Sabotage in Space

Sabotage in Space, by Carey Rockwell

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Title: Sabotage in Space
Author: Carey Rockwell
Illustrator: Louis Glanzman
Release Date: June 6, 2006 [EBook #18520]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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SABOTAGE IN SPACE

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
[Illustration: Frontispiece]

A TOM CORBETT Space Cadet Adventure
SABOTAGE IN SPACE
By CAREY ROCKWELL
WILLY LEY Technical Adviser
GROSSET & DUNLAP Publishers New York

COPYRIGHT, 1955, BY ROCKHILL RADIO
COPYRIGHT ROCKHILL RADIO 1955
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ILLUSTRATIONS BY LOUIS GLANZMAN
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note | | | | Extensive search has failed to uncover any evidence of | | renewal of copyright of this work. | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

ILLUSTRATIONS
Frontispiece
Tom shot a hard right to his opponent's stomach 13
Tom swerved the jet car in front of the runaway truck 81
The men inside were tough-looking and steely-eyed 89
Tom saw that the Space Marines were watching the passengers very closely 137
"He's hanging on to the cleat over the main tube!" 185
"The projectiles blew Devers' ship into rocket dust!" 209

SABOTAGE IN SPACE
CHAPTER 1
"Bong-g-g! Bong-g-g! Bong-g-g!--"
With a hollow booming sound reminiscent of old eighteenth-and nineteenth-century clock towers, the electronic time tone rang out from the Tower of Galileo, chiming the hour of nine. As the notes reverberated over the vast expanse of Space Academy, U.S.A., the lights in the windows of the cadet dormitories began to wink out and the slidewalks that crisscrossed the campus, connecting the various buildings, rumbled to a halt. When the last mournful note had rolled away to die in the distant hills, the school was dark and still. The only movement to be seen was the slow pacing of the cadet watch officers, patrolling their beats; the only sound, the measured clicking of their boots on the metal strips of the slidewalks.
On the north side of the quadrangle near the Tower, a young watch officer paused in front of one of the dormitories and scanned the darkened windows of the durasteel and crystal building. Satisfied that all was in order, he continued on his lonely way. A moment later a shadowy figure rose out of the bushes opposite the dormitory entrance and stepped forward quickly and cautiously. Pausing on the slidewalk to stare after the disappearing watch officer, the figure was illuminated by the dim light from the entrance hall. He was a young man wearing the royal-blue uniform of a Space Cadet. Tall and wiry, with square features topped by a shock of close-cropped blond hair, he stood poised on the balls of his feet, ready to move quickly should another watch officer appear.
After a quick glance at his wrist chronometer, the young cadet darted across the slidewalk toward the transparent crystal portal of the dormitory. Hesitating only long enough to make certain that the inner hallway was clear, he slid the portal open, ducked inside, and sprinted down the hall toward a large black panel on the wall near the foot of the slidestairs. On the panel, in five long columns, were the name plates of every cadet quartered in the dormitory and beside each plate were two words, IN and OUT, with a small tab that fitted over one of the words.
Out of the one hundred and fifty cadets in the dormitory, one hundred and forty-nine were marked IN. The slender, blond-haired cadet quickly made it unanimous, reaching up to the tab next to the name of Roger Manning and sliding it over to cover the word OUT. With a last final look around, he raced up the slidestairs, smiling in secret triumph.
In Room 512 on the fifth floor of the dormitory, Tom Corbett and Astro, the two other cadets who, with Roger Manning, made up the famed Polaris unit of the Space Cadet Corps, were deep in their studies. Though the lights-out order had been given over the dormitory loud-speaker system, the desk lamp burned brightly and there was a blanket thrown over the window. The boys of the Polaris unit weren't alone in their disobedience. All over the dormitory, lights were on and cadets were studying secretly. But they all felt fairly safe, for the cadet watch officers on each floor were anxious to study themselves and turned a blind eye. Even the Solar Guard officer of the day, in charge of the entire dormitory, was