Tom Swift in the Race to the Moon (7 page)

Tom stepped forward. "I’m Tom Swift. I haven’t been told anything about this, so—"

A handsome woman of middle years, neatly dressed, stepped to meet him and shook hands with the young inventor. "I’m Maureen Kesey," she said. "That’s my married name. Let me tell you my former name, Tom." She did so, and Tom looked blank. The woman smiled. "You might recognize a few of these other names."

She introduced a dozen others in the crowd, and after the first few Tom had begun to understand. "I do recognize your last names," he said. "I’m sorry not to have caught on right away."

Mrs. Kesey nodded. "We’re the parents, children, spouses, grandchildren—and a few close friends—of those who lost their lives on the space shuttle
Challenger."

Tom nodded, waiting politely for her to continue. "Tom, Mr. Swift, there have been other tragedies and other heroes since that terrible day. We know there’s a time for letting go. But your ship is going where our loved ones yearned to go, into space. Their dream was shattered; but now you’re returning to the moon on behalf of our country, for the first time since the last Apollo flight thirty years ago. Over the years, we all have kept in contact informally; on this occasion we’ve decided to get together and come to you as a group, with a request from our hearts. We’re asking you to name your ship in their honor. We’re asking that the return to the moon take place in a ship bearing the name
Challenger."

Tom let out a long, deep breath and looked at his father. They both had been moved by Mrs. Kesey’s speech.

Before Tom could find words to respond, a young boy stepped forward from the group, a sealed metal box in his hand. "Mr. Swift, my grandfather was one of the crew. I never got to meet him. But inside this box is something of his that he carried with him." Tom took the box in his hands, and gave the youngster a warm hug, tears touching his eyes.

"The box contains some of the personal effects recovered from the crash site and returned to the families," said Mrs. Kesey. "Whatever you decide as far as naming the ship, we hope you’ll take the box with you to the moon, and if it works out, perhaps you could leave it there on the surface. Like a little memorial, a monument."

Tom kissed her cheek and turned to take in the entire delegation, speaking in a choking voice. "I—I won’t try to match you folks for eloquence. Let me say just this. I don’t need to think it over. My new spaceship will carry the proud name
Challenger
to the moon!"

The room erupted in cheers and tears, and Tom and his father were a part of all of it.

The next morning a telephone call from Swift Enterprises interrupted the family breakfast. "It’s Phil Radnor, Tom. We just got word from the Subcommittee in Washington—our request to have the two docs admitted to the capsule storage chamber has been approved, and they also give permission for use of your new probe machine."

"Fantastic!" exclaimed Tom. "I’ll have to call—"

"Already called ’em, chief. They’re rarin’ to go."

"Then we just have to get the
Sky Queen
ready for—"

"Already took care of that too," laughed Radnor.
"And
I’ve had the leptoscope camera loaded aboard!"

"Rad, you’re a gem!" cried Tom, joining in the laughter.

"Don’t tell my wife," the security man replied. "She hates being contradicted."

Late morning found Bud landing the
Sky Queen
at the Dayton airport, where a buslike vehicle, spacious but sporting bars on its windows like a prison conveyance, was waiting to carry Tom, Bud, and Drs. Glennon and Faber, with the leptoscope equipment stored in the back. They were driven onto the grounds of Warrenton Air Force Base, where they passed a series of armed checkpoints before stopping in an enclosed parking area, where they entered an elevator and dropped down into the ground.

"Just how far down is this place, eh?" asked Evan Glennon.

"The details are classified," Tom replied. "But a few hundred feet easily—and we’re moving on a slant. The entire facility is surrounded by layers of metal and concrete."

"Man! Sounds like a great place to go in case of nuclear attack!" Bud remarked.

Tom grinned at his pal. "They tell me that’s what it was built for!"

The elevator stopped, and the four entered a long, brightly-lit hallway, busy with armed men in uniform and a smattering of civilian types whose purposeful, abstracted air suggested that they were scientists. Behind them, the elevator doors clicked shut as it prepared to go back up for the leptoscope.

A broad-shouldered man in uniform approached them in the hallway. "Hello again, Gen. Jedreigh," Tom greeted him. The young inventor introduced his companions.

"It seems you’re here to solve a few of the mysteries from our crypt of secrets," said the general to Faber and Glennon. "It will make my job a bit less romantic if you do. But I don’t mind, gentlemen—can’t talk about it anyway."

He led them past a code-keyed door that slid shut behind them. Then another opened in front of them, in the manner of an airlock. They emerged into another hallway, featuring three long, narrow windows spaced along a wall nearly half a block in length. This hall was dimly lit by a reddish light which, leaking through the windows, barely illuminated the chambers beyond.

The first chamber contained a rounded, bullet-shaped object about the size of a small sofa. It was blackened in places, but retained a sheen in others. On one side a cluster of hieroglyph-like inscriptions could be discerned. "The original meteor-missile that came down in Enterprises," Tom remarked, speaking softly in the library-like atmosphere of the underground facility.

In the chamber behind the second window they could make out several table units upon which dozens of small, strangely formed objects had been arranged. "Recognize that stuff, flyboy?" Tom asked.

"Sure do!" replied the dark-haired pilot. "From the cave on Little Luna." The Swift expedition to Little Luna—the earth’s tiny new moonlet Nestria—had explored a cave of artifacts left by the space friends for their terrestrial colleagues to study. These implements had eventually been moved to the security chamber, leaving behind only the mysterious cube-shaped device that maintained the satellite’s gravitational field—which could not be moved in any event.

At the third chamber they followed Gen. Jedreigh through a double-sealed hatchway, and soft overhead lights were flicked on. Before them, lying on its side, a transparent cylinder awaited them, about ten feet long by six feet in diameter and partially filled with some sort of soil.

"There it is," said Tom simply.

Evan Glennon approached, a tentative hand extended. He rested a single finger on the curving surface of the alien life capsule. "To think, to think—I am touching a piece of outer space."

"Yes, yes, wonderful and impressive," Faber said. "But now we must get to work."

The camera equipment was carted in and speedily assembled and tested. Tom was delighted to find that the spectronic rays appeared to penetrate the transparent capsule shell without diminution or distortion. "We’re in business!" he announced.

For three hours the scientists studied the microstructure of the remnants of life heaped inside the vessel. The exotic dripping spikes and mushroom-shaped plants had collapsed to a brownish rubble, and the queer creeping vegetative forms looked like rotted-out carrots. Yet the leptoscope images, carefully recorded, revealed the preserved traces of a cellular structure. "A nice surprise, this," remarked Dr. Glennon. "They contain something like plant cells, and within the cells something like a nucleus of complex, twisted molecular chains."

"Quite unlike the earth’s," added Anton Faber, "yet I know enough of these cellular matters to say that they are pleasantly familiar."

"Perhaps life has to take a somewhat similar form everywhere in the universe, by some basic principle," Tom mused in response. "And that’s good news. It gives us hope about curing the space disease—or at least containing its spread."

Their reserved time drawing to a close, they began to pack the equipment away. Leaving Bud in charge of this portion of the operation, Tom approached Gen. Jedreigh and spoke to him quietly. "Sir, I assume you also received word about my other request."

"Are you ready?" The general smiled at Tom. "Everything’s been set up in the Quiet Room, and the contact sequence has been input. Just press the button and start talking."

The man led Tom to a small, bare room, equipped only with a comfortable chair and a small table, upon which a plain boxlike console had been placed. A single red button was visible. Tom seated himself and, after Jedreigh had left the room, pressed it.

"I greet you, Tom Swift," said a deep, cultured voice. "Greetings from Brungaria!"

"HOW ARE you these days, Col. Mirov?" was Tom’s response to the familiar accented voice.

"Not bad, not bad," he replied. "We have a very efficient healthcare system in Brungaria, you know; which was wise enough to refer me to a convalescent facility in Berne, Switzerland. Beautiful view! And now I am quite recovered from my little spill up on New Brungaria—pardon me, Nestria." Tom could sense the older man’s eyes twinkling in mischievous good humor.

"That’s good to hear," Tom said politely.

"Yes, and good to say—but I doubt it is why you have called me here in Volkonis over the high-security link. After all, it is now perfectly legal, even recommended, for we Brungarians to be friendly to you Americans. I take it you have some serious business to discuss, eh?"

"I do, sir," confirmed the young inventor. "Mighty serious stuff affecting us both."

Col. Streffan Mirov had headed the Brungarian mission to the phantom satellite Nestria, a rather cutthroat race with the American expedition, headed by Tom Swift. Facing perils together on the moonlet, they had ended becoming, if not close friends, persons who deeply respected and valued one another.

"Tell me of this, then," Mirov encouraged.

Tom gave a sketchy account of the recent communications with the space beings. He refrained from mentioning the threat of the disease, but only said, "The space friends are landing a craft containing animal life somewhere on the moon, but they’ve felt forced to leave it for us to discover the exact location, because their signals have been intercepted by some of your countrymen. There are rumors that the secret Sentimentalists faction plans its own trip to the moon to seize the vessel."

Mirov grunted. "Mm, the Sentimentalists. Bad people, anti-democratic—I have learned to love democracy, you know, my friend. But how can I help you? I trust you recall that I am a patriotic Brungarian."

"Yes, Colonel, just as I am a patriotic American. But you might agree that putting information about extraterrestrial biology in the hands of—"

"Bah!" he interrupted.
"Unthinkable!
They are barbarians, boorish people. I do not call them good Brungarians, I call them scoundrels. This is another race you must win, Tom Swift, this race to the moon."

Tom smiled to himself. "I certainly agree!"

"But now, how can I assist you?" asked Mirov. "There is little I can do openly, and to seek official permission—weeks, months, years of bureaucratic struggle. Civil war by another name, and not so civil."

"I was hoping you might have some basic information."

"No doubt I do."

"Does COSMOSA have any sort of craft ready that could, conceivably, carry a team to the moon?"

There was a lengthy pause. Then Col. Mirov began to speak slowly and carefully. "It is good we are communicating by means of this special mechanism, Tom. Or I should be most hesitant. What I am telling you now is not authorized.

"Yes," he continued, "the space commission has—or had—such a thing. It was, as you say,
in the works
even before the Gamma series. It was called Dyaune, after the goddess of the moon."

"We say Diana," Tom interjected.

"Same thing. The
Dyaune-1
was to be propelled by a nuclear-ion thrust system—do I use the right words?—and was constructed in a valley in the Northern Mountains. The goal of the project was a landing on the moon. That is, a landing and a return—a round trip. I imagine you have heard the rumors—? No matter."

"Was the ship completed?"

"Here I think matters become uncertain," Mirov replied with a verbal shrug. "Officially, no, it was abandoned deliberately just before the democratic revolt. Unofficially we were told that there was a terrible accident, a spillage of radioactive materials that caused many deaths. Even today that valley is off-limits and well-guarded. But Tom, it is not beyond possibility that some special branch of COSMOSA was permitted to continue the project and, perhaps, perfect the spaceship. And if that branch has come under the control of
i-Szentimentalya
—well then."

"I see," Tom said. "Do you recommend a course of action, sir? If our government worked in cooperation with yours, perhaps—"

"No no no, and many more of the same! You do not realize how unstable, how confused is this democratic government of ours. If the
Dyaune
exists, it has surely been moved, perhaps to foreign territory—our friends in the Middle East. Announce that it does exist after all, and imagine the loud patriotic outcry: Brungaria racing America to the moon, for a great prize! No, young man, get there first in your
Challenger,
and if you see a sign of these fools, shoot them down! Then say, as countries do, it was an unexplained accident."

Tom thanked Col. Mirov warmly, then added as he was about to sign off: "By the way, Colonel, my compliments to somebody or other. The decision to name our repelatron moonship the
Challenger
was made late last night, and has not yet been announced to the public."

Mirov chuckled. "Yes, well, one doesn’t wish to await the daily papers, eh? My good luck to you, young man. You saved my life up there, in space, and I do not forget."

Flying back to Shopton in the
Sky Queen,
Tom told Bud of his discussion with Mirov. "Are you sure we can trust that guy?" asked Bud skeptically.