Tom Swift and His G-Force Inverter (2 page)

"I’d like some local crust samples as well," Jenna suggested. "Some scoops from the sides and bottom, too."

"I need the same," muttered Rafe Franzenberg suavely, with a sidelong glance at the chemist.

"Shall I extend the transmitron antennas, Skipper?" Bud asked Tom.

The young inventor hesitated, then shook his head. "No, let’s not use the small model. I’d like some heftier samples to take back to NASA—and Enterprises. I’ll go down and roll the large model out onto the vehicular deck."

Leaving the control cabin, Tom elevatored down to the airlock compartment adjoining the
Challenger
’s big vehicular hangar, where he donned one of the ship’s standard spacesuits. "Okay, flyboy," he transiphoned. "I’m suited up. Open hangar panel two."

Interior air pressure at zero, a high door of folding slats was rolled upward, revealing starry space and the tops of the crater-wall peaks in the farther distance. A large, bulky apparatus of rods and rings awaited the young inventor. This was the business end of his recent telesampler invention, which used invisible beams, reflected back from its target, to excise and retrieve samples of matter for electronic analysis. After his use of the telesampler in his recent probe of some intruders to our solar system, recounted in
Tom Swift and The Captive Planetoid
, the youth had installed a much smaller model in its own bay in the hull of the
Challenger
. But this larger, more powerful model remained in the hangar.

With local gravitation one-sixth of Earth’s it was an easy matter to roll the transmitron unit—the telesampler’s antenna array—out onto the spaceship’s wide "front porch." Magnetic coils in the soles of Tom’s space-boots allowed him to grip the deck, giving him enough traction to dig-in as he shoved the equipment into place at the very edge of the vehicular landing stage. Anchoring the mechanism he then adjusted the angle, pointing the paired antenna-rods almost straight down into the fissure. "Okay," he transiphoned. "How’re the readings on the main board, Hank?"

"Nominal, Skipper. Shall I fire her up?"

"Go ahead. Let’s see what pops up in the collector cells."

Space seemed just as dead and empty the moment after Hank Sterling activated the telesampler as the moment before. But one thing was no longer empty. Through its transparent cover Tom could see minute specks of color appearing in the containment cells of the retrieval tank. "We’re getting
something
," he mused, half to himself.

What came back over the transiphone was a cry of alarm! "
Tom! Big energy spike across the board!
"

But the young inventor barely heard. Movement and a flick of light had drawn his eye to the darkness below, inside the crevice. A bizarre circular form, transparent as a ghost yet glowing like neon, had risen into view. Somewhat disk-shaped, the object didn’t so much move as
flow
along, writhing and twisting like jelly while maintaining its basic outline, edge upward toward the ship. About ten feet across, it was small with distance at first. But it didn’t pause as it passed the lip of the fissure, emerging into the open—it continued to climb spaceward, accelerating as it drew nearer the hovering
Challenger
. In seconds it had risen over the horizon of the vehicular platform like the dawn of a very bad day!

Tom stood with wide eyes as the object seemed to gather itself together, looming ominously. Having turned horizontal it was now much more like a solid disk. Its outer edge surged and flickered as if in rapid rotation. A fringe of sharply angled projections were visible along the periphery. The rotation made them hard to make out as they blurred past, but the impression was all too clear.
The teeth of a buzzsaw!

Bud was in Tom’s helmet ear, shouting at his pal to get back inside. But Tom Swift barely registered the familiar voice. He seemed rooted in place. And as the whirling disk of light suddenly began to approach, he discovered that his immobility wasn’t a matter of awe or fear—he couldn’t move his feet from their spot on the deck!

The edge of the advancing disk grazed one of the
Challenger
’s thick metal rail-rings, leaving behind a shiny streak as if the paint—or the metal beneath!—had been gouged away. In a few thudding heartbeats the whirling saw-blade would touch Tom’s spacesuit—and very likely continue right on through him!

TOM could still hear a babble of voices over his helmet transiphone. Chow—goood old Chow!—was shouting.

"
Bud, take off! Git ’er outta here! Mebbe we can leave that thing b’hind!
"

Bud took the advice. Tom suddenly was thrust down into a crouching position by the jolt of acceleration as the
Challenger
leapt spaceward like a cannon shot. But it was useless. The
Thing
barely wavered in its whirling assault.

Tom Swift’s mind worked well under pressure. His life at stake, his scientific curiosity and analytical prowess nonetheless kept pace with events and sometimes gave forth sparks of inspiration. With a gasp he struggled to stand against the upward acceleration of the ship, stretching out a gloved hand toward a set of auxilliary controls on the transmitron’s positioning stanchion. Half-falling against the control panel, he slammed a fist hard against a lighted button.

"Ohh!" he gulped.
The floating buzzsaw-blade had instantly blinked out of existence!

Tom found that he could lift his feet again. Trembling, he staggered backwards into the hangar interior, and the descending cover panel suddenly blocked-out his view.

"I’m inside—I’m f-fine—" he panted into the helmet mike. "Flyboy—wh-what’s the status out on the landing deck?"

"No sign of anything, Tom. I’m slowing to full stop. We’re miles high now and away from the crater."

"Good. I’ll be up in a minute. I’m leaving the telesampler in place for now."

"Ye-ahh," Tom heard Chow mutter. "Don’t much reck-o-mend goin’ right back out t’ fetch it!"

Dazedly pulling off his spacesuit Tom returned to the control compartment and the pale faces that awaited. "It was awful!" Jenna Deames gasped. "Tom, what
was
that thing out there?"

Rafael Franzenberg commenced a pompously authoritative response. "
Obviously
, what we—"

"I
believe
I was asking our captain," snapped Jenna.

"I guess my answer is a shrug," Tom replied quietly. "I have no idea what that ‘buzzsaw’ was."

"But look, Skipper," Bud began, "we’ve seen space disks like that before. Couldn’t it be one of those ‘light-ships’ the Space Friends use?"

Earthly astronauts had encountered many examples of unearthly technology since friendly extraterrestrials had first contacted Tom Swift by means of their mathematical symbol-language. Some of their interplanetary vehicles had solid fuselages designed in accordance with standard aerodynamic principles; but when there was to be no attempt at atmospheric penetration, the never-glimpsed beings often made use of discoid craft that seemed to be composed of pure energy—as if made of light itself.

But the young inventor gave back an impatient headshake. "No. If the SF’s had something to do with this, it was for some completely new purpose. I’m sure the object wasn’t a vehicle."

"Aw now, it’s plain as th’ Pecos what it was!" Chow asserted. "Brand my ol’ six-gun, it’s a weapon! Them snake-people down in that hole shot off a buzzsaw t’ bring down the whole blame ship!"

"Maybe they just wanted to give Tom a buzz-cut," was Bud’s nervous wisecrack.

"As I was
about
to say," snorted Dr. Franzenberg, "
all
instrumental evidence confirms that this was merely another form of the same contoured plasma-motes that we detected inside the crevice. It’s child’s-play to calculate how electromagnetic entrainment could produce such a simple shape—even produce the illusion of rapid rotation. Not that such thing’s aren’t dangerous. Ultra-concentrated high-energy plasmas can attain tremendous temperatures."

"I think I saw an example," Tom gulped.

"If it’s just Mother Nature in a bad mood, what caused it to zoom up to the
Challenger
and attack Tom?" demanded Bud of Franzenberg.

"That’s what shows that Rafe’s analysis is right on the beam," Tom replied. "When I was trapped out there I suddenly realized how the ‘buzzsaw’ appeared, not when we arrived, but when we started probing with the telesampler. The capture beam must have fed additional energy into whatever’s going on down there, setting off a reaction that generated the mote as a form of waste-energy. It was drawn along the electromagnetic gradient of the telesampler beam right up to the transmitron. When I switched it off, the mote dissipated."

"The recorded readings support what you’re saying, Tom," agreed Hank Sterling. "Except for one thing. Why weren’t you able to move? You said it was as if your boots were stuck in place."

"It was nightmarish," Tom nodded. "The self-reinforcing magnetic field that gave the mote its shape must have caused a secondary field in the deck coils, by induction. It amplified the normal effect of the gripper-coils in my boot soles."

"Well, boys, there’s still a scientific phenomenon to investigate and explain," urged Jenna. "Something is generating a tremendous amount of electromagnetic energy down there and radiating it away into space, massively."

"I agree with our provocative little lady," sniffed Franzenberg.

Chow scratched his bald dome. "Mebbe one o’ them lodestones? I hear they’s
packed
with magnetism! Had a great big one in a museum in Carson City. Made my teeth feel funny."

"You bit it?" asked Bud.

Tom smiled. "Maybe our telesampler ‘grabs’ will tell us the story. Let’s continue the probe—"

"From a nice safe height," Bud added.

They spent several hours cruising above the fissure at an altitude of two hundred miles, retrieving thousands of microsamples that were immediately subjected to various modes of analysis. As the
Challenger
began to accelerate toward home, Tom reported:

"The ‘serpents’ and the ‘buzzsaw’ are covered by the Franzenberg Theory—low-density ionized plasmas clumped together by electromagnetic effects that are pretty well understood."

"But what produced the ionizing radiation in the first place?" asked Jenna. "Even subsurface nuclear material—"

"The ionizing EM radiation is coming up from under the ground, all right, but it’s not a lode of nuclear material," Tom pronounced. "The local atmosphere has been
spiked
."

"Hunh?" Bud reacted. "
What
‘atmosphere’?"

"The moon is airless, but that doesn’t mean local space is
absolutely
empty. The solar wind—even ordinary heating and cooling—gives rise to a barely detectable ‘atmosphere’ of dust particulates, hydrogen, helium, argon, sulphur, and so forth. Even microtraces of oxygen and water vapor. Over billions of years the stuff tends to settle inside better-protected places, such as deep craters or our crevice here.

"That’s what the plasma is
made of
," he went on. "That—and a little more. According to the telesampler, the wisps inside the fissure are seeded with monoatomic molecules of an unidentified substance, which is laced all through the fissure walls and along the bottom. These atoms, whether in the ground or drifting free, are the source of the ionizing radiation—and also the shifting interference patterns behind the complex electromagnetic effects we’re seeing."

"And that’s what caused what LIP-8 observed?" asked Hank.

"I think so. Evidently the shockwave from the impactor dislodged extra material from the crevice walls, which fed a much stronger interaction than usual. The repelatron beams from the
Challenger
must’ve had a similar effect."

"A matter for physicists to ponder," noted Franzenberg.

Jenna smiled icily. "It’s a worthy goal. We all benefit by keeping the minds of physicists
occupied
."

"My mind is constantly occupied."

"Maybe you should try occupying it
yourself
."

"Er—I’ll be upstairs in cubicle five," Tom cut in hastily.

The young inventor spent an hour concentrating intently on the various instrumental readings as the ship neared the earth. Presently he felt a hand on his shoulder. "It seems Miss Deames is immune to my many and considerable charms," snorted Rafael Franzenberg.

Tom chuckled sympathetically. "Maybe you’re not her type."

"Just my fool luck to encounter a chemist—a
chemist
!—with good taste," grumped the physicist who was also, himself, a chemist. "Tom, this electromagnetic phenomenon... You’re not saying it outright, but you and I know what this could mean."

The young inventor nodded. "I don’t want my eagerness to trump good science. But I’m beginning to think you’re right. Rafe, this lunar material—"

"Could well be the answer to the tech problems in my special project—
our
project," finished Franzenberg. "It could bring the GDI close to completion, Tom."

"Inverting the force of gravity!" Tom breathed in excitement.

Within the hour the
Challenger
had touched down on tiny Fearing Island, the Enterprises space facility off the coast of Georgia. Shortly thereafter, Tom and his friends were winging north to New York and Shopton in the three-deck
Sky Queen
, Tom’s supersonic Flying Lab. Jenna Deames, who lived in nearby Georgia, remained at the base to continue her study of the lunar material.

In the huge jetcraft’s spacious "wheelhouse," Tom piloting, Bud answered a beep from his copilot’s control board. He listened to his headset, then put the incoming radio signal on the speaker with a nod at Tom. "Tom, this is Mary in Fearing Communications. A radio distress call has been relayed to us by the Coast Guard—a private plane’s in trouble over the ocean some sixteen miles off Norfolk, Virginia."

"Not far from the
Queen
," Tom noted.

"The pilot was informed you were in range. It seems the situation is pretty serious and you may be able to help."

"Scoop him up from the water when he ditches, you mean?"