Tom Swift and the Asteroid Pirates (17 page)

"What a meal!" Tom said, after finishing a final morsel. "I feel like a million!"

Bud chuckled in agreement. "After a feast like that, I’m ready for anything!"

"Same way we felt," Chow said.

"It must be extremely nourishing," Tom mused, "and produce a psychochemical effect as well." He turned to Kent. "You’re our resident mineralogist. What’s your take on this?"

The blond, husky scientist scraped out another piece of the red-orange ore and handed it to Tom. "Take a look with that pocket magnifier the suits carry."

Tom examined the sample. It had definite traces of a cellular structure. "Must be organic!" he announced excitedly.

"Meaning what?" Bud asked.

"It was formed from living matter, just like coal or petroleum! Don’t you realize what this means!" Tom said excitedly. "This bears out the theory that Nestria is a remnant of some much larger body, maybe even an exploded planet, which sustained a living biosphere!"

"How come?" Bud asked with a puzzled look.

"Ah, because Nestria by itself could never have developed an appreciable atmosphere and supported life," answered Dr. Jatczak.

"One thing I’ve been wondering is—who worked this mine in the first place?" Simpson asked. "The space scientists?"

Tom shrugged. "I assume so. But then again—maybe they found the workings in this condition when they first landed!"

"Er—say there, folks," Chow interrupted. "That fancy talk is all well ’n good, but shouldn’t we be out there stompin’ that cobra varmint?"

"You’re right," Tom said, suddenly grim. "Miracle rock or no, you scientists can’t stay holed up underground. We’ve got to overcome Li and his troops somehow, and disperse the barrier if possible." Tom asked Rockland if he had brought his PER unit along with him.

"Yes, I thought our electronics people could do something with it. But no go, so far. It just plain stopped working."

"Let me look at it," Tom said.

Using tools from his suit, the young inventor carefully scrutinized the complex circuitry of the Private Ear radio. "I’ve found the problem," he pronounced at last. "Some of the key components are frazzled internally. Apparently the antimatter bombs, small as they were, produced localized EMP effects that fried the innards of the PER by induction. I think I can get around the problem by rerouting some of the circuits."

"What are you planning?" asked Doc. "To call Earth?"

"We can call Earth anytime—there’s a working PER on the
Unstoppable
," Tom explained. "What I want to be able to do is to keep in touch with you guys. I brought the Nestria quantum cartridge along with me in the ship."

Returning to his spacecraft with Bud, Tom reported to the
Challenger
and to his father back in Shopton, then lifted off, a strategy in mind.

They made a high arc over Nestria in the direction of the base. Tom was no longer concerned about being seen. "They’ll be seeing us pretty clearly in about a minute anyway," remarked Bud.

As he swooped down over the asteroid, Tom noted that more work had been done on the missile fortifications near the
Fanshen
. Gimballed launch tracks had been set up on all sides. "I’m sure that sentinel has given the alert, and the Cobra is ready to defend his outpost."

"But he doesn’t know that Tom Swift has a few counterweapons up his blue-striped sleeve!" chortled Bud. "But what if he uses those antimatter bombs against us, like he did when he attacked Base Galileo?"

"I’m sure that’s exactly what he’s using as warheads on his mini-missiles," was the tense reply. "But as for the system he used before—from the description, I think it’s an approach that uses focused laser beams to
push
the explosive capsules down toward the ground faster than the low gravity here could pull them. It may be rigged to allow a more precise degree of guidance. But the point is, I’m betting the ejection ports and beamers are only on the
underside
of the
Fanshen
."

"Sure—which explains the need for the missiles," commented Bud.

The radiocom suddenly bleeped. At a click, a familiar voice, oily and imperious, barked from the speaker. "Tom Swift!—it
is
you, isn’t it, Tom? Of course it is. Who else has the skill and youthful foolhardiness to penetrate my fortifications? For all your attempts at concealment, our instruments spy the wake of your vehicle as it cleaves the air you have given this tiny world."

Tom lifted the microphone with a resigned glance at Bud. "I don’t suppose it’s worth the time to ask you to surrender, Comrade-General."

"What nonsense. Yet I am willing to embarrass both of us to ask it of
you
, Tom. Surrender. I will grant your faithful friend, undoubtedly at your side, his life—the others as well. The gates of my Great Wall will be opened. I will allow your big spaceship to land and take them all back to Earth, everyone but the very valuable Tom Swift."

"Or you’ll close the gate after the
Challenger
landed. Isn’t there usually a second part to the offer? The threat?"

"As a matter of fact, there is. Cooperate, or I will adjust the radius of the destructive sphere of protection, bringing it down to the surface."

Tom whitened in fear.
There was enough antimatter in the entirety of the barrier cloud to obliterate Nestria completely, in an explosion like a supernova!

"He’s ready to bring down the house," Tom whispered to Bud, "ready to destroy
everything
to uphold his pride and power!"

"Now Tom, this should really be what you Americans call a
no-brainer
," chided the Black Cobra in a suave manner. "Surely I have reason to expect the courtesy of a prompt answer?"

"Sir, my answer is that you’ve made the same mistake you’ve made over and over—you’ve underestimated me!"

TOM cut the radiocom. "Skipper, the missile launch tracks are moving!" Bud sang out.

"So am I." Tom’s hands jumped across the control panel.

"
Firing!
" Bud yelped.

A volley of missiles leapt spaceward toward the hovering
Unstoppable
. They rose like a rank of deadly metal teeth—and scattered in all directions, as if violently swept aside by an invisible hand!

In moments the distant hills on all sides erupted with geysers of blue-white light. "Getting EMP waves from the energy blasts," Tom reported. "Our Inertite-Tomasite coating should handle it, though."

"Looks like Swift genius is handling
everything
!"

Tom grinned. "We may not have enough repelatron power to handle a whole covey of missiles at once—but we sure make up for it in
magnetaser
power!"

Far below the uniformed men were racing toward the
Fanshen
in a panic. A followup missile volley was dispatched with ease, and Tom used the repelatrons for one task they were more than adequate to accomplish. Almost as one, every man below smashed down flat to the ground!

"Imagine it’s a little
discouraging
," Bud remarked.

"Imagine so."

Having put at least a temporary crimp in the Cobra’s plans, Tom and Bud now circled Nestria in the direction of its axis. The
Unstoppable
flew first to Nestria’s north pole, then its south pole, to check on the atmosphere machines. No enemy men could be seen guarding either one. Tom doubted that the Cobra forces had any idea how the atmos-makers worked, and in any event their leader might not have wished to divide his forces at such an early stage of his pirate conquest.

They looped back toward Base Galileo. "Now to make a few threats of our own," Tom said happily. "If the Cobra doesn’t want to crawl on his belly back to Earth, he’ll turn over control of the barrier to― "

Bud’s yelped warning cut Tom off. Something hazy and oblong, dark against the stars, was jetting up from the horizon. "He’s escaping!"

"Bud—if he gets far enough away in space, he’ll have no reason not to constrict the barrier and blow up the asteroid!"

"How long do you think we― "

"Not long! Maybe a half-hour, forty minutes tops—he probably plans to ride it out on the far side of the moon. But below on Earth, the burst of radiation will be fatal.
Half the world could die!
"

Thinking feverishly, Tom had Bud contact the base colonists. "Is there—is there any hope?" asked Kent Rockland.

"There always is!" declared Bud.

Tom had evolved a desperate plan in the pressure of the moment. As he guided the spacecraft up into the sky, he explained to Bud: "The magnetaser isn’t nearly strong enough to blow apart the barrier. But based on what we learned of the material, it
might
be possible to sort of peel away big pieces of it and force them out into space. By my calculations, disrupting even a fairly small proportion of the barrier will cause it to destabilize at some point. The particles will start to repel one another and the Great Wall will evaporate away into space."

Bud put a gentle hand on his pal’s shoulder. "And we’ll be inside the barrier, peelin’ away, when it destabilizes, won’t we. We’ll be sprayed with antimatter like paint spray on a car."

Tom looked at him, not answering in words.

"Oh well." Bud’s conclusion ended the discussion. He knew there was nothing else to be done.

Whirling about Little Luna in a forced-arc orbit, the magnetaser ripped away long curved streamers of glowing matter and hurled them away into space. The action was constant, minute upon minute.

"Getting there, chum?" Bud asked.

"Getting there, chum."

Abruptly Tom gasped as he read one of the sensor dials. "It’s starting!"

"The barrier’s falling apart?"

"It’s constricting!
Li Ching is lowering it!
"

They could do nothing but continue their task at top speed.

Four minutes later Tom gripped Bud’s arm and spoke quietly. "It’s happening. We did it, Bud. The barrier is destabilizing. You can watch the profile on this monitor." The antimatter cloud was rearing upward like a boiling pot!

Tom PER-ed the colonists. "You’re safe now. The barrier is disintegrating."

"But Tom—can’t you outrun the thing?" choked Rockland.

"The reaction is accelerating, Kent. We’ll try."

The
Unstoppable
streaked outward from Nestria on a radial course, trying desperately to outrace the expanding rush of particles. "The wave front is closing the gap," reported Bud dully.

Tom turned to him. His eyes were brilliant with excitement! "Bud—let’s turn the ship around!"

"What!"

"We’ll aim the magnetaser at the wave as it overtakes us—maybe we can make a big enough hole for it to pass by us on all sides!"

Tom reoriented the
Unstoppable
and threw power into the magnetaser. "It may not be enough, flyboy. The particles may leak through."

"I know, Tom. And then― "

"And then," said Tom Swift, "and then it’s like Mr. Bao said."

Bud nodded. "I remember. ‘
Just be lucky!
’"

Chow Winkler stood at the entrance to the mine, gazing at the starry sky that poked through the slight haze of Little Luna’s artificial atmosphere.

"Nice night," said a voice behind him.

"Figgered you’d come up here, Doc," said Chow. "Even though you’re the one who told us t’ stay burrowed up inside the mountain."

"Doctors don’t always take their own advice," Simpson answered. "This is where I want to be right now."

"Me too," said another voice quietly. Violet Wohl made it a threesome.

"When I joined up with Enterprises I had no idea of the wonders Tom and his Dad—and Bud—would show me," murmured Doc presently. "Or the adventure they’d lead me into."

Dr. Wohl nodded. "I found my life here, with Kent and Henrick Jatczak and the others."

"As fer me, guess I’d jest be out on the ol’ prairie with the cactoozies, gettin’ older an’ fatter and a mite bald." The gravel of Chow’s voice was soft for once.

They stood watching the sky.

A spot of light, like a distant flashbulb, winked high above the horizon—and grew. The three flinched back as a brilliant white disk turned the sky to fire!

They stumbled backwards into the shadows of the mine tunnel. Suddenly a chorus of shouts erupted behind them.

"
It’s Tom! He says they’re all right!
"

"It is? He does? Th-they
are
?" sniffled Chow.

"Run!" commanded Doc. "Away from the opening—the rads will kill us!"

As Simpson brought out his medical instruments, Kent Rockland was speaking to Tom over the PER. "Say again,
Unstoppable
! The cheering’s a little loud."

"I’m saying the explosion must have been the
Fanshen
," Tom reported. "Constricting the barrier must have been a bluff, and they were standing-to in space. The dispersion wave hit them square in the nose!"

"Penalty for being the bad guys," noted Kent wryly. "
And
for not having a Tom Swift magnetaser to protect them."

Forty-eight hours later, in Shopton, Tom told his father and Phil Radnor—now joined by Harlan Ames—the final details of the defeat of the asteroid pirates. "There was nothing left of the black spaceship, of course—a little radioactive vapor, which we used the telespectrometers to analyze."

"The Earth is fantastically lucky that the explosion happed on the far side of Nestria," smiled Mr. Swift. "John Thurston says the EMP from the blast was almost totally blocked by the body of the asteroid."

"Can you be sure some of Li Ching’s men aren’t in hiding?" Ames asked.

Phil Radnor retorted, "Oh, I think we can be sure there’s a slew of them still at large somewhere on seven continents—not to mention the oceans!"

Tom laughed. "But if you mean up on Nestria, Harlan, we’ve got armed teams searching the area. Nothing so far. It looks to me like the Cobra and the whole invasion force were in the
Fanshen
, waiting to see how the plan worked out."

"Not favorably, I’d say," noted Tom’s father dryly. "By the way, son," he added, "you’ll be glad to learn that John Tsu is recovering."

Ames commented, "Thurston and his ‘friends’ have now checked him out pretty thoroughly. They won’t tell us much—and I gather
they
weren’t told everything—but apparently Tsu is as your Mr. Bao said, part of a foreign group cooperating with the U.S. to bring down the Cobra. Now, I guess they can all go home."