Tom Swift and the Mystery Comet (21 page)

"Because Starro and Tarski are getting deeper into the gravitational field of the sun as they move along. More energy locked-up in local spacetime."

Within the hour the instability of the
Challenger
’s repelatrons had become evident to human senses. Everyone could feel the ship accelerating and decelerating, wobbling, twisting, rocking like a raft in rough seas. But still they hurtled Earthward, and Tom pursued his idea feverishly, consulting continuously with his father and the Enterprises team via PER.

As the repelatron problem worsened alarmingly Tom concluded that it would be unsafe to attempt atmospheric reentry and a landing. Instead he had Bud place the ship into the proper trajectory for a rendezvous with the space outpost—and killed the repelatrons completely. "We’ll just use them as we approach, very briefly," Tom explained.

Lett Monica strode over to Tom, keeping half an eye on the glowering Dr. Sarcophagus at the other side of the control compartment. "If I could ask—what is there in your ingenious plan that requires our return to Earth?—and yet not for a landing?"

"It has to do with the telesampler," Tom replied. "I think I can use it against the staroid."

"Hmm. Great jets! Do you plan to use the sampling beam to ‘sample’ it to pieces?"

"I don’t think I can ‘sample to pieces’ something with the mass of the Moon," said the youth dryly. "What I’m going to do is scoop up something from Earth—and then use the telesampler
in reverse!
Maybe it’s just something from my feverish imagination, Lett. But unless it works, I’m afraid we don’t have any hope at all!"

WHETHER devised by science, spirit, or human alchemy, Tom Swift’s bold plan was not to shove the neutronium fragment from its deadly course—but to destroy it utterly!

Tom explained his idea to the others on the main deck of the
Challenger
—a group which included Kenneth Horton, for the ship had made its shaky arrival and now floated one hundred feet from the rotating space outpost.

"I shore do like th’ idea," said Chow, "but how’re ya gonna do it? Blow ’er up with a bomb?"

"I don’t think even an American H-bomb could make much headway against something that can flatten the Statue of Liberty!" commented Lett.

"Or maybe your X-rasers?" speculated Ken.

Tom shook his head. "There’s no weapons technology on Earth that could have any effect at all on our ‘little big man’," he declared. "I doubt even the space friends could do anything. Little Luna’s just a peanut compared to Starro.

"But there’s one thing that’s effective against
anything
," Tom continued. "Namely antimatter!"

"Antimatter!" Bud looked stunned. "Good grief! We’ve been able to deal with it before, but―"

"Antimatter isn’t bothered by mass," Hank noted. "It
eats
mass!"

"Hmmph!—I guess the space critter’d make a good meal fer it, then," Chow put in.

"Before I toss in my vital okay—I think I need a few details, chief," said Horton. "I know you have a source of antimatter from that mountain in Africa. What do you plan to do, lob a chunk at the staroid? Man, it’s a mighty
small
target a great
big
hunk of distance away!"

"You’re right," agreed the young inventor. "But we have something designed for pinpoint accuracy—the telesampler."

"Here comes the ‘reverse English’ idea!" Lett enthused.

"From here in orbit, I’m going to aim the capture beam at Earth, right into the antidiracinium bed under Mount Goaba," explained Tom. "I don’t need much material, just a fraction of an ounce. Once we have it in the tank, I’ll reorient the transmitron and target the star fragment. But this time, instead of taking a sample, I’ll be
sending
a sample—a stream of antidiracinium molecules aimed right smack at the middle of our little marble!"

"Yup!" murmured Bud wide-eyed. "Antimatter—great for getting rid of unwanted anything!"

"We’ve calculated that even a relatively infinitesimal mass of antimatter will be enough to trigger a chain reaction," Hank stated. "The fragment’s entire mass will be converted to energy and dispersed into space."

"If you’ll
permit
me to make a
mild
observation― " croaked Sarcophagus from across the room, "I
trust
you realize the consequences of producing a Moon-sized blast. Even at a distance of tens of millions of miles― "

"It’s all been calculated," Tom said evenly. "And by
real scientists
at Enterprises. I’m sure you’re familiar with Dr. Kupp..."

"I even had the dubious pleasure of meeting him."

"All the great brains agree that whatever hard radiation reaches Earth will be sufficiently weakened by the atmosphere to be harmless. Little Luna will be on the far side at that time, by the way, and the outpost and the ship are protected by their Inertite coatings."

Tom had directed the
Challenger
to the outpost because he needed some equipment not stored on the spaceship: the magnetic suspension container he had developed for the express purpose of handling antidiracinium. Installing the complex "bottle" in the telesampler’s matter-receiver consumed something that they had in slight supply—
time
. The fateful moment had to be carefully calculated. Tom wanted the explosion to take place while the staroid was behind the gaseous coma of Comet Tarski from the point of view of the earth. "There’s not much to it, but at least it’ll
help
damp down the radiation," Tom explained to Bud as they worked to ready the telesampler. "It’s a window that’s closing, though, as the two move along and the angles change."

Bud nodded. "Tom... not that this is very important right now, but—what about that mystery stalker and his threats? We still haven’t figured out who doped up those toy swords, and ol’ Doc Sarco’s not exactly a picture of mental health."

"I know," sighed his pal. "I’m just glad Lett’s keeping an eye on him.
And
that Dr. Feng’s keeping his distance!"

Finally came the crunch, the moment of action. Because it was impossible to completely stabilize the huge, massive
Challenger
as it floated freely, Tom separated the transmitron unit from its swivel base on the main body of the machine, and he and Bud, in their spacesuits, gently guided it a few yards out into the void. "Its own internal gyros will do a better job if it doesn’t have to cope with movements of the
Chall
," Tom had told his friend. "We’ll float it."

The space model of the telesampler was much larger than the test model Tom had taken on the
Sky Queen
. Its transmitron assembly consisted of a curving trough of a special transparent material, with the two X-raser emitter tubes mounted at either end. The jointed waveguide conduit led from the rear of the receiving unit to the main chassis, which remained in the ship’s vehicular hangar.

Floating nearby—and making absolutely sure they were not in the way of the X-raser beams!—Tom used the Spektor in his gloved hand to activate the transmitron, pointed toward the eastward horizon of the blue Earth below. "Ranging contact confirmed," he murmured into his suit transiphone. "We’ve acquired position next to Mount Goaba. Here goes
scooping
!"

Bud’s answer was unheard—a gulp. If the magnetic bottle malfunctioned even slightly, the antimatter explosion would disintegrate the
Challenger
and hurl what was left of the boys into deep space!
And—and we
have
had a few little equipment problems lately,
he thought,
thanks to our buddy Starro!
What if the containment field were vulnerable to the spacetime tidal waves!

But the matter was already in motion. As the ends of the X-raser tubes glowed with a faint corona, Tom reported jubilantly: "
Got it!
Antidiracinium in the container, fresh from Africa!"

Tom now expertly remote-controlled the transmitron into its reverse orientation. Bud could almost see the line joining the wave-beam projector to the distant, deadly staroid—by far the smallest target humanity had ever tried to hit!

"She’s steady," said Tom, now icily calm. "The positioning beam is on its way. Bounceback in nine minutes."

Hanging in space, it was a very long nine minutes.

"Here it is!" cried Tom. He made final positioning adjustments, then activated the powerful capture beam, which was now propelling captured antimatter
away
from the telesampler and off into space. "Well, flyboy, for better or worse the load’s on its way."

"To a meeting with a piece of a star!"

"Let’s go back aboard," Tom directed. "We have hours to kill before anything happens." Leaving the transmitron outside to continue sending the beam that propelled the stream of molecules, Tom and Bud jetted back into the vehicular hanger, then through the airlock and into a pressurized corridor.

"I’m going up for some snacks," Bud told Tom, pulling off his helmet. "Man, I’m beat."

Tom nodded. "I’ll be up in a while, but I want to look over the comet samples. Say—if you see Dr. Feng, ask him if he’d like to join me, will you? He deserves a chance to see with his own eyes a few pieces of the White Queen!" The several sample cases, flat transparent containers honeycombed into minute cells, had been moved from the hangar bay into the corridor for easier examination.

Tom waited in the hallway for a time, and was pleased when the elderly scholar stepped out of the interdeck elevator. "Tom! What an overwhelming experience this has been!"

"How do you feel, Dr. Feng?"

"Fine and well. Perhaps my subconscious has been emptied of whatever my long alchemical studies put into it." He stepped closer with a sympathetic smile. "And I’m glad we’re alone, Tom. I wished to take the liberty to say something to you of a personal nature."

"What, sir?"

"A small observation," he said. "Perhaps it’s the practicing psychotherapist within me that speaks. You’ve been troubled, Tom, for quite some time. I’ve sensed it. I’ve read it on your face, as long ago as the Phoenix convention. It preceded the entire affair of the comet and the staroid—didn’t it."

Brow furrowed, Tom nodded. "I really can’t explain it, Doctor. When the repelatrons started failing, I had... a weird reaction. All those things Sarcophagus brought up seemed to make it worse. I don’t know why."

"Here’s something to consider," the man said earnestly. "I know something of you and your history, Tom. Your first inventions—in some ways they were elaborations and improvements upon the work of others, don’t you think?"

"I guess you could say that," admitted the youth. "Bigger and better jets, robots, rockets, a bathysphere for a volcano... even the special engine for the jetmarine came from someone else’s discoveries. I was pretty much a tinkerer, I think."

"And a good one. But the repelatron was quite different, Tom. For
that
one you had become a ‘real scientist,’ to use Sarkiewski’s term. You created something the world had never seen before, and it’s been crucial to nearly everything you’ve done ever since."

"True. The repelatron’s my special baby..."

"Who seemed ready to let you down, Tom—to betray you. That’s a serious hurt, my friend. Your scientific credibility was suddenly thrown into doubt, do you see? Irrational as it seems to us, your
mind
asked: What if this invention of mine, this sign of my prowess, has only a transient existence? What if it gets
taken back?
What if the skeptics are right after all, and the dream of manhood attained is shown to be only― "

Dr. Feng stopped abruptly at a sound. Tom turned as the elevator door opened and Dr. Sarcophagus emerged, followed by Lett Monica.

Sarcophagus turned to Lett coldly. "You told me Feng was down here alone."

"No, Sarco, I only said I knew he was heading down here," corrected the Brungarian. "Why does it matter? Planning to make one of your ugly scenes?"

"I wanted to speak to Dr. Feng on a personal level," the skeptic said. "Might you two others do me the favor of leaving us alone for a few minutes?"

Lett barked out a laugh. "No way, man! You might punch our alchemical friend in the nose."

"If you have something pressing to say, Sarkiewski, you’ll have to say it in front of Lett and myself," pronounced Tom.

The man shrugged. "Fine. But at least step over here, Feng, so I don’t have to blurt it out across the room."

Feng approached warily. "If this is an apology, sir, there is no need. Let us declare an armistice, shall we?"

"An armistice? Why not a nonaggression pact?" The skeptic gave a slight, thin smile. Tom noticed that his face was white—drained. "Well now,
herr wissendoktor,
I don’t have the authority to negotiate with you. That authority belongs to some people who have been dead for more than half a century."

Tom blanched. Dr. Sarcophagus had pulled a tiny handgun from his pocket and was pointing it at Karl Feng! "Don’t move, Karl. I have a pathetic urge to say something before I pull this trigger. And Tom, Monica—one step this way and I cut the speech short and send Feng into the great blank Beyond."

Dr. Feng stared at the pistol, his hands slightly raised and trembling. "My dying amounts to little, sir, but it saddens me that your crusade against me has led you so far—you, the great man of rationality and scientific truth."

"Oh yes, it has its ironies all right," replied Sarcophagus with a shrill voice. "But fact is fact, whether humanly rational or not. Your mother’s father, Otto Reizlinter, chose to betray his friends to the Nazis—men and women of my grandparents’ generation, a branch of my family. Who speaks for them now? You have your voices, Feng, and I have mine. Long as I’ve lived I’ve sought, rationally and methodically, to uncover the truth and heal the wound. The past makes its claims, doesn’t it?—
you
of all people should know that, Feng. I now have the great honor of closing the circuit. Pardon the corn, but this gun shoots justice. At least a partial justice, hmm? One all-but-finished life for a couple dozen barely begun."

"I know nothing of the actions of my mother’s father," protested Dr. Feng.