Tom swift and the Captive Planetoid (2 page)

Bud and Tom had just returned to their planetary native soil from an interrupted voyage to Tarksi, the mystery comet that had entered our solar system from interstellar space. The
Challenger
expedition had reversed course midway when data from Tom’s telesampler revealed a grave threat from a companion body, a staroid—a tiny fragment of an ultradense neutron star.

“Not to alarm any of you,” said Jatczak mischievously, “but there is indeed a certain relationship between my discovery and our late solar intruders, Comet Tarski and the neutron staroid. A married couple, eh?”

Tom’s father smiled. “It already sounds intriguing, Dr. Jatczak.”

“But perhaps of no great interest to most of our guests,” responded the astronomer politely. “And yet—I have no wish to darken the ceremonial enjoyment of our two science-minded visitors with undue suspense. Perhaps...”

“Tell you what, Henrik—I’ll continue my tour and Tom and Damon can catch up after your lecture,” offered Kent.

“If no one objects, I should like to remain, Doctor,” declared Col. Mirov. “As head of the Astra-Volkon contingent, it is my duty to be aware of any such ‘intriguing’ matters in space.”

“Of course,” Tom nodded.

As the others were led away, the two Americans and the Brungarian waited for Jatczak to speak. “Well now,” he commenced, “some have wondered as to the value of my residence here on Nestria—no, please, it’s true, and it’s a reasonable question. Of what value is my modest astronomy station in this age of megascope space probers, orbiting electronic telescopes, and Tom’s marvelous celestial specimen collector?

“The answer is a pure matter of science, gentlemen—of astronomy, even. Our moonlet is comparatively near to Earth, and it rotates. During a portion of our
solar
night, we have simultaneously an
earthly
night, you see.”

Tom nodded. “In other words, the span when this part of Little Luna is turned away from Earth as well as the sun.”

“I understand how that would be of value,” commented Mr. Swift.

“Of great value,” Jatczak confirmed. “There are sensitive telescopic observations much aided by a double shadow—that is to say, when the bulk of Earth also eclipses the sun for us, obviously a frequent occurrence given our close orbit. But this benefit is less a matter of optical observation than the modern electronic variety. Naturally, I do both.”

“You are referring to radio-astronomy?” inquired Mirov.

“Precisely, sir—that, and more. Our blue world’s communications and power-transmission systems flood local space with waste energy, electromagnetic waves, all across the spectrum. Nestria, placing her metallic bulk between noisy Earth and my instruments for half of her lengthy day, acts as a very effective shield.”

“Sure,” Tom said; “all the more so because Nestria is laced with veins of Lunite. We had to deal with the inductive diffusion effect from the start.”

“Yes, of course, the annoying signal dispersion,” noted Col. Mirov.

“Go on, Dr. Jatczak,” Tom urged. “What have you discovered?”

The elderly astronomer’s face brightened in scientific delight. “Ah! You see, the protection of Nestria afforded me the opportunity to make a broad study of the heavens with instruments of heightened acuity—in particular the regions of space ‘north’ and ‘south’ of the plane of the ecliptic, the home of the planets.

“You are all familiar with the Oort Cloud, I should imagine?”

Mirov reared up defensively. “Perhaps I am not as familiar with it as you presume, my dear sir.”

“It’s the source of most of the longer-period comets,” stated Damon Swift. “The outer reaches of the solar system.”

“Exactly,” nodded Jatczak. “Leaving our planets behind, one first encounters the Kuiper Belt, domain of icy materials and source of shorter-term comets; and then beyond, at a distance of some five-thousand-billion miles—rather a long haul, but nothing to an astronomer—one enters the Cloud. Unlike the Belt, which is a flat ring, the Oort Cloud is spherical, completely enclosing the solar system like a bubble. Much too thin and diffuse to be seen with the naked eye, of course.”

“It’s so far distant from the sun, and its orbital coefficient so slow, that movement of the sun among the nearby stars can dislodge material that ends up crossing the solar system as comets,” Tom put in.

“And you have discovered something in this cloud?” demanded Mirov impatiently.

“A wonderful discovery! I have detected, within Oort, a rather thin spherical stratum occupied by what seem to be rocky objects of sizable dimension!”

Tom’s eyes widened in scientific enthusiasm. “Another asteroid belt?”

“I intend to call it the ‘Planetoid Sphere’,” replied the scientist. “Perhaps one day the name
Jatczak
will become attached to it, eh? Setting aside such vital matters, my instruments tell me that the Sphere—mostly composed of what we dismissively term cosmic dust—contains a scattering of substantial objects, thousands. Some of them, gentlemen, are hundreds of miles in diameter and are true microplanets—in the new terminology we are supposed to use nowadays.”

“Doctor, you referred to a relationship with Comet Tarski,” prompted Tom’s father.

“Yes, yes. My second discovery. Well, you see, it is a natural possibility that as Tarski and its staroid companion passed through the Sphere, delicate balances would be disturbed. And it seems that is what has eventuated. I have detected a small planetoid trailing in the wake of the comet and even now approaching the plane of the ecliptic. The glare of the comet’s tail made it difficult to detect from Earth by conventional means.”

Mirov frowned. “I don’t wish to be a worry-wart in the manner of Barclay, but if I may ask with utmost calm—do you predict a collision between this planetoid and our Earth?”

The astronomer chuckled mildly. “An interesting and perfectly legitimate question, Colonel. No indeed, nothing of the sort. No world crisis is involved this time. The Follower will be no less than eight million miles distant at its closest approach—an ant’s stumble cosmologically, but in no way a cause for concern.”

“We thought the same thing about Tarski,” murmured Tom wryly. “How big is the planetoid, Doctor?”

“Roughly—it has an irregular shape—ten miles in diameter, on the order of Mars’s small moons Deimos and Phobos. Little surface gravitation to speak of.”

Tom Swift’s deep-set blue eyes shone with excitement. “Dad, we had to pass up on the Tarski probe, but this planetoid—!”

The elder Swift smiled broadly. “Well, Doctor, you’ve set a fire under my son. And your prediction was right. The
Challenger
will undertake a mission to this ‘Follower’ and land on it.” As Tom cheered under his breath, he asked the astronomer how long it would be before the planetoid made its closest approach to the earth.

“Oh, you have a little time, a few weeks. The comet nucleus was well ahead of it. And with the disintegration of the staroid the parameters have changed, obviously. I’m making a study of the matter. I shall resume after the wedding ceremony—well, perhaps tomorrow morning.”

“I recommend a postponement to tomorrow
afternoon
, Jatczak,” dryly pronounced Col. Mirov. “In view of the circumstances.”

The marriage was solemnized in one of Base Galileo’s larger spacecraft hangars, which usually served as a church. Nearly all the colonists, now a fair-sized crowd, watched bride and groom march—or bounce—up the aisle and into the history books. Beneath an arch of enormous flowers from Nestria’s gardens, Henrik Jatczak and Violet Wohl became Henrik Jatczak
and
Violet Wohl. “Two doctors,” commented Chow. “Ain’t nobody gonna get sick in
that
family.”

“It’s lovely,” said Mrs. Swift. “Damon, this was a wonderful occasion for my first vacation in space.”

“And so far entirely restful,” Bashalli observed. “Unless this new planetoid guest of ours has overstimulated your brain, Thomas.”

Bud laughed. “C’mon, Bash. Genius boy gets overstimulated if he
doesn’t
have something going for his brain to chew over!”

Tom laughed too, knowing every word his pal said was absolutely true.

The next morning—so-called; there had been no intervening night—Tom set off for the cave of the gravity cube in one of the colony’s agile terrain-crawler tanks, equipped with treads that clawed into the ground, supplemented recently with Tom’s gravitex machine. His father and Bud accompanied him, as well as—by insistent demand—Sandy.

“After all, I
do
have a scientific education, Daddy—Tomonomo—
Bud
!” she observed forcefully. “I’m as well-qualified to take a look at this alien thingie as—”

“As me,” Bud put in.

“
More
so,” she daintily snorted.

Inside the energizer chamber, hewn from solid rock by the space friends, Tom worked for hours with the researchers stationed there, next to his father. But it didn’t take long for Sandy and Bud to lose interest—as there was little to see. The black-haired young pilot led his dateable friend down to the base of the mountain and into the “mine” of “
edible substance to sustain life
,” as the mineral food had been described by the extraterrestrials.

When they eventually returned, Mr. Swift said to his pert daughter, “And how did you like our clay entrée, sweetheart? As you know, it has healthful properties—some kind of stimulative effect on cell regeneration and the immune system.”

“I
do
feel
energized
,” she replied.

Bud reddened slightly. “I, er, picked up a few samples for Doc Simpson,” he said. “He said he wanted to test them in combination with his adapticum pills.”

“Good going, flyboy,” grinned his pal. He paused momentously. Then he added: “Doc plans to make a new version of aquadapticum for astronauts. To save on oxygen.”

“That explains why you’re not out of breath, Buddo,” Sandy commented. She was slow to add: “After our climb.”

Bidding goodbye to the chamber’s research team, they drove back to base. Both the sun and the swollen ball of Earth were now low on the horizon of the moonlet. It had become
tomorrow
afternoon, and they found Henrik Jatczak awaiting them at his elevated observatory outpost.

“How are you, Henrik?” asked Damon Swift as the party climbed down from the transport.

“Oh, fine, fine, fine!” he replied happily.

Tom’s eyes twinkled. “Made any new discoveries, sir?” Sandy nudged him in rebuke.

“I have indeed, my friend!” beamed the elderly man, whose stay on Nestria had made him a good deal less frail than when he had first arrived. “Something most interesting!” He gestured toward one of his radiometric instruments. “The MHD dipoliscopic resolver—I thank you for having shipped it to me, Tom; one can hardly do without one these days—has registered a
second
guest in our solar system!”

“Another planetoid?” asked Sandy.

“Yes, my dear, another one jarred loose by the passage of the staroid through the, ahem, Jatczak Sphere. There may well be a great many of them.”

“Not a—er—big heavy one, is it?” Bud asked.

“You must stop this needless worry, Bud, or you will wither your muscular youth,” remonstrated Jatczak with a warm smile. “No, this is just a tiny rock. I haven’t yet calculated its dimensions and mass. Perhaps a thousand feet or so. And
no
, it will not approach the earth. But I trust you will pay a visit en route to the Follower?”

“We surely will,” promised Tom.

After a grand feast prepared by Chow and their second period of sleep, the visitors from Shopton, New York, Earth, bade the newlyweds and the other colonists goodbye and mounted spaceward on columns of repelatron force. They made brief stops at the poles to show Sandy and Bashalli the atmosphere-making machines in operation. Then the
Challenger
zoomed homeward to the minute speck in the Atlantic that was its permanent base, Fearing Island.

As the ship penetrated the atmosphere at a modest velocity, the Private Ear Radio—an advanced quantum-link communicator—beeped on the control board.

“Hmm! Guess it’s an early ‘welcome home’,” remarked Bud.

Tom plucked up the unit. “This is Tom, Fearing Control.”

“
Tom
! This is Tower Three!” came a frantic voice, clear as a bell. “
We have a situation!—There’s
—”

The voice was cut off by a sharp sound!

“That was an explosion!” gasped Bashalli.

Tom nodded sharply. “Don’t I know it! Let’s bring ’er in on a low arc, Bud. We need to know what we’re getting into.”

“Aw, like as we don’t a’ready
know
what we’re gettin’ into,” groaned Chow. “Trouble!”

“It may just be a problem with the radio,” suggested Tom’s mother hopefully. “Mightn’t it be, Damon?”

The reply was grave. “Not likely,” said Mr. Swift. “Not with the PER units.”

A dark silhouette against the last traces of Atlantic twilight, the
Challenger
crossed the islet slowly at a 300-foot altitude.

Suddenly Bud exclaimed, “Hey! What happened to their power supply?” The blazing array of lights that gave evening illumination to the Swift Enterprises spaceport had gone out, plunging the base into darkness.

A pillar of fire shot up from the ground and in its glow a huge gantry crane seemed to come apart like a collapsing toy tower. An instant later an ear-shattering
Boom
! penetrated the hull of the ship!

Before anyone could speak, two more explosions followed. Another service tower and a tall radar-tracking antenna went to pieces in brilliant bursts of flame.

“Sizzlin’ skyrocks!
The whole base is blowing up!
” Bud cried.

Tom threw himself at the controls. “We’d better get down there and—”

“Son—stop,” came the quiet, commanding voice of his father. “You’re carrying passengers. There’s no need to set the ship down in the middle of all that. Let Base Security handle it.”

The young inventor felt torn. He was hungry to take action. Yet Fearing Island, leased by the Swifts from the federal government, was protected by assigned military guards as well as Enterprises’ own security forces. “I—guess you’re right, Dad. We can go back upstairs until we get the all-clear.”