Tom Swift and His Space Solartron

THE TOM SWIFT INVENTION ADVENTURES

TOM SWIFT

AND HIS SPACE

SOLARTRON

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

"CALLING Tom Swift!"

"Power failure in the wind tunnel!"

"Hey, the presses have stopped in the metalstamping department!"

Excited voices blared out from all corners of Swift Enterprises, many wending their way toward the telephone in Tom Swift’s private laboratory at the ultramodern four-mile-square experimental station. But the telephone bleeped and sputtered in vain. Tom was not there.

In the big assembly building known as the Barn, a lanky, blond youth with deep-set blue eyes switched off his experimental equipment as the lights above him began to flicker and fail.

Tom sighed. Then his pocket phone made a modest chirp and he fished it out of his pocket.

"Tom speaking."

"For Pete’s sake, take it easy, chief!" gasped a voice at the other end of the line. "You’ve popped the main circuit breakers for the whole plant!"

"The load’s off, Art," Tom reported, recognizing the voice of engineer Art Wiltessa. "I just stopped my experiment. My apologies to everyone."

The young inventor clicked off and stood for a moment balefully regarding the odd-looking clump of machinery that silently awaited his next electronic order. Almost hidden behind a dense spiderweb of power-feed cables, the device consisted of a wide, low circular casing with a round depression in the center of its topside, causing it to resemble a rather puffy metal doughnut with a very stunted hole. Above it rose a series of thick disks, one above the other, in a spreading conelike array, the narrow neck of which dipped down into the center of the "doughnut" and touched it at a fine point.

"No use, Matty," murmured Tom. "You’ve got just too much appetite."

"Wa-aal, anybody with an appetite around here better think about losin’ it!" twanged a gravelly voice, none too pleased. "Brand my buckshot, Tom Swift, give folks a warning if you plan blowin’ all the ee-lec-tricity on this here spread!"

Tom’s frustrated frown switched to a broad smile as a chunky, bowlegged, weather-beaten figure came stomping into the big, hangarlike space. Wearing a white chef’s hat and highheeled cowboy boots, Chow Winkler, the Enterprises cook for its executive staff, was pushing a lunch cart in front of his ample midriff.

"Sounds as though you’ve had some trouble, Chow," Tom said sympathetically.

"Trouble? Pardner, I’d call it real misery! And all on account o’ your experimentin’. My mixer went dead jest when I ’as beatin’ up some lemon meringey. My fancy-pants electronic range is as stone-dead as Jesse James. An’ there I was with two dozen half-baked pie shells—not t’mention lunch!"

Chow grunted with disgust as he served Tom the food off the cart. "So there’s your lunch, wrangler— cold beans an’ applesauce."

"Looks good to me," said Tom with a sheepish expression. To emphasize it, he piled into the food hungrily.

"It better be, son, ’cause that’s all I got to offer. Jest lucky you didn’t electrocute yourself into the bargain, messin’ around with all them volts an’ killywatts!" But after a brief pause, the cook’s broad brow began to furrow with concern. "Y’know, boss, I kin prob’ly rustle up somethin’ better right quick. You young fellers need your vitamins and energy."

Tom chuckled silently. He knew that under the old Westerner’s leathery hide beat a heart as warm as Texas sunshine. Chow Winkler had been a ranch cook with a modern-day chuck wagon when he met Tom and his father Damon Swift during the course of a project in the New Mexico desert. He had become so fond of Tom that he agreed to go back to Shopton with them and take on the job of chef for the Swifts at Enterprises. When Tom went on expeditions, he usually accompanied him as cook, confidant, and friend. More than once his dedication and shrewd, seasoned insight had proven invaluable.

"This lunch suits me fine, Chow," Tom reassured him. "I’m sorry about the troubles my tests caused you. And speaking of energy, that’s the problem in a nutshell. Matty here—that’s my new matter-making machine—needs a lot more of it than we can handle."

"More’n this whole place kin handle, sounds like," observed the former Texan, casting a suspicious eye at Tom’s equipment. "Matter-makin’ machine, huh? More like a nerve-wrackin’ machine!"

Tom gave a rueful laugh. "Matty’s been messin’ with
my
nerves too, pard—ever since we got back to Earth!"

Only weeks had elapsed since Tom, Chow, and a large crew had returned from their epic voyage to the moon aboard the newest Swift spacecraft, the colossal
Challenger.
True to form, the youthful scientist-inventor, who had already earned a name for himself in the history books that equaled that of his famous same-named great-grandfather, had plunged full speed into perfecting a bold new idea. It was his test of the key component of his invention that had confounded Enterprises’ power supply and Chow’s oven.

"Shall I explain how my boy here works, Chow? I promise I haven’t explained it to Bud yet!" Tom was teasing his friend. Chow had complained about the fact that Tom usually favored his pal Bud Barclay with an account of his work and ideas before anyone else.

Chow looked doubtful but eased down on the top of a crate, pulling off his chef’s hat. "That’d be fine, son. But make it short—none o’ that mathy-matics that’d drive a junebug crazy. I got me lunch t’ serve."

Tom nodded affectionately. "I’ll do my best. Okay then, what we have here is a machine that makes matter."

"Figgered that," Chow said. "So ain’t we got enough? I got more’n enough, m’self."

Tom chuckled. "Well, the problem is that space travelers don’t have enough of the
right kind
of matter—specifically air and water. On the moon, or when we’re traveling through space," Tom continued, "we’ll be cut off from our natural sources, the supplies we take for granted here on Earth. If this machine could produce oxygen, nitrogen, water, maybe even edible rations of some kind that could be eaten in an emergency, then we could exist away from the earth as long as we wanted to stay."

"Not sech a bad idee," Chow commented, "ceptin’ that ‘edible rations’ part. Don’t sound like good healthy food t’ my way o’ thinking. But as fer the rest—wa-aal, I know you been talkin’ about doin’ some homesteadin’ back up on the moon."

"That’s right," said Tom with a grin. "Lunar colonization—a permanent scientific city—that’s the next logical step. But it won’t get started without air and water."

The westerner frowned. "Thought you already had a machine t’ make air fer ya, boss."

When the mysterious extraterrestrials Tom called his space friends had moved a small asteroid into permanent orbit about our world, the young inventor had led the American rocket expedition that staked claim to the phantom satellite. There on Little Luna, as it had been nicknamed, Tom had used his atmos-maker invention to create a livable environment. "Chow, the atmosphere-making machine only works if the materials in the ground include plenty of oxygen-bearing and nitrogen-bearing compounds for the smelting mechanism to release. Otherwise you’d have to use tanked gases. Unfortunately, the compounds we need are rare on the moon—and of course they don’t exist at all in space itself."

"Made yer point," Chow agreed. "So this here jumble o’ stuff turns out air an’ water like some kinda assembly line, is that it?"

"I
wish
it were that simple," replied the young inventor. "This machine uses a complicated process, involving some cutting-edge quantum theory, to make the substances we need out of loose atoms of solar hydrogen—the ‘solar wind’ that’s always blowing out from the sun into outer space. That’s why I call it a
solartron
as its official name. It’s the latest in a long line of ‘trons’ that manipulate subatomic particles, such as the cyclotron, synchrotron, bevatron—"

"Whoa now!" exclaimed Chow with a look at his watch. "Gotta get a move on—folks is waitin’ on their lunch, sech as it is."

"But pard, I haven’t really explained how—"

"Mebbe some other time, son." As the cook wheeled his cart away in hasty dignity, he seemed to be muttering something under his breath.
"Sike, sink, bev, quanto-squanto—
brand my dictionary!"

Tom soft laughter was interrupted has his pocket phone rang again. The caller proved to be Mr. Greenup, head of the Shopton Municipal Water Company. "Tom, I just called to give you a head’s-up, as they say. Lewton Ajax is on the warpath, and you might be wise to head him off." Ajax was the president of Shining Path Power, the power-supply corporation that supplied the town with its electricity.

"I’ve spoken to Mr. Ajax more than once," Tom remarked. "He
can
get a little hot under the collar."

"As can I," chuckled Greenup. "But Lewton has his friends, you know. They say he’s got Dan Perkins in his corner." Perkins, owner and editor of the
Shopton Evening Bulletin,
had always had a somewhat testy relationship with the town’s biggest newsmaker, Swift Enterprises.

"Dad’s not especially worried, Mr. Greenup, and neither am I," was Tom’s reply. "The power problems have been limited to our facility out here, so far. It looks like we’ll have to go someplace else to work out the bugs anyway—Shining Path Power doesn’t seem to have enough of it!"

Herb Greenup paused. "Well, Tom… I suppose I shouldn’t tell tales out of school, but there’s something you and your father deserve to know."

"About Mr. Ajax?"

"About his attitude toward your plant—and you. It’s fairly well known in certain circles that Lewton Ajax intends to do whatever it takes to shut down Swift Enterprises!"

TOM was aghast. "Shut us down! But why in the world would he try to do something like that?"

"Ah, well, Tom, I’m just telling you what they say," was the cautious answer. "Ajax didn’t grow up in these parts—him and his snooty wife and those four obnoxious sons of his. They brought him in to run the company and make a good profit, and he’s one of those young fellows with big sharp teeth and very flexible morals. Unsociable type. Doesn’t care to apply to the Yachting Society, can’t be bothered with the Excelsis Club."

"I’ve only spoken with him on the phone," Tom remarked. "He seemed civil and rational. Does he have something against Swift Enterprises?"

Mr. Greenup snorted. "No, young fellow, what he has is something
for
the land Enterprises sits on—namely a great greedy desire! He’s one of the ones in favor of massive commercial development all along that side of town. Talks it up—jobs and taxes and all that."

"But we’re the biggest employer in Shopton, and the taxes we pay—" Tom caught himself. "Sorry, Mr. Greenup. It’s just ‘what they say.’ No need to get excited about it. Thanks for the call, though."

But the young inventor was disturbed. He called his father in the main office and they discussed the matter for a while. Mr. Swift could shed no light on the situation—although he admitted to having heard the same rumors.

Tom finished gulping down his food, then in a moment of quick resolve picked up the phone and called Shining Path Power, asking to be put through to Mr. Ajax directly. "Hello, Tom," the man answered, his voice rather cool. "You’ve been on my mind. I was about to give you a jingle."

"I was calling to ask if arrangements could be made to increase the supply of power to Enterprises from the town’s generating plant," Tom said.

"And
I
was calling to tell you that you’re maxing out our capacity. I don’t know what’s going on over there—something of grave worldly importance, I’m sure—but if Enterprises keeps it up our little town is going to have to ante up whatever it takes to produce more generating capacity. We’re looking at the possibility of brownouts and blackouts, Tom. Not only can’t I promise you any increase, but I’d say we’ll have to look at surcharges or serious cutbacks to keep the juice flowing."

"This is all news to me, Mr. Ajax," Tom replied. "We don’t mean to place that sort of burden on the town."

"Oh, I’m sure you don’t." Somehow Ajax sounded a bit sarcastic.

Tom began to think aloud. "With this sort of load… I suppose I should be thinking in terms of tapping the reactor at the Citadel. That’s our nuclear research facility out in—"

Ajax interrupted brusquely. "That’s your concern, not mine. I’ll let you know if any more of these ‘issues’ arise. Have a
bright and powerful
day."

Tom clicked off, deep in thought. As he turned, he suddenly realized that Bud Barclay had entered and was watching him with a half-smile.

"No luck with the electric company?" Bud asked. He began to casually unzip the flight gear shrouding his athletic form. An expert pilot, he had spent most of the morning jetting up to Bangor, Maine, and back, delivering some electronic components to an Enterprises licensee.