by Jeff Norton
“Do you have some?” I asked, desperately.
“I might,” the Fungus replied. “Do you have fifteen bucks?”
Slowly, in his wormy little fingers, the mushroom pulled out a box from behind his back. The red-and- white striped carton was overflowing with popcorn that spilled to the concrete every time he moved.
“I might,” I replied, checking my Space Shuttle Columbia wallet. “Ten. That’s all I’ve got. It’s a good deal.”
“Sixty,” the Fungus countered.
“What?”
“Three.”
“Have you ever haggled before?” I asked.
“Zip it, primate,” he said. “Forty-two. Final offer.”
I held out my lone, crumpled ten-dollar bill and said, “How about a portable portrait of Alexander Hamilton? Founding father and America’s first secretary of the treasury.”
He snatched the note off me.
“Sucker,” he cackled, handing me the box. The not- so-fun guy bounced over the wire fence, disappearing into the night.
I was ten dollars poorer, but I’d bagged the mammoth. I was back in the evolutionary game.
Buoyed by my negotiating skills, I turned back towards the Toyota to politely but firmly tell NED to leave us alone so Juliet and I could watch the world’s landmarks get blown to pieces. In peace.
But something was definitely, unmistakably, off.
It’d unnerved me, ever since NED showed up, that his furry-faced bodyguard wasn’t in sight. That was new. And I couldn’t help feeling that this whole black- market-popcorn thing had the distinct atmosphere of a …
“HELLO, TINY, DEFENSELESS—”
… set-up.
“—HUMAN.”
Graz rose from behind the industrial-sized garbage container next to the snack stand. He towered above me – gray-black fur stinking of wet dog and hot dog, piercing orange cat’s eyes staring down at me, razor- teeth fighting for room in his mouth – and it all pretty much fell into place.
Never trust a fungus selling snacks.
Whether NED, Graz and the mushroom had planned the whole thing in advance, or if it was more spontaneous, I didn’t know. But by the time I was upside down, seven feet above the ground, showering piles of half-eaten wieners and ketchup-soaked bun fragments with my stash of fresh, delicious popcorn, the mechanics of the set-up didn’t really matter. I wondered if this was how Alexander Hamilton felt when facing Aaron Burr. Totally. Utterly. Ambushed.
The fuzz-monster growled, “GRAZ NEVER LEAVES A JOB HALF-DONE, SHER-MAN.”
Just as the onscreen, make-believe aliens zapped the White House and the whole drive-in vibrated with the explosion, real-live alien Graz buried me deep in the container. My head clanged against the bottom and I blacked out.
* * *
I woke to someone hurling giant eels at me.
It turned out to be Octo slapping my cheeks with his slippery tentacles. He must have pulled me from the garbage and leaned me against the bin and now – for the second time in a month – he was checking my bones for fractures.
“What happened to you?”
I gazed at the stars, inhaled the romantic aroma of dusty concrete and rotting sausage, and explained my encounter.
“For never was a story of more woe,” I concluded. “Than this of Juliet and her Sherm-eo.”
“But are you okay, dude?” Octo said. “Took forever to find you. How many tentacles?”
“What?”
“How many tentacles am I holding up?”
“Seven,” I mumbled.
“You’re fine, Romeo,” the ventitent declared.
But I wasn’t. I had to get back to my date.
I pulled a ketchup-smeared popcorn carton off my head and scrounged for useable kernels. “I’ve got to get back to the Toyota and bring Juliet her mammoth.”
“Err … hmm …” Octo stuttered, “well … y’see … it’s not-too-spectacular news there, buckaroo.”
Then I heard it over the speakers, the opening scene of Mars Attacks that meant that Independence Day was over. I’d been blacked out for well over an hour. “Don’t tell me,” I groaned. “Juliet thinks I abandoned her.”
“It’s a bit worse than that,” Octo warned. “It seems she, ah, didn’t want to stay for Tim Burton’s underrated masterpiece, so she—”
“She dematerialized?” I sighed. “I’m such a moron. If only I’d remembered to buy the stupid—”
“No, Sherm,” Octo said. “She left with NED.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Test Drive
A fter that star-crossed night, Juliet completely avoided me outside of rehearsal. She materialized just in time for our scenes, stayed in character while on stage, but then poof – she’d zap somewhere else as soon as rehearsal finished. Since I’d messed up our first, and possibly only, date, all of my hopes were riding on The Plan.
It was a long shot, but my only shot.
Could Sonya, Houston, Octo and I could build a champion rocket racer? Could I fly the thing well enough to blow away the competition? Would Juliet then realize I was the only man in the universe for her – that I was Prom material?
These were big questions bashing around in my brain, and they gave me a headache. So I did exactly what Dad does when he’s upset: I threw myself into my work.
Every night, our racer inched closer to resembling Houston’s 3D model. It was evolving into a thing of physical beauty. This rocket was actually two rockets with a cockpit and cabin resting on top, a bit like a skier wearing a backpack. Of course, these skis were fusion- powered and could propel the skier at more than a thousand miles per hour, but you get the idea.
“It’s a double-clutch fusion system,” Houston announced, “something an Earthbound rocketeer such as yourself would normally find rather unfamiliar. But I’ve developed an interface that’s similar to an Earth- type motor vehicle.”
“You mean it’ll be like driving a car?” I asked.
“Like a really fast, flying car,” said Octo.
“But I don’t even have a license,” I confessed.
“Don’t worry so much, Sherman,” said Sonya. “You picked up Eggcraft flying pretty quickly, I’m sure you’ll be ace at this. And we’ve built in plenty of practice time.”
“Thanks, guys,” I said. “It means a lot that you have so much faith in me.”
It was great to be part of something, part of a team with a big, lofty goal. But all of this nocturnal construction was starting to take its toll. I was sleepwalking through school. Before long, Dad got a note from Principal Meltzer about my nodding off in lessons and asked if I had glandular fever.
Jessica valiantly sprang to my defense. “There’s no way anybody would ever kiss Sherman.”
At least my friends had faith in me.
* * *
It was late Saturday afternoon, the one weekiversary of my date debacle, and I was waiting for Octo to pick me up. I wasn’t feeling very upbeat – I was starting to think that Juliet was a lost cause. As soon as I jumped into the truck, I began complaining that maybe she just wasn’t into me.
“Do not despair!” said Octo, as we approached the hangar. “Romeo didn’t give up on his Juliet.”
“Octo, Romeo and Juliet die at the end,” I said.
“What?!” he shouted, his twenty tentacles flailing all over. “Coulda used a spoiler alert there!”
“Are you guys ready?” asked Sonya, who was loitering with Houston outside the closed hangar doors. She was wearing blue overalls covered in logos and patches saying Race Ace Fusion Oil, Beeble’s Booster Emporium and Snap-On Tools. Houston was sporting a toolbelt that looked like a lightsaber collection. They were both so covered in oil and grime they looked positively alien. Houston passed me a bottle of cream soda.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m parched.”
“It’s not for you,” said Sonya. “It’s for her.”
I looked around, secretly hoping that Juliet had come to visit. But she hadn’t. �
�Who?”
Octo slid open the rattling, corrugated-iron doors, then disappeared into the dark hangar.
“That’s for you to decide,” said Sonya. “We came early today and finished the paint job. She’s ready to race in the trials tomorrow.”
“But you get the naming privileges,” said Houston, as the hangar lights popped on.
I stood with my three best friends – the ventitent, the robot, and the lizard – and marveled at our feat of astrophysics engineering. The twin rockets were silver- sleek, with a double racing stripe, green and black, running down the double fuselage, and four stabilizing fins at the rear. The front cockpit and rear cabin, perched atop the rockets, looked like the nose of an F-18 fused with a postal van.
“Isn’t she magnificent?” Sonya asked.
Octo folded a few tentacles and gave me a proud-as- punch, three-beaked grin.
“So,” he said, “whadaya gonna name her?”
There was never any question.
“Carol,” I said, smashing the cream soda bottle. “I think Mom would like having a rocket named after her.”
“Then let’s take Carol for a test drive,” said Sonya. “Fire her up and she’ll purr like a canary.”
“Kitten,” I corrected her.
“Oh, no, thanks,” she said. “I’ve already eaten.”
Houston wheeled out the steel box containing the Aldrin suit. “You must get used to the ecto-shell,” he explained.
When I stepped into the suit, it gripped me. It squeezed every muscle in my body, fusing with my form. At first I thought I’d feel claustrophobic, but the ecto-suit became part of me. It was seamless.
“How’s your vision?” Houston asked.
His voice echoed in my head loud and clear. The other voices less so, like Sonya and Octo were just standing nearby, using Houston as a microphone.
“Great,” I replied. The vision was digitally enhanced and I could see everything in super-sharp detail. “It’s like mega-HD.”
Octo wheeled the rocket to the edge of the desert and helped me up and into the cockpit. I settled into a replica of my dad’s Jeep.
“It should feel familiar,” he said.
“Grab the wheel,” Sonya said, “and Carol will respond.”
The instant I did, a mass of read-outs flashed into existence in the air in front of me. I gradually recognized all the virtual dials for speed, pitch, yaw … everything. The controls stayed in perfect focus wherever I turned my head.
“This is awesome.”
“Pay attention,” Houston said. “I know you understand the basics from your Eggcraft experience, but it’s vital you familiarize yourself with this particular class of low-altitude competitive rocket. We shall proceed step-by-step. Understood?”
“Understood,” I said, in no hurry to vaporize myself first time round.
The racer’s fusion system throbbed beneath me – a deep, teeth-rattling hum. And maybe it was static electricity in the suit or something, but I was convinced my hair was trying to stand on end.
“This thing is safe, right?” I asked.
“Pretty safe,” Sonya said, not entirely filling me with confidence.
“Only one way to find out, right?” Octo said.
“We’re going for a ten-mile, four-hundred-miles-per- hour burst,” Houston said. “Your only goal is to keep a straight line.”
“Got it,” I said. “Straight line. Ten miles. Four- hundred-miles-per-hour.”
“Depress clutch, Sherman,” Houston instructed. “That’s the one on the left.”
I pressed down with my left foot. “Clutch is depressed.”
“Maybe we should cheer it up,” chuckled Octo.
“Hush your beaks,” snapped Sonya. “This is serious.”
“Apply accelerator …” said Houston.
I pressed down the second farthest right of the pedals.
“ … very gently.”
And the racer bolted.
The fusion system, which sounded like twenty giants yelling “AHHHHHHH!” at the same time, propelled me into the vast Nevada desert. The G-force must have been incredible, but the suit protected me from feeling it.
“I said gently!” Houston yelled, his voice reverberating in my helmet.
The salt flats became a blurry white ocean beneath me. It was only when a stray boulder or tumbleweed whizzed by that I got any sense of just how brain- meltingly fast I was actually going.
Even the dazzling, red-orange Nevada sunset seemed
to be getting closer.
Awesome.
“Try a turn, buckaroo!” Octo urged.
“Do not attempt a turn, Sherman,” Houston said. “Keep her straight and steady.”
“You crash that thing and you’re toast, Earthman,” Sonya yelled.
“Who brought toast?” asked Octo.
“I’m gonna try a turn, Houston,” I said. “Trust me.”
“Sonya, could you order pizza?” Octo continued.
“Sherman, no,” said Houston, “the suit—”
I turned the wheel. Just a touch …
The horizon tilted. And kept tilting. Until it had spun right around, and then kept tilting, kept rotating.
“Sherman,” Houston said calmly, “you’re in a death- spiral.”
“I’m going to die?” I shouted.
“Don’t worry!” Octo yelled. “I’m filming this on my phone. It’s spectacular!”
“SMALL MOVEMENTS, SHERMAN,” Sonya hollered.
“The suit enhances your strength,” Houston said. “You need to be gentle and precise. You also need to DO AS YOU’RE TOLD.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “But what now?”
“Idiot!” Sonya yelled.
“Beautiful!” Octo yelled. “This is great footage!”
The sky was spinning so fast now it was making me think of Jessica’s kaleidoscope. The one I broke when I was eight. Jessica took her revenge by filling my lunch box with Goose’s dog food.
“Holy cow,” I said, “I think my life’s flashing before me.”
But the flashes didn’t last long. I still had so much I wanted to do. I had a deity to take to Prom and a planet to save. Plus, I really wanted to be old enough to walk into R-rated movies without sneaking in the back door. I had a lot of living to do; I didn’t want to die in a fiery ball of wreckage. So I decided to focus.
“I’m putting you on automatic pilot and activating the homing beacon,” Houston said.
“Wait,” I pleaded. “Just give me a second. I can do this!”
Gentle.
I just needed be gentle and precise.
I eased my breathing, let the info from the instruments flow into my brain like I was conjuring The Force. I held the steering column dead still and gradually got my bearings. The racer reacted to my moves and the spin gradually slowed until chaos gave way to control.
I could see the desert again, now in crisp, clear focus instead of a nauseating blur. And with the racer back under my command, I cruised straight and smooth. And safe.
“That’s good piloting, Sherman,” Houston said. “Carol’s homing beacon is activated. Just bring her home.”
The homing beacon was both a blip I could hear and a glowing dot superimposed on my vision. But before I followed the glowing breadcrumbs back, I wanted to master this low-orbit rocketeering.
I pushed into a controlled turn, lifting the rocket up and back on itself in an aerial loop. I’d watched enough air shows on enough air bases to know the tricks and manoeuvres that pilots use to show they’re top gun. I did banks, nosedives and twists, all narrated by Houston’s protests. But I was pretty sure that Carol loved it.
I pushed the racer to its limits. Swoops. Turns. Glides.
And then I finally felt it.
Six degrees of freedom.
6DoF.
Over the years I’d built dozens of rockets. And I’d watched each one soar into the sky while I’d stayed on terra firma. But now that I was airborne, I felt at home up here in
the night sky. Maybe Octo was right, maybe all this time the thing holding me back had been … me.
It was time to let myself go. It was time to reach for the stars.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Balcony Scene
I parked the rocket in the hangar and climbed out feeling like an experienced pilot. The suit peeled off me with a zzzzzzzCLINK as it loosened its grip. I kept my eyes closed as ordered, and suddenly, instead of the tangy, metallic smell of ecto-suit, I could smell cinnamon-scented desert air, hot Grav-Thwart plating, cooling fusion engines and … pepperoni.
“Did you guys order pizza?” I asked.
“Don’t sweat it,” Sonya’s voice said, “there’s plenty left.”
“Not for long,” Octo mumbled with his beak full.
“Now open your eyes,” Houston said, “but do not be alarmed. Your natural vision will need to readjust.”
He was right.
For a moment I couldn’t see anything but a smudgy grayness. My heart pounded and I felt rising panic, but then, gradually, shapes emerged through the fog.
The hangar’s criss-cross superstructure and corrugated walls.
The racer’s open cockpit and still-glowing dual exhausts.
The junk in the scrapyard.
And to be honest, I’d expected to see Octo, Sonya and Houston huddled around me. Applauding, maybe. Patting me on the back. But instead, Houston was carefully packing the Aldrin-suit into its container and Sonya was hurling pizzas Frisbee-style at Octo, who was catching them like an outfielder on the other side of the hangar, catching and chomping each one with his middle beak.
The pile of pizza boxes next to Sonya was as tall as her.
“The What Beats a Pizza? guy has a crush on me,” she explained. “I’m on a ‘buy one, get twenty free’ plan, which is handy since Octo pretty much needs one pizza per tentacle. Want one?”
“No thanks,” I said. All that looping had left my stomach in knots. Exhilarated, adrenaline-fueled knots, but knots all the same. “I’ve got something I need to do.”