world through a telescope, Sue said, “I wish Mom could be here with us.”
“I do, too, Sis,” Steve replied. “But it would take all the soldiers in
the Humpty-Dumpty story to get Mom into a rocket, wouldn’t it, Dad?”
Mr. Shannon chuckled. “I believe it would, Son.”
Their father leaned over and whispered something to the officer at the
telescope, who nodded. The man slipped a high power lens on the
telescope and turned it on a certain part of the United States, toward
which the Wheel was slowly moving.
“Take another look, Sue,” her father said.
Sue eagerly went to the eyepiece. The telescope brought a city into very
close range. It seemed as if she had only to reach out a finger to touch
the tall spire of a building. Suddenly she gasped. She knew that
building! It was the home office of her father’s place of work. The city
was Little Rock, Arkansas, their own home!
“Steve, look!” she said excitedly to her brother and let him see for
himself.
Steve was as thrilled as Sue. Together they moved the telescope lens
over all the familiar spots of the great space city, which in this day
had a million population. They were able to locate the wee speck that
was their own home in the suburbs.
“I can almost see Mom hanging out the wash in the yard!” Steve said with
a grin.
Before the children were through looking, they noticed several black
hazy spots in different parts of the state.
“What are these, Dad?” Steve asked, showing them to his father.
“They’re tornadoes, Son,” Mr. Shannon replied. “There seems to be an
unusually large crop of them this season. There are even some close to
Little Rock. The Weather Control Bureau here has a way of dealing with
them, though. They do many skillful things in Weather Control. They can
make it rain in dry parts of the world and even melt snow drifts in
blizzard areas.”
“What can they do about a tornado?” Steve asked.
“When one threatens a city they fire a guided missile—a bomb—that breaks
up the twister before it can do any harm. We’ll visit the Weather
Control Bureau as soon as we’ve been to the hub of the Wheel.”
Mr. Shannon led them out of the Military Lookout Room. Steve and Sue
then found a job of climbing facing them. In order to reach the hub,
they had to go through one of the spokes leading into the center of the
Wheel. The children saw before them a nylon ladder stretching as far as
they could see down a long corridor.
“Let’s start climbing,” their father said.
“Why can’t we just walk along the hall,” Sue asked, “instead of doing it
the hard way?”
“You’re forgetting that the Wheel is always throwing you outward as it
spins,” Mr. Shannon said. “If you tried to walk down the spoke it would
be like trying to walk against a hurricane. For this reason, you two
must be careful not to lose your grip on the ladder or you’ll be flung
down the corridor against the rim.”
The three began climbing hand over hand along the ladder. They got along
very well until Sue suddenly became dizzy and lost her hold. She
screamed as she began flying down the corridor. Steve’s heart nearly
stopped beating for a moment. He heard his father calling out loudly in
a frantic voice: “Grab the ladder, Sue! Grab the ladder!”
At first Sue did not seem to hear and kept hollering in fright. Then she
understood and reached out wildly with her hands for the nylon ladder as
she swept along. One hand seized a piece of it and she held on for dear
life, her body still hanging in mid-air as the force of the turning
Wheel kept trying to throw her outward.
“Hold on, Sue!” her father called. “We’re coming!”
He and Steve swiftly crawled along the ladder to the spot where Sue was
clinging with one hand.
“Hurry!” she cried. “I can’t hang on much longer!”
Just as she was about to let go, Steve reached her and held on to her
with his free hand. Then his father lent his help and Sue was safe. She
sobbed for a moment from the fright she had had and Mr. Shannon
suggested that they go back to the rim where they would be safe again.
Both children agreed, for they had suddenly lost all interest in the
hub.
By the time they got to the Weather Control Bureau they found more worry
awaiting them. Men were hustling about the huge room with serious looks
on their faces. One of them was looking into the eyepiece of a large
machine that was pointed out the window down onto Earth.
“What’s wrong?” Mr. Shannon asked one of the men.
“A tornado is headed for Little Rock, Arkansas!” was the shocking reply.
“I hope our missile scores a hit, but it isn’t going to be easy because
the Wheel has already moved past the United States!”
“The missile’s _got_ to hit!” Steve burst out. “Our home and Mom are
there!”
“Yes, it’s simply _got_ to!” Sue added tearfully.
The Shannons had to stand helplessly on the side as the tornado fighters
went to work. The missile gun was in another part of the Wheel, but the
orders for firing it would leave this room by radio.
“Oh, why couldn’t Mom have come with us?” Sue asked. “She would have
been safe here!”
Steve felt his whole body tensing like a wound spring. The perspiration
was beading his forehead and his knees were weak. On his father’s face
there was a dark look and Steve saw that his big hands were opening and
closing.
“Twenty seconds to go before firing,” the man at the machine said slowly
over the radio mike on his chest. “Steady. Eighteen—seventeen—”
“Why don’t they hurry?” Sue cried. “They’re so slow!”
“They have to do it a certain way,” Mr. Shannon answered. “They know
what they’re doing, Honey. Don’t be afraid.”
But she _was_ afraid. And so was Steve. And her father, too. Everyone in
the room was afraid because no one could say whether the tornado could
be destroyed before it hit the city or not.
“Eight—seven—six—” droned the unhurried voice of the operator.
The Shannons hardly dared breathe for fear of disturbing the man at the
machine. Steve felt Sue’s body quivering next to him. It seemed as if
the seconds were dragging on endlessly.
“Three—two—one—FIRE!”
Steve felt nothing but he knew the tornado bomb was on its way, speeding
hundreds of miles a second Earthward.
For long, awfully long, moments after the operator had said, “Fire!” the
Shannons waited for him to speak again. He kept looking calmly through
the eyepiece of the machine as though just studying the stars. Then at
last they saw a smile spread over his face and he said to everyone in
the room, “It’s a hit! Little Rock is safe!”
[Illustration: _The tornado bomb was on its way, speeding hundreds of
miles a second Earthward_]
Sue and Steve whooped as if it were Christmas morning. Where a minute
before they had been greatly worried, now they were happy as they never
believed they could be.
“Whew!” Mr. Shannon sighed. “I’m afraid I’ve had enough excitement to
last me a lifetime!”
“Not me, Dad,” Steve said, as the fire of adventure began to glow again
in his eyes. “I won’t be satisfied until I’ve seen what lies beyond the
Wheel in the Sky!”
_DANGER ON THE ICE CANAL_
Steve and Sue Shannon were at Mars Port No. 13. This was one of the many
colonies on the planet Mars where Earth scientists were carrying on
work. It was a town of plastic tops, called domes, that were clear as
glass. The town was at the center of three canals that led outward into
the red desert.
The Shannon twins were now touring the largest dome with Biff Warren,
who worked for their father’s space cargo company. Suddenly their tour
brought them to a large cafeteria where many of the workers were eating.
“Umm!” Sue exclaimed. “Smell that turkey!”
“Yeah!” Steve said. “It sure makes your mouth water, doesn’t it?”
“Which reminds me,” Biff said, looking at his watch. “We’ll have to
finish up our sightseeing pretty soon. The quicker we get back to your
father’s ship, the quicker we can have our own turkey feast!”
“I can hardly wait for that!” Sue sighed, as the wonderful smell of the
holiday meal kept tickling her nose.
When Thanksgiving dinner was finished aboard the big space freighter
that had brought the children to Mars, the ship would take off into
space. But before that, Biff, Sue and Steve would have to go twenty
miles back down the ice canal to reach the ship.
Biff had become a close friend of the young Shannons, having made trips
with them to other ports in space. Sue liked Biff because of his quick
smile and gentle patience. Steve liked him because he was all that Steve
would like to be some day himself—a fearless, bold spaceman.
They finished up their tour of the dome. They saw the room where giant
machines made oxygen out of chemicals and blew it through the building
so that there was fresh air to breathe all the time. And they saw the
astronomy hall far up on top of the dome where scientists could see the
heavens through the thin atmosphere much clearer than they could from
Earth.
“Isn’t it about time for the fuel rocket to be shot off, Biff?” Steve
asked.
Biff nodded. “I think it’s just about time,” he said. “We’ll suit up and
go outside to see.”
In the dressing room they put on their space suits. As though they were
his own children, Biff carefully checked the young Shannons’ air tanks,
built-in heaters, and their helmet radios for talking to one another.
Finally Biff rubbed gelatin on their helmets so that they would not
frost over in the cold that was a hundred degrees below zero.
Outside they found space-suited figures gathered around the fuel rocket
cannon. The cannon was pointed toward a shiny ball high up in the
purple-black sky.
“Look, Sis, there’s the space ship toward which they’re going to shoot
the fuel rocket,” Steve said.
“I see it!” Sue cried, her eyes dancing excitedly.
“They have to line up the cannon with the ship just right or the rocket
won’t reach it,” Biff said.
“Won’t the rocket hit the ship?” Steve asked.
“No, it’ll lose all its speed by the time it reaches the ship,” Biff
told him. “Then they’ll take on fuel from the rocket by means of a long
hose.”
Suddenly the three of them heard a loud roar and saw a burst of flame.
Like a bullet, the rocket left the muzzle of the giant gun and rose into
the sky.
“They’ll be shooting off more rockets before they have enough fuel for
the space ship,” Biff said. “There’ll be a little wait in between each
firing.”
“Look, Biff, isn’t the space ship right over the canal where we’ll be
heading back?” Steve asked.
“That’s right, Steve,” Biff answered. “You’ll remember, our ship is at
the end of the canal. We’ll be able to see the rockets go off as we head
back—which we’d better do right now, if we’re going to have any turkey
and pumpkin pie!”
The canals of Mars had been carved out of a great desert by water and
fierce winds. Because of the ice that filled them, they made good
highways. The three went to the canal bank to see if their sled was
ready to go, and it was. The sled looked like a big bombing plane with
the wings off. Instead of wheels, there were long runners beneath it. In
this sled Biff and his young helpers had brought supplies to the colony
several hours before.
Steve, Sue and Biff climbed into the front seat. Then Biff shut the
door. He pushed buttons in front of them. Steve and Sue felt the sled’s
engines throbbing. The next moment the sled shot off over the smooth
sheet of ice, Biff holding tightly to the steering wheel.
“Wheeeeee!” Sue screamed in delight. “Offffffffff weeeeeeee
goooooooooo!”
“Like a rooooller cooooster!” Steve shouted.
They sped along at a hundred miles an hour. This was as much fun as they
had had on their last space journey.
Each of their trips into space seemed to be more exciting than the last.
They had won a lifetime free pass into space and by now they were sure
they would need a lifetime in which to see all of its many wonders. A
brave act by Steve on their first space trip had earned them their pass.
Right now, Steve thought that their mother and home, back in Arkansas,
seemed as far away as Deneb, the North Star of Mars.
“We’ll be there in about ten minutes,” Biff said. “The ship leaves in
thirty, which gives us some spare time.”
“Look,” Sue said, “there comes the first fuel rocket back down in a
parachute.”
“That’s right, Sue,” Biff replied.
Steve studied the bank of the canal. Along it he saw scrubby cactus,
which was forever fighting for life in the cold, dry atmosphere. Beyond
the bank stretched acres of red wasteland, and sand drifts piled up by
strong winds that never stopped blowing.
A few minutes later, Sue noticed a bright streak against the purple sky.
It was nearly as bright as the tiny sun, which was so far away that it
could not keep Mars warm.
“There goes another fuel rocket!” Sue called out, pointing through the
windshield.
As Biff caught sight of it, he jerked up sharply in his seat, bumping
the shoulders of Sue and Steve on both sides of him.
“That rocket’s too low!” he exclaimed. “It’s not lifting! Something’s
gone wrong!”
Steve felt chills run up his spine. He was seeing the danger too, now.
The rocket was dropping ahead of them, a screaming bomb filled with
explosive fuel. It was still quite a distance away, but even Steve knew
that it would make a terrible blast when it struck the ice.
Biff’s feet hit the brakes of the sled and the runners chewed into the
hard ice pack, shrieking, and bringing the sled to a skidding stop. The
riders were slammed forward. Sue and Steve were dazed, but not hurt.
When Steve’s mind cleared, he saw that Biff had thrown himself over in
front of Sue and him to protect them. But in doing this, his helmet had
thumped against the windshield. He was now slumped over and not moving.
“Sue!” Steve cried. “Biff is hurt!”
Just then they felt the shock of the explosion. It tilted the sled at an
angle and dropped it down again with a hard jolt. The air was filled
with flying chunks of ice. It looked like a hailstorm outside. The ice
clattered against the windshield like stones. Sue and Steve were
relieved when it finally stopped. But the explosion had left the ice
sheet in front of them broken and choked with lumps of ice.
“Steve,” Sue moaned, “what are we going to do?”
Steve looked at Biff who was still not moving. He could see a big lump
on Biff’s forehead where his head had struck the helmet, knocking him
out. The children tried to revive their friend, but could not.
“We’ve got to get the sled to the ship ourselves, Sue!” her brother
said. “Biff may need a doctor! Besides, I bet we’ve all missed our
Thanksgiving dinner!”
“I won’t want any dinner if Biff is hurt badly!” Sue said tearfully.
At first it seemed like an impossible thing for a pair of
twelve-year-olds to run the big sled. But Steve remembered how Biff had
worked the controls and he believed he, too, could do it. He changed
seats with the unconscious spaceman and tried the levers and buttons.
Presently the sled’s rockets began to pour fire out of the rear. But
Steve couldn’t get the sled to move. He was afraid it had been damaged.
Then Sue showed him a lever to push which she had remembered seeing Biff
shove. As Steve worked it gently, the sled started off slowly.
“We’ll go slow,” Steve said, “and take it very easy.”
The explosion had hit at the far edge of the canal so that there was a
narrow place on the other side where the ice was still smooth. Steve
carefully guided the sled across the canal and through the unbroken
part. When there was smooth ice before them, Steve picked up speed a
little. As he drove, Sue tried to awaken Biff.
Steve would have found their adventure a lot of fun if things weren’t so
serious at the moment. It wasn’t every day that a boy had the chance to
drive a giant rocket sled on a distant planet!
At last Steve saw the round top of the space ship just over the horizon.
It was at that moment that Sue called out the good news:
“Biff’s awakening, Steve!”
The boy saw their friend slowly rise up, then shake his head to clear
it. When he smiled at them in his pleasant way, they were sure that he
was going to be all right. By the time they had told him what had
happened, he was his old self again. He took the controls and looked at
his watch.
“Time’s running out,” he said. “We’ve got to hit top speed again. Hold
onto your helmets! Here we go!”
And off they went at lightning speed once more. It seemed to Steve as if
they covered the distance between them and the space ship in seconds.
As the sled came to a gentle stop beneath the giant freighter, Biff
said, “It looks like we’ll make our Thanksgiving dinner on time after
all, doesn’t it, kids?”
“Yeah,” Steve answered, “and this is certainly one Thanksgiving that I’m
really thankful!”
“I know what you mean, Steve,” Sue said thoughtfully. “We’re thankful
that we’re alive!”
Biff and Steve both nodded. It was a holiday none of them would ever
forget.
_CARGO FOR CALLISTO_
The big rocket freighter was speeding through the star dust of outer
space. It was carrying supplies to Callisto (one of the twelve moons of
Jupiter) and the Shannons, on another space adventure.
Steve and Sue looked out a window of the freighter at the airless world
growing in size. Callisto was a gigantic roughened rock, but it was a
globe larger than the planet Mercury. It reminded Steve of a giant
cockle-burr hanging in the sky.
Suddenly the children heard a tiny voice behind them say, “Rocket away!”
They turned and Sue exclaimed, “It’s Bud!”
The blue parakeet, a budgy, blinked lazily at them. The twins had met
Mr. Whittle’s pet a week ago. He had taken a liking to them from the
very start. They didn’t know that a few hours from now their very lives
would depend on this little fellow.
“We’d better take him back to Mr. Whittle,” Steve said.
The budgy kept studying them with his flat face and blinking his tiny
button eyes. Then he squawked again, “Rocket away!”
“It’ll be ‘rocket away’ for you, young fellow!” Steve said sternly. “Up
on my finger, Bud!”
The bird did as he was ordered. They took him down the hall to Mr.
Whittle’s room. Bud’s owner, off duty now, was a tall, spidery crewman
with a big Adam’s apple. He always gave his pet full run of the ship.
Mr. Whittle whistled to the parakeet, but the bird stayed on Steve’s
finger.
Mr. Whittle chuckled. “Hey, I believe he likes you two better than his
master!”
“We like him, too,” Sue told the crewman.
“You can keep him for a few days if you want to,” Mr. Whittle said. “I’m
going to be pretty busy after we land.”
“Gee, we’d like to look after him!” Steve answered.
“If you take him outside on Callisto, you’ll have to put him in that
air-tight cage over there I had made. It’s sort of like a space suit for
him.”
Sue and Steve played with Bud in the room they used for games until it
was time to “strap down” for landing. Then they went to the couch hall
and lay down on cots like the other space travelers were doing. They
buckled straps across their bodies to keep them in place.
For a long time, Steve and Sue lay there as the big freighter began
cutting its rushing speed. It felt to Steve as if a giant anvil were
crushing downward on his chest. Take-off and landing were always the
roughest moments in space travel, as the twins had already found out on
other space trips.
At last the ship set down on Callisto. The young Shannons went back to
the game room. Then with the bird on Steve’s shoulder, the twins looked
out the window at the strange new world.
They saw a land bathed in ghostly twilight. Very little light was coming
from the sun. It was so far away that it was only a small circle. Most
of the light came from a huge shape that looked like somebody’s lost
beach ball resting on the ground. Its bottom edge just touched the
horizon.
Sue and Steve were joined by their father, who worked for the space
freight company.
“That’s His Majesty, Jupiter—the king of planets,” Mr. Shannon told
them. “He’s over a million miles away and yet he looks close enough to
touch, doesn’t he?”
“Let’s go outdoors, Dad!” Steve begged.
“No reason why we can’t,” Mr. Shannon replied.
After they had put on their space clothes, Steve popped Bud into his
warm, air-tight cage.
As they all went outside, they saw the crewmen unloading the cargo.
“There’s the colony over there,” Mr. Shannon said, pointing to a high
framework that looked something like an oil derrick.
“They mine here for a mineral called magna. It’s very valuable, because
without it we couldn’t have atomic engines. Magna is what keeps our
rocket tubes from melting under the terrific heat that goes through
them.”
“May we go down into the mines, Dad?” Steve asked.
“We’ll see if we can,” said his father.
As they walked toward the mining place, Mr. Shannon said, “Underneath us
are pockets of poisonous gas like that found in Jupiter’s atmosphere.
Sometimes it leaks into the mining tunnels causing danger from
suffocation.”
“I sure hope the gas stays where it belongs while we’re down there!”
Steve said and swallowed the lump of fear in his throat.
They turned their attention to Jupiter. It looked even more like a beach
ball now with its stripes of beautiful colors. Mr. Shannon said the
bands were floating ice bergs of the poisonous gases he was talking
about.
“No ship can land on Jupiter,” he said. “Its gravity would crush a
spaceman flat. Gravity pull is much stronger on the larger planets, you
know. Jupiter’s atmosphere is many thousands of miles deep. Raging
storms are going on beneath it all the time.”
“Ooo!” Sue gasped. “I guess we’re close enough to it then!”
Other wonders of the sky were the round beacons of Jupiter’s other
moons, three of which were about the same size as Callisto. They hung
like bright searchlights in the starry heavens.
The men at the mining place greeted the Shannons warmly. They had not
seen anyone from Earth for so long that they had grown very lonely.
The chief mining engineer said he would be glad to take the visitors on
an underground tour. His name was Dr. Harding. He was plump and short
and wore black-rimmed glasses inside his space helmet.
He led them into an elevator and it sank into the darkness. Steve
remembered about the poisonous gases that crept about underground and it
made him shiver to think about it.
Dr. Harding watched Bud hopping around uncomfortably inside his small
space cage. “Do you remember, Mr. Shannon,” he asked over his suit
radio, “when they used to use canary birds in mines to warn about
leaking gas? The birds would notice it first and give the miners time to
get out.”
“I’ve read about that, Dr. Harding,” said Mr. Shannon.
“Now we have automatic warning machines in the tunnels to do that,” the
chief engineer told Sue and Steve.
Deeper and deeper below the soil of Callisto the elevator sank. At last
the cage reached the bottom, and the riders found themselves in a large
cavern. There were machines and men all about, working busily. Tracks
led off into tunnels and ore cars were running on them. Some were going
empty into the tunnels while others were coming out full of rock and
gravel.
“The magna is separated from the rock in that big machine over there,”
Dr. Harding explained. “Want to ride an ore car into one of the
tunnels?”
“Sure!” Steve spoke up.
“The mine is air-conditioned,” the chief engineer said, “so we can take
off our helmets.”
This done, Steve let Bud out of his cage. The little bird hopped up on
his gloved finger, saying, “Rocket away!” several times. His two-word
language seemed to do for everything.
One worker controlled all the cars at a main switch in the middle of the
cavern. The Shannons and their guide climbed into an empty ore car and
it rolled into a tunnel.
Glistening dark rock crowded in on Sue and Steve from all sides. Steve
hoped the walls were strong enough so they would not come crashing down
on their heads! There were lights along the way to help brighten the
gloom.
After clicking along like a trolley for awhile, the car came to the end
of the line. It was a large room with more machines and workmen. The men
were digging magna ore out of the wall with drills.
As Dr. Harding explained about the work, Bud began flitting about as
though sight-seeing on his own. He was shy of the workers at first, but
then made friends with them. He spoke to them with his favorite two
words and the men laughed in great fun to hear him.
Then a few minutes later, Bud began acting queerly. He flew back to
Steve’s finger and started wobbling as though dizzy.
“What’s the matter with him?” Steve asked.
“He’s sick or something!” Sue cried out. She took the budgy from Steve
and cuddled him in her own gloves. But the little blue bird seemed to be
no better.