Tom Swift on the Phantom Satellite (14 page)

"Because of the low gravity?" Tom queried.

"Exactly. The lessened amount of muscular strain here would be helpful to heart patients," the medic replied. "Sustained zero gravity can be harmful, but this amount is beneficial—my tiny caged patients are proving it!"

"Maybe Little Luna would be a good place to set up a hospital," Bud suggested.

Jatczak now spoke up. "As we are speaking of gravity, my recent observations have been concentrating on that very subject—and the results are so fascinating that I was reluctant to turn aside from them, even at the risk of my life!"

Tom asked the astrophysicist to elaborate.

"Of course we’re all aware that this minute body manifests a considerably stronger gravitational force than its slight mass can account for," he began. "Thinking its core might be composed of some extraordinarily dense material, I began making a detailed study of the moonlet’s rotational characteristics. And what do you suppose I found, eh?" He paused, as if expecting an answer.

"Er—I give up," said Bud.

"There is a wobble, my boy, a wobble! A periodic anomaly produced by tidal interaction with the earth—ground tides, you know." Dr. Jatczak sat up straighter, eyes shining, and Violet Wohl cast a smiling glance in Tom’s direction. "I followed up these observations with a more minute instrumental examination of the gravitational flux vectors, and my findings—quite remarkable!"

"Maybe you could summarize them for us," Tom suggested gently.

"Of course. In brief, the satellite’s gravitational field does not conform to its physical shape, but shows an unprecedented deviation—a warp, if you will. The distortion is centered on a small region north of the equator, which I have been able to identify on the crude photographic map we compiled from the space survey. Tom, it is scientifically essential that we pay a visit to this area!"

Tom was almost as excited as Dr. Jatczak to learn of this new mystery. And in truth, he felt a great desire to set aside the burdens of command for a time. "Let’s do this," he said with new enthusiasm. "Rather than fly back to the main base camp with the
Titan,
a small group of us could drive back in the derrick tank, stopping at the anomaly site on the way!—that is, if Dr. Wohl thinks you’re up to it, sir."

Violet Wohl gave a reluctant nod. "Resistance is futile, I can tell!"

Within the hour, the
Titan
blasted off with a great sudden bound, arcing north under the guidance of Rafael Franzenberg, while the tank set off on its long, rugged journey with Tom, Bud, Kent, and Henrick Jatczak, whose scientific excitement seemed to have worked a miracle cure.

The sun had begun to creep below the horizon, and the sky was alight with something Little Luna had never seen—a red-orange sunset. "We’re starting to develop some clouds," Tom commented.

Bud snorted. "Those little wisps up there aren’t what I call clouds!"

But abruptly, as they bounced along, the orange glow was whisked away, taking with it the blue-violet of the sky. Though a part of the sun was still visible, the sky above was black as midnight.

"What happened?" inquired Kent in surprise.

"We just passed through the skin of the atmosphere-envelope," Tom explained. "It hasn’t expanded this far yet." He added that the barrier would extend outward much more quickly as it moved away from the poles, a planned effect of the force of Little Luna’s rotation. "Give it another day or two. If the northern atmos-maker is operating as efficiently as this one, we’ll soon have a complete atmosphere covering almost the entire surface."

With the brilliant earthshine providing nearly as much light as full day, the explorers were able to continue safely for several more hours before finally stopping for the night. After a packaged supper Tom tried to raise the north pole camp by relaying a call through the space outpost, but the tank’s transiphone equipment proved inadequate to the job.

"They’re probably having dinner in the
Titan
right now," murmured Bud dreamily. "This prepackaged gunk makes Chow’s cactus-burgers sound like heaven." He quickly added: "Don’t tell him I said that!"

Bud, Kent, and Dr. Jatczak conversed for a time, speaking of their lives fifty-thousand miles away. Noticing that Tom was quiet, Bud asked what was on his mind.

"Just thinking about our Brungarian pals and that Professor Lemura."

"The man with the phony fingers?" asked Kent.

Tom nodded. "It just occurred to me—though he wasn’t enthusiastic about meeting any of us, he didn’t seem to have any particular problem with me, or Northrup, or Dr. Kutan."

"The big shots, in other words," Bud commented.

"You might say that. But I was looking at his face when Mirov introduced Gabe Knorff to him. He definitely had some kind of strong reaction, which he tried to hide. He wouldn’t shake Gabe’s hand, and practically ran away." Tom’s voice trailed off.

"Young Gabe can be somewhat of a pill," declared Jatczak with a wry chuckle.

"Yeah," said Bud, "but how would some rocket brain from Kazakhistan already know that?"

Tom fell asleep with the mystery churning through his head, unsolved.

By noon the next day, the tank had crossed the equator and was drawing near to the location of Dr. Jatczak’s prize anomaly. They stopped frequently to allow the astronomer to take readings with his instruments. "Yes indeed!" he proclaimed. "We are very close. You can almost feel it, can’t you?—‘down’ is no longer quite
down,
but a bit to the side!"

"If you say so," retorted Bud skeptically. He turned to Tom. "Where now? What’s the program this afternoon, space boy?" Bud asked.

"It looks like we need to keep heading a bit west of north," Tom said.

Kent agreed, nodding in his spacesuit helmet. "How about starting with that range of hills over there?" He pointed off to the west.

The group reentered the tank, and soon they were working their way up a gradual incline in the barren rocky terrain. Presently they reached the low mountains and began following a wide, sinuous ledge that wound upward among the rocks. The colorful crags and peaks, which loomed majestically in the harsh light of the vacuum, actually were tiny compared to mountains on earth.

"Like miniature Alps," Kent commented.

"There’s even white on the peaks, like snow," noted Bud.

"Well, actually that’s a secondary oxide reaction between—"

"Never mind, Kent buddy," interrupted the dark-haired pilot. "Leave me my romantic illusions!"

"Stop!
Stop!"

At this cry from Henrick Jatczak, Tom brought the tank to a skidding halt and looked back at the astronomer. He was pointing up through the dome, speechless.

"Good night!" whispered Bud.

Halfway up the side of a mountain crag, a huge inscription had been carved into the rock!

"A space symbol!" Bud gasped.

The weird symbol was circular and had segments radiating out from it, like a sunburst. It appeared to be more than thirty feet in diameter and stood out boldly against the stark rock face.

"It looks like the kind of symbol the space friends use," said Tom softly. "But I’ve never seen that one before."

"You will note that one of the radiating features is longer than the others," Jatczak observed. "It may be meant to point the way to the very site we are seeking."

They branched off from the route they were following and approached the carved peak.

"That looks like a road over there!" Kent exclaimed.

They followed the flat path, obviously artificial, until it became too narrow for the tank. Then the four got out and traveled further on foot, their excitement growing with every step.

Bud had taken the lead on the narrow trail. "Say, here’s a cave!" he called out, after rounding a huge boulder.

Something in Bud’s voice made Tom hurry forward. The sight that met his eyes was strange and intriguing. In the face of a steep pinnacle of bluish rock was a large opening. It seemed to be the entrance to a passageway. Though wide enough to admit all four of them, the floor of the passageway sloped sharply upward at an incline of almost 75 degrees.

Kent gave a low whistle. "Hey, that’s too smooth and well-finished to be a natural cave or rock fissure. Looks to me like an engineering job!"

Bud flashed an excited glance at Tom. "What do you make of it?"

Tom looked at the opening in solemn awe. "Our space friends," he almost whispered, "must have carved that passage!"

"But why build it at such a steep angle?" Kent asked.

"It’s only a guess," Tom replied. "But maybe their own planet has such low gravity that an incline like this is easy for them to ascend. Their bodies have evolved to handle it."

Dr. Jatczak said, "It is safe to assume that the source of the gravitational effect lies within that cave!" His voice was emphatic.

Then another idea struck Tom. "If the space people really were here on the satellite, they may have left instructions for us and some samples of their civilization!"

"Well, sizzling skyrockets!" Bud exclaimed. "What’re we waiting for?" Eagerly he started to scramble up the sloping passageway, but Tom pulled him back. "What’s the matter?" Bud complained.

"Listen! The suit raditectors are picking up radiation!" They all paused to listen, and could hear the audible tones in their transiphone headsets that warned them of ambient radiation.

As Tom tuned several control knobs, the tones grew louder. Excitedly the young inventor watched the needle flicker upward on a dial built into his suit forearm. "High-level radiation!" he exclaimed. "But the Tomasite-Inertite layers in the suits, and the helmet coating, will protect us."

Bud offered to go back to the tank and retrieve some sensor instruments for use in the cave. A few minutes later he returned with the instrument kit and a portable floodlight, battery-powered. "Thought this might help us see what’s up there," he panted.

"Good! We can use it."

They easily bounded up the slope and stood for a moment at the mouth of the cave. Tom pointed wordlessly at a smooth space on the wall just within. Another space symbol!

"I guess we’ve got the right address!" murmured Bud nervously.

The four entered the tunnel, its steep incline posing no real problem in the weak gravity of Little Luna. After an ascent of several dozen feet, the cavity ended at a large, long chamber with a horizontal floor. Tom flashed the light from side to side. The whitish glare revealed walls lined with shelflike indentations, bearing a bewildering array of strange objects. Some looked like twisted glassware used in chemical work. Others seemed to be made of stone or metal.

The explorers held their breath in sheer fascination. Then Kent asked Tom to direct the floodlight directly onto a blank wall. "What sort of rock
is
this?" he wondered aloud. "It’s run through with veins of some kind of crystal."

"There are loose pieces all over the floor," Tom observed. He bent down and picked up a couple fist-sized fragments, putting them in his suit sidepack for later analysis.

"Gentlemen, if I am not mistaken,
there
lies our goal!" called out Dr. Jatczak over his transiphone.

In the center of the floor was what looked like a cube-shaped rock about thirty inches on each side. It seemed inert. But as Tom and Jatczak began to approach it, they both cried out in alarm!

"What’s wrong?"
exclaimed Bud in dread.

"SOMETHING’S got ahold of us!" Tom shouted in response to Bud’s cry. "It’s pushing us sideways!"

"And look at the rock!" exclaimed Kent. The cube had become luminous!

Bud and Kent ran forward to attempt to drag their friends out of danger. But before they had taken two steps, Tom and Jatczak were suddenly jerked sideways. A pair of small silver-colored objects, one from each spacesuit, streaked away from them in a spiralling trajectory, as fast and hard to see as the blur of a whirling fan blade.

"Stand back!" Tom warned.

The small objects orbited the cube at blinding speed, coming closer and closer to it. Then they hit the cube and stopped moving instantly, stuck fast.

"The magtritanium wrenches from our tool belts!" Tom proclaimed. "There’s some sort of field around the cube that interacts with that combination of alloys."

Though the object was still glowing faintly, the four were now able to approach with no difficulty. Tom scanned it with the portable instruments Bud had brought. In the silence of the eerie, airless cavern, there was something strange and menacing about its queer shape. Tom saw that it was not a perfect cube, each of its six faces being built up in several steps or layers.

"Just as I thought," he said slowly, eyeing the readings. "It’s like the meteor-missile the space scientists sent to Enterprises—you can’t see anything inside it beyond the transparent glaze on the outside. There’s no heat and—that’s odd!—no radiation either." He made a broad arc with the sensor instruments. "The radiation is coming from the walls of the chamber, not the cube itself."

Curious, Tom tried to move the cube. Despite the low gravity, it wouldn’t budge. "It seems to be fused directly to the floor," he said at last. "It may be that no power on Earth can move it!"

"In my opinion, this is the energy source for the gravitational-field concentrator," Dr. Jatczak declared. "Perhaps it is fused to the floor because it uses this rocky substance, or the crystal within it, as a sort of antenna through which the effect is focused and controlled."

"If that’s true," said Kent Rockland, awestruck, "the entire core of this asteroid may be functioning as one big gravity antenna!"

"Your guess is as good as mine!" Tom muttered. Completely mystified, he worked the controls of the probe instruments but got no further data.

The men looked at one another in dismay. "Now what?" Kent asked.

"Only one thing we
can
do." Tom shrugged. "Return to the ship for specialized equipment."

Dr. Jatczak was obviously deeply stirred. "This will surely prove the great discovery of this expedition," he declared. "Perhaps one of the great scientific discoveries of all time!"