Hold Zero!

by Jean Craighead George

  Craig glanced up perplexed. Mr. Brian stepped into the launch pit. He picked up the payload, pulled off the lower capsule, and took out the aluminum-wrapped test tube. Craig stared, Phil scratched his head. They shrugged. Steve strained to see what he’d done, but the teacher’s back was to him. Mr. Brian climbed from the pit and returned to the observation bunker.

  “Proceed with countdown, Batta control,” the teacher said.

  “We are resuming the count at T-minus thirteen,” Steve relayed. “Install payload capsule assembly on main booster.”

  “Mission accomplished.”

  “T-minus twelve. Install first- and second-stage booster engines.”

  “Accomplished.”

  “T-minus eleven. Install nichrome igniter wires in first-stage booster engines.”

  “Go.”

  “T-minus ten. Clean and attach microclips.”

  “Green and go.”

  “T-minus nine. Check firing angle.”

  “On the line.”

  “T-minus eight. Clear the area. Check for low-flying aircraft.”

  There was a sound from the shore. Craig imagined the class looking into the sky. They’re either getting terribly noisy, he thought, or the communications system’s going bad.

  “Clear and go,” said Mr. Brian, who had the widest view of the sky.

  “T-minus seven. Recovery crew go to your stations!”

  Phil and Craig plunged out of the pit, taking the radio direction finder and the Batta walkie-talkie with them. They skidded around the bushes and leaped onto the swamp buggy. Craig started the motor after two pulls, but did not put the engine in gear. Phil untied the line. He lifted his walkie-talkie.

  “Ready and waiting.”

  “T-minus six. Arm the launch panel!” Johnny put his hand on the switch.

  “Go,” said Johnny.

  “T-minus five.”

  “T-minus four.” The police walkie-talkie crackled with a welling sound. Then it bellowed and thundered.

  “Hold,” Steve said. “We are holding at T-minus four for a communications check. Batta command to Officer Ricardo, we are getting a noisy reception. Do you read me clear?”

  “I read you fine. The noise is your audience. There must be five hundred people here. There are cars on both side of the road holding up traffic. The whole police force is here except Harry, who stayed on fire duty. The town board is here. There are merchants, teachers, and newsmen. Over.”

  “Gee whizz!” said Steve.

  “Furthermore,” Officer Ricardo blared on, “Mr. Brundage has most of his congregation out and three buses have brought students from the Wilbur Junior High in Greensburg.

  “Your parents are all here. They look nine feet tall. We’re all with you. We hope it’s ‘Go’ all the way!”

  The crew on the island peered at each other over and around the mud bags. Phil and Craig on the swamp buggy whistled through their teeth.

  “We are resuming the countdown at T-minus four.

  “Three.

  “Two.

  “One.

  “Zero.

  “Ignition!” Johnny threw the switch. The engines fired instantly, held their power a few inches off the ground to steady the craft, then thundered into a fifty-mile-an-hour climb. “We have a launch!” Steve shouted. “We have a perfect launch!”

  Craig saw the rocket rise above the edge of the pit. It sped over the tops of the reeds, going at twenty-five degrees to the vertical. It gleamed and the engines burned red. Smoke streamed out.

  The class on shore shouted as it shot into view and roared above the bushes, the trees, the top of the ridge.

  “The first-stage engines have burnt out.” Steve’s voice was shaky. “There goes the first stage falling away!

  “Whoops! The first-stage parachute has opened.” Horns tooted.

  A silence; the banner had dropped out of the parachute and fluttered open in the clear air. It rippled into view, “BLAS YOU ALL” it read as the T spiraled to earth.

  Mr. Brian gasped over the Batta walkie-talkie.

  “Bless you all, too!” shouted Mr. Brundage over the police walkie-talkie. “But learn to spell!”

  The crowd laughed and cheered. “Ray! Ray! Hooray!”

  Craig laughed and slapped Phil as the second stage ignited and the rocket sped on.

  “The second stage has fallen away,” Steve announced. “The third stage is ignited!” A red burst marked the explosion of the last engine.

  “The payload engines have ignited!” Steve cried. The capsule shot higher and higher speeding upward now on its own momentum.

  It reached its apogee, then arched over and began its descent.

  “Two parachutes should open,” Steve called out, “bringing the payload capsule ten feet north by northeast of the far shore.”

  A small red parachute unfurled and blossomed. It was followed seconds later by a big striped one. Checked with a sudden jerk, the payload drifted earthward on the quiet morning air.

  “Recovery crew!” Steve called. “The altiscope indicates it’s coming down at splash point A. Take a fast ride!”

  The grass mower engine roared and the awkward buggy rolled over the water.

  “Phil to Steve. I hear the transmitter. It is beeping loud and clear. We are closing in on it. Man! It worked!”

  Steve repeated Phil’s message. Suddenly he shouted, “Phil caught it in the air! We have a perfect rescue. Now how ’bout that!”

  Horns honked. Voices cheered. There were toots and whistles and a single blast on a trumpet.

  “Unit one to unit two,” Steve shouted in order to be heard over the roar. “We have a surprise for you. We have a surprise. Twelve snails have been sent up in the payload to see if they’ll continue normal behavior at two thousand feet.” Another sound arose from the shore, a bellow so loud it was heard above the communications system.

  “Phil, can you give us any details?” Steve shouted. “Are the snails acting like they do in the swamp water? Raise your right hand if they are. Raise your left hand if there has been any change.”

  Phil and Craig lifted their heads simultaneously and stared at each other. “What’s the matter with Steve?” Craig said.

  “Is he crazy?” asked Phil.

  “I dunno.”

  “Phil,” Steve repeated, “raise your right hand if the snails are all right.” The roar from the shore died as the audience waited. Suddenly Craig understood what had happened. He grabbed Phil’s shoulder.

  “The banner!” he said. “Mr. Brian found out about the banner, and I’ll bet he thought he had taken it out! Steve doesn’t know he took the snails!”

  “My gosh, you’re right,” exclaimed Phil. “Now, whatda we say? We can’t make him look stupid. He’s too nice a guy. And I can’t lie!”

  Craig agreed as he thought of all the trouble Phil had gotten into in the first place by not telling the truth.

  Phil bit his lip and leaned forward. “Here goes my neck,” he said and lifted the walkie-talkie. Suddenly he gave a gasp of glee and reached into the water. He slowly raised his right hand.

  “Aw, don’t,” Craig said. “It’s not worth it.’

  “The snails are doing the same thing!” Phil announced firmly. Steve repeated his words. The crowd cheered. Horns blasted. Hands clapped.

  Craig grabbed Phil’s shoulder and shoved him back to search his face. “Whatdidja lie for?” he whispered. “You’ll get it.”

  Phil held out a snail. “This snail is doing the same old thing,” he chuckled. “No one asked me what snail.” Craig sighed and slumped against the motor.

  Phil clutched a paddle and steered the craft to shore. They were met by Steve, Johnny, the two students, and a tarrying Mr. Brian.

  “Thanks, Phil!” Mr. Brian said as he came ashore. “But you didn’t need to lie to cover for my stupidity.”

  “I didn’t lie,” said Phil with a huff. He handed Mr. Brian the snail he had found. “I’ve never seen a more normal snail in my life.” M
r. Brian threw back his head and laughed from the bottom of his belly.

  With a whoop Steve threw his arm around Phil. Craig whacked Steve on the back. Johnny jumped on Craig, he fell, and pulled Steve with him into the grass. The three rolled and wrestled. Phil held his chest and tried not to laugh for laughter hurt his rib; but he couldn’t help it. So he laughed and then he cried and then he laughed again.

  Horns resounded from the shore, voices rose and fell. Presently Officer Ricardo’s voice boomed over the police walkie-talkie sitting unattended on the shelf of the command center.

  “Bravo!” he crackled. Steve stumbled forward and picked up the instrument “—was great!” Officer Ricardo went on. “And by the way, the reporters here want to know what your next big project will be.”

  Craig paused in astonishment. After all the trouble they had been through, he thought the town couldn’t possibly ask them to create more. Apparently all the boys felt the same, for Steve answered heavily, “College!”

  Phil murmured, “High school!”

  “The moon!” shouted Johnny desperately.

  Craig rolled from his back to his belly and pressed his cheek into the orange-yellow grass. A raft of ducks gabbled beyond the island.

  “The earth,” he whispered, “the solid, solid earth.”

  A Biography of Jean Craighead George

  Born in Washington, DC, on July 2, 1919, Jean Craighead George loved nature from an early age. Her parents, aunts, and uncles, all naturalists, encouraged her interest in the world around her, and she has drawn from that passion in her more than one hundred books for children and young adults.

  In the 1940s, after graduating from Pennsylvania State University with degrees in science and literature, George joined the White House Press Corps. She married John Lothar George in 1944 and moved to Michigan, where John was attending graduate school. Her husband shared her love of nature, and they lived for a time in a tent in the forest. They began to write novels together, with Jean providing illustrations. Their first novel, Vulpes, the Red Fox, was published in 1948.

  Following the birth of their first child, the Georges relocated to New York, living first in Poughkeepsie, then in Chappaqua. The family welcomed wild animals into their backyard, to stay for as long as they wished, but the creatures always remained free to return to the wild. Many of these temporary pets became characters in the stories George wrote with her husband.

  After winning the Aurianne Award, the American Library Association’s prize for outstanding nature writing, for Dipper of Copper Creek (1956), George began to write on her own, at first continuing to illustrate the books herself. She won a Newbery Honor for her third novel, My Side of the Mountain (1959), which tells the story of Sam Gribley, a young boy who runs away from home in New York City to live in the Catskill Mountains in Delaware County, New York. The book was adapted into a film by the same name in 1969.

  In 1963, divorced from her husband, George and her three children, Twig, Craig, and Luke, began to travel around the country, visiting parks and preserves to learn about the plants and animals that thrived there. These experiences were the inspiration for many of George’s novels, including what is perhaps her best-known work, Julie of the Wolves (1972).

  In the summer of 1970, George and her youngest son, Luke, visited the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory near Barrow, Alaska, one of the northernmost cities in the world. In preparation for a Reader’s Digest article, George studied the wolves living on the tundra nearby, learning about the animals’ social structures and intricate methods of communicating through sound, sight, posture, and scent. One day, George saw a very young girl crossing the tundra alone. The image remained with her as she began to write Julie of the Wolves, the story of an Inuit girl who escapes her abusive husband and survives in the wild by joining a wolf pack.

  Julie of the Wolves was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1973. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award, and it was selected by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) as one of the ten best American children’s books of the previous two centuries. A film adaptation was released in 1987, and George later wrote two sequels about her Eskimo heroine, Julie (1994) and Julie’s Wolf Pack (1997), and shorter illustrated stories about the wolves, Nutik, the Wolf Pup (2001) and Nutik and Amaroq Play Ball (2001).

  George also wrote sequels to her first award-winning novel, My Side of the Mountain. The Far Side of the Mountain (1990) and Frightful’s Mountain (1999), along with the picture books Frightful’s Daughter (2002) and Frightful’s Daughter Meets the Baron Weasel (2007), relate the further adventures of Sam Gribley and his peregrine falcon, Frightful, as they live off the land in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. George and her daughter, Twig, published their Pocket Guide to the Outdoors (2009), a practical companion volume to the books.

  George has written more than one hundred books in the last five decades, including the Thirteen Moons series (1967–69), comprised of illustrated chapter books about wild animals in their natural habitats through the seasons of the year. Most recently, she has collaborated with illustrator Wendell Minor on more than a dozen picture books for younger readers, including the Outdoor Adventures series.

  In addition to this extensive list of fiction for children and young adults, George published an autobiography, Journey Inward (1982), in which she reflects on her life as a writer, naturalist, and single mother. George still lives and writes in Chappaqua, New York.

  Jean Craighead George (bottom left) in Ontario, Canada, in 1923 with her twin brothers, John and Frank Craighead; mother, Carolyn; and next door playmate. Jean’s brothers were a great source of inspiration, and worked as photographers, naturalists, National Geographic writers, champion wrestlers, and, finally, grizzly bear biologists. Jean also attributes her love and appreciation of natural history to her teacher and father, Dr. F. C. Craighead, a forest entomologist and zoologist.

  Jean Craighead George (far right) in the wilderness of Seneca, Maryland, with cousin Ellen Zirpel, brother Frank, Spike the dog, friend Morgan Berthrong, and Trigger the dog, in 1936. They spent just about every school weekend together along the Potomac River, learning about vegetation and wildlife.

  Jean Craighead George with her then-husband, Dr. John L. George, in 1958. The couple lived in a twelve-by-twelve Army tent for four years while John got his PhD and Jean wrote books and illustrated filmstrips.

  Jean Craighead George and Yammer, a screech owl, in 1964. Yammer lived with Jean and her family and made his home in the breaks between books in their bookcase. (Photo courtesy of Harper Portraits.)

  Jean Craighead George in Chappaqua, New York, in 1964, with her pets Tonka, a Newfoundland dog, and Tricket, a Manx cat. Jean learned many things from her domestic pets, including animal language, social structure, and personalities. (Photo courtesy of Ellan Young.)

  Jean Craighead George circa 1970, catching Monarch butterflies to band and release. These bands were used to track the butterflies’ migratory destination, which was still unknown at the time. (Photo courtesy of Ellan Young.)

  Jean Craighead George and a young peregrine falcon named King David in the Catskill Mountains in 1985. Jean was gathering a falcon’s perspective for her book Frightful’s Mountain, a sequel to My Side of the Mountain.

  Jean Craighead George and her Alaskan Malamute, Qimmiq, which means “dog” in Inupiat (an Eskimo language), during the 1990s. (Photo courtesy of Ellan Young.)

  Jean Craighead George in the Lower Colville River, in Alaska, in 1995. Jean first traveled to Alaska in 1970, when she did research for her Newbery Award–winning novel Julie of the Wolves.

  Jean Craighead George’s home in Chappaqua, New York, in 1995. Jean has lived in Chappaqua for over fifty years.

  Jean Craighead George in the Wyoming wilderness in 1999. Wherever Jean goes, she sketches and paints to record incidents and “feel” the details of a place.

  Jean Craighead George and her family along the Yellow Breeches Creek in Craighead, Pennsylvania, in 1
999. As a child, Jean spent her summers at Craighead Station with her father’s family. They fished, canoed, painted, made wildflower collections, swam, and played baseball.

  Jean Craighead George in the Belize Rainforest in 1999, where a sky-walk bridge in the tops of the trees introduced her to a whole new world of wildlife. Jean traveled to many locations to study new plants and animals as research for her books.

  Jean Craighead George circa 2001, feeding a wolf pup near the Bob Marshall Wilderness in western Montana.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  copyright © 1966 by Jean Craighead George

  cover design by Connie Gabbert

  978-1-4532-2332-1

  This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media

  180 Varick Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com