Sabotage in Space

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #172

The penultimate entry in the Tom Corbett book series is 1955's Sabotage in Space, which begins with Tom, Roger and Astro coming close to sabotaging their own careers.

Frankly, they screw up. They get into a fight with another crew of cadets, which lands them in hot water. Their punishment is to spend time each day pulling guard duty, which in turn leaves them less time to study for upcoming exams. This, in turn, leaves them with little time to sleep in order to make up the study time.

I actually like the way this one begins--showing that our young and hyper-competent heroes can still have human moments and make poor decisions. As far as the plot is concerned, this also leaves them in a position to get thrown into the middle of the action.

A new spaceship is being tested. The ship is designed to carry smaller remote control rockets, designed to take supplies directly to small outposts on other planets. This will save on the time and expense of transporting supplies to those outposts from the nearest rocket base. 

Someone is trying to sabotage this new ship before its test flight. At one point, it looks as if the cadets have caught the criminal, but it turns out they've captured the chief assistant to the ship's designer.

So they've messed up again. Or have they? When that chief assistant proceeds to frame Roger and Astro for stealing a rocket (by giving them fake orders to take the rocket into space), we begin to suspect he might be the saboteur. Actually, the guy is a bit of a jerk, so we kind of suspected it already.

In the meantime, Tom is on a side mission to Mars when he's kidnapped and framed for desertion. He escapes his captors, but now finds himself obligated to somehow return to Earth without being arrested, spring Roger and Astro from the hoosegow and pull off a plan to catch not just the guy who framed them, but the mastermind behind the sabotage as well.

Tom also needs the help of Captain Strong, his commanding officer. But Strong's duty would require him to arrest Tom if the two meet up. How much is Strong willing to trust his prize cadet?

The story is paced a little bit slower than the earlier novels in the series and it's flawed in two ways. First, the identity of the mastermind is kept as a surprise to be revealed in the last chapter--but there's really no doubt who it is. There is literally only one character introduced to us who could be the chief villain.

Second, the attempts to frame the cadets are a bit heavy-handed and I think it unlikely that so many of the officers at the Space Academy don't suspect the frame-ups. Especially since the cadets have spent six previous book heroically saving lives and catching crooks.

On the other hand, this set-up leads to a legitimately touching scene in which Captain Strong muses whether his ultimate duty isn't to friendship rather than strictly following orders. 

And the climax is quite good, with the cadets and several other characters aboard the new spaceship, improvising a way to fight back with their unarmed vessel as another ship fires space torpedoes at them. Tom, Astro and Roger have a chance not only to prove their innocence, but also to demonstrate quick thinking and innovative tactics. It's pretty cool stuff and, despite its flaws, the book is yet another enjoyable one in the series.

That leaves us with one Tom Corbett book to go. I had trouble locating this one--the first seven are all in the public domain and it was easy to find and download electronic versions for them. But the eighth was nowhere to be found and it looked as if I would have to skip this one in my reviews.

But I knew that this would disappoint millions and possibly cause civilization to crumble, so I kept looking. Eventually, I found an ebook version being sold on Lulu. So we will soon be returning to Tom Corbett's universe one more time.