Tom Swift and His Space Solartron (10 page)

"Feel better, pal?"

"Sure do."

As the boys left the communications center, Ted asked, "What’s the first step on your experimental program, T-man?"

"To assemble my solartron and run off another test," was the answer. "Tomorrow, after my sleep period, I’ll work on modifying the solar-power setup. All I can do is
hope
it’ll finally give me the amps Matty needs!"

The various parts and subassemblies of the solartron had already been unloaded from the
Challenger
. As the dawnless "morning" arrived hours later, Tom set them up in his private laboratory spoke with the help of Ted and Bud. With no gravity to contend with—just the slight force due to the outpost’s rotation—this was easily accomplished.

"How about your power hookup?" Bud asked.

"I’ll use a bank of solar batteries," Tom said; "a whole hundred of ’em! They’ll stay right on the line so the sun’s rays will be constantly recharging them." He added that he would have to move and reorient one of the big solar reflectors to make the system work with maximum effect.

Within an hour, the matter-making machine was ready to operate. Sandy and Bashalli and Mr. Swift came to watch as Tom closed the main switch. With a loud hum, the current throbbed into action. Tom grinned as he saw the needle dart upward on the main ammeter.

"Good?" asked Sandy.

"Very good!" Tom replied. "This setup already gives me much more current than I had at the Citadel. But I don’t dare run the solartron for too long before I’ve got that recharging reflector in place."

Until the atom-gatherers could be used, the matter maker relied upon a tank to supply the hydrogen it required. Soon Tom was able to draw off a steady flow of gas from the machine.
"Pure oxygen
—and plenty of it!" Tom exulted, after testing the gas with a Swift Spectroscope.

"Wonderful!" exclaimed Bash, looking at Tom proudly.

"Amazing!" was Mr. Swift’s verdict. "If the collector panels function as well as this power setup, you’ll have solved all the basic difficulties, son. I can only hope to be as successful in my own experiments."

Powering down the solartron, Tom announced that as soon as he had adjusted the solar reflector mounted on the hull of the factory spoke, he would begin to deploy the huge atom-gatherer lattices stored aboard the
Challenger
.

"Okay now, big brother, here’s something I just thought of," said Sandy. "If those collector panels will be floating off in space somewhere, how do you plan to pump the atoms from there to here?"

"Through long, flexible tubes of Tomasite plastic, with transifoil strips running along their lengths to cause them to uncoil," explained the young inventor. "They’ll connect with the station hub through a special sealed coupling that can rotate smoothly along with the station." He reminded Sandy that even using the atom-snatchers, the actual gas pressure would be very low.

Recruiting the help of Ted Spring and several of the outpost’s trained extravehicular technicians, Tom explained the job and ordered his work party into their spacesuits.

Chow Winkler, who was itching for an excuse to join them and get some exercise, slipped into the galley section and returned with a coil of rope he had brought with him to the station. "Boss, you reckon mebbe I could go outside an try throwin’ a few loops while you hombres are workin’? Allus wondered what it’d be like, doin’ rope stunts where nothin’ can fall down lessin’ it tries hard!"

Tom grinned at the roly-poly cook. "Sure, pardner. Hop into your space duds!"

One by one, the work party emerged through the station air lock. The brilliant sunshine which Tom planned to tap divided every object starkly into halves, pure glittering white and, on the other side, an inky black only partially relieved by the reflected shine from the great blue ball of Earth.

As Tom, Ted, and Bert Everett, one of the station techs, used the tiny micro-thrusters built into their suit material to jet across to the factory spoke, two other crewmen mounted compact jet scooters and headed toward the waiting
Challenger
to haul the bulky bales of foil out into space.

Chow, standing on the spoke-module next to the one bearing the solar reflector and clamped firmly in place by the force of his magnetic boots, acted especially frisky. "Brand my cosmic sagebrush, I sure wish I had a bronc to ride up here on this sky range!" he proclaimed over his suit radio. "Then I’d really show you buckaroos some fancy stunts!"

"Maybe I can oblige," Tom signaled back. "I can tell you where to find a horse in space!"

"Uh-
huh.
You funnin’ me again?" Chow demanded suspiciously, twirling his lariat.

"No—on the level, Chow," Tom replied.

"Okay then, whereabouts kin I find this space-hoss?"

"A mere nine hundred trillion miles away." The crewcut young scientist-inventor chuckled. "He’s Pegasus, the Winged Horse constellation."

"Know’d you ’as pullin’ my leg," grumped Chow with a mock glare at his beloved boss through his transparent bubble helmet.

Under Tom’s supervision, the curving solar reflector, composed of a myriad of mirrorlike facets, was detached from its pivot and the small motor which constantly rotated it so that it faced the sun at all times as the outpost turned about its axis. After Tom had manually changed the angle of the pivot shaft, Ted and Bert, at opposite ends of the wide reflector, carefully pushed it back toward the module so that Tom could reinsert it properly.

"Keep it aimed away from old Sol until I have the insulators in place," Tom warned his men.

As work progressed, Chow happily twirled his lariat and practiced tossing a loop around an unused antenna bracket on the station’s hull. At first he found it difficult to control his toss while encumbered by his bulky suit. The lack of gravity also made him misjudge his first throws badly. But Chow had a certain knack, and soon the old cowpoke was lassoing the target with expert skill.

"Nice going, old-timer!" Ted applauded—unheard space clapping. "How about giving me a try at it?"

"Why sure, tenderfoot," said Chow. "If’n you jest keep right on practicin’ mebbe one o’ these days you’ll be almost half as good as an
old-timer
like me!"

Tom and the other crewmen roared with laughter at Chow’s comeback. But Ted had momentarily let go of his end of the reflector and it was slowly drifting out of reach. He stretched out a gauntleted hand, but in his relative unfamiliarity with the space environment he bumped it further away instead as the reflector began to turn sideways.

"No sweat—I’ll get it," radioed Bert. He let loose his side of the apparatus and began to drift across its concave surface.

"Bert—
no!"
Tom warned in sudden alarm. "You’re going into the focal point!"

A startling scream came ripping through the void over the workers’ transiphones. To their horror, Tom and the others saw Bert’s space-suited figure writhing in sudden agony! His limbs thrashed wildly, but he seemed unable to move from the spot he had floated to. The technician’s scarlet pressure suit seemed to be outlined in a nimbus of dazzling white light.

Ted did not waste a second in puzzling out the situation. He triggered his suit microjets and darted to aid the helpless space-walker. But as he approached Bert, Ted felt a wave of searing heat pass through his transparent helmet and even the fabric of his suit.

In a flash Ted realized what was causing it! The reflector had been turned toward the sun. Like a burning glass, it was concentrating the sun’s rays directly on the spot where Bert Everett was trapped! Not only Bert, but anyone who tried to rescue him, would literally be broiled alive!

"Chow!
Get Bert out of here with your lariat!"
Tom screamed into his suit mike as Ted veered away from the danger zone, shooting Tom a helpless look.

Chow responded with the cool skill of a veteran of the western range. Adjusting the noose of the rope in his big hands, he coiled it in a twinkling and swung the loop above his head. A second later the lariat snaked out through the void and settled around Bert’s struggling shoulders. With a yank, Chow dragged the victim to safety!

Cheers rose from the watching crewmen, including the two working on the atom-gatherers. But they died away in shocked silence after a glimpse at Bert’s deathly pale features.

Both Bert and Ted were hustled into the station infirmary as Tom called for Doc Simpson over the public address speaker. In the infirmary compartment the regular outpost medic, joined by Doc, stripped off their spacesuits and began to treat the scorched victims. Fortunately, Ted was shaken but unscathed by his brief exposure. Bert Everett, however, had suffered a severe shock from the intense rise in temperature inside his suit. Only its Tomasite sheathing had kept him from instant death. He was put to bed immediately and an intravenous line was inserted to restore his fluids.

"What happened?" Ted asked, as he and the other crewmen stood by Bert’s side, still stunned by their comrade’s accident,

Tom picked up Bert’s discarded spacesuit and examined it. "The heat from the reflector fused the fuel pump mechanism so he couldn’t fire his thrusters," Tom explained. "Without them, he had no way of moving out of the concentration point once he’d stopped!"

Bert grinned up at them wanly from his bed. "It was like one of those nightmares where you find yourself rooted to the spot!"

"How do you feel?" Tom asked sympathetically.

"A bit dehydrated, but otherwise okay. By the way, Chow"—Bert turned to the wide-waisted Westerner—"thanks for hauling me out. If you hadn’t lassooed me, I’d be lookin’ like a toasted marshmallow right now!"

Chow began to protest modestly, but Tom, putting his arm around Chow’s shoulders, declared: "You deserve a medal, pard!"

"Jest showin’ what a old-timer kin do!" responded the cook, flushed with pleasure.

Others in the great space station, having heard Tom’s panicky voice on the loudspeaker, now crowded into the infirmary—Mr. Swift, Sandy and Bash, Ken Horton, and finally Bud Barclay, knuckling sleep from his eyes.

After Bert had narrated what had happened, Bud said, "And there I was on my sleep period! Guess I really missed your moment in the, er,
sun,
Chow."

"Bert’s going to be all right," noted Ted Spring. "That’s the main thing."

Sandy said, "I’m just glad
you’re
going to be all right, Ted."

"I will be
now,"
he replied suavely.

During the course of the infirmary’s hubbing and bubbing Bud had slipped out unseen, a sly grin on his lips. In a sort time he returned. He was carrying a small loosely wrapped package. "For you, Chow," he announced, handing it to the chef. "A small token of my esteem, ya big ol’ rope-wrangler."

Grinning proudly, Chow unwrapped the package. The next moment his grin turned to open-mouthed amazement. Inside lay a small green Texas lizard! Its beady eyes stared up at the weathered cowpoke as its throat pouch slowly pulsed in and out.

"Great balls o’ fire!" For a moment Chow could scarcely believe his eyes. Then he turned to Tom. "Brand my prairie cactus, boss, did you make this here critter with that machine o’ yours?"

 "NOT guilty, pardner!" Tom laughed. "This is definitely a Barclay special!"

Chow was baffled. "Well, brand my wild turkey soup, where
did
this come from?" he muttered, stroking the lizard with his finger. "Poor li’l varmint—I’ve never seen one so far from home before!"

"Confidentially, it just arrived by flying saucer," Bud said with a straight face. "Tom’s space friends figured you deserved a reward for ‘extraordinary valor in outer space’!"

As Chow glowered at him suspiciously, Bud exploded with laughter. "Okay, okay. I just borrowed it—don’t know if it’s a
him
or a
her
—from the zoology lab! But it’s the sentiment that counts."

Chow gave his young friend a good-natured nod. He was touched by the sight of the little reptile from his home range. "Jest for that, buddy boy, I’m a-keepin’ this critter fer my own mascot," he declared in his usual foghorn tones. "I’ll call him Li’l Ole Alamo."

Tom smiled, patting Chow on the back. "You’ve earned him. And now, how about you and Alamo working up some grub, pardner?"

The stout Texan beamed. "Comin’ right up, boss! What with ever’body else doin’ experee-mints around here, it’s about time I rolled out a few o’ my own."

"Bud will be first in line,
won’t
you?" said Bashalli blithely as the young pilot gulped.

After a quick lunch of
cosmic-spiced
frankfurters and baked beans, Tom prepared to give his matter-making machine another, more demanding tryout. The solar reflector was turned to face the sun, providing the full battery-changing setup all the power required for extended use. In space a couple hundred yards from the outpost, the two bales of folded transifoil floated at the ends of their output-tube links.

"Don’t you have to unfold them, amigo?" Ken Horton asked Tom.

"Sure do," the young inventor replied. He turned to a small crowd of watchers gathered at one of the spoke’s several small viewing portholes. "Ladies and gentlemen—the Remarkable Tom Swift Atom-Snatcher!"

Tom threw a couple switches. At first there was no obvious effect, and Tom received a few curious glances. Then Bashalli gasped. Bit by bit, fold by fold, the four-acre collector lattices were opening up! Several minutes later the pair of rectangular grilles stood flat and rigid, gleaming in the harsh sun-glare. They floated in parallel, separated by what appeared to be five hundred feet or so.

"Tom, how come there are two of ’em, anyway?" Ted Spring asked.

"Because they work together, like two sides of a trap. The flux—which extends some ways out into space, incidentally—causes the hydrogen atoms to slow down in the area between the screens and forces them toward the tubes in the lattices. The atoms enter the tubes through submicroscopic pores and are electrically accelerated through the conduits and, finally, right into the solartron’s tank."

As the solar-energy apparatus began to produce a stable current, Tom fed power to his machine. The laboratory hummed with the tremendous flow of electricity.