Appleton, Victor – Tom Swift Jr 12 – In the Race to the Moon

“They’re heading back to earth!” Jerry Walden groaned. “Now we’ll never stop them! They’ll take the ship back to Brungaria!”

Tom said nothing, but watched the enemy ship intently. They were in the darkness of the umbra now. Reaching out, Tom threw a switch on the control panel that turned on the giant searchlight invented by his father.

Bud gave a sharp cry. “They’re in trouble!”

Something had happened. The Brungarian ship and its captured ark seemed to have lost their earthward momentum. They were falling back toward the moon’s surface!

“They’ll crash!” Hank Sterling muttered.

“This is what I was banking on-the chance that they might lose power,” Tom said.

Bud stared at him in amazement. “How come?”

“Since their ship operates on solar energy,

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they can’t use their main drive here in the darkness,” Tom explained. “And apparently their auxiliary power supply isn’t strong enough to support both their own ship and the space saucer.”

As he spoke, Tom was gunning ahead full speed, seeking to maneuver the Challenger between the two falling craft and the moon’s surface.

“Tom, are you nuts?” Bud gasped. “They’ll crash on top of us!”

“Not if our repelatrons work properly,” Tom replied.

“But we have no solar power, either!”

“Not from direct sunlight,” Tom said. “But take a look down in the repelatron room and you’ll find a bank of special solar batteries for emergency use.”

The others held their breaths as Tom put his daring plan to the test. The other two ships, completely out of control, were plunging straight toward the Challenger which by now was resting on the surface of the moon. In seconds would come the crash!