Star Struck

by Ryn Shell

  “Lying on my back like this is easier on my shoulder. I can hardly feel it hurting.”

  I wish I could watch you, but I can’t see you for the face flannel. He moved his hand and found her firm, warm skin.

  “You cannot see, but you can feel me.” Rose’s thigh pressed closer to his body as her legs parted slightly. “I can feel you. I’m glad you found a better way than fighting, Linton. I love you all the more because of that.”

  “I love you, Rose.”

  “Prove it,” she challenged and prodded him with the side of her thigh.

  Rose reached down and found exactly where he needed her touch, and Linton did the same for her.

  38

  Rose woke with the first rays of light that penetrated under the blind to find herself snuggled into Linton’s bare chest. “I want to stay here forever.” She stretched, smiling. “But, I don’t want Bruno leaving before we can attempt to help him get his life on track.”

  “We’d better get a move on then.” Linton slid his legs from the bed and grabbed his pants.

  Neither Bruno nor Jim was in the dining room when they entered. As Minnie was flat out preparing breakfasts for a self-drive convoy group of tourists, Rose headed for the kitchen with a grin on her face to prepare a mixed grill for two while Linton squeezed fresh orange juice and made coffee for them.

  “The man’s a bloomin’ marvel,” Jim’s voice boomed across the restaurant to Linton. In two seconds he strode the distance from the entry to where Rose and Linton had chosen to eat. “You should see your truck.”

  Linton leapt up. “What’s happened to my truck?”

  “Steady.” Jim put his hand on Linton’s shoulder. “Sit down, mate. It shines like a new pin. Every tyre has been rotated.”

  “I better check them.” Linton looked anxiously towards the exit.

  “Relax.” Jim grasped Linton’s arm. “I watched everything being done,” Jim said. “I tell you that Bruno fellow is a genius with trucks. You couldn’t have done it better.”

  “You are going to give him a job?” Rose asked eagerly.

  “Yes. If he can keep his temper, I’ll give him a job and a place to stay.”

  Rose jumped up and hugged the startled roadhouse owner.

  “Not so fast. He’s working for me on probation,” Jim said. “He’s giving my old ute a service at the moment. Then he’s going to take it out on a test drive.” Momentary concern crossed Jim’s face. “I guess that’s when I find out if he’s too good to be true.”

  Linton cupped his chin in his hands for a moment, then asked, “How far is he allowed to take your ute on this test drive?”

  “Well, not as far as Darwin, that’s for sure.”

  “Can I borrow him for a day or so to help prove a theory?”

  “What theory?” Jim eyed Linton suspiciously. “What, that a leopard can’t change his spots? I thought you and Minnie were working on me to give the bloke a second chance?”

  “I want to prove my theory as to the cause of the Min Min lights in the channel country.”

  Jim threw back his head and roared with laughter. “Geologists and scientists and every bush cocky has been trying to find out the cause of those lights for the last century or more.”

  “And they never had Rose and me on a radio comparing the location of distant vehicles and connecting their locations to the arrival and positioning of the Min Min lights.”

  Jim scratched his head.

  “Who else can we recruit?” Linton asked.

  “The truckers keep a tight schedule, but I wouldn’t mind betting some of the tourists will think it a bit of a lark to be in this, if you can do the explaining. Then there would be a few of the property owners who might spare one of their kids old enough to drive. They’d all love to have the lights explained.”

  “I’ll move around the room and ask everyone here,” Linton said.

  “All right,” Jim said. “I’ll get on the blower and rustle up a few recruits for you.” He turned in the doorway. “What do I tell them you are trying to prove?”

  “I’m trying to find out if Australia’s Min Min lights are due to the same causes as the Fata Morgana lights. There are similar lights in other countries where there is flat land with gentle hollows and rises, such as we have in our channel country.”

  Jim scratched his head. “Wouldn’t the scientists have already tested for that?”

  “If they have, then I missed hearing about it, and I’ve always been fascinated by the land and the sky.”

  “Fatima what?” Jim asked.

  “Tell them it’s all about light rays,” Rose said.

  Linton nodded. “Nothing mysterious.”

  

  Rose drove the motorhome converted truck to one of the best-known vantage points for witnessing the Min Min lights. Linton and Rose spent the next few mornings walking quietly, observing the bush. In the evenings, they watched for the lights and charted, by radio contact, the position of vehicles travelling towards them but still over the horizon, where their headlights should not be visible.

  “Linton’s researched it and believes that you can get these lights anywhere in the world where there is flat land with gentle hollows and rises,” Rose explained to the drivers who were helping test their theory. “Especially where there’s an unbroken view to the horizon. It’s all about light rays being bent between temperature layers. It has to be cold. Is it cold outside where you are, Bruno?”

  “Sure is,” Bruno replied through the radio. “I’ve got the diesel heater on inside the truck or I’d freeze at night.”

  “That’s all a part of how those lights bend.” There was good radio reception, and Rose spoke into the mic mounted on the dashboard of the motorhome. “You can see them before the source of the light appears above the horizon.”

  “So, you are certain what you will see on the ground is just a mirage from my far-off headlights?” Bruno asked.

  “Yes,” Linton and Rose replied together.

  Using his long-distance truck radio to communicate with drivers up to hundreds of kilometres away, far over the horizon, Linton, Rose and Bruno and their driver friends became convinced that the Min Min light was the nocturnal equivalent of a daytime mirage. Linton had proved to his satisfaction that the light was a reflection of something real and far away—usually the lights of another truck. He waved at the drivers as their vehicles appeared on the road ahead an hour or two after a bluish-white light had glided towards him, along and underneath an inversion layer of warm air over the chilled ground.

  That night, Rose and Linton slept contentedly. Their research was complete. They were sad to farewell newly made friends, especially Bruno, but were thrilled with the results they’d gathered on the Min Min lights. Now they were eager to return home.

  

  “That’s all a part of how those lights bend,” Rose explained to Helen as she helped prepare her daughter to leave for her adventure of attending Morton High Ladies College as a live-in student. “You can see the light before the source of that light appears above the horizon.”

  Linton nodded. “We had teams of drivers timing their trips, marking positions in relationship to the Min Min lights…”

  Carl clapped his hands with enthusiasm. “And they synchronised.”

  “Yes,” Linton said. “And no.”

  “What?” Carl’s brow furled.

  “Most of the lights could be predicted to appear according to where the advancing vehicles were. But, just when we thought all the lights were explained, there was one wisp of a blue dancing light,” Linton said.

  Rose nodded. “There were times I thought I imagined it.”

  “But, I saw it too.” Linton’s eyes danced with excitement.

  “We saw the real Min Min lights.” Rose’s face glowed.

  “The real Min Min lights.” Linton hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans. “The channel country still retains the mystery of the Min Min lights, and they have nothing to do with truck hea
dlights.”

  “Our ancient land still retains her mysteries,” Rose said.

  “And Skylab?” Helen picked up her research project. “When you read the reports, they are full of contradictions.”

  “The reports say that space junk has never caused any substantial damage,” Linton said.

  “Who draws the measurement line between substantial and unsubstantial?” Rose asked. “You do realise that that sentence is meaningless without a qualifier.”

  “Humph.” Helen’s eyes narrowed fractionally, and she shifted her weight on to one hip. “I think that plutonium from obsolete spacecraft being scattered over the northern hemisphere and South America would be considered substantial damage.”

  “But NASA says it’s the Russians that do that. It’s never them.” Carl shifted in his seat. “I read that they claim only one person was ever injured by space junk. It’s supposed to have happened in Oklahoma. A woman was hit on the shoulder by something travelling at a mind-boggling speed, and she wasn’t supposed to have been hurt.” He chuckled. “What’s the chances her bank account ballooned in proportion to her having gone quiet on the subject?”

  “Then there were the five Japanese sailors injured when their ship was struck by space junk.” Helen arched a brow.

  “What happened to them?” Rose asked.

  “That’s the thing…” Helen threw up her hands. “No one seems to know. Skylab’s descent had an effect on my family. I plan to complete university and then follow this up. I know there is a lot more to the Skylab story.”

  “Linton and I would love it if you did follow up on the trail,” Rose said.

  Linton smiled down at Helen. “My girl was bright enough to win bursaries to attend any school of her choice. I’m so proud of what you’ve done and that you are interested in justice.”

  Helen swept her long hair to the side of her face. “One day, someone will talk, and the public will realise that you cannot crash-land space junk without there being significant damage done somewhere.”

  Rose wandered to the window to look at the sky. “Look, a shooting star.”

  Linton joined her to stargaze.

  “I wished on them as a child—a wish for a dream,” Rose said. “Now I just wish on a sky where the stars don’t fall. My wish is that the shooting star will not be space junk coming to crash on someone else’s dream.”

  She gripped Linton’s hand tight.

  “I’ll wish for that too, Rose.” Linton caressed her shoulder. “But our fate was not determined by Skylab because we chose not to stay as silly star-crossed lovers. You had the love and resilience to find me. And through you—and Carl—and Helen…” Linton’s arms curved open, and his family came into them. “I found my dream.”

  39

  “G’day.” Carl extended his hand to the lead NASA official approaching him as he stepped off the plane from Australia. He wondered if the US government had enough men employed to keep each satellite and spacecraft in orbit, or if they’d get on to hiring more after hearing what his parents, Rose and Linton, asked him to share.

  “Mr Fife Junior?”

  Carl watched his bags and the steel box disappear into the cluster of uniformed men before he’d had a chance to collect them. “Call me Carl.”

  “Are you refreshed, Mr Carl Fife?”

  Carl was parched. “No refreshment or water, aside from the toilet hand basin or expensive vending machines, was offered during my first ghastly introduction to Hawaii.”

  Considering the long flight from Sydney to San Francisco and the welcome for passengers going through customs at the entry point to the United States, he was lucky to be awake. He’d entered Hawaii’s humid transit lounge, then boarded exhausted for the second leg of the flight, this time with the plane seemingly filled with weary adults, grumpy children and screaming babies.

  Thinking of the most refreshing part of the flight—the water bomb he’d copped, thrown by irritable teenagers—Carl remembered his manners. “Rose and Linton send their best wishes.”

  The suited man blinked—like Carl had given him a complicated formula he couldn’t equate.

  Carl asked, “Are you the foreman I’m to give—”

  “Foreperson.”

  “Right.” Carl accepted the responsibility for the awkward start. “Must be my jet lag.”

  “The best way to avoid that is to get straight into the normal rhythm of your new location,” the smartly suited man said.

  To gauge the time of day, Carl held his hand up and measured five fingers from the sun to the horizon. “Sun sets in twenty-five minutes. At home, it would be time to turn the tractor around and drive back to the store-shed, unload into the cool room, then put my feet up. Mum, Dad, my sister Helen and I drink homemade blackberry wine while Uncle Trevor and his husband, Alvin, cook dinner. Mum and Helen won’t be able to stop themselves from talking business—berry growing. At home Dad and I would be spending our time reading the latest sci-fi novel.”

  Carl got a blank stare in response.

  He continued undaunted. “Yes, straight into my routine equivalent would be great.” Carl grinned to try to put the suited man at ease. “An evening with my feet up and a good book—” He took his first deep breath of Californian air. It smelt like Sydney near the harbour.

  A frown greeted him from a senior official with the NASA emblem on his jacket. “You are to be the guest speaker at a dinner tonight.”

  Carl’s emerging smile faded; he blinked.

  The formally dressed padded-suit man extended his hand. “Just a small affair. Of course the President and the First Lady will attend.”

  “You’re kidding me?” Carl said.

  “You will have time to rest—one hour. A valet will assist with your dress.”

  “I need to collect my luggage.”

  “We have everything under control. It’s black tie.”

  “I don’t own—”

  “A chauffeur will bring you to the venue. I’m heading there now to make preparations to put your sample on display.” He motioned to where a lead-lined box Carl had brought with him, the reason for his visit, was being whisked away by armed guards.

  Carl closed his eyes as the limousine followed its police escort to the suite they’d booked for him. He’d not expected nor prepared for any of this. NASA officials and their VIP guests expected an evening’s celebration of the first moonwalk and the following manned Skylab and subsequent re-entry glory days. A man seated beside him hammered on about how Carl was to recount his dad’s memories of the fire passage he’d witnessed of an unmanned spacecraft dropping out of orbit.

  Strangely, Carl wasn’t the least bit nervous. He visualised himself in his cream moleskins as the valet dressed him in the fancy suit they called a tuxedo.

  Another man dressed in a pompous bag-of-fruit, who’d introduced himself as the speech coach, droned on about how Carl was to slow his speech so that his Or-stray-lian accent could be understood. Heck, Carl knew he didn’t have an accent—the speech coach did. Why the coach couldn’t even say Australian. So Carl felt within his rights to totally tune out everything else that the man had to say.

  Carl did catch on to the facts he needed. The guests were drawn to the table, believing that history is composed of extraordinary events. Well, Carl’s mum and dad had taught him by example that history is, in actuality, mostly made up of regular people trying to survive or make things better. He’d be telling it like it is.

  

  Standing composed before the audience, Carl drew from beneath his jacket a document titled “Remembering Rose”. He spoke without the need to reference his parents’ story.

  Carl considered his mum and dad were a space-age Romeo and Juliet, only they never gave up, and they triumphed. He was certain the President and First Lady would love their story, even if NASA didn’t. Carl planned to talk to them about how “star-crossed lovers” was merely a descriptive expression in Shakespeare’s day. Today the stars (space junk) really can hit you and throw yo
ung love off course.

  Carl paused in his speech and moved his head slowly. He made eye contact with all in the room. “I guess I do too. They made me during the moonwalk.”

  Leaning to touch gently the “Remembering Rose” document, Carl smiled. Then he straightened his back and continued his address to the dinner guests.

  A bell rang at this point, and Carl was invited to sit down. As he reached for his wine glass, it was removed and replaced by a glass of water. That was okay. It was a Napa Valley red. Carl wasn’t sure about that—never heard of the place or that wine. He thought he’d be safer sticking to water or beer; he didn’t want traveller’s tummy trots. Carl wished he could have his mum’s Dandenong Ranges–grown blackberry wine. Customs had confiscated it—another reason he did not like his experience in Hawaii.

  It was midway into the splendid dinner as the guests continued to enjoy the excellent food, wine and in a break from the story supplied by the entertaining and good-looking young Australian man, Carl Fife, when the young man suddenly went red in the face and neck.

  The telling of the “Remembering Rose” story, which his sister Helen had written, had been a joy for Carl to recount. He struggled, however, with the third course—glazed quail, a dish beyond the comprehension of a man brought up in a rural lifestyle.

  The fancy-suited NASA official beside him saw his difficulties in trying to scrape the poultry flesh from the bone. “You eat the whole bird,” he whispered.

  “What, the bones too?” Scowling, Carl prodded the skeletal bird, then remembered his manners and forced a smile. He felt the eyes of everyone at the long table on him as he carved through the quail and shoved a piece on to his fork. How am I going to finish my talk if a bone sticks in my throat?

  Voices from the far end of the table brought tension relief. All eyes were now on the President.

  When you live with a family member with a disability, as Carl did, it isn’t unusual to learn many of their skills, and Carl had become as adept a lip and body-language reader as his dad. Linton had taught him, and they’d practised together. Carl watched, his own quail forgotten as the President’s quail communicated as much as the President’s lips.