Tom Swift in the Race to the Moon (13 page)

"Okay, genius boy, so what
is
your plan?" Bud asked. "And don’t tell me you don’t have one!"

Tom shrugged. "We have a couple days to kill—44 hours. At zero hour we need to stand-to out in space in hopes of seeing the capsule in transit. Between now and then, all we have to do is stay clear of the Brungarians."

"That’s
all,
hmm?" chuckled Arv Hanson with irony.

"I would think this a good opportunity to engage in scientific work," suggested Dr. Faber. "After all, we
have
come rather a long way, and may not be up this way again for a while."

Tom laughed. "You have a point! All right, a little science before dinner." The young captain took the ship down to within a few miles of the surface, then gave orders for the depth and consistency of the dust layer directly below to be checked by the
Challenger
’s specialized radar instruments. The report he received back was that the answer was somewhat indeterminable. "The bounceback looks funny to me, skipper," declared the radar crewman with a frown. "I’d avoid walking on that stuff until we know a little more."

Tom turned to Bud. "Like to do a little exploring by flying carpet?"

"Would I!" Bud grinned enthusiastically. "Pal, I can hardly wait to get my space-legs uncoiled!"

Leaving Hank in charge, Tom descended to the hangar compartment with Bud, Chow, and several others who were anxious to begin some lunar exploration. Here they sealed their helmets to the space suits they already wore, and hauled the six Repelatron Donkeys out through the big air lock—which rolled up and down like a garage door—to the landing platform.

"This is great," said one of the men. "We’re miles up and I don’t feel dizzy! But say, Tom, where are we exactly? Some place unexplored?"

"We’re just east of the Hilbert Crater on the farside," was the answer. "That ridge on the horizon is the edge of it."

Chow suddenly called out, "Boss! Brand my hemispheres,
where’s the earth got to?
Cain’t see it, an’ I though you could see it from anyplace up here!"

Bud laughed. "Cowpoke, there’s a reason they call this part of the moon the farside! It’s always turned away from the earth so you can’t see it—not
no-how!"
he added.

The six explorers now mounted their vehicles, one to a disk. "One thing from your training I especially want you to remember," Tom radioed via his suit transiphone. "Unlike the spaceship these Donkeys only have one repelatron apiece, and it can’t be retuned quickly and precisely enough to deal with the changing mixtures and proportions of ground composition as we travel along. Don’t risk flying lower than about three miles. Below that, the generalized surface frequency you can use at this height starts to break up, and you could run into trouble."

One by one the six lifted off the porch-platform, forming a flying caravan with Tom in the lead. As they soared through the brilliant sunlight, gradually spreading out into a broad flying wedge, Chow whooped and waved an imaginary 10-gallon hat.

Bud seethed with excitement. "Just think, Tom," he exclaimed over the radio, "this is really it—the moon! Mrs. Barclay’s little boy sure has—"

Bud stopped with a squawk. His flying platform had suddenly tilted.

"Bud!" Tom cried in panicked alarm. "You’ve gone too low! Pull up quick!"

But the disk had begun to waver violently, knocking Bud away from the control pedestal and against the encircling safety rails. For a moment the Donkey seemed to steady itself, and Bud stretched out an arm toward the controls. But the next instant, bucking and jolting, it spilled Bud toward disaster!

FRANTICALLY Bud clawed for the nearest support as he whirled over the safety rail like a runaway windmill. He failed to grasp the edge of the disk. But as the platform bobbled over on its side he managed to snag the end of the repelatron’s central antenna rod and cling to it. But the platform refused to right itself! Despite his light lunar weight, Bud’s position was indeed perilous.

Tom had immediately begun to drop down and loop back to rescue his friend. But as he came close to the same level, his own Donkey began to act up, twisting and faltering wildly in its course.

"You can’t go this low either, skipper!" Bud exclaimed, panting. "You’ll end up like me! Let me try to—uhhh!"

Trying to swing his legs up to the platform, he had lost his grip instead!

Tom’s heart stopped. Even though the moon’s gravity was only a sixth that of Earth, they were miles above the surface, with no atmosphere to slow a falling object even slightly. By the time Bud’s plummeting body hit the ground, Tom knew he would be traveling at bone-smashing speed!

Before Tom could think of what to do, a shadow flashed by him on the left, angling downward. Chow! The seasoned Texan’s rodeo-trained eyes locked on to where his straight trajectory would cross Bud’s falling form. "Knew I shoulda taken m’ lasso out with me!" he muttered.

As Chow’s platform went lower in its flight, the same interference effect that had turned Bud’s and Tom’s Donkeys unstable began to affect his repelatron as well. Instantly the cowpoke switched off the power. Hurtling free through space, the Donkey was now an arrow!

"Buddy boy," Chow called, "keep yer eyes on me an’ reach out. Only got me one chance at this, partner!"

Tumbling slowly as his fall accelerated, Bud stretched out a desperate arm and Chow, passing below, reached upward and, at the last instant, gave a slight jump. Chow’s fingers raked along Bud’s gauntleted forearm and for a sickening moment it seemed they would be unable to connect. Then their hands came together—and locked in a firm grasp. Chow yanked his young friend down onto the Donkey, and immediately switched the power back on at full force. The repelatron seemed to stutter. But it held, and the platform rocketed up into the black sky out of the danger zone. "Brand my octopus soup, you had a mighty close call, buddy boy!" Chow remarked.

Bud was white. "Chow—all the dumb jokes I ever played on you—"

"Naw, fergit it, hombre. You jest keep bein’ you!" Chow said. His leathery face wore the satisfied smile of a Texas hero.

As they neared Tom’s Repelatron Donkey Bud began to stumble through an apology for his carelessness, but Tom’s look of anger and sheer relief cut him off. Then the team soared off to recover Bud’s Donkey, which, freed of Bud’s weight, had rebounded to a high altitude. Catching up to it at last, Bud transferred over to it.

"Now let’s head back and put
dinner
ahead of
science!"
Tom declared shakily.

"Best idee yet!" amened Chow.

The ensuing hours passed slowly aboard the
Challenger.
There was no sign of the
Dyaune,
but also no word from the space friends.

"It’s a real mystery," Tom remarked to Hank Sterling. "Obviously the space people want us to find the ark—we’re their only chance. Why don’t they transmit detailed arrival and landing information?"

"I’d say it shows a high level of ethical development," responded Hank thoughtfully. "They now know that their first contact was an error, that they’ve placed Earth in danger as well as their own ‘planet X’. So they’re being extra cautious about sending any messages that could fall into the wrong hands—or ears. I’m not so sure we humans would, ultimately, give such priority to the welfare of strangers on another world—not if our own civilization were in danger."

Tom nodded at the logic of Hank’s comments. "Yet somehow they seem too clever to leave the situation there. Even if their craft is like their original contact missile and doesn’t show up on our radar, they may be expecting us to sight it visually as it comes in."

"They seem able to play around with light and visibility, too," the engineer reminded him. "Remember that object you and Horton encountered on your way to the outpost?"

"Guess we can’t do anything but stay alert," Tom said.

When the stated time for arrival was finally near at hand, Tom pumped power into the repelatrons and sent the
Challenger
zooming up into space to an altitude of 800 miles above the lunar surface. He had the entire crew focus their attentions on the surrounding dark void and its field of stars, looking intently for any sign of movement as the ship’s radar, and other detection instruments, scanned back and forth.

But the hour came and went.

"Frustrating, frustrating," grumbled Dr. Faber. "No doubt their vehicle has been delayed. But for how long?"

Tom disagreed. "I’d be very surprised if they didn’t keep to their stated schedule. More likely they’ve arrived along some route out of sight to us here—or made the vessel impossible to see by some technological means."

Tom unrolled a detailed map of the two lunar hemispheres and spread it before him on a worktable. Next to it he placed the last space message for reference. "It’s a logic problem, just like the symbols themselves. They must expect me to be able to dope out the most likely landing site just by thinking it through. I wonder if I’m up to it."

"You are!" Bud declared. "That’s why they trust you—why they picked you to be their point of contact in the first place."

Bud’s words started a train of thought. "That’s true. It’s me
personally
they prefer to deal with. So, maybe, the key to all this has to do with me personally—something about me, or something I would know that the Brungarians wouldn’t." As his agile mind ran over the whole sequence of his contacts with the space friends, his deep-set blue eyes fell upon the copy of the final space message they had received.

WE ARE NOT ABLE TO ACT TO PREVENT THE COMPLETION OF ITS SEQUENCE. CONTAINER COURSE WILL TERMINATE AT #### SEVENTEEN ROTATIONS. SOLVE FOR POSITIVE RESULTANT IF YOU ARE ABLE. NO COMMUNICATION PENDING RESOLUTION.

"Bud!" Tom cried suddenly. "This previous message!"

"Huh? What about it?"

"‘Solve for positive resultant’! Don’t you get it?
It has a double meaning!
We took it as a reference to solving the disease problem, but what if it means that there’s something else
embedded in the message itself
that we are to ‘solve for’?"

Bud’s eyes widened, as certain eyes are prone to do. "Genius boy! That’s got to be it! The key they’re counting on is
you yourself—your genius!
They figure you’re the only person on Earth who can pull the secret second meaning out of what they sent you!"

Tom set to work with renewed vigor, going back to the original array of received symbols. "It might even have to do with the exact transmission frequencies they used," he muttered.

The young inventor tried one approach after another as the hours fell away. At last inspiration came to him. "I’ve got it! If you take the base coefficients of the row delimiters and then—"

"That stuff’s as hard t’ figger as them drawins, boss," Chow interrupted. "Mebbe you kin just tell us what the space folks have to say."

Tom rubbed an hand across his forehead, streaked with the perspiration of hours. "Sure, pardner. They’ve sent us radial coordinates based on the lunar sphere, and repeated them several times for confirmation. It’s beautiful! And they’ve used the moon’s orbital plane, which is slightly inclined to the plane of the solar system, as an anchoring point."

Tom drew a number of precise lines and circles on the lunar map, plotting a series of X’s that formed an octagonal figure. "There, where the lines cross inside that octagon—that’s the landing site."

"But where is it?" asked Dr. Wohl.

"Here on the farside, but much closer to the southern pole." Tom read the small writing on the map. "The Lucian Plateau—probably right in this feature here, a small valley."

"Then it’s waiting for us, lad!" exclaimed Evan Glennon. "Let’s go!"

TOM SWIFT took Dr. Glennon’s advice immediately. Swiveling and adjusting the repelatron array on the ring-rails, he sent the
Challenger
lunging off on a southern tack, pulling closer to the surface at the same time. The craters, mountains, and rippling fore-edges of ancient lava flows sped by beneath them faster and faster as the huge ship seemed to strain forward in anticipation.

"Here’s the edge of the plateau," said the young inventor breathlessly. "Coming up portside—I think that’s the valley. Anyone see anything?"

A dozen pairs of eyes scanned the stark terrain in tense silence. Then a dozen shoulders flinched as Nicky the monkey gave forth an excited, unearthly screech!

"Nicky!"
reproved Violet Wohl. "What’s the matter with you?"

"Mebbe he sees somethin’," said Chow. "Animals kin see better’n us human beins can."

"I think
I
see something," Tom murmured in awestruck tones, pointing.

A circular, unearthly object was hanging immobilely one thousand feet above the floor of the lunar valley!

"Jetz!" breathed Bud.

"You found it, Tom!" said Arv Hanson. But like everyone else, he seemed compelled to speak in a whisper.

"What do you suppose holds it up like that?" mused Hank. "Our instruments don’t detect anything at all—like it isn’t there!"

The space ark had an overall discoid shape, flattened on top and bottom but curving smoothly around its periphery, top and bottom merging together without a rim or seam like the end of an egg. It was utterly featureless, its color a nonreflective white. Yet the watchers could make out a very faint, hazy corona against the blackness of space, a rainbow-colored luminance that seemed in constant shifting motion over and around the entire hull.

"I’m not receiving any energy readings at any frequency," intercommed Dinah Ingraham from her station. "Dead blank."

"Yeah," gulped Chow,
"dead
’s the word fer it—like a blame ghost from outer space!"

"Let’s not get spooked by it," said Tom with a smile. "We need to get moving before the
Dyaune
runs across it too. I’m taking one of the Donkeys over for a closer look. As long as I move very slowly the platform should remain stable."

Bud put a hand on his pal’s shoulder. "Not you, Tom—
us!"