Tom Swift in the Race to the Moon by Victor Appleton II

Kesey stepped forward on the special platform which had been erected for the occasion. Each held a champagne bottle wrapped in silver foil.
    As the count reached one, Mrs. Kesey said clearly, "I christen thee Challenger!" Together the two women swung their bottles against the spaceship’s outer frame. Mrs. Kesey’s cracked in half, neatly, and champagne came fizzing out of the gaps in the foil.
    But Mrs. Swift’s bottle exploded in her hand, splintering into a thousand pieces and showering her with glass!

CHAPTER 12
SATELLITE STOPOVER
    WITH a gasp of unbelieving dismay, Anne Swift staggered back, holding her face. Blood oozed from her fingers and neck!
    "She’s hurt!" Mrs. Kesey cried out, rushing to her side to keep Tom’s mother from falling. Fortunately, she herself had escaped most of the flying glass. She supported Mrs. Swift as shocked workers scrambled up on the platform to assist, pushed aside almost at once by Mr. Swift and Sandy.
    "We’ll take her to the infirmary at once," Damon Swift directed, hoping that his wife’s eyes had not been affected.
    "Oh, Mom!" gasped Sandy tearfully. She could not go on.
    Meanwhile, Tom and his crew were soaring high above the island, unaware of the accident. As different selector lights flashed on and faded on the master control board, indicating changing dominant mixtures of compounds and elements in the receding ground far below, Tom manipulated the controls, seeking the most efficient combination. He cautiously opened the power feed, gradually switching from the storage reservoirs to the energy converters as the atmosphere dropped away around them. The ship rose into blackness like a huge majestic visitor from another planet.
    The ground fell away below them. In minutes the whole of Fearing Island was no more than a speck on the waters lapping the Atlantic coast. Higher and higher they zoomed till the earth’s curvature became noticeable.
    "My word," Dr. Faber murmured in an awe-struck voice, "All the things I’ve seen, yet I never in my life imagined I’d see anything like this!"
    Tom smiled, ecstatic with the performance of his new invention. For a time he remained busy at the controls, always trying to produce the maximum lift with the least amount of power consumption. As the ship got above the blanket of atmosphere, Tom reduced the force on the rock-silicates, iron, and aluminum of the crust of the planet, and retuned the repelatrons for sea water, atmospheric nitrogen, and oxygen.
    "At this height we’re starting to be able to select Earth’s general, overall mix of frequencies," Hank Sterling explained. "The effect becomes more pronounced the farther we travel from the repulsion focus."
    "Let’s try a little globe-trotting," Bud suggested to Tom, and his pal readily agreed.
    The Challenger arced eastward. Soon they could make out, on the eastern rim, the shores of Europe, clouded by drifting blankets of evening mist. Tom grinned in triumph as he swiveled the radiating antennas to enhance forward motion. Like a circling comet, they glided further eastward over the face of Europe, then down across Africa, and back into full view of the continents of North and South America.
    "Good way to learn geography, eh?" Bud quipped. But the young pilot was almost left speechless by the ease and smoothness of the ship’s action. "Tom, this has rocket flight beat to a frazzle!"
    "What a fantastic shape the ship has!" murmured a senior crew member, a veteran of the construction of the space outpost. Staring out the viewport at the great, arching metal beams, he added doubtfully, "It isn’t exactly streamlined, is it?"
    "Doesn’t have to be for traveling through the space void," Tom explained. "As for the earth’s atmosphere, we can get clear of that easily enough with our repelatrons, slowly as we choose."
    "We could even get through a brick wall," Bud put in jokingly.
    Meanwhile, the spaceship having long since dwindled into the blue, an ambulance from the Fearing Island