They huddled in the narrow elevator. Bud pressed a button and the conveyor shot to the top stage. In some ways it resembled a plane, but the girls knew that during the early part of the flight, Tom and Bud would be strapped to a board tilted at a 45-degree angle from the upright rocket. Therefore the controls had been built to be within easy reach of this position.
“See this panel?” Bud asked. “It’s Tom’s foolproof control. If the first three stages don’t drop off by themselves, this electronic attachment will cause an explosion and off they go!”
Sandy and Phyl looked around, awe-struck. This passenger section seemed like such a tiny ship in which to make a trip through space. Commenting on this, they learned that it weighed seventeen tons, or only two percent of the rocket ship’s total weight.
“But that’s all we need,” Bud declared. “The two bottom stages get the rocket up into space. The third is to get it in orbital motion. Our payload-stage mo-40 TOM SWIFT AND HIS ROCKET SHIP
tors are only used for braking on the return trip.”
“But you don’t have any windows in here!” Phyl exclaimed. “Aren’t you going to be able to see anything?”
Bud smiled at her evident disappointment and said, “We do have two portholes, but it can be pretty dangerous to take a peek.”
He walked over to the wall and opened a circular steel shutter, exposing a good-sized porthole in which was set an extremely thick pane of orange-colored glass.
“Tom tells me that the glass in there will absorb most of the ultraviolet light, but even so we won’t dare look toward the sun.
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