Racing the Moon

by Alan Armstrong

  Alex fidgeted. Ebbs noticed. She went over to the card table and handed Alex a wad of marked-up typewritten pages.

  “Here’s what I’ve taken from his books and journals. I’ve edited it some, to make up his story for someone like you and Chuck. You’ve come along just in time—I just finished it. You’ll see Smith knew his business, but the knowledge didn’t come easy. He worked at learning what he needed to know.”

  * * *

  That night in the Moon Station, Alex started reading aloud.

  My parents were dead. I was thirteen and in the way of my guardians’ spending what was mine, so they apprenticed me to an old seaport merchant, not a bad man, but there was nothing in that place to hold me. I wanted to go to the places I’d heard men talking about at night when they were drunk and dreaming out loud about Russia, Africa, Constantinople, Virginia—boasting of the rare things they’d seen and found and done, the fortunes they’d won. I wanted adventures of my own, and fortune. I was sick of being an orphaned brat in hand-me-downs.

  For a year I had a passing-through schoolmaster not much older than me who taught me to wrestle, cartwheel, juggle, and do magic tricks like whisking a man’s handkerchief from his pants pocket and making a penny appear on his shoulder without his knowing.

  I wasn’t like the others. I never fit in. No home ever felt familiar or comfortable. I heard men talk about home like it was a person, somebody they loved. I didn’t know what they were talking about. Anything strange appealed to me more than anything familiar. I realized I was destined to live among strangers when I discovered that foreign tongues came easier to me than to my schoolmates. All my life I’ve had the knack of picking up strangers’ speech almost as quickly as I heard it.

  Sure that I was born for something better and bigger than a shop, after my teacher left I sold my school satchel and made up a kit for travel, saving bits of dried beef and biscuit as I waited for my chance. The morning my shop master rushed out distracted to have a rotten tooth pulled, I took what little silver I found in his till, rolled up his heavy blue wool cape, and slipped out the back as if headed to the privy.

  I was a week walking and running, heading inland always because I knew they’d look for me along the coast, sleeping in fields rolled up in the stolen cape that went twice around me. I avoided all other travelers, hiding when I saw them, begging milk and bread and morsels of meat and cheese from countrywomen in the late mornings when their men were out in the fields.

  The night I got too weak to go on I gave myself up where a faint yellow light drew me. The old woman there took me in and gave me soup and strong tea with cream. She was my angel, asked no questions, took me for what I was. I blessed her in my prayers and left for Portsmouth before dawn the next morning.

  When I got there, judging from the hubbub, the next vessel to depart was a boatload of Catholic pilgrims fleeing to Rome, a place I’d heard men at home talk about as older and grander than London even if it was Catholic, so I picked that ship. At the boarding the company was all hurly-burly and confused together, old and young, women and children, topsy-turvy as to who was whose, so it wasn’t hard for me to stow away, but I knew stowing away was a dangerous business: stowaways are thought to curse a ship, and me being a Protestant would count as a double curse, so I hid myself well under an overturned lifeboat.

  Alex quit reading. The flashlight had grown too dim for her to go on.

  “I like him,” Chuck said. “I know how he felt about having to get out. Maybe that’s why Ebbs gave me his story.”

  “Us,” Alex corrected. “She gave it to us. Smith was just a year older than me when he ran away.”

  “It’s not the same for girls,” Chuck said.

  “Because it’s harder,” Alex retorted. “Mother’s after me all the time about what I can’t do, mustn’t, shouldn’t. It’s a pain, her going on about growing-up stuff. She says I’m ‘unformed,’ need shaping, says my character is like a lump of unbaked bread, no way to tell how it will come out unless you shape it, and now she’s worked up about Ebbs, thinks she’s some sort of religious crank, but Ebbs doesn’t talk religious stuff at all. With her it’s all about space work.”

  Chuck peered at Alex, trying to make her out in the darkness. “That what you want to do?”

  “Yes,” said Alex. “Like Amelia Earhart. How about you?”

  “Smith. I want to go out like him.”

  “Right,” Alex said, getting up and reaching for the rope. “I gotta get back to my room in case Mother comes up to tuck me in.”

  “Remember, we gotta go fix Reggie’s car,” Chuck said. “I’ll come get you later. I jimmied the garage door lock this afternoon. We’ll get in tonight OK.”

  Alex’s father was waiting when she came in. “Mrs. King came by while you were up in the Moon Station. Something about her microphone. Somebody saw you going into the assembly room. She put two and two together—she taught Chuck too, you know. She wants an apology and she wants her microphone fixed. Meanwhile, you’re on probation.

  “You guys!” He sighed, giving Alex a hug.

  “She’s really mad at me?” Alex asked.

  “No, it’s not that. You embarrassed her.”

  Alex felt bad.

  11

  BOLDLY STATED IS HALF-DONE

  The next afternoon coming home from school Alex saw a long black car in the driveway. She grabbed Jeep’s collar as she went cold all over, sure it had to do with their fixing Reggie’s car the night before. “You hold the funnel. I’ll pour,” Chuck had whispered. It was so dark Alex couldn’t see what she was doing. Later that night she’d had a nightmare: Reggie’s father was at the door in his big black hat with legal papers to send them to jail. Now it was for real. The authorities had come for them.

  A big soldier was knocking at the front door. He wore a pistol on his hip. Another soldier was heading around to the back of the house. The front door opened and the first soldier stepped in as if expected. A minute later he came out and waved. The driver opened the limo’s back door. A tall man stepped out. He was well dressed with wavy dark hair combed back like a movie star. The stranger snubbed out his cigarette and went into the house.

  The detective, Alex thought. She was scared, thought about running up to Ebbs’s, but just then the driver caught sight of her.

  “Hi!” he yelled as Jeep barked.

  “What’s going on?” Alex called in her bravest voice.

  “You live here, miss?” the soldier asked. This one wore a gun too.

  “Yeah. What’s up?” she said, trying to keep the scare out of her voice.

  “Your mother’s got an important visitor. We’re protecting him.”

  “Who?” Alex asked. “Protecting him from what?”

  “Our top rocket man,” the soldier replied, “Doctor Wernher von Braun.”

  Alex was relieved, and astounded.

  “The space scientist Doctor von Braun is here? Why?”

  “Your mother’s a translator, right? German songs?”

  Alex nodded.

  “The doctor is friends with your neighbor, Captain Ebbs, and she knows he likes music—especially German music, your mother’s specialty—so she got the general in charge to arrange a visit while he’s up here from Texas, give him a break from his meetings.”

  “They’re inside listening to records?” Alex asked.

  “He plays piano, so maybe she’s teaching him some songs,” the military policeman replied. “VB—he doesn’t mind if we call him that—he’s really a pretty regular guy once you get over how foreign he is. He’s not like what you’d expect one of them to be.”

  “Them?” Alex asked.

  “You know, Germans.”

  “I gotta see him,” Alex said, starting toward the door.

  “Not yet, miss,” the soldier said, stepping in front of her. “We’re under orders not to let anyone in. He only has an hour, so it won’t be long. Why don’t you get in the back there where he sits and pretend you’re a big-deal prisoner lik
e he is.”

  Alex got in. The car smelled of seat leather and cigarette smoke. A small vase with fresh flowers was mounted beside the door next to a reading light.

  “He’s a prisoner?” Alex asked.

  “It’s more like he’s a guest of the government—a protected guest,” the soldier said, putting his hand on his holster.

  They talked for a while about spies and Jeep and the soldier’s dog back home until the big man came out of the house. Alex scrambled out of the car. As soon as he saw her von Braun smiled and put out his hand.

  “So you are Alexis, the youngest one, yes?” he said. “My name is Doctor von Braun.”

  His chicory-blue eyes bored in like he was reading Alex’s mind. She caught her breath. “Yes, sir,” she whispered. They shook hands. The rocket man’s hand was large and warm.

  “Captain Ebbs has told me about you,” he said as he studied Alex. “You climb trees like Amelia Earhart to pretend flying, and you do radio with your older brother in the Moon Station, and the two of you watch to catch the weather balloons—is all that correct?”

  “Yes, sir,” Alex said, feeling her cheeks burn.

  “Captain Ebbs says young persons like you are the future of our space program,” he continued in his heavy German accent, “so maybe someday we should make something more interesting than little helium weather balloons for you to study, yes?”

  “Will we go to the Moon pretty soon?” Alex asked.

  The doctor’s eyes warmed. “How do you say it, Alexis—‘You bet’? Yes. You bet! So now it is very good that I meet you here. You have the key to your Moon Station? I want to see it.”

  “It—it’s not much, sir,” Alex stammered. “It’s not locked.”

  “Just so. I want to see it,” the doctor said. “Captain Ebbs told me about it. I know what I’m looking for, and she warned me to be ready for the little electric surprise at the door.”

  “I’ll have to get you the ladder.”

  “Tell them where it is,” von Braun ordered, pointing to his guards. “They will bring it.”

  “Sir,” the soldier in charge protested. “It may not be safe.”

  “Oh, I’ll be careful, officer,” von Braun said reassuringly. “It is important that I see what the youth of America are up to, yes?”

  Oh, man! I wish Chuck was here, Alex thought. She watched in amazement as the big man in the suit clambered up the ladder. The instant he pulled at the hatch cover the screecher went off again.

  “Ja!” he roared, jerking back. Then he pitched himself in.

  He was inside for what seemed to Alex a long time as she and his guards stood around, eyeing one another and not saying anything, Jeep sniffing each stranger and circling uneasily.

  “It is pretty good for what it is,” he said when he came down, breathing heavily as he adjusted his tie and dusted off his fine wool suit. “When I was your age we were all for rockets. We did not think too much about making satellites. In that respect you are more advanced than we were, even to planning for food with the algae growing in the nose cone—the influence of Captain Ebbs, yes?”

  Alex nodded, too stunned to speak.

  “And the theremin—where did you get the idea for that?”

  “From a spy story, sir,” Alex said. “Chuck built it.”

  “Yes,” the doctor continued thoughtfully, “your older brother. Captain Ebbs has spoken of him too. Well, for what it is, your station is good. The gyroscope you have to stabilize your flight—we learned to use that from your American rocket pioneer, Doctor Goddard. But your navigation equipment? It is ridiculous! That compass you have mounted next to the hand-crank generator—what good will it do you in space? Do you think there is some ultimate North Pole out there? There isn’t. You should know that. Discard it!”

  “OK. Yes, sir,” Alex whispered, her face hot with embarrassment.

  “Good,” the big man said in his deep voice. “Captain Ebbs says she will give you some lessons with her star bowl. That will help your navigation.”

  He paused, looking at Alex not unkindly as he thought for a moment. “I do not mean to scold about the compass, Alexis. It is not personal, just a matter of science. You will not be hurt that I point this out, yes? I will send you something to put in its place, a theodolite—the tool surveyors use to measure horizontal and vertical distances. You have seen one?”

  What he said made Alex feel better. She stood taller. “Yes, sir, the telescope thing, right?” From her tree perch she’d spied on surveyors using them.

  “Yes. I send you one for replacement of that useless compass,” the doctor said as he moved toward the car. “So good-bye, Astronaut Alexis,” he said with a small bow. “Good cruising in your Moon Station.”

  As the car started backing out of the driveway he ordered the driver to stop.

  “And perhaps when I go cruising, you will go with me?” he called.

  “Me?” Alex exclaimed, lighting up.

  “Tell yourself you’re going, and you will,” he yelled as the car pulled away. “Boldly stated is half-done—that’s my rule!”

  Alex waved as hard as she could with both arms high over her head until the car was out of sight. Then she rushed into the house.

  “Mother!” she screamed, even though she was under strict orders never to bang in like that on account of her mother’s heart. “Mother! Did he tell you about the rockets? His space rockets?”

  “No, no, dear,” her mother said, coming out of her room and motioning with her hands that Alex should calm down. “We talked about music. I played some records and we practiced some songs together. With practice he could play well again.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Alex impatiently, “but did you know they were guarding the house?” Alex was still bursting with excitement. “The soldier with a gun wouldn’t even let me come inside to use the bathroom.”

  “Oh my,” her mother said. “I’m sorry, dear. They told me there’d be security, but he was late. I figured he’d be gone by the time you got home.”

  “It’s OK, Mother,” Alex said, talking fast. “Ebbs says he’s really important. He’ll save us from space rocks, and get us to the Moon and Mars and help us plant colonies like Captain John Smith did because we’re running out …”

  Her mother fluttered her hands and shook her head for Alex to stop going on.

  “We didn’t get into any of that, dear. With us it was some Mendelssohn they were not allowed to listen to under the Nazis because Mendelssohn was a Jew.”

  That night, as soon as everyone was seated at dinner, Alex announced, “I met Doctor von Braun! He was here visiting Mother, and there were guards with guns and then he made them bring the ladder so he could go up and look at the Moon Station and the screecher went off, but Ebbs had warned him, and he checked it out, and he says it’s good but we need some different navigation equipment he’s going to send—”

  “What?” John howled, turning red. “Von Braun was here, in this house? How could you do it?” he raged at his mother. “How could you help him? He’s a Nazi war criminal!”

  “Oh no, no, dear,” their mother replied calmly. “In those days in Germany, everybody who was anybody, especially anyone young who wanted to get ahead, joined the Party. To most people it didn’t mean anything; it was just what you did. And Doctor von Braun is an aristocrat, a baron—Freiherr von Braun—which means he is royalty, so he is above politics. Alexis says he’s a scientist, working on space travel for us.”

  “Space, my foot!” John snarled. “They should hang your fancy Freiherr! He used slaves to build Hitler’s Vengeance Weapon to bring England to her knees—all so he could get rich, get a big military title and a fancy uniform. He killed thousands—thousands of his slave rocket builders, thousands of helpless civilians! He is evil!”

  Alex slumped in her chair like she’d been hit.

  “Aw, come off it, John!” Chuck growled. “We’re at war with the Russians, or almost, and he’s working on stuff we can use against ’em, so what’
s your problem? Talk about Vengeance Weapons—what do you call the atom bomb?”

  “Boys!” their mother cried, clutching at her chest.

  “Enough!” their dad ordered.

  “VB didn’t …!” Alex cried, jumping up from the table. “I’m gonna go ask Ebbs.”

  “My brother … John,” Alex gasped when Ebbs opened the door. “He says VB’s evil. He says he had slaves and built the rockets to get rich and kill people. Is it true?”

  Alex was pale. Jeep stood by her, his tongue lolling.

  The big woman pursed her lips. “Come in.

  “When I was G-13 we went after him,” she said. “It was called Operation Paperclip, which sounds pretty tame, but we were hunting him day and night because he’d headed the German guided-missile project. The Russians were after him too. If we hadn’t captured him we would have done everything we could to keep him and his plans from going to anyone else. Capture or destroy was the unwritten order. They even issued me a gun,” she added as Alex stared at her.

  “Then one afternoon this skinny boy comes bicycling down out of the mountains and says he’s VB’s brother, says VB wants to surrender to us. ‘He’s up there,’ the kid says, pointing. And he was, in a mountain hospital recovering from a crash.

  “Right off when I met him all I could think was, if anyone can get us into space it’s him.”

  “So John’s wrong?” Alex asked.

  “No, he’s not wrong about what happened,” Ebbs replied. “The Nazis used slaves—used thousands to death—and von Braun knew, just as he built rockets to kill. They were deadly. There’s no excusing any of that, just as there’s no excusing war itself. I don’t mean to let him off, but war is the big evil, Alex. It corrupts everything and everyone. Von Braun let himself get caught up in it for his own purposes.

  “What got him off with the authorities was that, late in the war, he’d gotten drunk one night and told the company that the military application of rockets was only part of the picture—a means to getting into space. A Party stooge reported him. The next day the Gestapo arrested him. They searched his room and found his spacecraft drawings and his flight plan to the Moon. They jailed him for diverting military materials to space exploration. When our people heard about his arrest they figured he wasn’t really a Nazi—at least they could make the case that he wasn’t.