Part 3

Compared to the tiny ship they were in, which was shaped like a medicine capsule, the Wheel in the Sky was a gigantic thing. It looked like an automobile wheel and by its moving spokes the children saw that it was turning just like one.

“Why does the Wheel spin, Dad?” Steve asked.

“That’s in order to give the people inside of it a feeling of weight,” Mr. Shannon explained. “As I told you before, things in space have no weight because there is no gravity out here to speak of. What happens when you ride on the merry-go-round on the school playground?”

“You have to hold on tight or it’ll throw you off,” Steve answered.

“The Wheel in the Sky does the same thing. It tries to throw you off, but since you are safely inside of it, all it can do is throw your weight against the floor of the Wheel. Understand?”

The children nodded and smiled, pleased at knowing one more fact about the strange ways of space.

As the ferry neared the big space station, Steve watched the black heavens all around them. The stars were thicker than salt crystals and glittered like precious gems. Close to the Wheel, the ferry had to use its rockets in order to keep up with the spinning of the Wheel. Presently a door in the rim of the Wheel opened. Two men in space suits appeared in the doorway and threw out a line which stuck to the ferry by magnetism. Then the men pulled the little ship inside and closed the doors.

“Here we are!” the ferry pilot called to his passengers. “Everybody out!”

Since there was fresh air in the hangar, the riders did not have to use space suits. Just as his father had said, Steve found that he could walk around as easily as he did back in Arkansas.

“Ready for a tour of the Wheel, kids?” Mr. Shannon asked.

“Sure!” the twins replied together.

Mr. Shannon worked for the American Space Supply Company which carried supplies to the planets of the Solar System. This was the year 2004 and by now nearly all the planets or their moons had budding Earth colonies. Sue and Steve had earned free lifetime space passes because of a heroic act Steve had done a month before on the twins’ very first trip into space.

As Mr. Shannon took the two around the “man-made moon,” they were almost overcome by all the wonderful things they saw. They learned that the Wheel in the Sky was both a scientific laboratory and a military lookout. With their big telescopes, the Space Guard could see every mile of Earth, for the Wheel circled the globe several times a day.

While the Shannons were in the Military Lookout Room peering at the world through a telescope, Sue said, “I wish Mom could be here with us.”

“I do, too, Sis,” Steve replied. “But it would take all the soldiers in the Humpty-Dumpty story to get Mom into a rocket, wouldn’t it, Dad?”

Mr. Shannon chuckled. “I believe it would, Son.”

Their father leaned over and whispered something to the officer at the telescope, who nodded. The man slipped a high power lens on the telescope and turned it on a certain part of the United States, toward which the Wheel was slowly moving.

“Take another look, Sue,” her father said.

Sue eagerly went to the eyepiece. The telescope brought a city into very close range. It seemed as if she had only to reach out a finger to touch the tall spire of a building. Suddenly she gasped. She knew that building! It was the home office of her father’s place of work. The city was Little Rock, Arkansas, their own home!

“Steve, look!” she said excitedly to her brother and let him see for himself.

Steve was as thrilled as Sue. Together they moved the telescope lens over all the familiar spots of the great space city, which in this day had a million population. They were able to locate the wee speck that was their own home in the suburbs.

“I can almost see Mom hanging out the wash in the yard!” Steve said with a grin.

Before the children were through looking, they noticed several black hazy spots in different parts of the state.

“What are these, Dad?” Steve asked, showing them to his father.

“They’re tornadoes, Son,” Mr. Shannon replied. “There seems to be an unusually large crop of them this season. There are even some close to Little Rock. The Weather Control Bureau here has a way of dealing with them, though. They do many skillful things in Weather Control. They can make it rain in dry parts of the world and even melt snow drifts in blizzard areas.”

“What can they do about a tornado?” Steve asked.

“When one threatens a city they fire a guided missile—a bomb—that breaks up the twister before it can do any harm. We’ll visit the Weather Control Bureau as soon as we’ve been to the hub of the Wheel.”

Mr. Shannon led them out of the Military Lookout Room. Steve and Sue then found a job of climbing facing them. In order to reach the hub, they had to go through one of the spokes leading into the center of the Wheel. The children saw before them a nylon ladder stretching as far as they could see down a long corridor.

“Let’s start climbing,” their father said.

“Why can’t we just walk along the hall,” Sue asked, “instead of doing it the hard way?”

“You’re forgetting that the Wheel is always throwing you outward as it spins,” Mr. Shannon said. “If you tried to walk down the spoke it would be like trying to walk against a hurricane. For this reason, you two must be careful not to lose your grip on the ladder or you’ll be flung down the corridor against the rim.”

The three began climbing hand over hand along the ladder. They got along very well until Sue suddenly became dizzy and lost her hold. She screamed as she began flying down the corridor. Steve’s heart nearly stopped beating for a moment. He heard his father calling out loudly in a frantic voice: “Grab the ladder, Sue! Grab the ladder!”

At first Sue did not seem to hear and kept hollering in fright. Then she understood and reached out wildly with her hands for the nylon ladder as she swept along. One hand seized a piece of it and she held on for dear life, her body still hanging in mid-air as the force of the turning Wheel kept trying to throw her outward.

“Hold on, Sue!” her father called. “We’re coming!”

He and Steve swiftly crawled along the ladder to the spot where Sue was clinging with one hand.

“Hurry!” she cried. “I can’t hang on much longer!”

Just as she was about to let go, Steve reached her and held on to her with his free hand. Then his father lent his help and Sue was safe. She sobbed for a moment from the fright she had had and Mr. Shannon suggested that they go back to the rim where they would be safe again. Both children agreed, for they had suddenly lost all interest in the hub.

By the time they got to the Weather Control Bureau they found more worry awaiting them. Men were hustling about the huge room with serious looks on their faces. One of them was looking into the eyepiece of a large machine that was pointed out the window down onto Earth.

“What’s wrong?” Mr. Shannon asked one of the men.

“A tornado is headed for Little Rock, Arkansas!” was the shocking reply. “I hope our missile scores a hit, but it isn’t going to be easy because the Wheel has already moved past the United States!”

“The missile’s _got_ to hit!” Steve burst out. “Our home and Mom are there!”

“Yes, it’s simply _got_ to!” Sue added tearfully.

The Shannons had to stand helplessly on the side as the tornado fighters went to work. The missile gun was in another part of the Wheel, but the orders for firing it would leave this room by radio.

“Oh, why couldn’t Mom have come with us?” Sue asked. “She would have been safe here!”

Steve felt his whole body tensing like a wound spring. The perspiration was beading his forehead and his knees were weak. On his father’s face there was a dark look and Steve saw that his big hands were opening and closing.

“Twenty seconds to go before firing,” the man at the machine said slowly over the radio mike on his chest. “Steady. Eighteen—seventeen—”

“Why don’t they hurry?” Sue cried. “They’re so slow!”

“They have to do it a certain way,” Mr. Shannon answered. “They know what they’re doing, Honey. Don’t be afraid.”

But she _was_ afraid. And so was Steve. And her father, too. Everyone in the room was afraid because no one could say whether the tornado could be destroyed before it hit the city or not.

“Eight—seven—six—” droned the unhurried voice of the operator.

The Shannons hardly dared breathe for fear of disturbing the man at the machine. Steve felt Sue’s body quivering next to him. It seemed as if the seconds were dragging on endlessly.

“Three—two—one—FIRE!”

Steve felt nothing but he knew the tornado bomb was on its way, speeding hundreds of miles a second Earthward.

For long, awfully long, moments after the operator had said, “Fire!” the Shannons waited for him to speak again. He kept looking calmly through the eyepiece of the machine as though just studying the stars. Then at last they saw a smile spread over his face and he said to everyone in the room, “It’s a hit! Little Rock is safe!”

Sue and Steve whooped as if it were Christmas morning. Where a minute before they had been greatly worried, now they were happy as they never believed they could be.

“Whew!” Mr. Shannon sighed. “I’m afraid I’ve had enough excitement to last me a lifetime!”

“Not me, Dad,” Steve said, as the fire of adventure began to glow again in his eyes. “I won’t be satisfied until I’ve seen what lies beyond the Wheel in the Sky!”

_DANGER ON THE ICE CANAL_

Steve and Sue Shannon were at Mars Port No. 13. This was one of the many colonies on the planet Mars where Earth scientists were carrying on work. It was a town of plastic tops, called domes, that were clear as glass. The town was at the center of three canals that led outward into the red desert.

The Shannon twins were now touring the largest dome with Biff Warren, who worked for their father’s space cargo company. Suddenly their tour brought them to a large cafeteria where many of the workers were eating.

“Umm!” Sue exclaimed. “Smell that turkey!”

“Yeah!” Steve said. “It sure makes your mouth water, doesn’t it?”

“Which reminds me,” Biff said, looking at his watch. “We’ll have to finish up our sightseeing pretty soon. The quicker we get back to your father’s ship, the quicker we can have our own turkey feast!”

“I can hardly wait for that!” Sue sighed, as the wonderful smell of the holiday meal kept tickling her nose.

When Thanksgiving dinner was finished aboard the big space freighter that had brought the children to Mars, the ship would take off into space. But before that, Biff, Sue and Steve would have to go twenty miles back down the ice canal to reach the ship.

Biff had become a close friend of the young Shannons, having made trips with them to other ports in space. Sue liked Biff because of his quick smile and gentle patience. Steve liked him because he was all that Steve would like to be some day himself—a fearless, bold spaceman.

They finished up their tour of the dome. They saw the room where giant machines made oxygen out of chemicals and blew it through the building so that there was fresh air to breathe all the time. And they saw the astronomy hall far up on top of the dome where scientists could see the heavens through the thin atmosphere much clearer than they could from Earth.

“Isn’t it about time for the fuel rocket to be shot off, Biff?” Steve asked.

Biff nodded. “I think it’s just about time,” he said. “We’ll suit up and go outside to see.”

In the dressing room they put on their space suits. As though they were his own children, Biff carefully checked the young Shannons’ air tanks, built-in heaters, and their helmet radios for talking to one another. Finally Biff rubbed gelatin on their helmets so that they would not frost over in the cold that was a hundred degrees below zero.

Outside they found space-suited figures gathered around the fuel rocket cannon. The cannon was pointed toward a shiny ball high up in the purple-black sky.

“Look, Sis, there’s the space ship toward which they’re going to shoot the fuel rocket,” Steve said.

“I see it!” Sue cried, her eyes dancing excitedly.

“They have to line up the cannon with the ship just right or the rocket won’t reach it,” Biff said.

“Won’t the rocket hit the ship?” Steve asked.

“No, it’ll lose all its speed by the time it reaches the ship,” Biff told him. “Then they’ll take on fuel from the rocket by means of a long hose.”

Suddenly the three of them heard a loud roar and saw a burst of flame. Like a bullet, the rocket left the muzzle of the giant gun and rose into the sky.

“They’ll be shooting off more rockets before they have enough fuel for the space ship,” Biff said. “There’ll be a little wait in between each firing.”

“Look, Biff, isn’t the space ship right over the canal where we’ll be heading back?” Steve asked.

“That’s right, Steve,” Biff answered. “You’ll remember, our ship is at the end of the canal. We’ll be able to see the rockets go off as we head back—which we’d better do right now, if we’re going to have any turkey and pumpkin pie!”

The canals of Mars had been carved out of a great desert by water and fierce winds. Because of the ice that filled them, they made good highways. The three went to the canal bank to see if their sled was ready to go, and it was. The sled looked like a big bombing plane with the wings off. Instead of wheels, there were long runners beneath it. In this sled Biff and his young helpers had brought supplies to the colony several hours before.

Steve, Sue and Biff climbed into the front seat. Then Biff shut the door. He pushed buttons in front of them. Steve and Sue felt the sled’s engines throbbing. The next moment the sled shot off over the smooth sheet of ice, Biff holding tightly to the steering wheel.

“Wheeeeee!” Sue screamed in delight. “Offffffffff weeeeeeee goooooooooo!”

“Like a rooooller cooooster!” Steve shouted.

They sped along at a hundred miles an hour. This was as much fun as they had had on their last space journey.

Each of their trips into space seemed to be more exciting than the last. They had won a lifetime free pass into space and by now they were sure they would need a lifetime in which to see all of its many wonders. A brave act by Steve on their first space trip had earned them their pass. Right now, Steve thought that their mother and home, back in Arkansas, seemed as far away as Deneb, the North Star of Mars.

“We’ll be there in about ten minutes,” Biff said. “The ship leaves in thirty, which gives us some spare time.”

“Look,” Sue said, “there comes the first fuel rocket back down in a parachute.”

“That’s right, Sue,” Biff replied.

Steve studied the bank of the canal. Along it he saw scrubby cactus, which was forever fighting for life in the cold, dry atmosphere. Beyond the bank stretched acres of red wasteland, and sand drifts piled up by strong winds that never stopped blowing.

A few minutes later, Sue noticed a bright streak against the purple sky. It was nearly as bright as the tiny sun, which was so far away that it could not keep Mars warm.

“There goes another fuel rocket!” Sue called out, pointing through the windshield.

As Biff caught sight of it, he jerked up sharply in his seat, bumping the shoulders of Sue and Steve on both sides of him.

“That rocket’s too low!” he exclaimed. “It’s not lifting! Something’s gone wrong!”

Steve felt chills run up his spine. He was seeing the danger too, now. The rocket was dropping ahead of them, a screaming bomb filled with explosive fuel. It was still quite a distance away, but even Steve knew that it would make a terrible blast when it struck the ice.

Biff’s feet hit the brakes of the sled and the runners chewed into the hard ice pack, shrieking, and bringing the sled to a skidding stop. The riders were slammed forward. Sue and Steve were dazed, but not hurt. When Steve’s mind cleared, he saw that Biff had thrown himself over in front of Sue and him to protect them. But in doing this, his helmet had thumped against the windshield. He was now slumped over and not moving.

“Sue!” Steve cried. “Biff is hurt!”

Just then they felt the shock of the explosion. It tilted the sled at an angle and dropped it down again with a hard jolt. The air was filled with flying chunks of ice. It looked like a hailstorm outside. The ice clattered against the windshield like stones. Sue and Steve were relieved when it finally stopped. But the explosion had left the ice sheet in front of them broken and choked with lumps of ice.

“Steve,” Sue moaned, “what are we going to do?”

Steve looked at Biff who was still not moving. He could see a big lump on Biff’s forehead where his head had struck the helmet, knocking him out. The children tried to revive their friend, but could not.

“We’ve got to get the sled to the ship ourselves, Sue!” her brother said. “Biff may need a doctor! Besides, I bet we’ve all missed our Thanksgiving dinner!”

“I won’t want any dinner if Biff is hurt badly!” Sue said tearfully.

At first it seemed like an impossible thing for a pair of twelve-year-olds to run the big sled. But Steve remembered how Biff had worked the controls and he believed he, too, could do it. He changed seats with the unconscious spaceman and tried the levers and buttons.

Presently the sled’s rockets began to pour fire out of the rear. But Steve couldn’t get the sled to move. He was afraid it had been damaged. Then Sue showed him a lever to push which she had remembered seeing Biff shove. As Steve worked it gently, the sled started off slowly.

“We’ll go slow,” Steve said, “and take it very easy.”

The explosion had hit at the far edge of the canal so that there was a narrow place on the other side where the ice was still smooth. Steve carefully guided the sled across the canal and through the unbroken part. When there was smooth ice before them, Steve picked up speed a little. As he drove, Sue tried to awaken Biff.

Steve would have found their adventure a lot of fun if things weren’t so serious at the moment. It wasn’t every day that a boy had the chance to drive a giant rocket sled on a distant planet!

At last Steve saw the round top of the space ship just over the horizon. It was at that moment that Sue called out the good news:

“Biff’s awakening, Steve!”

The boy saw their friend slowly rise up, then shake his head to clear it. When he smiled at them in his pleasant way, they were sure that he was going to be all right. By the time they had told him what had happened, he was his old self again. He took the controls and looked at his watch.

“Time’s running out,” he said. “We’ve got to hit top speed again. Hold onto your helmets! Here we go!”

And off they went at lightning speed once more. It seemed to Steve as if they covered the distance between them and the space ship in seconds.

As the sled came to a gentle stop beneath the giant freighter, Biff said, “It looks like we’ll make our Thanksgiving dinner on time after all, doesn’t it, kids?”

“Yeah,” Steve answered, “and this is certainly one Thanksgiving that I’m really thankful!”

“I know what you mean, Steve,” Sue said thoughtfully. “We’re thankful that we’re alive!”

Biff and Steve both nodded. It was a holiday none of them would ever forget.

_CARGO FOR CALLISTO_

The big rocket freighter was speeding through the star dust of outer space. It was carrying supplies to Callisto (one of the twelve moons of Jupiter) and the Shannons, on another space adventure.

Steve and Sue looked out a window of the freighter at the airless world growing in size. Callisto was a gigantic roughened rock, but it was a globe larger than the planet Mercury. It reminded Steve of a giant cockle-burr hanging in the sky.

Suddenly the children heard a tiny voice behind them say, “Rocket away!”

They turned and Sue exclaimed, “It’s Bud!”

The blue parakeet, a budgy, blinked lazily at them. The twins had met Mr. Whittle’s pet a week ago. He had taken a liking to them from the very start. They didn’t know that a few hours from now their very lives would depend on this little fellow.

“We’d better take him back to Mr. Whittle,” Steve said.

The budgy kept studying them with his flat face and blinking his tiny button eyes. Then he squawked again, “Rocket away!”

“It’ll be ‘rocket away’ for you, young fellow!” Steve said sternly. “Up on my finger, Bud!”

The bird did as he was ordered. They took him down the hall to Mr. Whittle’s room. Bud’s owner, off duty now, was a tall, spidery crewman with a big Adam’s apple. He always gave his pet full run of the ship.

Mr. Whittle whistled to the parakeet, but the bird stayed on Steve’s finger.

Mr. Whittle chuckled. “Hey, I believe he likes you two better than his master!”

“We like him, too,” Sue told the crewman.

“You can keep him for a few days if you want to,” Mr. Whittle said. “I’m going to be pretty busy after we land.”

“Gee, we’d like to look after him!” Steve answered.

“If you take him outside on Callisto, you’ll have to put him in that air-tight cage over there I had made. It’s sort of like a space suit for him.”

Sue and Steve played with Bud in the room they used for games until it was time to “strap down” for landing. Then they went to the couch hall and lay down on cots like the other space travelers were doing. They buckled straps across their bodies to keep them in place.

For a long time, Steve and Sue lay there as the big freighter began cutting its rushing speed. It felt to Steve as if a giant anvil were crushing downward on his chest. Take-off and landing were always the roughest moments in space travel, as the twins had already found out on other space trips.

At last the ship set down on Callisto. The young Shannons went back to the game room. Then with the bird on Steve’s shoulder, the twins looked out the window at the strange new world.

They saw a land bathed in ghostly twilight. Very little light was coming from the sun. It was so far away that it was only a small circle. Most of the light came from a huge shape that looked like somebody’s lost beach ball resting on the ground. Its bottom edge just touched the horizon.

Sue and Steve were joined by their father, who worked for the space freight company.

“That’s His Majesty, Jupiter—the king of planets,” Mr. Shannon told them. “He’s over a million miles away and yet he looks close enough to touch, doesn’t he?”

“Let’s go outdoors, Dad!” Steve begged.

“No reason why we can’t,” Mr. Shannon replied.

After they had put on their space clothes, Steve popped Bud into his warm, air-tight cage.

As they all went outside, they saw the crewmen unloading the cargo.

“There’s the colony over there,” Mr. Shannon said, pointing to a high framework that looked something like an oil derrick.

“They mine here for a mineral called magna. It’s very valuable, because without it we couldn’t have atomic engines. Magna is what keeps our rocket tubes from melting under the terrific heat that goes through them.”

“May we go down into the mines, Dad?” Steve asked.

“We’ll see if we can,” said his father.

As they walked toward the mining place, Mr. Shannon said, “Underneath us are pockets of poisonous gas like that found in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Sometimes it leaks into the mining tunnels causing danger from suffocation.”

“I sure hope the gas stays where it belongs while we’re down there!” Steve said and swallowed the lump of fear in his throat.

They turned their attention to Jupiter. It looked even more like a beach ball now with its stripes of beautiful colors. Mr. Shannon said the bands were floating ice bergs of the poisonous gases he was talking about.

“No ship can land on Jupiter,” he said. “Its gravity would crush a spaceman flat. Gravity pull is much stronger on the larger planets, you know. Jupiter’s atmosphere is many thousands of miles deep. Raging storms are going on beneath it all the time.”

“Ooo!” Sue gasped. “I guess we’re close enough to it then!”