Tom Swift Jr #34, Chapter 10: Across the Depths of Space

“The Challenger is in your hands,” Tom said to James Nathan. “I’m going downstairs to my lab. Let me know if you see any signs of trouble.”

James nodded. “Will do, sir.”

“I reckon I’ll be headin’ down to my galley,” Chow announced. “Gotta rustle up some vittles for lunch! Mebbe this’ll be a great time to introduce y’all to my famous rattlesnake stew.”

Tom gasped in surprise. “You actually brought rattlesnakes on board the ship?”

Chow grinned. “Now lookee here, Tom. All these years I’ve been tellin’ you about my most famous dish, and you ain’t never tried it once! You gotta be a bit more open-minded. You might like it!”

“He does have a captive audience,” Bud pointed out. “I don’t see any other restaurants around here.”

Tom looked at Chow with a slight grin on his face. “Just remember, Chow, it’s a long walk home! This might not be a good time to irritate the crew. I don’t think they have taxis where we’re going.”

As Chow headed down to his galley Bud grabbed Tom by the shoulder. “Hey – I’m coming with you, genius boy. I’m not about to spend hours sitting up here twiddling my thumbs!”

“Even if I got you a captain’s chair?” Tom asked innocently.

Bud shook his head. “Only if I can use it for napping.”

“Then come with me, Bud. I’ve got an idea for another invention!”

Tom took the elevator to his private laboratory and was soon unpacking boxes of electronic parts. Bud grabbed a chair, brought it over to the workbench, and sat down. “So what’s the idea this time, genius boy?”

“Well, Bud, I’ve been thinking. Twice now we’ve been attacked by machines that were cloaked with holograms. Wouldn’t be nice if there was a way we could detect them before they nearly killed us?”

Bud nodded. “I could see some usefulness there. But how are you going to catch them?”

Tom took a pencil out of his shirt pocket and grabbed a piece of paper. “I’m not exactly sure yet. I was able to spot the robot by the shadow it cast, but there’s got to be a better way to do it. Maybe I could hit it with some sort of scanning beam…” His voice trailed off, and he began rapidly sketching a prototype out on paper.

An hour later he put his pencil back into his pocket. “That should do it,” he said quietly.

“Already?” Bud said. He looked at the stack of notes on the desk with amazement. “Wow! I must have dozed off somewhere around page three. So how does it work?”

“It’s pretty simple!” Tom said. “All it does is fire a series of brief, high-intensity pulses at the target. These pulses will strike the target and reflect off of it, allowing us to create a picture of what is really looks like.”

“So it’s kind of like radar! I get it. But say, couldn’t you just x-ray the thing?”

“X-rays go right through the object, Bud. That’s why you need film on the other side to create a picture. What we need is something that can go right through the hologram but reflect off of the object underneath.”

“Makes sense. Is this something we can build right here?”

Tom nodded. “I think so. It uses a pretty standard set of equipment – I don’t think there’s anything exotic here. I’ve even got some components we can use to make the display.” Tom began sifting through the parts scattered on his workbench, and he and Bud got to work. Over the next several hours the invention began taking shape.

“It kind of looks like a futuristic space weapon,” Bud said at last. The body of the device was a long chamber that generated and emitted the pulses. A small dish at the top of the chamber received the reflected pulses, and a tiny solar battery provided the necessary energy. At the back of the machine was a small monitor that would display the assembled image.

Tom nodded with satisfaction. “All we’ll have to do is switch it on and begin scanning. This should even work at night! It’ll be quite effective.”

Bud snapped his fingers. “That reminds me! Couldn’t we just use infrared technology for this? Surely you’ve got some night-vision goggles on board that would work just fine.”

“I don’t think that would help – not in this case, anyway. Remember, Bud, we’re scanning for machines, not people. Given the science involved it’s quite likely that these robots already mask their IR signature. Plus, the surface temperature on Thanatos is probably hundreds of degrees below zero. There’s going to be extremely little infrared energy going around. It’ll be trivial for to them to hide in the cold.”

“So you think we’re going to run into opposition once we get there?”

Tom shrugged. “It’s possible. Honestly, though, we have no idea what’s going on. It’s best to be prepared for anything.”

Bud eyed the device on the workbench. “Is there a way we can test it?”

Tom nodded. “I’ve got a telejector on board. We can use it to cast an image around an object and then see if this thing works.”

Chow’s voice suddenly thundered over the ship’s intercom. “It’s lunchtime, y’all! Come and get it!”

Tom and Bud exchanged glances as they remembered their earlier conversation with the cook. “You don’t really think he – ” Bud began.

Tom shook his head. “Surely not! He must have been joking. Where would he even get rattlesnakes, anyway?”

Tom’s hunch proved to be correct. When they entered the ship’s dining room they discovered that the cook had provided the crew with a delicious array of fruits, vegetables, and sandwiches. There was nothing strange or exotic in sight. Tom took his seat and began devouring a turkey sandwich, but Bud was unable to resist needling the cook. He ambled up to the good-natured Texan and caught his attention. “Were you fresh out of rattlers?” Bud asked, while attempting to stifle a grin.

Chow gave Bud an innocent smile. “Y’know, come to think of it, mebbe I’ve got one or two left. I can fix one of ’em for ya if you’d like – it wouldn’t be no trouble at all.”

Bud stepped back in alarm. “Oh no, no no no no no. Ham is fine, Chow. Thanks.”

Tom laughed as his friend grabbed a tray and sat down beside him. “You did ask,” Tom said.

“Remind me not to next time, will you?”

“Anything you say, fly boy. What are friends for?”

After lunch, the two walked back to the lab. “I think we’re about ready for testing,” Tom announced, as he swiped his ID card in the door. The door unlocked and the two young men stepped inside.

Tom gasped in amazement when he saw the state of his workbench. “Bud – the detector is gone!”

“It can’t be!” his friend protested. “We left it right there not an hour ago. Where could it have gone?”

Tom and Bud quickly searched the lab but were unable to find the invention. “It’s definitely missing,” Tom said glumly.

“Who would have taken it?” Bud asked. “For that matter, who could have taken it? The lab was locked! There aren’t many people who can get in.”

“Only you, me, and Dad have access. No, Bud, I don’t blame the crew for this one. I hand-picked all of them, and would trust them with my life. Most of them have worked for Swift Enterprises since I was a kid. I think we have an intruder on board!”

Bud frowned. “Another evil killer robot on the loose, eh? Then leave it to me, skipper.” Bud walked over to the intercom and contacted James, explaining that someone had broken into Tom’s lab and giving orders to begin a ship-wide search for the perpetrator. Tom had brought along a dozen EMP emitters, and they were evenly distributed among the search party. Over the several hours Bud led a large contingent of the crew on a detailed search of the ship. Despite their efforts, however, they were unable to locate anyone.

When Bud reported the results of the search to Tom he merely nodded. “I can’t say I’m surprised! Without some sort of detector it’s almost impossible to spot those robots.”

“So you think that your friends are back at work?”

“Why not? We both know how much they wanted to stop me from getting the device on Thanatos. It would’ve been easy for one of them to have sneaked on board the ship while we were getting ready to launch.”

“But how did it get inside the lab?”

“Depending on the kind of cloaking technology it has, it could have walked in with us earlier this morning and been in here the whole time. If it was in here it would definitely have overheard what we were doing and realized the potential threat. Then, when we left for lunch, it simply pocketed the detector and walked right out the door.”

Bud shivered. “It gives me the creeps to think of one of those monsters being in here with us all morning.”

“That’s what doesn’t make any sense to me! Why stop at stealing the detector, Bud? There are a thousand things a robot like that could have done that would have prevented us from ever leaving Fearing Island – or worse. Why stoop to petty theft?”

Bud shook his head. “I just don’t know, skipper. Do you think you can replace the detector?”

Tom frowned. “I don’t really have the time, Bud. We’re going to be reaching the exoplanet shortly, and once we get there I’m going to have my hands full. I think we’re just going to have to do without it.”

Dejected, the two returned to the control room. As soon as Tom walked in James Nathan spoke up. “We should be arriving in less than thirty minutes, sir,” he said.

Tom nodded and walked over to the control terminal for the kronolator, where he sat down. “The readings look pretty stable,” he said at last.

His father nodded. “I haven’t had any trouble out of the fusion reactor either. They seem to work pretty well together, Son.”

Tom smiled. “We make a great team, Dad. The only problem I see with my invention is that it uses an awful lot of fuel. The Challenger can only make a few hops from Earth to Thanatos before we’ll need to restock the reactor. It’s burning through helium 3 like it’s going out of style.”

“Fortunately, Son, right now we only need to make this one trip. After this mission is over we will have plenty of time to refine the invention. You can’t expect the first model to be perfect.”

When they were just a few minutes away from the planet Chow ambled up to the control deck. “Are we there yet, pardner?” he asked Tom.

“We’ll be there soon,” Tom promised.

As the final minutes of the voyage ticked by anticipation began to mount. Bud counted down the final seconds. “Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, – ”

He was suddenly interrupted by a brilliant flash of white light. Sirens went off when the ship unexpectedly dropped back into normal space, and the power to the control deck flickered. Outside the window the crew could see stars, but no planet.

“Not again!” Tom said. He scanned the terminal in front of him and became puzzled. “It looks like the unit cut out early, even though it still had plenty of power. Dad?”

His father shook his head. “I’m not seeing any fluctuations on my end. For some reason the kronolator just quit drawing power.”

James Nathan spoke up. “We’re showing some intense spatial anomalies, skipper,” he said. “What are your orders?”

“What in tarnation does that mean?” Chow asked, perplexed.

“It means we’re in deep trouble,” Bud explained. “History-making, never-before-seen levels of trouble, actually.”

Tom stepped over to another terminal and examined the data. “I’m seeing the presence of an incredibly intense magnetic field. There are also signs of spatial buckling.”

“How bad is it?” Bud asked.

“I’m not sure,” Tom said slowly. “Space and time are kind of scrunched up here. It’s as if spacetime is being warped by an intensely strong gravitational field, only there’s no object here to do the warping. I see all the signs of a black hole, but there is no black hole. I don’t get it.”

Tom’s father spoke up. “That could explain the emergency. The kronolator may not be able to operate under these space-time circumstances, so it simply shut down.”

“Could be,” Tom Jr. agreed. “I’ve never seen anything like this before. Something really bad happened here.”

Bud shook his head. “Imagine coming across something weird and unexpected while on your very first interstellar journey. If that doesn’t beat all!”

Tom smiled ruefully. “I can’t say it’s the first time, Bud! I guess it comes with the territory. James, are you getting reports of any actual damage to the ship?”

“No, sir. All systems appear to be fully functional.”

“That’s what I thought. How far away are we from the planet?”

James consulted with the navigator. “If we use only the repelatron drive, sir, we can reach it in about ten minutes.”

“That’s not bad. Let’s go in, then. Silence the alarm, but keep an eye on things.”

The crew kept a careful watch on the ship as the extrasolar planet drew closer. Bud could see that Tom was very unhappy with the readings he was getting on the ship’s sensors. He at last spoke up. “What’s eating you, skipper?”

“This place is a mess,” Tom replied. “I’m reading wildly fluctuating levels of radiation, bizarre subatomic particles, gravity anomalies – you name it.”

“Land sakes alive!” Chow exclaimed. “That sounds mighty bad, Tom. It ain’t gonna kill us, is it?”

Tom shook his head. “Probably not today, Chow. The tomasite coating on the ship should protect us. Exploring the planet could be tricky, though. These readings are getting worse the closer we get to Thanatos.”

The planet in question was soon visible outside the main window of the control deck.

“Woah,” Bud said. “We’re not really going to land there, are we?”

In the complete blackness of deep space the planet would have ordinarily been impossible to see, but its upper atmosphere was lit by unceasing electrical storms. Enormous arcs of brilliant blue and white light flew across the planet at incredible speeds, giving the world an eerie, almost haunted glow. Violent storms raged over the planet’s surface and made it impossible to see the ground.

“Surface wind speeds are exceeding 300 mph in some places,” Tom’s father noted. “Its gravity is twice that of Earth, and its magnetic field is more than fifty times stronger.”

Tom shook his head in wonder. “But the planet is only half the size of Earth! What could it possibly be made of?”

His father continued. “Temperatures seem stable around 300 degrees below zero. The atmosphere is mostly nitrogen and methane. Radiation levels are quite high. Thanatos is actually an energy source, Tom. It’s an amazing scientific discovery!”

Bud nodded. “It’s probably also the most dangerous planet this side of the Milky Way. You sure can pick ’em, Tom!”

“What are your orders, sir?” James asked.

Tom gazed through the window at the planet for a few moments. A smile slowly crept onto his face. “Are you ready for an adventure?” he asked aloud.

“We’re right behind you, Tom,” Bud said. “Lead the way!”

“Then let’s do a little exploring,” Tom replied.