Tom swift and the Captive Planetoid (8 page)

“We have a similar group at Enterprises—
of
course.”

“Yeah. Okay. One of the members called me from home, late yesterday afternoon—
her
home, Day; she had a scheduled day off—well, she thought she’d tell me that she’d just picked up a bit of a short-wave broadcast that mentioned something about—”

Mr. Swift interrupted. “The
exact
words are important in this case. Or—I suppose Harlan Ames could speak to her directly—”

“That’s unnecessary!” snapped Teek. “As it happened, she was clever enough to jot down the words right after she heard them. She emailed them to me.”

“You said she
called
you, Shaw.”

“She called me and then she emailed me. Do you want this information or not?”

Tom gave a warning nudge to his father, who looked humorously rueful. “Sorry. I’m a bit distracted by a pain in my side.”

“I’m told marriage isn’t
always
bliss,” Teek sneered verbally. “The message was: ‘
when Tom Swift test-flies his duratherm system in space day after tomorrow
’.”

“
That’s
an incomplete sentence.”

“Am I responsible for the inadequacies of atmospheric transmission? At least it was in English.”

“Why
wouldn’t
it be?”

“She said it was heavily accented,” huffed Henshaw Teek. “Seems to me that
rather
ups the likelihood that this came from outside the United States.”

There was a lengthy silence. It seemed both old, now former, friends were struggling to calm themselves.

“Shaw...” began Mr. Swift.

“Yes, I know,” interrupted Teek. “We’re grown men.”

Tom’s father chuckled. “We weren’t always.”

“No, Day. I—I suppose it’s—”

“It’s not either of our faults,” said Mr. Swift. “Just the standard prickliness of human nature. I propose we place the blame on Anne.”

“Yeah. For being a lovely young woman.”

“She still is.”

“Awfully smart.”

Damon Swift grinned. “Not smart enough to choose you, Shaw.”

“Aaa, I just fumbled around on our first date.”

“Your—
first
? She told me—”

“The others were just... Now look, Damon, if you mean to suggest that Anne is less than truthful—”

As Mr. Swift opened his mouth, Tom nudged him sharply. “Well. Thank you, Shaw. N-
nice
to talk to you.”

“I can hear your teeth gritting, Day. But—yeah, it was. Old times, huh?”

“Very much.”

After ending the call, Mr. Swift briefed George Dilling, then called in Harlan Ames.

“Nice work,” smiled the security man. “Having an accent is trivial in itself, but it does go along with the foreign connection—Bangladesh, Madagascar.”

Tom rubbed his chin. “Given this ‘theory’ we’re working on, it makes sense to me that the message might have originated on Desh Zai’s yacht. He could be on a cruise in the Indian Ocean.”

“As a matter of fact, I just happen to know that he
is
,” winked Ames. “At least his boat is. His yacht is called the
Apocalypso
, by the way. Brand new, custom built. And it’s huge!”

“This fellow has a mansion and a yacht,” snorted Mr. Swift. “Not a bad life.”

“If you don’t want to
do
anything,” Tom commented dryly.

The reentry test of Tom’s duratherm wing was scheduled for dawn the following morning, Wednesday. Flying to Fearing Island in the
Sky Queen
with the midget
Fire Eagle
in the skyship’s aerial hangar, upon which the D-Wing container capsule had been mounted, Tom and Bud spent the night on the Swifts’ tightly guarded rocket base, where crews continued to work round the clock repairing the damage done by the raiders.

“The bunch we caught have been moved to federal custody on the mainland,” Bowden told them. “The one guy, Purji-something, is still in his brain-freeze coma. No change in his condition—nor in the condition of the others, namely
silence
.”

“You’ve changed that code system, right?” asked Bud.

Bowden nodded. “Sure have. Mace Vendiablo
assures
us that security on Fearing is tight as a drum. His words.”

“I feel ‘assured,’” Tom stated dryly. “
Re
assured is—another question.”

The next morning they were driven to the main launch area, where the
Fire Eagle
had been mounted atop one of Enterprises’ small, reliable Sampson IV booster vehicles. The rocket had been named after Eradicate Sampson, the long-time faithful friend of the first Tom Swift, the young inventor’s great-grandfather.

In the distance the huge
Challenger
loomed ready for takeoff. “She’s prepped and ready in case you two end up stranded,” declared Amos Quezada, the chief spaceflight controller. “Not that I have any doubt about a Swift invention, Tom! I may just go swimming.”

Tom laughed. “Bud and I may end up swimming too—if something goes haywire when we drop in the ocean. We have our emergency paraglide system as backup. But really, every part of the D-Wing setup has been thoroughly checked out.”

“Sure, as
always
, pal,” Bud retorted nervously. “But you still ended up on the wrong side of a tornado. You’ve heard of Murphy’s Law—if anything
can
go wrong, something
will
go wrong!”

“Sure, there’s always a margin of risk,” Tom admitted in a serious tone of voice. “That doesn’t keep you from test-piloting for Enterprises, does it? Sooner or later the duratherm wing
has
to be test-flown, and since I invented it, I may as well be the man in the cockpit!”

Bud looked sheepish, then grinned. “Correction, genius boy—we’ll
both
be in the cockpit!”

Tom and Bud looked at each other in silence for a moment. Then the young inventor chuckled and squeezed his pal’s arm. “And that’s
really
‘as always’!”

The gantry elevator carried the spacesuited pair up to the hatch of the tiny test craft, which was hardly bigger than Bud’s scarlet convertible. Attached to the nose of the
Eagle
was the compact, drum-shaped D-Wing pack. The boys took their places in the pilot’s and copilot’s seats, their shoulders almost touching, and the final checkout proceeded smoothly. Meanwhile, radar antennae were turning steadily, scanning the skies above the island—and the two were very aware that many other instruments and devices were on patrol. “And Dad’s watching us on the megascope,” Tom reminded his chum.

Liftoff was routine. Tom eased the
Fire Eagle
into orbit at an altitude of approximately two hundred miles, then reported to Amos Quezada that all was ready. “Happy landings!” replied the mission controller over the young inventor’s Private Ear Radio.

“Right,” muttered Bud. “I think we’re a little more concerned with the
getting-down
than the
landing
.” Bud had been shaken by Tom’s recent brush with death—by the sight of his friend pinned like a bug in the tornado tunnel. It haunted him.

Tom grinned through his transparent bubble helmet and circled a thumb and forefinger. “Come on, this is how we have fun! But if you want, I could let you off. Next bus on this route comes by in a few days...”

“Aaa. Hit it, pal!”

“Okay, here we go. ‘Oh help, we’re stuck in orbit!’ But never fear!” He pressed a button on the Spektor control unit attached to the main board. Looking forward through the two small portholes in front of them, the astronauts watched the cylindrical package on the
Fire Eagle
’s nose burst open like a flower-bud filmed in fast motion. The Durafoam sheath, its metallumin filaments glistening in the harsh sunlight, shot out into space in a flash and immediately molded itself into its programmed delta-wing shape, the twin tail booms streaming aft. In seconds the D-Wing had enclosed the
Fire Eagle
completely, like a protective hand. Light from the two portholes was blocked out.

“Skipper, I didn’t think to ask this before, but—just how do we see to steer this baby down?” Bud asked. “Just fly on instruments only?”

Tom replied, “The wing comes equipped with its own built-in instrumentation and ‘brain.’ It handles the reentry and landing almost entirely on its own, though there’s a PER-type link to Fearing to allow some remote monitoring—and remote steering if necessary. But I’ve told the control team to leave us to our own devices unless something serious goes wrong.”

“Still—kinda nerve-wracking to set down without knowing what we’re setting-down
on
.”

“I know—which is why I’ve designed things so that during reentry a small section of the sheathing fuselage, guided into position over the viewports by means of the transifoil, will purposely be allowed to burn away to a thin layer. Then we can blow-off that last bit, to provide pilot visibility and a degree of cabin control during the final landing maneuvers. Oh, by the way, flyboy...”

“What?”

“We’re already on our way down! The gravitexes started running as soon as the wing was fully expanded.”

“Thanks for telling me! What now, Skipper?” Bud asked.

“Relax.”

“Not funny!”

“We’re poor helpless space victims! Nothing much to do—except watch the gauges and keep our fingers crossed till it’s time to fly manually.”

Like a hurtling meteor, the spacecraft bit deeper and deeper into earth’s blanket of air. Tense minutes passed, and the D-Wing’s temperature shot up.

Suddenly Bud saw a tense look of fear creep over Tom’s face. “Aw
jetz
. Just to be
polite
I’m gonna ask you: Anything wrong?” the copilot queried.

“Look at those temperature needles! We’re overheating all over the wing! The heat cells aren’t functioning properly!”

“Glad I asked.”

Tom frantically studied the absorption terminal output ammeters and adjusted various controls, but the skin temperature gauges continued to soar.

Bud’s face paled and his heart thudded. No more jokes! Unless Tom could correct the trouble, they would plunge to fiery destruction in the atmosphere—or crash horribly if the craft somehow survived reentry!

THE PRIVATE EAR unit beeped with its incoming message alert. “
Fire Eagle
,
what’s going on up there? We’re showing nom-plus thermal on the shell!
”

“Acknowledged, Control. Amos, I’m trying to work it out.”

“We can get the
Challenger
up there—”

“No time!” choked Tom Swift. “Look—the
Eagle’s
own metallumin coating won’t burn through at these temps. Give me time, Amos!”

As Tom clicked off the PER, Bud said fearfully: “We’re safe at
these
temps—but we’re just
starting
reentry.” Bud’s pal didn’t reply. “I—I know you hate to hear this as much as I hate to say it, but—maybe you should jettison the D-Wing and deploy the backup paraglider.”

The young inventor didn’t break his attention to look at his friend, but the reply was dead grim. “I’ve been trying to activate the system. The explosive bolts are malfunctioning.”

“And... unless you jettison the wing, you can’t use the chute. Yeah. —Tom, what’s fouling up the heat cells? More of what happened in the tunnel?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.” The young inventor strained to focus his attention and his genius. His eyes remained glued to the gauges. Bud stared ahead at his own white reflection in the black-backed porthole viewpane.

They plummeted.

“I still have some control,” muttered Tom. “The heat and plasma-corona are interfering with the transifoil, but I can tweak the aerodynamics at least a little.”

“Hey, how about the gravitexes?”

“Support struts are warped out of line. Besides, yanking us one way or another won’t make much difference to the outside temperature—”

“
Look
!” Bud cried, pointing. “The Durafoam’s starting to burn through!”

A rectangular area of the D-Wing, directly in the boys’ line of sight in front of the twin portholes, was glowing red—then white. It began to flake and sizzle away!

“The visibility slot,” pronounced Tom dully. “It’s supposed to burn away, but not so soon. The forward surface of the wing is already as hot as if the reentry phase were near completion!”

“Doesn’t sound so good, Skipper.”

“The durathermor system has failed completely. We’re doing a basic ballistic reentry with no parachutes, no counter-thrusters—nothing.”

“We—we
do
have a pretty fair heatshield.”

“The D-Wing sheath? The metallumin filaments won’t hold it together when the going gets
hot
.” His brain was working desperately, scanning the universe of possibilities for rays of hope. “Bud, there may be a way out of this!”

Given the situation, Bud’s quick grin in response was startling! “Let’s have it, genius boy.”

“Remember the antipodal bomber? The rocket plane dreamed up by a German scientist? I know you’ve read about it, flyboy. His idea was to increase the rocket’s range by making it skip, or ricochet, in and out of the atmosphere like a stone skimming over water.”

“Sure. But we don’t—” Bud’s eyes widened. “I get it! Every bounce into space will give us a chance to cool off.”

“Right, more or less. We’ll still retain our acquired heat—a vacuum amounts to a great insulator, as there’s nothing to conduct heat away and radiant cooling works slowly. But we’ll have a better handle on friction heat because each short dip into the atmosphere will slow our speed—maybe enough to keep us from overheating on our final descent.”

“Gradual braking—so we don’t melt the brake lining!
Jetz
! Can we do it with this crate?”

“Maybe, if the control surfaces work okay. The transifoil flex strips won’t melt in these temperatures; they just get weak and sluggish. The big danger is that too much of the wing may have softened.”

“Can’t fly a ship made of melted ice cream.”

Tom snorted as he turned to the controls. “That sounds like something Mr. Gerard would come out with.”

After radioing his plan to ground control, Tom checked the temperature gauges and power indicator. Then he turned a control knob which fed current to the transifoil strips embedded in what was left of the D-Wing. As the current diminished and the strips began to fold back on themselves, the youths could see—the last layer over the portholes was gone!—that the contoured wing nose had begun to curve upward.