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TOM SWIFT and the Killing Moon BY Thomas Hudson & Leo L. Levesque Book four in the Lunar Saga that began with— Tom Swift and His Space Battering Ram Tom Swift and the Cometary Reclamation Tom Swift and the Lunar Volcano A Joint Thackery Fox & Assoc. / Levesque Publishing Empire Publication Made in The United States on America ©opyright 2016 by the authors of this book (Thomas Hudson and Leo L. Levesque). While some of the characters in this story have appeared in other books and collections of books, published by other entities, it is believed that all have fallen into Public Domain status. Fair use under U.S. Copyright Law provisions for “parodies” is claimed for their inclusion in this story. The book authors retain all ownership and copyrights to new or substantially altered characters, previously unpublished locations and situations, and to their contributions to this book and to the total story. The characters Damon Swift, Anne Swift and Bashalli Prandit were created by Scott Dickerson and are used through his incredible largess and understanding that they are superior people to those they replaced. This book is a work of fan fiction. It is not claimed to be part of any previously published adventures of the main characters. It has been self-published and is not intended to supplant any authored works attributed to the pseudononomous author, Victor Appleton II, or to claim the rights from any legitimate publishing entity. Some graphic elements for this book cover have been licensed from 123RF.com. 2 Tom Swift and the Killing Moon By Thomas Hudson and Leo L. Levesque The lunar colony at Cordillera City has been saved, quite possibly along with the Earth, by the actions of Tom Swift. Now, with things settling down and the citizens of the Moon are finishing work on stage one of their one-of-a-kind lunar resort, Tom’s former Chief of Security and, until recently, Director of the Cordillera City colony, Harlan Ames, has come back to Swift Enterprises. He is also acting part time head of security and executive advisor for the lunar colony from Earth, but is getting anxious to go back to the colony. Taking his children and Lola (Grandma) Reyes, back to the Moon, now seems like an unnecessary risk. So much has happened since they were born. Their mother’s death, the lunar quakes, the recent (hopefully the last) moon volcano and so much more. But he can’t sit around enjoying life with his twins when the first of a string of deaths occur back in the lunar colony. And, then another and another! All different and all of them murder! Harlan feels he must first look into something he discovered in the former Masters’ now destroyed fortress before heading back to help with the investigation. Tom has his hands full trying to help the colony leaders make their somewhat wild dreams become a reality, overcoming any number of obstacles that might derail everyone’s best efforts. Harlan eventually heads back to investigate, but when Saclolo is nearly killed and everything points to an even more sinister plot, can he save himself, save the colony, and more importantly, save Tom Swift? _______________________________________________________ This book is dedicated to shaking a few things up every once in a while. This is a bit more of a Harlan Ames and Tom Swift mystery than it is a science fiction story —although both elements abound. It is definitely a Tom Swift story with inventions and all, but there is an underlying uncertainty in it. So, here is to uncertainty and mystery and all that! All we can say is the butler did NOT do it! You can check the last page if you don’t believe us, but that might spoil the real ending. 3 In the dark haze all she could see was the man’s eyes. They spoke of an intent to do her nothing short of pure evil! — Chapter 16 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Forward(s) by Both Authors 7 & 9 1 Satisfaction 11 2 He’s Back and Ready For Action 21 3 Return to The Moon 29 4 Unfinished Past 39 5 “Let’s Hope They Lie in Peace” 49 6 “It Needs a Track!” 57 7 Burying the Past 67 8 Murder in the First 75 9 Landing In Lhasa 83 10 International Displeasure 91 11 The Caves 99 12 The Find; The Return 107 13 Backtrack on The Track 117 14 Another One Goes Home 125 15 Back on Track, Again 133 16 Homegrown Bad Guy 143 17 Whirling Danger 153 18 Confrontation 163 19 Building the Loops 171 20 Grand Hotel 179 21 Opening Day Festivities 189 5 6 Tom Swift and the Killing Moon FOREWORD — Tom Hudson Near the half way point in our previous dual-author novel—Tom Swift and the Lunar Volcano—I foolishly let myself believe we would tie up the entire Lunar Colony tale in those twenty chapters. HA! and double HA! (or Ha-ha!) It soon became evident that we had far too much to cover in the third book of our trilogy. So, like the late and great Douglas Adams, we found ourselves planning the fourth book in the trilogy. Don’t worry, THHGTTG fans, we are changing the designator to this being a “Saga.” I will not fiddle with his little joke! Careful readers will have noticed these books contain a lot more Harlan Ames that any previous Tom Swift book. Some might have wondered why not just do a couple Harlan Ames, Master of Security and His Moon Adventures books and be done with it? For me the answer is easy. Harlan Ames has been an integral part of the life and works of Tom Swift since the second series debuted in 1954. I would have found it impossible to think of him without keeping physical ties to the young inventor and so that is what you have been getting from Leo and me. Two worlds, meshing and moving toward a shared goal. Oh, and don’t you dare think, “But, Tom. Shouldn’t that have been ‘from Leo and I?’” NO! It would never be “me and Leo,” nor “Leo and myself,” or any of the other horrible abuses of the English language that make me cringe daily. So, in conclusion, I love you people who are reading these stories and hope that we tie things up—at least for the time being—with this story, but maybe… just maybe leaving you wanting a little more at some future point in time. In the mean time check out our other individual works listed in the back of this book. Tomas HudsonMarch 2017 7 8 Tom Swift and the Killing Moon FOREWORD — Leo Levesque What you intended to write and what you actually write are two entirely different things. Your characters and plot line seem to take on a life of their own. And maybe that is the way it should be. Art does imitate life. But when two authors unite to write a book together things can get out of hand. That is why there is a forth book to this trilogy. I know that Tom just mention this, but it’s an inescapable fact. Now murder is a hard thing to understand, especially why you would want to do it. It turn out that most of the time it’s over very trivial things that have no lasting consequences and the price the murderer has to pay is not worth it. If the dead had a say about it they would totally agree. Let us see what happens when trivial is blown way out of proportion. Leo L. Levesque March 2017 9 Precursor The hollow-eyed man sat in darkness stroking the piece of paper that would help him solve everything. Each of his personal demons would disappear once he cashed in the ticket so he could travel to the forthcoming Cordillera Lunar Resort. He had so carefully plotted and planned, finally arranging to get one of the first twenty tickets through the spreading of liberal amounts of money... all that he had. But, once on that ship everything would be fine. Everything that haunted him about the one man he hated more than anything else in the entire world—or, off of it—would be solved. He let out a racking cough he could not control for more than a minute; the illness he had contracted from lack of sleep, bad nutrition and lack of hygiene had settled in his lungs. It didn’t matter. It just didn’t! The means of exacting his revenge had been set in his mind months ago, once he had read about the forthcoming resort on the Moon. He would kill the man who had been responsible for mercilessly hounding his beloved uncle until the man had lost his job, filed for bankruptcy, and finally died from a painful, and very public, heart attack. For the death of his uncle, for the lost position that would have been his when he succeeded his uncle at the paper, he would kill Tom Swift! 10 Tom Swift and the Killing Moon Chapter One: Satisfaction The lunar surface was in near-darkness, constantly, and would remain so probably until the Sun finally went supernova and wiped the Earth and all the inner planets from existence. That was fine. The Moon had long cooled and was dead so it had no feeling about its continued condition. Of course, it had recently suffered a distinct lack of cooling in a small location on the dark or back side, the side always facing away from its mother planet, the Earth.

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