Tom Swift Jr #34, Chapter 3: Mission Impossible

Tom’s father was the first one to speak up. “I think you’re right, Son! If you interpret the origin of these coordinates to be Earth, and divide the numbers into three axes…” his voice trailed off as he scribbled some figures down on a piece of paper. “I calculate a coordinate that is 362.7 light-years from Earth.”

Tom Jr. nodded. “That’s what I get too. It’s astonishing!”

Chow spoke up. “So are we goin’ on another space trip, boss? I can pack up my things as soon as I can get back home! When do we leave?”

Tom Jr. burst out laughing. “Not so fast, Chow! Even my fastest spaceship would take generations to make a voyage like that. I don’t think our space friends have that much time left. I’ll send them a message and see if they can provide the transportation.” He beamed out into space a short message:

WE CAN GO BUT THE DISTANCE IS TOO GREAT FOR OUR CURRENT TECHNOLOGY. CAN YOU PROVIDE TRANSPORTATION?

The response came moments later:

WE NO LONGER POSSESS THE ABILITY TO MAKE THE VOYAGE. CAN YOU FIND A WAY TO GET THERE? THE NEED IS DIRE!

Bud looked at Tom. “It looks like they’re pinning all their hopes on you!”

Tom drummed his fingers on the desk. “I think I know why, Bud. If you’ll remember, we visited Mars just recently. I believe we even planted seeds there.”

“That’s right, we did – in your Cosmotron Express. If the space friends do live on Mars you probably gave them the impression that we have the space travel problem licked!”

Tom’s father spoke up on the other end of the videophone. “So what are you going to do, Son?”

Tom Jr. looked thoughtfully into the distance. “It’s a tough problem, Dad. It’s one thing to travel to the outer planets, but this request is in an entirely different league! There’s no known way to go faster than light, and we’re going to have to travel much, much faster than light to get anywhere near this system in a reasonable amount of time.”

“Just what is that-there star system like, pardnor?” Chow asked. “I ain’t never been that far from home before!”

“I don’t know, Chow,” Tom Jr. replied. “Let me look it up on the charts.”

Tom walked over to a nearly computer terminal and typed in a series of commands. “We’ve had all of our star charts categorized electronically for some time now. It should be here somewhere. Oh, there we go.” Tom pulled up a chart on the display, and then stared at it, puzzled. “That’s strange.”

“What is it, Tom?” Bud asked.

“There’s no star there!” Tom Jr. replied. “There’s just empty space. There isn’t even a star in the surrounding area.”

“Try checking with your megascope space prober,” Tom’s father suggested. “It may be that the star is too faint for our telescopes to pick up.”

“Good idea,” Tom Jr. replied.

Tom Sr. looked at his watch. “I’m sorry to break this up, Son, but there’s a few things I need to do before I can call it a day, and it’s getting late. I’ll leave the resolution to this problem in your hands! Do what you think is best.”

“I’ll do that, Dad. Thanks.”

“See ya later, boss!” Chow said, just as Tom Sr. disconnected the video signal. The line went dead.

Tom stood up and stretched. “Let’s go over to the observatory, Bud, and get some answers.”

“I’m right behind you, Tom!”

The two friends got in the atomicar and drove over to the observatory. At this late hour it was completely deserted.

Tom walked over to a terminal beside his megascope space prober and pressed a series of buttons. The enormous machine began warming up. Once it was online Tom removed a piece of paper from his pocket and began entering numbers from it into the device.

“That should do it,” Tom said, satisfied. “Now let’s see what’s out there.” As the seconds ticked by, however, nothing appeared on the screen.

“Are you sure this is working?” Bud asked.

Tom quickly scanned the controls. “Positive. If there was a star in that region of space, however dim, we should be able to see it. This is strange! Maybe I decoded the coordinates incorrectly.”

The young inventor thought quietly for a few moments. “You know, it’s just barely possible that something else is going on. I’ve got a hunch.” He reached over to the console and turned a few knobs. After a few moments a dark, hazy object appeared on the screen!

Bud looked at it, startled. “That doesn’t look like any star I’ve ever seen!”

Tom grinned. “That’s because it’s not a star, Bud. It’s a planet! I switched the machine to scan for a planet instead of a star, and I found this object, right where our space friends said it would be.”

“But what star does it orbit?”

“That’s just it – it doesn’t orbit a star! It’s a true extrasolar planet.”

“You mean it just drifts around in deep space?”

Tom nodded. “I’m sure it orbited a star at one time, but something must have happened. The planet may have been ejected into space when its parent sun went nova, for instance. It’s hard to say. Whatever happened, it probably happened a very long time ago.”

Bud looked at the hazy image with a mixture of curiosity and awe. “And that’s where our space friends want us to go! Man. That would definitely be breaking some new ground! Can you get a clearer picture?”

Tom attempted to adjust the settings, but the picture remained distorted. “The megascope just wasn’t designed to observe extremely small, dark, and distant objects. If it was a star I think we’d be ok, but that planet is pretty tiny. I would need to redesign the whole circuit assembly in order to get clear pictures of this class of objects.”

Bud nodded. “I get it. At least we can see something, though! Do you think that’s a cloud layer?”

“That’s what it looks like. The planet has got to be awfully cold, though – probably not too much above absolute zero. To have clouds at all there must be some internal heat source. Volcanism, maybe. It’s hard to say.”

“Do you think the planet is habitable?”

Tom shook his head. “Not a chance, Bud. The clouds are probably either methane or some other gas. We’ll need to bring our space suits along on this jaunt!”

Bud’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “A real interstellar voyage! Do you think we can find a way to get there?”

“I just don’t know, Bud.” Tom stared at the mysterious object that was displayed on the glowing screen of his megascope. Hazy as the picture was, he could still see clouds swirling in the upper atmosphere. Somewhere on that planet was an object that his space friends needed in order to survive. Tom realized he had to find a way to get there – the lives of many beings depended on it!

Tom at last spoke up. “This isn’t an easy problem, Bud. Einstein proved that it is impossible to go faster than light. As you approach the speed of light your mass increases, and if you ever hit the speed of light you would have infinite mass. In order to accelerate an infinite mass you’d need an infinite amount of energy, which is impossible. It just can’t be done.”

“But haven’t scientists found ways around that limit?” Bud asked.

“There have been lots of theories, but none of them have worked out. For instance, one idea would be to use wormholes that provide short-cuts around three-dimensional space. You could use these tunnels to cut a thousand-year voyage down to just a few days, or hours. The problem, though, is that in order to build these tunnels you need something called negative energy, which might not exist.”

Bud slapped Tom on the back. “If I know you, genius boy, you’ll have a working prototype by the end of the week! I’m going to go get packed. Is the trip on?”

Tom smiled. “I appreciate your confidence, Bud. I just hope it isn’t misplaced! Let’s go tell the space friends that I’m working on a solution and will keep them posted on my progress.”

“Sounds good, skipper!”

Tom powered down the megascope, and the two returned to the communications center. Tom then sat down at the terminal and typed out a message:

WE ARE WORKING ON FINDING A SOLUTION AND WILL KEEP YOU INFORMED. ONCE WE ARRIVE AT THE PLANET HOW WILL WE LOCATE THE OBJECT?

“I’d really rather not search an entire planet for a small machine,” Tom explained. “It would be nice to have some easy way to pinpoint it.”

“Good thinking!”

A light started flashing on the communications array. Tom looked at it, puzzled, and then tried to resend the message.

“What’s up, Tom?” Bud asked.

“You know how this system works, right? I redesigned it a few months ago.”

Bud nodded. “Sure I do. You send messages using your private ear technology to your Outpost in Space, and it then relays the messages through a powerful transmitter to Mars. That way it’s impossible for other people to overhear your communications.”

“Right. We’ve had no end of trouble in the past when other people intercepted messages and sent out communications that claimed to come from us. Well, Bud, it looks like the messages aren’t going through. I’m not getting an automated acknowledgement from the space station.”

“Do you think something is broken?”

Tom shook his head. “No, Bud, I don’t. I think we’re being jammed!”

Bud looked startled. “You think that someone is trying to prevent you from communicating with your space friends?”

“That’s exactly what I think! If that’s true, it should be possible to triangulate the source of the interference.”

Tom walked over to another machine and began running an analysis. “Try sending the message again, Bud.” As Bud resent the message, Tom watched the numbers on his display.

“This is tough, Bud. The interference is almost generalized. I’m having trouble pinpointing it.”

“But how is it even possible that someone can jam the messages?”

“The private ear network relies on the same anti-inverse-square-wave principle that the megascope was designed around, Bud. It’s pretty much impossible to eavesdrop on, but since it’s a form of electromagnetic wave it is very possible to jam it. I’m just surprised that someone even wants to. Try sending the message again.”

Bud complied, and this time Tom leaped out of his chair. “I’ve got it, Bud! The source is just outside Swift Enterprises. Let’s go find out what is going on!”

Tom and Bud raced to the atomicar. Tom took the driver’s seat this time and the car leaped off the ground and sped into the air. “I think the interference signal is originating about a half-mile south of the compound. There’s a section of forest there that would make an ideal spot for hiding covert equipment.”

Bud nodded. “Are we going to fly straight there?”

Tom shook his head. “I’ll get us close and then set the car down. We’ll try to sneak up on the spy and see if we can catch them red-handed. I think there’s a repelatron gun in the dashboard that you can bring in case we run into trouble.”

A few moments later Tom had cleared the south wall of Swift Enterprises. He carefully flew the car over the treetops until he was a couple hundred feet away from the suspected origin of the signal. Tom then set the car down on the ground and parked it under a tree.

Motioning for Bud to be quiet, the two silently crept through the trees.

“I see something up ahead,” Bud whispered.

“I do too,” Tom replied. “It looks like a van of some sort.”

Tom and Bud quietly crept toward the van until they were just a few dozen feet away from it. From that distance Tom could see that a large, white van was parked under an oak tree. The van bore no identifying marks and had no license plate.

“What should we do?” Bud asked.

Tom looked at the van with a puzzled expression. “That’s weird. Do you see any antennas?”

“Nope,” Bud whispered back.

“Then how is it broadcasting the interference signal? I wonder – ”

Tom picked up a rock from the ground and threw it at the van. It passed harmlessly through it!

Bud’s eyes grew wide. “It’s – ”

Before he could finish his sentence the boys were thrown into the air by a thunderous explosion just behind them!