“Good. Let’s check with him.”
A HAIR-RAISING EXPERIMENT 41
Tom and Special Agent Martin strode toward the rooming house, hurried up the steps, and walked in the front entrance. The tenement building was shabby and dirty. A spring lock on the inner door did not work.
“Apparently your chum had no trouble getting in,” Martin observed as he pushed the door open.
Inside was a long hallway ending in a flight of stairs. Tom and the FBI agent hurried up the steps and found Bud waiting between the second and third floors.
Weird East Indian music reached their ears.
“Susak’s in his room,” Bud told them. “His phonograph’s been going ever since I got here.”
Tom was puzzled. If Susak was eager to make a getaway, why would he be lingering in his room? Then a new thought occurred to him.
“Did anyone else arrive here after Susak?”
Bud shook his head. “Nobody except us. Why?”
“There’s a wall phone downstairs,” Tom replied. “Susak may have called someone-maybe his boss in the spy setup-and now he’s waiting for that person to pick him up.”
“Good hunch, Tom,” said the FBI man.
Hurrying downstairs, Martin roused the landlady-a fat, untidy-looking woman-and learned that Apartment 309 was vacant. The agent arranged for Tom and Bud to hide in this room, then went outside to keep watch from his car.
42 POLAR-RAY DYNASPHERE
The boys waited close to the door. Minutes dragged by. Suddenly Tom gasped in dismay.
“What’s wrong?” Bud hissed.
“That music! The same piece has played three times-it must be the last record on the stack!”
Bud’s face fell. “Good night! You mean Susak’s not even in there?”
Tom hurried down to notify Martin. They got a passkey from the landlady, then went upstairs again and knocked on 305. Receiving no answer, the FBI man unlocked the door.
As Tom had feared, the furnished room was vacant! It was clear from the turned-out drawers and general disarray that Susak had made a hasty flight.
“I’ll bet he did notice your taxi trailing him, Bud, or else he spotted you after he got here,” Tom speculated. “So he put on a stack of records to fool us, and ducked out either by the roof or the rear fire escape.”
Both Martin and the boys were chagrined by the suspect’s escape. A search of the room failed to turn up any clues. The FBI agent telephoned the police, requesting that all scout cars be on the lookout for the fugitive. Then he drove Tom and Bud to the heliport and they returned to Shopton.
Next day the young inventor plunged into work on his idea for retrieving objects in space. Bud dropped by the laboratory to watch the experiment. Tom was just switching off a vacuum pump
A HAIR-RAISING EXPERIMENT 43
connected to a thick-walled glass chamber. Inside the airless chamber, a metal-plated ping-pong ball hung from a nylon cord.
“What’s this-a new game?” Bud asked.
Tom chuckled. “No, a demonstration of how I hope to bring back that Mars probe rocket.”
“Hmm. Give me the low-down, prof.”
“Well, let’s pretend that the ping-pong ball is the rocket,” Tom began. He switched on his newly repaired electrostatic-field device and trained the inner crystal globe toward the glass chamber.
Instantly the ball swung toward Tom!
“Say, that’s neat, boy. How does it work-by magnetic attraction?”
“No, you might say it turns the ping-pong ball into an electron-drive engine.”
When Bud looked blank, Tom explained that the field beamed out by his device, in effect, polarized the ping-pong ball, making its front side highly positive.
“Sort of a polar-ray beam, eh?”
“You could call it that, I guess. Anyhow, the electrons in the metal coating, being negative, are driven toward the rear side. And since the ball is in a vacuum, the electrons jet out freely at high velocity.”
“I get it!” Bud exclaimed. “The ball is driven forward by reaction-just like a jet-propelled plane or a rocket!”
“Exactly,” Tom said with a nod. “And if I can beam out a powerful enough field-”
44 POLAR-RAY DYNASPHERE
He was interrupted by a knock at the door. “Come in!” Tom called.
Rakshi entered the lab. “I trust I am not intruding,” he said smoothly. Without waiting for a reply, he walked into the room, his eyes flickering over the experimental apparatus.
“What is it you wanted?” Tom asked curtly.
Rakshi’s face took on a worried look. “As loyal friends of Prince Jahan, the other trainees and myself are most perturbed that he is suspected of wrongdoing.
Can you tell us if he will be cleared soon of these false charges?”
“That’s up to your own government,” Tom said. “Personally, I don’t believe he’s guilty.”
“Ah! That is good news indeed!” Rakshi brightened and peered inquisitively at the glass-walled vacuum chamber. “May I ask what sort of research you are engaged in?”
Tom winked at Bud. “I’ll show you,” Tom told the student. “But first you’d better step on that rubber mat to avoid any danger of shock.”
Rakshi did so. Tom swiveled the inner crystal globe slightly, then switched on his static-field device. Rakshi let out a startled shriek. His long, wavy, carefully combed hair was standing on end-sticking out in all directions!
Bud was choking with laughter. Rakshi spluttered angrily, red-faced with rage.
“Sorry,” Tom said, switching off his machine. “I’m afraid I didn’t have the field aimed quite
46 POLAR-RAY DYNASPHERE
right so I-er-accidentally electrified your hair. If you’ll wait till I readjust the field focus, I’ll demonstrate-”
“Do not bother!” Rakshi snapped. Combing his hair furiously, he stalked out of the lab.
Bud laughed till his sides ached. “I’ll bet that’s the last time he comes snooping around here!”
“We hope.” Tom grinned.
He continued working on his device. First he altered the amplifying circuits to make the field more powerful, then constructed a repelatron “catcher.” This catcher would brake the speed of the rocket or other object being retrieved, in order to keep it from crashing into the operator’s spacecraft.
“All set,” Tom said finally.
On Saturday morning he and Bud flew to Fearing Island and took off in the Challenger with a small crew to test the invention.
As soon as the huge spaceship was above the atmosphere, a small missile was launched. Then Tom and Bud donned space suits and went outside to the landing platform where the static-field machine and repelatron catcher had been set up.
Tom switched on the machine and beamed out a field toward the speeding missile. By now, it had dwindled to a glittering speck in the blue-black space void.
The invisible electric field enveloped the
A HAIR-RAISING EXPERIMENT 47
rocket. In seconds it lost its forward momentum and began to move back toward the Challenger. Faster and faster it came, retracing its original flight path.
The boys were startled as the missile became more visible. Instead of moving on a straight course, it was fluttering and zigzagging!
“Hey! What’s wrong with it?” Bud exclaimed.
“I don’t know … I can’t imagine.” Tom was baffled by the rocket’s curious, jerky motion. He studied the dials of his control console and made several adjustments.
By now, the missile was hurtling toward their ship at terrific velocity.
“Why isn’t it slowing down, skipper? That thing’s getting too close for comfort!”
Tom gasped. “Good grief! The repelatron catcher’s not braking it!” He tinkered hastily with the repulsion-ray device but could not locate the trouble.
“The repelatron must be off frequency, Bud!” Tom cried out. “Its rays are having no effect!”
In a moment the missile would crash into the Challenger!.
CHAPTER VI
THE SAFFRON CLUE
“HANK!” Tom shouted into his helmet microphone. “Stop the missile! Use the ship’s repelatrons!”
The Challenger gave a backward lurch as its rays stabbed out against the onrushing rocket. Tom and Bud clung to the nearest supports. A split second later the missile came to a shuddering halt-its skin glowing cherry red from the sudden dissipation of energy.
“Whew!” Bud said shakily. “I expected us all to get knocked galley west!”
“We would have,” Tom said, “if Hank hadn’t braced the ship beforehand. He was using beams aimed against the earth and moon to cushion the shock of catching the rocket.”
After mooring the rocket, Tom and Bud went back up to the flight compartment and removed their space helmets. Hank Sterling was at the controls.
THE SAFFRON CLUE 49
“Neat catch, Hank,” Tom said.
“Sure glad I didn’t miss,” the engineer joked. “That rocket was almost down our throats.”
Tom grinned dryly. “The repelatron catcher goofed off at the wrong time.”
Bud gave his chum an encouraging pat. “You proved your machine could reel in that rocket, even if it did wobble a bit en route.”
“Wobble is rightl” Tom agreed. “I’ll have to find out what caused that and fix it-and also iron out the bugs in the repelatron catcher.”
After returning to Enterprises, the young inventor worked for the rest of the afternoon in his laboratory. That evening he gave a full report to his father. “The repelatron catcher will have to be shielded with Tomasite,” he added. “I found out that induction currents were throwing the repulsion off frequency.”