The third Jeff Hawke story which appeared in the pages of the junior Express weekly was THE SPACE FRONTIER which ran from July 9th 1955 until December 24th.
Like Sydney’s MARTIAN INVASION which was printed concurrently in the pages of the Daily Express, this
story also represents a change of direction for the character. He is no longer the agent of the SHINING ONES but is an RAF officer based in England and put in charge of building Earth’s first space station in orbit. His former companions have also disappeared and he has a new sidekick in the form of Ricky, a young officer. The opening scenes, where Jeff supervises the building of the station closely track those in the MARTIAN INVASION and the space stations themselves, once completed looks almost identical . We learn that while this is going on, a race of aliens whose saucers are in the vicinity of Earth are planning to invade and have set up a fifth column of sympathetic Earthmen whose help they are enlisting to accomplish their aims.
We are introduced at this point to Bobby Agar a young boy whose family has been selected to be among the first to live on the new space station . There was probably an editorial decision to introduce this new character with whom the young readers could identify to replace Dick Regan from the first two stories. Bobby is much more pro-active than Dick ever was and actually takes a central part in most of the action.
The aliens plan to destroy the space station which they see as a threat to their success and so they divert a meteorite swarm to bombard it. One of the space-rocks finds its mark and breaches the hull causing a violent escape of air from the station which sucks Ricky into space. Jeff goes out in a space-taxi and locates him but due to the aliens tractor beam he cannot get back to the station and the two drift helplessly in the void, unable to find their way back.
In the meantime. Back on Earth, Bobby is using his grandfather’s telescope to view the space station, which he cannot wait to visit. By chance he sees Jeff and Ricky and notifies Space headquarters England as to Jeff’s position.
As a reward for his quick thinking , Bobby’s father takes him to the Space station for a guided tour, but while his father is called away briefly, the boy decides to enter one of the spaceships on the launchpad and take a look around. Before he realises what is happening the crew enter and the ship takes off. The young castaway is discovered only after the ship is spaceborne and he learns that he is on the rescue ship that is on course to pick up Jeff and Ricky. He is allowed to help the radar officer and Jeff’s space-taxi is located in the nick of time before his oxygen runs out. Once the two spacemen are aboard the rescue ship , its crew heads back to Earth but not before Bobby saves the day once more by reaching a cut-out switch , essential for shutting off a faulty fuel pump, which is located in a part of the engine that no adult hand is small enough to reach. Safely back on terra firma , Bobby is thanked by Jeff for his brave actions . Skipper Prossit
