The young inventor hurried into his father’s laboratory, only to find it empty. A crewman told him that Mr. Swift and Ted Spring had gone outside the station to work on the cosmic dust experiment.
Tom donned his space suit and went out through the air lock. To his amazement, neither Ted nor Mr. Swift was in sight around the space wheel.
When Tom came back inside, thinking the crewman had been mistaken, he used the
100 SPACE SOLARTRON
loud-speaker system, but still he could not locate his father and Ted in any of the station compartments.
Worried, Tom said to Ken Horton, “Where are they?”
“I know they went outside,” Ken insisted. “They both checked with me personally, but they never checked in. And your dad laid down that rule himself for keeping tabs on every person at the outpost.”
“They’re not there now,” Tom replied tersely.
Fearing that the two might have drifted off into the void, Tom ordered the station telescope brought into play. But a complete sweep of the surrounding area revealed no trace of the missing pair.
Meanwhile, the radio and radar operators were busy at their sets. They too failed to make contact. Repeated call signals brought no response, and the radarscopes showed no object within range which might be a space-suited human.
By this time Tom was frantic with worry. Bud tried to console him, saying Mr.
Swift surely would not have done anything foolish, but Tom could not be comforted.
“They’re gone,” he insisted. “Probably lost.” Tom gripped a nearby bulkhead nervously. “Shall I notify Mother and Sandy? And how about Mrs. Spring? She’s apt to go to pieces if she thinks anything has happened to Ted!”