Tom Swift and the Cosmic Astronauts (3 page)

Tom nodded, chuckling at the wry look on Bud’s face as he himself recalled the unwieldy span of the objects. "But anyhow, whatever a ship uses for power, it’s the propulsion systems that make it a mighty expensive proposition."

"I’ll bet you have a better idea already. Out with it!" Bud urged. "Didn’t you say something about Dr. MacIllheny’s experiments?"

"Whoa! Don’t put me on the spot!" Tom cringed jokingly, then turned serious. "Well, as a matter of fact, I
do
have a few ideas. One factor I’ve been thinking about is the cosmic rays encountered in space."

"Dangerous stuff!" Bud pointed out. "One wrong move and whole future generations of the Barclay or Swift family lines could disappear! But your Tomasite-Inertite shielding protects space travellers."

"I’m thinking of a whole ’nuther side to it, Bud. Look inside the test chamber." The young inventor led his chum over to the double-thick view window that formed the side of a reinforced test cubicle. Inside Bud saw a sturdy framework supporting a vertical pivot. A metal arm, like the spoke of a horizontally mounted wheel, was linked to the pivot.

"I get it—you’ve reinvented the wheel!" Bud gibed.

"The wheel was a pretty useful invention, bolt-head!" Tom gripped a lever sticking out from the lab wall just beneath the window. "Watch what happens when I release the brake."

As Bud watched, the pivoted arm began to turn very slowly, gradually accelerating to a lazy pace. "It’s about as fast as those ceiling fans that move the air around," the dark-haired youth remarked.

"I know," Tom replied. "But slow and weak as it is, it’s a start. It’s being pushed along by cosmic subtrinos, Bud, the particles MacIllheny discovered. Once he’d pinpointed the basic parameters from the Hyper-Celerator run, he was able to plug the numbers into equations he had already developed, which he sent me right away. Dr. Kupp’s been helping me put it all together. It requires being able to think in six dimensions!"

"Uh-huh. If anyone can do it, he can." Bud watched the little device wheeling around for a moment. "Does it do anything else, pal?"

"I’ve been experimenting with different configurations for the reactor plates. I’ll try another while you’re here. Maybe you’ll bring me luck." Tom entered the chamber and spent some time unscrewing and re-setting a small unit, about the size and shape of a game domino, that was firmly attached to the end of the rotor arm. It appeared to be made up of a number of tiny square "cells" arrayed in parallel. Sealing the door behind him, he rejoined Bud at the window and again released the brake mechanism. "While I’m getting readings, I’ll explain the general idea to you."

"Um—Tom?"

"Huh?"

"Should it be doing that?"

The young inventor glanced through the view pane and his jaw dropped open in astonishment. The device was whirling about its axis at tremendous speed—and accelerating frighteningly. The end of the arm was already whipping through the air with such unbelievable speed that it was starting to glow red from friction!

Tom reached for the brake lever. Before he could touch it, a sharp, shattering retort rang through Tom’s laboratory as a pair of tiny holes appeared in the test chamber’s observation pane and in the lab window looking out on the great underground hangar.

"Get down!" Bud shouted. "Somebody’s shooting at us!"

ACTING on instinct, Bud yanked Tom down to the lab floor with powerful muscles. One side of their faces pressed flat against the tiles, they heard a number of further bangs from inside the hangar, followed by sudden quiet.

"Head down, skipper—don’t look over the window sill," Bud whispered tensely. "I’ll worm over to the door and peek around the side."

"Bud—" Heedless of his pal’s warning, Tom rose to his feet. "The danger’s over."

"Are you nuts?
The shooter must still be out there!"

Tom smiled down at Bud. "There
is
no shooter, pal. But thanks for protecting me."

Bud rolled half over and posed his head on his elbowed arm. "Fine. So where did those holes come from?" He looked up skeptically—though he already assumed he was in the wrong.

Tom gestured at the test chamber window. "Look at the edges around the hole, and where the fragments fell. Something went from inside the chamber to outside! And the hole in the other window started
in
the lab and went through into the hangar."

Somewhat redfaced, Bud scrambled to his feet. "I see. You forgot to tell me your invention is designed to shoot its operator!"

"My invention
broke,"
Tom retorted. "Or rather the testing apparatus did. The friction heat must’ve expanded the clamp, and the reactor chip went flying off faster than a speeding bullet. It’s massive enough to keep going for a few rebounds even after it shot through the windows."

"I take it you didn’t expect the thing to start turning so fast."

The young inventor gave a
that’s-for-sure
snort. "I was hoping for a slight increase. Somehow the reconfiguration keyed in to an effect that nobody anticipated."

Bud grinned. "Well, as a great inventor with deep-set blue eyes once said—
no one can predict everything!"

That evening, supper on the stove, a doorbell-chime announced an expected guest at the Swifts’ attractive home. Tom’s vivacious younger sister Sandra admitted Harlan Ames, who had been head of the Enterprises plant security office for several years running. The lean, middle-aged man was a widower with a daughter Tom’s age. Whenever Dodie was away from Shopton attending college, the Swifts made certain to make Ames a frequent dinner guest.

"Let me take your hat, Uncle Har," Sandy offered.

"Thanks, kid. When I drag myself home to my own place, Dodie usually greets me with,
So where ya been, Dad?"

"You can’t blame her for worrying," said Mr. Swift, looking in from the dining room. "Your job’s enough to turn
anybody’s
hair gray—even a teenager’s!"

Mrs. Swift, slender and as pretty as her blond daughter, had prepared one of her usual delicious meals. As usual, the current Swift mystery quickly became the main subject of dinner-table discussion.

"I can’t stand to think of what might have happened to Bob and Nina," Sandy remarked thoughtfully. "It must have been awful to have to break it to their families."

"I’m afraid it’s my job to face unpleasant facts," said Ames. "The
Sea Charger
may have been sunk."

"Sunk!" repeated Mrs. Swift, shocked by the idea. "But I suppose that would explain why all efforts to trace the ship have failed."

"I don’t agree with Harlan, Mom," Tom put in. "There’s just no way to sink something the size of an aircraft carrier in open water, in the middle of the Pacific, and not leave some sort of debris behind."

"Tom, if I were as optimistic as you always manage to be," Ames began, "—I’d be out of a job!" The remark brought a chuckle from Tom’s father.

"Why would anyone want to sink the
Sea Charger
anyway?" Sandy mused. "Isn’t it just some kind of research ship?"

"I don’t think
‘just’
is quite the word, sis," Tom replied. "The design we came up with for her is pretty sophisticated. She’s flat on top for aircraft landing, and her stern is a self-contained section that can be detached to use as a launch platform for missiles or small manned rockets. There’s all manner of scientific equipment and instrumentation below deck; and of course she’s atom-powered."

Mr. Swift took up the thread of conversation. "As far as I’m concerned, her most interesting feature is that she can be submerged like a submarine, huge as she is. Airtight panels slide shut over the deck, rather like the cover on one of those old roll-top desks."

"And it doesn’t leak—even a little?" asked Sandy mischievously.

"Not
even,"
said Tom. "A bank of water repelatrons reduces the outside pressure almost to zero, and allow us to alter the ship’s buoyancy, as we do in those undersea ‘bubblevators’ at the hydrodome." The Swift Enterprises hydrodome, on the floor of the Atlantic, sustained the company’s helium extraction operation.

"So the question before the house remains—who gets the advantage in sinking, or stealing, the
Sea Charger?"
Harlan Ames declared.

"Someone who’s either threatened by a competing technology—or who wants to capture it for his own uses!" declared Tom abruptly. His eyes suddenly blazed as an idea struck him. "And whichever it was, I think I know who is behind all this!"

All eyes turned toward the young inventor.

"Tom, you mean you
know
who stole the
Sea Charger?"
Sandy demanded. "I haven’t even made a list of suspects!"

"I believe so," her brother replied, "a wealthy, unscrupulous Asian named Li Ching."

"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Swift in surprise. "The man who murdered all those gang members!"

The government-backed Swift expedition to the undersea archaeological site named Aurum City had been bedeviled by a mysterious, never-seen adversary known to international authorities as Comrade-General Li Ching. His agents had ruthlessly cut down a competing gang of criminals employed by a nation that had spurned Li’s organization.

"Actually, he’s a man without a country. Li was exiled by his own government when he tried to sell high-tech military secrets to other countries—some of which are active foes of the United States. He managed to escape the chopping block and flee, no one knows where."

"And in the meantime," added Harlan Ames, "he’s made himself a menace to the world. He’s on
my
short list, though I didn’t want to mention him. Although his name is unknown to the general public, intelligence reports indicate that Li Ching is carrying on what he calls ‘reprisal actions’ against top scientists of other countries."

"In other words," said Tom, "he plans to eliminate his scientific rivals after stealing their technologies. The
Sea Charger
would be a tempting target."

Sandy gasped as Tom described a few of Li Ching’s reputed exploits. "What a gruesome character to come up against! He sounds like a—a sort of international octopus!"

"He gets around," Tom agreed grimly.

Mr. Swift frowned. "Unfortunately, that would certainly explain the
Sea Charger
’s being not just stolen, but sunk," he murmured thoughtfully. "An act of pure destruction! It fits in with reports of Li Ching’s tactics, Tom."

"Of course Admiral Hopkins and the other officials already know our thinking on this," noted Ames. The security chief promised to check at once with the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington for any clues to Li Ching’s latest activities.

The meal proceeded for a time in worried silence. Then Tom’s mother said quietly, "Goodness, I hope you men aren’t becoming involved in another dangerous adventure. It’s a vain hope, but hope is hope." Outwardly brave and calm at all times, Anne Swift often felt pangs of fear for the safety of "her two inventors," and sympathized with the families of Harlan Ames and other Enterprises employees.

"I’ll match your vain hope to some useless advice. Don’t worry, Mom." Tom stood and gave her a quick hug. "I doubt if Li Ching would dare show his face in the United States."

"He’d better not!" Sandy declared. Her blue eyes sparkled with mischief as she added, "But if that creepy old pirate ever does, I’ll grab his skull and crossbones and hit him over the head with it!"

Tom chuckled. "Okay, San. If I see a chance, I’ll let you know."

Tom and Sandy tried to keep the conversation cheerful, but the rest of the evening was clouded by thoughts of the sinister Li Ching. All present knew that again and again, Tom’s scientific work had brought him into danger from enemies bent on stealing his inventions or plotting against his country.

The next day brought Tom face to face with his other mystery, the peculiar behavior of his subtrino reactor device. With Bud away on a delivery flight to Canada, there was nothing to lighten his mood or divert his obsessive concentration upon the problem. He sensed that the matter would prove crucial to the notion of a new mode of space propulsion. But where was the key?

Almost without thinking, he ended his day by walking the short distance home from the plant along the secluded road he and his father often used. He barely noticed the setting sun, or the pair of bright headlights approaching behind him. Suddenly an automobile horn blasted shrilly in his ear! Tom had been so deep in thought he almost jumped off the road.

A white compact whizzed past, then braked to a halt.

"Bash!" Tom yelled, laughing. "What’s the pitch—scaring a guy this way?"

The driver—a pretty girl with long dark hair flying in the breeze—flashed a coy smile at her victim and backed up. She was Bashalli Prandit, a Pakistani who lived with her brother’s family in Shopton and had become Sandy’s best friend. Tom considered her the most attractive date in Shopton. And certainly the most attentive.

"Daydreaming again, eh?" Bashalli teased. "You really had better watch that, professor! I could have been one of those wicked felons who find it fascinating to hit you over the head and kidnap you."

"I didn’t expect such distracting scenery." Tom grinned as he climbed in next to her. She blushed a little and stepped on the accelerator. As they started off, a bulky slat-sided truck roared by, bearing the label SHOPTON QUICKRENTAL. Bashi followed, both vehicles going at a brisk speed.

Tom’s instincts blared a warning. Why was the truck using the little road? The only stop ahead, before the road rejoined the highway, was Tom’s home. "Bashalli," Tom said gently, not wanting to scare her, "let’s slow a little and give the guy some space."

Without warning, the truck suddenly stopped short with a screech of powerful brakes. Bash gasped and swung the wheel hard, but it was impossible to avoid a crash. With a crunching impact the frail compact car rammed into the rear of the truck!

IN SPITE of her tight grip on the steering wheel, Bashalli was hurled violently against her shoulder safety restraint. Her forehead scraped the metal bracelets on her wrist and came up bloody. Tom was half-turned in his seat, and as the car skidded in a half-circle his head was flung back against the windshield of the passenger door. Both were knocked for a loop and almost lost consciousness.