Racing the Moon

by Alan Armstrong

  “That’s it? Them?” the chief asked, incredulous.

  “Like I told you, these kids landed here by accident,” the captain repeated. “Now you’ve got to get ’em out of here.”

  “Get ’em to where?” the agent asked disgustedly.

  “To TJ’s,” Alex said. “Call him. He lives at Jester’s Used Books, Jesters and Main, Chincoteague.”

  Alex and Chuck stood with von Braun while the agent called and got directions from TJ, then waited and started speaking with someone else. They could hear a deep woman’s voice as the agent began stammering, “Yessum. Yessum. Yessum.”

  “Ask if Captain Ebbs is there,” von Braun ordered.

  The agent jerked around, disconcerted to hear von Braun’s heavy accent.

  “Captain Ebbs,” von Braun repeated. “Is she there?”

  “Are you Captain Ebbs?” the agent asked the woman on the line.

  She was.

  “Give me the telephone,” said von Braun.

  He spoke in German for a moment. There was no reading his face, but when he handed back the phone he said, “I go along.”

  “Thank you for dinner and all, Captain,” Alex said politely as they got into the launch. “And please tell the contractor thank you for the binoculars.”

  The captain said nothing, sighing and shaking his head as he turned away.

  “How come the new rocket is so small?” Chuck asked von Braun as they rode in the boat. “The V-2 with you and Ebbs in the picture is bigger.”

  “A lot of space in the V-2 was for the fuel,” von Braun explained, “alcohol and the oxidizer. This one runs on something new. Its range is less, but the payload—that’s the big thing—it is almost the same.”

  “What’s payload?” Alex asked.

  “The weight of the bomb in the nose,” von Braun replied, “or, better, what may someday be your space travel capsule, Astronaut Alexis. So now you two have classified information,” he said with a strange smile, “so if the spies get you and torture you, you’ll have to tell them what I just told you. But they won’t bother. Do you know why? Because they already know,” he said, glancing in the direction of the FBI men, who were listening as hard as they could.

  “The milk-and-egg lady who comes over to Wallops every other day,” von Braun explained, “she’s in their pay, as are ten or twelve other people on Chincoteague.”

  Chuck let out a silent whistle of amazement as he caught Alex’s eye.

  A government car met the FBI launch. Minutes later, the five federal agents accompanying Jeep, Alex, Chuck, and von Braun showed up at Jester’s Used Books.

  Ebbs and Pete, along with TJ and his mother, were waiting outside. Ebbs opened the car door for her old friend.

  “He said you sent them,” von Braun said as he climbed out.

  “Absolutely not!” Ebbs said, glaring at Chuck. “I wrote you about him, but this, he—and Alex—did all on their own. I didn’t even know you’d be there.”

  Von Braun looked at Alex and nodded. “Astronaut Alexis is a most intrepid young lady,” he said. “So now, Captain Ebbs, explain how it is we get to rendezvous here tonight. I have heard their account; now I want to hear yours.”

  Ebbs described their trip down the Potomac and out to Tangier. “After lunch they took off to explore the island,” she continued. “When I heard the Captain Sam’s whistle and they weren’t around, I figured what they’d done, so my friend Pete and I hustled over to the mainland and started looking for them. No trouble tracking them: ‘Older boy and his sister with a brown dog? Yeah, I seed ’em, watched ’em hitching,’ the candy and sundries-store lady told us. ‘Jester boy picked ’em up in his tomato truck.’ We went to the Jesters’ and met the boy—that’s him over there—and he took us out to where he’d dropped them. Nothing to see there. On the way back we stopped at Cousin Marge’s café. Right off Marge began to blow: ‘Oh, they was here all right. Fed their dog on the floor, didn’t leave no tip, and then they stoled Mr. Brownlowe’s boat. De-linquents!’

  “There was nothing for us to do but come back here to the Jesters’ and wait—and watch. There’s no civilian telephoning out there. I figured Alex would get them back here safe sooner or later.”

  Alex rocked back a little hearing that, but she knew it was true.

  “We saw the sky light up,” Ebbs continued, “then your rocket went streaking across like a white-hot pencil. What seemed a long time later we heard the roar. The Jester boy told us he’d invited them to dinner—and here they are.”

  “Ach!” Von Braun snorted.

  The agents started to leave.

  “No,” said von Braun. “Wait here. In a few minutes you must take me back.”

  The chief gave him a sour look.

  As everybody moved toward the bookshop door, TJ cornered his new friends.

  “You got on Wallops and stood there where they did the launch, then got the FBI to haul you back here in army clothes with no jail or fine or nothing, and they gave you those binoculars?” he whispered, shaking his head. “Wow!”

  “Chuck saved the launch,” Alex said. “It wouldn’t have gone up if he hadn’t told them how to fix it.”

  Once they were all inside, von Braun turned to Ebbs. “What are you going to do with these two? She has school she must finish,” he said, pointing to Alex. “But Charles—what do you do with him?”

  “Let me work for you,” Chuck said. “Give me a job.”

  Von Braun pursed his lips. “Why did you do this?” he asked, almost as if he hadn’t heard.

  Chuck took a deep breath. “Because during the war we hid in the basement shelter from what you were going to drop on us like you did to London. I wanted to be able to see what was coming—see better than what the searchlights could pick up. When I started learning about radar I figured that was it. I came here because I wanted to see the dishes, see how they worked, see the rockets you’re making.”

  He stopped, his face flushed. Alex and Jeep stood tensed.

  Von Braun took it in unblinking.

  “You are a boy with clever hands,” he said finally. “During the war we hear stories about boys like you. If an American jeep breaks, the driver jumps out and tinkers around until he fixes it, sometimes with something he makes out of what he’s got in his pocket or a bit of wire or a tin can he finds by the road.

  “With us, it is different, or it was. Work was done by class. The driver was of a higher class than the mechanic, so when his machine failed someone from the repair depot was summoned. I was often scolded by my superiors for getting my hands dirty.

  “Your American rocket genius—Goddard—he was a tinkerer too, but he was also professor of physics. You, Charles, you are just a tinkerer, no?”

  Chuck stared at him.

  “You have talent I can use,” von Braun continued slowly, thoughtfully, “an inventor’s energy, but what about your schooling? Ebbs says you are not technically trained beyond what you have taught yourself about radio. With us, every person on the shop floor must be able to read plans and do calculations. Nothing ever gets built exactly to plan. You have to be able to do the math to make things fit.

  “You are ignorant and you are dangerous. You would tickle the porcupine—never mind the danger to yourself, but what about everyone around? What about her?” he asked, pointing to Alex.

  “A fearless man is a more dangerous comrade than a coward,” he said grimly. “You have scars, but you have not learned the lessons of those scars. Sneaking onto Wallops—you could have got shot, you and Alexis too, yes? And then what next gets into your head?”

  Alex could see the muscles working in Chuck’s face.

  “Give me my chance and you’ll see,” Chuck said in a strangled voice. “I’ll prove myself. You need me. I don’t have to read plans. I can figure things out on my own. I can fix things, find stuff for you, and then you can send me up in the man-carrying rocket I’ve been reading about.”

  “What if you crashed or couldn’t bail out, just kept goi
ng?” von Braun asked.

  “That’s OK,” Chuck said eagerly. “Especially the keeping going part. I’d get to see it all!”

  Alex caught her breath. It was like what she remembered from Captain Smith: I wanted to get out of bounds, escape the gravity of the known world.

  “It is the answer I expected from you,” von Braun said after a pause. “You are impulsive, reckless. It is a virtue in this work to be hungry for risks—they are everywhere. You cannot teach someone that hunger; it is like telling a timid man how to cross the river on a narrow log. He takes one step and falls in, while the reckless one skips across. But you need the discipline of training, Charles, and the discipline of restraint. With you it is all living on the edge, everything made up as you go along, test after test for the thrill of it—climbing towers, stealing airplanes, sneaking into the highest-security zone. Real work does not burn so hot, so fast. How can you slow yourself down?”

  Alex watched to see what Chuck would say. He didn’t say anything.

  “Let me see if I can get him ready for you,” Ebbs said quietly. “He reminds me of the young German rocketeer I heard about who borrowed airplanes as a teenager and went all over looking into things he was not supposed to see. His father could do nothing with him—they hardly spoke—but then someone took him in hand and turned him around. Perhaps you could do as much for this one.”

  Von Braun smiled grimly. “We will talk,” he said.

  “He can do anything,” Alex said. “Anything! Just show him and watch!”

  Von Braun shook his head. “Alexis, there is a big difference between his doing anything—the anything that comes into his head—and his doing the something I need done, which he would probably find boring after his experiences so far. Can you—can anyone—make him do only what he is ordered? Anyway, now I must go back and face those who will hold me responsible for this breach of security. There are many who would like to see me far away from their rocket projects. In Germany I never had such a thing happen—but I had no Charles there either.”

  He stood at the door. “I make no promises, Captain Ebbs. We will talk later. Now I must go back before I lose my Cinderella coachmen and their lovely yacht,” he said, pointing to the FBI men.

  To Alex they looked like they’d been eating lemons.

  26

  TJ

  TJ’s mother made an omelet with a lot of tomatoes and onions. They all sat around her kitchen table and listened to Chuck and Alex tell about sneaking onto Wallops.

  Jeep barked frantically when Alex jumped up and started marching and singing again to show what they’d done. He’d had enough.

  “You two are just plum lucky you didn’t get shot,” Mrs. Jester opined. “From all we hear, folks out there are real touchy, but then you don’t exactly look like spies, and I reckon they was too busy to notice much, getting ready for the launch. Guess you brought ’em luck—the last three fizzled.”

  Chuck smiled. “I told VB how to fix the rocket.”

  “Go on!” TJ said, laughing.

  “It’s true,” Alex said. “Chuck told him to cut the line while the rocket sat live on the launchpad, and VB said he’d been thinking the same thing, so that’s what they did.”

  TJ’s mother made up beds for Pete and Ebbs. She got out stuff for Chuck and Alex to sleep on the floor in TJ’s room.

  “Oh no, no dogs,” she said when Alex asked for some rags for Jeep. “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.”

  “Then I’m sleeping outside with him,” Alex announced. Mrs. Jester relented.

  Alex didn’t stir until she smelled coffee and bacon. Only after she’d pushed all the bedding aside did Jeep move, starting with a languid rolling-over. A great shake followed to clear himself of fleas.

  Over breakfast Alex got Ebbs to tell TJ about the T she’d described in her version of Smith’s journal. Ebbs agreed that Alex’s new friend looked a lot like the boy standing beside Smith in the portrait.

  After TJ did his tomato run, with Alex helping, TJ took her to see the headstone. It was weathered and lichened over. Alex thought if you didn’t know what you were looking for, it would look like an ordinary stone. The only singular thing about it was how it sort of stood up on end. She couldn’t make out anything until TJ took her hand and guided her finger along the outline of the letter.

  “Oh yeah!” she said.

  After they got back to the bookshop, Ebbs said TJ should come up and see Smith’s portrait as soon as tomato-hauling season was over. She said she’d cover his bus fare and put him up, seeing as how he was likely close to being kin.

  “There’s no point our going back to Tangier,” she said. “Pete will take the Captain Sam over. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas we’ll sail the No Name back up to Washington. What’s important now is getting Chuck in a program for VB, so tomorrow morning we’ll catch the bus home.”

  It was a little tricky getting Jeep on the bus. Company policy didn’t allow for pets, just service animals, but Chuck made up some story about Jeep’s name and his war service, so they got him aboard.

  “Focus is the big thing,” Ebbs told Chuck as they rode north.

  “He’s focused when I read aloud to him,” Alex said. “He doesn’t have any problem following then. Maybe if you taught him by talking to him it would work.”

  Ebbs looked thoughtful. “Worth a try,” she said.

  Alex listened, half dozing, as Chuck and Ebbs talked over their plans. The land outside the bus window flashed by like sheets of colored paper, flat field after flat field, soybeans and corn, sometimes alfalfa, an occasional grain silo, now and then a long chicken shed. Ebbs’s attention was on Chuck now, but it didn’t bother Alex as it had before. She’s getting him going, saving him, she thought, counting the telephone poles. I figured he’d take her over, but she’s taking him over. It’s not all on me anymore. And TJ’s coming!

  “We’re going to start with your writing,” Ebbs was saying. “Benjamin Franklin learned to be a good writer because he had to write real slow as he set type in his print shop, one letter at a time. You don’t jump around in your head doing that, so our program for you is going to be Franklin’s making one letter at a time.”

  They ate the bag lunches Mrs. Jester had prepared as they skirted water, a finger of the bay Alex remembered from studying the maps. But she didn’t want to check with Ebbs and interrupt her telling Chuck about the program. Alex saw possibilities for herself if she could attend some of the sessions.

  “For math we’re gonna start with the basics,” Ebbs was saying. “I’ve got a box of sugar cubes we’re going to work with, so you can see and feel what we’re doing as we stack them and move ’em around, adding, dividing, multiplying. Then we’ll cut a strip of paper into like pieces—fractions. You’re going to see right off how numbers fit together—that they’re really all just bits and pieces you can see and move around. You said with radio if you can see it you can do it. It’ll be the same with math.”

  Chuck looked dubious.

  “You’re gonna like it,” Ebbs insisted. “I’m going to get the music of math into your head. It’s all rhythm, getting the numbers to dance. They want to dance. Once you start hearing their music you’ll be charmed. First thing in the morning for half an hour before I go to work you’re going to come up to my house for a talking math lesson like Alex suggested. Then when I get home we’ll do a half-hour talking review. In between times, you’re going to go to that new vocational school in town. I called. You’re enrolled: an early Christmas present!”

  “Holy cow, Ebbs!”

  “Hold on,” she said. “I’m not done yet. You know why they hang the carrot in front of the donkey’s nose?”

  “Yeah, to keep him going.”

  “That’s part of it. The other part is to keep him from snatching at grass by the side of the road—getting diverted.” She paused.

  “So what’s my carrot?” Chuck asked.

  “Flight lessons. Saturdays we’ll go out to the field at Rockville.
A friend of mine from Paperclip days has an old Piper Cub—the two-seater J-type they trained army pilots on during the war. You do your part during the week—with no escapades—you get a carrot. Deal?”

  “Deal!” said Chuck.

  “What about me?” Alex demanded. “There’s gotta be something in all this for me.”

  “Like what?” Ebbs asked.

  “Flight lessons.”

  “They don’t do them for kids,” Chuck said.

  “I’m not a kid anymore,” Alex said, glowering. “I’m an astronaut in training. VB said so.”

  “I’ll talk to my friend,” Ebbs said. “We’ll work out something.”

  That night, at home around the dinner table, Chuck asked, “Why is she doing all this for us?”

  “Because you and Alex have become her family,” Stuart replied. “She loves you.”

  Chuck started going up to Ebbs’s every morning for Focus and Drill and every afternoon for review. He told Alex how Ebbs was talking him through numbers and holding his hand to shape his letters. Alex felt left out. Ebbs had no time for her now, and she and Chuck spent less and less time in the Moon Station. Alex saw what was coming.

  The big consolation was that every Saturday she went with Ebbs and Chuck out to Rockville for a flying lesson. She had to sit on a pillow to manage the controls, and she couldn’t solo, but she was learning to fly. The instructor said there was no question about it, she’d get her junior license the day she turned fourteen. Just like VB, Alex thought.

  A week before Labor Day, Ebbs sent TJ money for a bus ticket to Washington. She took off work so she and Alex could meet his bus and drive him around Washington, showing him the Capitol high on its hill, the White House sitting in its great expanse of green lawn, the Lincoln Memorial out by the river. TJ was handsomer than Alex had remembered, and taller. He limped a little. “New shoes,” he explained when Alex asked why. “Mom made me get ’em.”

  The thing he most wanted to see was the Moon Station, so as soon as they got to Alex’s, she sent him up the slats. He almost fell when the screecher went off. That weekend TJ and Alex spent most of their time up there. Jeep insisted on going up with them. After being on the No Name, he was steady on his feet in the Station now.