Tom Swift in the Race to the Moon (4 page)

"Look you, lad! The name’s Evan and don’t you forget it!" On his tongue
Evan
was
ay-van
and
don’t
was
dawn’t.

Soon after they reached the plant, they proceeded by electric nanocar to the conference room in the administration building where Mr. Swift and Harlan Ames, chief of Enterprises security, were waiting. Bud politely excused himself.

The two had only been provided a sketchy, minimal report on the nature of the problem at hand; though naturally a thorough report had been given the United States government. They understood that they were being asked to accompany the Swift expedition to the moon, and that the main goal, unannounced to the general public, involved attempting to advise the extraterrestrials as to the deadly plague. As the discussion began, Dr. Faber said, "I’m willing to be very suave and blasé about going to the moon with Tom Swift. But if we’re to help, we’ll need to know more about the symptoms of the disease."

Evan Glennon nodded between puffs on his huge briar pipe. "Quite right. And for me, the most precise molecular and chemical data. We can hardly make a diagnosis until we have the facts."

"Unfortunately, it appears the aliens have cut off all communications for the duration," responded Ames. "From a security standpoint that’s a good thing, but it certainly puts you gentlemen in the most difficult position imaginable."

"Quite so," frowned Dr. Faber. "To be frank, I fear success may be well out of reach."

The group exchanged frustrated, baffled looks. Then Evan Glennon said, "Ah, no sense giving up the game in the first round, Anton. We’ll make our examinations on the spot and put our wits to the test, eh?"

"I don’t wish to be discouraging, but I’m afraid it’s hopeless without something more to go on." Dr. Faber said. "We might tell them about our new synthetic drugs and antibiotics. However, the chance is slim that these would conquer a totally unknown disease affecting a completely unearthly biology."

Mr. Swift drummed his fingers on the conference table. "Even if we convinced them of the necessity of providing detailed information in advance, trying to translate those unknown symbols might take weeks," he said, frowning.
"If
we could accomplish it at all."

"Do we at least know what caused the outbreak, Damon?" put in Glennon.

Mr. Swift shook his head. "No. That’s what puzzles me. Our space friends are highly advanced in science, so one would expect them to have all disease-causing germs or viruses under control—unless it’s something new on their planet."

"Exactly what I was thinking," Tom said. "The infection may have been picked up from another planet—perhaps from earth itself."

Evan Glennon puffed thoughtfully on his pipe. Dr. Faber muttered, "I take it we know absolutely nothing of the basic biological structure of these life-forms. One would like to have at least some tissue samples or germ cultures."

Tom brightened. "That may be the solution!" He looked at his father. "What do you think, Dad? Do you know what I’m referring to?"

Mr. Swift nodded thoughtfully. "It’s worth a try," he agreed.

At this point Harlan Ames objected. "Tom, Damon, it’s your decision—but I have to point out that there are legal and security issues involved—if you’re referring to what I assume you’re referring to."

Glennon uttered a few terms in Welsh that were best left untranslated. "The life and death of a planet or two hang in the balance, and you’re concerned with such things? Preposterous!"

"I do understand the issues involved, Professor," Ames responded coolly.

"Harlan is doing his job," said Mr. Swift. "And now I’ll do mine. Tom, go ahead and explain what we’re talking about."

The younger Swift took a deep breath. "By telling you this I’m breaching security regulations issued by Washington."

"We’ll be good," stated Faber with an ironic smile.

"The Welsh have no program for world conquest," added Dr. Glennon. "At least, none that I am aware of."

"All right then," Tom continued. "The world knows about the meteor-missile that landed at Enterprises, and our subsequent radio contacts. But the world doesn’t yet know that we have already received samples of extraterrestrial life."

Wide-eyed, Glennon exclaimed. "But that’s marvelous! Marvelous!"

"Not quite as marvelous as you think, Doctor," Tom observed wryly. "These were samples of vegetation sent to Earth in a sealed transport capsule which we recovered from the ocean. Apparently, the capsule was engineered so that it could not be opened unless the external environment was safe for the plants inside. But before we could even begin to create such an environment, the plants all died from some unknown cause. Nothing we’ve come up with has been able to penetrate the shell, and the space friends don’t answer our inquiries on the subject."

"If you can’t open it up, how do you know the plants have died?" objected Dr. Faber.

"The shell is completely transparent," explained the scientist-inventor. "We saw them wilt. Subsequently they’ve become desiccated and very fragile."

Harlan Ames picked up the thread of the account. "After hashing out questions of jurisdiction, the Federal government directed Enterprises to place the capsule in their control. It is now maintained in a low-temperature, high-security holding facility—essentially a large underground vault—in Ohio, near Dayton. Access is carefully limited, though Tom and his father are among the privileged ones."

"Hmmph! Typical!" muttered Glennon from behind his pipe. "Well, it won’t do us any good, not if we can’t get at the goods."

"The point is, there
may
be a way after all!" Tom declared.

ANTON FABER responded to Tom’s announcement with a warm chuckle. "You see, Evan, it’s just as I told you on the plane. No problem is beyond the ingenuity of these Swifts!"

"It’s something Dad and I have been working on for a while," Tom said. "It works in a lab setting, but we don’t yet know if it’ll work on the life-capsule."

"What is it then, lad?" inquired Evan Glennon.

"We call it a leptoscope, after the smallest quantity known to the ancient Greeks," was the answer. "Think of it as a combination super-microscope and telescope. It also uses certain aspects of the technology we developed for the Swift Spectroscope." Tom explained that the leptoscope picked up the penetrating spectronic radiation generated by the atomic nucleus and computer-analyzed the holographic information contained in the wave-fronts. "We use the data to construct an image on a monitor screen. You can see representations almost all the way down to the level of individual atoms!"

"In this case, its special virtue is its ability to work up to a distance of several yards from the subject, without contact," Damon Swift added. "If the spectronic rays penetrate the transparent shell as easily as photons do, the leptoscope will allow you gentlemen to examine the plantlife remains in great detail."

The meeting broke up with the Swifts promising to acquire clearance for the scientists to conduct the examination in the underground chamber. "It will probably take a few days," Harlan Ames noted. "I’ll try to get our government contacts to rush the process."

As it was lunchtime, Tom arranged with Chow to set a table in the executive dining room. When they arrived the rounded ex-Texan, who had met Anton Faber during the South Pole project, greeted the scientist with friendly enthusiasm. "Brand my skillets, with s’many different folks comin’ and goin’ at this here invention factory, it shor is good to run into a familiar face now’n then!"

"And the best part is," responded Faber, "that now we can have the great pleasure of regaling Evan Glennon here with our tales of the frozen south." He added with a twinkle: "And in this sort of discourse, strict scientific accuracy is not required."

Shaking hands with Glennon, Chow said, "I reckon he means I won’t get inta trouble fer a Texas whopper or two."

"No trouble from me," chuckled the scientist. "I’m a Welshman, you see. What’s a life for, but song and story?"

Chow beamed. "I’d say you Welcher-types have a little Texas blood in you!"

Tom called in Bud and they all ate a delicious meal together. For a time the talk and laughter provided a welcome vacation from the dark, deadly situation. Then Tom took the two guests on a tour of Enterprises, by nanocar. Finally they were shown to their well-appointed living quarters, a duplex bungalow for company guests somewhat shielded from the constant rumble of the Enterprises airfield.

Tom rejoined Bud and they headed for the gleaming, glass-fronted laboratory complex. "I did what you suggested," said Bud. "Just got off the phone. Sandy and Bash love to put together parties, you know, even at late notice."

"Didn’t think they’d mind," Tom grinned. "It’s a nice way to express appreciation to our guests. Good thing Bash is between quarters at the Institute." Bashalli Prandit, a close friend of Bud and the Swift family, was a part-time student at the nearby DuBrey Art Institute.

"What’s next, genius boy?" Bud asked as they reached Tom’s lab.

"Back to work on my new spaceship repelatron."

"Brief me again on it, will you?" the broad-shouldered young flier urged. "The problem, I mean."

Tom grinned. "Sure—maybe you’ll come up with the answer! Well, if you’ve ever looked at a newspaper photo closely, you’ve seen how what appears, from a little distance away, to be an image is really made up of rows of printed dots, dark or light, big or small."

"Right," Bud said. "Same thing with TV pictures."

"So when you’re close up you see the individual dots, and when you move back they blur together. Now the repelatron has to deal with something similar if it’s going to function over long distances—as compared to the hydrodome’s water-repeller, which is never more than a couple hundred feet from what it’s tuned to."

Tom gestured with his hands to illustrate the movement of the new spaceship. "When the ship is parked on the ground, it’s not hard to focus each of the repelatrons on one particular mixture or combination of elements and substances; we use an adaptation of our long-range spectrometers to take a reading, and the computer makes the tuning adjustment. But as the ship rises up, the ‘angle of vision’ gets broader, so to speak, and—"

"And the dots—the particular stuff you’re focusing on—start blurring together," Bud interjected, always proud to be a quick study.

"Yup! The wavefronts start overlapping and interfering with one another. That’s what happened to us up in the Pigeon Special: the technique I was using just wasn’t powerful enough to bring the repelatron into focus when we left the lake and flew out over solid ground. The lag effect in the Lunite antenna rod also plays into the problem."

Bud scratched his head. "Wish I had an idea, Tom, but all I can say is—get that machine some glasses!"

Tom resumed his experiments with the small prototype of the space repelatron that Arvid Hanson, Enterprises’ chief modelmaker, had created for him. This was the same model that the youths had taken aloft the other day—a compact rectangular chassis sporting a parabolic dish antenna, the repulsion-force radiator with the spectrometer sensor built in. Bud watched eagerly as his pal tried different new approaches, speaking his thoughts aloud in a continuous narration. Most of it was beyond Bud, but he found himself grasping a bit of it now and then, and he liked playing backstop.

Hours later, Tom was still busy at his workbench with a jumble of electronic parts and test gear when a knock sounded on the door.

"Come in!" Tom called without looking up. He heard the door open and close.

"Well, aren’t you two even going to say hello?" a girlish voice complained.

Tom whirled in surprise. "Sandy and Bash!" he exclaimed.

The two girls giggled at his startled expression.

"At least you remember our names after all this time!" Sandra Swift said accusingly. Blond and blue-eyed, Sandy was a year younger than her famous brother.

"Don’t jump to conclusions, Sandra," warned pretty, dark-haired Bashalli. "He knows us collectively, but you must ask him which one is which!"

"Hey, we’re not so bad," said Bud in mock protest. "At least we remembered about the… the… say, Tom, wasn’t somethin’ going on tonight—somewhere?"

"Something tonight? Involving the girls?" Tom said uncertainly. He pretended to search his memory.

"We should have known, Bashi!" Sandy groaned. "How in the world are these two lame-brains ever going to find their way to the moon?"

Tom slapped his forehead and grinned apologetically. "Oh, the party! I’m sorry. It slipped my mind completely!"

"And in case you didn’t know," Bud said, "the moon isn’t ‘in the world’ anyway."

They all laughed together.

"You know, Thomas, I have heard that ‘all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’," Bashalli commented. "I will admit that you are not
such
a dull boy—yet." She smiled. "But I give you fair warning, I just might change my mind by the end of this evening."

"Okay, I’m warned." Tom grinned back at the young Pakistani. "But don’t expect me to put aside my poor repelatron before I’ve fixed it up."

"Ohhh, more work!" Sandy pouted. "I know it’s important, Tom, life and death and so on, but can’t you and Bud ever think of anything but work?"

"Unlike you two, I think we girls will not be young and pretty forever," teased Bashalli. "We must sow our wild oats and make hay while the sun is shining, even at night."

Tom gave her an apologetic hug. "Okay, Bash. We’ll try to make up for it this evening."

"I’m already working up a line of witty banter and boyish quips," Bud announced with a wink.

Just then a loud, shrill drone startled the foursome. A siren!

"What
is
it?" asked Bashalli, wincing.

Tom’s face had suddenly become very serious. "That’s the general alert siren. It means someone’s broken into the plant in a big way! I’d better call… H-Harlan…" He passed an unsteady hand across his eyes.

"Goodness," murmured Sandy, "I feel so…"

Her voice trailed off and Bud cried out as she began to slump down to the floor! Bud managed to catch her in his arms—but he too was sinking down, with Bashalli next to him.