Appleton, Victor – Tom Swift Jr 16 – And the Cosmic Astronauts

Bud groaned. “Oh-oh! Don’t I know it!”

Before they had blasted off, Tom had ordered that a constant watch for the mystery rocket be kept, by both radar and telescope. But as they zoomed up to the outpost’s orbit of 22,300 miles above the earth, no sign of its presence was detected.

“Maybe Li Ching or his friends are not expecting us back this soon,” Tom conjectured.

Bud was not so sure. “Don’t forget,” he pointed out, “if they could foul up our steering system and silence our radio, they can probably black out our radar just as easily.”

“All of that happened to us when we were in a rocket coated only with Tomasite,” Tom said. “We’re in a C-type rocket this time-remember?”

“Could be they’ve jazzed up their radiation nullifier,” Bud argued, “so it’ll work through the combination of lead and Tomasite.”

78 COSMIC ASTRONAUTS

“What’s this here radiation nullifier you’re yap-pin’ about?” Chow broke in.

“It’s a gadget our mysterious enemy cooked up for conking out human brain waves,” Bud replied with a straight face. “It could even turn us all loco.”

The old Texan winked at Tom. “Conkin’ out brain waves, eh, Bud? Wai, I reckon that means you’re in no danger, buckaroo!”

Bud laughed at Chow’s comeback. “Guess you got me there, pardner,” the copilot drawled with a chuckle.

At three o’clock New York time Chow served a meal of compressed food pellets to the crew. “This gunk’s not fit for a self-respectin’ chuck-wagon cook to be passin’ out,” the chef grumbled. “But maybe your stomachs’ll take ‘em for an I O U till I can rustle up some decent grub at the space station.”