Tom Swift and the Mystery Comet (19 page)

"Yes. I agree."

"I don’t think we can afford to delay finding out just what’s up with Comet Tarski. The clock’s ticking; there’ve been more of those intermittent anomalies in the fixed-setting repelatrons. It’s getting worse, whatever the cause.
Who knows
whether the
Chall’s
repelatron drive will still be available in the crunch?"

Damon Swift tried not to sigh. "All right, Tom. We all trust your judgment. After all—you’re the hero!"

"No, Dad," stated Tom Swift. "I’m your son."

Tom directed Slim to divert course and head for Fearing Island. He explained to Sandy and Bashalli that after letting off the others, the girls would be flown on to Shopton aboard the
Sky Queen
.

"Then it is all
that
serious?" inquired Bashalli. "But I don’t need to ask, Tom. Only to say... come back safe."

The young inventor radioed Fearing to ask that the spaceship be made ready, then called Hank Sterling. "I’ve decided to go ahead, Hank. Jet down to Fearing with the space model right away."

"Will do, boss. See you there by dinnertime."

The task that Tom found most distasteful was a purely human challenge. "So, Swift, just what did you want to have a conversation about?" began Randolph Sarkiewski, mouth already open and running, as he joined the youth in one of the lab compartments. "Need a few more skeptical correctives from someone who dares to get squinty-eyed over the Swift intuition? You know what I think. All this haste to rush into space endangers the lives of your crew and could compromise your scientific goals as well. All because some idiotic―"

Tom interrupted coldly. "Don’t go on, sir. You don’t have to worry about any of this. You won’t be joining the mission."

"Got on your nerves, hm? And what about your commitment to me? My challenge?"

"Tell your fans whatever you like. I don’t care if it ‘hurts my image.’ Frankly, Doctor—Mister!—you’re out of control. You don’t believe in my approach to the mission. Fine. I don’t care to have you on board making your usual insulting asides and distracting me and my team. There’s no need for discussion, sir. You’ll be flown back to Shopton tonight, with Sandy and Bash."

Dr. Sarcophagus stood like a granite statue in a rumpled white shirt. "I see. I suppose Feng will be part of your team?"

"I think he’ll be of value in understanding whatever we find out there. You don’t have to agree with that. You just have to accept it."

The man’s expression slowly changed, evolving from red anger to something else that made him pale with barely concealed emotion. "Might I be allowed to say a little more to you—Tom?"

The youth nodded curtly.

"I’m going to give you something extremely valuable, valuable because it’s extremely rare," he began in a low voice. "Namely an apology. I
have
been insufferable. I call myself a skeptic and a scientific rationalist, but my conduct has been that of an obnoxious, closed-minded bigmouth. I’d like to blame some of that on the culture of the public airwaves and the internet—but it’s mostly just me, just Randy Sarkiewski.

"Tom, there’s a kind of a reason for my... attitude. I don’t choose to publicize it. My SCAT associates, my loyal audience of skepto-heads—they don’t know about it. It’s personal."

Now it was Tom Swift who appeared skeptical. "Are you going to ask me to feel
sorry
for you?"

"No. I just want you to have a few more facts." The older man hesitated, collecting his thoughts as if pulling them into the open with sheer muscular force. "An entire branch of my family was killed by the Nazis, in Poland. Only my grandparents, newly wed, were able to escape. Want to know what their terrible crime was? They were reported to have made some disparaging comments about a pet ‘scientific’ theory promoted by the Nazi leadership. Accepting it without question was treated as a test of loyalty."

"A scientific theory?" repeated Tom, intrigued.

"A
pseudo
-scientific theory. Aha! Establishment science crushing all
Challenger
s? You decide: it was called the Cosmic Ice Theory. It entailed that everyone believe that the Sun is a
big ball of ice!
A real thrill for those pure-blooded Teutonics who wanted to institute worship of the frozen north—frost-giants, aeons of twilight, all the old tougher-stuff Nordic myths favored by the Hitler gang.

"The leadership,
Der Fuehrer
himself, were obsessed with occultism, magic and mysticism, raw primordial power from some higher—lower!—source. They consulted astrologers in planning military moves. They threw over biology in favor of occult doctrines of ‘racial destiny.’ Millions died. Including most of my family. Not remembered, not avenged. No justice. Just
numbers
, Tom. That’s all that’s left of them.

"Heard enough? Maybe you understand now why I get a little emotional, a little obsessed, on the subject of pseudoscience and paranormalist cult leaders and all that feel-good anti-rational rubbish! And then I see reputable scientists, respected scholars, signing on to the scam..."

"Such as Dr. Feng?"

"Dangerous myths dressed up as science, marketed to a gullible public. I can’t respect such a man, Tom. But—I could do much better at
pretending
to."

The man stood in front of Tom, waiting.

"Mr. Sarkiewski," Tom said at last, "it’s not my place to judge you. Who knows what it’d do to
anybody
to have something so, so
unimaginable
happen to a person’s family! You acknowledge that you’ve acted badly..."

"I do. Please don’t tell my audience."

The young Shoptonian half-smiled. "Okay. Look... are you saying to me that you can get yourself under control? Even around Karl Feng?"

"Yeah, that’s what I’m saying," he confirmed. "I’d like very much to see this project through right to the end. Take me along on your comet probe—please. I’ll be good. Maybe even likeable.—well, let’s not set the bar too high."

Tom shrugged, but with a nod. "Departure time is 1 PM tomorrow. Be sure to pack your skepticism, Mr. Sarkiewski."

Tom’s goals were met with the usual Swift Enterprises efficiency. At 1 PM the following day the mighty
Challenger
was whooshing upward through the thinning air and over the black border into space. "How do you feel, Doctor?" Bud asked Dr. Feng as they stood before one of the ship’s big viewpanes. "Space can seem a little
big
first time out."

"I’m all right," replied the scholar. "If I am quiet, it is from a contemplative mood. The stars, all those stars... What do they wish to tell us?"

"Right now I’m more concerned with
that
guy." The young astronaut pointed toward distant, brilliant Tarski. "Maybe he’ll tell us his story even before we get there—if the telesampler does what Tom wants it to."

Below, in the ship’s wide vehicular hangar, Tom labored with Hank Sterling to iron out the final difficulties of the space telesampler. "I know you’d like to get this baby going en route, Skipper," said Hank. "Getting a preview of our mystery guest out there is a good idea."

"If there’s some sort of danger our regular instruments can’t detect, taking samples while we’re still distant could keep us alive," the young inventor pointed out tersely.

"Wellllp, our 1-G acceleration and deceleration should put us in Tarski’s lap in 51 hours," replied the young engineer. "Since we’re dealing in prophecies, I predict we’ll have the telesampler on line before Chow rings the dinner bell."

"That’d be great, Hank."

As it turned out, the problems had been solved before the range cook had even begun working his craft in the
Challenger
’s galley. "Ready to take the first slice," announced Tom, standing at the auxiliary control panel on the command deck.

"The moment of truth!" murmured Dr. Feng, watching with the others.

"
No
doubt about
that
," nodded Dr. Sarcophagus.

Bud, seated at the main control board, half-turned toward his chum and said: "Okay, genius boy, vacuum established in the hangar. I’m opening the hatch and starting the conveyor."

Tom gave a tense smile. "You don’t need to take the machine all the way out onto the landing stage. Just park ’er right in the hatchway. Perfect line of sight to the comet."

As Tom adjusted the controls, Chow Winkler nudged Lethal Monica with a pudgy elbow that wallowed in a shirt of supernova color. "It’s allus this way, Lett. Big suspense! Guess that’s why th’ books sell like they do."

Lett smiled nervously. "Yee-haw, pardner. This moment could be one of the end-of-chapter cliffhangers."

"Allus turns out all right."

"So far," muttered the Brungarian. "But these days, sometimes they kill off a main character."

Tom fed energy into the telesampler down below, and the rainbow of lights before him twinkled and changed. "Transmitron good. Positioning beam on its way. Data in a few minutes."

"And then you’ll have your first sample?" asked Sarcophagus.

Hank answered for his young employer. "No, Mr. Sark. This is just radar-type information to give the X-rasers a precise fix. A five minute round trip at light speed."

"Conveying the actual material samples back to the
Challenger
will take a lot longer," Tom added. "Though the capture beam travels at the speed of light, it can’t accelerate molecular mass instantly. The excised particles never get anywhere near light speed."

The positioning bounceback was received and fed into the analysis computer. "We know where the bulk of the nucleus is down to the inch," noted Tom presently. "I can’t say the same about its surface, though. It’s flopping around like boiling oatmeal right now."

"Th’ boss like t’ use cookin’ examples when he does his explanations," Chow whispered to Lett. "Like to think he got it from me."

"Ready to go, Tom," reported Hank.

"Right." The young inventor stabbed a button. "X-rasers on. Capture beam away! Now we have a little time to stretch."

Chow decided it was his duty to rustle up some supper. The others remained on the command deck.

"I wonder, Tom," said Dr. Feng. "Have your space friend contacts been able to tell you anything about the White Queen—the comet?"

"I was
politely
and
supportively
wondering the same thing," Sarkiewski stated.

"No, but not for lack of trying," was the reply. "Dad has transmitted a coded message several times now, but there’s been no response—nothing."

Sarkiewski smiled blandly. "But I gather that’s not unusual. Your aliens seem to make themselves scarce at certain critical moments."

"Maybe it’s just to spite you, Sarky," Bud remarked with his own brand of smile.

Glancing at the clock, Hank Sterling stretched his arms. "Hard to wait. I want those samples."

"Me, I don’t mind waiting for wonderful things," Lett said. "What a tale this will be for my buds back in Brunka."

At last a polite chortle from the board announced the return of the telesampler capture beam and the first of a steady stream of particles from the comet. "Working perfectly!" grinned Tom happily.

Bud asked if the first samples were from deep beneath the surface. "Not the first ones," Tom answered. "This series is from the coma, the ‘atmosphere’ of ice particles and dust surrounding the nucleus—the head of the comet, in other words."

"The crown of the White Queen!" said Feng.

The first samples showed nothing unexpected, matching the instrumental data gleaned by means of Earth-based instruments.

Tom then commenced a methodical probe pattern that penetrated the surface. "Tarksi is rotating," he noted. "I’m just running the beam right along the equator. We’ll get a good picture of materials distribution without having to shift the beam angle."

More and more wisps of matter materialized in the receiving tank, hour after hour. So many samples were accumulated that Hank, in a spacesuit, had to switch out the stuffed receiving tanks several times.

As Tom studied the analysis readout, his expression slowly evolved, from scientific excitement to nervous bewilderment—to thoughtful astonishment! "Don’t tell me something’s gone wrong with the machine?" Bud asked.

Tom looked up at his friend, frowning deeply. "No... it’s not a tech problem."

"Then what?"

"It’s what we’re scooping up. Bud—I’m not so sure Comet Tarski
is
a comet!"

THE SILENCE that followed was broken by Dr. Sarcophagus. "Please!—not another hive of space bees? Ectoplasm? I’m asking in a spirit of polite curiosity."

Tom was conferring with Hank in whispered tones as they both eyed the readout board. "You’re right, Skipper," Hank nodded. "I agree."

"Captain my captain, what’s what?" demanded Lett. "Going to battle stations?"

Tom addressed the knot of watchers. "I didn’t mean to imply something ominous. I’m just—surprised.

"The visible surface of Tarski is pretty much what we’d expected. But just a few feet down we’re picking up metal."

"You mean veins of metal ore?" Bud asked. "Is that unusual?"

"These aren’t veins of unrefined ore, flyboy. These are very pure deposits of a great number of
different
alloys, butting up next to one another, side by side, in bands of varying width with well-defined edges. The nucleus has now rotated several times under the capture beam. The analysis computer’s mapped the sequence pretty well."

Bud’s voice became tense. "You say it’s not a comet...
what
, then? Jetz, is it s-some kind of—
spaceship
?"

"No. Not that." As Tom spoke Bud followed the young inventor’s sober gaze to Karl Feng. The scholar was slightly shaking his head.

"All right, Feng, pull the rabbit out of the hat!" snapped Dr. Sarcophagus. "Tell the rest of us what the ‘mysterious others’ are whispering in your ear. Er—please."

"You know, don’t you, sir?" asked Tom.

"Perhaps. Somehow. I
do
know something." Feng stared off into space, toward the comet. "The purpose of the Messengers of Light was to provide the warning—and the key to what the White Queen bears in her crown."