traces of red, thatched above a pair of twinkling blue eyes.
     Tom, who had looked up a few words in Welsh, grinned back at him. “Do iawn, diotch! Very good, thanks. This is my friend, Bud Barclay.”
     Bud wincingly regained ownership of his hand. “Glad to know you, Professor.”
     “Look you, lad! The name’s Evan and don’t you forget it!” On his tongue Evan was ay-van and don’t was dawn’t.
     Soon after they reached the plant, they proceeded by electric nanocar to the conference room in the administration building where Mr. Swift and Harlan Ames, chief of Enterprises security, were waiting. Bud politely excused himself.
xxxxxxxxxxx

     The two had only been provided a sketchy, minimal report on the nature of the problem at hand; though naturally a thorough report had been given the United States government. They understood that they were being asked to accompany the Swift expedition to the moon, and that the main goal, unannounced to the general public, involved attempting to advise the extraterrestrials as to the deadly plague. As the discussion began, Dr. Faber said, “I’m willing to be very suave and blasé about going to the moon with Tom Swift. But if we’re to help, we’ll need to know more about the symptoms of the disease.”
     Evan Glennon nodded between puffs on his huge briar pipe. “Quite right. And for me, the most precise molecular and chemical data. We can hardly make a diagnosis until we have the facts.”
     “Unfortunately, it appears the aliens have cut off all communications for the duration,” responded Ames. “From a security standpoint that’s a good thing, but it certainly puts you gentlemen in the most difficult position imaginable.”
     “Quite so,” frowned Dr. Faber. “To be frank, I fear success may be well out of reach.”
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

     The group exchanged frustrated, baffled looks. Then Evan Glennon said, “Ah, no sense giving up the game in the first round, Anton. We’ll make our examinations on the spot and put our wits to the test, eh?”
     “I don’t wish to be discouraging, but I’m afraid it’s hopeless without something more to go on.” Dr. Faber said. “We might tell them about our new synthetic drugs and antibiotics. However, the chance is slim that these would conquer a totally unknown disease affecting a completely unearthly biology.”
     Mr. Swift drummed his fingers on the conference table. “Even if we convinced them of the necessity of providing detailed information in advance, trying to translate those unknown symbols might take weeks,” he said, frowning. “If we could accomplish it at all.”
     “Do we at least know what caused the out- break, Damon?” put in Glennon.
     Mr. Swift shook his head. “No. That’s what puzzles me. Our space friends are highly advanced in science, so one would expect them to have all disease-causing germs or viruses under control — xxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx 

 

unless it’s something new on their planet.”
     “Exactly what I was thinking,” Tom said. “The infection may have been picked up from another planet — perhaps from earth itself.”
     Evan Glennon puffed thoughtfully on his pipe. Dr. Faber muttered, “I take it we know absolutely nothing of the basic biological structure of these life-forms. One would like to have at least some tissue samples or germ cultures.”
     Tom brightened. “That may be the solution!” He looked at his father. “What do you think, Dad? Do you know what I’m referring to?”
     Mr. Swift nodded thoughtfully. “It’s worth a try,” he agreed.
     At this point Harlan Ames objected. “Tom, Damon, it’s your decision — but I have to point out that there are legal and security issues involved — if you’re referring to what I assume you’re referring to.”
     Glennon uttered a few terms in Welsh that were best left untranslated. “The life and death of a planet or two hang in the balance, and you’re concerned with such things? Preposterous!”
     “I do understand the issues involved, Professor,”  xxxxxxxxxxx 
 xxxxxxxxxxx

 

Ames responded coolly.
     “Harlan is doing his job,” said Mr. Swift. “And now I’ll do mine. Tom, go ahead and explain what we’re talking about.”
     The younger Swift took a deep breath. “By telling you this I’m breaching security regulations issued by Washington.”
     “We’ll be good,” stated Faber with an ironic smile.
     “The Welsh have no program for world con- quest,” added Dr. Glennon. “At least, none that I am aware of.”
     “All right then,” Tom continued. “The world knows about the meteor-missile that landed at Enterprises, and our subsequent radio contacts. But the world doesn’t yet know that we have already received samples of extraterrestrial life.”
     Wide-eyed, Glennon exclaimed. “But that’s marvelous! Marvelous!”
     “Not quite as marvelous as you think, Doctor,” Tom observed wryly. “These were samples of vegetation sent to Earth in a sealed transport capsule which we recovered from the ocean. Apparently, the capsule was engineered so that it could not be opened unless the external environment was safe for the plants inside. But before we could even begin to xxxxxxxxxxx   xxxxxxxxxxx

create such an environment, the plants all died from some unknown cause. Nothing we’ve come up with has been able to penetrate the shell, and the space friends don’t answer our inquiries on the subject.”
     “If you can’t open it up, how do you know the plants have died?” objected Dr. Faber.
     “The shell is completely transparent,” explained the scientist-inventor. “We saw them wilt. Subse- quently they’ve become desiccated and very fragile.”
     Harlan Ames picked up the thread of the account. “After hashing out questions of jurisdiction, the Federal government directed Enterprises to place the capsule in their control. It is now maintained in a low-temperature, high-security holding facility — es- sentially a large underground vault — in Ohio, near Dayton. Access is carefully limited, though Tom and his father are among the privileged ones.”
     “Hmmph! Typical!” muttered Glennon from be- hind his pipe. “Well, it won’t do us any good, not if we can’t get at the goods.”
     “The point is, there may be a way after all!” Tom declared.
     

CHAPTER 5


 

A WAILED WARNING

ANTON FABER responded to Tom’s announcement with a warm chuckle. “You see, Evan, it’s just as I told you on the plane. No problem is beyond the ingenuity of these Swifts!”
     “It’s something Dad and I have been working on for a while,” Tom said. “It works in a lab setting, but we don’t yet know if it’ll work on the life-capsule.”
     “What is it then, lad?” inquired Evan Glennon.
     “We call it a leptoscope, after the smallest quantity known to the ancient Greeks,” was the answer. “Think of it as a combination super-microscope and telescope. It also uses certain aspects of the technology we developed for the Swift Spectroscope.” Tom explained that the xxxxxxxxxxx

leptoscope picked up the penetrating spectronic radiation generated by the atomic nucleus and computer-analyzed the holographic information contained in the wave-fronts. “We use the data to construct an image on a monitor screen. You can see representations almost all the way down to the level of individual atoms!”
     “In this case, its special virtue is its ability to work up to a distance of several yards from the subject, without contact,” Damon Swift added. “If the spectronic rays penetrate the transparent shell as easily as photons do, the leptoscope will allow you gentlemen to examine the plantlife remains in great detail.”
     The meeting broke up with the Swifts promising to acquire clearance for the scientists to conduct the examination in the underground chamber. “It will pro- bably take a few days,” Harlan Ames noted. “I’ll try to get our government contacts to rush the process.”
     As it was lunchtime, Tom arranged with Chow to set a table in the executive dining room. When they arrived the rounded ex-Texan, who had met Anton Faber during the South Pole project, greeted the scientist with friendly enthusiasm. “Brand my skillets, with s’many different folks comin’ and goin’ at this here invention factory, it shor is good to run into a xxxxxxxxxxx

familiar face now’n then!”
     “And the best part is,” responded Faber, “that now we can have the great pleasure of regaling Evan Glennon here with our tales of the frozen south.” He added with a twinkle: “And in this sort of discourse, strict scientific accuracy is not required.”
     Shaking hands with Glennon, Chow said, “I reckon he means I won’t get inta trouble fer a Texas whopper or two.”
     “No trouble from me,” chuckled the scientist. “I’m a Welshman, you see. What’s a life for, but song and story?”
     Chow beamed. “I’d say you Welcher-types have a little Texas blood in you!”
     Tom called in Bud and they all ate a delicious meal together. For a time the talk and laughter provided a welcome vacation from the dark, deadly situation. Then Tom took the two guests on a tour of Enterprises, by nanocar. Finally they were shown to their well-appointed living quarters, a duplex bungalow for company guests somewhat shielded from the constant rumble of the Enterprises airfield.
     Tom rejoined Bud and they headed for the gleaming, glass-fronted laboratory complex. “I did xxxxxxxxxxx

what you suggested,” said Bud. “Just got off the phone. Sandy and Bash love to put together parties, you know, even at late notice.”
     “Didn’t think they’d mind,” Tom grinned. “It’s a nice way to express appreciation to our guests. Good thing Bash is between quarters at the Institute.” Bashalli Prandit, a close friend of Bud and the Swift family, was a part-time student at the nearby DuBrey Art Institute.
     “What’s next, genius boy?” Bud asked as they reached Tom’s lab.
     “Back to work on my new spaceship repelatron.”
     “Brief me again on it, will you?” the broad-shouldered young flier urged. “The problem, I mean.”
     Tom grinned. “Sure — maybe you’ll come up with the answer! Well, if you’ve ever looked at a newspaper photo closely, you’ve seen how what appears, from a little distance away, to be an image is really made up of rows of printed dots, dark or light, big or small.”
     “Right,” Bud said. “Same thing with TV pictures.”
     “So when you’re close up you see the individual dots, and when you move back they blur together. Now the repelatron has to deal with something simi-  xxxxxxxxxxx

lar if it’s going to function over long distances — as compared to the hydrodome’s water-repeller, which is never more than a couple hundred feet from what it’s tuned to.”
     Tom gestured with his hands to illustrate the movement of the new spaceship. “When the ship is parked on the ground, it’s not hard to focus each of the repelatrons on one particular mixture or combi- nation of elements and substances; we use an adaptation of our long-range spectrometers to take a reading, and the computer makes the tuning adjustment. But as the ship rises up, the ‘angle of vision’ gets broader, so to speak, and — ”
     “And the dots — the particular stuff you’re focusing on — start blurring together,” Bud interjected, always proud to be a quick study.
     “Yup! The wavefronts start overlapping and interfering with one another. That’s what happened to us up in the Pigeon Special: the technique I was using just wasn’t powerful enough to bring the repelatron into focus when we left the lake and flew out over solid ground. The lag effect in the Lunite antenna rod also plays into the problem.”
     Bud scratched his head. “Wish I had an idea, Tom, but all I can say is — get that machine some xxxxxxxxxxx

glasses!”
     Tom resumed his experiments with the small prototype of the space repelatron that Arvid Hanson, Enterprises’ chief modelmaker, had created for him. This was the same model that the youths had taken aloft the other day — a compact rectangular chassis sporting a parabolic dish antenna, the repulsion-force radiator with the spectrometer sensor built in. Bud watched eagerly as his pal tried different new approaches, speaking his thoughts aloud in a con- tinuous narration. Most of it was beyond Bud, but he found himself grasping a bit of it now and then, and he liked playing backstop.
     Hours later, Tom was still busy at his workbench with a jumble of electronic parts and test gear when a knock sounded on the door.
     “Come in!” Tom called without looking up. He heard the door open and close.
     “Well, aren’t you two even going to say hello?” a girlish voice complained.
     Tom whirled in surprise. “Sandy and Bash!” he exclaimed.
     The two girls giggled at his startled expression.
     “At least you remember our names after all this time!” Sandra Swift said accusingly. Blond and xxxxxxxxxxx

 blue-eyed, Sandy was a year younger than her famous brother.
     “Don’t jump to conclusions, Sandra,” warned pretty, dark-haired Bashalli. “He knows us collectively, but you must ask him which one is which!”
     “Hey, we’re not so bad,” said Bud in mock protest. “At least we remembered about the… the… say, Tom, wasn’t somethin’ going on tonight — somewhere?”
     “Something tonight? Involving the girls?” Tom said uncertainly. He pretended to search his me- mory.
     “We should have known, Bashi!” Sandy groaned. “How in the world are these two lame- brains ever going to find their way to the moon?”
     Tom slapped his forehead and grinned apologetically. “Oh, the party! I’m sorry. It slipped my mind completely!”
     “And in case you didn’t know,” Bud said, “the moon isn’t ‘in the world’ anyway.”
     They all laughed together.
     “You know, Thomas, I have heard that ‘all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’,” Bashalli commented. “I will admit that you are not such a xxxxxxxxxxx

dull boy — yet.” She smiled. “But I give you fair warning, I just might change my mind by the end of this evening.”
     “Okay, I’m warned.” Tom grinned back at the young Pakistani. “But don’t expect me to put aside my poor repelatron before I’ve fixed it up.”
     “Ohhh, more work!” Sandy pouted. “I know it’s important, Tom, life and death and so on, but can’t you and Bud ever think of anything but work?”
     “Unlike you two, I think we girls will not be young and pretty forever,” teased Bashalli. “We must sow our wild oats and make hay while the sun is shining, even at night.”
     Tom gave her an apologetic hug. “Okay, Bash. We’ll try to make up for it this evening.”
     “I’m already working up a line of witty banter and boyish quips,” Bud announced with a wink.
     Just then a loud, shrill drone startled the foursome. A siren!
     “What is it?” asked Bashalli, wincing.
      Tom’s face had suddenly become very serious. “That’s the general alert siren. It means someone’s broken into the plant in a big way! I’d better call… H-Harlan…” He passed an unsteady hand across his eyes.
  xxxxxxxxxxx

     “Goodness,” murmured Sandy, “I feel so…”
     Her voice trailed off and Bud cried out as she began to slump down to the floor! Bud managed to catch her in his arms — but he too was sinking down, with Bashalli next to him.
     “Enterprises is being attacked!” Tom gasped. And he himself was starting to collapse!
     

CHAPTER 6

 

SPACE-SUITED INVADER

BY AN ACT of sheer will Tom forced his hands to grip the edge of a lab table and his strong, slender arms to prop him up. Assuming that some invisible, odorless gas had been released into the air, he held his breath as his eyes probed the lab for something that could help him.
     Tom’s blue eyes lit upon the repelatron. In a series of lurching motions he half-dragged, half-fell toward the machine. Fumbling fingers switched on the power, and the twist of a flat palm against a control knob adjusted the intake spectrosensor so that it would detect the unusual substance in the air and tune the repelatron accordingly.
     It’ll take a moment, he thought, lungs ready xxxxxxxxxxx

to burst. The lag effect!
     Finally the young inventor could stand it no longer. He sucked air into his lungs convulsively. But the air was good! Almost instantly he felt stronger, more alert, energized. The repelatron beam was forcing the knockout gas aside.
     The warning sirens were still wailing. Tom swiveled the antenna so it took in the area of the lab where Sandy, Bashalli, and Bud lay unconscious.      After a moment he hastened over and checked their pulses. “Pulses strong,” he murmured. “They’re doing okay — for now.” Tom then tried to telephone Ames’s office, then the main switchboard. The phones rang without an answer.
     Tom made his way to the lab’s wall of tinted windows and stood gazing out on a scene of eerie silence and desolation. Aircraft sat on the runways unmoving and inert; one prop-plane, caught in the act of landing, was leaning over on one wing, its prop still spinning. Everywhere Tom could see motionless figures sprawled on the ground, tools and equipment scattered about them.
     A movement caught Tom’s eye. On the far side of the airfield several figures in Swift Enterprises work garments came staggering out of the portal  xxxxxxxxxxx

that led to the rampway connecting the surface with the huge underground hangar where Tom’s great Flying Lab was berthed. Of course! thought Tom excitedly. The hangar has its own air supply and recirculation system — those guys wouldn’t have been affected!
     But Tom’s hopes were dashed. The employees managed only a few wavering steps into the open — then they too sunk down and collapsed into unconsciousness.
     Tom wondered frantically what he could do. How far was the effect felt? Was Shopton also affected?
     Just as he resolved to telephone the municipal police, he discerned another movement outside — and this one didn’t falter! A strangely clad, almost unearthly figure was striding rapidly and confidently across the airfield. His garment, covering his entire body and hiding his face, resembled a pressurized space suit. The figure’s goal was soon made clear: the very lab Tom was standing in!
     Tom looked about for a weapon and finally grabbed a metal support strut used in experimental setups. Hearing the sound of footsteps in the main hallway, Tom lay down on the floor, the strut hidden beneath him.

 

     The lab door whisked open. Through slitted eyes Tom saw a pair of black boots of some shiny material step cautiously across the floor, pausing now and then. A fluttering sound told the young inventor that the invader was leafing through the pages of notes on his workbench.
     The figure approached Tom, a slight hesitation showing that he wanted to be certain that Tom was as unconscious as he appeared. Tom could sense the intruder bending close, then straightening again, satisfied. As the black boots stepped over the young inventor’s body, Tom struck like a cobra, reaching up and grabbing the trailing ankle. With a sudden jerk, he sent the raider sprawling!
     The raider fought back viciously, trying to use his thickly-gauntleted forearm as a club. But Tom managed to roll out of the way and launch himself into action, butting his opponent squarely in the stomach! The figure went down again, landing heavily on his back.
     Before he could get to his feet, Tom was on top of him, hammering away with rights and lefts that made the intruder’s opaque helmet whip left and right, producing the satisfying sound of a fleshly head bouncing off a hard inner surface. The raider, de-  xxxxxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxxxxx 

spite the fact that he was at a disadvantage in his cumbersome space suit, squirmed and fought like a cornered wildcat. But Tom had a weapon as well as his fists. In a few seconds, Tom overpowered him. Then he bound his limply quivering, semi-conscious prisoner hand and foot with insulated duct-tape.
     “Whew!” Panting from the struggle, Tom paused to catch his breath. Everything had happened so fast there had been no time to take stock of the situation. He stared at the invader in the strange suit and helmet, and a staggering possibility leapt to mind.
     Was his prisoner a space being of some kind?
     “I’ll soon find out,” Tom muttered. He ripped off the clothlike, flexible covering that shrouded the raider’s helmet and found a sullen-looking man staring back at him through the plastic faceplate. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d say you’re just an earth dweller after all. Okay. Start talking!” Not a sound left the prisoner’s lips, which were bruised and swollen from combat. He merely shrugged, jerked his head as if he did not understand English, and glared at Tom like a captured beast.
     Suddenly Tom heard the distant whine of a jet gathering power for take-off. The noise roused the young inventor from his puzzled reflections. xxxxxxxxxxx

Dashing to the window, he was just in time to see a Swift jetcraft taxi to the end of a runway and power-down again. Enterprises employees were beginning to stir and struggle to their feet, and suddenly the warning sirens faded away.
     “Good night! What’s happened to everybody?” came a husky voice. Bud was awake! As Tom turned, he was relieved to see that Sandy and Bashalli were also moving, their eyelids fluttering.
     Sitting up, Sandy stared dully at Tom’s prisoner. “If that’s a Martian invader, Tomonomo, I don’t think much of the species,” she murmured groggily.
     “He’s as human as we are,” Tom said. “Except this human doesn’t mind using sleep gas against innocent people.”
     “Maybe we should rip off that helmet and give him a dose!” Bud grated. The prisoner did not react.
     Making a series of frantic calls, Tom was able to ascertain that the attack had caused no serious injury, though it had affected almost the entire plant — every lab, building, and workshop that did not have its own separate air supply.
     To Tom’s surprised pleasure the installation’s xxxxxxxxxxx

talented young medic, Doc Simpson, had already diagnosed the cause of the sleeping plague. “It’s not a gas, but a mist,” he explained over the phone, “tiny droplets suspended in the air. I’m familiar with the formula, Tom; it was used in Europe for a time as a surgical anesthetic, but now its use is largely abandoned — the effect wears off too quickly.” Simpson described how the substance, entering the bloodstream by way of the lung tissues, acted as a powerful depressant of central nervous system functions. “It’s related to the formulation still used by security forces in Russia, as when they took down those hostage-takers in that Moscow theater.”
     “Eastern Europe,” Tom repeated. “As in Brungaria! Thanks, Doc. I think you’re going to have a pretty busy afternoon.”
     “Don’t I know it!”
     After speaking to his father and to Harlan Ames, Tom switched on the plant’s public-address system and boomed out some reassuring words over the mike. Gradually, reports began to filter in to the supervisory offices in the administration building. Everyone had blacked out for about twenty-five xxxxxxxxxxx 

minutes.
     A security squad armed with Swift electric i-guns came to Tom’s lab on the run and took the silent prisoner into custody. One of the men said to Tom, “It was a fleet of micro-missiles, about a dozen, that set off the alarms when radar showed them entering our airspace. They overflew the joint, but Ames thinks they must’ve been spraying the sleep-stuff all the way along. This guy climbed the north fence — no sign of any other invaders, though. What do you think he was after?”
     Tom shrugged. “He came directly here, and this is where I’ve been working on my repelatron. I’m guessing that’s the connection.”
     “Then someone working at Enterprises must’ve told him!”
     “Not necessarily,” said the young inventor. “I’ve found that the repelatron field sometimes generates an electromagnetic effect. Someone might have doped that out and used some kind of instrument to detect it from a distance.”
     Tom drove Bud and the girls to the Enterprises infirmary, where an anxious crowd had already begun to line up. Doc Simpson confirmed that they, like everyone else, had all recovered without ill  xxxxxxxxxxx   xxxxxxxxxxx

effects from the sprayed drug.
     “Who do you suppose pulled the raid?” Bud asked, when he heard what had happened. “The Brungarian faction?”
     Tom shrugged despairingly. “Makes sense. Your guess is as good as mine, but I wouldn’t put it past them. Let’s hope we can learn something from that man I captured.”
     Leaving Bud with the girls, Tom hurried to the room used by Enterprises security to temporarily restrain and isolate violators. The prisoner’s pressure suit had now been removed, and he was dressed in loose, comfortable clothes.
     Harlan Ames and his assistant, Phil Radnor, had been questioning the man. But he only looked at them, silent and insolent. Tom felt like taking another swing at him as he realized the medical danger to which the Enterprises workforce had been exposed by the attack. But he unclenched his fists and managed to swallow his anger. “Find anything on him?” he asked the security men. “Any clues?”
     “Not a thing,” replied Radnor. “Our pal’s pockets proved to be empty. Neither his space suit nor his inner clothing bore any clues to his nationality.”
     Ames gave a snort. “No label in the suit — not  xxxxxxxxxxx
 

even laundering instructions.”
     Forcing himself to speak mildly, Tom tried to engage the man in conversation. But the prisoner merely shook his head to all questions and maintained a stubborn silence.
     “Maybe we ought to work him over a bit, and then see if he’ll talk!” growled one of the watching security crew, who had suffered a nasty blow on the temple when he was felled by the sleep-drug.
     “Nothing doing,” Tom said firmly. “The Brungarians may mistreat prisoners in their own country, but we won’t use their tactics.”
     Ames nodded. “We can’t keep him. Jack here, and Paul Hann, will drive him into Shopton and hand him over to the police as soon as we’ve made the arrangements. He can wait for the Feds in jail.”
     Tom nodded. “It’s about all we can do, I guess.”
     Ridewalking back to the infirmary, Tom noted that the sun was low and red. Now that he had time to turn his attention to Sandy and Bash, he realized that their event for the evening was ruined. “I’m sorry,” he told them soberly. “I suppose it’s too late for the party now.”
     Sandy nodded. “I’ve already called Mother; she xxxxxxxxxxx

 told everyone we’d have to give them a raincheck. Don’t worry, Tom. It wasn’t your fault.”
     “Maybe we should apologize for bringing you such bad luck,” Bashalli added sympathetically. “Lately we have been nothing but albatrosses hanging themselves from your neck.”
     “Cut it out!” Tom grinned. “Nobody got hurt, nothing was wrecked or stolen, and now we have a prisoner!”
     “Yes,” said Bashalli sourly, “how wonderful it is. We must get together soon for another sleepover!”
     Bud offered to take the girls to dinner in town. After they had left, Tom contacted Evan Glennon and Anton Faber in the guest bungalow to make certain the scientists, older men, had suffered no ill effects from the attack.
     “Ach, we two are fine and spry, m’lad!” Glennon exclaimed heartily. “In truth and fact, we both slept right through it!”
     After meeting for a time with his father, Ames, and Radnor, Tom followed his father home for a late supper admidst drooping, bedraggled party stream- ers and sad, listless balloons.
     Tom was clearing the table when the telephone xxxxxxxxxxx

rang. “Tom? This is Captain Rock!” came the familiar voice of the head of Shopton PD, grimly excited.
     “What’s wrong, Captain? Has something happened?”
     “Absolutely. It’s enough to make me swear off my dissolute lifestyle for a year. Tom, your prisoner has escaped!”
     

CHAPTER 7

 

RIDE ’EM, COWBOY!

“OH NO,” Tom groaned. “Please tell me you didn’t say that, Captain.”
     “Feel bad? Think how I feel!” retorted Captain Rock. “This outfit hasn’t lost a Brungarian spy in years! Seriously, Tom, we’re all just sick about it.”
     Trying not to sound upset, not succeeding very well, Tom asked the police captain what had occurred. “Your two men, Jack Dellingmoor and Paul Hann, came barreling in to our parking lot, in one of those Enterprises SUVs you folks use, just a while ago. We were already starting to wonder where they were.
     “They said the prisoner had somehow worked his way out of his restraints in the back seat and had xxxxxxxxxxx

looped a strap around Hann’s neck, as if he were gonna strangle him. Your men gathered that he was demanding to be set loose — not much need for deduction on that point. The guy had them pull on to one of those unpaved side roads that cross through the Freyner Woods — what’s left of it; they’re putting in a Guess-What-Mart, you know — anyway, they let him out in the woods and he hightailed it out of there, as we police-types say. He’s gonna have some trouble if he’s still got cuffs on him.”
     “I get the picture, Captain,” Tom said. But his voice was heavy with thought. “Mind doing something for me before we hang up?”
     “Sure, Tom.”
     “Can you see our vehicle from your office window? — I know it fronts the parking lot.”
     There was a pause, and then Rock said, “Sure can.”
     “Can you see the door handle on the backseat door, driver’s side?”
     “Well — yes.” Captain Rock sounded puzzled.
     “How’s it look?”
     “The handle? Matter of fact, it looks sprung, hanging on by one end.”
     Tom nodded to himself. “And are our two em- ployees still there, at the station?”

 

     “They’re filling out reports. Why? Want to speak to them?”
     “No,” said Tom; “I’d just like you to take a look at their knuckles, closely — especially the one named Jack. Would you mind?”
     The voice at the other end gave a verbal shrug. “S’pose not. Playing detective, are you?”
     Tom chuckled but did not answer, and Rock set down the phone. After a minute he had returned. “They acted a little funny about it, Tom,” he reported. “Jack Dellingmoor’s knuckles are a little scraped up. I didn’t ask, but he volunteered that he scraped ’em on a tree trunk when he tried to chase after the prisoner. That’s the first time he’s mentioned that.”
     “What do you think, Captain?” Tom asked. “Did it look to you like a tree trunk ‘dunnit’?”
     “Not really,” the man responded. “I would’ve expected parallel scratches — striations. This looks more like the guy got into a fistfight.”
     “And I think that’s exactly what happened,” said the young inventor with smoldering anger. “Del- lingmoor was plenty angry and wanted to take it out on the prisoner. My guess is that he decided to pull the car off the road on his own, so it’d be out of sight. Then he forced the prisoner out of the car — to give him room to swing his arm — re-shackled the guy to the side handle by his handcuffs, then went xxxxxxxxxxx

off on him with his fists. But the prisoner was able to pull the handle half-off and work the cuffs free. That’s when he started running.”
     “Good gravy,” muttered Captain Rock, half in awe of Tom’s logic, half in disgust at the actions of the men. “You’ve given us reason to charge them both. But what about the escapee?”
     “Nothing much to do,” was Tom’s rueful reply. “The FBI will probably take over the search. It seems pretty likely that the prisoner was in the employ of a foreign power. National security is involved.”
     “Usually is, where Swift Enterprises is concerned,” noted Rock. “I’ll keep you, and Ames, posted.”
     After hanging up, Tom told his father of the new developments — and headed for bed. I didn’t get to sleep in the middle of the day like everyone else did, he thought wryly.
     Tom spent the following day hard at work in the Barn, as it was called, the big assembly building on the Swift Enterprises grounds. With the assistance of Hank Sterling, Enterprises’ young chief engineer, Tom was preparing a special small test vehicle for the latest version of his super-repelatron. Later that xxxxxxxxxxx

afternoon, after Sterling and the other workers had left, Chow Winkler came into the building, bringing a cup of hot chocolate. “Somethin’ to perk you up, pardner,” he announced.
     “Thanks.” Tom grinned. He took a few sips. “Really hits the spot, Chow!” He gave the cook a quizzical smile. “What brought this about?” he needled.
     “Oh, jest got t’ thinkin’ — about the moon and them sick space critters and suchlike. You know, up there a person wouldn’t be moonstruck — he’d be earthstruck! Makes ya stop an’ think.” The old cowpoke did not change expression. He waited until he felt his young boss was in the proper mood, then he announced the purpose of his visit. “Real reason I came around, Tom, is to ask you a favor.”
     “Probably granted,” said Tom. “But let’s hear it.”
     “Wa-aal, boss, all this time you’ve been talkin’ about that Gyro-Jumper o’ yours goin’ up to the moon, and you never once mentioned my name. You figger you’ve got enough cooks an’ friends, or what?”
     Tom looked at the stout, balding cook. The westerner was no longer a young man — yet he was years younger than Dr. Faber and Dr. Glennon. In xxxxxxxxxxx

spite of his paunch and bow-legs, Chow had proven tough and useful on previous expeditions — not only in outer space, but also in the frozen Antarctic, tropic jungles, and the depths of the ocean. The young inventor liked having Chow along. Yet he was concerned about the stress and strain of this voyage, and the two-world crisis looming in the background.
     “Pard, there’s nobody I’d rather have at my side than you and Bud. But — ”
     “Aw, now, you hadta go an’ say that there ‘but,’ dintcha.” Chow’s broad face fell like a curtain. “Guess you don’t expect I kin keep up no more.”
     Tom stood and rested a reassuring hand on his friend’s arm. “It’s not that. It’s just that this is a dangerous mission with a lot of unknown factors. I guess I’ve been feeling uncertain — that’s my honest answer.”
     The big ex-Texan nodded sadly. “Okay, then. I shor don’t mean to bother you none.”
     “I’m not saying no, Chow, I’m just — ”
     “Aaa, let’s jest talk about somethin’ else,” interrupted the cook. Chow paused as his eye fell on the new device Tom had spent the day assembling. “Say, what’s this do-jigger yuh’re xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

workin on now? Somethin’ new? Brand my sweet p’taters, you don’t have to allus tell Bud about your inventions afore anybody else, Tom. Mebbe I’d have somethin’ to say now and then.”
     The young inventor nodded with an affectionate smile on his face. “Good point. Well, this is a test-vehicle to see if my new repelatron circuitry is up to snuff. If it works, we’ll use things like this on the moon to get around as we search for the animal capsule. I’ve decided to call it a ‘flying carpet’ — or maybe a ‘repelatron donkey’.”
     Chow squinted at Tom suspiciously. “Brand my buffalo stew, if I didn’t know the things you cook up sometimes, I’d think you was pullin’ my leg. How can you ride on this contraption? Don’t have no wheels that I kin see.”
     The “donkey” consisted of a flat, disk-shaped platform about five feet across, standing upon four curving struts, or legs, each one tipped with a small circular pad. The parabolic antenna dish of Tom’s new repelatron was attached to the underside of the platform, pointing straight downward toward the ground. A thin conventional antenna wire extended up from a small metal housing bolted to the platform.
     Tom smiled at the skeptical look on Chow’s face.  xxxxxxxxxxx   xxxxxxxxxxx

“I wouldn’t kid you, old-timer. That’s really what it is — a sort of flying carpet. As I said, it’s for use on the moon, to transport persons or supplies. You see, in some places the terrain’s pretty rugged up there, with lots of clefts and craters, so ground travel may be difficult. We don’t know exactly where we’ll find the capsule. Flying platforms like this will allow our searchers to spread out.”
     “How’s this thing work?”
     “The body of the platform contains the repelatron circuitry and a solar-battery power source. Here underneath is a force-radiator to direct the repulsion beam downward so as to hold the disk suspended above the ground. It’s swivel-mounted; by tilting the antenna slightly you can steer the platform in any direction while staying aloft.”
     “How about that li’1 ole box on the end of the wire?”
     “That’s the remote-control ‘brain-box’ for testing the platform here on Earth,” Tom explained. “I’ll be running it from the ground like one of those remote-control model planes.” He added that a metal column with steering controls on top would be installed in the lunar models, replacing the box.
     Chow scratched his bald head. “Sounds pretty xxxxxxxxxxx

neat, boss. Only ain’t that metal kind o’ thin for haulin’ heavy loads?”
     “Not on the moon, Chow. Up there, the pull of gravity is six times weaker than on earth. So objects will only weigh one-sixth as much.”
     “Hot ziggety!” The cook snapped his fingers. “Why, up there I’ll be a reg’lar gazelle. Even with this bay window I tote around with me, I’ll run like a ole deer. That is — ” he suddenly added, interrupting himself, “if’n you jest happen to decide to — you know.” Chow forced himself to recover his spirits. “When you goin’ to try ‘er out, boss?’
     “Hank and I already did some testing in here. As soon as he comes back, we plan to really put her through her paces — you can watch if you like. As a matter of fact,” Tom added, “I’ll take it outside right now, to get it ready.”
     Tom switched on the power and picked up the handheld controller, which had a joystick and miniature steering wheel. Chow’s eyes widen