Racing the Moon

by Alan Armstrong

  “My other brother says there’s nothing in space for us to bother with,” Alex said as they worked. “But Chuck thinks there’s life. That’s what he wants radar for—to watch for space aliens. You think they’re out there?”

  “We have to go to find out,” Ebbs said. “But whether we find life or not, soon we’ll be creating it out there on our own with those seeds I’m working with, planting colonies in space like Captain John Smith did here.

  “Looking for life in space is tricky,” she continued, “but there’s no trick to finding space rocks, which is something else I’m interested in.”

  “Space rocks?” Alex asked.

  “Right. Ever seen one?”

  Alex shook her head. “No. I collect rocks, though, crystals.”

  Back inside Ebbs went over to the piled-up card table she used as her desk. She felt around at the bottom for a moment, knocking something off the top—a snapshot of a man with his arm around Ebbs’s waist. Ebbs picked it up, then handed Alex a shiny black square the size of a stamp.

  “These small ones are called meteorites,” she said. “It would have gone through you like a white-hot bullet had you been standing in Australia where it crashed.”

  Alex juggled it like it was still hot.

  “Take it for luck,” Ebbs said. “It’s older than the sun.”

  “Don’t you want it?”

  “Of course I do! That’s why I kept it, why I’m offering it to you. You don’t want to make a gift of something you wouldn’t want to keep yourself, right?”

  “Yeah, OK,” Alex said, embarrassed because she never gave away things she liked. “It really came from space?”

  “Yup, one of the thousands that hit Earth every year.”

  “What if …?” Alex started to say.

  Ebbs shook her head. “Don’t worry. Since most of Earth is covered with water most of them land in the ocean, and that may be how life got started here, some bit of life-bearing space matter fell into the ocean and got us going, right down to the bit of celestial fire that burns in you.”

  “What celestial fire burns in me?” Alex asked.

  “The fire that makes your heart beat and your little finger go up and down,” Ebbs explained, moving hers. “Some scientists think our life-bearing rocks came from Mars. They think there was life there once, but then a massive asteroid wiped it out, sending a chunk of spore-bearing Mars rock to us like Noah’s ark.”

  Alex was worried. “What do we do if we see something like that heading to Earth?”

  “Right!” said Ebbs. “You see little ones burning themselves up all the time—shooting stars, comets, meteor showers. But a big one? An asteroid? Right now we can do nothing, and that’s where our project comes in. In outer space they travel slowly. They only pick up speed when they get close enough for Earth’s gravity to pull them in. The new radar dishes like the ones we’re testing on Wallops Island will help us spot something threatening when it’s still far away. Then with one of Doctor von Braun’s new rockets we’ll be able to blow it up or maybe nudge it back out into space, seeded with the stuff I’m working on—make it into a space farm.”

  “Neat!” Alex said.

  “Hey! That’s nothing compared to our big plan!”

  “What’s that?” Alex asked.

  “A big-enough asteroid could become our first space colony. That’s what we’re getting ready for—a place for you and Chuck to stop on your way to investigate life on another planet.”

  “Mars,” Alex said. “We’re going to Mars.”

  6

  HYBRIDS

  That night in the Moon Station’s cockpit Alex cranked the hand generator. Red lights glowed over switches and dials, the pretend radar gave off a pale green light, the big vacuum tubes glowed pink with what looked like tiny buildings inside. Chuck was navigating. Suddenly he called to Alex, “Pilot to copilot: sighting craft approaching fast fifteen degrees off starboard.” It was the flashing lights from the WTOP radio tower. “Adjust thrust,” he ordered as Alex turned valves. “Quick, signal identity and greeting in Code Alpha.”

  “Roger,” Alex snapped in her official voice as she cranked the generator with one hand and tapped out a message on the Morse code key. She looked out of the Station’s nose cone. The red and green signal lights were pulsing as she tapped dot dash dot dot dot dash dash.

  “Message received,” Chuck announced. “Prepare to dock. Mission done.”

  They leaned back for their evening chat.

  “Sounds like huffduff to me,” Chuck said when Alex told him about Ebbs’s space colony plan.

  “It isn’t. Ebbs says she knows the people who build rockets and she’s been to some island near here where they track asteroids on radar.”

  “Wallops?” Chuck asked, sitting up. “She knows about the radar dishes on Wallops?”

  “Yeah. That’s it. Wallops.”

  “Huh!” said Chuck. “If she’s for real she must have a really high security clearance. What I don’t get, though, is why she’s got all this time for you.”

  “Dad says it’s the plants. He says working with plants you make friends and it doesn’t matter how old you are or if you’re man or woman. Anyway, do we ever hear voices from space?”

  “Maybe in some of the static we get on the radio,” Chuck replied. “Rosy says the new radar is going to pinpoint where it’s coming from. That’s why I want to get in on it, and it sounds like maybe you’ve met somebody who can help me.”

  “I guess,” Alex muttered. She’d told herself she wasn’t going to tell Chuck much about Ebbs because Ebbs was her find, and if Ebbs met Chuck, maybe she wouldn’t pay attention to her anymore, and maybe Chuck wouldn’t either. Alex had always felt possessive about Chuck, and now she felt possessive about Ebbs too. “Because they’re interesting,” she told herself. “They’re hybrids.” That was the word her dad used to describe his rarest plants.

  Later, in her bedroom, Alex felt for the space rock in her pocket. She hadn’t shown it to Chuck because it was private, a symbol of her special bond with Ebbs—Ebbs had given her something she’d prized. Alex had gotten lots of presents, but they’d all been bought things or hand-me-downs, nothing the giver really wanted to keep.

  Alex’s room was in the front of the house. Her shelves were filled with books, stuffed animals, junk, her box of crystals. A large chunk of petrified wood was on the corner of the lowest shelf. Every night she saw a head in the shadow where streetlight hit it. She knew she was too old to take it for real or be scared of it, but she was, so every night she’d bargain with the shadow to leave her alone.

  Tonight she didn’t notice the head. She watched the sky for space rocks. Suddenly a bright greenish light flashed through the stars. She held her breath and felt for the smooth square she’d put under her pillow. Ebbs said it was going more than a hundred feet a second. What if there’s some kid standing outside in Australia?

  She watched the sky. There were no more shooting stars. She looked around her room. It was as if she were seeing it for the first time. She got up and took down the pictures of the dancing insect musicians. When she got back in bed she stared at her shelves. “Ebbs doesn’t keep things she isn’t using,” she murmured, getting up again.

  Jeep lay on the bed watching as Alex cleared her shelves until the only things left were The Greek Myths and the crystals. “Shipshape”—that’s what Ebbs would say. “Just the essentials and everything shipshape.”

  A painting of Icarus was on the book’s cover. As Alex stared, the sun melted his wings of gold, the feathers went free, Icarus fell horror-stricken toward the blue-green sea. She heard his cry, but his father was out of sight and the ship in the distance was too far away to help—even if the sailors had seen something amazing, a winged boy falling out of the sky.

  Just then Jeep shot under the bed like a mole to his hole. Alex’s mother was coming up the stairs. “Time to tuck in, dear,” she said, breathing hard as Alex slid under the covers. If her mother noticed anything c
hanged, she didn’t say. She didn’t come up often—only when she felt strong enough to give her daughter a good-night kiss. Tonight, though, was different. She had something on her mind.

  “You’re almost twelve, Alexis,” she said as she sat down on the bed, “so I think it’s time you spent less time in that Moon Station and quit climbing up trees where nobody can see you, coming home scratched and bruised. And your hair,” she continued as she smoothed what was left of it, “your lovely hair all chopped away. Oh my.”

  Alex gently pushed her mother’s hand away. She felt a cautious tenderness for her, as if her mother were a delicate china cup.

  “It’s time for you to act more ladylike, Alexis, pay more attention to your schoolwork, start music lessons, and dress more carefully. Skirts. The neighbors say you’re becoming a tomboy.”

  “I’m not,” Alex protested, “but I don’t want to do that other stuff. I want to learn radio and flying and do space work.”

  “No, Alexis,” her mother said. “What you’re talking about is not for girls.”

  Alex lurched away. “What do you mean? Mrs. King had us read about this woman who flew alone across the Atlantic. They called Earhart a tomboy too, but she wasn’t. Ebbs says all kinds of women are pilots now. She says the first space pilots will be women because they weigh less. Chuck and I are going to do it together.”

  Her mother got up wearily, shaking her head. “Charles,” she corrected. “His proper name is Charles.” She bent over and kissed Alex on the top of her head. “Good night, dear. That woman pilot you’re reading about crashed somewhere in the Pacific. We don’t want that to happen to you.”

  7

  PEPSI-COLA HITS THE SPOT

  As soon as Alex’s mother went downstairs, Chuck knocked on the door. He’d been waiting.

  “Come on,” he called softly. “I need your help. We’re going to go fix Reggie with some sugar water.”

  Right off Alex knew what was up: it was in the magazine story they’d just read about some Dutch kids sabotaging a German patrol car during the war. They’d poured beet syrup into the gas tank. It gummed up the engine like burning sugar in a kitchen pan.

  The night before, Reggie had taken the girl Chuck liked to a drive-in movie in his father’s new car. Going out in a car had to beat bouncing around in Chuck’s war surplus jeep. Besides, you could be private in a car; the jeep was all open.

  “I’ve made the mixture,” Chuck said, holding up a bottle. “I need you to hold the funnel while I pour it in.”

  Lucky for Reggie the garage was locked.

  “Tomorrow,” Chuck growled. “I’ll jimmy the lock.”

  The next morning Alex waited uneasily in the assembly room for Mrs. King to come in for the Pledge of Allegiance. She chewed her lips and didn’t join in the usual chatter. She pictured sparks, a big flash. People had gotten hurt with some of Chuck’s tricks.

  The room was buzzing like a swarm of excited bees when Mrs. King strode in and lifted the microphone from its stand. She pushed the switch. “Pepsi-Cola hits the spot!” blared out in a high tinny voice as Mrs. King screamed and dropped the instrument. It crashed, but the singing and talking kept going until she pulled the connection from the wall. She was pale. “Dismissed,” she whispered to the gaping crowd. “Dismissed to class.”

  “Did it work?” Chuck asked when Alex got home.

  “Yeah, perfect,” Alex said. She didn’t let on how nervous she’d been. Chuck would have teased her for being sissy. “Tell me what you did,” she said in her cool scientific voice.

  “It’s what you did. Switching those wires turned the mike into a little radio. It doesn’t take much. Remember the crystal set? I heard about a woman who got signals through the silver fillings in her teeth, thought she was crazy hearing voices all the time, so they took out her fillings and it stopped.”

  “You gotta be kidding,” Alex said.

  “I’m not. She got false teeth, but then she complained they hurt, and besides it was suddenly too quiet in her head, so she said she wanted her little radios back.”

  Alex shook her head and changed the subject. “Did you get a flying lesson?” she asked, imagining herself Amelia Earhart at the stick.

  “No, not yet, but I watched what the instructor and the student were doing. It’s a Piper Cub with a beauty of an engine, no muffler or anything so you really hear it. There’s not a lot of controls to work it with either, and you know what? There’s no key or lock—you just open up the throttle a little, turn the prop slowly a couple of times to prime it, turn on the ignition, then flip the prop hard to get her started, hop in, take off.”

  He smiled at Alex the way he always did when he dared her. “Think you’re up for some prop flipping?”

  “You gotta be kidding,” she said again, turning away. But what if he was flipping the Airster’s prop for me?

  She went out and worked in her garden for a while, tilling and weeding as she thought about flying. A monarch butterfly coasted by, then another. Alex was delighted. Her father had pointed out their gold-dotted, bright green cocoons hanging like peanuts under the porch railing. “Hello,” she said softly.

  Alex dug up some special plants for Ebbs. She loaded her baskets and headed up the hill.

  “Right!” Ebbs called out when Alex knocked. “Just got home myself. And you brought more plants? Good.”

  “These aren’t to sell,” Alex said. “They’re my thank-you for the space rock. They’re cuttings from a wild azalea I found.”

  Ebbs looked at her, expecting her to say something more. After a pause she said “Nice” as she lifted out the plants. “When we get back inside I want to hear about that rocket you’re building.”

  Alex told how they’d made cherry bomb bazookas until one of them blew up and Chuck got hurt.

  “Good Lord!” Ebbs muttered, pointing Alex to the kitchen chair as she got out graham crackers.

  “He tells people he got the scar on his face in a knife fight with some spies,” Alex said, “but it was really the bazooka. He told Dad he got it doing a bike trick, but Dad must have found out because all the pipes and cherry bombs disappeared.”

  “So now you’re building a real rocket,” Ebbs said. “How’d you get into that?”

  “It was Mrs. Knapp, the town librarian,” Alex explained. “She knows what we’re interested in. She got us the new history of rockets book with pictures and the formula for gunpowder. Moon Girl looks like the Chinese rocket in the book, but it’s a toy compared to what’s in your pictures.”

  “Size doesn’t matter,” Ebbs said. “What von Braun started with looked like toys too, but they were the real thing. Go on.”

  “It started out as the steam one pictured in the book,” Alex said, “but it didn’t go up, it just flopped over steaming like mad, whistling and chasing us around like it could see us. It scared Jeep so bad that when we get it out now he goes under the porch.”

  Ebbs snorted. “Then what?”

  “Like I told you,” Alex said, “next time we’re going to pack Moon Girl’s shell with gunpowder like it shows in the book.”

  “Yeah,” Ebbs muttered, “but can it take the shock? What’s it made of? What materials? That’s what VB would want to know.”

  “Copper,” Alex said. “It’s an old fire extinguisher we turned upside down and made a pointed nose and fins for.”

  She started to explain how it was supposed to work, but Ebbs was after something else.

  “Where’d you get it?” she demanded. “VB says the hardest part of his job is getting parts. Where’d you get the extinguisher?”

  “Hector’s junkyard on Seventh Avenue,” Alex explained. “We go there with metal we’ve collected—aluminum, brass, copper. We trade him for parts for the Moon Station and for our inventions. He got us the Plexiglas when we told him the Moon Station needed a nose window like bombers have.”

  Alex hesitated. Suddenly she felt uncomfortable about what she was about to say.

  “And?”


  “W-well, uh, see,” Alex stammered, twisting her feet under the chair, “Hector’d always let us take what we needed. He’d pay himself back the next time we came in with the metal, but this time he said no because the fire extinguisher was an antique he could sell for more than its scrap value. He wanted five dollars for it.”

  Alex hesitated again.

  “And?” Ebbs prodded.

  “We didn’t have any money, so Hector asked Chuck what we had at home for trade. They had a talk and Hector said he’d hold it for us a couple of days.”

  Alex stopped talking.

  “So what’d you take him?”

  “Spoons,” Alex mumbled. “Mother’s got a bunch she never uses. They were in the attic.”

  Ebbs stared at her, eyes blazing. “You didn’t ask, you just took? That’s stealing.”

  Alex looked away, her face getting hot. She felt bad that her new friend saw her as a thief. She hadn’t thought of herself like that before. When she and Chuck stole things—mostly from stores—he’d always used a fancy name for what they were doing: “liberating.” That made it sound like they were simply putting things where they belonged.

  “Bring Chuck up here,” Ebbs ordered. “I want to meet him.”

  8

  AIR HART

  On Saturday morning Alex’s dad got her up early. She’d forgotten—she thought it was to do plants, but they were all in the kitchen waiting for her.

  “Twelve!” her mother announced when Alex appeared. She’d circled Alex’s place at the table with flowers and strawberries. There was a honey cake stuck with twelve candles, and there were cards—one from John with two dollars of his tutoring money—and a small box Chuck must have wrapped. She looked for something from her parents but there wasn’t anything until “Zoom!” her dad called out, buzzing Alex with a bright yellow model biplane. He spun the prop as he landed it at Alex’s place.