Free Tom Swift and His Space Solartron by Victor Appleton II Page B

soon."
    Two days later, after making final preparations for the trip to the orbiting outpost, Tom, Bud, Ted, and Mr. Swift flew to Fearing Island aboard the Sky Queen for the liftoff into space. The other skyship passengers included Sandy, Bashalli, Chow Winkler, and Doc Simpson. Tom’s father was making a second trip to the outpost to resume an experimental project he had been working on, while Simpson, on his first flight into the void after completing his training, intended to make some space medicine observations.
    Fearing Island, the Swifts’ spacecraft research base and rocket-port, was a thumb-shaped stretch of sand dunes and scrubgrass. It lay not far off the Georgia coast and was guarded by drone planes and the Swifts’ patrolscope radar security system.
    Landing at the island airfield, the travelers drove immediately to the special launching area for the Challenger as a large crew of workers began shuttling the solartron equipment from the Flying Lab’s hold to the spaceship. The great craft gleamed in the Atlantic sun with tones of silvery bronze and a bright trim of yellow and red.
    Both girls were electrified by the exciting adventure awaiting them. "Just think," murmured Bash, gazing in awe at the powerful yet strange-looking craft, "the Challenger has actually been to the moon!"
    Bud added proudly, "She may not look very streamlined, but this baby can travel like a comet."
    A multistory boxlike crew cabin, poised between hydraulic struts above and below, was encircled by a framework of sturdy, gracefully arching rails. These served as tracks for the radiator antennas which beamed out the repelatron force rays that propelled the ship. This drive system could be used to push the ship in any direction by exerting a repulsion force against the earth, moon, or other heavenly object near at hand.
    "All aboard!" Tom called, after a last-minute check with the mechanics and ground crew. "We can wait inside the ship for the loading to finish."
    Bud called attention to a pair of bulky-looking greenish cubes that were being unloaded from a truck bed. "Are those your folded-up atom-snatchers, genius boy?"
    "Right," he replied, grinning at Bud’s nickname from the collector lattices. "Made of transifoil. And you were part of that discovery, Bud! The material includes chains of piezoelectric crystals—which change size and shape when electricity passes through—from that rare-earths mine we found when we went after you and Slim Davis in New Guinea. Matter of fact, flyboy," he added, "I almost called it Barclaytium!"
    "Oh?"
    "But I knew it would offend your natural modesty."
    "Rrrrright," Bud responded darkly.
    Inasmuch as the several elevators that descended from the underside of the cabin fuselage were being used by the loading team, passengers and crew trooped up the extensible accommodation ladder to the landing platform which projected from the front of the cabin. The landing platform was used for small auxiliary craft which could be berthed inside the ship’s adjacent hangar compartment.
    "Brand my achin’ elbows!" Chow huff-and-puffed. "Nobody said we ’as gonna climb our way up t’ space!"
    Entering through an airlock, the space voyagers were whisked upward by elevator to the flight deck one level above the hangar. Here a pair of bucket seats for the pilot and copilot stood in front of twin view windows of lightweight, unbreakable Tomaquartz, coated, like the rest of the vessel, with transparent Inertite to ward off the dangerous radiations of space.
    "Jeepers!" Sandy gasped. "Just looking at all those dials and control levers gives me a thrill! Tomonomo, do you really think I can learn to fly this ship?"
    "Sure you can, sis." Tom grinned. "You’ve been doing great in the simulator. Remember, the real work of flight control is done by electronic brains in the computer room."
    "I do not require the jeepers, as I am quite confident in myself," Bash remarked. "But Thomas, I am glad we don’t have to be