Tom Swift and His G-Force Inverter

THE TOM SWIFT INVENTION ADVENTURES

TOM SWIFT

AND HIS G-FORCE INVERTER

BY VICTOR APPLETON II

This unauthorized tribute is based upon the original TOM SWIFT JR. characters.

As of this printing, copyright to The New TOM SWIFT Jr. Adventures is owned by SIMON & SCHUSTER

This edition privately printed by RUNABOUT © 2011
www.tomswiftlives.com

"MOON SERPENTS!" said Jenna Deames scornfully with a wry and skeptical shake of her head. "Tom, you’ve explained it to your best pal, your chief engineer, your key physicist, even your
cook
. I’m feeling a little left out. And may I remind you," she added, "we are halfway to the moon!"

The crewcut young man half-turned in his seat and looked up, shrugging in good-natured apology. "Sorry," said Tom Swift. He knew the chemist was joking, but his sheepishness was genuine.

"Want
me
to do it, Tom?" offered the young inventor’s
best pal
, Bud Barclay.

"Wa-aal, I’d do it," said the young inventor’s
cook
, Chow Winkler. "Butcha know, the plain fact is I don’t unnerstan’ it."

Tom grinned. "You don’t, pardner?"

"Son, I’m jest along t’ fix up the eats, not t’
think
. Not about
that
!" replied the hefty ex-Texan.

"I’ll provide any explanation you wish, my dear, readily, skillfully, and at length," declared the
key
physicist, Dr. Rafael Franzenberg. The suggestion seemed more
ooze
than assistance.

As to the
chief engineer
, Hank Sterling—a wise and smiling silence.

The crew stood on the flight deck of Tom Swift Enterprises’ majestic spaceship, the
Challenger
, as its bank of repulsion force-rays thrust it toward the moon with a constant 1-G acceleration. Its mission was a scientific quest—to solve a scientific mystery.

"I know I’m just a lowly chemist," continued Jenna, smiling. "I suppose that’s like bringing the plumber along on a vacation trip. But I
would
like to know why I was called over to Fearing for a sudden jaunt to the moon. The moon’s been around a long time; she doesn’t have sudden needs. And
serpents
—didn’t they go out with the Garden of Eden?"

"That’s just what they called it in the news articles," Tom answered. "There are no real snakes up there."

The moment begged for a Bud Barclay quip. "Otherwise Chow would be working up a new recipe—rattlesnake stew with moon-serpent seasoning."

"Don’t think I wouldn’t, Buddy Boy," Chow promised—or threatened.

Jenna crossed her arms. "Loving the banter, but not getting the data, boys."

Tom rose from his contour seat at the deck’s main instrument console. "It’s like this." He drew an arcing serpentine curve in the empty air, like a drunken letter S. "That’s what NASA’s researchers saw when they enhanced the scanner readings from LIP-8—the latest of the Lunar Ice Probe series."

"Right," Jenna nodded; "searching for traces of water-ice in deep craters at the lunar poles. They detected something in the crash plume, didn’t they?"

"Jetz!" Bud called out. "Is this supposed to be a
plumed
serpent, genius boy?"

Chow looked startled. "Hunh? You mean like that big wall carving we saw in Yooky-tan? With th’ jim-danged funny name?"

Tom shook his head. "No, this has nothing to do with Kukulcan. The ‘plume’ is the miles-high splash of particles caused when the impactor module released by the probe crashed into the lunar crust. It’s all but invisible to the eye, but the probe’s rear-view instruments are able to analyze its composition."

"But what exactly did the instruments detect?" asked Jenna impatiently. "The science news articles were pretty vague."

"They didn’t detect anything unusual," continued the youth, "at least no unexpected compounds or substances among the particulates. But when they used their computers to map out the overall shape of the plume—"

"Curved like a giant space serpent ready to pounce," Bud finished. "You know, Jenna. Cobra in a basket."

"I see," said the chemist. "Not the usual mushroom cloud."

"They detected a strong density gradient in the plume that twisted back on itself as the particles fell back to the surface at one-sixth G. That’s never been observed before. The scientists think it might be some unexplained MHD effect."

Chow raised an eyebrow. "Now boss, yew don’t need t’ use initials in front o’ modern young ladies no more—these days they kin take salty language." The westerner paused. "Er, no offense meant, ma’am."

"Don’t worry, Chow, you’re absolutely right," Jenna reassured him. "I’m modern enough to know that ‘MHD’ means magnetohydrodynamics."

The rotund older man blushed beneath his prairie tan. "Didn’t expect her t’say it full out," he murmured.

Tom plunged ahead. "They assume it’s an electromagnetic effect connected to solar-gamma ionization of the crustal particles. But that’s just speculation. NASA asked us to hop up there while things are still ‘hot’—it could be a transitory phenomenon."

"It probably is," agreed Jenna. "And I’m just being a pill, of course. I’m glad to be along, Tom." She turned toward Chow. "And I’ll try to watch my mouth from here out, Chow."

"Thanks kindly, ma’am. Guess I’m a mite more deli-cut than I figgered."

Passing the midpoint of the journey of three hours, the ship flipped over and began to eat its acquired speed at a 1-G rate. As they slowed, the swelling globe of Luna was beneath their feet. Some hundred minutes later, as the curve of the half-illuminated orb became a true horizon, Tom directed Bud to lay in a course that would take them over the southern pole. "The LIP-8 impact point was a deep crater on the lunar farside called Aldeb," Tom noted to Jenna and Chow. "There’s no direct line-of-sight to Earth. The plan is to hover and take readings, then land if anything looks interesting."

"Things already look interesting to these penetrating eyes," said Rafael Franzenberg. His penetrating eyes were aimed at Jenna Deames. The bluff, blustery physicist—who also held degrees in chemistry and electronics—was notorious for his appreciation of the feminine aspects of science, which the feminine aspects of science sometimes failed to appreciate in return.

The
Challenger
crossed the pole and Planet Earth sank below the horizon. The vessel finally cruised to a halt above a small, well-like crater, its bottom deeply shadowed since the birth of the moon. "Aldeb, Skipper," announced Bud.

"Down to two miles and cruise ahead slow, pal. Right across the center, from one wall to the other."

"Wilco."

"I’ve started the full instrumental scan, Tom," called out Hank from his assigned control panel. "No infrared hotspots."

"LRGM?"

"Nothing unusual," came the reply. Tom’s LRGM, the Long-Range Gravitoscopic Mapper, used minute gravitation differentials to pinpoint the presence of buried objects of higher mass-density.

Tom approached with a nod. "Okay. What’s this activity on the polyfrequency monitor?"

Hank’s eyebrows showed the young engineer’s surprise. "Just now crossed the detection threshold—and jumpin’ like a wildfire! Upper range stuff on all frequencies." The space veteran looked up at his boss. "High gamma, Tom. We’ve got some kind of
nuking
going on somewhere. It’s not from the sun."

"It has to be a nuclear reaction—natural—or
not
." The thought was as ominous as it was exciting. "I think it’s growing because it’s partly blocked by the ground material and we’re cruising closer to the break where it leaks out."

"Skipper, there’s a crack or something ahead, near the crater wall," reported Bud. "Narrow but way deep, according to the penetradar."

"Park right on top of it," Tom directed his chum.

"Uh, now..." sputtered Chow quietly but definitely. "Nuclear stuff—them gammer things—ain’t that radionation? Makes yer hair fall out? Slough off yer skin like a blame snake?"

Dr. Franzenberg harrumphed. "It can also melt fat and cause mutated glowing eyes to appear in the stomach region. Only if one is susceptible, of course. Feel vulnerable?"

"Aaa, yuh’re jokin’... r-right?"

"The
Chal’s
Inertite coating will protect us completely, old-timer," said Bud soothingly. He himself teased his rotund friend daily and didn’t care to have Franzenberg take the job over.

Tom was not in a mind for banter, not while on the scent of a strange scientific phenomenon. "The wave profile is extremely intense, though it’s a mishmash of frequencies. Some kind of shifting self-interference is creating a structured pattern above the fissure, extending far out into space for hundreds of miles—even thousands."

"If it’s nuclear radiation, I’ve never seen anything like it," commented Jenna, puzzled and intrigued. "It’s a mixture, all right, but not like random nuke output. It’s more like the coherent output of lasers or masers—but from billions, trillions of sources, all differently tuned but within certain parameters."

"That don’t
en
-lighten me much," shrugged Chow. "Not like I need to know."

"It’s ionizing radiation," Franzenberg added.

"Like I said."

The ship was now hovering at a full stop above Crater Aldeb, the dark gash of the crevice below them. "Man, I don’t think even starlight could get far down in
that
hole," Bud said. "Great place to search for ice."

"That’s the idea," rejoined Franzenberg. He pointed out and down through one of the two big cabin viewpanes. "See that splash of color over there? That’s where the LIP-8 impactor hit."

"Pretty close. The impact ground-shock may have stirred up something in the fissure," Tom mused. "It’s the twisted interference patterns in the wave-output that caused the plume to bend back. Something energetic is down in that crevice."

Bud glanced over uneasily. "Something? We’ve had trouble with
somethings
before. Come to think of it, in that old movie it was when they found a ‘magnetic anomaly’ on the moon that all the problems started!"

"I’ll be on the lookout for black monoliths," said the young inventor dryly. "Bud, let’s have some light."

Bud switched on and focused the
Challenger
’s powerful hull searchlights, aiming them straight down into the crevice. The beams were invisible in the airless environs of Luna, but the sides of the crevice suddenly leapt into clear view.

Tom studied the video monitor. "Deep, all right, but nothing visible."

"Nothing in the optical range," Hank corrected him; "but the gamma is toppin’ the charts."

"Go up the ladder, Hank," Tom directed. "We may get an image out of the higher frequencies even below the gamma."

Sterling fed commands into the board computer. As the hull receivers began to capture frequencies above the realm of visible light, the scene on the monitor went dark. But after a moment, a hazy image began to form. "Getting something at high ultraviolet," breathed Hank.

The others were now clustered around the instrument command board, necks craning to see over the shoulders of Hank and Tom.

"I—I can’t believe it," gasped Jenna Deames with what little breath was left to her.

As the others boggled, Chow gave a name to the image on the video monitor screen. "B-brand my rattlers, it’s true! True as Texas truth!
Moon serpents!
"

The eye of the camera disclosed a crevice full of writhing serpentine shapes of monstrous size!

Franzenberg huffed dismissively. "A nicely romantic idea. But the only snakes down there are imaginary ones, Lunar pink elephants. Those are self-reinforcing plasma motes, squirming around in the coils of their magnetic lines of force."

"But what are they made of?" asked Jenna.

"Almost nothing," was Hank’s cool reply. "On Earth we’d call it a vacuum."

"A vacuum with shape, though," Tom declared. "More like wisps of dust. Nothing much on the telespectrometers..." He straightened up. "We need a closer look. Let’s capture some of the fissure plasma in the telesampler. Bud, take us down to a couple hundred feet for a better angle."