Tom Swift on the Phantom Satellite (2 page)

"Oh no!"
groaned Bud through clenched teeth. "Dan Perkins must have dropped that little hint!"

The commentator asked, "Do you mean it could be dangerous to us here on earth?"

"Certainly it could be dangerous!" declared the professor. "Tremendous forces may be unleashed—these high tides are only a sample! Even worse, a slight miscalculation could lead to a collision between the object and earth, resulting in unprecedented loss of life! You have asked my opinion and I have spoken bluntly."

The commentator now filled the screen again. "And so the voice of science warns us:
it’s not a movie this time, folks!
How far are the famous inventors willing to go in their—"

Tom switched off the videophone in midsentence. Bud exploded, "Are you going to let Voort get away with that?"

As usual when under fire, Mr. Swift controlled his emotions. His only comment was, "The man is entitled to his own opinion, Bud."

"Maybe we’d better issue a statement after all, Dad," suggested Tom. "People seem to expect it of us."

His father agreed. Quickly Tom dashed off a few lines and handed the paper to Mr. Swift, who scanned it and nodded approval.

Picking up the phone, Tom called Dan Perkins at the
Bulletin
. "Why Tom! How’s it hangin’?"

Tom did not mention the broadcast but merely said, "Dan, you’ve asked for a statement. This is the only one we can make: ‘We know absolutely nothing about the nature of the satellite. However, we plan to observe it carefully, both from Swift Enterprises and from our orbiting space station, and will release our findings as soon as we have anything to report. So far there appears to be no danger to earth’."

"Maybe that’ll shut him up!" grumbled Bud as Tom broke the connection.

Tom and Mr. Swift went back to the observatory. Hour after hour they studied the object, which showed in the telescope as a small, bright disk with few visible details. By lunchtime they had also received data transmitted from the Swift space outpost which circled the earth in a geosynchronous orbit at a distance of 22,300 miles. The outpost was equipped with its own telescope and a variety of sophisticated space-probing instruments.

"Look at these photos, Tom," said Damon Swift, handing a sheaf of digitized images to his son.

"Nice and sharp," commented the young inventor. "The outpost’s electronic telescope does a wonderful job."

The pictures showed the first close-up view of the interloper from space. The moonlet was revealed to be a rocky, rugged sphere, pockmarked with craters and sporting narrow, jagged peaks that seemed to claw far into space. Its mottled coloration was primarily a deep auburn.

"Definitely an asteroid," said Mr. Swift. "And from the cratered condition of the surface, it’s been around a
long
time."

"Yet that color is unusual, Dad—don’t you think?"

"It is. I’m anxious to receive the telespectrometry data from the outpost." He glanced at his wristwatch. "But by now the satellite is below their horizon, so we’ll have to wait."

Tom and his father continued their observations throughout the afternoon and long into the evening, occasionally releasing updated statements to the world press. It was nearly midnight when they finally stopped work.

"It looks to me," said Tom, "as if the earth has a permanent, junior-size moon."

"Right, son. But we’ll know more when we have a full day’s-worth of orbital figures."

After closing the observatory, the Swifts drove a nanocar—a midget company personnel vehicle—across the experimental station to their private gate and parked it for the night. Tom beamed the gate open with his electronic key. Then, as was often their custom, father and son headed on foot down the little-used road which led to their home a half-mile distant. At Tom’s request, Bud had already returned the family car to the Swift home, where his own car was parked.

The Swift residence was just looming up ahead in the moonlight when Tom clutched his father’s arm. "Hold it, Dad!" he warned. "I think I heard something moving over in the—"

His words ended in a gasp as a shadowy figure leaped from the bushes beside the road, a long knife in his right hand.

"Murderers!" screamed the assailant. "You’re trying to destroy the world!
But you’ll never live to do it!"

AS THE assailant’s arm arced viciously through the darkness, Mr. Swift dodged to avoid the knife thrust, but was only partially successful. He gave a yelp of pain. Instinctively, Tom hurled himself at the attacker and grabbed the man’s wrist. The stranger fought like a cornered rat, twisting, clawing, and kicking as he tried to get his knife hand free.

But Tom, using his right fist, pommeled the attacker until the man’s knees buckled. Dropping the knife, he sagged limply and Tom’s next blow sent him sprawling to the ground in a knockout.

Instantly Tom turned to his father who was clutching a bloody shirt sleeve. "Dad! Are you all right?"

"Just a scratch, son. Let’s see who this fellow is."

Whipping out a pocket flashlight, Tom beamed it at his fallen foe. The man’s face looked bony and hollow-cheeked. His clothes were shabby, his hair long and unkempt.

"Never saw him before," murmured Tom.

"Some misguided crank, no doubt." Mr. Swift’s voice was tinged with pity for the man who had attacked them. "We’d better take him to the house."

The stranger revived enough to walk under his own power. Taking no chances, Tom used his handkerchief to tie the man’s wrists behind his back. The prisoner muttered incoherently all the way to the Swift home, but had become fairly docile.

Tom’s mother and his blond, blue-eyed sister, Sandra, a year younger than he, greeted the group at the front door, having waited up late for them. They cried out in alarm at sight of the bleary-eyed prisoner and at Mr. Swift’s bloody sleeve.

Tom bound his prisoner more securely, then called Dr. Simpson, the plant physician. Next, Tom phoned Harlan Ames, in charge of the security division at Swift Enterprises. He apologized to both for disturbing them in the middle of the night.

Minutes later, a car screeched to a halt on the gravel driveway outside the house. Harlan Ames, slender and dark-eyed, was accompanied by Phil Radnor, blond-haired and stocky, Ames’s assistant. At once they began to question the prisoner.

"All right, let’s have the whole story! Who are you? Who put you up to this?" barked Ames.

The man stared back sullenly, his eyes gleaming with a fanatical light. "I’m trying to save the world from destruction! Can’t you understand? Tom Swift and his father are the real criminals!"

While the questioning went on, young Doc Simpson arrived, yawning, and examined Mr. Swift’s arm. Fortunately the knife slash proved to be only a flesh wound. After using an antiseptic, the doctor applied a bandage. A quick examination of the prisoner showed only superficial bruises.

When Ames and Radnor had abandoned grilling the stranger, who refused to give his name and only glared at them, Tom’s mother approached the man and lay a gentle hand on his arm.

"Sir," said Anne Swift in a soft voice, "you endangered my husband and my son, and you can’t blame us for being upset. But let’s all calm down. Won’t you tell me your name?"

The man looked up at Mrs. Swift, frowned—and smiled. "Sure. My name is Samuel F. Cobboley, ma’am. Did you say someone is after your son?"

"I’m afraid so, Samuel. Do you know why?"

The man seemed to struggle to think. "Well, some folks seem to have the idea that Tom and his father are out to destroy the world."

"Isn’t that silly!"

"Sure is, ma’am."

Tom’s mother smiled prettily at the stranger. "Now, your doctor—what did you say his name was?"

"Oh, that’d be Dr. Smeckna, Otis Smeckna. He’s in the phone book, if you need a good psychiatrist," was the reply. "Please don’t tell him I’m not taking my pills, though. It makes him mad, and he sends me bad thought-waves."

"We won’t mention it," she said soothingly.

"Amazing!"
whispered Ames to Radnor.

The psychiatrist was contacted, and within forty minutes Dr. Smeckna had escorted his patient off into the night. "Samuel gets worked up rather easily, and he was listening to the TV news," was his brief explanation. "Thank heavens he didn’t do any serious damage to you men."

Early the next morning as Tom and his father were eating in the sun-filled breakfast nook of the Swift home, a broadcast came over the television which startled them both.

‘‘World capitals are buzzing with excitement," said the newscaster. "There is a rumor that Brungaria—" Instantly the Swifts were alerted at mention of a country which had once been a persistent adversary of the United States. "—has something to do with the strange new sky satellite," the announcer went on. "So far, the Brungarian government has neither confirmed nor denied this rumor. Many experts take this as proof that the Brungarians are responsible!"

Tom and Mr. Swift exchanged worried glances. "Dad, this could cause even more panic!"

A totalitarian state for most of the Twentieth Century, Brungaria had only recently entered the democratic fold. But there were still many who held on to suspicions that the East European nation regarded itself as a rival to the West. The thought that tiny Brungaria might have developed a technology of such immense power would be deeply disturbing to much of the world.

With Tom at the wheel of his low-slung sports car, father and son sped to the experimental station, and by eight o’clock they had arrived at some figures that seemed conclusive, now based upon a day’s-worth of instrumental observations of the phantom satellite. These showed that the new body was indeed orbiting around the earth like a second moon. Tom had plotted the orbit and found it was precisely 54,311 miles from earth. The moonlet’s rate of revolution on its own axis was calculated to be 28 hours, 16 minutes, and the period of its orbit about the earth was a shade over three days, 19 hours—an alternative "month" for Earth! Spherical in overall shape, Little Luna was about 41 miles in diameter.

"No atmosphere detected," Tom commented. "And surface gravity is negligible, as one would expect for such a small body—less than .3 percent that of the earth."

"Well, one thing seems certain," remarked Mr. Swift. "However it came to be where it is, the new satellite is a natural body—probably an asteroid."

"Which means it wasn’t constructed by either our space friends
or
the Brungarians," added Tom.

Mr. Swift nodded thoughtfully as he mulled over their other findings.

"Here’s something else that may interest you, Dad," said Tom with a slight smile, shoving over a paper filled with formulas and equations that he had worked out.

Mr. Swift studied Tom’s figures with a puzzled look. "You mean its orbit is perfectly circular?"

"Perfectly! No variation, to within one-thousandth of a percent."

"But
that,
at least,
isn’t
natural! An object drifting into orbit could never settle in to such a perfectly regularized one."

"Exactly." Tom’s eyes glinted with excitement. "That proves its trajectory was artificially controlled."

"In other words, the work of intelligent beings!"

Again, father and son stared at each other, the same thought running through their minds.
Was this part of some plan by their space friends after all?

Mr. Swift shoved back his chair and stood up abruptly. "Tom, I think we’d better call a press conference as soon as possible and give our findings to the world. It may help to calm the public’s fears."

Tom nodded. "I’ll get George Dilling on the phone right away and make the arrangements."

As the lunch hour drew near, a jostling swarm of television reporters and news photographers filed into a reception room in a building near the main gate. At one o’clock, just before Tom and Mr. Swift were to arrive, Harlan Ames walked in and ascended to the dais. The crowd of newsmen buzzed expectantly as Ames introduced himself.

"For reasons of safety," Ames began, "we’ll have to ask all of you to observe some rules that—"

But at that point came a loud interruption. A slightly-built, red-haired young man, wearing a vivid green sports jacket and carrying an expensive camera, burst out in a nasty manner: "Is the cover-up starting already? When are you going to cut out the double talk and get down to what you really know?"

"What do you mean?" asked Ames, annoyed.

"I mean we want the real story! What are the Swifts up to? We all know you and your space pals are cooking up some experiment, just like Professor Voort said yesterday! So you can’t make us swallow the bunk you’ve been handing out so far!"

Harlan Ames’s fists clenched at the man’s insulting manner. The crowd shrank back as he jumped from the platform. Striding up to the man, he said quietly, "Look, wise guy, you’re a guest here. If you don’t like the way things are being run, leave!"

"I have the right to be here!" responded the short-statured young man loudly. "You want to throw me out, go ahead and try it!"

"Thanks!" Grabbing the lapel of the man’s jacket, Ames swung the man around and took him by the seat of his pants. Before the surprised newsman could do more than squawk helplessly, the security chief marched him out of the building and through the main gate! "Don’t let him back in!" Ames told the gate crew. "And don’t come back till you’ve learned some manners!" he called after the sputtering photographer.

Meanwhile the two Swifts had arrived and mounted the dais facing the audience. As Ames returned, to a scattering of applause, they began to explain their findings.

The rest of the conference went smoothly. Toward the end one of the journalists asked, "Since Swift Enterprises has spaceflight capability, should we expect a Swift expedition to the satellite?"

Damon Swift chuckled. "If I know my son Tom, he’s already planning it!" The crowd laughed, and Tom grinned.

After a late lunch Tom and his father went to their office, where they found Bud Barclay waiting for them with a bulky package in hand.

"Here’s that part you needed," said the youthful pilot, handing the package to Tom. "Straight from Marietta, Georgia, via Bud Barclay Air!"