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

“Don’t worry. Even my fingers still work,” Tom told them after they had removed their space helmets. He proved it by wiggling his fingers.

Bud sat down on the deck to recover from the shock. “Tom, can you ever forgive me for pulling such a dumb stunt?” he pleaded in a dry-throated voice.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Tom reassured his pal. “I gave you the go-ahead signal and I saw the ship coming. But my metal gauntlet got trapped by the 82 COSMIC ASTRONAUTS

magnetic pull of the coupling as soon as it started functioning properly. I couldn’t yank it loose in time. I couldn’t even talk over my suit radio. Apparently the magnetism set up an induction current that jammed my signal output.”

Bud mopped the beads of perspiration from his forehead. Chow and the other two crewmen were still pale.

“I don’t see how you escaped losing a hand, skipper,” one crewman said.

“As soon as I realized my gauntlet was stuck to the coupling, I pulled my hand up the sleeve,” Tom explained. “Just in the nick of time, too. Luckily I was able to seal my sleeve almost airtight by clutching it with my other gauntlet-otherwise I’d really have been in a mess!”

“Brand my armadillo soup, I don’t never want to see such a close call again!”

Chow muttered weakly. “Can’t somethin’ be done to make sure it don’t happen twice?”

“He’s right, Tom,” said Ken Horton. “I’ll post a standing order that from now on no crewman ever works on the magnetic coupling without wearing some kind of nonmagnetic space gauntlets.”

Still somewhat shaken by their leader’s narrow escape, the visitors relaxed for a time in the lounge of the space station. Chow, meanwhile, had taken over the galley and served Tom’s group steaming cups of hot cocoa.