Tom Swift on the Phantom Satellite (17 page)

Tom didn’t bother blowing up at the impulsive young stowaway. "Okay, you’re here. What did you mean when you said—"

Gabe fumbled in a pocket and took out a small photo print. "It was the first day and I was just checking out my camera and flash settings, and didn’t think much about it at the time. He didn’t even make an excuse, just mumbled something and walked away. But I had to wonder—why was he coming out of the storage hold where you were keeping the
second
atmos-maker, the south pole one? At that time we were busy setting up the other one."

He held out the photo to Tom, but the young space veteran didn’t look at it. "I don’t need to see it. I’d already figured out that Jess Northrup has been working for the other side."

The photo showed Northrup emerging from the hatchway of storage hold B.

"How did you know?" asked Bud, incredulous. "Because of the hostage business?"

Tom nodded. "That’s when I started putting it together. I remembered that Northrup had been involved in the original construction of the
Titan
by NASA—he was in a good position to ruin the bracket beam, maybe even Jatczak’s chair."

"He could have been in that hold to sabotage that part of the second atmos-maker, the part that failed at the south pole," Gabe said. "I just wish I’d said something, Tom," he added ruefully.

"Sometime over the last couple days he sabotaged the engines." Tom stared out the viewpane at the night landscape, illuminated by earthshine. "He didn’t want us to have any chance of escaping Little Luna, even if we got word from the Brungarians about the bomb. He and Lemura have been working together all along. And now they’re riding around together in that saucer-copter."

"But
why?"
demanded Gabe. "What’s Lemura’s goal?"

Tom turned and faced him. "Sheer lunacy—just as it was the first time."

Gabe looked blank. "What first time?"

"The first time he tried to revenge himself against the country of his birth, the country that condemned him to death."

Eyes bulging wide, Bud choked out a single word:

"Rotzog!"

Korvant Rotzog, a Brungarian rocket scientist blamed for a disaster in space during the totalitarian era, had escaped the firing squad with the help of western agents, and had been given a new identity. But he had used his technical genius to plot a mad vengeance against Brungaria. As recounted in
Tom Swift and His Rocket Ship,
Tom and Bud had narrowly thwarted his evil ambitions.

"I thought the guy was dead!" exclaimed Gabe in confusion.

"No remains were ever recovered from Carpe island," Tom replied. "When his rocket base went up, the burning super-fuel reduced everything to ash. He must’ve had an escape vehicle ready and waiting—or maybe he was never there at all!"

"Now I get the fingerprint business," Gabe remarked. "It never was to fool
us—
but to mislead the Brungarians into thinking he was that man Lemura."

Tom nodded his agreement. "Lemura is probably dead. But his fingerprints live on!"

"Bet he used the same surgeon who made that Fearing Island spy look like he’d been beat up!" Bud cried, half in anger and half in awe. "Then he was able to take Lemura’s place on the space expedition."

Gabe laughed unexpected. "Okay, guys, now the great light dawns! That must be why he didn’t want me to see him up close—he thought I’d recognize him, because he remembered my name as someone who’d been on the yacht where he was holed-up for a while. But man, I was only aboard for a total of two or three hours! I don’t think I ever caught sight of him."

"He must look a lot like the real Lemura," Bud commented.

"The real Lemura was a Soviet scientist, Bud," Tom retorted. "Any photo of him would probably be decades out of date."

Tom sat down again, and Bud put a hand on his shoulder. "What now, skipper? Join the others?"

Gabe asked fearfully, "Do we even have enough time? We don’t know when Rotzog plans to set off the bomb."

Suddenly Tom brightened. "Wait a second! Now that we know Rotzog’s behind all this—I think I can tell you
when
the bomb is set to go off—and
where
it is!"

Bud shot a wry look toward Gabe Knorff. "Genius at work, Gabe. Maybe you should get a shot—no,
put that thing down!"
Bud turned to Tom. "I know you’re aching to explain, Tom, old chum."

Tom was already at work at the computer station. "Ten to one Rotzog is still feeding his main obsession—revenge against Brungaria! In his crazed mind, just setting off a big bomb on Little Luna wouldn’t accomplish anything, but—what if he set it off in such a way that it
threw the satellite out of orbit?"

"Is that
possible?"
gasped Knorff.

"Very possible," Tom confirmed. "Just a split-second of thrust on the leading edge of the satellite would send her into an atmosphere-grazing trajectory straight at Earth!—but it would have to be timed
perfectly.
And that’s what I’m calculating now."

Presently a long series of coordinates flashed onto the monitor screen. "There’s the list," said Tom.

"The
list?"
Bud repeated. "Can’t you narrow it down?"

"Sure can. Because there’s a second element to factor in.
I’m sure he wants Little Luna to come down over Brungaria!
Only one realistic trajectory will do that. By combining the factors, we’ll know both the when and the where—the bomb will have to be located more or less along the midline of the asteroid’s mass, right on the fore-edge at the moment of detonation."

Gabe had turned white, making a stark contrast to his red hair. "Listen, guys, I’ve seen movies and—I mean—if this thing actually hits the earth, it won’t just be a problem for
Brungaria.
Won’t it, like—wipe out all life? Total extinction?"

"What do you want me to do, Gabe?" asked Tom, his face stony. "Broadcast a warning? Just the
sight
of Little Luna in the sky caused mass panic! If the bomb goes off and we start heading earthward, there won’t be time to get another bomb up here to divert it. We’ll hit. End of story!" Tom realized all too well that his beloved family, in fact all mankind, were in dire peril.

"Then—" the photographer gulped. "Let’s go get that bomb, boys!"

TOM LOCATED the probable coordinates for the bomb on the crude photo-map of Little Luna. The area was several miles in diameter and not far from their base—about nine miles southeast, still in the daylight zone.

"We’ll take the smallest, fastest tank," Tom said, "and bring along whatever tools and instruments might help us disarm the bomb."

"Swell," grated Bud as he paced back and forth behind Tom. From the angry flush on his face, Tom guessed what was on his mind.

"Simmer down, pal," he advised gently, laying a hand on Bud’s shoulder. "Whether we like it or not, we must keep cool. There’s too much at stake to lose our heads."

In fifteen minutes, their tank crammed with equipment, Tom, Bud, and Gabe were scooting and scrambling across the defiant terrain of Little Luna. Tom pushed the vehicle’s electric motors to the limit, and it seemed that half the time they were soaring through the air from one rise or hillock to the next.

"This is more like flying than driving!" gulped Gabriel Knorff. "But whatever you do, don’t slow down!"

Studying the map, Bud observed, "Looks like we’ll have quite a bit of landscape to poke around in."

"I’m pretty sure it’ll be easier than it looks," Tom said. "See that big, steep-sided crater that I’ve marked? It would make an ideal blast-chamber for Rotzog’s purpose—just like the combustion chamber of a rocket, with the opening at the top serving as a nozzle. I’m going to look for the bomb right in the center."

The three fell silent, prey to the dread and tension of their mission. Five, ten, twenty minutes passed. Then without warning Tom swerved the wheel violently to the right, nearly sending the tank into a sideways somersault!

"G-Good grief!" cried Bud. "What’s wrong."

Tom killed the engine. "Caught a glimpse of something—something we don’t want glimpsing us!"

The tank had skittered into deep shadow between arching boulders. Now Tom pointed off into the sun-drenched valley that they had been following.

"The saucer!" Gabe exclaimed.

The helicraft had appeared between two peaks, dwarfed by their craggy elevation. Unable to rise higher, it was forced to cruise cautiously 100 feet above the valley floor.

"They’re coming from where we’re heading," noted Bud. "Maybe they just planted the bomb!"

"If so, that’s good news," Tom muttered. "They will have given themselves plenty of time to get clear of the blast area." He leaned forward and began to tune the tank’s transiphone unit.

"Tom, you’re not planning to try radioing that loon, are you?" Gabe demanded.

"No," Tom replied. "But they probably have some kind of in-ship communications setup, like an intercom. Wouldn’t hurt to see if we can listen in."

After several tries, Tom was able to zero-in on the correct frequency. He boosted the amplification to maximum.

Amidst the usual static, a torrent of angry Brungarian poured from the speaker! There were several distinct voices—but mainly two.

"Wish I spoke their language!" murmured Tom. "But I recognize one voice—it’s Mirov."

"The other bigmouth must be Rotzog," Bud guessed. Then he added, "Listen, Mirov called him by name!"

The craft had now passed over the tank’s hiding spot, and the wave-canceling effects of Little Luna’s terrain were beginning to assert themselves. The three Americans turned in their seats to look back at the saucer-chopper.

"What’s going on?" asked Gabe breathlessly. "It slowed down."

Suddenly the sounds from the speaker took on a shrill tone of desperation and fear.

"They’re doing something to Mirov!" Tom said. Then he flinched back. A shrill, horrifying scream burst from the transiphone—continuing an instant later, not from the speaker, but from the sky!

"Look!" cried Bud. "They’ve thrown somebody overboard!"

"It’s Mirov!" Tom shouted.

A figure in a dark uniform was tumbling through the thin air of Little Luna! The Americans sat frozen with horror. Mirov’s ghastly shriek rang in their ears!

In every mind the same nightmarish picture was burned like a photograph—the picture of a helpless captive being hurled from the Brungarian helicraft to the rocky ground below!

It was the most brutal and cold-blooded act Tom had ever known. Shuddering, he managed to pull himself together. Unless he and his friends acted at once, an even more terrible catastrophe loomed in the offing. Everyone on Little Luna would be blasted to death!

"We must move fast!" he cried out. Waiting but a moment for the saucer to gather speed and soar out of sight, Tom activated the tank motors and quickly spun it around.

"You’re going the wrong way!" shouted Gabe.

But Bud said confidently, "Tom knows what he’s doing."

"Mirov should be able to tell us some things about the bomb," Tom said in explanation. "The low gravity makes even a fall from that height survivable, unless he slammed into some rocks." He didn’t need to add a further motive: that making some attempt to help the man was the only decent thing to do.

They had seen the Brungarian hurtle past the side of a nearby mountain and out of sight. Unfortunately, the ground was broken and shadowed by rocks, crags, and gulches. Precious minutes slipped away as they swept the terrain with electronic binoculars.

"There he is!" The cry broke from Gabe Knorff. He pointed to a man’s figure, spread-eagled grotesquely on the rim of a sandy canyon.

The rumbled to a stop and the Americans ran to Mirov’s side. "He’s still alive," said Tom. "But I think his shoulder is broken." The commander was only semi-conscious, but when Tom applied stimulants and injected a powerful painkiller, the man began to revive. At first his deep-set gray eyes seemed glazed, as they roved uncomprehending over the faces of the Americans looking down at him. Then, with a rush of returning consciousness, he jerked upright and burst into a frantic torrent of words.

"Can you speak English to us, Commander?" Torn asked quickly.

"Yes, yes, sorry—my friends!" He began to explain about the H-bomb, but Tom cut him short.

"We know about Rotzog’s plan," Tom declared. Mirov confirmed the general location of the bomb, which was as Tom predicted.

"But I was imprisoned when they set it down!" he exclaimed. "I do not know if it is well hidden or visible on the surface." He added that Rotzog planed to detonate the bomb by remote signal after departing into space.

"How does he plan to get away?" Bud demanded.

"That’s no puzzle!" declared Tom in fury. "He was heading toward our camp at the pole!" Mirov confirmed that Rotzog intended to have his accomplice, Colonel Northrup, reverse the sabotage that was preventing the
Titan
from functioning. Then he and his party would use the American craft to flee!

"They will return to Earth with your ship their valuable prize," groaned Mirov. "I ordered him to stop, in the name of our beloved Brungaria, but it only made him furious!" Tom and Bud exchanged glances—wherever Rotzog was heading, it was surely not back to Earth, a world he intended to doom to destruction! But Tom refrained from telling Mirov all he had deduced.

They carried Mirov into the tank and attempted to cushion him as best they could. Then Tom poured on the power, and the tank scurried on its way.

Finally they rolled over the rim of the wide, deep crater that Tom thought was the most likely site for the bomb.

"But where is it?" muttered Bud. The steep-sided crater was half cloaked in shadow. There was no sign that a human being had ever set foot there!

Tom activated his battery of sensor instruments and scanned the floor and walls of the crater, sweeping them back and forth. When he finally looked up at his companions, his face was pale and grim.

"Nothing!" he choked. "Not a trace!"

An abrupt sound, rolling and booming through Little Luna’s scant atmosphere, drew their eyes northward.