THE TOM SWIFT INVENTION ADVENTURES

TOM SWIFT
AND THE ASTEROID
PIRATES

BY VICTOR APPLETON II

CHAPTER 1

EXPLOSION IN SPACE

"OUTPOST to Sky Queen. Looks as if the storm on Venus is getting worse!"

The message came crackling through the predawn darkness to Tom Swift aboard his Flying Lab as it streaked through the upper stratosphere, winging south at Mach-plus speed.

"Can you make out any details through the electronic telescope?" Tom radioed back.

"Not too clearly, Skipper," the radioman responded from the Swift Enterprises space station 22,300 miles distant. "According to the astronomy team, the planet’s cloud cover seems to be in a state of terrific upheaval."

Bud Barclay, the Queen’s copilot and Tom’s closest friend, turned anxiously to the crewcut blond youth at the controls. "Tom, does this mean our Venus probe will be scrubbed?"

The two fliers, both veteran astronauts despite their scant years, had been looking forward eagerly to piloting the first interplanetary space mission, an orbital probe of Earth’s mysterious near-neighbor.

"Could be." As he spoke, Tom’s blue eyes ranged over the bank of special recording instruments in the cabin of the giant research plane. "If Dad’s predictions are correct, the radiation may be too intense just now."

"Come on, genius boy! That Inertite coating on the Challenger will stop anything!"

"That’s not the point," was Tom’s reply. "We worked out a long itinerary of instrumental studies of the Venusian atmosphere. The atmospheric turbulence and static charge effects would make them impossible."

Bud understood and nodded, deeply disappointed. Months before he had participated in an earlier mission to Venus that had failed en route. The prospect of a new voyage on Tom’s huge Challenger spaceship, propelled across the space void by its bank of repelatron force-beams, had softened the blow. "Maybe I’m a jinx," Bud muttered.

"Never mind! Let’s concentrate on our next trip — the one that starts in fifty minutes."

Muscular, dark-haired Bud flashed a hopeful grin at his pal. "Right. And it’s in the right direction, too — straight up!"

Carrying a small group of atmospheric researchers aboard, the Sky Queen was headed for the Swift space-launch facility on tiny Fearing Island off the coast of Georgia. Here Tom and Bud would mount the skies aboard a special vehicle, Tom’s newest invention. Called the Extreme Altitude Instrumental Platform, the XAIP would bear them to the very edge of space, where Tom would test out its array of sensitive instruments. The purpose of the project, which had been developed by Grandyke University, was to make difficult, valuable observations of Earth’s upper atmosphere.

Presently Tom announced over the Flying Lab’s intercom that landing was imminent. "There’s the capsule," Bud remarked, gazing down at the thumb-shaped islet through the Queen’s downsloping view window. "They’ve got it all lit up. But when do they bring out the big bag?"

Tom chuckled. "Hey, pal, I’m going to cut out my explanations to you if you’re not gonna pay attention! We generate the balloon-bag ourselves, from the capsule."

"Oh yeah. Right." Tom’s XAIP was a remarkable vehicle of radical design. There had been extreme-altitude manned research balloons before, but the XAIP was to be lifted by an enormous bag that could not be seen — and contained nothing!

The silver Sky Queen hovered above the island airfield for a moment on its bank of jet lifters, then descended like an elevator for a smooth landing. The skyship’s main hatchway was less than one-hundred feet from the XAIP capsule, which was shaped like a broad, truncated cone resting upon its base. A framework tower, its tip bristling with a cluster of oddly-shaped antennas, rose above. Sophisticated detection instruments extended from its slanting sides.

As the passengers emerged and made their way down the Flying Lab’s extensible ramp-way, one of the researchers, Dr. Williamton, turned to speak to Tom. "So that’s the XAIP! But I’m afraid I missed part of your briefing at the University, Tom. How does it work? That is — what lifts it up?"

The young inventor smiled. "It’s basically a kind of super-balloon. We have a mechanism that produces and extrudes a shell of filaments, each one smaller than the nucleus of an atom, made of a unique substance we discovered called Inertite."

"Oh yes — from the African mountain."

"That’s right, Mount Goaba. The filaments shape themselves into an ultra-fine ‘webbing’ that doesn’t interact with light waves but blocks molecule-sized particles. The shell is very rigid, but weighs almost nothing."

"And that’s your balloon bag," said Williamton. "I suppose you fill it with helium?"

Tom shook his head. "We don’t fill it at all, Doctor. As the shell expands without admitting air, the inside remains a vacuum. To counteract the air pressure outside, we use several directional repelatrons tuned to the composition of the atmosphere. In other words, we push it back."

"But look, Skipper," interrupted Bud, who stood listening nearby at the foot of the rampway. "Why do you need that invisible bag at all? Couldn’t the repelatrons create a big vacuum-bubble by themselves?"

"Sure enough," responded his friend. "But the resultant buoyancy, which involves a pressure differential pushing against a resistant surface, would only have the surface of the capsule to press against. Up in the thin upper atmosphere that’s not enough lift-force. The Inertite-filament shell vastly increases the surface area."

"Well," stated Bud, "it was a good question, anyway."

"Sure was, flyboy!"

Tom and Bud accompanied the team of scientists to the nearby control blockhouse, then returned to the XAIP and climbed aboard. After a final check of the readouts, and having verified with the Fearing control tower that the local skies were clear, Tom pulled the lever actuating the device that spun out the Inertite filaments. "We’re getting lift," he reported to Bud. "Weight dropping on the ground struts."

There was no countdown. Within a minute, the XAIP took to the air, accelerating vertically as the balloon shell expanded.

The vault of starry sky was immobile around them. The only sign of motion was the Atlantic horizon as it slowly changed from straight line to curve. The XAIP capsule didn’t even rock, stabilized by an invention of Tom’s called the gravitex.

The youths knew that their ascent would take nearly an hour. They chatted and bantered, and Tom began to describe a project he had been planning. Bud threw a hopeful look at his friend. "A space cruise?"

"No — and yes," Tom said. "I’m planning to set up a solar observatory on Nestria to try unraveling the mysteries of the sun’s radiation and its effects on other bodies in the solar system."

The phantom satellite Nestria, sometimes called Little Luna, was Earth’s second moon, a small asteroid which had been moved into orbit around the earth at an altitude of about fifty thousand miles. Tom had led a space expedition to claim the asteroid for the United States, and the Swifts had established a permanent base there with personnel to staff it. At the invitation of the U.S., other nations had also joined the scientific colony.

Bud, excited over the new project, began peppering Tom with questions. But suddenly the copilot stiffened in his seat and pointed off to starboard!

"Jetz! What’s that over there? A rainbow at night?"

A weird, filmy band of red, yellow, and green light was sweeping across the jet-black sky.

Tom’s eyes, too, widened at the amazing spectacle. Then suddenly he chuckled! "Relax, pal. It’s a natural phenomenon called airglow, caused by the reactions of oxygen and sodium in the upper atmosphere. This is the first time we’ve had a grandstand seat to the show."

"Whew!" Bud settled back in relief. "For a minute I thought I was going loopy from break-off!"

Though neither Tom nor Bud had ever succumbed to "break-off," both boys knew about the giddy feeling of detachment from the earth sometimes experienced by jet pilots when flying at high altitudes. "Fat chance of that ever happening to an old space-hopper like you," Tom reassured his friend.

"Boy, I hope not! But getting back to business," Bud went on, "what’s causing all this fuss on Venus?"

"Same thing that caused that airglow — a flare-up on the sun," Tom replied. "As you know, there’s a constant solar wind of charged particles blowing outward from the sun into interplanetary space."

"Right. You used it in your solartron and the Space Kite. See, I do remember your lectures!"

Tom grinned. "Then you remember what happened when we were testing the Space Kite, the cosmic storm that fouled us up. Every so often the sun shoots out an especially hot gust of those particles — or plasma, as the stuff is called. Dad’s been making a spectroscopic study of Venus’s atmosphere. He figured that periodic conditions in the cloud cap were so unstable right now that the next gust of plasma might trigger a violent reaction."

"And he called the shot just right, hmm? Tough luck for us."

Tom nodded. "It’s beginning to look that way." He fully shared his chum’s disappointment at the likely postponement of the scientific adventure.

Presently Tom announced that the ascent of the XAIP had reached its highest point in the uppermost reaches of the ionosphere. Bud watched as Tom pressed a master control button to start recording the instrument readings. The capsule’s equipment for the flight included a rubidium vapor magnetometer, radiation counters, stacks of nuclear emulsions, automatically operated cloud chambers, and various specialized sensor devices provided by the Grandyke University team.

"That solar tantrum must be having a real effect on the earth’s ionosphere," Bud commented, scanning several of the instrument dials.

"Sure is," Tom agreed. "That’s one of the things we’re studying. In fact, it throws the planetary magnetic field, which extends out further than the moon’s orbit, way out of kilter. Right now the earth is getting showered with all sorts of — "

The young inventor broke off abruptly, a startled expression on his face.

"What’s wrong?" Bud asked, alarmed. He knew it took a lot to startle his adventurous comrade!

"Up there at eleven o’clock!" Tom gasped, pointing out the domelike cabin window. "That burst of light!"

Bud’s jaw dropped open in astonishment as he twisted around to see the phenomenon to which Tom was referring. A small starburst in the darkness at first, strange in color, the patch of light was growing larger by the moment. It looked like it was slowly spreading out into a sizable glowing fireball.

"Good grief! What is it?" Bud murmured in awe. "A meteor?"

Tom shook his head. "If it were falling into the earth’s atmosphere, it would show up as a streak of light from this height."

"Then what — a supernova?"

"Couldn’t be." The young inventor hesitated. "You know, Bud, if it didn’t sound crazy, I’d say that’s a thermonuclear explosion out in space!"

"A nuclear explosion!" Bud stared at his friend. "You mean, like a hydrogen bomb?"

"I don’t know," Tom said with a baffled look. "But notice how the patch of light is spreading. That’s exactly what would happen to an atomic fireball in a vacuum, where it wouldn’t be held in by the counterpressure of the air."

Tom paused long enough to throw a glance at the bank of instruments, then gave a whistle.

"Man alive! We’re getting some kind of radiation already!" the young inventor cried. "Look at those counters! They’re going crazy! And so’s the magnetometer!"

"Maybe the explosion, or whatever it is, was touched off by the solar outburst," Bud suggested tentatively. "Could those particles from the sun have triggered a reaction in a cloud of micrometeorites?"

"Maybe. I doubt it," Tom replied. "But Bud, that’s not what worries me. Look! — you can still make it out through the light of the blast."

"Hunh? Make what out?"

"Nestria! That space explosion took place right next to Little Luna!"

CHAPTER 2

CONTACT — LOST!

TOM and Bud exchanged fearful glances. If the burst of deadly energy had taken place too close to the scientific installation on Nestria, the entire base crew could have been affected — even wiped out!

Tom snatched up the microphone and radio-commed the wheel-shaped space outpost. Established in part for international television transmission, the space station was line-of-sight reachable from any location across half the earth.

"Sky Haven. This is Horton."

"Glad I reached you, Ken. This is Tom. Are you watching that burst of light?"

The voice of Ken Horton, commander of the space outpost, reported: "We sure are, Tom! The observatory crew up here is in a tailspin trying to figure out this thing. Any idea what’s causing it?"

"I was hoping you fellows could tell me," Tom replied. "And I’m very concerned about our guys on Nestria."

After a click, Kent Rockland, director of the American research installation on the tiny moonlet, came on line. "We’re okay up here, Tom, thank goodness. But the space tracking station is telling me the blast occurred very close to the surface and the base. Lit up everything. It’s dimming out now, though." His voice was eerily distorted by the processing required to filter out the static, and it faded in and out like a ghost. "I’m waiting for a report from Jatczak. Oh — Simpson and Chow are here with me."

"Put them on, please."

Doc Simpson was Swift Enterprises’ young medical officer as well as a researcher in his own right. He had recently been ferried to Nestria to assess the long-term effects of reduced gravity on the colony team. Chow Winkler, Enterprises’ executive chef and Tom and Bud’s close friend, had asked to accompany him "to treat them poor folks up there to some decent victuals fer a change."

The voice wavered in and out of audibility. "Doc, is that you? I can hardly make you out."

A different voice came on, but the words were a mishmash of indecipherable sounds.

"Repeat, Galileo. Chow, is that you?"

"Yup, it’s Chow," Bud confirmed, winking.

"How’s everybody doing up there, cowpoke?" asked Tom with an affectionate grin.

The voice faded out suddenly with a sound like a grating hinge, and did not return. After a moment Ken Horton came on again. "That’s all, Tom. We can’t squeeze any more out of the signal. We’ll keep at it."

"Thanks, Ken. It’ll get easier as the radiation dissipates. Signing off now, but give Fearing or Enterprises a call the second you get any more data."

Tom unbuckled his seat belt and stood up. "Take over, Bud," he said thoughtfully. "Keep an eye on the test readouts. I’m going up to the astrodome for a better look."

"Right, Skipper! I guess we’ve got the best seat in the house to watch the blast, except for the — " Bud broke off with a yelp of surprise. A queasy falling-elevator feeling swept over the youths, then subsided with a jolt. "What was that?"

"What does the control panel — " Tom’s response was interrupted as the same sensation surged through them, longer and more severe.

As it faded out again, Bud gibed nervously: "What is this, air travel by pogo stick? Something’s gone wrong with the balloon-bag!"

Tom’s deep-set blue eyes scanned the monitor dials. "No, the Inertite shell is stable. It’s the repelatrons. The radiation is affecting the telespectrometers — we can’t get a precise fix on the air composition. In other words — " The young inventor gulped as the XAIP took another unexpected plunge! He finished: " — we’re out of tune!"

"Good night! Will we lose lift completely?"

"No. In fact, conditions will improve pretty quickly," Tom responded reassuringly. "As we reach the denser atmosphere, less of the interfering radiation will get through to us. I’ll start taking us down."

"Seems to me we’re already on our way, Skipper!"

As Tom used the gravitexes to steer the descending XAIP, he kept the mysterious patch of light in view dead ahead in the sky. It still seemed to be expanding, but more slowly now. Its brilliance had faded to a dull glow against the black of space.

What had caused the explosion, Tom wondered silently — if it had been an explosion? It was certainly no official American nuclear test in space, he reflected, or the Swifts, and scientists and governments around the globe, would have been given advance notice. An unannounced atom-blast in near space could set of a nuclear alert, even trigger a war!

And why had the event occurred so close to the base on Little Luna? The young prodigy racked his brain for an answer, but without success.

Using the gravitexes and the lift-bag, which was stable again, Tom guided the XAIP back to its pad at Fearing Island. Touching down at last, the two hastened to the blockhouse to make a brief report to the research team. As they came out again, the Atlantic sky was turning pale with sunrise. The blob of light from the explosion was no longer visible.

"Wonder if the outpost has anything new on it?" Bud murmured.

"Ken said he’d call, but let’s try him again."

They made way quickly to the communications center in Fearing’s control tower. As they arrived, the operator on duty told Tom that he was to contact George Dilling at Swift Enterprises immediately. Dilling was in charge of the Enterprises office of information and was usually "in the loop" with respect to unusual events that might stir public inquiries.

"Good thing I came in early to work up a press release," he told Tom in harried tones. "The nightshift guy in the space communications room told me a message came in about an hour ago through the magnifying antenna. It was the space friends, Tom!"

Tom’s eyebrows peaked in surprise. The space friends, mysterious other-planetary beings who had established radio contact with Tom, communicated with Earth by a visual code of mathematical symbols which were mot easily translated, even with the assistance of the computerized "space dictionary" Tom and his father had developed. "What was the message, George? Has it been translated?"

"Demassin’s come up with something by using the computer, but the space people had to send several different versions. He thinks the last one was simplified — even so, I’ll leave it to you to figure out what it means. Here, I’ll digi-fax it to you now."

In moments Tom and Bud were gazing at the message in perplexity. Beneath the array of strange hieroglyphics was the tentatively translated text in English.

"Uh huh," grumbled Bud. "These guys need a good ‘English as a second language’ course."

Tom was frowning deeply. "I can’t make it out either, pal. Still, it’s just a rough approximation. Dad and I will study the symbols. Anyhow, let’s get Ken on the horn."

Before he could signal the space station, a beep announced that the outpost was calling in. A tense, excited voice came over the speaker. "Sky Haven to Fearing! Do you read me?"

"We read you, Ken — Tom here. But your signal is fading in and out."

Tom and Bud were stunned! "Are you sure it was the rocket, Ken? I mean — the shuttle drones are just ordinary combustion-thrust rockets. There’s nothing aboard that could cause a nuclear explosion."

"But what caused the explosion?" Bud asked over the microphone. "Any clues?"

"Not so far, hombre. It’s a total mystery," Horton replied.

Tom’s face was grim. "Okay. You know how serious this is, Ken. Stand by and keep us informed," he directed. "I’m taking the Queen back to Enterprises."

Tom immediately called his father in Shopton, awakening him. "Lord! — this could quickly become a crisis, son. I’m sure it’s occurred to you that we may be dealing with sabotage."

"I know," Tom stated. "And the deadliest kind — nuclear sabotage. The only explanation I can come up with is that someone planted some kind of thermonuclear device aboard the rocket!"

"What a horrible thought!"

Puzzled and worried, Tom guided the Flying Lab back north. Bud was at his side as always, his young face full of question. As Tom banked the huge jetcraft into a sweeping turn and began the steep descent into the ship’s underground hangar at the Swifts’ vast experimental station, he was no nearer the answer. Thank goodness there was no crew aboard the lost rocket, he thought.

Easing down past the massive ceiling-doors of the hangar, the Sky Queen set down by means of its jet lifters and the boys and the XAIP scientists disembarked. As Tom and Bud hurried across the morning-lit Enterprises airfield on one of the ridewalk personnel conveyors, a messenger on a scooter came speeding out from the control tower to intercept them.

"We just had a flash from Fearing Island, Mr. Swift," he told Tom. "They’re saying they’ve lost all contact with Nestria! The men on the base don’t respond to our calls!"

Tom turned white at the news. "Dad was right, Bud — it’s a crisis. And I’m afraid it’s turning deadly!"

CHAPTER 3

THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING

THE sudden news sent a chill of foreboding through Tom and Bud. Once again they had to consider a dreadful possibility. Had the rocket explosion destroyed the personnel on Nestria after all, by some delayed effect?

"This is awful, Tom!" Bud gulped. "Jetz, you don’t suppose — all those poor guys up on the base — "

"Don’t say it!" Tom shuddered. "It could be just more of the radio interference. Come on, let’s see what we can find out through the space prober!"

With a quick thanks to the messenger, Tom dashed off with Bud at his heels. The two boys hopped onto another ridewalk and sped across the grounds of Swift Enterprises in a different direction.

The experimental station was a high-walled, four-mile-square enclosure, crisscrossed with airstrips and dotted with sparkling modern research laboratories, test facilities, hangars, and workshops. Virtually a scientific city, it was here that young Tom and his equally eminent father Damon Swift developed their many inventions, continuing the family tradition begun by the first Tom Swift, Tom’s renowned great-grandfather.

In moments they stepped off before the astronomical observatory building in an isolated section of the plant grounds, topped by its great rounded dome. Tom and Bud hurried inside, finding Mr. Swift waiting next to the console of Tom’s "Mighty Eye," his megascope space prober.

Mr. Swift looked up and nodded as the boys arrived. He was talking on a portable telephone. "No, sir. As yet we have no clue to the cause, but we’ll keep you informed. Dilling’s department will be handling the public statements... Right! Goodbye."

"More trouble, Dad?" Tom queried.

"A bit. Just as we feared, the United States and Canada almost had a nuclear alert," Mr. Swift said wryly. Spare and athletic, with graying hair, he looked a great deal like his son.

"A nuclear alert!" Bud gasped. "On account of our rocket exploding?"

Mr. Swift nodded. "That was the North American Air Defense Command calling. The blast momentarily disrupted its detection and tracking system — even the deep-space satellites. They’re calling it an electromagnetic pulse effect, of extraordinary magnitude."

"Good night!" Tom exclaimed. "And Fearing has lost contact with the base on Nestria!"

Mr. Swift showed instant concern. "I was just told. I’ve had no chance to try your space prober," he said.

Tom’s megascope space prober, a recent invention, was an amazing video telescope of nearly unlimited range. Rather than using magnifying lenses like an optical instrument, it employed a revolutionary quantum-link principle to establish a remote viewing point near its target. A close-up picture of the object being sighted was produced on a monitor screen in astounding detail.

Hands trembling with excitement and anxiety, Tom quickly fed the asteroid’s orbital data into the prober’s tracking computer, then tuned the range control. As the huge antenna shifted into position, the three waited anxiously for an image of Nestria to appear.

"What’s wrong?" Bud asked. Shrugging, Tom adjusted the megascope’s anti-inverse-square-wave generator without result. "C-could something have happened to the whole deal? To Little Luna?"

Tom’s forehead wrinkled thoughtfully. "Apparently the prober’s microwave beam isn’t getting through."

"That may be a good sign," Mr. Swift put in. "Perhaps the researchers on Nestria are alive and well, but simply can’t communicate with us."

"But what’s blocking the signals now?" Bud inquired, puzzled. "The fallout from the explosion?"

"Possibly. Or it might just be one of those freakish blackouts due to solar activity." Mr. Swift went on worriedly: "And yet — the megascope’s spacewave guide-tube would be unaffected by electromagnetic radiation. The microwave beam shouldn’t be disrupted."

But Tom pointed out, "Dad, it could be the transparency of the guide-tube that’s causing the problem! The radiation could be directly interfering with the beam as it passes along the tube, scrambling its coherence parameters."

"True. But in that case... Try moving the sensor-node away from Nestria."

Tom gave a rueful smile. "I should have thought of that." Tom used the trackball atop the console to shift the megascope’s viewpoint, pulling back toward the earth. He moved the beam-terminus slowly, mile by mile. At first there was no effect. Then, abruptly, a picture flashed into view on the screen.

"There she is!" cried Bud elatedly. "Man oh man, what a relief!"

The curving sweep of Little Luna’s rugged horizon filled most of the monitor screen. The asteroid’s dark, rocky terrain showed a haze of clouds here and there, floating close to the surface in the breathable atmosphere maintained by Tom’s two atmosphere making machines, one at each pole.

Tom pulled back further, showing the entire sphere of Nestria, then moved the sensor-node closer again on another side of the moonlet. Once again the screen went blank. "Whatever’s causing the effect completely surrounds Nestria," Tom pronounced grimly after several more attempts. "It’s like a barrier of interference, about seventy miles out. Obviously, it’s gotten much worse since the explosion. It’s not dissipating as I had expected — whatever it is."

"What about the explosion itself?" Bud demanded suspiciously. "That’s the biggest mystery of all!"

"You’re right, Bud!" said Tom. "And it’s not only affecting Nestria directly, but may also be targeting defense and communications systems around the world! The whole thing may be a plot, and there’s only one way to find the answer. I’m going to hop back over to Fearing and take off for Nestria in the Challenger!"

Bud nodded excitedly. But the elder scientist laid a hand on Tom’s arm. "Son, I know it’s hard to stand by at a moment like this. But you’re a scientist as well as an inventor. Now is the time to gather data."

Bud looked exasperated. "But Mr. Swift, if somebody’s trying to screw up the whole world’s defenses — "

Tom sighed. "No, flyboy. Dad’s right. The EMP effect was momentary. It’s over now. And it just occurred to me that the signal interference could just be an aftereffect of the rocket explosion. See — " Tom continued thoughtfully, "the artificial gravitational field around Nestria has a very sharp gradient. I can see how it might be possible for debris and fallout to ‘ride’ the gradient in all directions, creating a cloud of energized smog, so to speak."

"Okay. If you say so." But the black-haired young flyer didn’t look entirely convinced.

Mr. Swift said, "Actually, you two, I’ve already started the process of data-gathering. While you were flying back, I had Fearing send up the Challenger — not to Nestria yet, but into a high Earth orbit to make some long-range observations. After that, we’ll have a better idea as to the need for a landing."

"That’s great, Dad," nodded Tom.

Trusting matters to his son, Mr. Swift hurried off to a waiting jet, having scheduled one of his frequent trips to Washington DC. After Damon Swift had left the observatory, Bud turned to his friend with a slight frown. "You know, pal, your Dad’s a smart guy. But sometimes I wonder if you don’t — well..."

"Give in too easily?" The young inventor smiled. "Maybe. But only when he’s right."

Following a hasty breakfast, the boys waited anxiously in the observatory, with Tom making periodic efforts to sight Nestria through the space prober or contact the base there. But the blackout continued. "Even the lasercom setup doesn’t get through to them," grumbled Tom in frustration. "There must be some sort of haze that distorts the laser beam, at least above Base Galileo."

Suddenly Bud’s face lit up and he snapped his fingers. "Good grief, I just thought of something. Why don’t you use the PER? You told me nothing can stop that!" Tom’s Private-Ear Radiodio used a quantum-link principle to connect paired communications units in a manner that effectively annihilated the space between them. Bud knew that its basic technique was different from that of the megascope, and consequently would not be affected by the interference around the moonlet.

"That’s a great idea, Bud," said Tom. "Just one problem."

"What?"

"The Nestria crew doesn’t have any PER units."

"What! Not yet?"

Tom snorted ruefully. "Actually, a shipment was on the way. In the rocket that blew up!"

"Aw jetz."

"Exactly."

The boys resumed their vigil for news from Nestria — or at least a megascopic peek. They both had many friends among the base team, giving a face to their anxiety. At last Tom could stand the suspense no longer. "Come on, Bud! Let’s grab a ridewalk back to the admin building. I want to talk to Nels Gachter about that message from the space friends."

"Yeah. We’re not accomplishing much hangin’ loose here."

As they approached the tall administration building on the conveyor-belt transport, Bud remarked restlessly: "Sandy said she’d give us a call this morning to set up our date for tomorrow night. Bash wasn’t sure if she could duck out from the Cat." Sandy was Tom’s younger sister and Bud’s frequent date about town, as Bashalli Prandit was Tom’s. The pretty young Pakistani worked for her brother in Shopton at a trendy coffehouse called The Glass Cat.

"I’m afraid I’m not going to be in much of a mood — " Tom began. He broke off as his tiny cellphone chortled from its post on his belt-loop. Tom snatched it up and answered.

"Sandy?" Bud whispered hopefully to his pal.

Tom turned away from the unit and shook his head Bud’s way. "Main switchboard." He resumed the conversation. "Oh? You’re sure of that? I see. Yes." Turning to Bud again, he said: "Somebody’s coming to Enterprises to kill me." Turning back to the receiver, he asked: "Does he have an appointment? Uh-huh. Well, thanks for letting me know. I’ll drop by and you can give me the details. Keep trying Security, won’t you?"

As Tom clicked off, Bud frowned at Tom suspiciously. "Some kind of joke, I take it."

Tom shrugged. "We get crank calls, including death threats, almost every day. Security evaluates ’em, but it always turns out to be some guy in a house trailer with too much time on his hands. Jilly called me directly because she couldn’t reach Rad. Oh, did I tell you? — Harlan’s at the Citadel for two weeks." Harlan Ames was chief of Enterprises internal security, Phil Radnor his assistant. Ames had traveled to the Swift nuclear facility in New Mexico, the Citadel, to assess its current security setup.

Bud and Tom were about to step off the ridewalk in front of the administration building when suddenly a loud crash resounded across the experimental station! — followed instantly by the wail of sirens and the shrilling of an alarm tone from Tom’s phone unit.

"Roarin’ rockets!" Bud blurted. "What’s going on?"

CHAPTER 4

THE GATE-CRASHER

"IT’S A patrolscope alert!" Tom exclaimed. "Level one!"

Bud gulped at his friend’s pronouncement. He knew that the plant’s sophisticated internal radar system was designed to instantly detect intruders not cleared by wearing special anti-radar amulets. "That crash! — it sounded close, Tom."

Dashing into the lobby of the admin building, Tom switched on an auxiliary monitor and keyed-in the main plant radarscope. A message flashed at the top of the screen: security alert, level one breach. He and Bud watched breathlessly as the sweeping scanner painted a blip of light near one edge of the screen. "Someone or something at the executive gate!" the young inventor exclaimed. This security gate, at the end of a private roadway, was only used by Tom, Mr. Swift, and a handful of key Enterprises executives. It was just outside the administration building, out of sight around a corner.

Bud dashed out through the door at Tom’s ominous words, his pal following as they trotted around to the far side of the building. "Looks like an accident!" Bud cried.

Tom joined Bud for a hasty look. A car had apparently plowed into the entrance gate at top speed. Employees were running to the scene from all directions.

The young scientist-inventor grasped Bud’s arm. "Come on! Let’s find out who it is!" Tom urged. As they dashed forward toward the wreck, a midget electric vehicle, called a nanocar, sped past them.

"There’s Radnor!" Bud exclaimed.

Braking next to the gate, the stocky security man leapt out. A second nanocar, bearing three uniformed security personnel, screeched to a halt next to him.

Radnor twisted his head, flashing a warning look at Tom. "Better stay back, Skipper!" he called. "This may be the killer! Jilly just told me about the threat."

"I doubt if he’s in any shape to be dangerous now!" Tom replied coolly as he drew near.

Through the magtritanium bars of the gate they could see that the driver, visible through the shattered windshield of the car, lay slumped over the steering wheel. Blood streamed from a scalp wound.

"Let’s get this gate open!" ordered Radnor. "You — Flemmer — get the plant ambulance over here!"

"The gate’s buckled and the crash wrecked the opening mechanism, sir," one of the men reported after a moment. "We’ll have to go out through the gatehouse at the employee gate."

"Then do it!"

By the time Tom, Bud, and Radnor reached the car, a high-powered blue sedan, the ambulance team from the Enterprises staff infirmary had come roaring up by way of the private road. "We can’t wait," said one of the medics, grimly motioning toward the black smoke wafting from the engine. "Go ahead, guys, lift him out, gently as possible. Try not to let him sag."

As they extricated the driver from the wreckage, he was revealed to be a slightly built man of about thirty or thirty-five, apparently of Asian extraction.

Tom pointed to a sticker on the car’s rear bumper. "M.I.T.," Tom muttered to Bud.

Meanwhile the crumpled gate had been forced open, allowing passage to Doc Simpson’s assistant, Ralene Bell. As she began to examine the unconscious victim, two carloads of state troopers, guided to Enterprises by Captain Rock of the Shopton Police Department, pulled up at the site.

"That’s our man, all right," said Captain Rock to the troopers after a quick look. The man had been placed on a blanket on the ground next to the road. Rock asked Dr. Bell, "How badly is he hurt?"

"Pretty seriously, I’m afraid," the doctor said. The medic pointed to a nasty-looking wound in the victim’s left side. "He stopped a bullet, and the windshield stopped him. On top of his wound, a broken collarbone, and blood loss, he may have a concussion."

Captain Rock nodded briskly in Tom’s direction. "We were told he’s an escaped mental patient. The hospital guards who were chasing this fellow are armed and must have wounded him."

"Yeah? Then where are they, Captain?" objected Bud, scanning the area.

Rock looked surprised. "Now that’s a good question! Of course, they may have taken a few shots at him during his escape. But..." Keeping a wary eye on the smoke, which was now diminishing, Rock approached the wrenched-open door of the car, Tom at his heels. When they returned, Tom told Bud quietly, "Just a few spatters of blood on the seat and the dashboard — but look at that wound. He couldn’t have been hit more than five seconds before he crashed."

Bud nodded. "So. Like I said."

"I’m having my guys search the roadside all the way up to the main road," said Phil Radnor, adding in a wry whisper: "Before those troopers start clomping over all the evidence!"

A hasty check of the man’s pockets produced no identification except for a Massachusetts driver’s license. It had been issued only months before in the name of "John Tsu" at a Cambridge, Massachusetts address. The photo matched the face of the accident victim.

Staring at the license in Captain Rock’s hand, Tom frowned deeply. "Captain, there’s something wrong here."

The officer nodded. "My friend, there’s quite a bit wrong here. It was a gas station jockey over in Thessaly who phoned in the first alarm," Captain Rock reported. "I took the call and decided to check it out myself, since you’re something of a big wheel around these parts, Tom."

"Thanks," Tom said with a grin. "How did the guy know about the threat?"

"Everybody’s supposed to be on the alert these days, looking for suspicious behavior. The attendant said this Oriental fellow had stopped at his station to inquire the way to Swift Enterprises, and specifically whether Tom Swift was likely to be there at this time. And of course, who knows? — you could be on Mars. The attendant thought something was wrong because the guy’s manner seemed kind of wild and distraught. Then, a minute or so after he left, another car pulled in, with two men in it."

"The guards?" asked Bud.

Captain Rock nodded. "They told the attendant they were pursuing a dangerous delusional psychotic who’d escaped from the locked facility where he’d been under confinement for three years. They described him and said he had some kind of crazy grudge against Tom Swift. Said they figured he was heading for Swift Enterprises to bump you off, Tom. The attendant told them the route the psycho had taken, and they took off at top speed. Then he thought it all over and called me, and I called the Staties."

"Did the gas station guy describe the pursuers?"

"He did. Two more Asians. Bigtime accents for all of them."

Bud gave a frowning glance at Tom and the captain. "Guards too? Isn’t that just a little odd? I mean — it’s not like they have special mental hospitals for people of Asian descent."

"What institution did he break out of?" Tom asked.

"Don’t know yet. The caller says they didn’t mention it, and their car was unmarked. And strangely enough, although we have a homicidal psychopath who must have got loose at least several hours ago, surely, we’ve had no bulletin on the escape."

Tom snorted derisively. "It’s one-hundred-percent phony! Tsu owns this car, based on the license info. How did the guy just happen to have his own car handy? It didn’t sit in a hospital parking garage for three years. How did he renew his license? And that M.I.T. sticker is for this year."

"And then there’s the blood business," Rock added. "Looks to me like the make-believe ‘guards’ raced on ahead, lay in wait just outside the wall, and winged old John pretty good!"

At that moment a screaming siren heralded the arrival of the ambulance Dr. Bell had called in from Shopton. "Shopton Memorial?" asked the driver.

Dr. Bell nodded, but Tom suddenly held up his hand. "No! There’s a private surgery clinic north on the highway outside the city limits. Know it?"

"I know it," said the driver.

"Take him there, please. I’ll phone the medical chief — he’s a friend of the family."

Rock chuckled in a gruff way. "Fast thinking, Tom — and you’re on the beam, all right. We may have scared off those guys, but they’ll probably check out the big hospital first thing. And they’re still armed! I’ll send one of these nice troopers along to keep watch over our Mr. Tsu."

As the ambulance men began to apply an oxygen mask to Tsu, his eyes flickered open weakly and focused on the young inventor. They were wide, panicked, desperate. He choked out something beneath the mask.

Asking the ambulance attendants to stand back for a moment, Tom approached the collapsible stretcher and bent down. "We’re taking you to a safe hospital, Mr. Tsu," he said gently. "Don’t be afraid. Did you want to tell me something?"

The man made a movement with his eyes, and Tom pulled back the oxygen mask a crack. As if summoning all his remaining strength, Tsu muttered something — then collapsed back, eyes closed.

"Let’s get going!" ordered the ambulance driver.

As the vehicle sped away, Bud asked: "What did he say?"

"Just a sec." Tom made a note in the note-book he carried. "I’m writing down how it sounded. I think it was Chinese."

Phil Radnor rejoined Tom and Bud, reporting that he hadn’t found any clues in the brush near the roadway. "Let’s go talk to Jilly," Rad suggested.

In the plant switchboard room, Radnor asked Jilly for details of the warning call. "Oh, Mr. Radnor, I just don’t have much information. He didn’t identify himself. He just said to warn Tom Swift that someone was on his way ‘now’ to kill him."

"Did you recognize the voice, Jilly?"

"No, not at all," she replied. "And I have a good ear. I’m sure I’ve never heard it before."

"What was the voice like?" Tom asked. "Did he have an accent?"

"Yes, a slight one. I couldn’t tell what kind, though. He spoke well — kind of cultured, a deep voice. An older man, I think."

Bud said: "You must’ve got where the call was coming from, right?"

"No. It was ID-blocked."

Thanking the switchboard operator, Radnor left to return to the security office. Tom motioned Bud away, toward a waiting nanocar. "Where’re we going?" Bud asked.

"Let’s go hunt up Felix Ming."

"I get it. If the words Tsu said are Chinese, he’ll be able to translate." Felix was a Chinese-American aircraft engineer at Enterprises who had previously assisted Tom in a similar situation.

Locating Felix in one of the construction hangars, Tom took out his notebook and attempted to repeat the sounds John Tsu had uttered.

"One more time, please," Felix requested, frowning in concentration. At last he said: "Well — it’s pretty difficult, Tom. There are many distinct dialects of what we, in this country, call ‘Chinese’. To make things worse, it’s an inflected language. The up-and-down tones, giving it that ‘singsong’ quality, modify the meaning."

"Then you don’t have anything?" Tom asked, disappointed.

"I may. It doesn’t make much sense. But it’s the only possibility that makes any sense at all."

"Go ahead."

"I think the fellow may have said: Beware the Black Cobra!"

Tom and Bud exchanged startled glances. The looks expressed dismay at the sudden recognition of an alarming possibility! "Beware the Black Cobra," Tom repeated. "Is that the whole thing?"

"Yes — but..." The young engineer hesitated as Tom and Bud waited impatiently. "The form is idiomatic. The ‘beware’ isn’t just your garden-variety ‘be careful’. It’s more urgent, like a warning shout. Like what you’d yell out at someone if you saw that a cobra was about to strike!"

CHAPTER 5

INTERRUPTED WARNING

AS TOM turned to leave after thanking Felix for his translation, ominous but vital, Bud held back for a moment. He felt a need to break the grim mood. "Say there, Felix, how’s the ol’ romantic life going?" he asked jokingly, referring to a subject of recurrent concern to the Chinese-American.

"Alas, it is in the hands of my honorable ancestors."

"Got a date lined up yet?"

"Are you asking me out?"

"No."

"Then no."

As Tom drove the nanocar across the grounds, Bud observed: "Bet you and I are thinking the same thing, Tom."

"He did say he was shedding his skin."

It was while developing his spectromarine selector that Tom had first been told of Comrade-General Li Ching, a traitor to his native China who had fled into hiding with a treasure trove of military and technical secrets. Nicknamed "the snakeman," he had made himself the imperious head of an international syndicate of scientific thieves and murderous agents from many countries. It was during Tom’s deadly struggle with the man in the course of his recent exploit with his megascope space prober that he had been sent the cryptic message that this new development seemed to explain. Tom continued: "It hangs together pretty well, don’t you think? Evidently our recovering the stolen stealth drone inspired him to adopt new methods."

"Or at least a new monicker," Bud noted wryly. "And hey! — remember that energy burst you and Hank Sterling detected out in space? When you were trying out the Private-Ear gizmo in the Space Kite?"

"I know what you’re getting at, flyboy. Li could have been testing some sort of energy weapon, which he’s now used against the Nestria delivery rocket!"

"Right, from his ship, the Fanshen. Sounds like he’s our enemy," agreed Bud. "Tsu may have been a turncoat, and the Chinese guys chasing him must be Li’s cronies."

Tom nodded thoughtfully as he braked in front of the Administration Building. "Bet you’re right, pal. But what about that warning phone call we received? We need more answers, and I think I know how to get them."

Up in the spacious office he shared with his father, Tom activated his computer and accessed his personal journal. The journal was stored on a protected server; yet protected or not, he knew that an ultra-secret U.S. government agency, which Tom had come to call Collections, somehow monitored the connection. One of its agents, "the Taxman," had frequently responded to his inquiries.

After establishing his identity and signaling his desire to contact the agency, he typed: "A man has been shot by unknown pursuers while trying to warn me of someone called ‘the Black Cobra’."

The reply appeared on the monitor almost immediately.

To Tom’s surprise, there was no immediate answer. "Maybe he doesn’t know, for a change." Bud murmured over his pal’s shoulder. "Er, if you heard that, Mr. Taxman, no offense intended!"

At last a message appeared.

"What about my question?" Tom typed. "Does Li Ching have designs on Nestria?"

The young inventor was annoyed by the response. "This is no time to play games!"

Tom flicked off the unit with a sharp movement. "I’m not willing to wait any longer, Bud. Cobra or no, I’m taking the Challenger up to Little Luna to see what’s going on!"

Bud cheered. "I’m with ya, Skipper!"

Tom made a call to Fearing Island and spoke to Amos Quezada, chief ground controller of space missions. "What’s the latest from space? Any luck yet contacting Nestria?"

"None. The blackout’s as solid as ever."

"Nothing new from Horton at the outpost?"

"Afraid not."

"Well, tell him to keep trying. I’m taking off for the asteroid as soon as I can get to Fearing."

"I can save you some time," Quezada offered. "Hannah Morgensteiff is up in orbit in the Challenger right now — your Dad’s survey flight. I could have her dip down above Shopton, and you could have one of your choppers drop you off."

"That’s a great idea. Let’s put it together."

Little more than an hour later, Enterprises pilot Slim Davis soared into the afternoon sky in the SwiftStorm, Tom’s wingless ultrasonic cycloplane. His passengers were Tom, Bud, and Enterprises’ chief engineer Hank Sterling, all of them suited-up for space flight.

As the craft’s furiously whirling lift-cylinders carried them vertically into the upper stratosphere, Tom explained his plans to his comrades. "According to Hannah’s radio report, the Challenger crew didn’t detect anything dangerous around Nestria. Just the spherical interference zone."

"No orbiting radioactive byproducts from the explosion?" inquired Hank.

"None detectable, thank goodness."

Bud was skeptical. "Fine. But then just what is that ‘spherical interference zone’, anyway? Maybe it’s like a tripwire, guys! We cross it and Blackie shoots a missile at us."

Tom smiled half-heartedly. "Can’t rule it out, I guess. But unlike the drone rocket, we have a whole bunch of neat gadgets called repelatrons. Anything nosing too close’ll get tossed back into space."

"Well, we had repelatrons in the XAIP, too," Bud persisted. "That explosion fouled them up, remember?"

"We’ve readjusted the telespectrometers to protect them from the EMP effect, now that we understand what happened," explained Hank. "And if you’re worried about that anti-energy powder, the crystal stuff Li shot at us from his ship that time we were headed for the outpost — "

" — which, by the way, knocked out the repelatrons! — " Bud interjected sarcastically.

" — don’t worry. Great minds have figured out how to get around the refraction effect," concluded Sterling. Bud snorted.

It was Slim Davis who spoke next. "Got the Chal up above on radar, boys. I’ll let the cybertron set us down on the landing deck."

The SwiftStorm’s robot brain brought the craft even with the flat vehicular deck that extended like a porch from the front of the huge, multistory spaceship. The cycloplane gently touched the deck and a conveyor-belt system drew it forward into the open portal of the Challenger’s hangar-hold, which was then pressurized.

"Best luck, guys," Slim called out as his three passengers disembarked. "Here’s hoping you don’t need it."

"Seems like we always need it," said Tom with irony.

In minutes the gyroscope-shaped spacecraft was zooming up to the edge of the atmosphere — and on into space, its bank of powerful repulsion-ray generators pointing earthward.

"It won’t be long at constant 1-G," Hannah Morgensteiff, at the control board, said to Tom.

In response the young space pioneer nodded tensely. "I’m going to feel every minute, believe me." He picked up a microphone and intercommed Hank Sterling in the main communications compartment. "Got anything for me, Hank?"

"Not so far, Skipper," was the reply. "But as you say, we just might start to pick up a signal from close range. I’m calling — and keepin’ my ears wide open."

"I know you are. Thanks."

Still tens of thousands of miles remote in space, Nestria was already visible through the Challenger’s big rectangular viewports, a blob of light against the blackness showing the hint of a disk. It swelled by the minute, soon disclosing its dark, mottled surface and craggy horizon, barely softened by the cloak of atmosphere that clung very close to the ground.

"How far?" Bud asked presently. "It’s been a while since we reversed thrust." It now seemed that the asteroid was beneath them, the ship descending toward it.

Tom checked the monitor dials. "Coming up on the 500 mile mark. We’ll make a polar flyby before we try — "

His last words were lost behind a fierce alert tone from the intercom. "Incoming transmission, Tom!" reported Hank excitedly.

Bud whooped. "Man alive! Ask ’em how they’re doing up there — I mean, down there!"

Hearing the comment, Hank had a quashing response. "No, it’s not the asteroid. It’s on the frequency used by the space friends!"

"Good night!" muttered Tom. "Maybe they’ve found a way to elaborate on that message they sent."

"Not exactly the best timing," harrumphed Bud.

"I’ll send what I’m getting up to your monitor, guys, by way of the translating computer," Hank offered. After directing Hannah to continue the flight as planned, Tom turned his attention to the imaging-oscilloscope screen.

After a moment, Tom intercommed Hank impatiently, "Where’s the rest of it?"

"There is no ‘rest of it,’ Skipper," was the engineer’s answer. "Like Chow says, That’s all she wrote!"

Bud shrugged. "Thanks a heap, space buddies! Well, at least they’re encouraging us."

When Tom did not comment, Bud cast a curious glance his way. To his surprise, the young inventor was frowning — and pale!

"Look at this," Tom said in a raspy voice, pointing at a corner of the screen.

Again Bud shrugged. "Yeah, one of the space symbols."

"Without a translation under it. And that’s because it’s not complete."

"Guess they were called away from the phone." Bud looked again at his pal’s expression. "But this isn’t a joke, is it."

"The space symbols modify one another, clustering together in groups that show the relation of concepts," Tom reminded him. "The symbol for ‘proceed’ made it through, but this one was cut off — we got just the bare bones. Bud, I’m sure it would have been the symbol for negation!"

"Huh? Negation?" Then the young pilot’s eyes grew wide with alarm. "Jetz! They’re saying don’t proceed!"

"Otherwise known as Stop!" Tom rushed to Hannah’s side and directed her to bring the ship to a full stop as rapidly as possible, station-keeping high above Little Luna. The Challenger began a sudden deceleration, pressing her crew downward against the deck as if they’d been turned to lead.

"Full stop and hover mode," Hannah reported. "Altitude 481.4 miles, extended radial from Nestria surface."

"What do you think’s going on, boss?" asked another member of the crew, Bob Jeffers, a veteran of Swift Enterprises space flight.

Tom paused before answering. "What do I think? I think something — maybe someone — interrupted the space transmission at a crucial point. I think our space friends are trying to warn us of a danger to the ship if we continue on course."

"Danger? Danger of what?"

No longer whitefaced, Tom looked Jeffers in the eye.

"Of total destruction!"

CHAPTER 6

DEADLY MATTER

THE OTHERS on the Challenger’s control deck stared at Tom in shock. "Do you mean — they’re going to start shooting at us?" Bud demanded. "Or set off a bomb in space?"

"He means someone’s planted a bomb on board — like they did on the supply rocket," murmured Hannah in fear.

Tom shook his head, gazing downward through the Tomaquartz viewpane at the ball that was Nestria. "It may be something much more deadly. Let’s hope I’m wrong." He flicked on the intercom. "Join us, Hank. Got a project for you."

When Hank emerged from the inter-deck ladder shaft, Tom explained: "I think there’s something in front of us, something we can’t see or detect with our instruments, that could destroy the whole ship if we blunder right into it!"

Hank whistled. "The same thing that blew up the supply capsule?"

"Probably."

"Then what’s your idea, Skipper?"

"To do like lost hunters do when they don’t want to step into a bear trap." Tom adjusted the deck computer to bring up a current ship manifest. "We have four of the Donkeys down in the hangar-hold. Good."

"Er — just what do hunters do?" Hannah whispered to Bud. "To avoid bear traps?"

"They poke ahead in the underbrush with a branch," was Bud’s answer. "I see what Tom’s got in mind."

The Repelatron Donkeys were small flying platforms, elevated and propelled by single repelatrons, that Tom had used for survey work on the moon. Now Tom asked Hank to join him below in the vehicular hold, to assist him in making some quick, jerry-rigged modifications to the Donkeys’ control circuitry. When they returned to the command compartment, Hank reported: "Not much to it. Now we can control ’em remotely from the main board."

Tom rolled-up the hangar’s protective doors and the conveyors pulled the four transports out onto the exterior deck. At a signal they rose gently, then curved downward toward Little Luna, splaying out in different directions.

"So you think they’ll blow up?" Jeffers asked Tom.

"Or worse!"

The crew waited tensely, minute after minute.

The lengthy vigil was finally broken by an announcement from Tom. "Crossing the hundred-mile altitude mark," he stated. "I have Donkey number four a few dozen miles in the lead, roughly in the direction of Base Galileo — not too close, though."

"But it’s getting close to where the megascope beam started failing," Bud explained to the others.

Eyes on the telemetry readouts, Tom initiated a countdown. "Eighty-eight miles... eighty-one... seventy-six..."

The crew staggered back, shielding their eyes. Tom adjusted the variable transparency settings for the viewpanes, blocking out more of the glare.

"Man, I think we just got some data!" Bud gulped. "You Dad’ll be pleased!"

"Hard radiation, very high intensity," reported Hank Sterling. He looked up at Tom. "It’s what we saw in the Space Kite. Same overall profile."

Tom gave a grim nod. "Then that settles it. This is the same phenomenon. And I’m sure it’s something artificial, a weapon of some kind."

They continued to study the radiation intently. But suddenly the crew gave a start as a strange thrumming sound filled the deck! "It’s coming from outside, through the hull!" declared Hannah in amazement. "But what could possibly — ?"

"Ionized particulates, spreading out from the blast in concentric waves," Hank stated. "From Earth it must look like a fireball against black space, just like the shuttle explosion."

"And the instruments recorded an EMP effect," added Tom. "We’re lucky our Tomasite-Inertite coating protects us." He noted that the blast, impressive as it was from the viewpoint of the Challenger, was much smaller than the prior one. "It shouldn’t have caused the same big effect on communications and defense systems."

"Well, lemme tell ya, it was more than big enough for me!" Bob Jeffers commented.

One by one the remaining Donkeys met their doom with blazing brilliance. "It’s clear that what we have here is a spherical barrier enclosing Nestria like a bubble," pronounced Tom Swift. "Anything that comes into contact with the barrier disintegrates completely — converts to energy. Evidently the barrier wasn’t wholly stabilized when the supply rocket hit it, but as it reached its fullest extent it began to fuzz-out radio transmissions, including the microwaves my space prober uses."

"Then you think the barrier may be some sort of electromagnetic field, Tom?" Sterling inquired, puzzled.

But the young scientist-inventor wagged his head. "No, Hank, although I’d guess such a field may be keeping it in place."

"Then what?"

"Antimatter."

"Huh?" Bud was aghast at the thought. "Like the matter-eating gas from the taboo mountain?"

Tom’s exploration of Mount Goaba in Africa, by means of his terrasphere vehicle, had revealed an astounding phenomenon taking place in the caves of nuclear fire far beneath the surface. By means of some complex, inexplicable atomic reaction, a mineral-like substance was releasing a gas, termed Exploron, that in turn emitted antiprotons. These subatomic particles, bearing electrical charges opposite those of the nuclei of ordinary matter, caused such matter to disintegrate in a violent flare of radiation. Bud knew that reversed-charge substances, which had previously only appeared in minute quantities in experimental settings, were called antimatter by physicists.

But Bud’s comment was not quite on the mark. "No, pal," Tom corrected his friend. "What we’re dealing with here is a whole lot worse than Exploron."

Hank nodded slowly. "You mean — true antimatter."

"That’s what I think. Look," he continued, "the phenomenon isn’t fully understood yet, but the researchers at the Goaba installation think they’ve cracked the basic sequence of reactions. Exploron gas emits antiprotons, but it isn’t true antimatter. It’s one of the two main byproducts of the reaction of an anomalous substance, which they’ve named Diracinium, with certain catalysts."

Bud observed, "Catalysts like saltwater. You’re talking about that mineral deposit at the bottom of the cavern."

"That’s it. Catalysis induces a sort of ‘nuclear combustion’ — the nuclear fire — with its own ‘smoke,’ namely vaporous Exploron and granules of Inertite. But there’s one more thing that happens. The surface of the Diracinium, the part directly exposed to the catalyst, converts to a molecule-thick coating of Diracinium in antimatter form — actual antimatter molecules. It’s only the interspersed presence of Inertite particles in the film that damps-down the reaction. Otherwise a big chunk of Africa would be history!"

"If particles of anti-Diracinium could be dispersed in space around Little Luna," noted Hank, "the cloud might be too dilute to be detectable, but more than dense enough to destroy — "

"Anything!" concluded Tom Swift. "The space friends are trying to warn us — twice now. The reference in that first message to ‘opposed force matter’ was their attempt to convey the idea of antimatter. Whoever caused the barrier," he went on, "may have figured I’d take off for Nestria to investigate the base’s silence, and that my ship would meet the same fate as the cargo rocket."

Bob Jeffers shuddered. "What a devilish scheme! Which happens to be Li Ching’s stock in trade."

"But wait a second," Bud suddenly objected. "Like you just said, Tom — Inertite blocks off the reaction. Wouldn’t the Challenger’s coating protect us?"

It was Hank who answered Bud. "The cargo rocket was also coated, Bud. Inertite is effective against most radiation, and protects against the sort of fine spray of antiprotons produced by Exploron. But in the case of something like this barrier, you’re dealing with massive grains of the anti-stuff. Evidently a little works its way through — and when you’re dealing with antimatter, as they say: the little things mean a lot!"

Bud nodded, grasping the dreadful situation the Nestria team was in — totally cut-off from their world! He said to Tom: "Whee-oh, genius boy, your brain’s got quite a lump to chew on this time!"

Tom didn’t answer, but Bud could see that the young inventor’s brain had already taken up the task.

Soon the control readouts announced that the ship’s repelatrons were again humming with power. Tom had directed Hannah Morgensteiff to reorient the dish-shaped radiator antennas to brake the ship and send it on its long, wheeling descent back to Earth. "We’ll land at Fearing," Tom stated. "I want to test something using the big space communications gear."

"What’s your idea?" inquired Hank.

"It is only a theory," Tom said. "Let me hash it over a little, Engineer Sterling."

The young inventor radioed a full report to Fearing Island, but the rest of the trip was spent mostly in grim silence. Two hours later the Challenger was biting into the earth’s atmosphere, then dropping smoothly like a clump of feathers to set down finally at the rocket base.

The astronaut team ate dinner in the island mess hall. Afterward, as Tom and Bud walked back to Tom’s private laboratory on the island, Bud remarked, "I can tell plenty is going on in that high-powered head of yours, pal. Feel like talking about it yet?"

"Our first job is to find out the exact nature of the disintegration barrier," Tom said thoughtfully. "So far we’re only guessing that antimatter is what’s causing the trouble. Since the barrier seems to be scrambling and nullifying our long-range instruments — even the spectroscopic scanners — we’ll have to take a sample to study in the lab."

"And how do we do that?" Bud asked in challenging tones. "How do you get a tankful of something that turns anything it touches into the Fourth of July?"

Tom grinned at his chum. "Hey, we had the same problem at Mount Goaba, remember?"

"Which you solved with Inertite. But in this case — "

"I know. Inertite isn’t enough. But it just may be that we can bring a sample down to Earth without touching it at all!" As Bud started a skeptical, if fascinated, objection, Tom held up his hand. "That’s for tomorrow, flyboy. Right now I have something else in mind."

"Well, there’s plenty of room for it up there in that head of yours! What?"

"After I run some numbers on my lab computer, I’m heading over to Communications. If my theory is right, we’ll soon be back in touch with Little Luna!"

Bud lifted his eyebrows, creasing his forehead with worry. "Let’s hope there’s someone up there to answer!"

CHAPTER 7

AN ADDRESS IN CHINATOWN

IN THE space communications room inside the Fearing control tower, Tom explained his idea to Amos Quezada and the chief communications engineer, Harry Lengle. "The numbers look good," he declared. "So my idea is plausible, at least."

"Which is?" challenged Quezada.

"My guess is that during the shadow-traverse every three and three-quarters days, when Nestria orbits through Earth’s shadow, the unusual mineralogy of the asteroid will be affected by the temperature drop — remember, the higher elevations stick up beyond the atmospheric envelope which insulates the lower parts. About eighty percent of Nestria is airless."

"Granted. Okay, chief, so you have a quick change in surface temperature. But what good does it do?"

"My calculations show that it makes Little Luna as a whole less permeable to magnetic forces," Tom continued excitedly. "Something is holding that barrier in place, and it may well be electromagnetic in nature. If I’m right, when the average surface temp drops, the field’s lines of force will be pushed away from the surface further out into space."

"I understand Tom’s idea," Harry spoke up. "That would tend to make the barrier thinner and less opaque — like a stretched balloon — so it’s easier for radio waves to penetrate."

"All right then." Quezada checked his wrist-watch. "We’re lucky — she’ll be starting the traverse in about six hours. We can give it a try."

"I’ll be grabbing some shuteye in the cottage," Tom said wearily. "I have to — but call me immediately if you get through."

Tom met up with Bud, who had been chatting with one of his friends among the staff, and the two headed across the facility grounds toward the executive quarters. As he walked along, the youthful pilot gave a mighty yawn — which turned into a laugh. "Good grief, I just realized something. It’s only been twenty-four hours since we went up in the XAIP!"

Tom echoed the yawn. "Quite a day!"

Tom slept helplessly for hours. It was daylight when he awoke. A quick check with the communications center was disappointing — the moonlet had entered Earth’s shadow, but there was still no radio response. But that’s not too surprising, Tom thought hopefully. It may take awhile for the anti-magnetic effect to build up.

Some time later, having a late breakfast with Bud, he was interrupted by a buzz on his cellphone-intercom. "We’ve just made contact with Nestria, Skipper!" Harry Lengle reported excitedly. "Come on down!"

Tom and Bud were thrilled by the news. They sped across the island by jeep and dashed into the communications office.

"Still getting through?" Tom cried.

Lengle nodded. His expression was pensive. "Their signal’s pretty weak, but we’ve enhanced it enough to make out the audio." He added into the microphone in his hand, "Galileo, here’s Tom now."

Tom seized the mike. "Do you read me? What cooks up there?" he asked eagerly.

A blur of voices could be made out through the earphones. One voice was especially prominent. "He said cook. He’s askin’ fer me!" The young inventor was smiling broadly as Chow came on the line. "This here’s ole Chow, boss! Brand my — "

But Tom had already begun speaking, the signal delay overlapping their voices. "Are you fellows all right?"

"Sure thing, son, right fine! Wa-aal — considerin’."

"It’s great to hear you, pardner, but maybe I should talk to Kent. The communications window may not last very long."

"Okay. Here he is."

Rockland’s voice came on. "Looks like you had the same idea as Professor Jatczak, Tom. We’ve been trying from our end for an hour now. We know there’s some sort of screen or cloud-barrier around Nestria that blows things to kingdom come — we’ve sent up a few test missiles."

"Have any of the scientists determined the nature of the barrier?" asked Tom.

"No, we can’t get a fix on anything. One of the Brungarians thinks it might be some kind of antimatter deal."

"I have the same theory," Tom stated. "What sort of condition is the base in?"

When Rockland’s response came through after the delay, Tom noted that it had become more distorted and was noticeably weaker. "We’re getting water from our atmosphere-making machine, but we could use some food. We’ve got quite a few mouths up here right now." The mineralogist explained that the explosion of the supply rocket had sent out a shower of radioactive fallout which had contaminated nearly all of Base Galileo’s experimental vegetable gardens. The colonists, given a few minutes’ warning by the base’s radiation sensors, had retreated to protective shelters but had had no time to shield the crops. "We’ve started de-radding the area, but Doc Simpson says the edibles are unsafe. And we don’t keep a big reserve of the packaged stuff."

"Roger. Your signal’s starting to go now. But tell everyone we’re working the problem. Keep your chins up, all of you," he added. "I’ll try to get a ship there with provisions as fast as possible — and bring you fellows safely back to earth."

Beneath the rising waves of static Tom could hear a faint chorus of cheers and exclamations of relief from voices in the background. Evidently the entire crew of the base had gathered around the radio. "This is Fearing, signing off."

Tom and Bud jetted back to Shopton and Swift Enterprises. Landing, the young inventor headed for his office, remarking to Bud: "I’ve got to let my ideas cook a little — upstairs. Which is fine, because tomorrow — "

"Is Friday!" concluded Bud with an excited grin. "Which means we’re due in Chinatown for some Chinese-puzzle solving!"

Early the following afternoon the youths took off for New York in a Swift Enterprises jetrocopter. Marketed by Enterprises’ manufacturing subsidiary in Shopton, the Swift Construction Company, this was the name given to a versatile combination helicopter-jetcraft which Tom had invented.

After landing at the Hudson River heliport, Tom and Bud took a taxi to downtown Manhattan. From time to time Tom glanced at the driver’s rear-view mirror.

As they neared the Chinatown commercial center at Chatham Square, he murmured to Bud, "Don’t look now, flyboy, but a car’s been on our tail all the way from the heliport. That’s a lot of streets and a lot of turns."

Ignoring his pal’s admonition, Bud twisted his head and watched. "Yeah, four cars back and holding steady. I don’t like this, Tom," he said uneasily. "Let’s not take any chances."

Tom nodded. As their taxi braked at the next stop light, he hastily handed the driver a bill and said to Bud, "Okay, let’s go!"

The boys leapt out, slammed the door, and darted off into the crowd of pedestrians, mostly from Chinatown. Bud flung a quick glance over his shoulder.

"You were right, Tom!" he muttered. "The guy in the passenger seat is hopping out too!"

Tom turned long enough to glimpse a short but square-built figure in a tan suit, an Asian, striding after them, briskly keeping pace as he tried to stay out of view behind the knots of pedestrians. The two from Shopton stepped up their own pace. They wove through the stream of pedestrians for a few blocks, past colorful shop windows filled with Chinese merchandise.

"We’re blocked by the crowd for a sec, but he’s still on our tail!" Bud reported.

"Turn at this corner!" Tom said. A moment later he pulled Bud into a darkened doorway.

They watched the sidewalk at the corner and waited. To their surprise, the follower did not appear. Finally Bud heaved a sigh of relief. "We shook him! He must’ve given up when we ducked out of sight."

"Let’s not stick around!" Tom advised.

The boys were now within walking distance of their destination and soon reached the address the Collections contact had provided, a tall modern office building. Pausing inside next to the elevators, they read over the directory of tenants posted on the wall.

"Let’s see — third floor," Tom murmured. "Wu Nang Toys. Pleasant Golden Soup. Hing-Tse Family Association. Universal Exports, Ltd. Okay — Trans-Pacific Import Company, suite 313. Up we go!"

The door of the third-floor suite brandished a shiny, new-looking brass sign with the name of the company engraved in solemn, dignified letters. "No hint of what they ‘import’," Bud remarked. "Maybe nothing!"

"I’d be surprised if it’s anything more than a front," Tom agreed.

"I sure hope we’re not walking into something!"

"Oh, I’m pretty sure it’s something."

The door was locked. It didn’t even rattle as Tom gave a rap. Almost instantly the door was opened by a young, pretty Asian woman wearing a high-waisted, long-skirted cheong-sam of jade-green silk. Tom was struck by the fact that she showed no surprise at her visitors.

"Good day, sirs. Do please come in."

"I’m Tom Swift," said the young inventor. "I was asked to come here. This is my associate, Bud Barclay."

"Of course. Please be seated." She closed the door as they entered, and the latch caught with a decisive click.

The room was scantily furnished with only a desk and a few chairs, which were well-padded with dark leather and comfortable-looking — but looked as if no human backside had ever sat down in them. As the boys sat down, the young woman disappeared through another door. A moment later she emerged and held the door open.

"Please go in." A polite smile showed briefly on her calm, delicate face.

Tom and Bud entered the adjoining room and the door closed behind them. They found themselves in a room lighted only by a single, rose-shaded lamp. It cast a dim glow over a small bronze statue of Buddha on a desk.

An elderly Asian with a thin, drooping white mustache, clad in an expensive business suit that appeared to be seeing its first day of use, stood up and bowed to Tom. "Very pleased to receive your visit, my dear Mr. Swift. I am honored."

Tom introduced Bud, then said, "I’m eager to learn why you sent for me, Mr. — ?"

"But I did not send for you."

"True. But you were expecting us, obviously."

"An important distinction, is it not? Indeed, perhaps your visit was anticipated, Mr. Swift. I must say, you most skillfully gave our man the slip. His mission was only to guard you, to ensure a pleasant and safe arrival." The man’s smile was polite yet slightly mocking.

Tom felt a slight nudge from Bud, and he followed his chum’s gaze to a narrow decor-table of dark lacquered wood pressed against the wall to their right. A small crystalline cube sat upon it. Embedded inside was a tiny carven black cobra, coiled to strike!

CHAPTER 8

BRACELET WITH A SECRET

TOM’S pulse quickened as he and Bud exchanged glances. What was the meaning of the cobra image? Had the two walked straight into the enemy’s clutches?

The boys’ faces must have shown their suspicions. Their host said calmly, "The name ‘Black Cobra’ is not unknown to you, I see."

He waited as if he expected an answer. Tom Swift didn’t give one.

"I don’t mean to be rude, sir, but I think we’ve had enough of this particular ‘game’," Tom declared hotly. "You’ve obviously established some sort of phony get-up here, staged for our benefit. A real festival of ‘inscrutable oriental’ cliches!"

"Ah, but at least there is no incense." Perfectly serene, the man nodded in acknowledgment. He continued, "The quaint talisman you see was obtained at great risk, by certain ones who are willing to lose their lives to honor others who have already lost theirs. Take it, won’t you? It bears a sort of encryption, and it is our hope that it may serve to assist you, should you ever fall into the power of our mutual adversary."

Tom picked up the cube and slipped it into his pocket. "Our hope?" Tom repeated the words questioningly. "Does this mean that you belong to the same... group... that told us to come here?"

Their host pretended not to have heard. He went on smoothly, "You asked my name. I am Mr. Fun. And to answer the stifled laughter I see upon your face, Mr. Barclay, the name ‘Fun’ is common in my native land. I am, in fact, Sheong-Lo Fun. You are wondering, perhaps, why it was necessary to come here. Why could the cube not have delivered to you in a, one might say, less theatrical manner?"

"Now that you mention it, why?" Bud asked.

The Oriental smiled. "There is an old proverb — "

Tom interrupted with: "Please."

"But this is a good one, Mr. Swift, very apt. Only Buddha knows if the arrow shall reach its mark. It was most important that this tiny, rare, infinitely valuable object reach the hands of Tom Swift with safe certainty. Even personal messengers may be followed and dispatched violently, unexpectedly — the way of the cobra, is it not?"

Frowning, the young inventor drew a deep breath and nodded. "I see. And evidently you intend to tell us no more than you choose to. Do you and your people realize how many lives are at stake here? Can’t you at least tell me what you know about the whereabouts of Li Ching?"

"I have given you my answer. It lies within your pocket," he said. "Yet you are my guest, and I must see to your satisfaction. So I shall tell you this. In trusting and protecting John Tsu, you have made a regrettable error. He is the servant of the man whom you seek, and is, by compulsion, loyal to him — even unto death."

"You mean his warning was bogus? To send us off the rails?" demanded Bud.

"He only managed to utter the first few words of what he was to say. The remainder would have, indeed, given you, in a most convincing way, false information, a false lead that would have put you and your associates in the hands of your adversary."

"Was shooting him part of his being ‘convincing’?" Tom asked skeptically.

"Those who pursue him are members of the military of the People’s Republic of China," replied Mr. Fun. "As you know, certain secrets were taken by one of their own."

"Comrade-General Li Ching."

"There are those in China who yearn desperately for the return of those secrets, unexposed to the light of day. They have found a means of, shall we say, negotiating. But the opposite party now makes unrealistic demands, arrogant demands that no government can accept. And so they do what they can to interfere with his plans, to demonstrate that they are not to be trifled with."

Tom inquired bluntly, "Is it permitted to ask your own interest in this? Just who you are?"

"Your humble friend and servant." The man bowed, then straightened and pressed a wall button.

The young woman in jade reappeared so promptly that Tom suspected she had been standing on the other side of the door. Mr. Fun then turned back to the boys.

"How valuable it is to have an efficient secretary." Again he bowed. "Most pleasurable to have met you both. Miss Tung will show you out. Good day to you."

Moments later, the two were back in the hallway. As the door shut behind them, Bud gestured with his thumb. The door was blank. The identifying plaque had been removed. "I’d say Miss Tung is mighty ‘efficient’," commented the young Californian. "Maybe they need the plate for this evening’s hoax."

In the lobby, Tom pointed at the wall directory. The listing for Trans-Pacific Import Company was gone, replaced by: Vacant, now available for lease.

Bud gaped. "Good night! This whole thing was phony from start to finish!"

"Maybe phony isn’t quite the word, Bud." Tom’s face took on a wry grin. "Let’s say it was arranged for our benefit."

"Benefit? We should be so lucky!" Bud retorted, and hailed a taxi for their trip back to the heliport.

As Bud piloted the jetrocopter toward Shopton, Tom’s brow wrinkled as he closely examined the crystal cobra cube. "Personally, Bud," he said, "I think someone’s gone to an awful lot of trouble to help us. Maybe a little too much trouble. The import company was a blind for our rendezvous — and now that our unknown friends have handed over this cube, they’re making sure no clues are left behind."

"If you say so, genius boy. As for me — my theory is, we got roped into being unpaid actors in somebody’s low-budget spy movie — what they call a pirate shoot!"

Tom devoted the weekend to intense work on the problem of designing a means to safely take a sample of the destructive space barrier. The shadow-traverse effect had proven to Tom that the dispersed particles were stabilized by some form of enveloping electromagnetic field that cloaked the moonlet on all sides. And if magnetism holds it in place, he reasoned, I can use magnetism to scoop out a piece of it!

Bud wisely left Tom to his work most of the weekend, but paid a visit to the lab late Sunday afternoon. "How’s the brainwork?"

"Chugging along," was the reply. "I may have something to show for it soon."

"Great, genius boy," said Bud. He added in a somber voice: "And what would be really great would be a Swift gimmick to punch a big hole in that space cloud — I’ll settle for blowin’ it away from the base, into outer space."

"I know, Bud. If only there were some way to get through to them!" Tom muttered.

Suddenly a girl’s voice asked, "Tom couldn’t possibly be referring to us, could he?"

Tom and Bud whirled in surprise as two girls breezed through the open lab door. The one who had spoken was pretty, blond Sandra Swift, Tom’s sister.

Sandy’s companion, Bashalli Prandit, offered a bland smile and eyes that twinkled. "Since when did Tom and Bud ever worry about contacting a couple of mere girl friends? — that is to say, friends who happen to be mere girls."

"Hey! Look who’s here!" Bud exclaimed. "It’s almost as if some conniver set it up to surprise you — er, us!" Tom chuckled. In creative conniving, Bud Barclay was usually suspect number one.

"And look what arrived in the mail this morning!" Sandy said proudly.

She held out her right wrist, displaying a silver link bracelet, decorated with a single, large sky-blue turquoise.

"You’re getting extravagant, sis." Tom pretended to object. "When did you order that?"

"Order it? Hmmph!" Sandy tilted an eye-brow. "I’ll have you know this was a gift from an admirer!" Reaching into her bag, she plucked out a card. The sender had printed on it, by flowery hand, a message:

"Now I wonder who that could be?" said Bashalli.

"Of course I’m only guessing," Sandy teased, "but anyhow — " She took a quick step toward Bud and pertly kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you, Bud! It’s perfectly lovely!"

"B-b-but wait a second!" Bud stammered in confusion. He gulped and reddened. "Well — er — Sandy — you see — I didn’t send you that bracelet!"

"You didn’t?" Sandy stared at him in surprise. Then a mischievous gleam came into her eyes. "Hmm. In that case, let me see... those charming boys from Thessaly — "

"Are still in jail," Bashalli noted unhelpfully, earning a frown.

"Bill? Doug? Chad?..."

"No," corrected Bash. "Chad is mine."

Sandy pretended to count on her fingers. "You really can’t expect us girls to sit around waiting for you two spacemen to find time to take us out."

Tom winced. "Come on. We apologized for having to cancel out the other day."

"Oh, did you? I must not have been paying attention." Sandy began to hum a popular song while holding the bracelet up to the light to admire the color of the large turquoise. Bud was speechless with embarrassment. Tom couldn’t help grinning at Bud’s plight.

"If you’re done with the torture bit," Tom said, "do you have any idea who really might have sent it, San?"

She shrugged. "No. Though that checker at the supermarket, Dwayne, does seem to pay me a lot of attention."

"With the braces? The fifteen year old kid?"

As Sandy frowned again, Bashalli remarked with a sigh, "We can slip nothing past the eyes of the observant scientist."

But suddenly the eyes of the observant scientist narrowed as a thought struck him. He glanced at the card again, then asked Sandy, "Mind if I take a closer look at that bracelet?"

"Why? Don’t you think it’s real?" she said indignantly.

"Very much so. I’d just like to see how it’s put together."

Wary, Sandy unfastened the clasp and handed the bracelet to her brother. Tom took it to a workbench near the wall and began prying at the setting.

"Oh, Tom, please don’t ruin it!" Sandy begged.

"Should you need to ruin something, there is always my purse," suggested Bashalli.

"Relax, sis," Tom told Sandy. "If I can’t put this thing together again, I’ll buy you a better one."

"I’ll buy it," Bud put in, "and send it to you anonymously!"

Presently the stone came out of its setting. Inside, to the utter surprise of Sandy, Bud, and Bash, was a tiny but compact assembly of electronic micro-units.

"Jetz!" Bud exclaimed. "It was bugged!"

"Bugged." Sandy echoed the word with unhappy resignation. "It had a radio inside. Naturally."

Tom pulled out a powerful magnifying glass and examined the circuitry. "No. No transmitter. It’s a very advanced digital recording device. This little sliver here is the chip that captures the data, and the whole surface of the gem acts as a resonating microphone. Your bracelet was designed to pick up conversations."

"So much for secret admirers," Sandy moaned. Then she asked a bit breathlessly: "But why? If it was just a trick, what are they after?"

Tom gave his sister a reassuring smile. "It’s probably some competitor of Enterprises who thought he might learn valuable secrets by tuning in your conversations with Bud and me, or Dad."

"We do talk about a lot over dinner, I—I guess."

Sandy looked crestfallen, but Bud tactfully added, "What a low-down trick! How do you think they planned to retrieve that recording chip, Tom?"

"What an easy question," responded Bashalli. "Are we not confronted, stalked, and threatened with kidnapping on a regular basis?"

Though the Pakistani’s tone was joking, Sandy turned pale. "But — but they won’t know you found them out, Tom. They’ll still try to take the bracelet from me!"

"No they won’t," declared her brother firmly. "They know you won’t always be wearing it — after all, it doesn’t match every outfit! — and they wouldn’t make an attempt unless they see it on you. Just wear it home when you leave here. I’ll sneak it back tomorrow and let the security guys look it over."

The girls left hastily, Sandy’s repaired bracelet back on her wrist. Bud turned to his friend and said: "Okay, Skipper, so much for keeping the civilians calm. You don’t really think this is about a business rival, I hope."

"Of course not. But Sandy’s always been pretty scared of Li Ching, especially so after what happened last time. She and Bashalli know about the Nestria situation, but Dad and I agreed to... to postpone bringing up the Comrade-General around her."

Tom phoned a full report of the episode to Phil Radnor, who had come in to work in his office. "More of Li’s high tech," he noted. "At least we know that cube the guy gave you isn’t bugged." The cobra talisman had been thoroughly scanned by a number of sophisticated detection instruments.

Radnor finished by promising to send a full report to Harlan Ames in New Mexico. "Incidentally," he concluded, "I have a few pieces of news concerning Mr. John Tsu. According to M.I.T. he’s a grad student in advanced engineering theory, part of a special exchange program with Hong Kong. Also, I called that clinic this morning. The doctor says Tsu’s in and out of consciousness and unable to speak. But he’s well guarded — now to keep him in place as well as to protect him."

"Good. But you know my suspicions, Rad. Despite what Mr. Fun said, I’m not so sure Tsu’s warning was just the interrupted start of a lie. I looked in his eyes — he was mighty scared, but trying as hard as he could to speak to me. I don’t think it was just an act."

The morning following — a cloudy Monday in upstate New York — Tom demonstrated his new inventive approach to Bud and Enterprises’ talented modelmaker, Arvid Hanson. They had gathered around a shallow, flat tank covered by a plate of Tomaquartz. "I know you use this for magneto-dynamic experiments, boss," said Arv. "I take it you’re planning to capture some of that antimatter in a magnetic bottle."

As Tom nodded, Bud said: "Okay, guys, what’s that — a bottle of fridge magnets?"

"They’ve used it for years in fusion-power experimentation," explained Tom. "The standard fusion process requires the creation of a minute pocket of hydrogen gas at extreme pressure and density. The gas in this state, plasma, is as hot as the sun, and because it has a net electric charge, an electromagnetic flux can be used to force it away from the sides of the container. Otherwise the container would vaporize instantly."

"Like lassoing it in magnetic lines of force. But as I understand it," Arv objected, "even the strongest fields have only been able to hold the plasma for less than a second."

"That’s true."

"And besides, our instruments don’t indicate that the barrier particles are charged in the first place."

"Right again."

"Fine. Spill it, sci-guy," Hanson remonstrated jokingly as Bud nodded.

"Wa-aal, buckaroos, as Chow would say," began the young inventor while he made adjustments to the controls of the test device, "remember how we — "

Before he could finish the thought, he and his listeners swiveled about in surprise as a weird humming sound, unlike anything they had ever heard, filled the laboratory — and the lab door suddenly burst open with a bang!

CHAPTER 9

MENACING MONGEESE

TOM AND BUD tensed to rush at the intruder, then stopped themselves. "Boris!" exclaimed Tom. "What’s wrong?"

In the absence of Chow Winkler, his second-in-command was in control of the executive kitchen. But Boris Yakunetsky was no Chow Winkler. The Russian emigre was finicky, persnickety, excitable, and on occasion somewhat full of himself. Now his expression was fierce.

"Wrong? Wrong? Pfah! Where are they?"

"Misplace your midmorning snacks?" asked Bud with wry innocence.

The cook reared up with a glare of indignation. "Snacks? Nutsense! You think I am the Winkler, to make tidbits of mongeese?"

"Mongeese?" Arv repeated.

"Of course mongeese! There are two of them. I should say mongooses?"

Tom suddenly understood — although it was, admittedly, a peculiar thing to understand! "You mean there’s a mongoose running around in here, Boris? — that is, two of ’em?"

The ex-Russian glared at his employer. "Isn’t it not what I say? There are two mongeese! Can you not hear them?"

"Right," said Tom. "That sound."

"It is they. They wish to mate, it strikes me."

"I get it," Bud said. "A male and a female."

"One might hope so!"

Arv Hanson was looking about into the corners of the lab room, which was large and square — and crowded with lab tables and equipment. "I can sure hear them. But where are they?"

Boris scowled. "Hmmph, you Swedes. Should I know that, would I be asking you?"

There was a pause in the sound — and then it suddenly redoubled! The four whirled to see what was causing it, and Bud exclaimed in astonishment.

A small, grayish-brown weasel-like animal was peering with glittering eyes from between the legs of a chair. Its back was humped like a spitting cat’s and its fur was bristling angrily. As the creature stood glaring, a second mongoose, the mate-in-waiting, poked its head out from behind a test stand nearby. "Good night!" gulped Tom. "What in the wide world are they doing here?"

"I do believe you can see what they are doing with your own blue eyes," sniffed Boris. "They are being pests, wild varmints, and mocking us with annoying noises."

Tom was patient, and becoming amused. "Yes. But why are they here?"

The emigre chef did not answer for a moment, and began to look somewhat abashed. "It was my own experiment, sir, perhaps to assist you. Winkler does such things, and he — he is given many privileges."

"What sort of experiment was it?" Hanson asked.

Boris smiled boldly. "Ah, my marvelous idea! The scuttling-butt of the grapevine speaks of a snake that is loose, a cobra. Very dangerous, hmm? So I buy from fellow Russian, a sea trader, two mongeese. They are to breed, many babies, all to be trained as watching dogs."

Tom stifled a laugh. "Watchdogs!"

"Illych says they are easily trained, and very intelligent. And do not many facilities like this Enterprises have such protectors?"

"Well, Boris, it was a good idea," said Tom, not wishing to disparage the man’s good intentions. "It’s sure true that a mongoose would make a perfect protector against a snake. Over in India they’re champ cobra-killers. But..."

"You are giving me a but?"

"But the Enterprises grapevine was passing along bad data. There’s no snake loose here. It’s just a kind of nickname, for a person."

"A bad person? Might you not wish to have him bitten?"

Arv chuckled. "They may be smart, but my guess is they’d bite a hundred good guys before hitting on a bad one."

"Besides, Bor, they’re illegal," Bud remarked. "Can’t bring ’em into this country — if they get loose they start killing poultry and small game."

"I see." Boris reddened in anger. "I shall speak of this to Illych! I have long suspected he is not true Russian, but Ukrainian." The cook explained that both creatures had escaped their cage in his kitchen while he was trying to feed them.

"Tell you what, I’ll have some people from Life Sciences come over to, er, apprehend them," Tom promised. "We’ll keep ’em in the zoology cages aboard the Sky Queen, and arrange to find them safe haven — in another country."

"Where they will not be illegal aliens," sniffed Boris with a look of disdain. "Very well."

After the lab was cleared of mongeese, and of Russian chefs, Tom returned to his long-interrupted explanation. "All matter — all atoms — responds to magnetism to some degree. Matter with diamagnetic properties is ‘squeezed’ by magnetic forces and moves away from the center of the field, a form of repulsion."

"And I just happen to know that paramagnetic matter does the opposite," Bud interjected proudly.

Arv Hanson raised his eyebrows. "The boy’s been reading!"

Grinning, Tom went on. "Those basic effects are much weaker than ferromagnetism, the reactions we’re used to with substances like iron and commercial magnets. What I’m at work on, which I call a magnetic deflector, concentrates, modulates, and ‘contours’ a field in a way that amplifies the weaker forms of reaction."

"Made it work yet?" Bud asked.

"Watch." As Tom carefully adjusted the dials of the magneto-dynamic test device, a transparent filmy surface layer, floating on a fluid like a skin of oil, became luminous beneath the protective plate. "The glow is produced by microlasers in the sides of the tray, refracting upwards as they sweep back and forth through the top layer. Now let’s switch on the magnetic deflector apparatus, which is underneath the test stand."

There was a click. Instantly a pattern of neatly curving lines, a spiral, spread across the luminous surface. Like a tour guide, Tom commented: "That’s a perfect logarithmic spiral, by the way." There was a small darkened area in the very center, and as the three watched it smoothly expanded out until the spiral was only visible at the edges of the fluid pan.

"What is it you have floating on the suspension liquid, Skipper?" Arv inquired. "Iron filings?"

Tom shook his head. "Nope. It’s been dusted with tiny droplets of Tomasite doped with manganese flouride, which is magnetically unresponsive."

"But it responds anyway," Bud declared.

"That’s the whole point," his friend noted.

Arv scratched his forehead, jostling his lazily-combed blond hair. "I’m guessing the Meissner Effect." Which elicited the Barclay Effect — a blank, slightly pained, look.

"I took a different direction, Arv," Tom corrected the modelmaker. "Remember how we used linear spacewave fields to guide the megascope’s microwave beams through space? Well, my brain-light flicked on and it struck me that microwave interference patterns crawling along a surface like that act like ‘virtual’ electric currents."

Responding to Bud’s expression, Hanson said: "Hey, let me take a crack at the explanation bit. Budworth, you like surfing and hit the beach when there’s one available, right?"

"Good start — Arvid."

"Then maybe you’ve noticed how, when regularly spaced ocean waves come in and hit against a straight barrier — a seawall — at an angle, you can see a chain of wave crests moving sideways against the barrier." When Bud nodded, the engineer continued: "Well, if I’m grasping what our blond prodigy is saying, he’s using an effect like that to produce what amounts to a chain of moving electric charges on the surface of the spectronic field. And that’s what an electric current is — moving charges. Which, incidentally, generate magnetic force."

"Hmm." Bud winked at Tom. "Not bad. The guy’s got a future."

Tom laughed. "Anyway, by projecting the forces out into the space ahead of the deflector, it creates highly localized currents that grab ahold of — "

The exclamation was Bud’s, but Hanson echoed it. "Something’s rummaging around in my pants pocket!" gulped Arv, startled.

Tom stared at his companions with blank puzzlement. Then his hands darted downward toward his own pockets. The same thing was happening to him!

The next instant the entire contents of all their pockets — coins, keys, bits of paper, even globs of lint — were streaming out into the air at high speed, turning the pockets inside-out.

"Good grief, it’s happening all over the lab!" cried Tom.

Throughout the laboratory, small objects were streaking back and forth through the air, colliding with one another, shattering into fragments — and changing by the second into a hail of deadly bullets!

CHAPTER 10

A MEETING IN THE STRATOSPHERE

"GET DOWN!" Tom ordered as he sank to his haunches. "Make for the hallway and shut the door!" The young inventor gave Bud a look that stifled the young Californian’s instinctive protest. He and Hanson complied, protecting their heads with their arms.

Tom had realized immediately that his new invention was the behind the chaos. Unexpectedly, with no warning, the powerful magnetic forces were grappling all smaller, lighter objects in the vicinity and propelling them through the air in what Tom now observed to be wild back-and-forth loops, always returning to the same position — then darting away again!

The phenomenon had become a whirling cloud of shrapnel. Tom wormed his way across the tiled floor to the test stand and tried to reach up to the control board — then drew his hand back down with a cry of pain. Flying fragments of shattered test tubes had raked across the top of his hand, drawing blood!

Okay! he told himself, his muscles knotting as he steeled them for the pain to come. I’ll have to cut the power over at —

And then, abruptly, came a ragged crash all across the room. In unison the streaking shards had dropped limply to the floor! The banging roar was replaced by dead silence.

After a moment a white face beneath a floppy lock of black hair poked through the doorway. "Uh — T-Tom? Are you..."

"I’m fine," Tom called out, rising to his feet. "Just a scrape on my hand."

"Was it the magnetic deflector?" asked Arv as he and Bud cautiously reentered the lab.

Tom nodded wryly and said, "And I didn’t even get a chance to play hero by disabling it."

Bud looked surprised. "Yeah? So what did stop it?"

"I guess you could say it stopped itself," was Tom’s reply. "Look at that gouge-mark on the control panel. One of the fragments rammed the off button!"

Arv’s nod came with a wry snort. "Another day, another lab trashed. I take it this wasn’t part of your demonstration?"

Tom chuckled. "Well, it demonstrated something to me, at least. The thing works — but it goes critical at the slightest fluctuation in power input."

"Shouldn’t be hard to fix," commented the modelmaker. Tom agreed.

"That’s great. But... er, Tom," began Bud. "There is one more thing..."

"What’s that, flyboy?"

"Buried somewhere in this big mess is — my car keys!"

Finally retreating to his design workshop, Tom spent the waning hours of the day working up the layout of the drone rocket which he hoped would crash through the disintegration barrier and return a sample to Earth. The rocket was to be shielded with a heavy coating of Tomasite and Inertite laminated with asbestalon, a heat-insulating material which Tom had devised for his atomic earth blaster. But none of this matters at all unless the antimatter granules can be pushed aside by the magnetic deflector, Tom reminded himself. As a further difficulty, the protective field would have to have a weak spot, an opening through which the sample would be funneled into its special container within the rocket fuselage.

After a call home and a late supper, Tom bunked down in the room adjoining his workshop and fell asleep instantly. When Bud came to rouse him, Tom blinked at the clock in disbelief. It was 11:30 in the morning!

"Good night!" gulped Tom.

"You mean good morning, pal!" replied Bud with a grin. "But anyway, I’m afraid you’re gonna have to gulp down your brunch on the run."

"Huh? How come?"

"I came looking you up because Phil Radnor asked me to. He told me he just took a call on the security office’s PER unit from a guy named John Thurston at the CIA!"

Tom swung upright, senses engaged. "Thurston at the CIA? We’ve worked with him before — you’ve met him, Bud. In fact, he was one of the people Dad talked to in connection with that EMP pulse that disrupted defense communications."

"Well, I’m supposed to trot you out onto runway three as soon as I can toss you out of that cot," Bud stated firmly. "A jet’s going to fly you to an emergency confab, right away."

"Really? When’s the jet due?"

"Due? She’s already here, pal — and waiting!" As Tom stood up, straightening his sleep-rumpled clothing, Bud’s expression darkened. "But look, pal. Are we really sure Thurston is Thurston, and the jet’s not carting you off to the Black Cobra?"

Tom stretched. "If the call came in on the CIA cartridge of the Private-Ear Radiodio, I’d say we can be about ninety-nine percent confident. Even if Li managed to replicate the PER circuitry, don’t forget that the cartridge matrixes of the communicating units are ‘mated,’ one for one, in a way that can’t be faked."

Some minutes later a wet-faced, slightly less disheveled Tom Swift boarded the sleek, unmarked jetcraft awaiting him. Inside the hatchway a hand was offered him. "I’m your pilot, Mr. Sw