Read Online Tom Swift in the Race to the Moon by Victor Appleton II - Free Book Online

from the Subcommittee in Washington—our request to have the two docs admitted to the capsule storage chamber has been approved, and they also give permission for use of your new probe machine."
    "Fantastic!" exclaimed Tom. "I’ll have to call—"
    "Already called ’em, chief. They’re rarin’ to go."
    "Then we just have to get the Sky Queen ready for—"
    "Already took care of that too," laughed Radnor. "And I’ve had the leptoscope camera loaded aboard!"
    "Rad, you’re a gem!" cried Tom, joining in the laughter.
    "Don’t tell my wife," the security man replied. "She hates being contradicted."
    Late morning found Bud landing the Sky Queen at the Dayton airport, where a buslike vehicle, spacious but sporting bars on its windows like a prison conveyance, was waiting to carry Tom, Bud, and Drs. Glennon and Faber, with the leptoscope equipment stored in the back. They were driven onto the grounds of Warrenton Air Force Base, where they passed a series of armed checkpoints before stopping in an enclosed parking area, where they entered an elevator and dropped down into the ground.
    "Just how far down is this place, eh?" asked Evan Glennon.
    "The details are classified," Tom replied. "But a few hundred feet easily—and we’re moving on a slant. The entire facility is surrounded by layers of metal and concrete."
    "Man! Sounds like a great place to go in case of nuclear attack!" Bud remarked.
    Tom grinned at his pal. "They tell me that’s what it was built for!"
    The elevator stopped, and the four entered a long, brightly-lit hallway, busy with armed men in uniform and a smattering of civilian types whose purposeful, abstracted air suggested that they were scientists. Behind them, the elevator doors clicked shut as it prepared to go back up for the leptoscope.
    A broad-shouldered man in uniform approached them in the hallway. "Hello again, Gen. Jedreigh," Tom greeted him. The young inventor introduced his companions.
    "It seems you’re here to solve a few of the mysteries from our crypt of secrets," said the general to Faber and Glennon. "It will make my job a bit less romantic if you do. But I don’t mind, gentlemen—can’t talk about it anyway."
    He led them past a code-keyed door that slid shut behind them. Then another opened in front of them, in the manner of an airlock. They emerged into another hallway, featuring three long, narrow windows spaced along a wall nearly half a block in length. This hall was dimly lit by a reddish light which, leaking through the windows, barely illuminated the chambers beyond.
    The first chamber contained a rounded, bullet-shaped object about the size of a small sofa. It was blackened in places, but retained a sheen in others. On one side a cluster of hieroglyph-like inscriptions could be discerned. "The original meteor-missile that came down in Enterprises," Tom remarked, speaking softly in the library-like atmosphere of the underground facility.
    In the chamber behind the second window they could make out several table units upon which dozens of small, strangely formed objects had been arranged. "Recognize that stuff, flyboy?" Tom asked.
    "Sure do!" replied the dark-haired pilot. "From the cave on Little Luna." The Swift expedition to Little Luna—the earth’s tiny new moonlet Nestria—had explored a cave of artifacts left by the space friends for their terrestrial colleagues to study. These implements had eventually been moved to the security chamber, leaving behind only the mysterious cube-shaped device that maintained the satellite’s gravitational field—which could not be moved in any event.
    At the third chamber they followed Gen. Jedreigh through a double-sealed hatchway, and soft overhead lights were flicked on. Before them, lying on its side, a transparent cylinder awaited them, about ten feet long by six feet in diameter and partially filled with some sort of soil.
    "There it is," said Tom simply.
    Evan Glennon approached, a tentative hand extended. He rested a