Tom Swift and the Asteroid Pirates (10 page)

"In her hole nice and snug."

"Good. Please patch me through to Slim Davis."

Eighteen minutes later, over the Atlantic, the jet’s radar announced a massive object miles ahead and high above. "We’re locked on you too, Skipper," Slim radioed from the
Queen’s
command deck. "The crew’s finished clearing the hangar-hold. Everything’s battened-down."

"Good going," Tom radioed back. "Extend the deck on my signal. We want to get up close, but not so close as to get sheared in the slipstream when you lower it. I’ll keep our head down until the last moment."

"Roger. Understood."

Tom climbed. Presently he could see the bright flares of the Flying Lab’s four tail jets burning against the deep blue sky. He approached cautiously, knowing that the backwash from the hurtling sky giant could be deadly.

Finally Tom’s jet was station-keeping one hundred yards aft of the
Sky Queen
’s tail, at a level slightly lower than her flat underhull. "All right, Slim," the young pilot commed. "We’re positioned. Lower away."

Immediately a big section of the
Queen’s
bottom began to descend like an elevator platform. It stopped. Tom edged upward a bit more, until the straightaway view forward showed the sky ahead of the Flying Lab through the forward side of the wall-less deck section, the upper air roaring through the broad opening between the extender struts. Tom knew that this was an abnormal, and possibly destabilizing, configuration for the
Queen
. Under normal circumstances the extensible hangar deck was lowered while the ship was hovering, stopped, on her banks of jet lifters.

Tom gently upthrottled, and the jet crept forward, a game of inches. As it neared the deck it began to shudder, and Tom tensely played the controls to keep the craft as steady as possible. He was attempting a landing
while jetting along full speed ahead!

Tom could feel his stomach muscles tightening. He crossed over the trailing edge of the deck. Easing forward he saw the motion-arresters and setdown bumpers swing into ready position, ahead and to the side.

And then, a slight bump—and it was over.

"Welcome to the
Sky Queen
, gentlemen," he intercommed his passengers. His voice was faint.

In the resealed hold of the huge three-decker craft, John Thurston pumped Tom’s hand. "Fantastic save, Tom! Fantastic!
A midair landing
—without slowing down! Magnificent idea."

"It was really the only alternative, sir," Tom responded with a modest, somewhat shaken smile. "With the landing gear fouled, the only way to maintain control all the way through was to come to rest without cutting our airspeed."

His other passengers were doubtless grateful, but decidedly less effusive than Mr. Thurston. Dr. Palfrey only stared at Tom with bulging eyes. Bernt Ahlgren gave a slight, smiling nod as if to say,
Not bad, kid.

From the control compartment Tom called ahead to Phil Radnor. "We’ve got the story, Tom, more or less. Shopton’s been flooded with reports of something separating from a low-flying jet over Lake Carlopa—a paraglider, evidently. This ‘Lt. Bemis’ was able to steer over to the far shore woods and drop out of sight. Probably had a crony waiting."

"The jet has a resealable cockpit ejection system—that’s how she was able to ‘step out’ when we slowed over the lake," Tom explained. "The government guys are stunned that they had ― "

"A
snake
in their midst," Radnor finished wryly.

When the Flying Lab finally made its landing at Enterprises, Tom saw his father waiting for him on the airfield. Then the airfield was invaded by a running throng of Enterprises employees—grapevine alert! Cheers went up as they saw Tom emerge from the skyship. Rushing to greet his father, the two exchanged pale grins from a distance, then a fervent handclasp and embrace. Both son and father were limp and shaken.

Tom accepted the crowd’s acclaim with a quiet smile. But as soon as possible he broke away and hurried off with his father to their office in the main building.

As they settled into comfortable chairs, Damon Swift said to his son, "Incredible to think that the Black Cobra has been able to place an operative at the highest levels of our government’s security apparatus."

"We don’t quite know that, Dad—that it’s the Cobra, I mean," Tom pointed out. "There are other players in the game—the team from the Chinese military, as well as whatever group Mr. Fun is associated with."

"You’re holding on to that notion that Mr. Fun might not be on our side, working with Collections?"

Tom shrugged in frustration. "I don’t know. It’s true that our ‘Taxman’ contact directed me and Bud to Mr. Fun’s phantom office. But who knows whether they’re part of the same group—or just using each other for their own ends? We’ve found, more than once, that even our own ‘good guy’ agencies are willing to maneuver civilians like us into doing what they think needs doing without bothering to give us the big picture."

"Yes, Tom—manipulation. Even if the ultimate cause is a good one, it deprives us of our right to decide for ourselves." The elder Swift was quiet for a while, musing. "I have to trust John Thurston, but for all we know this Bernt Ahlgren and Dr. Palfrey may be manipulating
him
."

"And trying to get
me
to do their bidding, without so much as a
please
!" pronounced Tom grimly. "Maybe I’m being a little too paranoid. But Dad, I have the strong feeling the flying conference wasn’t so much designed to solicit my comments—as to get me to take independent action once again, the kind of thing they can deny involvement in if things go wrong."

"I’m very sorry to say—you could well be right, son." Now it was Damon Swift’s turn to shrug.

"And
I’m
very sorry to say that once again, their gimmick will probably work!"

Tom decided to clear his mind of his frenzied experience by focusing on his particle-catcher device. As he exited the doors of the administration building to head for his lab, he almost collided with Bud, dressed in workout togs that exhibited his muscular physique. "Oh, hi! Back already? I spent some time over at the gym in town. Whew!—big lunch. So—anything interesting come up in the meeting?"

The young inventor grinned. "Oh, maybe a little... I suppose."

Tom’s chief of engineering, Hank Sterling, joined the young inventor in his underground lab adjoining the
Sky Queen
’s cavernous hangar. After performing some delicate tests on the magnetic deflector’s "funnel" mechanism, he and Tom spent the waning hours of the exhausting day supervising the preparation of a midget cargo rocket which Tom hoped would be able to crash through the formidable wall around Nestria, delivering a small bundle of supplies for the base. "The shoot will also serve as a test of the magnetic deflector system," he explained to Sterling. The rocket was to be shielded with a heavy coating of Inertite-glazed Tomasite, laminated with asbestalon, molded around a hull of strong, lightweight Neo-Aurium metal.

"Gallopin’ gamma rays, chief, you’re really throwing into the stewpot everything Enterprises has got!" Hank observed with a laugh.

"Sure am," nodded Tom. "I have no idea whether the magnetic deflector will work well enough to protect the capsule in the denser parts of the barrier. Still, we’ll get basic info to guide the final development of the sampler probe—and with any luck we’ll be able to get at least a smidgen of food and supplies down to the surface."

Hank looked over the plans for the test missile, which assembly chief Art Wiltessa was already engaged in constructing. "Nice miniaturization you and Arv worked out," he commented admiringly. "Man, the whole thing sure is
tiny
! When do you plan to ship it off to Fearing for launch?"

"No time, Hank. I want to take advantage of the shadow-traverse, when the barrier is at its weakest, and the next one is late tonight!" The scientist-inventor explained that he would be launching from Swift Enterprises directly, using a multistage rocket as compact as the delivery capsule itself.

"I tell ya—the things we can do these days!" Sterling boggled.

After a late supper, Tom bunked down in his laboratory and fell asleep instantly. Bud came to rouse him at 11:15 P.M. and the boys jeeped across the network of runways to the launching area under a gauzy sky almost devoid of stars.

"Tom, do you think there’s much chance of the supply rocket getting through?" Bud asked.

The young inventor could tell that his chum was deeply concerned about the asteroid colonists. "A good chance, I hope," Tom replied. "It depends partly on whether the barrier matter becomes any more intense beyond the point reached by the Repelatron Donkeys. Even if the ground reaction has thinned the barrier overall, we just don’t know the contours of the effect."

The sleek booster rocket stood poised on its pad in a glare of floodlights. Its two stages stood only some twenty feet high, the cargo capsule on top adding another eight feet. Tom pointed out a triangular arrowhead-shape mounted on the prow of the capsule. "That’s the flux-projector antenna for the magnetic deflector—basic model."

Both youths shivered in the chill night breeze blowing off Lake Carlopa as they headed for the control blockhouse.

George Dilling greeted them with the news that radio contact had again been made with the base on Nestria, by means of the plant’s powerful magnifying antenna. "So far it’s pretty sketchy, but you can make out a word now and then." He added with a chuckle: "Even a few choice Winkler-isms! But it’s getting stronger and clearer by the minute."

Tom was heartened by Dilling’s report. "And they’ve barely crossed the margin of the shadow. By the time the test missile gets there, about two-hundred minutes from now, Little Luna should be right in the thick of it!"

Minutes later the cargo rocket blasted off, its hyper-powerful solid fuel thrusting it ever faster through the atmosphere heedless of friction. Then came a tense period of waiting while it streaked through space toward the asteroid. As the space outpost monitored its path, Tom and Bud repaired to the observatory to keep close watch by means of the megascope.

"Any time now," Tom pronounced quietly. "We’re getting good telemetry, not only from the rocket and the outpost, but even from Base Galileo. The antimatter cloud has really thinned out over the last couple hours."

Tom programmed the megascope antenna to maintain the sensor viewpoint close to the capsule, following it along. Presently Bud pointed out a flashing, flickering effect surrounding the hull like a halo and extending well forward.

"That’s the mag deflector’s field interacting with the outer edges of the barrier," explained Tom. "We’re right on the button, so far."

Suddenly the two observed the brilliant flash as the rocket pierced the denser part of the disintegration barrier.

"Looks like a hotter explosion than I was figuring on," Bud commented.

Tom nodded worriedly. "The rocket must have hit an area of denser material. It probably coheres in long streamers, like clingy cobwebs. Let’s hope the extra shielding can take the radiation."

"But at least it broke through," the black-haired copilot pointed out.

The megascope output abruptly faded away, and the screen went blank. "Far as our own signals can go," declared Tom. "Let’s head over to communications and find out what’s coming in through the big antenna." The boys drove to the communications center to await word of the results from the base crew on Nestria. When they arrived, the news was bad.

"We’ve lost all radio contact, Mr. Swift," Lee Jarrild, the communications expert on duty, reported. "Telemetry too. Everything just dropped out when the rocket hit the barrier."

Bud gulped. "Then—then maybe it
didn’t
get all the way through."

"No concession speeches just yet, flyboy!" Tom pronounced. He strode over to a console and plucked a small device from its cradle.

"Hey, a Private Ear Radio!" cheered Bud Barclay. "You mean you ― "

"Part of our precious cargo. Let’s give ’em a chance to open up the rocket. It’ll probably need some serious anti-rad decontamination, too."

The minutes fled, becoming an hour as Tom and Bud waited tensely for some word from the Nestria colonists. Had Tom’s invention opened a path for the test rocket? Had the capsule’s shielding proved adequate?

If not, the main hope of rescue would be dashed—and Nestria’s inhabitants would remain in captivity 50,000 miles from the earth, in straits that would soon become desperate!

THE SHRILL beep of the PER came so abruptly, after such a long and dismal wait, that Tom and Bud almost fell from their chairs! "Th-this is Tom Swift!" gasped the young inventor into the unit’s inbuilt microphone as Bud leaned close to listen.

"It’s Kent Rockland, Tom." The base leader’s voice was harried and husky, but came through clear as a bell!

"Thank goodness! So the test missile must’ve made it all the way to the surface."

"Yes. She came down nice and slow. But... " His voice, coming sharply over the speaker, sounded somber. "The rocket landed—or what was left of it—but it was burnt to a frazzle."

As Bud mouthed
Oh no!,
Tom asked: "Supplies too, I suppose?"

"The edibles were all destroyed. Doc Simpson says the radiation was just too intense, even with all that shielding."

Tom bit his lip. "Kent, this is a tough break, but tell your gang not to give up. At least we know now that my magnetic deflector is strong enough to allow us to take a sample of the barrier material for study. We’ll lick this problem yet."

"We know you will, Skipper. All of us." Rockland added with a wry chuckle, "But make it soon, please. We’re on short rations, but our stomachs are wrapped around our backbones."

Bud commandeered the unit. "Where Chow’s concerned that must be quite a sight to see!"

"
Chow’s right here, Buddy Boy!
" came a faint foghorn bellow in the background. "
I’m gonna have some words fer you when I get back!
"

"Chow, I—I’m looking forward to it," Bud replied seriously.