The air crackled with static and then a voice that sounded as if it came from a badly tuned radio station. “Hey, Mouse. You brought your friends.”
“Are you real?” Jenna said, alongside Mouse.
The spaceman hovered closer. “I sure hope so. What about you?”
Jenna looked at Mouse who said, “They’re real. This is Jenna and that’s Freddie.”
The spaceman held out a massive hand towards Jenna. Freddie felt a surge of panic as she took his hand, afraid he might fly off with her. Instead there came a crackling sound that might have been laughter. “Well, I’m pleased as pie to meet you Jenna,” he said, letting go her hand and reaching towards Freddie. “And you too, Fred.”
Half-afraid, but not wanting to show it, Freddie stepped forward and shook his hand then stared up at the dark visor that hid the spaceman’s face. “What’s your name?” he asked, his voice barely audible in the still air.
“Captain Paul,” the spaceman said.
“You’re American.” Freddie pointed to the small flag stitched to the spacesuit.
“Yes. I was. I am.”
“How did you get here?”
“In a rocket, I bet,” Jenna said. “That’s how spacemen travel, right?”
The spaceman was silent a moment, as if thinking. He turned slightly in the air, his legs hanging like the thick pale roots of a strange tree. “A rocket, yes. A Saturn Five, a real beaut.”
“Can we see it?” Jenna said.
“Sure. Why not?” He moved out over the edge of the crag, then raised an arm, pointing towards the haze on the horizon. “Keep your eyes peeled.”
The kids moved closer to the edge. Freddie felt Jenna’s fingers touch his and close around them. He peered intently at the blur of shimmering heat, his gaze shifting first to the left, towards the North Devon coast, then right towards Carmarthen Bay. The sea lay below them like the surface of a vast mirror, reflecting an unbelievably blue but empty sky. There has to be something, he told himself. Something to show that this is real. Jenna’s grip tightened around his fist and Mouse cried out, “There!”
He followed Mouse’s finger and even before he saw it he heard Jenna exclaim, “Oh my God!”
Something climbed up out of the haze, leaving a long white tail in its wake. At first, the distant jet-stream was all they could see but as they watched it grew larger and they began to make out a slim column of fire ahead of the white stream. Freddie’s breath caught as he realised it was arcing towards the Head. Over the next few minutes he began to make out a structure atop the pillar of flame. White and tall, its edges sharply defined as it cut like a knife through the fabric of the sky. Its distant roar a drawn out peel of thunder as it sped towards them. At its nearest, they could make out the main body of the rocket and a long thin needle shape thrusting out from it. Just as he thought it was going to pass right over them it banked to the left and began to climb steeply, almost vertically into the sky. Freddie called out but his words were lost in the hurricane roar of its powerful engines. He stared after it, watching it diminish and fade in the upper atmosphere. For a long time he stood watching the silent, empty sky, until he heard a voice calling his name.
“Freddie.” It was Mouse, tugging at his arm. “He’s gone.”
Turning, he saw Jenna sitting on the grass. She looked as lost and bewildered as he felt. The sun was low over the sea, throwing red patterns across its surface. He wondered how much time had passed.
“We gotta go,” Mouse said. “The tide.”
“What happened?” Freddie wanted to know. “Where did he go?”
Mouse shrugged. “I dunno. He does that.”
Freddie spoke to Jenna. “Are you all right?”
“You saw it?” she said, subdued. “It was real?”
“I guess. We have to go now.”
She got to her feet. “Where’s he gone, Mouse? Will he come back?”
“Yeah. If we come, I think he will. “
“Why’s he here?”
Mouse shrugged. “I think he’s lost.”
*
Freddie didn’t sleep much that night. He couldn’t get the spaceman out of his head. He knew that what he had seen was impossible, totally unreal and yet, Jenna had seen it too. This confused him even more than if she hadn’t been there, made it harder to accept. He felt that some rule had been broken, as if her presence there, her witnessing what he had seen, had severed the link to reality that had always allowed him to enter into Mouse’s hidden world. What would it mean if that connection were no longer there?
He kept going over what had happened, trying to find something wrong, some false note to suggest that maybe he had dreamed it all. Yet it remained vivid and real in his mind, as strong then as it had been that afternoon out on the Worm. Like the best dream you could ever have, one from which you’d never want to wake.
The next day dragged by. He couldn’t pay attention in class. His mind spun with thoughts of the spaceman and he knew that as much as Mouse or Jenna, he wanted Captain Paul to be real. He wondered why he had come to Rhossili and what his mission was, and he tried to picture the inside of his rocket and what it would be like to travel through outer space. At lunch break he went searching for Jenna. She’d dreamed about the spaceman too, that she was with him on the moon. This troubled Freddie, brought all his doubts back to the surface.
“So did I,” he said. “Maybe that’s what it was.”
Jenna frowned. “What do you mean?”
“We both dreamed about him. Maybe that’s all it was.”
“You were there, Freddie. We touched him.”
“Right,” he said, not sure how this confirmation made him feel.
Mouse was waiting at his front gate when he got home. He changed quickly and they called for Jenna. The sky began to cloud over and the afternoon grew chill. They hurried down the rocks, across to the island, each of them lost in their own thoughts. How cool it would be, Freddie thought, if Captain Paul really did exist, yet he remained wary, uncertain as to what that would mean. His excitement grew as they crossed over Devil’s Bridge and Jenna raced eagerly ahead. They chased after her and clambered breathlessly up the rocky crag to the grass-covered summit. Jenna lay stretched out on the grass, staring up at the grey, swollen clouds. Freddie and Mouse plopped down either side of her and they waited for Captain Paul to show.
Minutes passed. Freddie sat up and looked around the summit. Nothing had changed. The sky was still the same ordinary Welsh sky hanging gloomily over the sea. Feeling restless, he stood up. “Where is he, Mouse?”
“He’ll come,” Mouse said. He got up and walked to the edge of the Head and scanned the rocks below. “He’s got a mission,” he said, half to himself. “He needs our help.”
“Help with what?” Freddie asked.
Jenna continued to look up at the sky as if searching for a sign in the clouds. “Maybe he’s lost,” she suggested. “I mean, rockets go to the moon or to Mars, not to Wales. Maybe he’s searching for something.”
“That’s it,” Mouse said, excited. “And he needs us to help him. That’s why he came here.”
“Well.” Freddie was doubtful. “Not much help we can give if he’s not here.” He still wanted the spaceman to show but was already resigning himself to the impossibility of it all.
Mouse started calling out and Jenna joined in, while Freddie stood by, awkward and confused. “Captain Paul, Captain Paul,” they cried out, their voices shrill and desperate in the grey sultry afternoon. Nothing changed—he didn’t appear. After a while, they both sank to the ground, despondent.
“He’s not coming,” Freddie said, bluntly, trying to hide his own disappointment.
“Damn!” Mouse said, gazing at the horizon. “He will come.”
“You didn’t help, Freddie,” Jenna said, with a look that suggested he’d let her down. “You act like you don’t want him to come back.”
“Course I do,” he said, crushed by the accusation. He turned away, cupped his hands
around his mouth and called out, “Come back, Mr Spaceman, we need you.” Even to his own ears it sounded false, too full of doubt.
They stayed another hour, until a light rain started to fall. The spaceman didn’t show. They climbed down from the Head in silence and made their way back along the island to the mainland. They parted in silence and as he walked home the rain grew heavier, soaking Freddie. He didn’t care. He felt horrible and empty, like someone had reached inside him and pulled out all his contented workings.
*
They returned to Worm’s Head the next evening but Captain Paul didn’t appear. They searched all over the island and found nothing at all to show that he’d ever been there. That night as Freddie lay in bed, he couldn’t stop from thinking about what Jenna had made of it all. When it had been just himself and Mouse, it had never mattered how much he let himself get sucked into his fantasies. But Jenna’s presence changed everything. He felt angry and exposed, as if he had revealed a younger, more childish part of himself that he should, by then, have outgrown. That was it, he decided—he would never again put his faith in things that couldn’t be. He just hoped that Jenna wouldn’t think him half the fool he felt. Except that when he told her the next day of his intentions she accused him of betrayal, of being afraid. For what he had forgot to take into account, was that whatever he had decided, Jenna still believed.
He saw afterwards that it was their belief that brought Captain Paul back. It was Sunday before he saw Mouse again. He was painting the garden shed for his dad when Mouse came racing along on his bike. He stopped at the wall and called Freddie over. Freddie wasn’t sure how he felt about seeing him. Jenna had stopped speaking to him since he’d abandoned the search for the spaceman and he blamed Mouse for it. “What’s up?” he said, feigning indifference.
“We found him,” Mouse said.
“Oh yeah? Well, I don’t give a shit.” He wanted to make it clear to his friend that he didn’t want to anymore to do with his games but Mouse ignored his stubbornness.
“Jenna said to fetch you.” His eyes burned with excitement. “She’s waiting up there with him. Freddie listen, we were looking in the wrong place. He’s up at the beacon now but he needs our help.”
Freddie’s resolve weakened. Jenna was up there. She hadn’t spoken to him in three days but she’d asked Mouse to get him. “All right, I’ll come.”
On the way up to the beacon he considered the possibility that the spaceman’s mission was to bring him and Jenna together. I should have been stronger, he thought. Had more faith. Maybe then she’d kiss him again.
She was kneeling in front of the spaceman when they arrived at the beacon. He sat with his back against the white, stone pillar, not moving. “There’s something wrong with him.”
Freddie crouched beside her. “How do you know?”
“He hasn’t moved since Mouse went.”
“Is he sick?” Freddie leaned forward to peer through the visor. It gleamed blackly, reflecting his own face. He spread his fingers over the cool, hard surface. “You think he’s dead?”
“Not dead, Freddie,” Captain Paul’s voice crackled faintly from the helmet. “Just tired.”
“How come?”
“Help me up,” he said. They gathered round him, holding his arms as he struggled to his feet. “Thanks. Power’s low. I need to tell you about them.”
“About who?”
“His crew,” Mouse said. “They’re lost in space.”
“This isn’t space,” Freddie reminded them. “This is Rhossili.”
“Don’t be a moron,” Jenna said. “Tell him, Captain.”
Through the static his voice came, cracked and broken. “We were designated Apollo twenty. I was the command module pilot. Stayed in…lunar orbit while the commander and Jack touched down at the Tycho Crater. We were a J mission…seventy-five hours on the surface. It was…” The static grew worse. Captain Paul took a step forward, maybe hoping for a clearer transmission. “It was on…I think…my fifteenth, sixteenth orbit when…I lost their transmission. Coming round from the dark side of the moon I couldn’t raise them. Something wrong…I thought…with communication system.”
“What happened?”
He looked up at the sky. “I wish I knew. Look there, at the moon.” He pointed west towards the horizon but Freddie could see nothing out there. He glanced at Mouse and Jenna, saw them looking where captain Paul pointed, squinting into the sun. Then Jenna’s expression changed. Her eyes widened and a huge smile broke across her face.
Freddie turned and saw the pale rim of a swollen moon rise above the horizon. It dragged itself up from the ocean, expanding slowly to fill the sky like a desolate continent of grey rock. His heart raced as the outline of a huge crater came into view, and right in middle of it a mountain, as clear as if he was looking down on it from the window of a jet plane. “Jesus. What’s happening?”
“Look closer, Freddie,” the spaceman said, pointing. “There.”
Freddie made out a small cone shape moving through the sky, its shadow following it across the moon’s rough surface. It was Captain Paul’s rocket, he realised, except it was smaller than before, like it had lost part of itself. As he watched a smaller craft emerged from the rocket and began drifting slowly away from it. The smaller craft had what looked like four legs sticking out from each corner, like some kind of mechanised insect. “What is it?” he whispered.
“That’s the lunar module,” the spaceman hissed. “For landing.”
As the larger section continued its orbit around the moon, the lunar module began to descend towards the surface. Freddie followed it all the way, tracking it as it dropped below the mountain range that formed the high rim of the enormous crater. For a while nothing happened but he kept watching in case he missed something. After some time a suited figure emerged from the body of the craft and began to climb slowly down a ladder on the side of the craft, jumping, or rather floating gently down the last five or six feet. A second astronaut followed the first and when they were both on the ground they set off along the crater floor.
The moon shifted out of focus, its features blurring in a swirl of black and grey. When the image solidified again there was no sign of the lunar module. A sudden burst of static came through the air, then Captain Paul’s voice. “This is command module Artemis calling Raven. Update me on your status, over.” It came not from the suited figure beside Freddie but from the craft that continued its orbit around the moon.
“Raven, do you read? This is Artemis, over.” The fizz and crack of white noise. “Come in Raven.” Even through the static Freddie could hear the note of desperation in Captain Paul’s voice.
Mouth dry and palms sweaty, Freddie said, “What’s happening?”
The spaceman stood there, motionless, staring at the empty moon. His voice came again across the countless miles. “Commander, let’s get a status report, over.” He was answered with another prolonged burst of static. “Stu—this is Paul; do you read? Jack, what’s going on down there?”
Freddie peered at the dark, pockmarked surface.
“Where are they?” Jenna whispered.
“Raven, do you read? Where the hell are you?”
Freddie grabbed Captain Paul’s arm. “What happened to them?”
He turned, the dome of his helmet staring down at Freddie. His voice crackled distantly. “December fifteen, nineteen seventy-two, Command Module Artemis lost contact with Lunar Module Raven. I called it in to Houston but no acknowledgement came back. I waited another forty-eight hours in lunar orbit but mission control failed to respond. I had had no word from Commander Roosa or Jack so I did what I had to do. I tried to find them.”
“Nineteen seventy-two,” Freddie said, figuring it out. “You’ve been searching for twenty-two years? That’s impossible, you’d be…” He didn’t finish the sentence.
“Sometimes I dream about Suzanne. I wonder what she looks like now, and the kids…” Captain Paul’s voice trailed away for a moment as he be
came lost in his own memories. “And then I hear Stu or Jack’s voice,” he went on. “At least I think it’s them. Random transmissions, like echoes, always asking the same thing, why I abandoned them. I’ve followed them all this time.”
“You think they’re here?” Jenna said, excited. Freddie watched her gaze sweeping across the Down, as if searching for his crew. “We can help you find them.”
“How?” Freddie asked. “This isn’t outer bloody space.”
Captain Paul moved back towards the beacon. “It’s been a long time,” he said. “I think I got lost too, somewhere along the way.”
“And you have to find them, right? Before you can go home?” Jenna said. They turned to hear his response but he was no longer there.
“This is mad,” Freddie said.
“Jenna’s right,” Mouse said. “We have to help him. He can’t go back without them.”
“How? What can we do?”
“There must be a way,” Jenna insisted. “Why’d he come here if there wasn’t? We have to find out all we can about his mission. There’ll be old newspaper reports, it’ll be in history books. Maybe the Americans are still looking for them. If we find out what happened, then we’ll know what to do.”
Freddie shook his head, unable to hide his doubts.
“Please, Freddie,” Mouse said, his voice quiet and desperate, as if the world depended on his decision. “We need you.”
Jenna took his hand and squeezed. “You have to believe,” she said. “When you believe, good things happen, remember?” Freddie forced a smile. She put her arms around his neck and hugged him. He melted in her embrace, and told himself he would believe whatever she wanted him to believe. Maybe that was what being in love was all about, he thought, believing in impossible things.
*
When they were both not much older than he was now, they told Freddie, his parents had watched on TV as the first man had landed on the moon. His name was Neil Armstrong and his rocket was Apollo Eleven. Right before he stepped down onto the moon he said something about it being a small step for a man and a giant one for the human race. Freddie wondered what Captain Paul would have said if he’d got the chance. Neither of his parents remembered much about any other Apollo missions but they both believed nobody had gone to the moon for fifteen years or so.
The Dream Operator Page 13