“Roger!” Arv acknowledged.
Tom made some quick calculations as he hurried back to Ted Spring’s bunk.
He knew that the observed time of two and a half days to circle the earth would fix the enemy ship’s distance
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164 SPACE SOLARTRON
above our planet, since a body’s orbital rate varied at different altitudes.
“Ted, what was the spot on earth you used as a reference point and when did you first see it?” Tom asked.
“It was the western bulge of Africa,” Ted replied. “The first time we passed over the area it was approximately seven a.m. on the morning after we were captured. We appeared to be moving east southeast.”
“Good! I’ll work the rest out by computer!”
Tom hurried to the ship’s computer room and fed in the data which Ted had just given him. He added the orbital period of sixty hours and the elapsed time since the first observation. In a twinkling the navigation dials on the electronic brain showed the enemy rocket’s present celestial latitude and longitude, as well as its distance from the earth, which was about 60,000 miles.
Tom grinned with satisfaction, then flicked a switch and pressed a “memory”
button. The computer would now retain this information and continue calculating the rocket’s movement after the Challenger took off.
“I’d better see how Arv’s making out,” Tom said to himself as he hurried out of the compartment.
Going down in the elevator, he was struck by a new thought. He donned his space suit hastily in the hangar compartment and went out through the air lock, meeting Bud on the landing platform outside.
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