Appleton, Victor – Tom Swift Jr 13 – And His Space Solartron

of a small hand-control box at the end of a six-foot wire.

Bud asked, “Tom, do you think the message from your dad was on the level?”

Tom shrugged uneasily. “I don’t know, Bud. I can’t figure out why neither Dad nor Ted will respond to our calls. It doesn’t make sense.”

As Tom gunned the repelatrons to full power, they blazed through the void at cometlike speed. No one broke the tense silence. All eyes in the flight compartment were glued to the view panes.

Ahead of them the moon loomed with a white and ghostly radiance. Its face was pock-marked with craters and ridged with jagged mountain ranges, while the lunar plains or “seas” showed as smooth dark patches.

In two more hours the Challenger was hovering a hundred miles above the moon’s surface. Tom steered for the Crater of Copernicus, scene of his previous landing,

“Take over the controls, Bud!” he ordered.

Eagerly Tom focused the ship’s powerful telescope and scanned the terrain below. Light-colored streaks radiated outward from the rim of the crater. Inside the towering rock walls, the bowl-like surface was strewn with gritty dust and rubble.

“See anything?” Hanson asked.

Tom shook his head. “Not a trace of a recent landing so far as I can make out. Cruise around in widening circles, Bud.”

130 SPACE SOLARTRON

The crater was fifty or sixty miles in width and the telescope showed every detail of its interior with needle-sharp clarity. Yet Tom could discern no evidence of movement, nor unusual marks in the gritty debris.

Grim-faced with disappointment, Tom turned the telescope over to Arv Hanson and went back to the controls. He brought the ship still lower and began circling farther and farther beyond the crater. Yawning cracks and crevices, spiny mountain ridges, and tumbled heaps of rocks passed below them.