Tom Swift and His Space Solartron Read Online Free PDF Page B

adjusted the control knobs.
    There was a steady hum of current as the solartron throbbed with a flood of energy from the Citadel’s reactor. To everyone’s relief, the aluminum bars stood firm. Tom settled down to tending the dials in silent absorption. Nothing seemed to happen but the occasional flick of a meter-needle. An hour ebbed by, and the technical team excused themselves. Bud, Ted, and Chow watched in fascination as another hour passed. Finally, apologetically, they left to attend to other tasks.
    To everyone’s amazement, Tom continued to run the machine throughout the night and into the next day, sleeping on a cot in the lab as the deep hum of the transformers lulled him into a restful slumber. He broke off his vigil only long enough to eat a few bites of the hot, tempting food which Chow brought him at intervals.
    It was late afternoon of the next day when Tom finally called a halt, after operating the machine to the limit of its calculated capacity. Thirty hours had elapsed since the start of the test!
    Bud, Chow, and Ted rejoined Tom and gathered around to watch in fascination as, breathless with anticipation, he drew off a tiny quantity of gas from the collector tank inside the machine. He analyzed it in a Swift Spectroscope, then, frowning deeply, precisely measured its mass with a laser momentometer.
    Bud saw the young inventor’s face turn bleak. "Failure?" he gently asked his pal, nudging his shoulder.
    Tom shook his head slowly. "Not exactly, fellows. But…" His voice trailed off in discouragement.
    "What’s wrong, boss?" Chow anxiously asked Tom.
    The young inventor smiled wanly. "A million watts of electrical energy! And all my invention produced was this measly amount of gas!"
    Bud rushed in. "But the spectroscope—"
    "Shows that it’s pure oxygen, yes. Which weighs up to exactly one one-thousandth of a gram!"
    Chow pushed back his ten-gallon hat and knuckled his balding head. "Reckon that ain’t very much, heh?"
    "About enough to keep a flea alive for half a second." Tom did some rapid figuring. "Chow, with the power I used to make this much oxygen, you could run your toaster an hour a day for 120 years!"
    "Wa-aal, brand my coyote cutlets!" Chow gulped. "I—uh—how—" he floundered, trying to think of some way to comfort his young boss, but words failed him. He glanced helplessly at Bud and Ted.
    Bud broke the glum silence by clapping Tom on the back. "So what? Fleas need oxygen too, don’t they? Cheer up, pal. At least your machine works!"
    Tom chuckled good-naturedly, a chuckle that was half a sigh. "Guess you’re right at that, Bud. But this is only a start." He paced back and forth with his hands in the pockets of his slacks, then turned to face Ted. "As an engineer you see what we’re up against. The feed tank contained only a wisp of hydrogen gas at the start—so little it counts as a vacuum, like you’d find in space. All this time and power, and the matter maker couldn’t manage to make out of it more than—that."
    Ted asked if the solartron had only been able to transmute a small portion of the hydrogen atoms available. Tom nodded ruefully. "Exactly. I knew this was a possibility. I was banking on some assumptions that were always a little shaky, and as it turns out the power allotment just wasn’t realistic. It looks as if even the Citadel isn’t the place to finish this experiment."
    "Meaning what?" Ted asked.
    "Meaning we’ll head up to our space station and use solar radiation as our source of power."
    Tom Swift’s outpost in space was a huge, wheel-shaped satellite, orbiting 22,300 miles above the earth. Tom had designed it as a factory for charging his famous solar batteries, as well as a scientific observation post and communications relay station.
    Tom’s quiet announcement was greeted with a jolt of jubilation. "Yip-pee!" Bud and Ted yelled together, and took turns swinging their friend around the floor a couple of times.
    "Hey!" laughed Chow excitedly. "Let me