Racing the Moon

by Alan Armstrong

  “But here’s the big question,” Ebbs said, looking steadily at Alex. “Did the end—building a rocket that can get us into space—justify the means, which involved using slaves and murdering civilians? And either way, what do you do with such a person now?”

  Alex’s jaw trembled. “So should they hang him like John says?”

  “No. Even as we were hunting him—when they gave me the gun—all I could think was, How can I shoot him? We need him. He’s a maker. Our survival depends on our making our way into space, Alex—to new worlds, to making new worlds. VB’s hands and mind are crucial for that. I see him doing good to make up for the bad he did.”

  That night Alex wrote ASTRONAUT ALEXIS on her door.

  12

  ICARUS

  The next afternoon, Chuck told Alex about going to the Flying School. “Nobody was around,” he said. “The hangar was empty. I waited for the instructor. When he taxied up in the Piper Cub, I went over and talked to him. He told me the sound in the plane’s radio goes in and out. I said I was a student of radio, I’d fix it in exchange for a lesson. I’m going to take my tester and tools over tomorrow. If I fix it he says he’ll take me up.

  “He let me sit in the cockpit and work the yoke and everything. I could do a takeoff; you aim into the wind to do it. The big thing is, you’ve got to get the wind going over the wing fast enough to lift off. There’s an indicator that shows it. Coming down is easy—you just glide in like those balsa gliders we fool around with sometimes. You want to watch? Want to go over to the airport tomorrow instead of school?”

  “Sure,” said Alex, thinking about the new name on her door. Flight was flight. Ebbs said VB got started flying small planes.

  “Meet me in front of Doc’s Variety so they won’t know,” Chuck said.

  Jeep was waiting with Alex when Chuck drove up. “There’s an observation deck,” he said excitedly. “While I’m fixing the radio you can watch flights taking off and landing. Maybe he’ll let you come out and sit in the cockpit with me.”

  Chuck drove fast, talking about taking off and flying, gesturing as they raced to the airport. When they got there he left Alex and Jeep on the deck and ran over to the flight school’s dingy-looking Quonset hut. The Piper Cub was parked nearby.

  Chuck yelled something at the hangar door, then went to the plane and climbed in to work on the radio. A little while later he vaulted out, looked around, turned the prop slowly, waved to Alex, then swung himself back in. Alex got a bad feeling in her stomach as Chuck started working the Cub’s ailerons and swinging the tail. Suddenly he was out of the cockpit again checking the wheel chocks. He flipped the prop. There was smoke. The engine caught.

  “Hey, Chuck! Don’t do it!” Alex screamed as he kicked away the chocks and pitched himself back in. The plane started to roll. Alex could hardly breathe.

  The flight instructor rushed out yelling and waving his arms as the plane wobbled off, the sun catching it like a golden toy. Icarus, Alex thought as the plane straightened out and sped down the runway.

  Toward the end of the runway it slowed and lurched to the left, the wing scraping the pavement as Chuck tried to turn the plane around. He was going too fast. The plane skidded, ran through a patch of grass, bounced over a mound of earth, and splashed into the river.

  For a long moment there was a silence like sand falling, then pandemonium. Sirens went off. An air horn sounded stunning blasts. Alex raced down the stairs with Jeep close behind and ran as fast as she could to the end of the strip. By the time she got to the wreck emergency vehicles were on their way. They brought Chuck up, muddy and stumbling. Nobody noticed Alex until Chuck saw her and waved.

  “I’m OK, Alley!” he yelled, trying to look brave. He pantomimed holding a telephone and mouthed, “Ebbs.”

  “Who is he? Who are you?” an official demanded.

  Suddenly Alex was cool and professional. “I’m his sister,” she said. “He’s a student of flying. He’s learning it like Doctor von Braun. Please help me. I need a telephone.”

  She ended up in somebody’s office. The man got Ebbs on the line. As soon as Alex heard her friend’s voice her self-control dissolved. She began to sob so hard she could barely get out the news that Chuck had crashed a plane. “He—yes—he’s OK. He had a deal with the flying school pilot. For fixing his radio he was going to get a lesson, but, but he tried to take off himself and it went into the river. I told the people here he was just being like VB.”

  “I’ll be right over,” Ebbs said. “Have you called your father?”

  “No.”

  “I will,” said Ebbs.

  An hour later they were all crowded in the airport security office: Chuck in a corner looking sullen; the officer in charge and some of his people; Alex and Jeep; and the flight instructor, who was sputtering, “He stole it. He stole my airplane and wrecked it.” That was when Ebbs walked in.

  She looked around, then stared hard at the officer in charge. He recognized her. He mouthed the word “paperclip.”

  She nodded.

  Alex noticed and glanced at Chuck. He had noticed too.

  “I’m representing the boy’s parents,” she said.

  “This is a serious matter,” the officer began. “He maybe thinks it was a prank, but it’s really what the owner says—theft—not to mention violation of all sorts of federal flight regulations.”

  Ebbs spoke up in her army voice. “Perhaps there was a misunderstanding.” She turned to the flight instructor. “My young friend here was doing a radio repair on your aircraft when it happened, right? He was in the plane with your permission, correct? In exchange for his work he was to get a lesson—yes?”

  The man tried to speak, his lips working like a goldfish, but Ebbs kept talking and turned back to the officer in charge.

  “It could be attempted theft,” she continued in a respectful tone, “but it could be he was trying to give himself the lesson he’d earned: taxi down a little, brake, turn, and taxi back. But he got going too fast, couldn’t stop and turn, so he ran it into the river. Looked at that way, it’s reckless and careless—but not criminal.”

  The officer shook his head. “It’s a whole lot more than reckless and careless, Cap … ah, ma’am—an unlicensed person running an aircraft out on an active runway without tower clearance or anything—and what do you do about this man’s aircraft?”

  “We’ll take care of the repairs,” Ebbs replied evenly. “They’ve already pulled it out. I checked it before I came in. There’s damage to the wing and some struts and the wheel assembly, but nothing that can’t be fixed. We’ll cover it.”

  The airport security people talked things over. “We could charge you with criminal trespass,” the chief announced, glaring at Chuck, “but we’re not going to. We’ll give you the benefit of the doubt under the, ah, circumstances,” he said, glancing at Ebbs, “provided you satisfy the owner that you will pay for everything.”

  “Done,” said Ebbs, nodding to the instructor, who was already holding her check. “Right?”

  When it was over and they were standing outside, Ebbs turned to Chuck, her eyes narrowed, her voice low. “Mister, if you were in the army under my command, starting now you’d be in jail doing real hard duty.”

  Riding home, Chuck was blithe. “You know what, Alley? I really was trying to take off. I just wasn’t going fast enough. The airspeed indicator was still showing red when I got to the end of the runway. I tried to work the Cub’s brakes as I turned, but things were happening so fast I couldn’t. I wasn’t afraid, though. I had this great taste in my mouth—like when I swing on that fraying grapevine over the ravine and I’m hanging at the end of the pitch and I don’t know whether I’m going to snap and crash or make it back—and either way’s OK.”

  13

  THE SHOPLIFTER

  A few days after the plane crash Chuck showed Alex a sketch he’d made. “A catamaran,” he explained, “a boat that floats on pontoons. I got the idea at the toy store.” He lurched around
in the Moon Station to show how the boat would go. “They just got in a model airplane engine smaller than my palm. It weighs less than an egg. All of a sudden I saw it powering a radio-controlled boat.

  “I’ve figured out all the radio stuff. We’ll move the rudder with electromagnets activated by a radio signal. No gears or anything.

  “So here’s where you come in, Alley: you’re going to wind the magnets. You’re gonna take a medium-sized nail and wind it with a length of insulated wire to make a coil. When you run a current through it a magnetic field will set up and move the rudder. You with me?” Chuck asked, pointing to the drawing. Alex wasn’t. She didn’t understand how winding wire around a nail could move anything.

  “I figure we can make up a really neat package,” Chuck said, “something the Institute can sell by mail with the boat pieces precut, the engine and fuel tank just as they come from the store, navy decals and flags, and one of Rosy’s kits with the transmitter and receiver parts for the radio control. And your electromagnets.”

  Alex hadn’t yet wound a magnet that worked when she told Ebbs how Chuck had figured to guide the boat with them. Ebbs was impressed. “It’s like one of VB’s solutions,” she remarked. “Simple. He’d like that.”

  A week later Chuck showed up in Alex’s room with the motor. It was finned and shiny with a tiny porcelain glow plug screwed in at the top, CHAMPION written on it in minuscule red letters.

  Alex was still struggling with the electromagnets when Chuck said they should do a water trial. They went down to the creek. Chuck fixed the engine to the catamaran’s bridge, locked the rudder so the boat would go in wide circles, and got the engine going. It snarled like a buzz saw as it sent the boat zooming around until the fuel ran out. The exhaust stank.

  “We need more range,” Chuck muttered. “Another tank.”

  Alex had about given up winding magnets. She figured getting the tank was the one thing she could do to help. She knew where to find it. She and Jeep walked up to town. She slipped into the toy store without being noticed. The model airplane parts were kept behind the side counter. She bent down, trying to hide behind it as she reached for the tank.

  “Hey, kid! Get out of there!” the clerk yelled. “What-cha got in your hand?”

  As the man approached, Jeep’s ruff went up. He began to bark. The dog looked huge.

  The clerk picked up a stool and held it out to fend him off.

  Alex wanted to throw down the tank and run, but she couldn’t. She was frozen.

  The clerk’s face was fleshy and splotched with fury. There was a dark hairy bump in the center of his chin that bobbled when he spoke. Alex stared at the bump. The tank felt like it was burning in her hand.

  The manager was standing behind the clerk now.

  “What’s your name?” the manager demanded.

  Alex felt like she’d been hit in the stomach. She couldn’t get breath to yell “Sic!”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Alex,” she gasped.

  “Alex what?”

  “Ebbs,” she panted.

  “What’s your phone number?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The man looked up “Ebbs.” There was only one. A new listing. He called the number.

  “We’ve got your daughter here. Caught her stealing. Yeah, Alex. Her dog’s here too. We’ve been losing all kinds of stuff—engines, props, parts. OK, we’ll hold her.

  “You in a gang?” he demanded while they waited for Ebbs.

  “No.”

  Ebbs looked grim but she didn’t let on anything when she came in. Alex couldn’t hear much of what she said to the manager as she paid for the tank, but she saw her shake her head when the word “gang” came up.

  “If I ever see you in here again I’m calling the police,” the manager yelled as Ebbs led Alex out. Jeep jumped into the back of Ebbs’s old coupe and sank down small.

  “Did you do this for a thrill or to help Chuck?” Ebbs asked as they drove off.

  Alex didn’t answer. She felt too sick with shame to speak.

  “I think I know,” Ebbs said.

  14

  SAVING CHUCK

  “I’m gonna get you two straightened out right now or know the reason why,” Ebbs said. “First stop, the junkyard where you traded the spoons. The one on Seventh Avenue, right?”

  “Yes,” Alex answered. “But why are we going there? We never stole from him.”

  “Right. With him it was the other way around.”

  As they parked Alex pointed to the hairy keg of a man in grease-stained coveralls sprawled on a sofa in front of the office.

  “That’s Hector.”

  Hector recognized Alex, but there was something about Ebbs that made him squint through pig eyes as she strode up, hands on her hips.

  “You know this girl, right?” Ebbs demanded in her army voice.

  “Yessum,” the junk man said, slowly getting up.

  “Comes here with her brother, right?”

  “Yessum.”

  “Came here a while ago with some silver spoons, right?”

  “Dunno about that,” Hector mumbled vaguely. “Lots of stuff comes through …”

  “Stolen property,” Ebbs snapped. “I want ’em back or we’re going to the police.” She pulled out a five-dollar bill. “This will make you whole for that extinguisher.”

  They left with the spoons.

  “Now we’re gonna go see Chuck.”

  Alex put a finger to her lips as they entered the house and headed up the stairs. “I’m coming up with Ebbs,” she called softly when they got to the attic door.

  “Our invention,” Chuck said, smiling proudly as he pointed to the model.

  “Yeah,” said Ebbs as she opened her purse and pulled out the tank. “And here’s one of the parts. You send her out for it?”

  Chuck shot Alex a surprised look. “No.”

  “Well, she got caught trying to steal it for you—for that,” Ebbs said, pointing to the catamaran. “The motor must have cost a lot. You send her out for that?”

  Chuck’s eyes narrowed.

  “Did you?” Ebbs repeated.

  “No,” Chuck muttered. “I got it myself.”

  “Right. You stole it.”

  Chuck didn’t say anything.

  Ebbs picked up the catamaran and began turning it roughly in her big hands as if she might crush it. “You told me about the Institute needing new kits, so you’ve come up with one—but to do it you’ve been stealing from toy stores like some sort of Robin Hood.”

  Chuck stood silent.

  “Not that you’re all that noble,” Ebbs said as she laid out the spoons.

  They were standing in a tight circle, Ebbs towering over them as she stared at Chuck, waiting for him to say something.

  Chuck looked at her, unblinking, his head level.

  Jeep was panting, his tail between his legs as he looked from face to face.

  Chuck began speaking in a hollow voice. “Mother thinks I’m going to do big things.… At school they laugh at me.”

  “So you steal to get even?”

  Chuck’s face tightened. “Forget it, Ebbs. I’m a dud. That’s why they threw me out of Tech. I can’t do that stuff. It makes me crazy. The others think I’m dumb, and I guess I am, but I’m getting even. They can read and do math better than me, but I’m getting away with more than they ever dreamed of. And in the end when I get caught for something big I’ll jump off a bridge or take a fistful of pills or hang myself—I’ve thought it all out: I’ll do myself in.”

  Alex began to sob.

  Suddenly Ebbs was Captain Ebbs again, eyes glittering, chin set. “That sort of talk makes me furious,” she said. “What about everybody who has to clean up after you—the people who love you—your mother, your father, Alex? You kill yourself, their hurt lasts forever. You think talk like that’s brave? It’s cowardly, and I don’t think you’re a coward. Not being able to read fast and compute isn’t what got you thrown out. They s
ent you home for taking stuff—‘getting even,’ as you put it. And what’s that about? The students you stole from, the toy store owner—what did they ever do to you? And what about the other people like Alex you mess up in your wake? Worst of all, you’re stealing from yourself, poisoning your self-respect.”

  Chuck’s eyes went dull. “How did you find out?”

  “I wasn’t a CIC agent for nothing, Chuck. I did a little investigating, called the dean at Tech. I checked you guys out—that’s how I knew about Alex’s birthday.”

  Ebbs looked down at the model she was holding. She paused, seemed surprised to find it in her hands. “This thing,” she said slowly, “the person who dreamed this up is no dud. We need folks who can think things through to their hands. You’ve got a gift, Chuck. I know it, Alex knows, Rosy knows, and this boat you’ve built proves it. Plus, you care about some really important things. Most folks don’t, so they just slog along bored and not very useful. But you’ve got something precious,” she added in a gentler voice. “So please don’t go around risking it.”

  Chuck slumped and shook his head.

  Ebbs put down the model, stepped close to Chuck, and put her big hands on his shoulders. “A while ago you asked me to get you to some people who are working with radar. Play by my rules,” she said, gripping him hard and rocking him slowly back and forth as she spoke. “Play by my rules and I will.”

  Chuck shook himself free. “How?” he asked, his mouth twisted. “You said you didn’t work with radar.”

  “Something will come up. So starting now you’ve got to play by my rules—both of you.”

  “What rules?” Chuck asked, his voice half-strangled.