The space hotel, p.1
The Space Hotel, page 1
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ALADDIN PAPERBACKS
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright © 2006 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
ALADDIN PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Designed by Lisa Vega
The text of this book was set in Weiss.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Aladdin Paperbacks edition October 2006
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Library of Congress Control Number 2006931755
ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-1751-9
ISBN-10: 1-4169-1751-9
eISBN: 978-1-439-10373-9
1 Ups and Downs
2 The First Wild Ride
3 Surrounded
4 The Launch Lobby
5 The Second Wild Ride
6 Apogee
7 Restricted Access
8 Missing: One Dinner Guest
9 Marooned
10 Putting It Together
11 Kidnapping by Remote Control
12 The Good Doctor
13 Hostages
14 Extra-Vehicular Activity
15 Getting a Grip
16 Command Center
17 Down to Earth
Ups and Downs
“Check it out, Sandy,” I said, looking at my younger sister upside down. Like a spider, I used my fingers and feet to slowly “walk” across the padded surface of the plane’s ceiling and then back again. “I’ve always wanted to be a ‘fly on the wall’!”
Sandy looked up at me. She was hovering in a cross-legged sitting position a good six inches off the plane’s floor. “Ho, ho, ho, it’s Tom Swift Jr., the king of comedy,” she replied into her Swift Speak, the miniature microphone-and-earpiece combo that allowed us to communicate in normal voices over the roar of the plane’s engines. “Just don’t fall on me when the plane finishes its arc!”
We were passengers aboard the SwiftStar, the latest invention of my dad’s business, Swift Enterprises. It was a special jet astronauts used to get a feel for what it would be like to be in outer space, where there was very little gravity. Microgravity, it was called. Scientists used the plane too; some of their experiments work best in a weightless environment.
My dad showed Sandy and me the plans for the plane months ago, and it didn’t take long for me to become as excited about it as he was. “The plane’s the size of a small air tanker,” he explained, pointing to diagrams on the paper. “It’ll make a steep, graceful climb to a high altitude, then descend in that same arc.”
Sandy nodded. “Coming down, the people inside will become weightless!”
“You got it, Sandy,” Dad said, squeezing her shoulder. “But only for about a minute.”
“A minute?!” I repeated, unable to believe my ears. “That’s more than twice the time you can float in a ‘Vomit Comet’!”
My dad was too caught up in the excitement of the project to realize I had called the plane that the air force and NASA used for the same purpose by the nickname they used. “And the ‘Vom …’” He paused, catching himself. He cleared his throat and scratched his graying temple. “The plane the government uses can only make thirty to forty parabolas,” he said, dipping his hand up and down to mimic the plane’s flight path. “The SwiftStar has increased fuel capacity, so it can stay in the air for six hours!”
“Twice the ups and downs, twice the training!” I said, shaking my head.
“And twice the science,” Sandy added.
“Sweet!” I exclaimed.
“Sweet, indeed,” Dad said, nodding firmly.
Suddenly, my arms and legs felt as heavy as oak tree logs—gravity was coming back. Captain Lisa Ryder’s voice crackled over the planes intercom. She was Swift Enterprises’ chief test pilot. “How’s my honorary crew?” she shouted above the engines’ roar, and I could tell from the way she said it that she was smiling. “Anybody need an airsickness bag?”
“No problems back here, Lisa, we’re floating like feathers,” I answered lightly … then bumped my head against the fuselage. Good thing the main cabin of the plane was heavily padded. For takeoffs and landings, we’d be strapped in to the traditional airplane seats that were in the rear cabin. And they were safely bolted down.
A member of the SwiftStar’s real crew smiled at Sandy and me. He was there in case one of us got hurt, or sick. “Feet down, coming out,” he yelled.
I stretched out my legs and grabbed on to a padded handle on the side of the fuselage. My feet lightly touched the floor, then slowly gained more and more weight. Even though I’d only been weightless for less than a minute, it felt like a sumo wrestler was pressing down on the top of my shoulders. All of a sudden I found myself missing that free-floating sensation and I couldn’t wait for that feeling again. Once you’d had the chance to fly, it was hard to give it up, even for a little while.
Sandy, too, drifted down to the floor of the plane, her legs still crossed in a sitting position. She grasped handles set into the floor on either side of her. “What’s the deal?” I asked her. “You just sat when we went zero-G! Why weren’t you bouncing around and having fun?”
“I was studying,” she answered patiently, “trying to figure out the most efficient ways to move.” That’s my little sister, more into the science than the coolness. A real firecracker.
The plane started to climb again into another arc, and I felt my full weight return—and then increase. We were climbing at an angle of forty-five degrees, so steep, I felt almost twice as heavy as usual, to the point where it was even hard to hold myself up.
“Ready for float,” the crewman shouted after half a minute, and the SwiftStar leveled out, then dipped toward the ground again. All sense of weight disappeared, and my toes lifted off the floor once more into the total freedom of weightlessness. I let go of the handle and let myself drift, as though in a lake on a lazy summer afternoon.
I watched as Sandy rose off the floor in her sitting position, then unfolded her legs and reached up for one of the handles lining the walls. She tested her grip for a second, then pulled herself past the handle, her momentum propelling her forward until she reached the next handle, and the one after that, and the one after that. She “swung” the length of the cabin and back faster than I could have walked! She took a handle across the cabin from me when she got back. “That seemed pretty efficient, didn’t it?” she asked.
I had to try it myself. If Sandy could do it … I stretched out parallel to the floor, still holding the handle. I took a deep breath, then pulled myself forward and pushed off, moving far faster than Sandy had been going. Unfortunately, I was going too fast, and missed the next handle, swiping at it in vain. I flailed my arms like a drowning man, and tumbled end over end the length of the cabin before thumping into the padding at its end. I bounced off and hung in the air upside down, dazed. “Sure didn’t feel efficient,” I muttered sheepishly.
“You’ve gotta take your time,” Sandy called out to me, pointing to her belly button. “Make sure your line of motion runs through your center of gravity at all times, and just go handle to handle and don’t worry about speed…. That’ll take care of itself!”
I decided to try it her way, took another deep breath, and reached for the closest handle. Wouldn’t you know, I made it back to my starting point without breaking any bones or looking too stupid. “Pretty cool,” I admitted. “That’ll make getting around a lot easier on our vacation!”
The crewmember raised an eyebrow. “You’re going on holiday in the SwiftStar?” he asked loudly.
“Even better,” I shouted back excitedly. I could feel the weight returning to my arms and legs—and I could feel myself wanting to be back in microgravity as soon as possible. “We’re going on vacation two hundred and thirty-six thousand miles from Earth!”
The First Wild Ride
Sandy and I stepped out of the Rio de Janeiro airport and were met with a blast of damp, hot air. Instantly, my clothes started to stick to my skin, and a thin sweat broke out across my forehead, down my neck, and into the small of my back. I felt like I was breathing soup rather than oxygen. Didn’t Brazil know this was November? Of course, this close to the equator, the temperature hardly moved a degree in either direction.
Taxis, cars, and limousines crawled past us. Polluted haze covered the mountains in the distance. Rio has the reputation of being one of the most fun, wild, and crazy cities on the planet, with its beaches and crowded nightclubs, but I sure couldn’t tell that by the airport on a stifling hot afternoon, that’s for sure.
The heat was starting to make my eyelids droop. Sandy was half awake, having slept all the way from home. She has that gift, the ability to fall asleep anywhere, at any time, regardless of the situation. I’m not much of a sleeper on planes to begin with, and besides, I was too hyped up about our upcoming “Vacation” to even think about sleeping. But now, the miles were catching up with me, and that, combined with the heat, was about to make me drop into a nap whether I wanted one or not. And I really didn’t want that, not with all I was about to experience!
Sandy let out a huge yawn. “Stop it,” I begged her. “You know yawning’s contagious!” And with that, I yawned twice as hugely as my sister, unable to help myself.
“It’s your own fault,” Sandy chided me. “If you’d just learn how to relax, you’d have slept on the plane like me, and you’d be ready to go now.”
I was just grumpy enough that we might have gotten into a full-blown sibling argument, but a black limousine made a daring cut through two lanes of traffic and screeched to a halt right in front of us. The cars all around it honked in disbelief. The noise woke me up … a little.
“Whoa,” Sandy and I said at the same time.
The driver’s side door opened, and a short, fat Brazilian man hopped out, wearing a driver’s cap, a blue blazer … and a Hawaiian shirt beneath. I’ll be professional, his outfit seemed to say, but only to a point.
He looked at us and smiled, revealing a gold front tooth. He held up a sign that read, TOM AND SANDY SWIFT. He pointed at us, pointed to his sign, and nodded. “This is you? You are this?” he asked, with a heavy Portuguese accent.
“More or less,” I replied. He hadn’t needed to even ask the question since Sandy and I were wearing Swift Enterprises T-shirts.
He bounded up onto the curb and shook both our hands with vigorous energy. “I am late and I apologize,” he said. “My name is Joao, and I am your driver. I will be taking you to the Launch Lobby.”
“¿Como é você, Joao?” Sandy asked. She’d been practicing her Portuguese for a week before we left, and was obviously happy for the chance to show off.
Joao was clearly impressed, smiling even more broadly and bowing. “I am well, Miss Swift! Thank you for asking!”
“Seu nome é Sandy,” I told him, formally introducing my sister. I’d been practicing my Portuguese too. “Meu nome é Tom.”
Now he bowed to me as well, equally impressed. “It is a pleasure to meet you both, Tom and Sandy Swift,” he said. When he said “Swift,” it sounded like “Swiff.” He turned and gestured to the car. “Now that we all know one another, may I suggest we go? We have a long drive ahead of us.”
He took my duffel bag and Sandy’s—neither of which was exactly light—and loaded them with ease into the car’s trunk. We climbed into the back, and I sank down into the comfortable leather seat. Good thing it’s a long drive, I thought. Maybe I actually will get some sleep.
Joao slid behind the driver’s seat, put the car in gear, and put the gas pedal to the floor! The car lurched forward and sideways, right into moving traffic, sliding just barely into the open space between a truck and a motor scooter, setting off a flurry of honks!
Joao looked over his shoulder and grinned at us as he drove without paying any attention to the road, miraculously managing to avoid smacking into any cars, guardrails … or people. “I was sorry to hear your parents were not coming,” he said. “I would have liked very much to meet Mister Doctor Tom Swift Sr.!”
“He and our mom were too busy,” I said, instinctively ducking and dodging while sitting in my seat.
Joao nodded. “You are excited to see the Apogee Space Hotel, right?”
I grabbed on to the door handle, my knuckles turning white. Next to me, Sandy did the same. Maybe Joao couldn’t see where he was going, but we could. Cars swerved away on either side of us, and we could see the angry, terrified faces of the drivers who were barely escaping with their lives. “Very excited,” Sandy said. “I just hope we actually get to see it!”
I did too. Ever since Dad had told me about the first “space hotel,” I couldn’t wait to lay eyes on it!
The idea of tourism extending into space was a no-brainer. It’s man’s nature to explore, Dad liked to say, and as long as there are new things to see and do, people will want to see and do them. Ever since astronauts had first gone into orbit, “normal folks” had dreamed of the chance to see what outer space was like.
For a long time, many design firms had debated the best approach to building a space hotel, but recently, in the last few years, everyone had agreed on the basic idea. At its core, the hotel would have a solid metal cylinder, housing all the “operations” aspects of the facility: the Command Center, the kitchen, the laundry, the docking bays for transport shuttles, and so on. The core would also feature a series of air locks, into which would attach as many inflatable “modules” as the structure could accommodate. These would be the “guest rooms,” and in them would be not only sleeping quarters, but dining rooms, libraries, gyms, and, of course, observation decks offering stupendous views of Earth below and the stars all around. While on the hotel, guests and crew would live in microgravity—essentially weightless!
It sounded too fantastic to be true, but it was. Lots of companies had raced to be the first to get a hotel into space, among them Swift Enterprises’ chief rival, the sneaky Foger Utility Group, or FUG. But a company called Above and Beyond, with backing, technology, and materials from Swift Enterprises, which was a major investor in the project, had crossed the finish line first with the Apogee Space Hotel. Apogee was about to open for business, and we were going to be among the very first guests! Soon, lots of people would fly shuttles to hotels that soared above the highest levels of the atmosphere, and we’d be able to tell them what to expect.
“Oh, Apogee is very impressive,” Joao said casually, resting his wrist atop the steering wheel. It seemed like we were going even faster, now that we were out of the airport roads and into regular city traffic, which was even more congested. Half seriously, I wondered if it was possible that Joao was actually some sort of new android, outfitted with a guidance chip.
“You’ve been to Apogee?” I asked, my head whipping from side to side with every near collision. Suddenly it seemed like everyone was driving like Joao! Cars turned and twisted every which way, avoiding disaster by a hairs width, continuing to drive at recklessly high speeds. Honks came from every direction, but no one seemed to pay much attention to them. Steering with one hand and honking with the other seemed to be as much a part of everyday driving here as stepping on the gas or brake. Maybe you had to drive like this to live in Brazil!
Joao shook his head. “No, no,” he replied. “I haven’t been to Apogee … but I have seen pictures! I’ve worked for Above and Beyond for many years. Very, very impressive!”
We rode in silence for the next several miles, Sandy and I on high alert for possible crashes, Joao simply humming along to himself as though nothing were out of the ordinary. I suppose, to him, nothing was. When we cleared the city limits for the rural highway, my sister and I relaxed a little. There were far fewer cars here, and while there was the occasional rickety truck carrying produce or livestock, we felt much safer. “It is about three hours to the Launch Lobby,” Joao said pleasantly. “Please relax. Maybe sleep?”
Yeah, not a chance. I settled back in the seat, accepting the intermittent swervings and honkings, but definitely not comfortable. I turned to look out the window at the Brazilian countryside rolling by. Between that, the hum of the engine, and the wavelike curving of the road, however, sleep came to get me, whether I wanted to go or not. I fell into a deep and heavy doze and dreamed of flying in outer space.
Surrounded
“Tom? Tom, wake up!”
The voice seemed to come to me through a thick, gray fog. I had a terrible pain in my neck and left shoulder—I had fallen asleep wedged against the limousine’s door. My eyes opened with a little pop. It felt like my eyelids had been glued shut, almost.
Sandy was shaking me awake, and her eyes were wide and frightened. It takes a lot to scare my little sister—she doesn’t freak out easily. “Tom, what do they want?”
As my murky brain tried to process the information it was receiving, I struggled to sit up straight, my neck and shoulder protesting. It was dark in the car, for some reason, like we had stopped halfway through a tunnel. I caught a quick look at myself in Joao’s rearview mirror: thanks to the heat and my awkward position, all the hair on the left side of my head was sticking straight up. I looked like one half of my body had been plugged into a light socket.
