"No, everything's green."
He took a deep breath. "All right. Set the countdown sequencer back to T minus two minutes and go through it again. Maybe we've just got a loose connection. Tell the astronauts that we're recycling to T minus two—and counting!"
"Right!" The men scurried back to their consoles.
Mr. Amaro appeared at Mr. Gunnarson's elbow. "There's been some funny kind of disturbance around the pad—a couple of kids on motorcycles. . . ."
"Not now!" Mr. Gunnarson snapped. "We've got a bird loaded and ready to go. Like a live bomb out there!"
One instant Rolf was diving under the water to grab at Shep's sinking form, and the next instant he was standing in the middle of the Gremlin Hollow, dripping wet, with Shep beside him.
"What the—"
Shep shook himself, and a shower of water sprayed from his soaked fur. "Hey, wait, cut it out!" Rolf yelled, trying to protect himself with his hands.
He rubbed the water from his eyes and felt the hot Florida sun baking him dry. Then the air of the Hollow shimmered and Rita appeared, holding both their bicycles, looking rather surprised and troubled.
"Rolf, you're all right!"
"Yeah, sure . . . but . . ."
Suddenly the air about them was filled with fireflies, thousands of dancing lights that spun around their heads and settled to the ground. Wherever one of the sparkling lights touched down, it turned into a gremlin. And now the gremlins were laughing and dancing lightly, grabbing each other and whirling around, arm in arm. Baneen was dancing with La Demoiselle. O'Rigami was twirling with O'Kkane Baro.
Lugh appeared, and he was neither laughing nor dancing. Rolf had never seen the gremlin leader look more grim or more terrible. At the sight of their prince, the other gremlins stopped dancing and their laughter faded into silence.
"So!" said Lugh, looking up at Rolf and at the same time seeming to tower mountainously over him. "You'd trick a gremlin would you—you'd try to pull the wool over the eyes of Lugh of the Long Hand? Well, it's a short delay you'll find you'll have gained, in a moment—and a long time of sorrow to repent interfering with our departure! So, you bid me stop the launch by virtue of the Great Wish gained when you drew our Corkscrew from its case, did you? I suppose you'll not be shy about drawing the Corkscrew forth once more, just to show me while my eyes are on you, how the strength to do so is in you, and you alone?"
"I . . ."
"Ah, now, Lugh!" chattered Baneen, appearing beside Rolf with O'Rigami and the rest. "Sure, and it's a terrible hard thing to do, drawing the Great Corkscrew from its holding place. You wouldn't be requiring the lad to do it more than once, and that second time right on the heels of his first mighty effort. How much better to admit ourselves beaten—"
"SILENCE!" roared Lugh. Silence fell over the Hollow. "BOY, LET ME SEE YOU DRAW THE CORKSCREW FORTH!"
The Great Corkscrew, once more in its case, winked into existence in front of Rolf. Half-paralyzed by Lugh's voice, he reached out and took hold of it, pulling at it. And then, a strange thing began to happen . . .
In front of Rolf's eyes . . . in front of Lugh, himself . . . first Baneen, and then, one by one, O'Rigami, La Demoiselle, and O'Kkane Baro, along with other nameless gremlins, began once more to disappear into the glare and glitter of the case . . . and the Corkscrew once more came forth in Rolf's hand.
Lugh stared. For a second his jaw worked, but no sound came out. Then, incredulously, he spoke.
"What . . . what is this? MUTINY?"
Baneen and the others reappeared.
"Ah, Lugh, darling!" cried the little gremlin. "Sure, and we'd never go against your wishes, ordinarily. But it's fond of this world we are, to be sure, after all these thousands of years, and—"
"Silence!" thundered Lugh. "What kind of gremlins are you?"
"We are ze good gremlins!" cried La Demoiselle. "Eet ees because we are true gremlins zat we fight to stay on ze Earth!"
"FIGHT?" roared Lugh. "Well the lot of you know that it's myself alone—" he shook one knobby fist, "is more than a match for all of you put together. What, must I take you all up under my arm and carry you back to Gremla by force? If so be it, I will—"
He began to roll up his sleeves.
"Wait!" shouted Rolf. Lugh paused and looked at him. "Wait," Rolf said again, more quietly. "This is my fault, but somebody's got to tell you you're wrong—"
"Silence, human!" rumbled Lugh ominously, continuing to roll up his sleeves.
"I'm not going to be silent," said Rolf. "You're just like I was—"
Lugh paused in rolling his sleeves, and stared at Rolf in astonishment.
"I?" he said. "Lugh of the Long Hand, like a mere human-lad?"
"That's right," said Rolf, determined now to get the words said, no matter how Lugh would react to them. "I kept trying to make my parents be the way I wanted them, in spite of the fact that they had other responsibilities. And you've been trying to turn Earth into another Gremla—into Gremla all over again, with the drawing of the Great Corkscrew and someone being king, and all that—and now that it hasn't worked, you're going to run away, back to Gremla and Hamrod the Heartless. Even Hamrod's better than admitting you were wrong!"
Lugh's ears rotated slowly, twice.
"Do I hear what I think I hear?" he muttered. "A human, saying such to me?"
"It's time somebody said it to you!" Rolf shouted. "None of the other gremlins want to go back to Hamrod. They've come to love Earth—and so have you, only you won't admit it! If you'd admit it to yourself, you'd be willing to work with humans, even if none of them has a big enough soul to draw the Great Corkscrew from its case without help, any more than there's any gremlin who can. Can you pull the Great Corkscrew loose by yourself? Of course not! So what makes you the one to decide whether all the gremlins on Earth have to go back to Gremla?"
Lugh began to swell . . . his actual body began to enlarge until he seemed to be growing to twice his normal size. As for his aura, that large impression that hovered over him at all times, it grew and grew until it seemed as large as a mountain. He spoke—and his voice was so deep that it seemed to come from the bowels of the earth and shake the very Hollow around them like an earthquake.
"L I G H T N I N G!" said Lugh, in that awful voice.
Suddenly the sky was black with clouds over their heads. A roll of thunder rumbled, echoing the sound of Lugh's voice and a jagged spear of lightning shot down from the clouds and was caught, still jagged and so bright none of them could look at it, in Lugh's right hand.
He poised the shaft of lightning, aiming it toward Rolf.
"B O Y!" he said. "A D M I T Y O U L I E!"
Wincing away from the blinding glare of the lightning shaft burning in Lugh's hand, Rolf shook his head stubbornly.
"No!" he cried. "I'm right! You're the one who's wrong!"
For a moment there was a terrible hush in the Hollow. Lugh stood still. Then he lifted his arm.
Suddenly the lightning shaft flew from his hand back up to the clouds. The clouds themselves rolled up and disappeared. Bright sunshine poured down again on them all; and a great sigh of relief went up from thousands of gremlin throats.
"Ah, sure, your honor!" piped the voice of Baneen. "And wasn't it yourself said that if you could find a human who cared more for another creature than himself, you'd give that human the Great Wish? And haven't we here a lad who today risked everything, his own life included, for that of his faithful dog—and sure, if a dog's not a creature now, what is?"
Lugh stared fiercely at Baneen, and then at Rolf, and then off into the distance.
"Quick, lad!" whispered Baneen in Rolf's ear. "Make your wish—now!"
"I wish," said Rolf, rapidly, "that gremlins would work with humans from now on to clean up the world and keep it clean and safe!"
"There, Lugh, darling!" cried Baneen, dancing in front of the gremlin prince. "It was yourself heard his wish. Do you grant it, now?"
Lugh glared at Baneen and turned to
glare again at Rolf.
"Harrumph!" he growled, deep in his throat. "Rahumpf! HAHR-rumphff . . . all right!"
He turned and stalked off. The gremlins in the Hollow burst into wild cheering.
Abruptly, the ground shook. The air vibrated as if some giant's breath were roaring across the world. And off in the distance, as wave after wave of thunder rolled across the Hollow, they all saw the Mars rocket lifting up, up, climbing straight into the cloudless blue sky on a tongue of sheer flame.
"A beautifur feat of engineering," Rolf heard O'Rigami say.
The Mars rocket climbed higher, the roar of its mighty engines diminished. It became a distant speck, then a bright, fast-moving star shining in the morning sky. Then it got so far away that none of them could see it any longer.
Rolf felt as if he wanted to cheer, but it was all too magnificent and overpowering for something as small as one human voice. But it really did not matter. The gremlins were all cheering, for him. Rita was trying to hug him. The gremlins nearby were trying to hug him. Mr. Sheperton was standing on his hind legs, trying to lick Rolf's face. It was all sort of a wonderful mess.
13
" . . . Crazy, the whole business," said Rolf's father, thoughtfully. "Absolutely crazy! On the other hand, does it matter? The bird got off all right, with only that short two-minute hold at the last minute—"
"What caused that?" asked Rolf's mother. "You didn't tell me."
"One of those one-in-a-million things," Rolf's father dismissed the hold with a wave of his hand. "A loose connection in the ignition wiring. When we recycled and tried again, the light was white and there was no evidence that it had ever been anything else. But I'm not talking about that. . . ."
Rolf fidgeted in his chair at the breakfast table. Rita, he knew, would be waiting at her place for him, by this time, but he dared not call attention to himself by leaving the table. His father, like most generally easygoing men, had one or two crotchets. One of them was that the whole family should be together at the breakfast table.
" . . . We never see each other the rest of the time," he was in the habit of saying. "The least we can do is sit down and have a decent breakfast together before the day starts."
All of which, of course, did not mean that Rolf could not leave the table—but he would bother his father by doing so, and his father's reaction, when bothered, was suddenly to start remembering all the questions he normally did not get around to asking Rolf, such as where he was all day yesterday, and why didn't he use his dependent's pass to watch the rocket launch, and what had he been doing lately anyway? Rolf could lose more time than he would just sitting and waiting for his father to remember it was time to go to the office.
" . . . Almost enough to make you believe in gremlins," his father was saying.
"Gremlins?" Rolf's mother asked, trying to get a spoonful of applesauce into the baby without half of it going on to the flowered bib around the baby's neck.
"Gremlins—imaginary little troublemakers that are always keeping things from working right," said Rolf's Dad with another wave. "Someone dreamed them up during World War II, I think. I didn't mean it seriously about believing in them. Not that there aren't all kinds of things . . ."
His mind wandered.
"What things, dear?" asked Rolf's mother, wiping the baby's chin with the bib.
"Well, that business the guards reported about some people on motorcycles running all over the place."
"Did they find them?" Rolf's mother asked. "The checkout girl in the supermarket was saying . . ."
Rolf's dad snorted. He sounded almost like Shep.
"I've heard the rumors!" he said. "Bicycles riding at a hundred ninety miles an hour up one side of the VAB and down the other? Bicycles bouncing all over the Press Stand? Ridiculous. Besides, if there was anyone actually involved in something like that, how would they have gotten out of the Space Center, with every security man and car on duty looking for them?
"Well, at least everything's A-okay with the spacecraft. The astronauts have been reporting that everything's working absolutely perfectly. No gremlins aboard the spacecraft!"
Rolf struggled to keep a straight face.
Mr. Gunnarson sneezed.
"Are you catching a cold?" demanded Rolf's mother, looking suddenly at him.
"No . . . no, I don't think so," said Rolf's father. "Just thinking about that sneezing fit everybody had out at the launch a minute or two after the hold was called. No one knows about that either. There's a notion that some unusual cloud of pollen blew in about that time. Well, there you are. Things all over the place not making sense—"
He gestured at the newspaper he had just laid down.
"Half a dozen U.S. senators opposed to the Wildlife Reclamation bill got caught in an elevator that stuck between floors and missed their chance to vote against the bill. It passed," he said. "Some boat owner who'd been sneaking people into the Playalinda Beach area to watch launches ran it up on the beach there and was stranded. Got caught. Claimed he was going into a canal a friend of his had made months before—only somebody had moved the canal. Nonsense! Actually, he'd missed the canal entrance by a good fifty yards. Must have been blind. Then, here, it says that it looks as if the Space Program's going to get a financial shot in the arm so that the Space Lab can get to work on wider-ranging studies of how to combat air pollution and topsoil erosion while surveying for more deposits of natural resources."
"Wasn't the Space Lab doing a lot of that sort of thing anyway?" Rolf's mother asked, lifting Rolf's baby sister out of her highchair.
"Of course. Amazing how few people seemed to know about it though," Rolf's dad answered. "Still, this is going to make that part of the work here a lot more important. Which reminds me—the surprise I mentioned I'd have for you after the launch. I've been asked if I want to shift into this new ecological study work."
"You?" said Rolf, staring at him.
"Yes. It's been a pet project of mine for some time. I didn't want to say anything to you both because I wasn't sure it could be pushed through. But it's all set now. I'd be Engineering Director for it," said Mr. Gunnarson, thoughtfully. "It means I'd have to go running off on trips to various parts of the world from time to time, but maybe we could tie some of those trips in with family vacations."
"Why, I think it's marvelous!" said Rolf's mother. "Why didn't you tell me until now?"
"Well, you were asleep when I came in at four a.m. after we got the launch wrapped up," said Rolf's father. "Besides, the only time this family ever gets together is at breakfast, and I thought we'd all talk about it together."
He looked at Rolf, who was staring back at him.
"What do you think, Rolf?" he asked. Rolf gulped.
"Cool!" he said, hastily, getting up from the table. "But I've got to go now. Rita's waiting for me."
"Rita. That's nice," said his mother. "I'm so glad to see you spending some time with your friends for a change."
"By the way, you didn't ask me for a dependent's pass to the launch," said Rolf's father. "Where were you yesterday?"
"Oh, just around," said Rolf, halfway out the door.
"And come to think of it," said his father, "weren't you asking about a ten-speed bike back there a week or so ago?"
"Uh . . . well," Rolf edged back toward the kitchen door. "I guess my old three-speed is fast enough, Dad. Really."
"But . . ."
"I've got to go!" Rolf slipped out the kitchen door and paused only briefly in the hall to grab a towel from the linen closet.
"Where are you going, dear?" called his mother.
"Swimming! Down at the pool!" Rolf shouted back, stepping out the back door. His bike was waiting there with his bathing suit already in the rattrap. He added the towel to it and climbed on. Wait, he thought, until I tell Rita. . . .
"I thought—" A shadow that was his dad's face spoke to him through the curtains of the half-open kitchen window, "you said you couldn't swim because your leg bothered you—"
<
br /> "Oh, my leg's fine!" Rolf called back. "It's been fine for weeks. See you!"
He cycled off.
"That boy . . ." he heard his father beginning behind him; but the rest of the words were left behind. Rolf wheeled down the street in the morning sunlight; and for a second his father's words about the new job and family vacation came back to him. His father—of all people! He felt sharply uncomfortable for a second, thinking how he had misjudged his dad. Then, the uncomfortableness was washed away by the thought of the trips. It really would be cool zipping around the world. Wait until he told Rita, and the other kids at school. He would have to ask Baneen how to go about finding the local gremlins in other places, once he got there. He wondered if the dogs in Spain or Japan spoke Spanish or Japanese, or whether he would be able to understand them the way he was still able to understand Shep. . . .
No point in letting the fact that he could see gremlins and talk to animals go to waste.
HOUR OF THE HORDE
1
It had happened again. That primitive, unconquerable power in him that he could not seem to deny had reached out once more, savagely, down the muscles of his good arm and hand, to take over his painting.
Exhausted, Miles Vander threw the number four brush he held, now bloodily tipped with alizarine red, back into the pint fruit jar of muddy turpentine holding the other long, yellow-handled brushes. A feeling of dull exhaustion and frustration dropped on him like the doubled folds of some heavy blanket.
All at once he was aware again of his own starved-looking body, his bent shoulders, his uselessly hanging left arm that polio had crippled six years ago. The paralyzed hand was now tucked into his left pants' pocket, out of sight, and the loose sleeve of his white shirt, billowing about the wasted arm in the late sunlight of the warm spring afternoon, disguised for the moment its unnatural thinness. But he was suddenly, grimly, once more aware of it just the same.
For a few hours, caught up in his painting, he had forgotten both his crippling and the stubborn artistic search he had never stopped these last five years. Now emptied and worn-out, he stood with the aftertaste of one more failure, staring at his canvas, as the freshening breeze of the late afternoon blew the white shirt coldly about him, molding it to his cooling body.
Hour of the Gremlins Page 11