THIS SATELLITE FAILED TO ORBIT PROPERLY AND THEREFORE
STRAYED INTO OUR EXPERIMENTAL FORCE FIELD. TO MAKE UP FOR
THIS MISHAP, WE HAVE MOVED THE SATELLITE INTO ITS CORRECT AND
HOPED-FOR ORBIT. WE ARE HAPPY TO DO THIS FAVOR FOR OUR
BRUNGARIAN FRIENDS AND TO BRING YOU THE BEST WISHES OF THE
AMERICAN PEOPLE!
Bud was laughing uproariously. “That’ll teach ‘em!” he said.
Mr. Swift was on hand to greet the young astronauts when they landed back at Fearing. “Congratulations, son!” he told Tom. “You’ve turned a near disaster into a propaganda victory for the free world! I’m afraid there must be some THE KIDNAPPED SATELLITE 129
pretty red faces in Brungaria tonight. The whole world is laughing over what happened.”
“Are they going to protest to the UN, Dad?”
“Not a chance.” The elder scientist chuckled. “Our State Department is sure they’ll be only too happy to let the matter drop. The Brungarian dictators are afraid that any protest may bring more direct news flashes from America!”
Next morning Tom and Bud soared aloft for another try at retrieving the dead American satellite. This time the test went off perfectly. Tom grinned with satisfaction as he brought the glittering space object to a gentle halt and grappled it to the Flying Junkwagon.
“So far, so good,” he said. “Now if we can just get this-”
“Tom! Look!” Bud broke in excitedly and pointed off to the left.
A needle-nosed yellow rocket ship was zooming toward them from nine o’clock!
“It looks like the mystery ship!” Bud yelled. “The same one that plowed into the space wheel!”
Tom stared in amazement at the strange craft. As he whipped a pair of electronic binoculars to his eyes for a better view, a thin stream of fire shot out from its bow.
The fiery streak billowed into a huge glowing mass and sped like a meteor toward the Dynasphere Ranger!
CHAPTER XV
ROCKET CHASE
“NOT another attack!” Bud gasped.
“Get below!” Tom shouted. The boys scrambled to the flight compartment.
Tom seized the controls and sent the Dyna Ranger streaking upward.
But the fireball, too, veered from its course and kept on racing toward their craft!
“The thing’s homing on us!” Bud gasped.
Tom began to zigzag, plunge, and climb. His efforts were useless. The weird object mimicked every move of the Dyna Ranger and continued to streak closer!
By now, the whole compartment shone with the orange-red radiance of the huge fiery mass. The boys shielded their eyes.
“What can we do, skipper?” Bud asked in a strained voice.
“There’s just one hope!” Tom gritted. He swung around in the pilot’s seat toward the duplicate control board for the dynasphere. “I’ll see 130
ROCKET CHASE 131
what effect our electrostatic field has on itl” His fingers flew deftly over the panel, nicking knobs and switches.
Both boys sucked in their breath as the glowing mass suddenly disintegrated I The fireball seemed to explode before their eyes, spraying out a million sparks and fragments.
“You did it, Tom!” Bud exclaimed hoarsely.
The fiery shower lit up the sky for a moment, then died away as the particles burned out and faded in the blackness of space.
In the excitement there had been no time to watch the enemy rocket ship.
But a moving blip on their radar screen showed it streaking away.
“I’m going after that baby!” Tom said grimly.
In a few moments the yellow raider could be made out far ahead. Tom switched on the dynasphere again and trained it on their foe.
At first there seemed to be no effect. Then the distance between the two ships began to close.
“You’re slowing it down!” Bud cried.
The gap narrowed more and more as the electron-jet effect worked against the rocket ship’s forward motion. It was almost as if the craft were bucking a powerful space wind. The Dyna Ranger began to overhaul its quarry!
Suddenly a fiery blast of exhaust spurted from the rocket ship as its pilot gunned his engines. The craft seemed to leap forward and break loose from the dynasphere’s invisible field.
132 POLAR-RAY DYNASPHERE
Bud fumed. “We almost had him!”
“We could nail him just the way we’re going,” Tom replied. “A few more spurts of acceleration like that would probably burn up all his fuel.”
“Well, let’s do it!”
Tom frowned thoughtfully as he hunched over the controls. “We might be courting trouble, Bud. We don’t even know that ship’s nationality. If we knock it out of action, the owner country could call our move an act of war.”
“That sneak fired on us first,” Bud growled.
“It would be our word against theirs.”
“What about the time they slammed into the space wheel? We can certainly prove that!”
“They could say it was an accident-that the ship was out of control,” Tom replied.
“Okay. What do we do?”
“Trail this guy,” Tom decided. “At least we can find the location of his secret base.”
The Dyna Ranger pursued the yellow rocket ship relentlessly. Twice more Tom used the dynasphere to slow it down, forcing the pilot to burn up precious reserves of rocket fuel.
By now, both rocket ships were arcing over the Pacific. The enemy ship was descending fast and both craft were glowing red from the heat of air friction. As the boys sighted the Asian mainland, the fugitive dived steeply.
“He’s aiming for the Himalayas!” Bud exclaimed.
134 POLAR-RAY DYNASPHERE
Tom hastily consulted a map of Asia, then watched as the yellow rocket ship arrowed downward. “The base must be just north of Vishnapur. That peak he’s heading for is Chogyal.”
Fearing a missile attack, Tom made no effort to swoop lower for a close-up view of the secret rocket stronghold. But he noted the latitude and longitude on the automatic navigator.
Both boys were thoughtful and said little as their globe-girdling westward flight continued. An hour or so later, while passing over Europe, Bud snapped his fingers. “Hey, I forgot all about the weather satellite! Hope we didn’t lose it, chasing that fireball pitcherl”
Tom flicked a TV monitor. “It’s okay. Those magnetic grapples don’t let go easily.”
When the Dynasphere Ranger finally landed on Fearing Island, crewmen and technicians swarmed to the launching area for a look at the salvaged satellite.
Tom and Bud were cheered.
Mr. Swift shook hands with them warmly. “Well done, boysl Tom, I don’t doubt your invention will do as well on retrieving the Mars rocket.”
“Let’s hope so, Dad. But there’ll be fifty million miles difference in the range.”
Tom waited for the debriefing session that followed in his father’s island laboratory, and then gave a full report of their encounter with the enemy rocket ship.
ROCKET CHASE 135
“I’d say you handled the situation just right, son. A wrong move could have triggered serious international trouble. We’d better inform the Central Intelligence Agency immediately.”
Tom telephoned the news to Washington. Then, after hanging up, he turned back to his father.
“How soon do we tackle the Mars rocket, Dad?”
“That’s up to the government space agency,” Mr. Swift replied. “They’ll want to evaluate this test and examine the satellite to check the field effects on its transponders and magnetic data tapes. Probably in a week.”
Tom bounced up excitedly from his chair. “With luck, that’ll leave time enough for me to drain the Lake of Kali!”
The next day, back at Swift Enterprises, Bud found the young inventor hard at work in his laboratory. Tom was frowning over a bubbling mass of purple goo that was perking through an apparatus of chemical retorts and coils.
“The mad scientist himself,” Bud remarked. “What sort of a witch’s brew are you cooking up?”
“A valve to plug the lake inlet.”
“A valve?” Bud echoed. “I don’t see any hardware in that gunk.”
“Not a metal valve. This is a colloidal solution of very fine particles that will set, or coagulate, into a gel.”
136 POLAR-RAY DYNASPHERE
The young scientist seemed so absorbed in his work that Bud gave up and walked out of the lab, looking puzzled. When he came back, late in the afternoon, Tom greeted him cheerfully.
This time, the setup on Tom’s workbench consisted of a tall glass cylinder with a purple plug inside, about halfway down from the open top. Two insulated wires were connected to the plug through the glass wall of the cylinder.
“Let me guess,” Bud said. “This is your valve and it’s made out of that purple jelly.”
Tom chuckled. “Right. But it’s harder than jelly. I’ve named it ‘electrogel.’ “
“Okay. How does it work?”
Tom poured some water into the cylinder. It seeped quickly through the purple mass, which appeared to be porous. Tom opened a petcock at the bottom of the cylinder and drained off the water, then said, “Now watch what happens when I send a current through the plug.”
He closed a switch and poured some more water into the cylinder. This time, the electrogel had become impervious to the water. Not a drop seeped through!