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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Space Pioneers, by Carey Rockwell

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Title: The Space Pioneers

Author: Carey Rockwell

Illustrator: Louis Glanzman

Release Date: July 4, 2006 [EBook #18753]

Language: English


*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SPACE PIONEERS ***




Produced by Greg Weeks, Joseph R. Hauser and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net






COVER

frontispiece THE SPACE PIONEERS THE TOM CORBETT SPACE CADET STORIES By Carey Rockwell


STAND BY FOR MARS! DANGER IN DEEP SPACE ON THE TRAIL OF THE SPACE PIRATES THE SPACE PIONEERS THE REVOLT ON VENUS TREACHERY IN OUTER SPACE SABOTAGE IN SPACE THE ROBOT ROCKET CONTENTS
[Transcriber's Note:
Table of Contents is not in original.
Added for reader convenience.]

ILLUSTRATIONS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
[Illustration] A TOM CORBETT Space Cadet Adventure


THE SPACE PIONEERS




By CAREY ROCKWELL WILLY LEY Technical Adviser








GROSSET & DUNLAP Publishers New York COPYRIGHT, 1953, BY ROCKHILL RADIO [TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
EXTENSIVE RESEARCH SHOWS NO EVIDENCE OF REQUIRED COPYRIGHT RENEWAL]



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED



illustrations by LOUIS GLANZMAN








PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

ILLUSTRATIONS Cover i Frontispiece ii Her nose pointed skyward, the Polaris was ready to blast off 21 The Solar Guard worked late into the night, examining every ship in the Alliance 50 The speedy little ship shot ahead of the fleet toward the gigantic mass of asteroids 90 The Polaris landed safely on the surface of the satellite 105 Bush pulled a paralo-ray gun from his belt and said, "All right, march!" 143 "Hasn't anybody figured out why four hundred ships crashed in landing?" Strong asked. 159 "We better take it easy, Astro," said Tom. "Turn off the lights." 171
THE SPACE PIONEERS

CHAPTER 1

"Go on, Astro," shouted the young Space Cadet. "Boot that screwy ball with everything you've got!"

The three cadets of the Polaris unit raced down the Academy field toward the mercuryball, a plastic sphere with a vial of mercury inside. At the opposite end of the field, three members of the Arcturus unit ran headlong in a desperate effort to reach the ball first.

Astro, the giant Space Cadet from Venus, charged toward the ball like a blazing rocket, while his two unit mates flanked him, ready to block out their opponents and give Astro a clear shot at the ball.

On the left wing, Tom Corbett, curly-haired and snub-nosed, ran lightly down the field, while on the opposite wing, Roger Manning, his blond hair cut crew style, kept pace with him easily. The two teams closed. Roger threw a perfect block on his opposing wingman and the two boys went down in a heap. Tom side-stepped the Arcturus cadet on his side and sent him sprawling to the ground. He quickly cut across the field and threw his body headlong at the last remaining member of the opposition. Astro was free to kick the ball perfectly for a fifty-yard goal.

Jogging back toward their own goal line, the three Polaris cadets congratulated each other. Astro's kick had tied the score, two-all.

"That was some feint you pulled on Richards, Tom," said Roger. "You sucked him in beautifully. I thought he was going to tear up the field with his nose!"

Tom grinned. Compliments from Roger were few and far between.

Astro clapped his hands together and roared, "All right, fellas, let's see if we can't take these space bums again! Another shot at the goal—that's all I need!"

[Illustration]

Lining up at the end of the field again, the cadets kept their eyes on the cadet referee on the side lines. They saw him hold up his hand and then drop it suddenly. Once again the teams raced toward the ball in the middle of the field. When they met, Roger tried to duplicate Tom's feat and feint his opponent, but the other cadet was ready for the maneuver and stopped dead in his tracks. Roger was forced to break stride just long enough for the Arcturus cadet to dump him to the ground and then race for Astro. Tom, covering Astro on the left wing, saw the cadet sweeping in and lunged in a desperate attempt to stop him. But he missed, leaving Astro unprotected against the three members of the Arcturus unit. With his defense gone, Astro kicked at the ball frantically but just grazed the side of it. The mercury inside the ball began to play its role in the game, and as though it had a brain of its own, the ball spun, stopped, bounced, and spiraled in every direction, with the cadets kicking, lunging, and scrambling for a clean shot. Finally Astro reached the tumbling sphere and booted it away from the group. There was a roar of laughter from the Arcturus unit and a low groan from Tom and Roger. Astro saw that he had kicked the ball over his own goal line.

[Illustration]

"Why, you clobber-headed Venusian hick!" yelled Roger. "Can't you tell the difference between our goal and theirs?"

Astro grinned sheepishly as the three jogged back to their own goal to line up once more.

"Lay off, Roger," said Tom. "How come you didn't get Richards on that play?"

"I slipped," replied the blond cadet.

"Yeah, you slipped all right," growled Astro good-naturedly, "with a great big assist from Richards."

"Ah, go blast your jets," grumbled Roger. "Come on! Let's show those space crawlers what this game is all about!"

But before the cadet referee could drop his hand, a powerful, low-slung jet car, its exhaust howling, pulled to a screeching stop at the edge of the field and a scarlet-clad enlisted Solar Guardsman jumped out and spoke to him. Sensing that it was something important, the two teams jogged over to surround the messenger.

"What's up, Joe?" asked Roger.

The enlisted spaceman, an Earthworm cadet who had washed out of the Academy but had re-enlisted in the Solar Guard, smiled. "Orders for the Polaris unit," he said, "from Captain Strong."

"What about?" asked Roger.

"Report on the double for new assignments," replied the guardsman.

"Yeeeeooooow!" Astro roared in jubilation. "At last we can get out of here. I've been doing so blamed much classroom work, I've forgotten what space looks like."

"Know where we're going, Joe?" asked Tom.

"Uh-uh." Joe shook his head. He turned away, then stopped, and called back, "Want a lift back to the Tower?"

Before Tom could answer, Richards, the captain of the Arcturus unit spoke up. "How about finishing the game, Tom? It's been so long since we've had such good competition we hate to lose you. Come on. Only a few more minutes."

Tom hesitated. It had been a long time since the two units had played together, but orders were orders. He looked at Roger and Astro. "Well, what about it?"

"Sure," said Roger. "We'll wipe up these space jokers in nothing flat! Come on!"

There was a mock yell of anger from the Arcturus unit and the two teams raced back to their starting positions. In the remaining minutes of play, the cadets played hard and rough. First one team would score and then the other. A sizable crowd of cadets had gathered to watch the game and cheered lustily as the players tore up and down the field. Finally, when both teams were nearly exhausted, the game was over and the score was eight to seven in favor of the Polaris unit. Roger had made the final point after Tony Richards had left the game with a badly bruised hip. A substitute called in from the bystanders, an Earthworm cadet, had eagerly joined the Arcturus team for the last minutes of play but had been hopelessly outclassed by the teamwork of the Polaris unit.

Promising a return match soon, Roger, Tom, and Astro hurried to their lockers, showered, and dressed in their senior cadet uniforms of vivid blue, then raced to the nearest slidewalk to head toward the main group of buildings that made up Space Academy.

Whisked along on the moving belt of plastic that formed the principle method of transportation in and around the Academy grounds, Tom turned to his unit mates. "What do you think it'll be?" he asked.

"You mean the assignment?" asked Roger, answering his own question in the next breath. "I don't know. But anything to get out of here. I've been on Earth so long that I'm getting gravity-itis!"

Tom smiled. "It'll sure be nice to get up in the wide, high, and deep again," he said, glancing up at the cloudless sky.

"Say it again, spaceman," breathed Astro. "One more lesson on the differential potential between chemical-burning rocket fuels and reactant energy and I'll blast off without a spaceship!"

Roger and Tom laughed. They both sympathized with the big cadet's inability to cope with the theory of atomic energy and fuel conservation in spaceships. In charge of the power deck on the Polaris, Astro earlier had gained firsthand experience in commercial rocket ships as an able spaceman and later had been accepted in the Academy for cadet training. The son of colonists on Venus, the misty planet, his formal education was limited, and though he had no equal while on the power deck of a rocket ship, in theory and classroom study he had to depend on Roger and Tom to help him get passing grades.

The slidewalk moved smoothly and easily toward the gleaming Tower of Galileo, the largest and most imposing of the structures of Space Academy. Made entirely of clear crystal mined on Titan, satellite of Saturn, the Tower rose over the smaller buildings like a giant shimmering jewel. Housing the administration offices of the Solar Guard and the Space Academy staff, it also contained Galaxy Hall, the museum of space, which attracted thousands of visitors from every part of the Solar Alliance.

Tom Corbett, his eyes caressing the magnificent gleaming Tower, remembered the first time he had seen it. While it hadn't been so long in months or years since becoming a Space Cadet, it seemed as though he had been at the Academy all of his life and that it was his home. In the struggle to develop into a well-knit dependable rocket team, composed of an astrogator, power-deck cadet, and a command cadet, Tom had assumed the leadership of the unit, and the relationship between Astro, Roger Manning, and himself had ripened until they were more like brothers than three young men who had grown up millions of miles apart.

As they rode toward the Tower, the three cadets could see the green-clad first-year Earthworms getting their first taste of cadet life--hours of close-order formations and drills. The nearer they came to the Tower, the more intense and colorful became the activity as the crisscrossing slidewalks carried enlisted guardsmen in their red uniforms, and the officers of the Solar Guard in magnificent black and gold, across the quadrangle to the various dormitories, laboratories, lecture rooms, mess halls, and research rooms. Space Academy was a

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