Tom Swift and the Martian Moon Re-Placement

by Victor Appleton II

  “Actually, flyboy,” the inventor said with a little sigh, “we shoved it out nearly one-hundred-twenty-seven feet, but if we’d kept that up the ship would have gone into survival mode and we’d have moved off way too fast for most our comforts.” He really meant Doctor Heller, but it would have been a rough exit for all.

  They climbed down to the surface to find several expectant faces showing through the clear “fishbowl” helmets of the residents.

  “Sorry to disappoint,” Tom began—

  “But, he got the moon to move a little!” Bud interrupted. He was better at reading faces than his best friend and so realized they needed some good news, however slight it might be, rather than negative or neutral news. The smiles his words brought to their faces proved he was right.

  Inside, and as they hung back from the main group, Tom asked him about it.

  “Face it, Professor. The students need to know there is a possible light out there and not an ever-descending sword of doom aimed at their heads. Obviously, don’t lie to them, but give them anything positive whenever you can. Trust me on this, but go ahead and ask the Doctor up here what she thinks.”

  They broke off from the group heading for Haz’s office where they climbed out of their protective suits leaving both young men in short and t-shirts.

  Haz smiled at them, but then looked serious. “Okay. Word reached me about a tenth of a second after you arrived that you had some success, but I’m guessing by Tom’s face it was pretty small. What’s the real story?”

  Tom told him about the encounter ending with just how little they affected the moon.

  What he had not expected was to find Haz Sampson smiling at him.

  “Well, that’s not a lot, but it is great news. It means that stupid conglomeration of rocks and who-knows-what can be moved, and that is the important thing!”

  Tom was somewhat shocked. “Do you really think a hundred feet is enough to change people’s feeling? I find that hard—”

  “Tom,” the big man interrupted, “you come up here a few times a year and we appreciate that, but you always bring your head up here. We think differently on Mars. Every little advance, every little win is big to us. We managed to increase oxygen production a year ago by half of one percent. No big deal until you look at it from our point of view. That is at least one new colonist we can support, or, and purely from a physical point of view, it means a bit more oxygen for each of us. That, in turn, makes us healthier and a little more productive. One little win, many possible advances.” He smiled at Tom and nodded to Bud who was looking like this was so evident to him he could not believe Tom didn’t catch on.

  The inventor, who had been standing, took a seat.

  “Have I been doing you all a disservice?” he asked.

  Haz snorted. “Disservice? Heck, Tom. No! Absolutely not. It is just that you need to re-center your ideas of what is a positive when you step out of your ship. No need to tell anyone you’re doing it, just so you think on a slightly different track.”

  Bud excused himself to go visit a friend working in the hydroponics habitat of the first dome while the other two remained to discuss possible tactics for working on the Phobos problem.

  “My basic plan,” Tom said, “was to give it a gentle but powerful shove. My hope was Challenger could handle it. Now, I’m not so sure anything less than the power of Goliath might make a real difference.”

  Haz nodded. “Sure, but what if it happens again? What if this wasn’t one of those ‘we didn’t see it but something collided with the backside of Phobos’ sort of things. What if something down here…” He paused and scrunched his forehead in thought. “What if something up there has changed, or been changed? What if your Space Friends or their so-called Masters have done something?”

  Tom’s forehead also creased. “As in something to drive all the colonist off Mars?”

  “Stranger things have happened. Spaniards wanted the Central America area and all the gold it held so they brought death by bullet to the natives. American Indians were systematically infected with smallpox to get them away from desirable land. Perhaps these Masters are ticked off at us for moving in so close to their minions and this is their way to deal with it. I hope not because we all are planning to stay here.”

  “Yeah, and dad and I and everyone back home—our home not yours until you decide otherwise—want you to be able to stay here as long as it isn’t an impossible situation. So, what the heck can we do?”

  The more they spoke of the issues and possible steps to take, the more convinced Tom became that he would never be able to issue an evacuation notice and expect anybody to heed it.

  He decided to take a couple more tries at pushing on the underside of the moon, but he wanted the ship completely checked out, safeties and extra circuits in top condition and ready to be used at a second’s notice, and the crew to get a full night’s rest.

  As usual, and so they did not unduly tax the systems and supplies of the colony, the Challenger crew slept in the ship.

  Chow Winkler had come along but had kept to the ship rather than coming into the colony. This was unusual, so Tom sought him out and asked what was going on.

  “Got me a bad case o’ heartburn, Tom. Cain’t shift it even with some powerful anti-acids Doc Simpson give me. So, rather than be all belchin’ and sour-faced, I thought I’d stick ta the ship. Hope ya don’t mind. I ain’t been idle, neither. Made a real humdinger of a lasagna fer tonight.”

  This made his young boss smile. “One of your specials?”

  Chow beamed in spite of his stomach. “Yep! Meatless but nobody ever realizes it. It’s in the oven right now so I’ll be a-callin’ fer all hands in an hour. Hope yer hungry.”

  Chow’s meatless lasagna was an offshoot of his meatless chili, a recipe he’d made up on the spot to win a cooking contest where the other contestant had purposely spoiled his meat and made certain there was none to replace it.

  It featured crumbled tofu that was browned like beef to give it some texture and chew, then layered between noodles and strips of zucchini with an incredible sauce, mushrooms, and several cheeses.

  Tom thanked the westerner and headed for the small room off the control room he used as an office. When not used for that it doubled as the tiny sick bay for the ship as well as storage for a few mechanical instruments such as the ship’s sextant.

  It also contained a small, powerful radio set.

  He made a connection back to Earth asking the duty radioman to connect him with his father.

  “Hey, Son. Have you attempted to give Phobos a little shove?”

  “Yeah. Not a rousing success but as Haz tells me, anything positive up here is considered a win. I wanted to ask you for advice.”

  He told his father of his desire to go back out at least two and possibly up to four times to push right up to the maximum the ship could stand.

  “Any thoughts?”

  Damon could be heard laughing lightly. “Thoughts? Why, sure. Let me begin with the easy ones: Bashalli, Bart and Mary. Then, there’s your mother, your wife’s parents and me. A couple thousand employees and something like ten dozen colonists up there. Any of those have meaning to you?”

  If Damon had viewed his son he would see Tom’s head hanging down on his chest. A moment later it snapped up and Tom spoke into the microphone.

  “Message delivered and understood. I’ll give it one more push to 90% of maximums and be happy with that. Uhhh, another subject, but how is this new project you started the week before this hit?”

  “You mean the air ferry? Slow to no progress at all. Lots of politics. I’ve turned some notes over to Dianne Duquesne and her team in Propulsion Engineering for the time being to come up with the propulsion systems while I work on the political side of things. I’m still trying to get a handle on at least one tricky sticking point. And one very nasty politician who seems bound and determined to make this a ‘No Americans wanted’ situation.”

  “And, Senator Quintana can’t h
elp?”

  “Pete may be a good friend and our DC angel, but since Uncle Sam isn’t involved in this, it is all up to the government of New Zealand. You read their Prime Minister’s letter so you can guess he is not exactly a powerhouse down there and must tread carefully.”

  There was also the issue with one of Damon’s old enemies from his previous project in Australia. Even though the man was in prison for the rest of his life, he still wielded power among a small group of followers who just would not give up and accept that their boss had been wrong and Damon had been correct.

  Chow’s dinner was a hit with the crew but Tom spotted Chow’s face while he ate. Something didn’t look right so as soon as possible he suggested as a reward for the meal, others in the group do the dishes and cleanup. He personally ushered he cook to one of the recliner couches near the big view panes, handed him a tall glass of ice cold water and suggested the older man take a rest.

  While Chow complied Tom returned to his office and made another radio call.

  “I’m not sure what to tell you, Doc, but he’s a little pale, is complaining of heartburn, and seems unusually tired. It’s certainly nothing like what Harlan went through when he had his heart attack, but it has me worried. Do you think we have anything onboard I can give him?”

  There was a half-minute of silence before Doc spoke. “In the sickbay cabinets, probably third shelf from the bottom you ought to find the cardiac box. Tell me when you have that.”

  Tom swiveled his seat around and opened the indicated shelf. There, in the left front was the box marked with a red heart and the letter “C”.

  “Got it. And, I’m opening it.”

  “Good. Take out and set aside the defibrillator. It’s very unlikely you will need it but it is best to have it right there. There will be nine or ten vials of meds. Pull out the fast-dissolve aspirin, the Retavase and the nitroglycerin tablets. Give Chow an aspirin now, let him put the nitro pills in his shirt pocket, but don’t give the other unless he has an actual heart pains. I don’t think you’ll get to that point, but I want you prepared. Then, if he has an actual attack, but no heart stoppage, give him a Retavase before hooking him to the defibrillator. Call me before using that.”

  A minute later Tom was kneeling next to his cook.

  “I know your chest is hurting, Chow, along with the indigestion. Doc says you’re to take an aspirin right now and then,” and he handed the small bottle over, “keep these in case of pain. Get a chest twinge and put one, and only one, under your tongue and let it dissolve. If the pain isn’t gone in a couple minutes, wait for a total of five and take one more. But, get word to me immediately once you’ve taken the first one.”

  “I don’t want to be no pain in yer backside, son, and shore don’t want ta hold nothin up,” Chow argued.

  Standing, Tom patted the older man on the shoulder. “You’re not being a pain and not holding things up. It’s your health and if you don’t behave Wanda isn’t going to let you come out and play with us any more.”

  Chow’s wife, Wanda, was a strong-willed woman who had been the driving factor behind the cook losing over one-hundred pounds and getting into better shape in his late fifties than he’d been in when he was forty.

  “Yeah, there’s that. Okay, Tom. I’ll behave. Gimme another cup ‘o water ta wash this white choker down.”

  Tom complied and soon Chow was resting again in his couch.

  * * * * *

  By morning Chow felt much better and most of the symptoms had disappeared during the night. At Doc’s suggestion he gave the cook another aspirin before allowing him to get out of his couch.

  Tom asked Bud and Art Wiltessa to accompany him on the flight up to give the tiny moon another push. Everyone else transferred into the domes to wait and watch. The colony’s doctor came out to bring Chow into the colony where she could check him about every half hour until she was satisfied he was in no danger.

  Challenger raced skyward leaving behind a swirl of Martian dust in its wake.

  They reached a point directly under the fast-moving moon and Tom matched their speed and orbit trajectory with it.

  “We’re six-point-five miles under Phobos,” Bud reported. “When do we start shoving?”

  “When we’re 80% of the way back around Mars. If we shove too hard and it breaks up, everything will pass over the colony and scatter around another nine- or twelve-hundred miles, safely away from anyone.

  That is exactly when the first shove came. Like the first time the little moon barely moved away from them, but unlike the first time Tom held the power and time to well within the safe zones.

  Art, who’d kept an eye on the distance gauges called out, “We managed ninety-eight-point-seven feet outbound. Want to take a one-orbit break and give it another go?”

  With a shake of his head, Tom suggested they head back down, but before Bud could change their course Tom had a thought.

  “What makes rockets and satellites go farther out in orbit?”

  “More powerful rockets?” Bud ventured.

  “Speed,” said Art.

  “Right. The faster an object goes the farther out it ends up. It either finds a balance point between speed and gravity or escapes. What say we get directly behind our little foe and give it a shove to make it run away faster?”

  Art looked as if he were contemplating something very important. “Umm, did the moon slow down and come in or did in come in and then slow down?”

  “What do you mean, Art?” Bud inquired.

  Tom answered for him. “You see, Bud, if the moon slowed down and naturally came, or is coming, closer that is one thing, but if it were forced down into the lessening orbit and then was slowed down to match those heights, that is something altogether more sinister.”

  “So, can we give it a shove anyway or does that also have layers of badness?”

  Tom looked at his two-man crew. Both seemed eager to go ahead so he asked for a vote.

  Both said, “Go ahead.”

  “Okay. Bud? Get us into position behind by five miles and below by… hmmmm. Below by three-hundred yards of the bottom of that rock. Art? Call out our position as we get nearer to the safety zone in this orbit.”

  A moment later, Art told them they would be back in position in six hours and nineteen minutes.

  Until that time got much closer Tom decided to do a series of systems checks.

  This time, the moon scooted forward ahead of the Challenger picking up about one-hundred miles per hour in speed and it began easing outward. It halted its rise at two-hundred and fifteen feet of increased height, but it was something for Tom to tell the colonists about once they landed.

  “So, that said I think it is time for us to head back to Earth and for me to come up with a more permanent solution for you all,” he told a small gathering. “With luck, and a lot of watching on your parts, we might discover a new balance point or I’ll have to come up with a way to shove Phobos a little harder.”

  With the lower Martian gravity it was relatively easy for Chow to get up the ladder, but once they landed at Fearing Island nine days later Tom called for the supply truck and its scissor-life back end which rose allowing the cook to stroll inside and ride it back down along with Doctor Heller.

  “Mighty grateful fer the ride,” he told the operator and Tom as he climbed down the four steps to the tarmac.

  “You doing okay?” Tom asked him.

  Chow nodded before taking off his ten-gallon hat and fanning himself. “Yeah. A bit tired nows we’re back ta full gravity, but I’ll make it. Any ideas what’s next?”

  “Sure. Like Harlan did, you’ll go have a little and pretty fast procedure called an angiogram to look inside your chest, and if they find anything they don’t like, like a cholesterol blockage, they’ll pull that out and then outfit you with a little stent to keep things open. If you take to it like he did, you’ll probably swear five minutes later you feel top of the world!” He grinned encouragingly at the man who had been a dear friend
for over eleven years.

  “Can I go out fer long walks with Wanda after that?”

  “I’d bet on it!”

  When Tom got back to the large office, and accepted some congratulations from Trent, he stepped inside and crossed to his desk. His father was not it at the moment, so the young inventor opened up a log file and started making notes on the trip and what had worked along with what had been accomplished.

  He was about to perform a few calculations to see if he might determine how large of a repelatron might be necessary to shove the moon back into its correct position and speed when the door opened and Damon Swift entered.

  “Welcome home, Son. I hear through the grapevine you managed to get the moon out more than just a little and not damage the ship in the process. Well done!”

  Tom grinned. “I figured I’d spent enough over the years on damaged and burnt out equipment, so I wanted to bring the ship back in good working order. Seriously, though, we did get the moon back out maybe three-quarters of the distance it had lost but we won’t know if it wants to stay there or start back in for a few more days. I’m really hoping it likes the new orbit and is satisfied to stay there.”

  With a small chuckle, his father replied, “You’re making Phobos sound like it has some sort of conscious capability and is making decisions on its own.”

  Tom had to shrug. “Until either our Space Friends can shed some light on things, or I mount an expedition right to the moon and see if we can spot something close up, anything might be possible.”

  “Okay, let’s table that for now. What is this I hear about Chow? And, is it serious?”

  Tom told him of the chef’s chest pains, his shortness of breath and his supposed heartburn.

  “Sounds like what Harlan told us about his problems. Just before he collapsed with that heart attack and had to undergo an emergency procedure.” His right eyebrow rose.

  “Yeah, but Doc thinks this is not that far along. Not an emergency situation and Chow isn’t keeping things from him. Bud dropped our oldtimer off at the Dispensary once we landed. Maybe we should go over to see if he has any word on what he thinks, and to say hi to Chow if he’s still there.”