_A Young Heroes Library Volume_
YOUNG VISITOR TO MARS
By
RICHARD M. ELAM, Jr.
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES H. GEER
_GROSSET & DUNLAP_
NEW YORK
Copyright 1953
By Lantern Press, Inc.
_Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 53-10375_
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_Contents_
_Beyond the Earth_ 9
_Hurtling Danger_ 17
_First Stop—Luna_ 25
_The Curious Boy_ 37
_Pelting Stones_ 47
_Into Space Again_ 59
_Invisible Menace_ 73
_The New World_ 83
_A Cry in the Night_ 99
_School on Mars_ 111
_Yank_ 123
_Illness Strikes_ 135
_News for Randy_ 147
_Peril in the Night_ 159
_The Peril Continued_ 169
_Disappointment_ 181
_Yank in School_ 193
_Trouble in the Air_ 203
_Terror in the Night_ 215
_Lost Underground_ 227
_A Struggle Against Time_ 237
_Of Days to Come_ 251
_List of Illustrations_
_“The Earth!” She spoke in awe._ 12
_“Hi, folks,” he greeted._ 21
_“That’s the headquarters building.”_ 43
_He was going to Mars._ 65
_Figures in weird metallic suits._ 78
_The birds soared away._ 118
_The whole landscape was blotted out._ 142
_The picture flashed on._ 156
_“Pops!” Randy cried._ 164
_Yank went over the side with a splash._ 189
_“Please don’t bring Yank back.”_ 200
_Down, down he went._ 213
_They felt themselves tumbling downward._ 232
_They grabbed Yank’s paws and began dancing._ 256
CHAPTER ONE
_Beyond the Earth_
The rocket ship _Shooting Star_ powered through the black deeps of space
like a silver bullet. Inside a room of their parents’ suite aboard the
vessel, Ted Kenton and his sister Jill sat before a large window looking
out at the wonders of space in the year A.D. 2003.
“It doesn’t seem as if we’re moving at all, does it, Sis?” Ted asked.
Jill shook her auburn head. “No, but it scares me to know how fast we’re
going!” she replied.
Ted straightened his sturdy young shoulders and shook strands of brown
hair out of his eyes. It was natural that girls should be scared of
things connected with space travel, he thought. “Thousands of miles an
hour isn’t much,” he said lightly.
“But what if we should hit something!” Jill complained. “It would be an
awful crash!”
“The only things we have to worry about hitting are meteors,” Ted told
her. “The _Shooting Star_ has radar instruments that tell us when
they’re headed straight at us.”
“Father says that sometimes meteors come so fast that space ships can’t
get out of the way of them,” Jill returned, with solemn eyes.
In brotherly fashion Ted pressed the shoulder of his
eleven-and-a-half-year-old sister, younger than he by a year. “Don’t
start worrying about everything that can happen to us, Jill. We’ve got a
lot ahead of us on Mars,” he advised.
“I—I’m not so sure I want to go to Mars,” Jill blurted. “It’s so cold
and bare and lonely there, Ted. Why did Father have to sign up with the
Martian Archeology Society?”
Ted looked at her with some surprise. “Dad talked this over with us. You
said you wanted to go.”
“It didn’t seem so scary then, although I didn’t really _want_ to go,
but out here in the dark where there’s never a sunrise and everything is
so still and quiet, I—I feel afraid!”
“Does Dad or Mom know you feel this way?” Ted asked.
She shook her head. “Father’s counted so much on us going to Mars. He
was so lonely there before without us. If he knew I didn’t want to go,
he’d feel he had to get a job on Earth. But you know his first love is
excavation on Mars.”
“You’ll be all right, Sis, when we get settled in our new home. They’ve
got it all ready for us. Think of the fun it’ll be!” Ted said
encouragingly.
Jill seemed to feel better and smiled. Both turned their attention to
the wondrous misty veil of the Milky Way outside. It reminded Ted of a
great caravan of countless tiny sheep trooping through the endless black
of space night. Each one of those millions of light points he knew to be
individual giant suns. How frighteningly huge and marvelous was God’s
universe!
[Illustration: _“The Earth!” She spoke in awe._]
Directly in front of them hung the wrinkled gray face of Luna, the Moon,
which they would pass before long. Ted shuddered at its forbidding deep
pits and miles of barren, dead plains.
Jill leaned forward eagerly on the window seat on which they were
perched, her nose almost touching the clear plastic window. “Ted!” she
exclaimed. “What’s that green ball below us?”
Ted looked, then grinned. “Don’t you even know your own planet when you
see it?”
“The Earth!” She spoke in awe. “Of course!”
Ted was not surprised that his sister had not recognized the globe, in
so far as neither of them had seen it before from this dramatic
position. Ever since their fire-off from the Arizona space harbor, the
Earth had been out of their view, beneath them.
“Look!” Jill cried. “I can make out the outline of Africa! It looks like
it’s buried under fog. I didn’t know before that you could actually
_see_ the atmosphere!”
“I knew it,” Ted said, with mock superiority. “I bet you don’t know it’s
hundreds of miles deep.”
“You’re not the only one who knows the answers, Ted Kenton, even if you
are pretty smart,” she returned. “I know that it’s the lack of
atmosphere out here in space that makes everything so crystal clear.
That’s why we can see so many thousands more stars out here than we can
from Earth under a layer of air.”
“That’s not bad for a girl,” Ted replied, with a tolerant grin.
She shoved him in playful displeasure. Although the push was not hard,
it upset Ted’s balance, and he slipped off the window seat and rolled
onto the metal floor. Jill gasped in alarm and darted to his side. As
she tried to help him up, she too lost her equilibrium and fell beside
him. Ted looked at her and laughed.
Their awkwardness was caused by the fact that they wore magnetized shoes
that were attracted to the metal floor of the space ship. Even when
sitting down, they had kept the soles of their shoes on the metal of the
seat. Ted got to his feet and helped Jill up.
“Will we ever get used to these funny shoes?” Jill complained.
“We’ll have to,” Ted said. “If we didn’t wear them we’d go floating
around in the air like a feather. That’s another disadvantage of leaving
Earth. We don’t have any weight at all in space. If we wanted to, we
could take off our shoes and stretch out in the air just like on a soft
couch.”
“It might be fun to swim around in here just like a fish,” Jill mused.
“I think I’ll try it.”
Ted knew he should stop her, but his curiosity to see such an experiment
prevented him from giving in to the tug of his conscience.
“Be careful!” Ted warned. “Any motion you make will be hard to stop.”
When her shoes were off, Jill pressed gently upward from her toes. She
shrieked in pleasure as she rose gracefully into the air. Reaching the
ceiling of the room, she pushed against it and floated downward again.
“That’s lots of fun!” she said. “Why don’t you try it, Ted?”
“Uh-uh. Another time. One of us had better keep his feet.”
Jill tried other movements, whirling and doing flip-overs. Then she grew
bolder, moving more swiftly. She teased Ted into trying to catch her,
and he finally got into the game. He lunged at her but missed her fleet
form every time. The game grew more active. Presently both of them were
scampering about in the space-ship compartment, laughing and having
great fun.
Jill paused in one corner beneath an air-vent box. “Try and catch me!”
she taunted, her eyes shiny with merriment. “I’ll let you get real
close.”
Ted glided catlike across the floor, his metal-soled shoes clicking at
every step. Only when he was nearly upon her did she move. She flexed
her knees and soared off above him, laughing. His hands raked the air
but missed her agile form.
Suddenly Ted’s heart seemed to stop dead. “Jill! Look out! You’ll hit
that air vent!”
She saw the danger too late. She screamed and crashed heavily into the
metal vent, head on. Her head lolled in unconsciousness, and her body
hung limp as a broken toy against the ceiling of the space-ship room.
CHAPTER TWO
_Hurtling Danger_
His heart pounding in anxiety at Jill’s plight, Ted opened a door and
dashed into the next room of the suite.
“Jill!” he cried. “She’s hurt!”
Dr. Kenton looked up, startled, from the desk where he had been
studying. “Let’s go, Son!” the scientist said, jumping to his feet.
“Where’s Mom?” Ted asked.
“She’s down in the magazine shop,” his father answered, and added, “It’s
probably for the better.”
They hurried into the observation room where Ted and Jill had been so
happy together only a short time before. The boy pointed overhead at the
air vent, where Jill’s limp form hung, lighter than a thistle in her
weightlessness.
Even Dr. Kenton’s tall, stalwart form could not reach high enough to
bring her down. “We’ve got to have something to stand on,” he said.
Ted thought of the long window seat. He rushed over and knelt down to
examine it. “The window seat is in sections, Dad, and has some clamps
holding it down,” he said. “We ought to be able to get it loose.”
Dr. Kenton’s strong fingers released the catches that held the seat in
place. Then he lifted it out and carried it across to the spot beneath
the air vent. He stood on the seat and grasped Jill’s slim body,
bringing it down.
The girl was stretched out waist high in the air, in which position her
father could best see her injury. Ted held her so that a sudden movement
would not send her floating off. The scientist found a cut on Jill’s
temple where she had struck the air vent. She began stirring. In a few
seconds she had recovered consciousness. She was pale and smiled feebly.
“What happened to me?” she asked in a weak voice.
Only then did Dr. Kenton seem concerned about the cause of the accident.
He looked inquiringly at Ted. “Well, Ted,” he said, “what did happen?”
“She wanted to go without her shoes to see what it felt like,” Ted
replied. “I should have stopped her.”
“You both should be tanned for a trick like that,” his father said
gravely. “Jill could have been seriously injured.”
They helped Jill to the window seat, then put on her magnetic shoes for
her. She said she felt all right, but her father insisted that she have
the cut treated. A brief visit to the first-aid cabinet, built into the
wall of the room, had Jill’s hurt taken care of in a few moments.
“What prompted you two to try such a stunt as this?” Dr. Kenton asked as
he closed the door of the first-aid cabinet. “I thought you had been
well grounded on the facts of weightless bodies in space.”
Ted, embarrassed, kicked the seat section they had removed, forgetting
that it was not fastened down. It scooted off in the air, but Dr. Kenton
alertly grabbed it before it got far. “I guess we were just fidgety for
something to do,” Ted said.
“I suppose the scenery _is_ getting a little monotonous for you,” their
father replied. “Maybe I can arrange for you to stretch your legs a
bit.”
“You mean we can tour the ship now?” Jill asked excitedly.
“I think so,” Dr. Kenton said, “I believe the confusion that always
follows the fire-off is pretty well under control now. I’ll ask
Commander Grissom about it.”
Their father left and was back in a short while. “We can go,” he told
them. “We’ll leave a note for Mom to let her know where we’ve gone.”
He scribbled it off, after getting a slip of paper from a drawer in the
wall desk. Then he asked them, “What would you like to see first?”
[Illustration: _“Hi, folks,” he greeted._]
“The pilots’ roost!” Ted said, and Jill nodded in agreement. The three
of them clicked along the corridor in their magnetic shoes. Reaching the
pilots’ roost in the nose of the space ship, Dr. Kenton knocked on the
door and was told to enter. Inside, the children found two men in the
light green with gold trim of the Space Transport Command, sitting in
big roomy seats in front of a large bank of dials and levers. Above the
panel was a broad port looking out into space.
One of the pilots appeared to be busy. The unoccupied one spun on his
swivel seat and smiled at the Kentons. “Hi, folks,” he greeted. “Come on
in!”
He introduced himself as Lieutenant Foran and his copilot as Lieutenant
Starky, who took a moment from his work to smile a greeting.
“On every trip we make we usually let the passengers come in a few at a
time,” Lieutenant Foran said, “to look around.”
The pilot showed them what each dial on the panel meant. Jill was soon
bewildered by it all, but Ted was interested in every gadget and meter.
He decided at that moment that he would like nothing better than one day
to be a pilot on an interplanetary space liner.
Ted had noticed a huge circular screen built into the middle of the
panel, with circles radiating out from the center of it. Suddenly it
lighted up, and white spots, or “blips,” began popping out on the
glass’s phosphor coating. Ted saw that the pilots’ eyes had flashed
swiftly toward the screen.
Lieutenant Starky leaned forward and twisted a dial.
“What’s he doing?” Ted asked.
“That’s the radarscope,” Lieutenant Foran said. “The screen
automatically lights up when anything comes directly into our path, even
if it’s many thousands of miles away. Those blips are echoes we’re
receiving from our approaching neighbors out there.”
Lieutenant Foran went over to the panel, looking up at the screen. “What
is it?” he asked his companion.
“Seems to be a ship,” replied Lieutenant Starky. “Probably the mail
rocket _Moonstone_ on its way back from Luna. The navigator said we’d
pass it.”
Lieutenant Foran slid into his seat and pressed a button on the panel. A
voice from a speaker said, “Navigation.”
The young Kentons heard the two crewmen speak in low tones for several
moments. Then Lieutenant Foran switched off and turned to the copilot
with an apprehensive look on his face. “He says the _Moonstone_ should
have turned off course before now! It’s heading straight toward us!”
“We’ll call the Commander!” Lieutenant Starky said, jabbing a button.
Jill squeezed her father’s arm. “Are we going to crash?” she whispered.
“Don’t be scared, honey,” her father said soothingly. “I’m sure we’ll be
all right.”
But Ted saw the fear in his dad’s eyes, and his own heart seemed to
squirm with terror in his body. Was their very first journey into space
going to end tragically scarcely before it had started?
CHAPTER THREE
_First Stop—Luna_
“I can’t understand why they don’t turn off course!” Lieutenant Starky
exclaimed. “Their radar _must_ have contacted us!”
Ted watched the blips from the _Moonstone_ slowly nearing the center of
the screen. By the time they did reach that center, the _Moonstone_ and
the _Shooting Star_ would be occupying the same area in space.
Lieutenant Foran came over to the Kentons. “I think you folks had better
get back to your suite. We’re going to be awfully busy in here for the
next few minutes,” he said.
Ted could see that the officer was trying to keep the fear out of his
voice. They must really be in a bad spot.
As they left, they met stout, red-faced Commander Grissom coming in. His
face was redder than usual, and he was so concerned with the _Shooting
Star’s_ danger that he barely nodded to Dr. Kenton.
As the Kentons returned to their quarters, golden-haired Mrs. Kenton
faced her family with stricken eyes.
“What’s happening, John?” she asked her husband. “All the crewmen are
running around like mad.”
“It’s just a little trouble outside,” the scientist said gently. “I’m
sure Commander Grissom and his men can handle it.”
Mrs. Kenton began pacing restlessly. “This waiting! I wish we knew
what’s going on.”
“We can,” the scientist said, crossing the room and pressing a button on
a wall panel. “I thought it might upset us more to listen in, but I
guess it would be better to know what they’re doing.”
They heard first the voice of Lieutenant Starky coming over the
compartment’s loud-speaker. “_The Moonstone_ has just answered, sir!”
“What do they say?” the commander asked urgently.
After a few moments’ pause, the Kentons heard the pilot speak again:
“They say that they had some electronic trouble and that it’s just now
been repaired. Their radio and radar were off because of it.”
Ted listened tensely as orders flew back and forth. Both space ships set
their rocket jets to carry each away from the other, but at the speeds
they were traveling, only time would tell if they could avoid a crash.
The Kentons heard the final miles being slowly called off by Commander
Grissom as the two ships hurtled toward one another:
“Four hundred—three hundred—two—a hundred and fifty....”
Ted’s eyes were on the side port. He knew that at the last moment either
he would see a large silver shape hurtle past the window or he would
feel the might of tons crashing head on. In the final seconds, Dr.
Kenton had an arm around his wife and daughter, and Ted’s heart was
thumping wildly.
The light of thousands of stars out there seemed to burn into the boy’s
brain. Would the decisive moment never come?
Presently Ted saw the blackness of space blurred for only the briefest
instant as the _Moonstone_ drove past, its rockets streaming tongues of
flame! The side jets spurted against the hull of the _Shooting Star_,
causing it to rock. Ted felt the floor tilting beneath him, and he had
to grab a wall rail for support. A glimpse he caught of his parents and
Jill showed that they were having the same trouble.
[Illustration]
As the ship steadied itself and drove on an even keel again, Ted grinned
weakly. “We—we made it,” he managed to say.
The faces of Jill and her mother were still chalky with fright, but Dr.
Kenton’s was as calm as if he had known the _Shooting Star_ would come
through the peril all right.
They heard the voice of Commander Grissom over the speaker informing the
passengers that the danger was past. Dr. Kenton then cut off the
speaker.
“I never want to go through an experience like that again!” cried Mrs.
Kenton, taking a seat.
“I don’t think we need ever fear this happening again,” Dr. Kenton said.
“It’s quite a rare occurrence.”
“What about meteors?” Jill asked.
“They’re rare too, fortunately,” he answered. “I don’t see why we can’t
expect an uneventful trip from now until we reach our home on Mars.”
Hearing this confident remark, the children were interested in the space
ship again. “We didn’t finish our tour!” Jill burst out.
“Would you like to see the garden?” Dr. Kenton asked.
“The garden?” Ted asked, puzzled. “What good is a garden on a space
ship?”
“Come along and you’ll see,” Dr. Kenton said and started for the door.
Mrs. Kenton said she preferred to stay in the suite and collect her
shattered nerves, but the children, of course, were eager to go.
“Haven’t you two wondered how you’re able to breathe in the ship?” their
father asked as they walked down the corridor.
“I know how,” Ted said. “The air is pumped through the ship from
compressed-air chambers.”
“What is air?” his father asked.
“Mostly oxygen and nitrogen,” Ted answered.
“The _Shooting Star_ uses oxygen, with helium instead of nitrogen to
dilute it,” Dr. Kenton said. “That’s so that, in case a meteor
penetrates the ship, the rapid decompression won’t cause us to get
bubbles in our blood, which is a dangerous condition called ‘the
Bends.’”
“But what’s that to do with a garden?” Jill asked.
“You’ll see in a minute,” came the reply.
An attendant showed them through the “garden.” There was not much to
see. There were merely rows and rows of broad-leaved plants covered with
plastic and a network of tubes.
“Some garden,” Ted murmured, when the attendant had walked off to answer
a call. “The plants aren’t pretty and they don’t seem to have fruit or
vegetables either.”
“They yield something even more precious, though,” his father said.
“Oxygen.”
“Huh?” Ted asked in surprise.
Dr. Kenton smiled at the puzzled looks on their faces. “Plants and
people are well suited to one another,” he said. “Plants breathe out
oxygen into our Earth’s atmosphere, and in gratitude we give them back
carbon dioxide which, as you know, we breathe out.”
“So that’s it!” Jill said.
“It’s really quite simple,” the scientist went on. “These plants keep
our oxygen tanks filled, and the air exhaled by us is pumped back to
them so that they can keep alive.”
“Will our home on Mars have a garden producing air?” Ted asked.
“No, we’ll use air cartridges there because they’re more efficient in
small places.”
Just then the attendant returned. “The commander has ordered all
passengers back to their suites to prepare for emergency landing,” he
told them. “Jet fire from the _Moonstone_ damaged our hull, and we’ve
got to lay over on Luna for repairs.”
“Goody!” Jill exclaimed. “We’ll get to land on the Moon!”
They returned to the main compartment of their suite, and Dr. Kenton
switched on the wall speaker so that he could hear the order from the
commander to “strap down.”
As they waited, they stood before the big window looking out on the
rugged globe of Luna. Dr. Kenton pressed a button on the sill that slid
a darkening filter over the window. In this way, the blinding glare of
the full moon was cut down considerably.
“Those big craters look just like eyes!” Ted exclaimed.
“It’s all so terribly rough-looking down there, I don’t see where we can
land!” Mrs. Kenton said.
The scientist pointed. “See that large gray plain down there?” he said.
“It’s the Sea of Serenity, and the Moon colony is located on one edge of
it. We’re too far away yet to see it.”
“Hey, we’re turning around!” Ted exclaimed, as he saw the stars
beginning to blur before his eyes.
“That’s so that we can use our rear jets to brake our landing,” the
scientist said.
The order to pull down couches and “strap down” came over the speaker a
few minutes later. Each of the Kentons opened a door in the wall and
pulled down his foam-rubber cot. The couches were fastened securely to
the floor with catches. The family stretched out on the soft mattresses.
They pulled up the plastic straps from the sides and tightened them
across their bodies.
Presently a crewman stuck his head in the door to make sure they were
ready for the strain of landing.
Some time later, when he had the sensation of going down in a suddenly
dropping elevator, Ted knew the moment of deceleration had begun.
In his mind’s eye he could picture what was going on. He imagined the
long sleekness of the _Shooting Star_ plunging toward the moon’s rough
surface. From the ship’s rocket tubes, streams of fire were pouring out
to slow the terrific speed of the ship. If those fire streams should
fail, or not hold back the craft enough, the rocket would be dashed to
bits on Luna.
As the ship slackened its speed, Ted felt steadily worse. It was as if
his chest were being crushed. He knew that he and the others could stand
any top speed the rocket would go; that it was only a change in speed
that was so grueling.
He twisted his head and saw the other members of his family buried
deeply in their couches. He knew they were suffering as badly as he. He
remembered the danger of the _Shooting Star_ and _Moonstone_ approaching
one another in the heavens. Then he thought what a frightful crash it
would have been had they met.
It made him wonder, now, if the _Shooting Star_ could check its downward
plunge in time, or if it would be dashed to atoms on the hard gray soil
of Luna.
CHAPTER FOUR
_The Curious Boy_
Just as Ted was expecting the worst, he felt a gentle bump beneath him.
He looked around and saw that the rest of his family were no longer deep
in their couches. That meant the heavy pressure of their descent was off
them. They must have already landed!
But he could not get up yet, for he was in a vertical position and
hanging by his straps. This was because the rocket had landed upright on
its tail fins.
Ted heard a rumbling sound. He felt the side of the room to which the
couches were fastened slide down into normal position. Ted unbuckled his
straps and rose to his feet.
“Hey, it’s time to get up!” he said to the others.
Dr. Kenton unstrapped himself and then assisted Mrs. Kenton. Ted helped
get Jill loose.
“Whew! That was awful!” Mrs. Kenton complained.
“I—I think I left my stomach up in the sky!” Jill said.
Ted started toward the side window. “I feel so heavy!” he said. “I can
hardly lift my feet!”
His father plodded with him to the window. “That’s because the gravity
of Luna is added to the ship’s artificial gravity. They’ll cut off the
rocket gravity any moment.”
Looking out the window, Ted thought that this was like a scene from a
fairy tale. Any moment he expected to see a group of gnomes come
frolicking past! But nothing appeared to be alive in that craggy, lonely
wilderness, except within the man-made structure of lunar rock.
Jill and her mother, having taken longer to get their bearings, finally
joined the other two at the window.
“What makes it so awfully bright out there?” asked Jill, squinting her
eyes.
“Don’t forget that we have a blanket of atmosphere to protect us from
the sun on earth, but here on Luna the sun strikes with full force,” her
father explained.
“Talk about a sunburn!” Ted said, with a whistle.
“You couldn’t stand it long,” Dr. Kenton said, chuckling grimly. “It’s
hot enough to boil water out there right now!”
“Then when the sun is down, it must be nice,” put in Mrs. Kenton
innocently.
Her husband grinned. “If you call over two hundred degrees below zero
centigrade nice!”
A crisp voice came over the speaker: “All passengers to the dressing
room to don space gear!”
“You mean we have to go out in that?” Mrs. Kenton asked, shocked.
“I don’t know any other way of getting to the settlement across the
way,” was Dr. Kenton’s gentle reply.
As the Kentons were walking along the corridor to the dressing room,
they suddenly felt light on their feet. The unexpectedness of it sent
them colliding with one another. A voice from a wall speaker said:
“Watch your step. The artificial gravity of the ship has been cut off.”
“I feel like a feather!” Jill said, dancing along.
“You should—you weigh only one sixth of your Earth weight,” her father
said. “But you be careful or you’ll have another accident like you did
earlier!”
The passengers lined up to receive their space gear. It was bulky
equipment, but not very heavy in the light gravity. In the dressing
room, several crewmen demonstrated how to put on the space suits.
Dr. Kenton, who had put on much space gear in his time, helped his
family into theirs.
“Climb into the flexible suit first,” he said, as he demonstrated. “Then
all you have to do is to zip it up—so!”
“What are these tubes on our backs?” Jill asked, after the
asbestos-covered suits were donned.
“That’s your oxygen source,” her father said. “Those smaller boxes are
refrigerator units that cool the air so that you won’t burn up in the
terrible heat out there.”
Weighted shoes were pulled on next. These were heavy, in order to bring
the wearer more nearly to his Earth weight. Dr. Kenton helped them on
next with their plastic fish-bowl helmets, fastening them in place with
catches.
They found that they could talk to one another, even from the air-tight
helmets, because of a compact radio attachment on the top. Last to be
put on were protective gloves.
When everyone in the dressing room was fully attired, the strange
company left the ship through an air lock—a pair of doors which kept the
air pressure from escaping. The _Shooting Star’s_ gangplank, which was
actually a long escalator, slid out of the side of the ship on gears
until the bottom touched ground. Then the passengers stepped out of the
air lock onto it and were carried slowly downward. The rocket, in
landing on her tail fins, was now in position for the fire-off later
into space.
“What a strange feeling it is,” thought Ted, setting foot on a world
outside of his own beloved Earth! The ground they walked on was soft and
powdery, and his father said it was called pumice.
The party was heading for a ring of stone buildings ahead, which were
connected to one another by long tunnels. It reminded Ted of a giant
wheel turned over on the ground. At the center was the largest building
of all. Ted asked his father what it was.
“That’s the headquarters building,” the scientist answered. “It’s called
the Hub, and it acts as a central control for all the other buildings
around the circle.”
“Why are the buildings connected with one another?” Jill wanted to know.
“That’s so the people inside can go from one to the other without having
to put on space suits. You see, all the buildings and connecting
corridors are filled with compressed air. The Moon has no air of its
own, so it has to be manufactured just as it is on the _Shooting Star_.”
Ted thought his father’s voice sounded queer coming over his helmet
receiver, but he guessed he would get used to it in time.
[Illustration: “_That’s the headquarters building._”]
The party from the _Shooting Star_ entered a building where they removed
their space suits. They were told that they were free to do whatever
they liked until the ship was repaired for the journey to Mars.
Some of the passengers said that they would like to make a tour of the
Wheel, and when others also expressed a wish to do so, a guide took the
entire party around. The Kenton children found that most of the
departments had to do with scientific research, while the rest were
devoted to the running of the colony.
“Did they haul all these stones from Earth to build this place?” Ted
asked, as they went down one of the long rock passageways.
“Goodness no!” his father replied with a laugh. “The whole colony is
built of lunar rock, quarried near by.”
When the Wheel had been circled by the sightseers and it was learned
that the _Shooting Star_ would not be ready for hours for the fire-off,
Dr. Kenton made a suggestion to his family as they sat idly with the
other passengers in the lounge.
“I have an astronomer friend who runs an observatory not far from here,”
he said. “Would you kids like to visit it?”
Their eyes sparkled with enthusiasm, and they both nodded as one. Mrs.
Kenton, however, was not so ambitious.
“Not I,” she sighed. “That long walk around this building will last me
for a good while.”
Ted noticed a sandy-haired boy of his own age watching them closely.
Even as they made the tour around the Wheel, the boy had listened
intently to everything Dr. Kenton had said. And when the scientist had
mentioned going to Mars, Ted saw that his eyes had lighted up as though
with longing.
“We won’t be able to take the other passengers with us,” Dr. Kenton told
his son and daughter, “because there aren’t enough cars available.”
After Dr. Kenton had chartered a car from the motor pool, he and his son
and daughter went to the dressing room to climb into their space gear.
As they were zipping up their suits, Ted looked toward the open doorway
and saw the same curious boy watching them again! What could be his
interest in them?
CHAPTER FIVE
_Pelting Stones_
Ted decided he would find out just why the boy was watching them.
“Hello,” Ted greeted.
“Hi,” the boy answered.
“What’s your name?” Ted asked.
“Randy Matthews,” the boy returned.
Before Ted could go on with his questioning, Dr. Kenton spoke up.
“Randy, would you like to go with us to visit the observatory?”
“Yes, sir, I would,” was the ready reply.
“You’d better check with your folks first,” Dr. Kenton advised.
“I don’t have any folks here,” Randy said. “Mr. Collins is taking care
of me. He’s an engineer.”
“Then check with him and come on back if you can,” Dr. Kenton said.
When Randy had left, Ted said, “He’s been watching us a long time, Dad,
just as if he couldn’t wait to make friends with us.”
“I’ve noticed it, too,” his father said. “I wonder what he meant when he
said he has no folks _here_?”
Randy got back shortly and said he could go with them. The Kentons had
to wait for him to dress, but they were surprised at his speed. He
seemed to know all the fasteners and fittings perfectly.
The four of them left the building and went outside where an odd vehicle
awaited them.
“What a funny-looking car!” Jill exclaimed, and Ted could hear her merry
laugh ring in his helmet receiver.
“A fresh-air taxi!” Ted put in.
The car had enormous tires and an open top. It looked more like a
tractor than anything else.
“Let’s climb in,” Dr. Kenton said. He helped the children in, then took
the driver’s seat. He turned a switch, and they were off.
When they had gotten up speed, Ted thought this the most exciting ride
he had ever taken! They bounced along over the rough ground without
feeling any of the bumps. Dr. Kenton explained that the tires were
low-pressured and shock-absorbent.
The young folks were so impressed by their ride that it was much later
before they took time to notice the breath-taking beauty of the sky. The
stars were so numerous, they looked like swaths of white dust against
the absolute blackness. Randy was the first to notice the big green
globe of Earth behind them, and pointed it out.
“It makes me homesick seeing it,” Jill said, and Ted detected a tremor
in her voice.
Ted couldn’t help admiring Jill for her courage in agreeing to come
along against her wishes, just to keep the family together.
When the Moon car reached the observatory, Ted did not find exactly what
he had expected. Instead of a white tower, like the observatories at
home, what he saw was a natural, tall column of jagged rock, on the top
of which was a man-made shiny dome with a slit in it where the telescope
eye peeped out.
The four got out of the car and walked through a doorway that had been
blasted through the rock in some time past. Beyond this was an air lock
that kept the compressed air of the observatory from escaping.
When they had gone through the door, the four found facing them a crude
elevator. Dr. Kenton motioned the young people inside and then followed.
He threw a switch, and the elevator cage began rising slowly.
“This column of rock has always been hollow,” he explained, “so it was
easy to run an elevator up through it.”
He unfastened his helmet and took it off. “You can take off your hats
now,” he told the children. “There’s air in here.”
The elevator stopped at the top of the shaft. The four got out and
entered a big room with a rounded ceiling. Ted knew this to be the dome
that housed the telescope. The reflector was like a huge cylinder
resting in its horseshoe yoke across the room.
“Hello!” Dr. Kenton called. “Is anyone home?”
[Illustration]
Suddenly a round face appeared at the side of the telescope. The face
reminded Ted of a circus clown’s, with its wild, wispy hair and broad
grin.
“John Kenton!” cried the little man, as he ran out and embraced Ted’s
dad. The elderly scientist asked, “What in the world are you doing on
Luna? And who are these young folks with you?”
Dr. Kenton explained that he was on a stop-over to Mars, and he
introduced the children to the funny little scientist, whose name was
Dr. Beeler.
“We had some time to kill so we decided to visit the observatory,” Dr.
Kenton finished. “Will you show the children some of the sights?”
Dr. Beeler’s eyes brightened with pleasure. Ted was sure that the little
man was truly enjoying their visit. Ted thought he must get awfully
lonesome up here by himself.
Dr. Beeler set the position of the telescope by turning two cranks. Then
he conducted the children up a catwalk to a platform about twelve feet
from the floor. Jill took the first peek through the eyepiece at the top
of the tube.
“Oooh—it’s beautiful!” Jill cried with a gasp.
Ted let Randy have the next turn, and then he himself looked. The view
was breath-taking. What he saw was the flattened, white globe of Saturn
with its graceful rings and many satellites.
“The Moon is much better than the Earth for using a telescope,” Dr.
Beeler said, “because here there is no atmosphere or haze to get in the
way.”
The children saw other captivating sights. There was the shimmering
pearl of Venus, Earth’s twin, then Jupiter, the king of planets, with
its four orderly larger moons. The children also saw smoky-looking
nebulae and star clusters that resembled bees in a hive. Then Dr. Beeler
showed them what he seemed to think was the greatest treat of all—the
Earth under high magnification. When Jill placed her eye to the
eyepiece, she suddenly turned away, sobbing.
Dr. Beeler and her father came running to her.
“What’s the matter, honey?” Dr. Kenton asked.
“I—I guess I’m homesick!” Jill said. “I miss the green grass and the
blue sky terribly! Oh, why did we ever have to leave home?”
Ted saw his father’s face grow grave. Now his dad knew that Jill had
never wanted to come along. Her father placed his arm around her
shoulders. “I didn’t know you felt this way,” he said softly.
Dr. Beeler stood by, fidgeting as though he wanted to say something but
didn’t know just what.
Presently Dr. Kenton looked at his wrist watch which he could read
through the plastic cuff of his space suit. “We’d better get back to the
colony,” he said. “The _Shooting Star_ may be nearly ready to take off.”
They came down off the catwalk to the floor level where they took their
leave of Dr. Beeler. Ted saw a sad look in the old astronomer’s eyes as
though he would have liked them to stay longer.
“Good luck to all of you,” Dr. Beeler said. Then to Jill he added,
“Don’t worry, young lady. You won’t find Mars such a bad place. And
you’ll be seeing the good old Earth again, some day, too.”
As the four went down in the elevator, Jill said, “I’m sorry I was such
a baby.”
“Nonsense,” her father returned. “I must confess I’ve been a little
homesick myself since leaving Earth. How about you, Ted, and you,
Randy?”
Ted had to admit to a certain amount himself, but the Kentons were
surprised to hear Randy’s opinion.
“No sir,” Randy said, “I’m not homesick for Earth.”
Ted could not understand why a person should prefer the other planets to
their own home world. Ted could see that his father felt the same, for
he gave their new young friend an odd look.
Ted thought it would be a good time to learn something more about the
mysterious Randy, and he was about to ask some questions when the cage
touched the ground floor.
“Everybody out,” Dr. Kenton said. “Put on your helmets and turn on your
air valves.”
There was no time for questioning now. The three younger folks did as
instructed. Ted liked the caressing feeling he got as the air pumped up
his suit. It was like a soft summer breeze against his skin. It made him
want to giggle.
The explorers climbed into their car outside, and Dr. Kenton started it.
Then they went flying across the bleak gray moonscape, back toward the
Wheel. Jill had gotten over her gloom, and the excitement of the
carefree ride prompted her to start singing. It was a well-known song
that all the school children at home knew, and Ted and her father both
joined in. Dr. Kenton invited Randy to chime in, but the boy surprised
them once more when he said that he did not even know the song! This
only added to the mystery of Randy.
Suddenly the scientist jammed the brakes on so suddenly that the
children were pitched forward.
“What’s wrong?” Ted asked, when he had regained his wits.
He was surprised to see his father leap from his seat and vault to the
ground. “Out of here—all of you—quickly!” he urged.
His insistent voice brought them tumbling out of the car to the ground.
“What is it?” Jill cried frantically.
“See those spurts of dust just up ahead?” her father said, pointing.
“They’re meteorites striking the ground. We almost blundered right into
a meteor shower!”
He looked around. “We’ve got to find some shelter,” he told them. “A
cave—a clump of rocks—anything.”
“There’s a bunch of rocks!” Randy said, indicating a clump off to their
left.
[Illustration]
“That seems to be the closest place!” Dr. Kenton said. “Let’s go!”
They broke into a run across the ground, slipping and sliding in the
powdery pumice. Ted saw bursts of Moon dust closer now, and they were
coming with greater frequency. One huge geyser several feet away threw a
shower of sand over all of them, blinding them momentarily.
When the “air” cleared, Ted was shocked to find Randy missing.
“Where’s Randy?” he cried.
“There he is—on the ground,” Jill shrieked, pointing behind them.
Ted turned, and his heart seemed to stop beating for a moment. Randy was
stretched out flat. He was unmoving, still as death!
CHAPTER SIX
_Into Space Again_
The Kentons dashed out into the open to the spot where their young
friend lay. They bent over him. He was struggling feebly, and his mouth
was open and gasping as though he could not get his breath. His suit was
almost deflated. The meteorites had stopped falling, and there was no
further danger from them.
Ted saw that his father seemed to know just what to do. He swiftly
zipped open a pocket in the side of Randy’s suit and took out a small
strip of sticky fabric. There was a tiny slit in the boy’s suit where a
stone had grazed it. Dr. Kenton stuck the strip over the tear and
pressed it firmly. Then he opened wider the air valve on Randy’s helmet,
and the suit puffed out again.
Presently Randy’s eyes opened, and he pushed himself up into a sitting
position.
“What happened?” he asked, almost in a whisper.
“A meteorite grazed your suit, deflating it,” the scientist replied.
“For a few seconds you were like a fish out of water. We’ll have the
doctor check you over when we get back, but I think we brought you
around in time.”
They helped him to his feet. At first, he was wobbly, but he soon
regained his full strength and was able to walk alone by the time they
reached the car.
They climbed into the Moon vehicle and went whirling off in another
swift-paced ride back toward the Wheel. When they arrived at the Moon
colony, Dr. Kenton had a physician examine Randy to make sure he was all
right, which proved to be the case.
Soon the broadcasting loud-speakers announced that the _Shooting Star_
had been repaired and would fire off within the next hour. In the
waiting room the Kentons held what they believed was their last meeting
with their new friend Randy.
There was still much about the boy which puzzled Ted—there were loads of
questions he would have liked to ask him. Although he did not talk much,
Randy seemed to like to be with the Kentons. And now that the parting
was nearly at hand, Ted thought he appeared very downcast.
“We’ll sure miss you, Randy,” Jill was saying.
“Yes, we will,” Mrs. Kenton said kindly. “Too bad you can’t go along
with us.”
At this last remark, Randy looked up wistfully. Ted had an idea that
Randy would like nothing better than to go with them.
“Have you ever been to Mars, Randy?” Ted asked.
“Of course,” he replied gently. “I was born there.”
All the Kentons straightened in surprise. No wonder Randy had said he
was not homesick for Earth, Ted thought. He knew the boy did not mean
that he was a native Martian, but that his father was an Earthman who
had been on Mars when Randy had been born.
Ted knew that his father had decided to evade the mystery of Randy no
longer when he asked the direct question: “Randy, do you mind telling us
where your parents are?”
Randy’s eyes dropped, and his slender fingers began twisting.
“My mother is dead. My father is somewhere on Mars with an engineering
expedition. That’s why Mr. Collins is taking care of me. He’s a close
friend of Father’s.”
“Son, do you know which expedition your father is with?” Dr. Kenton
asked.
“Yes, sir,” Randy answered. “It’s the Number Five Syrtis Major
Expedition.”
Ted was watching his father as he asked the question. A cold,
unexplainable feeling coursed through him. When Randy replied, Dr.
Kenton’s face suddenly paled, and he turned away. Ted felt a stab of
dread. Had something happened to the No. 5 Expedition? What a terrible
tragedy for Randy if this were so.
“I sure miss Pops,” Randy said softly, a dreamy look on his face. “I
haven’t seen him for two years. We had lots of fun together. He was
teaching me to play baseball—helping me develop a curve.”
This was the most Randy had ever said at one time, and the Kentons
listened raptly. Ted could see that his father was disturbed over
Randy’s case. He took out his handkerchief and blew his nose hard.
“Randy, how would you like to go to Mars with us?” Dr. Kenton asked
presently.
Ted saw the sunshine of joy flare up in the boy’s face. “C—could I?” he
asked. “Really?”
“Of course,” the scientist said. “We’d be glad to have you, wouldn’t we,
Mom?”
Mrs. Kenton smiled softly at the boy. “We certainly would, Randy.”
Randy needed no further urging. First he checked with his guardian, Mr.
Collins, who came to see Dr. Kenton. Mr. Collins was a husky, friendly
person. Randy was off packing as the men talked in the presence of the
other Kentons.
“I think it would be the best thing in the world for the boy,” Mr.
Collins said thoughtfully. “The Fifth Expedition was given up for lost
about a week ago. I’ve kept it from Randy all this time, hoping that the
lost explorers would turn up. But they never have.”
“I knew about the expedition,” Ted’s father said. “That’s why I want to
take him. I thought we’d accept him into our family, so that when the
news came to him, he might not take it so hard. I guess I’ve got a soft
spot in my heart for the pioneers on Mars, being a scientist myself.”
“It’s a grand thing you’re doing,” Mr. Collins said.
When Mr. Collins left, Mrs. Kenton said to her husband, “We’ll have to
tell Randy about his father ourselves, won’t we?”
“In due time,” Dr. Kenton replied, “after he comes to know us better.
It’ll be easier that way.”
“Randy will be able to tell us all about Mars, since he’s from there,”
Jill said excitedly.
Ted agreed with his sister and decided then that Randy was going to make
a very welcome addition to the Kenton household.
Less than an hour later, the _Shooting Star_ was in the heavens again,
powering toward the distant red beacon of Mars and leaving behind the
rugged wastelands of the Moon.
[Illustration: _He was going to Mars._]
Randy became a much more chipper person than the silent boy the Kentons
had first met. New life seemed to have flowed into him. He was going to
Mars, the land of his birth and the place where he believed his beloved
father to be—alive. Ted felt sorry for the boy in the days that
followed, whenever he talked about the good times he and his father had
had together. When the time came to tell him about his father, it was
not going to be an easy job for Ted’s dad.
In the eternal night of interplanetary space, time seemed to stand
still. Ted knew that days and days, even weeks, had passed since leaving
the Moon, but without the rising and setting of a sun to go by, it
hardly seemed that any time had passed at all.
By now the Moon had lost its roundness and had become just another star
in the sky. The red spark of Mars, however, was growing day after day,
week after week. However, it could not yet be recognized as a disk.
One day Ted noticed what looked like a smudge across the blackness of
the sky. It blotted out the stars behind it and appeared to be close.
But its movement was scarcely noticeable. Ted called his father’s
attention to the blur of light.
“It looks like a comet!” Dr. Kenton said. “I’ll check with the
commander.”
The scientist tuned in a two-way speaker system and asked about Ted’s
find.
“That’s Brooking’s Comet, discovered back in 1970,” Commander Grissom
replied. “It circles the sun every eight years. You’re in for a treat.
We’ll pass through some of its vapor. It’ll be a spectacular sight a few
days from now.”
Watching the comet took up nearly all of the idle time of Ted, Jill, and
Randy in the hours that followed. Under Dr. Kenton’s guidance they drew
a chart of that part of the sky in which it was located, and plotted its
motion in relation to that of the space ship.
“You don’t suppose it’ll crash into us, do you?” Mrs. Kenton asked
worriedly, as the comet loomed menacingly outside their compartment
window some time later.
Dr. Kenton soothed her with a smile. “Don’t worry,” he said. “If the
skipper says we’ll graze it, that’s exactly what will happen. He knows
every inch of this comet’s orbit and our own too!”
Dr. Kenton explained that the comet appeared to move slowly because it
was coming practically head on. Steadily it blossomed wider, like an
opening flower bud. In the center was a brilliant light, which was the
head, or nucleus.
“Why won’t the gravitation of the comet pull us into it?” Ted asked.
“That’s because a comet has very little mass, or what we’d call real
body, to it. It’s mostly a big lump of widely scattered gas particles.”
“How big is it?” Jill asked.
“The head is almost as big as Luna, and it has a tail many thousands of
miles long,” her father answered. “It’ll pass us at hundreds of miles a
second, but it will take a long time to get by and will hardly seem to
be moving.”