by Dan Gutman
Seconds later, the spaceship lifted off, kicking up a swirl of dust in the air. The twins shielded their faces and watched as the ship took off and disappeared as quietly as it had arrived. In seconds, it was gone.
“Wow,” Coke said. “Did that really happen, or did I just have some weird alien abduction dream?”
“If that was a dream,” his sister replied, “I had it, too.”
It was nighttime. A half-moon hung in the sky. As they looked up, it was hard for the twins to believe that they had been standing on that surface, and now they were standing on Earth.
There were trees on all sides. There was no obvious path leading back to civilization.
“Where are we?” Pep asked.
“I have no clue,” Coke replied. “This could be anywhere.”
“I hope we’re at least in the United States,” Pep said. “We don’t have any money or identification or anything. They won’t let us on a flight home.”
“Come on,” Coke told her, holding out his hand. “Follow me. I think this is the way.”
They walked through the woods, Coke holding his arms up in front of him to push aside the branches and bushes. He had a good sense of direction and seemed instinctively to know which way to go. At one point, the thorns on a bush caught on the sleeve of his T-shirt and tore it.
“I’m scared,” Pep said. “It’s dark.”
“You just survived an alien abduction,” Coke reminded her as he stepped over a fallen branch. “You survived a trip to the moon. You can handle a little darkness.”
Through the trees, it appeared that there was a light in the distance. Coke headed in that direction, confident of his navigation skills.
“How much time do you think has passed since we were . . . uh, kidnapped?” Pep asked, still holding her brother’s hand.
“Can’t say for sure,” Coke replied. “I mean, we flew 239,000 miles to the moon, then back. It didn’t feel like a long time, but maybe time moves faster in outer space. Didn’t Einstein prove that? It could have been a few days. It could have been a few weeks, for all I know.”
“If we were gone that long, there was probably a big manhunt for us,” Pep said. “Hey, I bet we made the local news.”
“Local news? Are you kidding?” her brother said. “We made the national news. And when they find out we’re alive, we’re going to be the most famous kids on the planet.”
“You really think so?” Pep asked.
“We were abducted by aliens!” Coke told her. “We walked on the moon! We picked up Alan Shepard’s golf balls! This is going to blow everybody’s minds when they find out. We could make a million dollars selling our story to the tabloids. I may have to get a publicist to fend off all the requests for interviews.”
Pep pondered her potential celebrity as they made their way through the woods. She had mixed feelings about the whole thing. It could be cool to be a little famous. But she didn’t want to be pestered by paparazzi or have everything she did reported in the tabloids.
The light in the distance was closer now. It looked like a neon sign. The twins couldn’t make out the letters yet.
“Do you think there will be TV cameras?” Pep asked her brother. “How does my hair look? If we’re going to be on TV, I want to look good.”
“You look fine,” Coke said dismissively.
Soon, they came to a clearing at the edge of the woods. They could see the back of a building.
“Look!” Coke said, pointing at the ping-pong table where they had been playing when the spaceship arrived.
“They brought us back to the exact same spot!” Pep shouted. “I can’t wait to see the looks on Mom and Dad’s faces when they see us.”
“I’m sure Mom and Dad aren’t here anymore,” Coke replied. “They’re probably back home in California by now.”
The twins passed the ping-pong table and walked around to the front of the motel. There was a man at the ice machine scooping ice cubes into a plastic bucket. When he turned around, they could tell it was their father.
“I thought you kids went to bed,” Dr. McDonald said matter-of-factly. “It’s late. What are you still doing up?”
“Dad!” Coke and Pep shouted, wrapping their arms around him tightly. “We love you so much!”
Dr. McDonald was taken aback by this sudden show of affection from his children, but he wasn’t about to complain. The emotions displayed by teenagers always seem to be on a roller coaster.
“I’ll never do a bad thing ever again,” Pep said, refusing to let go of her father. “I’ll never complain or criticize you or roll my eyes when you say something stupid.”
“Uh, okay. Good,” said Dr. McDonald.
“Where’s the media?” asked Coke. “Did the camera crews go home? I want to make a statement to the press.”
“Camera crews? Media? Press?” asked Dr. McDonald. “What are you talking about?”
“Didn’t the police come?” asked Coke. “Didn’t you file a missing persons report on us?”
“Missing persons report?” said Dr. McDonald. “You said you were going to play a little ping-pong a couple of hours ago. I assumed that’s what you’ve been doing.”
“A couple of hours ago?” asked Pep.
“We did play ping-pong,” Coke explained quickly. “But then we heard a noise and it was an alien spaceship and we went to check it out and we got sucked up into the spaceship and then it took off and the aliens were really ugly and we went to the moon and they made us pick up Alan Shepard’s golf balls and then they brought us back. And here we are!”
Dr. McDonald looked at Coke for a moment. Then he burst out laughing.
“How do you come up with this stuff?” he asked, doubling over. “I wish I had such a vivid imagination!”
At that moment, one of the motel room doors opened and Mrs. McDonald came out.
“Ben, where’s that ice you went to get?” she shouted.
“Mommy!” the twins hollered, running over to her. “We love you!”
Mrs. McDonald looked at her husband quizzically as Coke and Pep wrapped their arms around her. He just rolled his eyes and said one word—“Kids!”
“What happened to your shirt?” Mrs. McDonald asked Coke, poking her finger through the hole. “How do you rip a shirt playing ping-pong? Why can’t you keep your clothes nice for a change? These things are expensive, you know.”
“He must have ripped it while he was picking up golf balls from the moon,” said Dr. McDonald with a snort.
“What are you talking about, Ben?” asked Mrs. McDonald.
“I’ll tell you later,” Dr. McDonald said. “Let’s get to sleep, everybody. We have a big day ahead of us. It’s a long drive back to California.”
Chapter 10
A LAND OF MANY CONTRASTS
“Are we there yet?” Coke hollered from the backseat.
Dr. McDonald laughed. He had just pulled the Ferrari 612 Scaglietti out of the parking lot of the Best Western El Rancho Palacio in Roswell, New Mexico.
“Very funny,” he replied.
Leaving Roswell, he drove past the International UFO Museum and Research Center, the Alien Zone, and a bunch of alien-themed gift shops.
“I can’t believe how many people actually fall for this alien crap,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s the biggest con job I’ve ever seen.”
Coke and Pep shot looks at each other.
“Oh, I don’t know, dear,” Mrs. McDonald said. “I saw an article in the paper last week that said there could be as many as forty billion habitable Earth-size planets in the galaxy. How do you know there isn’t intelligent life out there?”
“Intelligent life out there?” Dr. McDonald replied. “I’m not even convinced there’s intelligent life in this car. I’ll believe in aliens when I see them with my own eyes.”
“I’m with you, Dad,” Coke said, winking at his sister. “What a con job.”
The twins shared a secret laugh. There was no point trying to convince their parents th
at just a few hours earlier they had been walking on the moon and searching for Alan Shepard’s golf balls for some uptight aliens who had a thing about littering.
The nice thing was that their brief adventure in outer space had completely knocked Coke and Pep’s other problems out of their minds. They had just about forgotten about the evil Dr. Herman Warsaw, Mrs. Higgins, Doominator, and those nincompoop bowler dudes who had been chasing them across the United States for the last four weeks. It was like a man with a stomachache who accidentally smashes his thumb with a hammer. Suddenly, he’s not thinking about his stomachache anymore.
“Go West, young man!” Dr. McDonald bellowed as he pulled the Ferrari onto Route 70, the major road out of Roswell. The engine purred to life as he pushed his foot against the accelerator.
“How many miles is it to San Francisco?” Pep asked.
Mrs. McDonald had her laptop computer open in the front seat. She tapped a few keys and reported that they had about 1,300 miles ahead of them, depending on which route they took to California.
“If we drove straight without making any stops,” Mrs. McDonald said, “we would be home in less than twenty hours.”
If you’d like to follow the McDonalds on their trip back to California, it’s easy. Get on the internet and go to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/), Mapquest (www.mapquest.com), Rand McNally (www.randmcnally.com) or whatever navigation website you like best.
On Google Maps, click Get Directions. In the A box, type Roswell NM. In the B box, type Alamogordo NM. Then click Get Directions again.
See the map? It would be a straight shot on Route 70 that morning for more than a hundred miles.
Twenty hours. Both of the twins thought the same thing—soon, their nightmare would be over.
Mrs. McDonald took out her New Mexico guidebook. The southern part of the state is mostly desert and boiling hot in the summer months.
“It says here that New Mexico is a land of many contrasts,” she reported. “Sun-baked deserts, deep caves, and snow-covered mountains. Big, modern cities and thousand-year-old Indian villages. Did you know that in the Aztec language, the word Mexico means ‘in the center of the moon’?”
“Actually, I did know that,” Coke said, looking out the window.
His sister rolled her eyes, knowing that her brother wasn’t just boasting. He did know just about everything. That’s what happens when you’re born with a photographic memory.
“Hey, there’s a museum devoted to Billy the Kid in Fort Sumner,” Mrs. McDonald said excitedly. “And in Faywood, New Mexico, there’s a rock formation that looks just like a giant toilet.”
Both sites would be perfect to gather material for her popular website, Amazing but True. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending on your point of view), it would be necessary to drive hundreds of miles out of the way to visit them.
“Personally,” Dr. McDonald said, “I would be more interested in learning about New Mexico’s involvement in the space program and the birth of the atomic bomb.”
“Bo-ring!” both kids hooted.
“Dad, you are such a stick-in-the-mud,” Pep said.
“I vote for the big toilet,” said Coke.
“Big toilet! Big toilet! Big toilet!” the twins chanted.
“Knock it off back there!” shouted Dr. McDonald.
When we think of the desert, a lot of people think of the Sahara in Africa—smooth, desolate, rolling sand dunes sculpted by the wind. But the desert of the American southwest doesn’t look anything like that. It’s mostly flat with low shrubs, interrupted by occasional road signs. There wasn’t much to look at out the window.
The twins read or listened to music while Mrs. McDonald—as usual—spent the time planning their route and looking up interesting places to visit. She had already decided that today’s destination would be Alamogordo, New Mexico. And because the money from Amazing but True had paid for the trip, she got to make most of the decisions.
“Hey, look at this,” she said after they’d been driving for an hour. “We’re not that far from Smokey Bear Museum.”
“Please tell me that we don’t have to go there, Mom,” Pep begged. “It sounds lame.”
“You don’t know anything about Smokey Bear Museum,” her mother admonished. “You shouldn’t criticize what you don’t know.”
“I know it’s a museum about a cartoon bear,” Pep said.
“Shouldn’t that be Smokey the Bear?” asked Dr. McDonald.
“No, his official name is Smokey Bear,” replied Mrs. McDonald. “That’s what it says in the guidebook.”
“Maybe the is Smokey’s middle name,” suggested Coke.
In any case, Mrs. McDonald decided to bypass Smokey Bear Museum. She had other ideas. At Tularosa, Route 70 bends south. Just a few miles from Alamogordo, they saw this in the distance. . . .
“What the heck is that?” asked Dr. McDonald.
“It looks like a big pistachio nut,” Pep said.
“It is a big pistachio nut,” said Coke.
“Not only is it a big pistachio nut,” reported Mrs. McDonald gleefully, “it’s the biggest pistachio nut in the world!”
“Here we go again,” groaned Dr. McDonald, slapping his forehead. He stepped on the gas, hoping that if the car was moving fast enough, maybe he wouldn’t be asked to stop.
“Oh, come on, Ben!” Mrs. McDonald said. “It’s right off the road here. How could we go to Alamogordo, New Mexico, and not visit the world’s largest pistachio nut?”
“Yeah, lighten up, Dad,” said Coke.
Dr. McDonald rolled his eyes and stamped on the brake. As a distinguished history professor at San Francisco State University, he had little regard for the tacky roadside attractions his wife and children found so fascinating. It was one of the few things they argued about.
“I need to use the bathroom anyway,” he said, skidding off the highway just before he would have passed the giant pistachio.
“Cool!” the twins shouted as they hopped out of the car and ran over for a close-up view.
At thirty feet tall, and covered with thirty-five gallons of paint, the giant pistachio sculpture was undeniably cool. Its tan shell was partly open, and the nut inside had been painted bright green.
“You don’t see one of these every day,” Mrs. McDonald said as she snapped photos and took notes for Amazing but True. The twins debated whether or not the pistachio was bigger than the world’s largest frying pan or the world’s largest yo-yo, both of which they had seen earlier in the trip.
As it turned out, the giant pistachio is the calling card for the McGuinn Pistachio Tree Ranch, a working farm with 12,500 trees and 6,000 wine-producing grapevines. It has become an institution in the Alamogordo area.
A few minutes later, Dr. McDonald found the rest of the family in the McGuinn gift shop, examining the dizzying selection of pistachio-themed treats and knickknacks.
“It’s a tourist trap,” he grumbled. “They just want you to buy their stuff.”
“We know,” Pep said, offering him a bite of Atomic Hot Chili Pistachio Brittle. “We did.”
The town of Alamogordo sits at the base of the Sacramento Mountains; its name means “fat cottonwood tree” in Spanish. The smell of roasted nuts triggered hunger pangs, so the McDonalds got back on the four-lane road and drove a mile toward town to the first restaurant they saw, the Rustic Café. The Rustic Café’s claim to fame is a sixteen-ounce hamburger. If you’re counting, that’s a pound of meat. Anyone who can eat the whole thing gets a T-shirt and their picture up on the wall. None of the McDonalds attempted such a feat.
After lunch, Mrs. McDonald instructed her husband to turn left on Scenic Drive for three miles, then another quick left up a hill. Soon they came to a huge modern glass building with a rocket ship mounted in front of it. A sign read . . .
New Mexico Museum of Space History
“Now, this is more like it,” Dr. McDonald said as he found a parking spot. “Maybe you kids will actually learn s
omething here.”
“Not another museum!” Coke whined.
“Oh, I didn’t bring us here for the museum,” Mrs. McDonald said as she got out of the car. “I brought us here to pay our respects.”
“Pay our respects? To whom?” asked Pep.
The family walked to the front of the museum. On the grass near the flagpole, they found this. . . .
“You gotta be kidding me,” Coke said. “A monkey grave?”
Not just any monkey. Before NASA was willing to risk human lives in the space program, they sent animals. Ham the Astrochimp was the first American in outer space.
A few other families came over to look at the gravesite. Mrs. McDonald pulled out her camera.
Ham blasted off from Cape Canaveral in January of 1961. He traveled 155 miles in 16.5 minutes and splashed down safely in the Atlantic Ocean. Three months later, Alan Shepard (the astronaut/golfer) became America’s first human astronaut.
“I wonder what happened to Ham after his flight,” Pep said.
“He retired,” a guy looking at the plaque explained. “He lived at the National Zoo in Washington for seventeen years. Then he died in 1983 at age twenty-seven.”
“Let us have a moment of silence in honor of Ham the Astrochimp,” suggested Mrs. McDonald.
“Are you sure it shouldn’t be Ham Astrochimp?” Pep asked. “Like Smokey Bear?”
“I guess in this case Ham’s middle name really was the,” said Coke.
After paying his respects to “the flying monkey” (as Coke put it), Dr. McDonald wasn’t about to leave. He insisted that the whole family go inside the museum, and they were glad they did. The New Mexico Museum of Space History was full of displays that everyone in the family enjoyed: Robert Goddard’s early rocket experiments near Roswell. A mock-up of the International Space Station. A moon rock. A space toilet. A memorial garden tribute to astronauts who had died. The International Space Hall of Fame. Even Coke learned a few things he didn’t already know.
By the time the McDonalds had seen everything there was to see in the museum, it was getting late. They stopped off at a fast food drive-through window for dinner and drove down White Sands Boulevard to the White Sands Motel to sleep for the night.