Tom Swift and the Martian Moon Re-Placement

by Victor Appleton II

  “Ignoring, of course, that you just happened to have a coffee waiting for me?”

  “Yes. That,” came the deadpan answer.

  He followed Tom into the office and spent ten minutes filling the young inventor in on what was happening at the company and what things were on the schedule for the day.

  On hearing about the five meetings spread throughout the day, Tom groaned.

  “All are company critical and only one is scheduled to run more than a half hour,” Trent said. He then inquired about the Mars problem.

  Tom gave him the condensed five-minute version of what had been going on and what he believed might be behind the problems.

  “And, your Space Friends no longer answer any of yours or your father’s call, right?” Tom nodded. “Then, I would say you are pretty free to do whatever you think best, all the time tempering it with the desires of the colonists. At times like this I wish I could offer some help, but it is way beyond my understanding.” He paused, then remembered what he wanted to say. “I’ll hold off on the mail until after your nine-thirty meeting with the Propulsion Engineering folks. They will come over here.”

  After handing Tom a folder with the notes Damon had made in preparation for the meeting, the secretary left Tom alone. By the time Dianne Duquesne, Artie Johnson and Olivia DeKolb came into the office he knew exactly where his father believed thing stood and what needed to be hammered out.

  “Hey, Dianne. Hey, Artie and also to you, Olivia. Welcome, and I hope it is okay that dad can’t be here. I’m fairly sure I understand the issues and am prepared to make any decisions necessary.”

  Dianne, whom Tom had known for about eight years, smiled. She knew what a dynamo of a man he was and had no doubt he could handle the small situation that had prompted the meeting.

  “Fine,” she said. “All we really need to do is fill you in on the status of the new all-electric solar motor and get your approval to spend about fifty-thousand dollars to build the prototype.”

  She asked Artie to start with the basics of the engine.

  “Fundamentally, it turns electricity into another form of energy that has mass, therefore it can be aimed out the back of a nozzle and then everything follows Newton’s Third Law. The trick is either in carrying enough electrical power, as in several nuclear power pods, or creating power on the fly using something like your solartron, only this is more like a solar sail that is nothing more than that incredible cloth your cousin over in England and her partner came up with.”

  Tom’s cousin, Tommy Swift, had been both a shock and a pleasant surprise. A brief affair between Tommy’s grandmother and Tom’s grandfather had resulted in her mother who turned around and brought a daughter into the world a couple years before Tom was born. She became an engineer and along with her best friend and business partner, Betty, had created a solar cloth that used heat rather than light to generate electricity.

  And, because of genetics, was a dead ringer for the inventor if only an inch taller, female, and very beautiful.

  “You believe the black of the cloth, even in the icy depths of space, will generate enough power?” Tom inquired.

  Two of his visitors looked at the young woman with them.

  “Oh, it’s my turn to speak,” Olivia stated. “Well, Mr Swift authorized sending up a three-square-meter test cloth to the Space Queen on a supply rocket a month ago. Commander Horton had a few of his people take it outside and run a lead into the station. It is less than down here on Earth, but it does generate an incredible level of power up there. Enough so that we believe a fifty meter circle of the material outfitted with a hoop frame to keep it mostly spread out flat and tethers to keep it attached to the spacecraft will give us enough electricity to run the Quantum Electric Force Engine with enough thrust to escape the Sun’s gravity pull.”

  Tom looked thoughtful before asking, “Is there a limit to the top speed or does it just keep speeding up until it gets far enough out to drop the electrical power below what is needed to run the engine?”

  His three visitors nodded.

  Dianne took up the conversation. “At that point it can be swung around so it traverses parallel to our orbital plane, or any other plane for that matter, or it can come back in until it has enough sunlight to power the engine again.”

  Artie smiled as he added, “It could do that forever… theoretically, that is.”

  They discussed the payload for such a prototype. It would have a full array of sensors to record and transmit back to Enterprises all data from the operation of both the power cloth and the engine.

  Ten minutes later Tom stood up and shook their hands.

  “You have your money to build that prototype. I assume it goes up like your test piece and launches from high orbit?”

  They nodded. “And,” Olivia told him, “in case you want to know, we can have everything ready to go in about eleven weeks, assuming we can get the cloth.”

  Tom promised to have the ladies from Uniforms—who operated the giant loom turning out the cloth these days—make it a priority.

  After they departed he made a call to England to tell Tommy and Betty about the new project. Both women were thrilled and asked to be kept “in the loop” as far as the success of the project.

  Tom asked if they had anything in the works. Tommy laughed.

  “When don’t we have something at some stage of either development or stagnation? Unfortunately, this week it is mostly stagnant. Betty has been working on developing a monofilament version of our nanotube technology. If she can perfect it things will be able to be made with incredible speed and there will be no places where structural failure might happen. Could be incredible for high-power transmission lines. But,” she sighed, “that is for the future.”

  The remainder of Tom’s day went about the same with only one meeting where he had to disappoint. It really wasn’t that much a disappointment for an internal department or division as it was for a small potential customer.

  Jake Aturian, manager of the older Swift Construction Company, had a midwest client with a desire to start an air service using six of Tom’s flying saucers outfitted to carry fifty people each. It wasn’t that they needed the speed as their destinations were rarely more than three-hundred miles apart. They wanted flying with them to be a unique experience.

  Jake was saying, “We have the capacity right now to turn them out inside of two months, but I just get the feeling they might be trying to play us a little.” He went on to say they rarely would commit to a solid answer to anything, including financing—which had to come from outside as the Swift companies did not provide such services to anyone.

  “Okay, then I say we tell them we are not interested unless they have solid, guaranteed financing they can bring to the table. Even then I’d rather tell them it will take at least a year to fulfill any order once we get the monies.”

  Jake agreed and went away happy he had not been forced to make the decision alone.

  Day two finally had Tom with enough time to go see Harlan.

  “Glad you could come over, Tom. We’ve had a little movement in that possible data sabotage. I put our forensic computer specialist, Meagan Blake, on the case. She sifted through that file and files alphabetically close to it.” His face told Tom there was more to tell.

  “I’m getting the sense this isn’t good.”

  “Not so much, but not as bad as it might be. Our saboteur was, luckily, not a spy. Turns out Meagan traced nearly all the file fiddlings back to a single computer and single sign in name over in the back offices of the main cafeteria. Obviously not a real genius.”

  Tom held up a hand. “Surely it wasn’t Chow’s nemesis, the man he calls the mad Russian!”

  “No, not him. But, someone who has been with Enterprises about a year. I had him brought in and he admitted to it all. His father was a cook on Loonaui when we had the rocket base out there and he was told that it was the Swifts who suddenly closed up shop and made his family destitute. The idea it might h
ave been the local government making us close things down never took root in his mind.”

  Tom sat there, saddened by having yet another employee turn on him or his father.

  “How bad is it,” he eventually asked. “Did we lose anything to the outside?”

  “He claims he was doing a file a week to avoid suspicion and had been at it about three months. His only intent was to get back at you personally and not the company. So, and with his cooperation once I showed him the video from the ‘Get off my island’ speech the local Governor made plus the official eviction notice we received, we traced down twelve files he recalls tampering with. All little things you should be able to fix, and he has agreed to my terms.”

  “Being?”

  “He turned himself into Chief Slater at the PD nine days ago to serve fourteen days in jail after which he comes back to make a direct apology to you, and Damon if he is back, and then agrees to pay damages. After that, we shall see. He’ll be on probation with us for at least a year if he decides to stay around, but I get the feeling he misses island life and might just leave.”

  Tom said he believed actual damages would be only in the time it took to trace and verify his activity and to fix the files.

  When Tom met up with Bud for an afternoon coffee in the cafeteria, Chow’s “Mad Russian,” Dimitri Krashnov, came out full of apologies for his employee.

  “I beg you forgive me, Mr. Swift, for this terrible thing I have brought on the company. I should never have hired him. The man is bad and he will be dismissed immediately once he gets out of jail!”

  “I wouldn’t be so fast on that,” Tom suggested and told him of the agreement the man had with Harlan.

  “Ah, then I shall not make a move against him. But, I cannot say that anyone wants to work with a man who would bring shame to his family and damage to you and your father.” He sighed and wandered away, muttering something in Russian to himself.

  Bud grinned at Tom. “I suppose that if you or Harlan won’t hold a good grudge, at least our Russian chef will do it for you.”

  They talked about the next Mars trip and what was going on in the mean time.

  “The giant repelatron dish is taking shape over at the Construction Company. Next week they’ll make the attendant Attractatron dish and then all the electronics for them both get built. By this time in five weeks we ought to have something to take to Mars.”

  Bud pursed his lips. “How long will that trip take? I mean Earth has zoomed past their position, and we don’t exactly have a speedy way to haul freight there unless you plan to drag it behind the TranSpace Dart.”

  Tom’s look told him everything. The inventor did believe he could use the last ship to pull the array behind it.

  “It may not be as fast as the ship can travel, but it ought to be our quickest way to get back to Mars and then use the Challenger and a couple of the mule drones to get it attached to Phobos. After that, we will see if a computerized approach of shoving Phobos a little each orbit or two but only away from the colony will do the trick. I hesitate to say it will be the permanent solution, because it really can’t be as long as the gravity stone is in there, but it could give us some breathing room.”

  For the next several weeks Tom kept tabs on the build of the combination repelatron/Attractatron and he wasn’t encouraged when it became obvious they could not add enough power pods of the medium size he hoped to run the dual array.

  With his father finally back at Enterprises for a week before the dedication and first run of the Air Ferry in New Zealand a few days away, he and Anne Swift, Tom and Bashalli along with Bud and Sandy headed down there for a two-day mini vacation before Tom had to leave for Mars.

  The event was a success and the people down there finally agreed it was a great thing and not some American effort to take over their islands. And, though one of Damon’s noisiest political foes had died when she led a sabotage attack on the Wellington terminal, even her rather fanatical party supporters had agreed she’d taken things too far. Now, the people of both islands would benefit from having fast and frequent transportation between their two major islands.

  The entire Swift contingent arrived home tired, but Tom and Bud only took one night off before final plans were completed for the trip back to try to fix Phobos.

  There was so much to do and still so many unknowns.

  Not for the first time Tom sat in his easy chair pondering whether he would ever get to the bottom of what was going on above Mars.

  CHAPTER 13 /

  A VICIOUS CICATRIX

  IN SPITE OF his earlier fears and some serious reservations, Tom decided to take a small atomic earth blaster up on his next visit. By now the orbital position of Mars was about 20% behind that of Earth as they moved around the sun and so all future trips needing to be accomplished in under three weeks, at least for the following ten months, would need to utilize the speed of the TranSpace Dart, so that was his spacecraft of choice.

  Two days before he, Bud, Hank and Chow headed up to rendezvous with the arrow-sharp ship, Tom spent the entire day in his underground office and lab trying to make refinements to his Deep Peek device.

  He had been nearly satisfied with its performance on the most recent visit to Phobos but felt it could be better. Perhaps even much better.

  For seven hours he worked uninterrupted except when Chow brought him a sandwich, which he insisted the inventor eat while he stood there to watch. During his work time Tom increased the capacity and strength of many of the sensors they would want to use, especially making refinements to the Deep Peek he believed would allow it to be more accurate and selective. Tests in the hills around Shopton showed it now could tell the difference between wet soil, dry soil, water and air pockets.

  It also detected what he believed could be a fifteen acre oil shale field just to the south of the Swift MotorCar Company grounds with about sixty percent of it under Swift-owned property. That would have to wait, but it was interesting to the inventor that the device could be that selective with just a few tweaks and a slightly redesigned antenna array.

  He hoped it could provide additional information once used to look more closely beneath the surface of Phobos.

  The trip to the Red Planet was uneventful and fast. Without the once-anticipated repelatron/Attractatron tagging along they made top speed for the short nineteen hours time they accelerated.

  As with previous visits, Haz Samson met them outside the main habitat dome. His face was a mix of eagerness and caution.

  “Greetings from some of the most puzzled colonists since the Pilgrims were introduced to the cockroaches of the sea, lobsters. I have to tell you, skipper, that Phobos is acting really strange, almost as if it is purposely trying to fool with us.”

  He described how the moon would come in closer for a few days and the gravity level would grow, and then it would wane and a simple push by the drones sufficed to get it back near its proper position.

  “Well, don’t look at me, not just yet, but I intend to try to dig into the moon and try to get to the cavern where the gravity stone seems to be. We ought to know more in about five days,” Tom told him.

  “Five days? Why so long?”

  Tom laughed. “Ever heard the adage, ‘Softy, softly, catchee monkey?’” he asked.

  Now Haz joined him in chuckling. “Okay. Message received. You go nice and slow and you don’t get into trouble or let things get away from you.”

  “That is the hope.”

  Chow, who had now fully recovered and had a renewed level of energy came out of the elevator in the lower fin of the hip hauling a cooler filled with things he intended to cook for the day’s lunch.

  “Gotta get a few o’ yer folks, Haz, ta help haul this grub inta the cookin’ dome. I’m gonna fix ya all some o’ the most tender pork loin with fresh green beans and smash ‘taters ya tasted in a month o’ Sundays!”

  “In that case, I’ll even lend a hand,” the big man offered heading to take Chow’s load. “You go get things st
aged up in the ship and I’ll have a detail meet you there in five minutes.”

  Haz and Tom headed into the airlock and took off their suits. Before continuing on, the colony manager made the promised call and as they made their way to his office they were passed by four men on their way, more eagerly than Tom might have anticipated, to help the chef with his food boxes.

  The early dinner was attended by all of the colonists with some of Tom’s people manning the sensors in the small control room of the main habitat. They only needed to monitor the air and keep an eye on the hydroponics growing lines in all but the small “chicken” dome.

  The Earthers returned to their ships for the night and all rose before four in the morning.

  During the night the new Deep Peek had been installed on the lower rails of the Challenger by the colony’s technical crew so when Tom and Bud entered the ship the only sign anything had been done was a note on the control panel advising them of the change.

  They took off accompanied by two of the saucers at six getting into rendezvous orientation fifty minutes later.

  “Where’re we going to set down?” Hank asked.

  “Over close to that subsidence point next to our gravity stone’s cavern. We’ll set up the earth blaster and start the slow drill down. And, before Bud or anyone asks, I think I mean really, really slow as in getting down the hundred-fifty feet might take a full day. I want no surprises if we can avoid them.”

  Once on the surface Tom made a measurement of the gravity and announced it was currently “…nineteen percent Earth normal. That ought to be enough to keep us and the equipment on the surface and not flying off, but everyone go slow and be careful,” he cautioned in time to turn and see Bud landing from having taken a leap to see just how high he could jump.

  Inside his helmet the flyer looked sheepish at having been caught.

  Along with the blaster and its collapsible launch stand, Tom had brought along three small self-drilling anchors to hold things down. These he and Bud poked into the rocky and dusty surface, holding them in place long enough to get a grip on the soil when activated and begin to dig themselves in.