Tom Swift on the Phantom Satellite (12 page)

"I’ll have to work on it," Tom said with determination. "And I’ll transmit a copy to Dad so he can work on it as well."

Tom hurried to the communications control panel aboard the
Titan
. In minutes he was in touch with his father on Fearing Island.

"Hi, Dad!" the young inventor said as his father’s voice came through.

"Good to hear from you, son! What news from Little Luna?"

Tom quickly reported the amazing developments, and added, "Dad, please contact Washington. Tell them what happened and find out what we should do in case of attack. We think there’s some hidden agenda going on."

"I’ll get the instructions immediately," Mr. Swift replied. "Meanwhile, stay on the alert and try to avoid trouble. I’ll be looking forward to receiving those latest space symbols."

After signing off, Tom rounded up the expedition for a status report and conference. They listened intently as he laid out a plan of action.

"I believe," Tom said, "that the most important thing is to get the atmosphere machines going as soon as possible. That’ll give us more freedom to move around and also show the Brungarians we’re doing our part to make this satellite livable. Here’s how we’ll tackle the job."

The young scientist said that a garrison force would be left at the base to guard the north polar atmos-maker, which was nearing completion a few score yards from the landing site. "This group will consist of Col. Northrup, Ron Corey, Dr. Kutan, and Hank Sterling. Colonel, you’ll be in charge, but Hank will oversee the completion of the machine, with help from the rest of you as needed. We didn’t bring any weapons with us—didn’t think we’d need ’em—but we’ll leave you all the transport tanks except the one with the derrick: you can use them as shelters and take refuge in them if something happens. But there’s no real reason to fear an attack—I’m sure Mirov wants the machines finished as much as we do."

The others would accompany Tom to the southern pole of Little Luna in the
Titan,
where the second atmos-maker would be constructed as quickly as possible. "I’ll need everyone’s help," Tom declared.

"I am as willing as anyone to assist you," spoke up Dr. Jatczak. "But as far as manual labor goes, I fear you are about thirty years too late."

Tom smiled. "There’ll be many important tasks involved that don’t involve lugging around machinery, sir."

"Don’t worry, Jatczak, you won’t be left out of the action," said Rafe in his usual wisecracking tone. "We’ll even find some use for Violet’s little friends with the big ears." As Dr. Wohl looked on, entirely unamused, the scientist persisted. "I have a notion to try hooking their exercise wheel up to a generator to save on veranium fuel! You wouldn’t mind, would you, darlin’?"

Dr. Wohl looked at him levelly. "We might be forced to try it, Rafael. But the first recourse would be to run the machine off your ego, a fuel that never runs out!"

Tom did not join in the laughter that followed. He was feeling the weight of his great responsibilities on the mysterious satellite. Northrup whispered to Tom, "They’re just blowin’ off a little steam. Probably a good thing." Tom nodded.

It was now too late in the day to start out. For the rest of the daylight period, Tom kept the expeditioners busy checking, organizing, and unloading the necessary tools and equipment.

As twilight fell, everyone returned to the
Titan
for supper. Chow, sensing the fear and tension in the air, had a surprise for them all after dessert.

"Look here, folks!" he announced, producing the large object he had been concealing behind his broad back. It was a battered old western-style guitar!

"Oh no!" Bud groaned humorously.

"Oh
yes,
buddy boy! And sure as a star, you’re gonna join in if’n you want breakfast tomorrow!" Chow began to sing a country-western ballad in a voice that could best be described as grizzled, and everyone eventually joined the fun. The revelation of the evening was that both Jason Graves and Ron Corey had excellent singing voices—tenor and baritone.

Before going to bed, Tom and Bud donned their spacesuits and went outside. The night sky was brilliant with stars. But the huge bright ball of earth outshone everything else in the heavens, filling almost a third of the sky.

They both acknowledged a feeling of homesickness. Then Bud chuckled. "What a dither those old Tin Pan Alley song writers would be in up here!"

"Why?" Tom asked.

"Because they wouldn’t have a reason to rhyme
June
and
moon
any more," Bud replied. "They’d have to talk about the earth shining way up in the sky, or walking with your date in the earthlight."

Tom grinned. "They might rhyme
earth
and
girth,
if your girl friend happened to be the chubby type."

"Sounds more like a song about Chow and his size fifty-two belt," Bud quipped. "Say, Tom, what makes the earth look so much brighter than the moon?" The moon, half below the horizon of Little Luna and far off in its orbit, looked a dull gray and was hardly noticeable.

"Higher reflectivity," Tom replied, "due to Earth’s atmosphere as much as the oceans. As a matter of fact, it’s twenty times as bright as the moon. Which reminds me—we still haven’t found out why
this
moon shines so brightly when seen from Earth. It’s one more mystery."

Bud patted Tom on the shoulder. "Let’s not solve ’em all in one night, genius boy!"

When morning came the crew members that would remain behind stood a healthy distance away, waving farewell as the
Titan
lifted off smoothly. There was no longer a danger of crashing. Doctors Franzenberg and Jatczak had been able to measure and chart the abnormal gravitational conditions now prevalent on Little Luna, and Tom had programmed a compensatory routine into the spaceship’s computer.

It took only minutes for the nuclear craft to arc around the satellite in a half-loop and set down again in a canyon near the south pole. After a gentle landing, Tom and Franzenberg—serious for the moment—took an hour going over everyone’s technical assignments and reminding them how the atmos-machine would function.

"Like the other machine, we’ll be building our Southern Special from the ground up," Tom said. "After Kent has located the best site based on his analysis of the surface composition, we’ll set up the automatic boring and conveyor units, then the smelting apparatus and the atomic pile. The dispeller—that’s the ‘spider’ that spreads out the atmosphere—won’t be unloaded from the hold until everything else is in place and tested."

In answer to a question from Gabe Knorff, Rafe described how continuous spectrographic and infrared analyzers would check on the composition of the atmosphere generated by the machine. Carbon monoxide gas fumes produced in the smelter would be catalytically converted to carbon dioxide and the excess CO
₂
removed by a caustic scrubber. The process would also release water vapor from the rocks, so that the atmosphere would not be excessively dry.

Kent and Dr. Jatczak now went off to find the best spot for the atmos-maker while the others labored to unload the equipment, including the disassembled derrick tractor-tank. Kent’s earlier survey had confirmed that the general site was rich in the sorts of ores required.

Shortly before the evening meal, Kent came into Tom’s laboratory with several reddish chunks of rock, flecked with metallic glints. "Tom, I think this ore may be our best bet for producing oxygen in the atomic furnace!" he announced excitedly. "We found it about a half-mile up the canyon. There are also nitrous compounds up there, for nitrogen."

"I’ll look at it under the spectrograph," the young inventor said. He took the rock samples into the metallurgy cubicle. A few minutes later both scientists were grinning happily.

"Nice going, Kent," Tom congratulated him. "It’s almost pure red iron oxide, plus about two percent of rare metals. It should work very nicely for us!"

"Mmm, I can almost breathe that fresh air already," Kent remarked. "You know, Tom, Henrick thinks these ores and compounds give us a clue as to where the asteroid came from in the first place."

"How so?"

"He says the crustal composition is very different from what one would expect to find on small bodies in the inner solar system, and could only have been formed on a much larger body, one big enough to have an atmosphere of its own. He theorizes that Little Luna is a tiny fragment remaining from a satellite of one of the giant outer planets in our system."

Chow Winkler had been standing in the doorway behind them, listening. "Say there, you mean these here planets and things can bust up on their own, inta little pieces?"

"Sure enough," Kent replied. "Tidal forces can do it, or a collision with another body."

Tom added, "That’s what scientists think gave Earth her moon—the old one, I mean! When Earth was young, she must’ve got run-into by a wandering body that splashed a lot of the crust into space, which eventually solidified into the moon as we know it now."

"Which jest goes t’ show," Chow declared, "that this here universe is a purty dangerous place!"

Hard days of work in the blinding sunlight were capped by black nights of relaxation aboard the ship. The various crew members watched television programs relayed from earth, including the news reports that now featured regular updates on the progress of the Swift expedition. The other expedition, still not officially confirmed by Brungaria, was not mentioned.

It was frustrating not to be able to contact the north pole site at will. But messages were relayed back and forth via Fearing Island or the space outpost, and it seemed all was well there. There had been no further contact with the other camp.

One night, after a particularly long and arduous day of work, the members of the space team were glad to retire. Tom, however, worked on, tinkering with the mechanical parts of his atmosphere machine. One unit had been jarred out of line by the forces of acceleration during the
Titan
’s space mishap.

"I’d better run another test on that pump impeller before I quit," he decided, yawning sleepily.

Exhausted by the day’s grueling activities, and fighting to stay awake, Tom flicked a switch and bent over the whirring impeller. Suddenly his head nodded and he slumped forward, slowly drifting downward in the weak gravity of Little Luna. As he did, the sharp-bladed impeller cut a deep gash in his arm!

Pale from shock and with blood spurting from the wound at an alarming rate, Tom staggered to the wall intercom and pressed the button.

"Doctor Wohl!" he called weakly. "H-hurry to my—my—" Tom’s words trailed off as he collapsed to the deck!

AT WORK in a nearby cubicle with her rodent-subjects, Violet Wohl heard Tom’s call. Grabbing a medical kit, she dashed out into the main connecting passageway, where she collided with Bud.

"What happened, Doc Vi? Was that Tom over the—"

"Tom’s in trouble. Come on!"

It took a moment to locate the right cubicle. Bursting in, they found the young inventor sprawled on the deck in a welling pool of blood.

Wohl and Bud bent over him. "Quick! Press here with your thumb!" Dr. Wohl ordered Bud, indicating a spot in Tom’s armpit.

As Bud complied, the bleeding stopped. With deft fingers, Violet Wohl cleansed and bandaged the wound. Then Bud carried the unconscious youth—a meager few pounds of weight—to a bunk. Tom’s skin was pale and clammy, his lips blue.

"He’s in a state of shock. Pile on the blankets!" As the doctor gave orders, she rigged up tubing and a needle to administer plasma.

Gradually, with the aid of stimulants, Tom regained consciousness. At sight of Bud’s frightened face, he grinned wanly. "Relax, chum! I’ve got more blood than I ever use!"

Bud responded by squeezing his friend’s hand gently. "Next time don’t scare us like that, you old space eagle! What happened?"

Tom described his accident, after which Dr. Wohl ordered him to stay in bed for the traditional twenty-four hours.

Tom grimaced. "But I can’t stay in bed tomorrow, Vi! I must get the atmosphere machine working! It’s so near completion…"

The physician-scientist finally agreed. "Tom, you must not exert yourself," she warned, "or you may be flat on your back a lot longer than twenty-four hours!"

By late morning the color was back in Tom’s cheeks and he felt much refreshed by ten hours of sleep, although his arm pained him. Chow brought breakfast to his bunk, and fussed over him like a mother hen while he ate. Then the young inventor climbed into his spacesuit.

"What’s going on outside?" Tom inquired as he tightened a leg strap. "I didn’t intend to sleep for so long."

"Better ask Graves," Chow replied evasively. "I hear tell he’s been bossin’ people around since the sun came up."

Hurrying out through the ship’s airlock, Tom emerged in time to see the derrick tank returning from a job at the construction site, with Rafael at the controls. "C’mon, boss, I’ll run you back up there. That man is too, too much!" Not asking Franzenberg to elaborate, Tom decided to see for himself. What trouble was Jason Graves causing this time?

The tank threaded its way through a bottleneck in the canyon, between high walls which abruptly receded on both sides. Then Tom let out a shout of shocked astonishment.

The atmosphere-making machine stood complete, glinting in the sun and ready for testing!

Franzenberg grinned at Tom’s reaction. "Gotta hand it to Graves," he said. "The guy really does keep people hopping!"

Tom crawled through the airlock and bounded up to Graves, who stood proudly. "Mr. Graves, you’re amazing!" Tom said, shaking hands vigorously. "I can’t thank you enough for seeing this through so quickly!"

"Nothing to it," Graves replied, grinning. Looking somewhat like a pouter pigeon in his spacesuit, the robust tycoon showed Tom the various details of the construction, noting that Rafe had repaired the unit that Tom had been working on the previous night. "The partial tests have all been successful, Tom. We can start making air as soon as you like, in my humble opinion."

During the next few hours, Tom worked with the others, making some final tests and performing some delicate calibrations. The fascinated expeditioners looked on as the big glittering gas spreaders spun around high above the site, apparently supported by nothing!