Tom Swift and His Cosmotron Express (18 page)

"It’s real, Bud," Tom responded. "As we creep our way closer to the speed of light, relativistic frequency shifts in the ambient radiation out there become visible to the eye. But it’s more than that," he went on. "The ‘space squeeze’ itself produces a prismatic effect. What they call the geodesic of space is bent around the ship."

"What I think about," said Neil MacColter, "is our velocity relative to space dust and micro-meteors out there—even hydrogen atoms from the sun. At these fantastic velocities, the things must be hitting us so fast it’s like we’re flying head-on into a particle accelerator!"

Tom nodded. "It was a worry, all right. But remember, we’re not just charging along like a bull—we’re bending space itself. The distortion in the momentum vectors affects everything it touches. To some extent all those particles are swept aside and around the Express. In fact, look over there, at the edges of those halos."

"Something glittery," said Bud. "Sparkling."

"The momentum-space field ‘warps’ floating particles around us, but it has a few sharper kinks in it where the particles are forced together, so much so that thermonuclear fusion can take place. Those sparkles are atom-sized H-bombs going off!"

"Good gosh!" sputtered the Californian.

Tom grinned. "As to raw radiation, don’t forget that the metallumin shell is coated with Inertite. That ‘non-matter matter’ blocks almost anything—even an X-raser beam would really have to work at it to get through."

"But it doesn’t stop that ‘tentacle force’," Bud murmured. The conversation veered away from the unwelcome reminder.

The astronauts slept in shifts, a pair of team members always on duty in the control compartment. All had received basic training in the operation of the Cosmotron Express—and all included Andor Emda. "Hmmph!" grumped Chow to his boss and friend, "think I’ll stay up t’ see th’ sights durin’
that
shift!"

But at last the
Starward
pulled into orbit about Jupiter, king of the planets, larger than all the others put together! His Planetary Majesty was wrapped in fantastic robes of many colors—silver and blue, pink, saffron, many shades of brown and orange, and even a hint of royal purple here and there. "It’s the fantastic rate of rotation that causes the clouds to divide up in bands," said Andy. "Massive and gigantic compared to Earth, but the Jovian day is only ten hours long!"

"Quite a whirl," remarked Bob Jeffers. "The atmosphere’s mostly methane, isn’t it?"

Tom elaborated. "Methane, ammonia, hydrogen. And deep down under those clouds, Jupiter’s almost as hot as a midget sun! It’s the energy of gravitational contraction. Billions of years old, but still settling in."

"I know there’s no solid surface," said Hannah. "Will the mobie just float around like a balloon?"

Damon Swift shook his head. "No, we decided to set it down on Ganymede, the largest of the moons in the solar system. It’s an odd place, big as a planet but lacking any significant atmosphere."

"Father Jupiter must’ve taken it away," Bud observed. "Bad boy—no dessert!"

As the
Starward
drew close to Ganymede, its bright tan color began to reveal dark patches. "That big dark region is named after Galileo," Tom noted.

"But what’s with all them white spots all over?" asked Chow. "Looks like she’s got leopard fever!"

"It’s an upwelling of lighter materials from beneath the crust, caused by meteor or asteroid impacts," Andy said. "By the way, Chow, Ganymede is definitely a boy, not a ‘she’."

"That so? Wa-aal, when he grows up he’ll likely be a handful fer his old man."

"And wet behind the ears," joked Hank. "Ganymede’s another space body suspected of having a layer of liquid water down below."

" ‘Water, water everywhere!’ " Mr. Swift said. "Let’s get Mobi-Gan launched."

They watched the Ganymede mobie set down and commence its baby-crawl. Presently Bud gave his pal a nudge. "C’mon Skipper. Isn’t it
time
?"

"Time for what?" asked Arv Hanson.

"Time to make ourselves First Men on the Moon!—of Jupiter."

"We do need to test the excursion modules’ landing routine," Tom grinned. "We’ll be dealing with some real gravity here—much more than on Earth’s moon. But let’s stick to the schedule and make a little moon of Saturn, Mimas, our first touchdown. I’d like to land in the Herschel crater—a major landmark in our solar system."

"I can hardly wait for my first naked-eye view of Saturn’s rings," breathed Sue. "I’ve just—"

Bob Jeffers interrupted. "Tom, I’m getting a PER call."

"From Fearing?"

"Nestria!"

The parallelophone call had been patched-through from Henrik Jatczak. "Tom, I have amazing news, wonderful news! I shall have to engage in real effort to pull myself together. I have received a message from my Dearest, my Violet!
Tom, she’s alive!
"

Tom Swift was at a loss for words! "Th—
that’s
—!"

"Yes, Tom, yes it
is
!"

"You actually spoke with her?"

"No, alas," replied Dr. Jatczak. "You see—I must stay calm and provide the sequence of events like a good scientist—I have pursued my studies of the Black Window region by means of the frequencifier. The results have been, strictly speaking, indeterminate. I can only repeat that a very minute region of space has been, shall we say, blotted out.

"But within the hour, the instrument registered some 90 seconds of modulated transmission from a certain point well within the area. It was extraordinarily weak; I dare say no standard earthly receiver would be able to isolate the signal from the random noise of the cosmos. Yet I determined the nature of the signal—a common transmission of the sort used in space communications!

"In other words, the very sort of radiocommunications that would be utilized by the Nestria transit capsule!"

"Could you make out the message, sir?"

Jatczak drew an incoming sigh. "No. It was surely enough of an accomplishment to merely analyze the frequency. The modulation envelope suggested vocal characteristics, of that I am certain. But what else could it be, my boy?"

What else? The
Dyaune! Tom thought. But he said reassuringly, "It’s a wonderful development, Dr. Jatczak."

"Tom..." said the astronomer haltingly. "I am an old man. I have learned late in life that scientific knowledge isn’t the sum total of what life has to offer. I am willing to beg. You know... what I ask of you."

"Of course."

"The Black Window is in the ‘scatter belt,’ the outer portion of the Kuiper Belt, somewhat within the orbit of the dwarf planet Eris. You had planned a visit to Eris as the outmost point of your voyage—and as I recall, that leg of your journey would have taken more than a week, even at the greatest capacity of your, what is it?—your cosmotron spacedriver."

"Yes sir, that’s true. A distance of some fifty
billion
miles."

"How Violet was able to extend her air supply to this point, I cannot imagine. But I am allowed to hope. Perhaps she is linked to that other spacecraft, the Brungarian ship that was also—taken. In any event..." His voice trailed off in a plea.

Tom’s decision was hardly a decision at all. "Dr. Jatczak—Henrik—the Grand Tour just ended. The
Starward
is heading straight for the Black Window at whatever speed we can manage!"

THERE were no dissenting voices among the space team—not that it would have made a difference. "We must attempt a rescue, obviously," gravely pronounced Tom’s father. "The outer planets will remain in their orbits for a visit later on."

"If only—" began Bud in a halting voice. "Wasn’t it going to take a couple
weeks
to get way out there? Can we really get to Doc Vi in time, Skipper?"

"Who knows?" Tom said. "She’s survived this long, somehow—that’s a plus point. It must mean that whoever seized the capsule—I’m certain it was deliberate—is keeping her alive, wherever she’s being held."

"Yet it seems
they’ve
given her access to the transit capsule, to the space radio," mused Hannah. "It doesn’t sound like the sort of thing kidnappers would do."

Arv Hanson spoke up. "What do you think, Tom? Damon? Is Volj behind this? The disappearance of the
Dyaune
may have just been a test of their
own
version of a ‘spacedriver,’ which they then used to capture Doc Vi and drag the capsule across the solar system!"

"For what possible reason?" objected Andor Emda. "Ransom? They could have held her captive on the moon!"

"The whole thing sounds t’ these ears like a blame
hoax
!" grumbled Chow.

Tom’s thoughtful voice took command. "I can’t believe we’re dealing with any Earthly technology. There’s some connection to the Emma object, the thing Jatczak calls the Black Window. It’s more likely the adversarial extraterrestrial group, the ‘Others’, are behind it."

"But why target—" began Neil.

Tom cut him off. "Everyone... we have to investigate and do what we can, whatever’s out there. It’s not an armchair exercise. Dad and I have settled on a plan, a very risky plan, to get us there faster than the
Starward
can travel."

"I can guess, genius boy," said Bud quietly. "You’re going to switch on the gravitexes deliberately—so the tentacle force can grab the Express."

"And take us directly to the Window," Tom finished. "Directly and—I’m guessing—at a far greater speed than anything we could do. A guess and a hope."

"
Holy
—!" Sterling breathed.

Tom looked at his friend with sympathy and shared feeling. He knew Hank was thinking of his family. "We may be sacrificing everything. All of us. And we can’t take a vote, or run anyone back home first. This is the mission."

Chow suddenly saluted. As did all the others, each in his or her own way.

"
Onward Enterprises!
" cheered Bud.

"Yes," said Tom, his voice low and hollow, chastened by the Fates. "Onward Enterprises."

The Swifts directed Bud to continue toward Saturn as planned, pushing the
Starward
to the highest velocity yet attempted—thirty percent of the speed of light! "We’ll know soon enough if the gradient isn’t flat enough!" Tom declared. "Meanwhile I’ll be PER-ing Fearing and Enterprises about the plan. And... one other thing."

"What other thing?" asked Hank.

"I’m going to make one last attempt to contact the space friends, using the transmitron, which is much more powerful than our standard deep-space transmitter."

"But it also has a tight beam," Hannah objected. "Where do you plan to point it? You don’t know where their base is, do you?"

Tom agreed but explained, "Dad and I have concluded that they’re operating out of Mars’ smaller moon, Deimos. I’ll try that—also the other moon, Phobos. I’ve got to make the attempt. The SF’s have warned us before of dangers in space."

"Yeah," said Bob Jeffers wryly. "We could
use
a good warning about now."

Tom composed his message in the space-symbol language and sent it into the void. But when he returned to the command deck hours later, pale Saturn already in view, he was shaking his head. "Nothing. No response."

"Tom," said Andy Emda, "isn’t it possible that—the other extraterrestrials have attacked and
wiped out
your space friends?"

Tom didn’t try to answer the unanswerable. He took a glance at his father, who nodded. "All right," said the young inventor quietly. "We know what we have to do. Bud, shut down the cosmotron drive." His copilot did so, and the huge ship halted instantly. "Now, activate all gravitexes, using the ambient solar gravitational field. No need to aim them, I think. On default setting they’ll balance out."

The crew felt no change. They waited tensely—reacting with a start at the sound of a
beep
! "H-has it started?" gulped Chow. "Did we get grabbed?"

"Incoming message," said Neil MacColter. "Not the PER—the main antenna. Source indeterminate."

The two Swifts studied the monitors. "I’m sure it’s a communication in the imaging-oscilloscope mode used by the Space Friends," pronounced Mr. Swift. "Let’s put it on the screen, and feed it through the Space Dictionary translation protocol."

Strange symbols began to appear, some of them familiar, some requiring electronic approximation as the tentative translation appeared beneath.

TOM SWIFT. ATTENTION. YOUR GRAVITATION DEVICES ALLOW US TO MAKE COMMUNICATIONS CONTACT DESPITE DISRUPTIVE FACTOR CAUSED BY RIFT-NODE
[translation approximate]
IN OUTER SYSTEM. DO NOT DISENGAGE ENERGY ENHANCEMENT DEVICES.

Tom immediately composed a reply, using the Space Dictionary translation files to assist him. "I’m transmitting through the regular antenna," he murmured.

THIS IS TOM SWIFT. WE ARE AWARE OF SPACE OBJECT AS SOURCE OF ANOMALOUS GRAVITATION WAVES. IS THIS WHAT HAS IMPAIRED YOUR COMMUNICATIONS?

The instant response:

RIFT-NODE EMANATIONS IMPEDE ALL OUR MODES OF SPATIAL MODIFICATION
[translation approximate]
INCLUDING COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPORT METHODS. PREVIOUS ATTEMPTS AT NECESSITATED RELOCATION
[translation approximate]
INEFFECTIVE.

"Now the big question," Tom stated.

OCCUPIED EARTH VEHICLES HAVE DISAPPEARED FROM SPACE NEAR OUR PLANET. HAS THE RIFT-NODE CAUSED THESE EFFECTS?

And the question was answered!

STATEMENT CONFIRMED. TWO EARTH VEHICLES AT VICINITY OF RIFT-NODE. WE HAVE BEEN ATTEMPTING TO MOVE YOU TO THEIR LOCATION, TOM SWIFT. ATTEMPTS INEFFECTIVE. NOW CAPABLE DUE TO YOUR ENERGY ENHANCEMENT. REMAIN STATUS.

"In other words, don’t do anything and keep the gravitexes on," said Arv.

Tom nodded tensely and sent another message.

WE WILL COMPLY. WHAT IS THE NATURE OF THE SPACE PHENOMENON? IS IT INTELLIGENTLY DIRECTED? ARE YOUR ADVERSARIES ATTEMPTING AN ATTACK ON YOU OR ON EARTH?

The response was unenlightening.

REMAIN STATUS.

The
Starward
astronauts exchanged glances—and there was no time to follow up with words.
Space suddenly turned white!
And then, in a blink, the black sea of stars returned.