Astrotwins — Project Blastoff (2 page)

Both boys were skillful tree climbers. Mark made a game out of climbing as high as he could. Scott liked to find a fat branch on which to sit and contemplate the world.

Finally it was Friday, the day the boys had been dreading. On Friday, a
girl
had been invited to come over and eat lunch.

“She's going into sixth grade like you are and she's not icky or anything. You'll like her,” Grandpa had said.

The boys couldn't believe it. Didn't Grandpa remember being a kid? Didn't he remember how uncool it was
to hang out with a girl? How could he assume you'd get along with a total stranger, a female total stranger, just because she happened to be in the same grade as you?

Mark had argued.

Scott had sulked.

But nothing worked, and at lunchtime Jenny O'Malley arrived in a beat-up Ford Falcon with her mom and a homemade blueberry pie. Jenny had wavy brown hair and freckles. She was wearing cutoffs and a blue T-shirt and tennis shoes with no socks.

She looked normal enough.

And the pie was delicious.

Jenny didn't say much while they ate, but her mom talked a lot, and Grandpa laughed at the stuff she said. After lunch, Jenny's mom actually uttered these words: “Now, you kids run along and play for a bit before we have to go home. Don't you want to get to know each other?”

Jenny looked appropriately mortified. Mark thought he would have died if his own mom had ever said anything that dumb.

But Scott got up from the table and said, “Come on,” without looking at anyone, and the three of them took off for the shore of the lake.

Mark was more talkative than his brother and—he wasn't proud of this—cared more about what other
people thought. So when they got to the lakeshore, it was Mark who said, “Uh, I liked the pie. Did you make it? Or your mom?”

“I did,” Jenny said. “My mom doesn't really cook.”

“That makes you an engineer, in a way,” Mark said. “You took flour, water, butter, and blueberries—then you engineered a pie out of 'em.”

Jenny grinned. “That's a good way to think about it.”

After that, they skipped stones on the water, and one of Jenny's bounced five times. “Good one,” Mark said.

Jenny shrugged. “I get a lot of practice.” Then she put her hands in her pockets. “You know, coming here today wasn't my idea. My mom said I had to.”

“Yeah?” Scott looked up.

“So that's okay, then,” Mark said.

After that, it was easier to talk, and it turned out Jenny was interested in space stuff too. The science teacher at her school—Mr. Drizzle—launched homemade rockets for fun. One time he told the class he was working on a new kind of rocket fuel—a solid fuel, something more powerful and advanced than anything NASA had come up with.

“You mean he has a secret formula?” Scott asked.

Jenny nodded. “I think that's exactly it. Then, later, another kid asked a question about it, and he said he
shouldn't have brought it up in the first place, and we should all forget he mentioned it.”

“So maybe we should forget it too,” Mark said.

“My lips are sealed,” said Scott.

Inspired by Mr. Drizzle, Jenny had followed the Apollo-Soyuz mission and watched the splashdown on TV the afternoon before.

“Lucky,” Mark said.

“We read about it in the newspaper,” Scott said.

“The astronauts almost died,” Jenny said.

“Yeah—when that poison gas came in the spacecraft on re-entry,” Mark said.

“Nitrogen tetroxide propellant from the RCS—reaction control system.” Jenny pronounced all that like it was easy. “They forgot to close a valve or something.”

Scott and Mark looked at each other, then at Jenny, who had turned pink. “Sorry,” she said. “My friends call me an egghead.”

“Jenny the egghead,” Scott said.

“ ‘Egg' for short,” Mark said.

“Jenny!” Jenny's mom appeared at the head of the path through the trees. She was walking with Grandpa. “Oh, there you are. Time to go, honey. Did you have a nice time?”

“I dunno, Mom.” She looked at Mark and Scott. “Did we have a nice time?”

The boys cracked up, which Jenny's mom interpreted as yes.

“Told you so,” she said to her daughter and then to the boys, “Come back later in the summer, why don't you? Maybe you kids can get together again.”

If Mom and Dad had driven up at that moment, the week would have ended on a happy note. Unfortunately, Scott and Mark's parents weren't due till the next morning . . . and after dinner, things kind of went to heck.

Jenny's mom had left the blueberry pie, and Scott was bringing it to the table for dessert. Later, Mark said he didn't know why he did what he did. It was just one of those irresistible ideas that come into your head. Every morning, Grandpa put the rubber band from the newspaper in a plastic dish on the windowsill by the kitchen table. The dish was overflowing with rubber bands. Mark's idea was grab one and shoot it at his brother's head.

“Ow!”

A direct hit—
yes!

But Mark's satisfaction didn't last. Scott swiped at his stinging ear, the pie fell to the floor, and the plate broke, shooting glass and blueberry goo everywhere. This was bad enough, but then things got worse. Barefoot, Scott stepped hard on a piece of glass, which neatly sliced his foot.

“Aiiiii!”
he squealed as red ooze joined the purple stain on his heel.

Grandpa was up in a flash to examine Scott's injury. Then he ordered Mark to get the first-aid kit from the bathroom and maneuvered Scott onto the sofa so he could elevate his bleeding foot.

While Grandpa cleaned and bandaged the cut, Scott squeezed his eyes shut and willed his tears to stay put in his eyeballs. “Is it gonna get infected?” he asked.

“Hard telling with a blueberry wound,” Grandpa said. “You might turn purple. You might not.”

Meanwhile, Mark swept up the mess, did the dinner dishes, and dried them—all without being asked.

Chores done, Mark approached his brother, who was still on the sofa. “Does it hurt a lot?”

“What do you think?” Scott said.

“You might look good purple,” Mark said. “And then people could tell us apart.”

“Easy for you to look on the bright side,” Scott said.

“Boys?” their grandpa said. By this time he had made himself comfortable on his beat-up recliner and
was reading the dregs of the morning newspaper.

“I didn't mean to hurt him,” Mark said.

“You shot a rubber band at my head,” Scott reminded him.

“Yeah, okay. But I didn't mean to hurt your
foot
,” Mark said.

Grandpa cleared his throat. “I can't help but notice that whenever you two are around, there's a high level of conflict.”

The twins couldn't really argue with that.

“And a correspondingly high level of destruction.”

Given the state of Scott's foot, not to mention the vivid purple stain on the linoleum floor, they couldn't argue there, either.

“Now, do you boys think that's a good thing?”

“No, sir,” they said.

“So the question becomes, what ought we—meaning
you
—do about it?”

The boys mumbled variations of “We don't know, Grandpa.” Then Mark added, “Do you have any suggestions?”

It so happened that he did. “I've just been reading about the Apollo-Soyuz mission you boys are so interested in. You know, up till now, the United States and the Soviet Union have been bitter enemies. The two countries' working together on this huge scientific project is a step forward for world peace.”

Mark tried to follow his grandfather's logic. “So you're saying that since Scott and I act like enemies sometimes, we should rendezvous in space?”

“I'm saying why not work together on something constructive? You're great kids who can do anything you set your minds to. What if you built a go-kart or something?”

Scott and Mark liked the idea of a project. When they were five, they had stayed up to watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. Back then, they both wanted to be astronauts. But when they started school it turned out to be boring, and they didn't do that well, and their teachers didn't think they were that smart. So the dream of exploring space had faded. Now, as Grandpa spoke, it came back.

Scott said, “I'd rather build a spaceship than a go-kart.”

Mark nodded. “Me too. And maybe that Egg girl can help us. Didn't she say her teacher has some kind of secret formula?”

“Shhhh!”
Scott said.

“Egg girl?” Grandpa repeated.

“Jenny,” Mark said.

Grandpa looked puzzled, but didn't ask for an explanation. Instead, he said, “Suit yourselves. Go on and build a spaceship in that case.” Then he looked back at his newspaper. “And if you need any help, let me know.”

Mark had had a brainstorm. “Well, actually, Grandpa, what if you let us use your workshop?”

Grandpa shifted in his chair, but kept his eyes on the newspaper. “We'll see,” he said.

The boys grinned at each other. In Grandpa-speak, that meant yes.

“How do you build a spaceship, anyway?” Mark asked his brother.

He and Scott were lying in their own beds at home on Sunday morning. They could hear their dad making pancakes in the kitchen. They knew it was their dad because Mom had worked the swing shift—four to midnight—and would still be sleeping. She was a police officer too, the first woman on their town's force.

“It might be pretty hard,” Scott said. “I think we need a whole lot of gasoline. It burns up and the fire pushes the spacecraft into space.”

Mark rolled his eyes. “Don't be an idiot. Anybody knows you don't put gasoline in a rocket ship.”

“Okay, genius,” Scott said, “what do you put in it?”

“Rocket fuel,” said Mark. “Like what Egg's teacher invented.”

“And just how is that different from gasoline?” Scott asked.

“Well, it's obviously way different because, uh . . . it just is. And I think you're right that we need a lot. What else do we need?”

“Metal,” said Scott.

“And where do we get metal?” Mark climbed out of bed and stretched.

“You have a bad attitude, you know that?” Scott sat up. “We'll find it. Maybe Grandpa's got extra in his workshop. He's got everything else.”

“I just think it might be a good idea to have a plan first,” said Mark.

In their hearts, Mark and Scott were as messy as any eleven-year-old boys anywhere. But unlike Grandpa, their parents wouldn't tolerate chaos. For that reason, the twins' bedroom looked tidy—provided you didn't pay a visit to the dust bunnies under the bed or scrutinize the depths of the clothes closet.

Now Mark tugged the corners of his red comforter so that it was more or less straight and punched his pillow. Scott, whose comforter was navy blue, did the same. Then they pulled on clean T-shirts over their pajama bottoms and went out to the kitchen to see how breakfast was coming.

“Sheesh, I thought you boys'd never get up,” Dad said by way of greeting. “You're burnin' daylight, you know that?”

Mark wrinkled his nose. “Better than burning pancakes, Dad.”

Scott laughed. “Good one.”

“Hmph.” With a spatula, Dad looked under the edge of a pancake on the griddle. “Nothing wrong with this one that syrup won't cure. Set the table, you two. And get out the milk. Oh—and Major Nelson's been wondering where his breakfast is, too.”

Major Nelson, under the kitchen table, thumped his tail.

*  *  *

After breakfast, the boys cleaned up, and then they had a whole glorious summer day at their disposal. Usually, that would mean riding bikes before it got too hot, but to Mark's astonishment, Scott disappeared into the den and came back out with a yellow legal pad.

“Wait—I'm gonna ask Mom for the thermometer,” Mark said. “You must be sick.”

“Very funny, loser,” said Scott. “I'm just doing what you said—making a plan. Turns out it wasn't that dumb of an idea. To make a spaceship, we need metal. What else?”

Mark sat down beside his brother on the living room sofa. Major Nelson trotted in from the kitchen, circled twice, and dropped to his favorite spot on the carpet.

“A parachute,” Mark said.

“In case the astronaut has to bail out?” Scott said.

“No, to slow the spaceship down when it's time to land,” said Mark. “And then I think we need a second one that floats it back to Earth.”

“Back to Greenwood Lake, you mean,” said Scott. “That's where we're going to splash down.”

“And we need electrical wiring for the controls. And a heat shield,” said Mark.

Scott looked up. “A what?”

“I read it in
Life
magazine.” Mark shrugged. “I'm not sure what it is, exactly, but it keeps the spaceship from
burning like an overcooked pancake when it's coming back through the atmosphere.”

Scott wrote it down. “Sounds important. Anything else?”

“A window,” said Mark. “And a periscope. That way you can see all around, like out of a submarine.”

“Oh yeah,” said Scott. “It would be pretty crazy to go all that way and not see anything.”

“A spacesuit,” said Mark. “A camera. Air tanks. Hoses.”

Scott was writing feverishly, then looked up. “Switches, cables, fuses, circuit breakers . . .”

Mark nodded. “Yeah, keep writing. And something else—a fire extinguisher.”

Scott didn't want to think about a fire extinguisher, but he wrote it down just the same. Like his brother, he was well aware of the Apollo 1 disaster in 1967, when three astronauts died in a fire in a capsule still on the launchpad.