“Chow! Your suit’s caught. Don’t move a muscle!” Bud hastily warned him, then radioed Tom to release the door mechanism.
It opened and Chow gingerly pulled himself free. “Buddy boy,” he said, “you’re a real friend. Closer’n a thistle burr. Thanks.”
Soon, he, as well as the girls and the crew, were safely inside the station.
Then Bud returned to help Tom and Mr. Swift, who were busy below decks in the compartment which housed the repelatron gear.
74 SPACE SOLARTRON
“Found the trouble yet?” Bud asked.
“It’s the homing device that locks the main radiator on target,” Tom replied, brushing the sweat from his eyes. “Somehow the circuit’s jammed, so that it keeps feeding power and won’t respond to the directional signal.”
For a while the two scientists feared that it might be necessary to disconnect the homing device completely and resort to manual control. But at last, after several hours of work, Tom managed to correct the difficulty.
When father and son finally entered the space station, they were greeted by Ken Horton, commander of the outpost, a slender man of about thirty, with dark, close-cropped hair.
“Welcome, strangers!” he greeted them, shaking hands with the Swifts.
“Tom, I’m eager to hear about this matter-making machine of yours.”
A former Signal Corps officer, Horton had become the Swifts’ first space trainee and had helped to build the station.
“The machine’s still experimental, Ken,” Tom replied. “I’m hoping to perfect it up here.”
At that moment Bud nudged Tom and pointed to Ted Spring with a worried look. The young cadet was slumped on a bench in a hopeless, dejected attitude.