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

“The word is spectrum, remember chum?” Torn said.

“Okay, professor. And your repelatron detects this radiation and generates a counterwave which is exactly out of phase with it. So when you aim it at a substance, the counterwave acts as a repelling force. It pushes the substance away, just as opposite poles of a magnet repel each other.”

“Correct, Bud.”

“But,” his pal objected, “the repelatrons you’ve built so far just repel one particular substance-like water. Now you’re going to build a machine which will repel anything in the solar system?”

“Right. That’s my big problem. It will have to work for all the ninety-two natural elements.”

Bud whistled. “Pretty neat, pal! But what happens if you want to change course?”

Tom turned toward the mock-up of the space—

26 THE RACE TO THE MOON

ship. He pointed to the dish-shaped antennas which ran on circular tracks around the ship. “We can beam out repulsion waves on any of these three directional radiators. By swiveling them around, we can line up on any object in space and give ourselves a kick in the right direction.”

“Suppose you’re traveling on the dark side of the moon,” Bud objected, “or some place where you can’t get power from the sun to work the repelatron. Then what?”

“Chances are we’d still have enough momentum to carry us out of the moon’s shadow,” Tom replied. “But just in case we want to maneuver or change direction in the dark, the ship will have auxiliary rockets. They’ll also be used to assist us on takeoff.”

Bud watched in amazement as the young inventor sat down and dashed off pages of diagrams and calculations. An hour later Tom phoned Art Wiltessa, one of the Swifts’ highly rated young engineers.