Williams thought a moment then nodded. “Sure. Why-y-y… oh, nuts! If it was all cinched down, why did it topple over on me? Right?”
Tom agreed as the medical personnel moved him to the side so they could get to Williams.
“Who had responsibility for both the strap down and the final check?” Tom asked.
“Why, I did the strapping down and… hmmm… Johnson Jackman was the checker. Uhh, he’d already left when I did my little number.”
Now, Tom tapped his TeleVoc and requested an open channel to Jackman. In his brain came the response, “Johnson Jackman’s pin is off line. It was deactivated seven minutes, nineteen seconds ago.”
Tom knew it was mostly useless asking the computer much more, but he did inquire as to the most recent location of the pin before it was turned off.
“Oh, and computer, please tell me if it was physically turned off or if signal just suddenly disappeared.”
“Pin signal was cut off without notification and mid-send cycle of daily diagnostics. Location was Hangar Two, inside of main doorway to the right.”
He went to the edge of the porch and yelled down to one of the mechanics who had come out to see why the ship wasn’t in the air. A quick explanation of the missing man had the mechanic running to his jeep and racing for the indicated hangar.
Two minutes later Tom’s TeleVoc pinged and he answered.
“Skipper? Bad news. Jackman evidently got nailed by a cargo bot. Looks like he came running into the hangar at the same second the bot was shoving a three palette load to the doors. He’s alive but looks like he’s pretty beaten up. I called for med assist before calling you.”
“Good. Thanks. I’ll be out and over there in a few.”
With Brant Williams in good hands and evidently only with his breath knocked out, Tom climbed down and ran toward the hangars.
He got there right after ambulance number two arrived and disgorged its medics. He looked over their shoulders and could see that Williams had likely come running in and went face-to-wooden brace. There was a lot of blood but the man’s eyes flickered open and he moaned from the pain. His shirt was torn which probably happened at the same time his pin was smashed.
One more time Tom activated his TeleVoc telling Bud to put the ship on hold; “It’ll be at least thirty minutes before I’m satisfied these were both accidents. The last thing I want to do is take off if we’re have injuries on purpose!”
Twenty-three minutes later a jeep dropped the inventor off at the base of the ship. He climbed up and headed in through the hatch. The hangar door was back in its closed position so he had to believe someone had strapped down the errant crate.
That is exactly what Bud reported as he entered the control room. “And, what about Jackman?”
“He’s awake, going to need some dental work along with about fifteen or sixteen stitches under his chin, and feeing stupid. The reason he was rushing in was he wanted to check the computer terminal regarding that loose crate. He couldn’t recall if he’d checked it off or not. Wasn’t watching where he was running and… well, the Doctor says a highly skilled dental surgeon specializing in industrial accidents resides over in Jacksonville, Florida, and they’ll airlift him over there in about an hour.”
The checks were performed a second time and the ship rose a few minutes later.
Doctor Heller had his couch swinging to face the giant view panes even before they left the upper atmosphere. Everyone heard his heavy sigh, a sigh of contentment and pure joy he assured them seconds later.
With a number of things to be accomplished before they passed the Moon, the accidents were mostly forgotten.
Dr. Heller continued to stare into the abyss of space only occasionally turning his gaze back toward the retreating Earth. He was a man whose attention had been outward most of his life; he let others look at the planet under his feet.
The trip was planned in fourteen acceleration segments with coasting periods between, and another fourteen decelerations. Everyone was required to be in their special couches when they were not coasting through space, which meant more than 70% of the time they were strapped in.
Heller and a few others with considerably more space experience passed the higher G times sleeping. It made the time pass more quickly and it relieved the mind of obligations to try to overcome what the body was feeling.
“I can see more stars and even discern galaxies with my naked eyes up here than I can with that incredible telescope your father outfitted our observatory with all those years ago.” Heller sighed. “It… is… magnificent!”
His statements made Tom smile. He truly liked the older man and it was from such pronouncements he could tell the trip was not being a burden on the man.
When they neared the “Turnover” point—a misnomer as the Challenger simply swung her repelatrons around on the circular tracks pointing them at the distant Mars to begin the slowdown—Bud went over to tell him what to expect.
“I suspect,” Dr. Heller told him, “that it will be no more or any less than the first half of the trip. In other words, my dear young Mr. Barclay, it will be slow enough to satisfy Doctor Simpson and also to allow me more time to just observe our universe. Please promise me you will not spoil things by telling young Swift that I am holding up rather well,” He winked at Bud. “I would hate for him to decide to move faster and shorten my moments in heaven!”
Bud made a cross-my-heart motion and said, “Promise!”
When he moved back to sit next to Tom, he leaned over and whispered, “Don’t look now, but I’ll bet it you gave the good Doctor a chance to just go out in a spacesuit and float around for an hour, he’d jump up and be through the airlock before you knew it!”
With a nod and a smile, Tom agreed. "Maybe on the trip back."
As they performed their ninth deceleration “burn” Tom swung the ship around so the view windows faced Mars. This drew a sharp intake of breath on the part of the Doctor.
He turned to face Tom. “You see before you a defeated man, my young friend. I have officially run out of adjectives and other positive things to utter on seeing the true and unadulterated vastness that stretches before me.” He shrugged and looked back out the window.
Bud got up and wandered over to drape an arm over the man’s shoulders. “Whenever I can’t think of something to say about something that astounds me, I just say, ‘Jetz!’ That’s with a Z and an exclamation mark, by the way. You can use it if you wish.”
The doctor, who had now been up and awake the previous twenty hours yawned, but as his mouth nearly closed, he said, “Then, Jetz! it is. Thank you!… and that is also with an exclamation mark!”
As Bud walked back to take his seat, the doctor added, “Of course, when I was your age I thought the word, ‘Shazam!’ was the epitome of exclamation.” He nodded as he thought something over. “I like your Jetz! better.”
When the time came, Tom announced throughout the ship they were about to enter the Martian atmosphere. Because he knew there were occasional near-hurricane strength upper atmospheric storms he ordered all hands to their couches.
He need not have bothered. The descent was as smooth as could be and they touched down within a one-inch margin of error. Everyone headed down to the lower level to the spacesuit lockers and took out their suits. Once Tom and Bud had the ship shut mostly down—it would remain in a low power standby state—they joined the rest of the men.
“Oh, Tom?”
“Yes, Doctor?”
“Forgive the ramblings of an old man, but in my youth I watched, many times, a movie called Robinson Crusoe on Mars. An interesting retelling of the DeFoe classic.”
Grinning, Tom said he had seen the movie at least three times.
“Good, then you shall recall for very brief periods of time, the hero could breathe the thin atmosphere up here. I honestly do know of the rarity of oxygen and the incredible overabundance of carbon dioxide, but is there any chance I can at least take a sniff outside?”
; It was far from an uncommon request. Tom and Bud had both tried it only to discover the air was so cold their noses ached within a single breath, and the CO2 made the lining of their nostrils sting. Neither had taken more that two breaths, and the record for the locals was less that thirty seconds without resorting to use of a face mask and an oxygen supply.
“Not this first time outside,” Tom had to inform him, “but I will make a point of allowing you to take that sniff—perhaps two—before we leave.”
Doctor Heller had a smile that did not leave his face until several minutes later. He had climbed to the surface savoring the lower gravity and turned to meet a man he knew only by reputation. When he looked at Haz Sampson he started by focusing straight across but that got him eye to chest with the man. He moved his gaze upward until he found the man’s smiling face seemingly several feet above him.
Haz left Earth a man of about six-feet-three inches and had, courtesy of the same lower gravity, stretched another full inch in his time on Mars.
Everybody had grown and so it was only visitors who noticed the greater height of the residents.
“I now know how my younger, and considerably shorter, sister sees the world and has all these years. I must remember to call and apologize to her for being eight inches taller!”
When he asked Tom if he would also grow taller, Tom had to disappoint him by saying it took nearly a year for the current residents to reach their increased heights.
“Probably for the better,” the doctor replied.
Inside the domes the attitude of the residents was reserved, but they continued with their daily duties as if nothing was happening. Only one woman, the base psychologist, wanted a private word with Tom.
In her combination apartment and office they sat sipping a hot beverage made from chicory and the dried leaves from another one of the crops designed to provide large amounts of oxygen. Every month a shipment came to the colony of caffeine powder that was added along with a leaf-based sweetener. The resulting drink was not quite like coffee but had many of the same stimulating effects.
“Like it?” she asked seeing the slight look of either surprise or distaste on his face.
“Not so much, but it’ll do. So, you asked to see me and I asked to see you. Good thing we want this discussion. What is it you want?”
She pulled over her tablet computer. “I have been keeping tabs on every colonist over the years and even developed a program to plot individual attitudes and issues based on what is happening in the colony and here on Mars. What I am seeing startles me, and perhaps bothers me a little. I want you and everyone down on Earth to know about it, but not the folks up here. Not yet that is.”
“Can you bottom line it for me?”
“Certainly. The bottom line is that people are less bothered about the possible destruction from that moon coming down on us, or at least in the neighborhood, than I would have thought. I would like to ascribe it to the heartiness of our spirits, but that doesn’t feel right.” She squinted at him and rubbed her eyes. “Not even the most… well, nervous of our colonists seems that concerned.”
“Wow,” Tom responded. “I’m no brain specialist like you but I’d think that would be much better than panic over something we still need to study and find a cause for.”
Barbara Clack shook her head. “Think of it like sadness. It’s long been known that the simple act of crying when we are sad releases a lot of the pent up emotions. Same with chronic fears. Talk about them and they lessen for most people; keep them bottled up and they fester. At some point, for some, they can explode!”
This made Tom quite curious. “Why wouldn’t they be worried about this? Everybody back at Enterprises and Fearing who know about it are pretty antsy to find out what we can do about it.”
The doctor shook her head. “That’s the problem. The closest thing I could find by begging, borrowing and outright stealing internet time back on Earth was what used to be called ‘The Pioneer Spirit.’ Women whose husbands or children or newborn babies died out on the trail, and they sublimated it and just got on with the business of living and trying to get to the end of the trail. Husbands as well who lost wives to disease or childbirth or even Indian attack and then became what the term ‘stoic’ barely scratches the surface of.”
The looked at each other for a minutes before Tom spoke. “That isn’t good, is it?”
She shook her head. “No. Eventually it caught up with many of them and there were a lot of women and men who ended up taking their own lives once the reached where they were going. I see the people around me putting all thoughts of danger so far in the back of their minds I worry if I can pull them out. I hope you have a lot of good and very difficult work for us all. Work to accomplish getting that horrible chunk of rock back where it belongs or shoved into the sun!”
He promised he’d do what he could, but first wanted to finish the current mission.
“Tomorrow I take my people plus a couple of yours up and we go all around Phobos. If there is anything to be seen that can tell us why this is happening, I want to find it. After that we see what can be done.” He paused. “I don’t suppose you could prescribe everyone have a six month rotation back on Earth until this is over?”
Her smirk told him it would be a useless gesture, but she told him, “These proud people are no longer citizens of your planet, Tom. They will not call themselves this, but they are Martians by desire. Order them to what you call home and they mutiny. Force them to go and you will have to take them back in cages. Do you want to do that?”
He looked horrified. “No! Absolutely not!”
She nodded. “Right. So, we work with your Earthers to find out what we all can do, and do it. Then we have one hell of a party! You bring the booze, and gallons of it. I am, by the way, dead serious.”
With little else to discuss he excused himself to go find Haz.
In the Colony Manager’s office he got down to the matter at hand.
“You’ve used the mules at your disposal to no avail. Everyone down on Earth says Phobos is light enough it ought to be able to be moved using those forces. Tomorrow, you and five of your best plus all of mine will go up there, see what we can see, and try an experiment.”
Haz smiled. “If you are suggesting getting between the moon and the planet, understand she moves over our surface really fast. Remember, she is orbiting at a rate of about five thousand miles per hour. Hard to get a lock on to both that and the surface at the same time.”
Tom had to agree. “Yeah. The drones are designed to work at greater distances to come up with a solution and them implement it. They were never programmed for instant changes to plans or trajectories. It isn’t any wonder you nearly burned them out. By the way, I brought a tech and spare part to give them a full going over and to replace anything that came close to failure.”
When takeoff time came, Dr. Heller was the first man in his spacesuit. Tom had warned Haz of the older man’s eagerness and of his desire to sniff real Mars air and the commander had laughed.
“So, Doctor, Tom tells me you want to give our atmosphere a little try. One breath or two?”
“Uhhh, I was hoping for a sniff at first and then one full breath, unless someone tells me that might be fatal.”
“No, not fatal, but we’ll need to have an oxygen tank and mask ready. The CO2 is powerful and painful. You may swoon.”
Heller tilted his head to one side. “Swooning, my dear man, is for young girls and old matrons. We doctors and other old farts simply clear our throats, perhaps mumble to cover things, and move on.”
As they exited the airlock on their way to the ship, Tom suggested Heller take his little sniff.
With his heart beating in anticipation of the unknown, Heller took a deep breath before he shut off his air circulation inside the helmet, and opened his visor. He took a small sniff, shoved the visor back into position and then turned his air back on. He exhaled.
“Well?” Bud radioed him.
After volub
ly clearing his throat, Dr. Heller replied, “Like sticking your nose inside a champagne flute and inhaling, but the champagne up here is so far from fresh it almost makes you sick. Still, this is somehow a little exhilarating.”
They took off ten minutes later and fifty minutes after that had matched their speed with Phobos hovering over the outer area with the moon between them and the planet. Tom turned on all measurement devices and moved them around the moon nine times until they had passed within sight of the entire surface.
With Challenger orbiting the planet and sitting one-hundred miles below the moon, he aimed the upper repelatrons at a deep crater area and the lower ones at the surface of the planet.
“All hands strap in. I’m going to try giving our adversary a little shove.”
On report of everyone being ready, he pressed a single button. The Challenger wiggled and bounced a little but soon settled down. He was about to smile when an alarm went off.
“Power overload to repelatrons five, six and eight!” Bud shouted over the noise. “Units one, three and four are heading into the danger range!”
Tom’s hand reached out and slammed down on the shutoff button. The ship stopped jostling them around and all repelatron indicators started to return to normal values.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen, was it?” Heller asked.
“No, and there is only one thing I can think of that could have that effect. Someone or some system in or on the moon was fighting us for control!”
CHAPTER 4 /
A FOOT OR TWO
BY THE TIME they landed, all repelatron systems on the Challenger had returned to absolutely normal. Nothing had burned out of been unduly strained. Systems were in place to specifically not let a human pilot or even an unskilled operator do things that would destroy the ship’s operational integrity.
As a bonus, if such a thing could be considered, the instruments showed the moon, Phobos, had been moved farther away from the surface.
Everyone who could see his face knew Tom was far from pleased by the nearly complete lack of progress. Still, they tried to compliment him on some achievement.
Tom Swift and the Martian Moon Re-Placement (The TOM SWIFT Invention Series Book 23) Page 4
