After letting the department head, George Dilling, know what he was about to do, Tom headed for the room where his computerized space dictionary and translation unit sat. Once in his seat he composed the message, read it slowly as he considered if any hidden meanings might be in the words, made numerous changes to it, and then sent it out.
To Swift Space Friends from Later Swift.
Greeting and I hope all is well for you.
Our experts have detected a movement
in the larger of the two moon objects
around fourth planet, Mars. I ask if you
have also detected the orbital height
change to object we call Phobos?
If answer is positive, do you have any
understanding of the reason? Did that
moon take an impact causing this? Is
there some other reason we can not
detects with our instruments?
I am anticipating your ability to give
some response to this, even if it is to
tell me you have no current data about
this new movement.
Tom had already pressed the button when he had another idea but decided to wait to see if this first message received an answer. The technician who normally manned the room asked if Tom wanted him to be notified if and when an answer came back.
“Yes, please. I have to go a couple places before I head to the office, so TeleVoc me, Jeff. Thanks.”
“Sure, and I have a question. I think you once told me, but why the ‘Later’ Swift thing?”
Tom chuckled. “They have no concept of father or son and so dad hit on the notion of him being the earlier Swift and me being the later one. They do understand that distinction so it has sort of stuck.”
The tech thanked him for clearing that up and turned back to his panel as a message from someone else started to come in.
Tom slipped out of the room and went to thank George.
“Actually, Tom, it is I who should thank you. I don’t have an idea in the world what you told your sister, but she waltzed in here a couple days ago with the brightest smile on her face I’d seen in months, announced that life was wonderful, and asked if she might work an occasional Saturday to make up for her Friday afternoons over doing the flight demos.” He shrugged but smiled.
“George, I have no idea myself. But Bud tells me she’s been very happy for the past week or so. File this under ‘Gift horse,’ and ‘mouth, not looking in,’ I guess.”
“You don’t think she’s…” and the Communications man made a big belly motion with his hands.
“Gee, I really doubt it but I’ll ask our mother. Sandy would tell her even before she told Bud if she was going to have a baby. In fact, she’d tell my wife, Bashalli, before she said a word to Bud. The husband is always the last to know.”
“In oh so many ways, Tom. Take it from a man who’s been married thirty years next month. It seems to work better that way.”
As he left the building Tom thought he knew the basic reason, that being his admission of the money situation, but still, Sandy and Bud had been trying to have a baby since the day they got married. Maybe…
By quitting time no response to Tom’s message had come back so he chalked it up to the likelihood their Space Friends might not even be in the solar system now. The thought saddened him a little, but at the very least he’d been able to determine their ancestors had walked on the Earth and even made inscriptions in a temple on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico hundreds of years ago, and had managed to get the latest aliens down to Earth to fulfill their actual reason for being in the solar system.
“Perhaps that is the reason they have left,” Bashalli said at dinner that evening. “They completed their mission and as soon as possible, they left.”
“Without so much as a good-bye?”
“Tom, where I came from originally nobody ever says ‘good-bye’ on the phone. When the conversation is over, they hang up. Or, if they meet on the street, once they say what they want to people just nod and walk away. Perhaps the space beings do not understand the politeness of saying good-bye.”
He had to admit that was quite likely the reason. If they were gone, they were gone. At least they had helped Tom and his father in many ways during the early days of their communication. It’s just too bad I never got the translation stuff settled until a few years after that, he thought as he helped clear the table. We might have had many more fruitful conversations.
One thing they had left the Swifts were a set of special radios that communicated in ways Tom couldn’t even dream about much less understand, and conversations from Earth to Mars took no longer to go back and forth than a phone call across the street. The issue was they were in such limited numbers, Tom never felt comfortable trying to open one up, and wasn’t certain he could duplicate it even if he saw what was inside.
Some of the artifacts they had given him seemed more grown than manufactured.
He went back to the table in time to see Bashalli picking up little Mary for her feeding. Although she was transitioning to mushy baby foods, Bashalli still believed in the powers of milk at least once a day.
Tom picked Bart up, Now just about to turn four, and took him to the living room where he sat in his father’s lap and looked at a movie he’d been watching earlier on a tablet computer. It was an old science fiction classic, Forbidden Planet, and a favorite of the boy.
“Daddy? Do you make Robbie the Robot?”
“Well, I have made robots but nothing quite like Robbie. Why do you ask?”
Bart thought a moment. “Because Robbie could help momma with the cleaning and dishes and food and she could spend more time with Mary and with me!”
“Later, or better yet, tomorrow, you ask your mother if she wants a Robbie or something like Robbie. Okay?”
Bart nodded firmly and snuggled into his father’s chest while he watched the scene where Robbie brings one of the spaceship crew many bottles of liquor. It always made him giggle.
The following morning Dr. Heller called Tom to ask when their trip to Mars might take place.
“I am both anxious and nervous about such a flight, Tom, but more anxious. Plus, I must find a minder for my little cat, Shoemaker. Forgive me if I become a nuisance.”
“Not at all. Most of the others I want to take will be ready in eight days, so a week from tomorrow, next Thursday, we’ll all fly out to Fearing Island and take off in the Challenger. Between today and then you need to come down to Enterprises and see Doc Simpson for a physical and so he can determine just how fast we can safely travel and not do anything bad to any of the crew, including you.”
The astrophysicist promised to make an appointment for the following morning. “I’ll see him after I wake up from my night up here.”
When the older astronomer walked into the Dispensary at Enterprises two days later, Doc took him by the arm and into one of the examination rooms.
“Tom asked that I attend to you myself,” he explained before rebuffing the older man’s suggestion Doc not take his valuable time out; someone else could look at him.
For a moment, Doc was a little wary the older man might be trying to hide or disguise something from him, but five minutes into the exam he could tell the man was outwardly in robust health.
“Well, I walk three miles every late morning after I rise, then have a little breakfast of some wheat toast and some sort of protein, and I also do some isometric exercises when I am sitting at the telescope at night to keep my joints from locking up on me,” he explained.
“I see. Pending our taking a look inside you with one of Tom’s little internal scanning machines,”—what was usually called a SimpsonScope—“and finding nothing horribly wrong inside there, I believe I can clear you for the flights and for the lower gravity and slightly lower oxygen levels up on Mars.”
One of the medical technicians wheeled the SimpsonScope in and Doc slid the base plate under his patient’s back. Seconds later a 3D i
mage of what it could “see” inside the man’s body was being projected right over his abdomen.
“Oh-oh,” Doc said as he moved the field of focus to just above Heller’s pelvis on the right side.
“If you are now looking at the terrible scaring where my appendix used to be, that is the result of my having been operated on by someone with zero medical experience more that twenty years ago.”
He told Doc about being stationed on the top of Mauna Kea on the big island of Hawaii at the Keck Observatory. During one of the worst winter storms spanning five days when absolutely nobody was driving or even flying helicopters up the mountain, his appendix decided that was the time it would become massively infected.
“Only because we had Internet connections was my colleague able to watch a video of a basic appendectomy. We had lidocaine to kill the pain but he cut into my large intestine, twice, before he got the offending little rascal. He stitched me up as good as he could, fed me massive amounts of antibiotics, and I lived, but that spot gives many doctors the willies!”
Doc though a moment before speaking.
“Doctor Heller, I can’t let you go up with things looking like that in there. I see spots where the intestinal tissues are so stretched and thin they could easily tear or rupture under some of the space flight strains your body will be under. The good news is I know a man who, if you can make yourself available first thing in the morning, can go in through your navel, wrap that area in a sterile mesh of artificial tissue and suture it, and be out of you in under an hour. That, and a night’s stay in the hospital, will see you good through the remainder of your life.”
Heller agreed to the operation but only if he could find someone to watch his cat.
Doc smiled. “It so happens that my neighbor has a daughter just out of college who is rattling around their house. They would be more than pleased to have her stay at your place that evening and also for the four to five weeks the trip will take. I happen to know Meagan and she is of that rare totally responsible breed of kid you don’t see a lot of these days.”
Heller said he’d first like to meet her, but not until after the operation.
Doc agreed to have her at the hospital that late afternoon of the surgery for the meeting. She would take the cat care duties that evening and when the Doctor got home the next day she would leave them until the day of the flight.
Heller went away to arrange his absence from work, and Doc walked over to the shared office Tom and Damon occupied.
“He’ll be fine,” he assured them after reporting the intestine issue. “This mesh procedure will permanently bond with the other intestinal tissues and give that area more strength than it originally had. Other than that little item, Heller is about the most fit man in his early seventies I’ve seen in… well, ever.”
Everyone else was ready and eager to depart as soon as possible. Going would be Tom, Bud, Hank Sterling, Zimby Cox, Art Wiltessa, Dr. Heller, two women from the team that built the Attractatron mules used up there—Phoebe Yates and Belinda Wisdom—and Chow Winkler.
As Bud said to Tom, “We can’t go up there without taking the oldtimer. Heck, after all his weight loss he’ll practically float up there on his own. Besides, we can all use some really decent meals on this trip. I love it up on Mars, but the mostly vegetarian cuisine sort of wears me down. Chow ought to be good for the occasional bowl of chili or a roast beef sandwich.”
“You might be surprised what we’ve shipped up there recently,” Tom told him. “They now have one small dome, about the size of half a football field, filled with grasses and imported insects and, drum roll, please, chickens!”
“Chickens? As in, ‘Cluck, cluck?’”
“Yes, as in about one-hundred of them running free inside, eating as many insects as they can catch and getting fat, making lots of eggs, some hatching into chicks, and providing for the occasional roasted chicken dinner.”
“Jetz!” Bud exclaimed, suddenly finding that he was hungry.
CHAPTER 3 /
ON-SITE VISIT
BY THE TIME everyone was to climb aboard the Sky Queen for the flight to Fearing Island, the repelatron-propelled spaceship had already been outfitted with the acceleration couches that would help mitigate the extra G-forces they would experience.
“I am looking forward to coming closer than practically any of my peers to the very planets and stars we so casually take for granted,” Dr. Heller mentioned to Art Wiltessa, normally Enterprises’ chief production scheduler but also a trained pilot and astronaut.
Art grinned. “It is absolutely beautiful. And starkly different. Like the first clear pictures coming from the old Hubble telescope. No atmospheric disturbances and no surrounding light interfering with the pure vision of what is out there. It always looks as if things are closer to me when I’m up there.”
Now, Dr. Heller grinned and rubbed his hands together. “I am giddy like a young boy discovering that girls are rather nice for the very first time in his life,” he commented.
Tom had arranged for the special loading truck with a box-like structure on hydraulic lifts to get things up as high as the lowest floor of the Challenger so they might be rolled into the spacious hangar on that deck. He assisted Dr. Heller up the four steps at the back and into the box. They sat on a couple of the final equipment and supply crates and rode up the thirty feet.
“That, my young friend, is exciting in and of itself. I can hardly wait to see what else is coming.”
Tom let the man walk across the loading ramp and pointed to the hatch to the right of the roll-up hangar door.
“Through there and into the corridor then we’ll take the elevator up the rest of the way. And,” Tom said hesitating a little at what his next might sound like, “I ask that you please keep me informed of anything that you might be feeing that doesn’t seem to be right. I can’t take any chances with your health.”
Heller stopped and turned to face the young inventor. “My dear Tom. Firstly, and as Doctor Simpson will avow, I am in very good shape. Strong heart, great muscle tone and no known diseases. Second, I have arrived at this advanced age of mine through a determination to see it all the way until I am at least one-hundred years old. If you believe for a second that I would jeopardize that by keeping secret anything going awry, please take another think out of petty cash.” He winked at Tom and turned back to go into the elevator.
Nine seconds later they were stepping out into the very large control room two decks up. Dr. Heller took one look at the floor to ceiling view panes on one side of the cabin and reached out to Tom.
“Incredible,” he whispered. “I imagine once we get into space that view will be all the more magnificent.”
Tom laughed. “Magnificent doesn’t half cover what I believe you will be seeing!”
While Hank Sterling helped the older man get situated in his couch and reminded him of the emergency procedures for the ship, Tom and Bud prepared the Challenger for takeoff, something that required less and less time as more and more improvements were made to the ship. Instead of the nearly fifteen minutes it had taken originally, the computers pre-checked nearly everything making it a very short check list to go through and even then, most checks were to ensure the proper lights were all green.
Turning his head a little to speak over his shoulder Bud informed everyone in the control room they would be lifting in under three minutes. Tom made radio contact to see that all non-flight personnel had left the ship and reported their presence on the ground.
“Hang on, Skipper. We don’t show one of our men having exited and checked in. Brant Williams of the cargo team. Can you check the hold?”
Tom obliged by switching to the intra-ship comms unit and energizing the cameras in the hanger.
“Oh, no!” he gasped seeing a pair of legs sticking out from under one of the heavy crates they were supposed to deliver. Tearing at his restraining harness, Tom jumped up. “Come on, Bud, We’ve got an injured man in the hangar!” They raced to the emergency
pole, much like those used by firefighters, and jumped to it letting gravity shoot them downward. It was about five times quicker than waiting for and taking the single elevator.
Tom put a hand on Bud’s chest. “It looked like the crate is wedged against the door. I’m afraid if we try to barge in it might tip even farther over and crush him, if that hasn’t happened already. Let’s go out the hatch and open the outside hangar door manually.”
His way took precious extra seconds, but once the big door had been rolled upward he was glad he’d taken the precaution.
The man’s legs were moving—obviously a good sign—and a deep moan came from under the crate marked HELLER. Together, Tom and Bud lifted it carefully from the man and moved it to the side and on top of another crate, possibly the one it had meant to be on in the first place.
Without being asked, Bud touched his TeleVoc pin and requested medical assistance. Tom saw this and nodded.
“Thanks!”
One of Fearing Island’s five ambulances could be heard in the distance as its siren was energized. It took a matter of seconds before they saw it streaking across the expanse of tarmac toward the ship.
Two attendants jumped from the back dragging out the roll-around gurney that already had four medical equipment and medications boxes loaded on top. They shoved it into the lift truck that had been ordered to return and rode it upward.
By the time they stepped onto the hangar’s outside deck—often called “the porch”—Williams was moving his arms and legs and complaining about all the unnecessary attention.
“Honest, skipper. I just turned and lost my footing and grabbed the corner of the crate. Down I went and on top of me it came.”
Tom grinned at the man more out of relief, but then he became concerned.
“Had everything been strapped down?”
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 Swift and the Martian Moon Re-Placement Page 3
