Tom Swift Jr #34, Chapter 16: Space Invaders

James Nathan tapped gently on the door as he walked into the Challenger‘s transporter room. “Do you have a minute, sir?” he asked.

Tom Swift Sr. looked up from the electronic assembly he was rewiring. “Sure,” he said cheerfully. He stood up and stretched, and then laid his wire cutters down on a table.

James looked around the room and saw that it was almost usable again. When he had made his last status report to Tom Sr. a few hours earlier the Transmittaton had been lying in pieces all over the floor, but since then Tom Sr. had almost finished his work. There were only a few pieces of machinery that had not yet been reinstalled.

“It looks like you’ve been busy,” James remarked.

Tom Sr. nodded, and then yawned. “It took some time, but it actually wasn’t very hard. I just had to tweak it a bit to allow it to receive an external data stream, and that meant taking apart the main assembly. But overall it wasn’t too bad a job.”

“How long have you been awake, sir?” James asked. “Do you realize it’s six in the morning?”

Tom Sr. laughed. “And I haven’t had a bit of sleep all night, have I? It’s ok, James. I’ll grab Tom and Bud from the netherworld and then I’ll get some rest. I can last that long, at least.”

James nodded. “I wanted to tell you that the crew has returned with the second translator. Both of the units are now secured in Hangar 1. We are ready to depart on your command.”

“Wonderful! My son will be glad to hear that. By the way, what has our friend Andy been doing?”

“He helped bring both units on board, sir. I believe he is on the control deck right now, waiting for us to return to Earth.”

Tom Sr. nodded. “That’s fine. Speaking of departing, I told Tom to contact me at half past six. The Transmittaton should be ready by then. We’ll do a few dry runs, and then we’ll go for it. Once Tom and Bud are safely on board we’ll head for home.”

“Dry runs?” James asked.

“I’ve talked to Tom, and he thinks we can test our setup on a few common items, like rocks and shrubs. If we can successfully reassemble a number of complex objects then we’ll feel a little better about trying it on something more serious.”

“Very good, sir. Should I pass the news along to Fearing?”

Tom Sr. shook his head. “No, and don’t tell the robots either. We’ll wait until they’re actually back before we announce the good news. But do tell Chow. He really wanted to be here when Tom and Bud materialized.”

“You don’t trust the robots, do you, sir?”

Tom Sr. was silent for a few moments. “Let’s just say I don’t like taking unnecessary risks. Did I tell you that before I came in here I stopped to look at the robot I destroyed?”

“No, sir, you didn’t. Did you find anything?”

Tom Sr. nodded. “I didn’t spend a lot of time on it, but I did notice that the Swift emblem was not printed on the parts. Chances are Swift Enterprises didn’t build that one – or any of the others.”

“You’re expecting a rough ride home, then,” James said.

“I am,” Tom Sr. replied.

“I’ll warn the crew to keep their EMP emitters with them, sir,” James replied.

“I think I’ve found something, Tom,” Bud said excitedly.

Tom Jr. wheeled his comfortable leather chair over to Bud. The two of them were inside the translator interface room that Bud had discovered the previous day. They had spent the entire night looking for a history of the war that had devastated Thanatos. Even though they had not gotten any sleep, neither of them were tired.

Tom looked over the screen carefully. “I think this is it, Bud! Let me take a look at this. Do you think you can find any video footage?”

“Let me check and see,” Bud replied. While Tom read the report that Bud had found his friend rolled over to another console and began working. After half an hour Tom leaned back in his chair and let out a long, slow sigh.

Bud spoke up. “I didn’t read the report in detail or anything, but it looks like it roughly follows the outline given to us by the evil killer robots.”

Tom nodded. “More or less. Evidently at one time Thanatos was in a system with a class G star. Based on the timelines I’ve seen, I’m going to guess that the war happened about five hundred years ago. It could be a lot later, though – it’s hard to tie their dates to ours.”

“Class G, skipper?”

Tom explained. “A class G star is a yellow star just like our own sun. They’re not terribly common, but they do exist. This one appeared to have two habitable planets – Thanatos, and another world. I think there may have been several uninhabitable planets and maybe a couple gas giants, but these records don’t talk much about them.”

Bud nodded. “I’m guessing the Space Legion lived on the second world, and the two planets got into a fight. Right?”

“That’s exactly what happened. I think the second world was actually colonized by the first, though. What came to be called the Space Legion was just a group of colonists that created a society on the second planet. The two worlds lived together in peace for a long time, but eventually the Space Legion decided they wanted to control Thanatos. The problem was that the Space Legion was the weaker of the two. Our space friends may have been a race of mathematicians, but their grasp of theoretical physics was astounding, and their homeworld was well-defended.”

“So they were expecting the Space Legion to attack?” Bud asked.

“Not necessarily. There are other hostile aliens out there. The galaxy ghosts ended up being friendly, but what if things had gone the other way? I’m sure that there are all kinds of threats out there that we don’t even know about yet.”

“I get you. So if our space friends were so strong, what happened?”

“It was the genetic meltdown that did them in,” Tom replied. “When their race started to die their power faded, so they took what little strength they had left and poured it into building the translators. When they started converting themselves to energy beings the Space Legion struck, and struck hard. I don’t know what weapons they fought with, but they absolutely devastated Thanatos. It used to be like Earth, Bud. You’ve seen what it’s like now.”

Bud shuddered. “It must have been horrible. An entire race – gone, just like that.”

Tom shook his head. “That’s the thing, Bud. The race wasn’t wiped out. The translators were designed to find people who were dying and convert them. When the attack came they powered up and converted everyone at once. I think hardly anyone died. The planet was destroyed, but the race lived on. In fact, judging from this report, it looks like the Space Legion was the party that lost the war.”

“You’re kidding!” Bud said, startled. “How could they have lost?”

“It’s true that the Space Legion did a lot of things to this planet. They destroyed every living thing off its surface. They cracked its crust and turned it into a volcanic nightmare. But they still lost. Tell me, Bud. How many other objects are there in this star system?”

“What star system?” Bud asked.

“Exactly,” Tom replied. “The only object still left is Thanatos. Everything else is gone, including the home world of the Space Legion. You see, in their haste to defeat our space friends the invaders launched a weapon designed to make it impossible to enter hyperspace within a light-year radius. They wanted to keep the space friends from retaliating with their faster-than-light weapons and force them to fight with more traditional ships, which would give the Space Legion an advantage.”

“I take it something went wrong?” Bud asked.

“You could say that,” Tom replied. “The weapon ended up collapsing the gravity wells of the star and its planets and converted them into unstable singularities. The entire solar system was destroyed in a matter of hours.”

“But how did Thanatos survive?”

“It almost didn’t. The collapse started with their star and worked outward, and their planet happened to be the furthest away from the danger. That gave them enough time to use the growing singularities to transport their planet to another region of space. They were hoping to reach another class G star, but the wormhole collapsed while they were en-route and they ended up here, in deep space. The collapse had the nice side-effect of damaging space-time in this area and making it impossible to move the planet again. Then temperatures slowly dropped to what they are today, turning the planet into an uninhabitable nightmare.”

“I like the way you say things like move the planet, as if people did it every Saturday evening,” Bud said. “That’s the great thing about hanging around with Tom Swift. You get to hear all sorts of interesting phrases. But really, Tom. I’d like to see you try to move a planet.”

Tom grimaced. “I’d really rather not, Bud. This is the only case of planet-moving I’ve ever come across, and I can’t say it was a success.”

“I have to agree with you there, Tom. It sounds like both side lost.”

“Nuclear wars tend to be like that,” Tom replied, “and this war was fought with weapons much, much bigger than nukes. When two nations with that much technology get into a war it just isn’t possible to have a winner. But I think our space friends fared the best. Their world was devastated, but at least they had their translators. The Space Legion ended up with nothing.”

“So the entire Space Legion was wiped out?” Bud asked dubiously. “Then who was bothering us when you were building your subocean geotron?”

“That’s the other piece to this,” Tom replied. “Both the Space Legion and our space friends had colonies in our own star system, and they were apparently the only extrasolar colonies that both groups had. I know for sure that our space friends settled on Mars. I have no idea where the Space Legion settled. But both of them ended up marooned around Sol when their home star system was destroyed. The people on Thanatos couldn’t reach Mars, and vice versa. The two groups couldn’t even communicate with each other.”

“But at one point they must have had the ability to travel between Thanatos and Mars,” Bud argued. “What happened?”

Tom shrugged. “If you and I were stranded on a desert island I might know how to build the Challenger, but that doesn’t mean the two of us could build one ourselves with only palm trees and coconuts. It takes a civilization to build things like that, and once it’s gone it’s gone. Plus, I’m guessing our space friends on Mars are trapped in a translator of their own, and have only a very limited ability to communicate with the outside world.”

“Which is why they do everything via remote-controlled ships,” Bud said. “I get it. And our space friends seem to have the ability to drive the Space Legion off whenever they want, so the Space Legion can’t be doing very well these days. But what does all that tell us?”

Tom drummed his fingers on the desk. “It tells us a few things. First, the robot I met in the observatory told me that our space friends had died, which might be true. If their translator was damaged for some reason – and we know they have one, because they sent us Exman – that could have wiped them out. I suspect that they’re not all energy beings, since they still care about their food supply, but probably at least 90% of them are.”

“But didn’t the robot say that the translator was a weapon of some kind?” Bud asked.

“Not exactly,” Tom said. “The robot said that the Space Legion wanted it and was not able to get to it. That I can believe. If they are facing the same mutational meltdown that affected the space friends – and I imagine they’ve got to be, because they come from the same stock – then chances are they’re on the brink of extinction. They would want a translator really badly.”

“I’m positive the robot said something about using it as a weapon,” Bud insisted.

“It kind of did, in a roundabout way,” Tom replied. “It said the Space Legion wanted to use it to wipe out their enemies. We know that our space friends have remote-controlled spaceships. If the Space Legion had a translator they could come back from the verge of extinction and live to finish any wars they wanted to start. That is, if they had the necessary strength.”

“I guess I could see that,” Bud said grudgingly. “So you think the robots are telling the truth?”

“It’s very possible,” Tom admitted. “By the way, have you found any video footage of the war yet?”

“Kind of,” Bud replied. He pressed some buttons on the console. “It turns out that the capitol building used to have video surveillance, and the surveillance was still working when the enemy ships invaded. I think I’ve got some footage of the building being stormed, but that’s about it.”

“Let’s see it,” Tom said. Bud pressed another button, and a view of the courtyard outside the capitol appeared on the screen. The two watched as the sky grew dark and a torrent of energy poured out of the sky, striking buildings in the distance. A handful of sleek, saucer-shaped vessels flew across the sky. One of them broke formation and headed toward the capitol building. After bombarding it from a distance it landed in the courtyard.

“It doesn’t look like our space friends are putting up any resistance at all,” Bud said worriedly.

“They were probably being translated into energy beings while this was going on,” Tom replied. “I imagine their response to the attack came later.”

As they continued to watch they saw the saucer open and a stream of soldiers poured out. The troops scattered all over the courtyard, shooting at will. When one of them caught sight of the camera it fired at it, and the picture was lost. The last frame of the recording captured a black metal robot shooting an energy weapon at the camera. The robot had a skeletal form, a featureless head, and two glowing red eyes.

Bud gasped. “Tom – will you look at that!”

Tom whistled. “Boy, does that ever look familiar!”

“So much for your inventing Andy thirty years in the future,” Bud replied. “It looks like they stormed Thanatos centuries before you were born – ”

” – and now they’re using me to get a translator so they can live long enough to complete the war they started five hundred years ago,” Tom finished.

Tom stared at the picture of the robot for a few moments before speaking. “I think we’ve got a problem, Bud. Now, keep in mind I don’t understand everything that the robots have been up to. They did try to stop us from ever coming here in the first place. But something tells me that our metal friends are not going to let us deliver the two translators to Mars.”

“You’re not kidding,” Bud replied. “So what do we do now?”

“I don’t know,” Tom confessed. “I just don’t know.”