“I’m familiar with this transmitter,” the captain went on. “Let’s get the radio kit down.”
When this was done, Captain Eaton donned one of the two space suits which the flier carried. When he was dressed, he entered the flier’s air lock, carrying the radio kit. Those inside the ship watched Captain Eaton walk about fifty feet from the flier and open the box containing the transmitter.
“Gee, why does he have to open it up out there?” Patch wanted to know. “Couldn’t he transmit from inside the ship just as easy?”
“No, not nearly as well,” Mac explained. “Just watch, and you’ll see why!”
Captain Eaton took some things out of the box, and then, after tinkering with them for a few minutes, he set the transmitter in the pumice dust and ran back toward the flier as if he had just lighted a bomb fuse. A few seconds later the boys were surprised to see something resembling a giant snake spring from the ground beside the transmitter and extend straight up in the dark sky!
“What in the world was that?” Patch asked in amazement.
“That’s the antenna for the transmitter, isn’t it, Mac?” Garry asked.
Mac nodded. “That long ropelike thing is hollow, and the antenna is in the middle of it. Captain Eaton released a switch that caused the casing to fill with compressed air, and that is what keeps it extended into the sky. That gives us a much better antenna than we could possibly have in here. Also, being as tall as it is, the radio waves leaving it can travel great distances and cross high places which they could not do if it were short. Understand?”
The boys nodded.
“The transmitter is a very light and simple one,” Mac went on. “All it can do is send out an SOS signal from time to time; it can’t transmit words. Yet whoever picks it up can easily trace it. I hope our signal will carry as far as the mining settlement and that there’s no interference between to block our radio waves. Those mountains could block the waves.”