The Complete Adventures of Tintin Volume 5 by Hergé

This volume compiles three more Tintin adventures: The Land of Black Gold, Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon.

In "The Land of Black Gold", Tintin is drawn into an adventure when he finds that Gasoline is exploding and destroying cars or causing them to break down. Even the Thom(p)sons are affected, although they blame the AAA-like service called Autocart that comes to help people who are stranded. But it's not just cars that are affected; Planes and other forms of transport that use gas are also running into the same problems.

This is affecting the world economy as industries cut down on gas usage. Tintin finds that even his friend Captain Haddock is affected, called up to military service again in case there is war or hostilities. But Tintin traces the problem to the Middle Eastern country of Khemed, arriving there by boat along with the Thom(p)sons. But on arrival in the port, Police Officers search the boat and find Heroin in the Thom(p)sons luggage, and secret papers concerning a sheik named Bab El Ehr. All three are arrested, but Tintin's papers concern a secret arms deal, so he is freed by the insurgents and taken to see Bab El Ehr. When Tintin says he doesn't know anything about an arms deal, the insurgents take him prisoner and force him to march in the desert after them.

Meanwhile, the Thom(p)sons have also been freed since they are really Policemen, and they go out into the desert to look for Tintin. But he was abandoned by the Insurgents when he passed out due to lack of water. Snowy revives him, and Tintin manages to find an Oasis. But when strange men on horseback arrive in the dead of night, Tintin knocks one of them out after they blow up the oil Pipeline and discovers that their leader is none other than J.W. Mueller, who has been working to destroy world confidence in oil. But for whom?

Tintin approaches the Sultan of Khemed for help, but the Sultan needs to get back his son, a prankster who his father coddles. Because his son has been kidnapped, the Sultan cannot move against Mueller. And so Tintin must retrieve the boy to find Mueller and save the world's Oil Supply from being adulterated. But can he do it in time?

The next two stories really go together. Tintin and Captain Haddock are arriving home to Marlinspike Hall when they recieve a cable from Captain Haddock asking them to come to Syldavia, the site of Tintin's earlier adventure "King Ottokar's Scepter". After a long journey through the country to a mountainous region, they find that the Syldavians have hired Professor Calculus to build a rocket to land on the moon. This was after the discovery of a large deposit of Uranium in Syldavia.

Syldavia is interested in finding peaceful uses for the nuclear power, and Calculus has used it to make a spaceship motor that is essentially an atom bomb that explodes more slowly. Using a metal alloy of his own invention, he can keep the radioactivity from irradiating the entire rocket. But since its use near the ground would poison the land, a chemical rocket propels the ship upwards until it is far enough away from the earth to safely use the atomic engine.

The base is patrolled by ZEPO, or Zecret Police, who are supposedly there to keep peace, but are actually guarding the base from the intervention of a foreign power. When a pair of parachutists drop at night over the base, everyone is worried for what this means for the rocket. Tintin comes up with a plan to catch them, but fails. The Thom(p)sons are caught instead, and end up staying at the base after Tintin vouches for them.

The rocket is launched, and circles the moon, then returns to Earth. But someone else takes control of the rocket, presumably with the intent to steal it. Luckily, it self-destructs before its secrets can be stolen by someone else, and Calculus and the other scientists work on building the real rocket, the one that can land on the Moon and return. The plan nearly comes to grief when Haddock tells Calculus he is playing the Goat, and a very angry Calculus shows him the rocket, which he designed himself. But when he falls down through one of the hatches, he develops Amnesia, and Haddock, guilty over what has happened. is eventually able to unwittingly restore his memory.

Haddock, Tintin, Calculus and a Scientist named Wolff are the team chosen to go to the moon, and despite a setback on the way (Haddock sneaks liquor on board gets drunk and goes for a spacewalk without a line) require rescue by Tintin. Also, the Thom(p)sons are also on board, due to a miscalculation as to when the launch would occur.

But someone has sneaked an extra person on board, and they intend to steal the rocket and abscond with it to a rival country, the same one. The intruder is Colonel Jorgan, who was the villain in "King Ottokar's Scepter". But Tintin and his friends manage to overpower him and get the story out of the traitor. But with so many people in the rocket, there won't be enough air for it to return. The rocket has also been damaged, and needs to be repaired. Jorgen intended to abandon everyone but the traitor on the surface, but Tintin and his friends can't do that. But how can they get home alive with only limited air and too many people in the rocket? Is there any way for them to survive?

This wasn't a bad volume, but I liked "Destination Moon" and "Explorers on the Moon" best, as there wasn't an excessive attempt at humor in the story as there was in "The Land of Black Gold". The tone of the two Moon stories is more serious and thrilling than Black Gold. Yes, there is still some humor there, but it's not as overdone.

Considering that the two moon stories were written ten years before we actually managed to send the first moon mission there, it's very realistic. Even the scene where the ship goes into Zero Gravity when the Captain is drinking shows the liquid becoming a sphere and Haddock chasing it around the cabin in Zero Gravity. Other things, not quite so much. When seeing the Earth from the moon, clouds are missing and the lunar landscape looks much more like Earth Mountains, particularly the Alps, rather than any lunar landscape, being too sharp and angular rather than rounded.

Aside from that, though, I didn't have any other problems with the story. I enjoyed this book a great deal and am actually looking forward to reading the next Volume of Collected Tintin stories. Not now, perhaps, but soon.