It was the start of the hardest and best ten days of Sandy’s life.
* * * * *
Tom’s list soon became a collection of pallets that would be loaded into Challenger once she flew over from Fearing and landed at Enterprises.
He made a stop in with the team trying to decide how to either adapt Goliath or come up with a fast but as powerful alternative.
“Any movement?” he asked Malcolm Service.
The man shrugged and shook his head slowly. “Not really. I suppose we could put together a giant repelatron and power supply with a something above it to rest against that moon, but it would be so unstable that just taking off from the Earth would be more than any one pilot could manage, even with computer assist. The best we’ve come up with is one of two possibilities.”
“Go ahead,” Tom urged seeing the man biting his lower lip.
“First, we do the cut down version but mount about a dozen smaller repelatrons around the perimeter angled out about forty degrees to provide stability until it gets out of the atmosphere. We did the costing at that would take about thirty-five million dollars and fifteen weeks.”
It wasn’t very good news but Tom accepted it for what it was.
“What’s the other idea?”
“Take Goliath up there with a special crew, put her in orbit near the moon and take everything from the cargo deck up off and tow it into higher orbit for safekeeping.”
A gleam of understanding came to the inventor’s eyes and he smiled. “Tell me more, please.”
Encouraged, Malcolm continued. “We put a remote control module under the deck and control it from the Challenger, or even one of your flying saucers. It will require a lot of computer power, but we have that available. It is a two-million dollar solution that can be ready to go—we have to do a few things while the ship is still down here to get it ready—in less than four weeks.”
Tom looked at Malcolm and the other four in the room. All of them were nodding as if this was their preferred solution.
He asked more questions over the next fifty minutes before standing up, placing his hands back on the table and leaning toward them.
“I like it. I want a full rundown and report on what the fast and cheap solution will entail, who will do it, and even a crew list by the time I come back from my latest trip out to see what there is to see. I ought to be back in twenty-four days from tomorrow. If it is a go I want it to begin the next day after I get back.” He looked each of them in their eyes. “Thank you, one and all.”
With that he stood up straight and left the room.
Malcolm looked at his manager.
“I honestly thought he’d hit the ceiling over that suggestion. It’s quite radical and will mean a lot of repair work once the ship gets home.”
“But, the good thing is we all know it is workable even if it is a bit messy.”
Four heads nodded in unison. What they hadn’t told Tom was the disassembly concept had only come to them the day before, and their first option—one they debated for a full week—had been to blow the little Martian moon apart with a nuclear warhead!
CHAPTER 7 /
AN INITIAL LANDING
BUD JOINED Tom at the Barn, the open-sided hangar situated closest to the Administration building, at noon the following day. They were waiting for Peter Bannock, Art Wiltessa and their back-up pilot/crewman Duanne Dimmock, to bring the Challenger in for a landing.
Situated in five piles were nineteen collections of equipment and parts the inventor hoped would be sufficient to cover anything they ran into or wished to do once they arrived at Phobos. There were many questions in the back of Tom’s mind as he checked his master list and visually identified in which pile each item could be located.
Peter called over the radio and it was relayed to Tom’s TeleVoc pin.
“Just passing over Rhode Island. We got vectored wide to avoid one of those giant double-decked Euro-jets that blew an engine out over the Atlantic. They’ll make it to JFK okay, but we’ll be six minutes late.”
Bud looked at Tom and shook his head. “One of these days they’ll lose one of them to those faulty engines. What’s this make? Eleven mayday situations and still they refuse to do a complete engine swap out?”
Tom could only shrug. When asked five years earlier what his thoughts were after the sixth such incident he’d stated that even the best engines could have hidden problems, and the only way to get rid of them was to re-engineer the areas that seemed prone to explosive blowout and then change out all engines. What he didn’t mention at that time was that Swift Enterprises had bid on those engines and were undercut by only a few thousand dollars so the airline manufacturer went with the lower bid.
In the case of these engines it was almost exclusively in the front compressor components of the engines where the problems occurred.
Obviously, this engineering and swapping had not happened throughout the fleets using the aircraft. About 30% of the carriers had insisted on getting replacement engines, but few of those were different from the originals.
He went back to his list while Bud tried to calm down.
Some fifteen minutes later, Challenger came in over the eastern hills on the other side of Lake Carlopa, made a half-circle around the area and settled down on the old heat-resistant tiles the Sky Queen used during its first four years in service.
Tom tapped his TeleVoc. “Peter Bannock,” he silently intoned.
“Yeah, skipper? What can we do for you?”
“Well, for one you can lift back off a few feet and side-slip closer to the Barn. It’ll keep us from having to haul everything over there. I’ve made sure nobody is going to need to use the area for the next few hours.”
“Will do, Tom. Facing you and what I believe to be a Bud Barclay?”
Tom grinned. “Yes. Go ahead and stop when the outer rails are even with that particular Barclay.”
A minute later the ship came to rest and Tom could hear the whine of the ventilation fans as their outer covers opened allowing fresh air to get inside and to force out the old air.
Duanne was first out the door next to the hangar on the lowest deck followed by Peter. As the two men climbed down the ladder to the ground Tom called out, “Where’s Art?”
Peter called over his left shoulder, “He’s gonna stay in the hangar and direct the insertion of all that fun stuff you’ve got over there.”
Hands clutching the outer rails of the ladder, he slid the last five rungs in a single jump and quickly joined Duanne in standing in front of Tom and Bud.
“Everything is shipshape and ready for the cargo,” Peter reported. He gave them a sort of sloppy salute and then reached out to shake hands. “Seriously, we pulled out everything we knew we could do without so there ought to be almost enough room for your gear. Uhh, is there any of it that can stay outside?”
Knowing the man meant could some things withstand being strapped outside the cube of the habitable ship for the trip out to Mars, the inventor nodded.
“Pile one,” Tom told him. “Just spare parts we might need to configure a push spot on the top of the ship. Glad to see the cargo carrier rack got removed. I forgot to ask for that.”
A team of fifteen men and women were approaching along with a small boom crane that would be used to lift things up to the lowest access point, some thirty feet above the ground.
Tom asked if Fearing had installed enough of the high-acceleration couches so the crew of six could withstand the high-G forces they would undergo on the fast trip out.
“Sure. Even added two extra in case Chow wants to come along. Where is he, by the way? I was sort of looking forward to some of his home cooking on this trip.”
Tom told the pilot about Chow’s brush with a heart problem.
“He’s still taking it easy but will be back to full days this time day after tomorrow. Doc says he can’t go on fast and heavy-G trips for at least one more month.” He mentioned that the cook—heavily chaperoned by Wanda—had come
in the day before and prepared enough frozen meals for the entire trip.
Peter and Duanne both smiled on hearing that information.
Forty-two minutes later the last of the gear was in the air heading for the porch outside the now closed hangar door. It only took two minutes to use the pop-up connectors to cinch that load down before a protective durastress tarp was added to protect things from air friction on take-off and landing.
Damon meandered over from the Administration building to watch the last of the packing, standing just behind Tom. With a small clearing of his throat he said, “Looks like you are ready to go. Wish I could join you but we’ve received the go-ahead to start hammering stakes in the dirt for the two air ferry terminal locations in New Zealand one of which I’ve never even seen. By the time you get back we might even be constructing the actual aircraft.”
Tom smiled and shook his father’s outstretched hand. “I hope to be home in just over three weeks. Try to not get everything finished while we’re gone. I’d sort of like to go down for a day or two to see what’s going on.”
Bud nodded. “Me, too. Maybe even Sandy, if, that is, she gets finished with this mission to Mexico.”
“Heard anything from her, Bud?” Damon asked. “She’s been mum as far as her mother and I are concerned.”
“Only that they had distributed most of the medicines to legitimate hospitals and about two-thirds the food. Phil Radnor and Armando Vatelli are down there from Security and had to stun a couple would-be thieves the other afternoon. Got ‘em turned over to the local gendarmes who took a very dim view of such activities. The stealing, not the stunning. I think they might have asked why our people didn’t use deadly force.”
“Let’s all be glad they didn’t and hope that puts an end to such foolishness. I’ll try to keep in daily contact with her and suggest that once they are out of supplies they come home. Might not work as I have heard she’s been piloting around the CadaverCar about non-stop and has already found thirty or so people still alive but buried under rubble and, sadly, maybe three times that number who did not survive.”
Tom now spoke up. “At least getting those bodies out and not deteriorating ought to cut down on the spread of disease.”
A few minutes later the men climbed the ladder and disappeared through the side door which was also the ship’s main airlock.
Since Peter hadn’t fully shut down the systems all Tom needed to do was run the computerized systems checks. Five minutes after sitting down he moved the indicator for the throttle up and they lifted from the ground.
The full load of nine tons of extra materials put a small strain on the ship’s power pod and so Tom made the decision to park up near the old Outpost in Space and unfurl his Solartron panels to replace as much power as they had used before heading to Mars. It would be a delay of only an hour but it would allow them to travel at top speed all the way to the Red Planet before they had to even think about recharging.
While they waited, Tom and Bud suited up and headed over to the outpost which now boasted two complete rings of spokes. Just two months earlier it had been turned over to NASA and a private investment concern for use as a permanent space station and tourist hotel.
It continued to act as a stationary relay station for television and radio broadcasts and still hosted a variety of scientists who came up to conduct experiments, use the high-powered telescope and Megascope for observations, and to work in microgravity on general and medical projects.
Five of the spokes had been turned into a high-flying space hotel where the ultra-rich could vacation for a week at a time producing enough revenue to operate the two weekly supply rockets—that had gone with the deal—and also the entire station.
Now that Tom’s specialty repelatron artificial gravity system had been installed throughout the station, anyone could decide to take advantage of it through the use of an undergarment with special woven metallic fibers in it that reacted to the downward pressing of the emitters. Some chose no gravity while others needed it to keep from experiencing space sickness.
It made a somewhat comical sight to see people standing upright and walking around while others around them soared past at a ninety-degree angle.
They entered through the new central airlock on the top of the station. Gone were the days when all access had to be from the ends of spokes via airlocks barely large enough for two men.
“Jetz!” Bud said under his breath as they entered the main hub area. It might still be the same diameter, but the newer, high ceiling made it feel cavernous.
“Right, and remember this is just the top area. There’s the new lower area with everything from the exercise facility, larger sick bay and the launching stations for their five evac balls.”
“May I assist you gentlemen?” came a lovely female voice from behind them.
Both men turned to face the woman, probably only in her early twenties.
“Well,” Tom told her. “Yes and no. You see, I’m Tom Swift and this is Bud Barclay. We sort of built this station and wanted to see what all changes had gone into it since we gave it to NASA. I hope you don’t mind us snooping around.”
As he had identified himself and Bud, her mouth had gaped open at the recognition of both the names and their faces. She was speechless as he finished.
“Are you okay?” Bud asked. He grinned as he added, “It’s just that with your mouth open like that we can see you’ve never had your tonsils out.”
Her mouth snapped shut and she turned beet red.
“Forgive my friend. He does not mean to sound insulting,” the inventor explained.
“Oh, no. No. I just sort of get flustered around really famous people.” She lowered her voice as a man and woman drifted past them taking advantage of the nearly zero gravity. “Not like them. They’re just rich and snobby, and he once did half a season on some bad TV show, but you two are… well… wow! You’re seriously famous!”
She offered to escort them around and so they took off their outer suits and hung them next to the airlock’s inner door.
They toured several of the upper spokes and about the same number of lower ones. As they poked their heads into the observatory spoke Tom let out a laugh.
“Professor Brandon,” he called over to a rumpled-haired man sitting at a desk.
The man, startled, whipped his head around and the momentum caused his body to shift and spun slightly in that same direction even with the partial gravity in the spoke.
“Thomas! Budworth!” he called out happily as he rose, a bit too forcefully, and headed a foot into the air. He settled down and shuffled over to see them. “My goodness! It is wonderful to see the two of you. I would have thought the newer Queen of All Space would occupy all of your orbital efforts. My, but it has been a long time. Perhaps a year or more?”
Tom and Bud grinned. The professor had arranged and managed to get his university to pay for five separate trips up to the Outpost over the previous five years. In all he’d spent some sixty days in orbit and was treated by the normal station crew as an accomplished astronaut.
“Well,” the inventor replied, “if you mean the new Space Queen, then I have to admit to being inside her more times this past two years than this workhorse, but nothing can compare with your first space station! So, what’s new with you?”
Making a small “come with me” motion, the researcher took them to the far end of the spoke and the small office he kept his papers and special tools in.
“I imagine you already know about the Phobos anomaly?” He said quietly and raised his eyebrow giving them both a little nod.
Tom admitted they did know about it. “We’re on our way out to Mars in a few hours to try to land on that moon to see what could be causing it to drift inward. Do you have any insights we need to know about?”
Brandon shook his head. “No. Sorry to report but, as a famous television sergeant used to say, I know nothing! Other than a few observations telling me it decided to make this closer approach be
ginning nine weeks ago and there were no viewable factors involved.”
“That’s what the skipper, here, tells me he knows,” Bud offered.
After discussing a couple possibilities Tom promised to let the professor know of anything he discovered.
“I wish I could be going with you. It would beat the dickens out of repeating and repeating observations I’ve been making of the liquid geysers on Ganymede. Some cockamamie numbskull in Albania published a paper on how his observations show they are reducing in intensity and will, or so he claims, cease in just over eleven month’s time as a possible precursor to a huge volcanic eruption.” He shrugged as if to say, ‘What can a scientist do?’
“Are you free to come and go as you choose?” the inventor asked.
“Pretty much. My research benefactors have obtained a five month stint up here to be divided into no fewer than three deployments. I am here on number one.”
“Come with us!”
Professor Brandon looked Tom in the eyes and could find nothing other than a genuine invitation.
“I accept. I can be packed and ready to go in thirty minutes. I never fully unpack when I come up here.”
* * * * *
The Challenger drew in her Solartron panel arrays, which automatically folded and tightly rolled and stowed themselves in the two special pods mounted atop the command cube. All this was possible through the use of special bi- and tri-layer metal strips embedded in the seams. When power was added they unfurled and when it was shut off everything ran in reverse.
The best equivalent of how that worked anyone ever came up with was Bud’s, “Think of a blow-tickler…” explanation.
Art had taken the outside duty to make certain things went smoothly, and three minutes after the pods snapped shut he re-entered the ship, took off his spacesuit and climbed the ladder to the upper level.
“All set, skipper. Didn’t even have to take the mid-point pause. It must be because the panels got warm enough this close to the sun. They folded and tightened down like champs!”
Tom Swift and the Martian Moon Re-Placement Page 8