“I don’t like this interference,” Tom said in a low voice to Slim.
His copilot shot him a questioning glance. “What is it? An enemy?”
“Or a heavenly body on the loose,” Tom declared.
CHAPTER XII
PHANTOM THIEF
SLIM Davis was startled. He wondered fleetingly if the young inventor had meant his remark as a joke. But Tom’s face was deadly serious.
The eyes of the astronaut darted to the space position finder. This was a huge fluorescent screen on Tom’s left.
“Look!” he cried.
A fine faint line of light seemed to be tracing itself on the screen. Was an object streaking toward them? A missile perhaps? The position finder gave a broad picture of the heavens, but its scale was not designed for an accurate pickup of smaller nearby phenomena.
“Quick! Warm up the search radarl” Tom snapped.
As Slim obeyed, the inventor’s brain was frantically weighing the odds against them. Should he race for earth? Or try circling for cover beyond 101
102 MEGASCOPE SPACE PROBER
the moon? He had to make a split-second decision -the whistling noise was mounting to a shrill whine. “We’d better lie low-and pronto!” Tom decided.
His hands flew to the controls as Slim pointed to a splash of light on the radarscope.
“Something’s coming, all right! Holding a straight course!” Slim muttered tensely.
The Challenger was already responding to a burst of power from Number Three repelatron. As the repulsion ray pushed them farther away from earth, the ship zoomed downward toward the moon’s surface. Tom had lined up on a huge crater near the lunar plain called the Mare Im-brium.
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