Escape from Earth: New Adventures in Space

by Jack Dann

  Damn. If only Dad hadn’t re-upped with the National Guard. If he was still around, he’d . . .

  “Pardon me. Could you give us some directions?”

  Wrapped up in my thoughts, I jumped when a voice spoke beside me. Startled, I looked around, saw a guy . . .

  No. Not a quite a guy. Another teenager, about my own age, give or take a year or two. Average height, dark brown hair, sharp eyes. I’d never seen him before, but that didn’t mean anything. Like I said, a lot of tourists came through Bellingham in the fall.

  Nor was he alone. To his right was another kid ... or at least I assumed he was a kid, because his face was young. But only once before I’d met a kid as big as he was, and although Josh Donnigen was the quarterback for the Bellingham Pilgrims, this dude would’ve smeared Josh all over the scrimmage line.

  Yet it was neither the kid who’d spoken nor the giant on his right who attracted my attention, but the girl between them. There were two or three gals at school who interested me; the best of the bunch was Pauline Coullete, who I’d known since the fifth grade, and whom I’d lately been trying to muster enough courage to ask out for a date. Yet this girl—petite and slender, with light brown hair and the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen— made Pauline look like she’d just finished shoveling out the barn.

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. “Where do you want to go?”

  “Umm . . .” The kid hesitated. “It’s difficult to explain, but could you tell us . . . ?”

  “We require guidance to the Narragansett Point Nuclear Power Station.” This from the big guy, in a voice was that surprisingly mild. “Topographical directions will suffice, but linear coordinates would also ...”

  “Be quiet, Alex.” The girl cast him a stern look, and Alex immediately shut up. Which I thought was strange. If Pauline had spoken to me the same way, I would’ve been embarrassed, yet this guy showed no trace of emotion. Didn’t even blink. Just continued to stare at me, like . . .

  “We’re trying to find the nuclear ... I mean ...” The first kid stammered as if English was a foreign language, even though his accent was American. “The Narragansett Point...”

  “You mean the nuke?” I asked.

  “The nuke, yes.” He exchanged a glance with the girl. “That’s what we ... I mean, I . . . that is, we . . .” He squared his shoulders. “Can you tell us how to get there?”

  That’s when I noticed the way they were dressed . . . and I almost laughed out loud.

  Go to a flea market, or maybe a vintage clothing store. Select what you’re going to wear at random, relying on dumb luck to get the right size. That’s what they looked like they’d done. The kid who couldn’t speak plain English wore plaid bell-bottoms with a purple disco shirt under a Yankees field jacket. His pal sported a patchwork sweater with camouflage trousers that rose an inch too high above his ankles, revealing a pair of pointed-toe cowboy boots. The girl had the best sense of style, but even then, I’ve never met anyone who’d matched a tie-dyed Grateful Dead T-shirt with red pants and a faux-fur overcoat.

  Their outfits may have been appropriate for a Halloween party, or maybe a rave club in Boston, yet they were as out of place in a small town in Vermont as a clown costume in church. Maybe this was some sort of post-punk, post-grunge, post-what-ever fashion statement, yet I had a distinct feeling that they were trying to dress like American teenagers, but couldn’t quite get it right.

  And I wasn’t the only one who noticed. An all-too-familiar police cruiser came to a stop at the traffic light, and I glanced over to see Officer Beauchamp checking us out. He saw me and I saw him, yet for once he was less interested in what I was doing than in my companions. The two guys didn’t notice him, but the girl did; she hastily looked away, yet I could tell that Bo made her nervous.

  She wasn’t alone. We weren’t doing anything illegal, but this bunch was awful conspicuous, and the less attention I got from the law, the better. Although my record was clean, nonetheless I was Steve Cosby’s kid brother. So far as Bo was concerned, that alone made me a possible accomplice to every sleazy thing my brother did. Time to get rid of these guys, fast.

  “Sure.” I pointed down Main Street, away from the center of town. “Go that way two blocks to Adams, then hang a right. Follow it five more blocks to Route 10, then cut a left and follow it out of town. Plant’s about ten miles that way. Can’t miss it.”

  “Thank you.” The girl gave me a smile that would have melted the ice on the school hockey rink. “You’ve been most kind.” She hesitated, then added, “I’m Michaela. My friends call me Mickey.”

  “Michaela.” I savored the name on my tongue. “I’m Eric. Are you from . . . ? I mean, I know you’re not from here, but...”

  “Pleased to meet you, Eric.” The big guy extended his hand. “I’m Alex. His name is Tyler. We’re . . .”

  “Alex, be quiet.” Tyler swatted his hand away from mine, and once again Alex went silent. What was it with them? Didn’t they want Alex to talk to me?

  The light changed. Bo cast one more glance in our direction, then his car slowly glided forward, heading in the direction of the theatre. I knew that he’d just swing around the block and come back for another pass. It would probably be a good idea to be gone by then.

  “We must go.” Tyler apparently realized this, too, for he took Mickey’s arm. “Thank you for the directions ...”

  “Bye, Eric.” Again, Mickey turned on her smile. “Nice to meet you.”

  I was still trying to unstick my tongue from the roof of my mouth when Tyler led her and Alex across the street. He was in so much of a hurry that he didn’t notice that they were walking against the light. As it happened, a Ford Explorer was approaching the intersection from Birch. The SUV blared its horn, startling Mickey and Tyler; Alex, though, calmly stepped in front of his friends, raising his hands as if to protect them.

  For a second, I thought Alex would bounce off the Explorer’s hood. Or maybe—just for an instant—exactly vice versa; Alex was utterly complacent, even as the SUV bore down upon him. Yet as the Explorer skidded to a halt, Tyler grabbed Mickey and yanked her across the street, while Alex lowered his arms and sauntered behind them, ignoring the obscenities yelled at him by the driver.

  They continued down Main, heading, in the direction I’d given them. Just before they passed Rumke’s Department Store, though, Mickey glanced back over her shoulder. I thought she smiled at me, but Tyler dragged her away before I could wave goodbye.

  I was still watching them go when Ted showed up. “Let me guess,” he said. “You’ve just met the perfect girl, and now she’s gone.”

  Again, I jumped. It was the second time that evening someone had snuck up on me. Even if it was only Ted, that was one time too many.

  “Forget it. They were just asking directions.” I looked up Birch; sure enough, I could see Bo’s cop car coming our way. “C’mon, let’s get out of here. Bo’s on my case tonight. Pizza at Louie’s?”

  “Sure. Why not?” Ted didn’t need to ask why Officer Beauchamp might take an interest in me; he knew my recent family history. When the light changed again, we crossed the street, then cut up Birch to an alley that would take us behind the block of buildings along Main, a shortcut to Louie’s Pizzeria. “So who were they? And who was the babe?”

  “I dunno.” I darted a glance behind us as we entered the alley. No sign of Bo. Good. “Just some guys asking how to get to Narragansett.”

  “Oh, yeah. Right.” Ted snickered as he gave me a sidelong look. “The way you were talking to her, I thought maybe you and she ...”

  “Never saw her before in my life.” I caught the look in his eye. “She was just asking directions, okay?”

  Ted was my best and oldest friend, so I forgave him for a lot of things, not the least of which was being a total geek. We’d both recently discovered girls, and were trying to figure out how to deal with them, yet Ted’s interest in the other half of the human race was misinformed by comic books and TV shows. He didn’t want a
date that ended with a kiss at the door, but a hot night with Lana Lang. He was no Clark Kent, though, glasses aside, and until he learned how to degeekify himself, he had as much of a chance of getting a steady girl as Brainiac.

  “Sure, yeah.” But now his expression had become pensive. “But why would they want to go out there?”

  “I dunno.” We’d come out of the alley, and were walking across a parking lot. “Maybe they were part of a school group taking a tour. ”

  “On a Friday night?” Again, he looked at me askance. “And since when did the plant let anyone inside ? ”

  He had something there. At one time, New England Energy allowed local schools to take field trips to the plant. But after 9/11 they closed the plant to the public, and it wasn’t long after that when Narragansett Point was decommissioned. But though the reactor may have gone out of service, everyone knew that the spent fuel rods were still being stored on-site until they could be shipped to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility in Nevada. So there was no way a school group would be allowed on the premises.

  “Maybe they were looking for a spot to go parking.” Even as I said that, it sounded wrong. Sure, the old visitors’ parking lot had once been a favorite make-out spot, but security patrols around the plant had put an end to that before I had a chance to borrow Steve’s car for my fantasized date with Pauline.

  Besides, how would some out-of-town kids know about the Point? And come to think of it, how where they going to get out there in the first place? The plant was ten miles from town, and I didn’t see them get in a car.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Ted said. “Unless they’re . . .”

  “You mean they’re not interested in the World’s Biggest Rocking Chair? Or the Farm Museum?” Despite my own misgivings, I grinned at him. “Where’s your civic pride? Aren’t you a proud citizen of Bellingham, Vermont, the greatest town in . . . ? ”

  I stopped myself. By then we’d come upon another alley, this one leading from behind the Main Street shops to Winchester Street, where the pizza place was located. A Chevy van was blocking our way, though, so we had to go around it. As we started to walk past, I saw that its side doors were open; within the light cast by its ceiling dome, someone was fiddling with something on a fold-down workbench.

  A girl just a little older than Ted and me stood in the open back door of one of the shops. She saw us coming, and raised a hand. “Hey, Eric. How’ya doing?”

  Sharon Ogilvy, who’d graduated from Bellingham High just last spring. I knew her because she’d gone out with Steve for a short while. Like a lot of my brother’s ex-girlfriends, she’d broken up with him because . . . well, because he was Smokin’ Steve, and there were better dates you could have than guys who’d make you walk home alone in the rain because you weren’t cool enough for him and his crew. But she and I had remained friends, although she never dropped by our house any more. Not that I blamed her; I often wished I lived somewhere else, too.

  “Hey, Sharon.” I strolled over to her, stepping around the front of the van. The workman barely glanced up at me; now that I was closer, I saw that he was a locksmith, using a portable lathe to make a set of keys. “Just getting some pizza. What are you doing?”

  “Working here now.” She frowned. “Or at least I hope I’ll still have a job tomorrow, after what happened today.”

  “Break-in?” Ted had noticed the locksmith, too.

  “Yeah. Found the door open when I came in this morning. Someone busted the lock ...”

  “Busted, hell.” The locksmith didn’t look up at us. “Whatever they did to it, they didn’t use a crowbar.” Before I could ask what he meant, he reached forward to pick up the knob he’d just replaced. “Damnedest thing I ever saw,” he went on, handing it to Ted. “Like someone put an acetylene torch to it.”

  I took a look at it. As he said, the knob itself hadn’t been damaged . . . but the bolt looked as if it had been melted. “Whoever did this had a fine touch,” the locksmith continued. “No scorch marks on the back plate or the door frame. You’d wonder why they even bothered.” An apologetic look at Sharon. “No offense.”

  “Well, if they thought they’d find enough money ...” Ted began.

  “You kiddin’?” Sharon laughed. “What do you think this is, a jewelry store? We barely make enough to pay the rent.”

  “What do you . . . ?” I shook my head. “Sorry, but I must be missing something. What is this place?”

  “S’okay. You can’t tell with the door open like this.” Sharon stepped aside to half-shut the door. Now we could see the sign on its outside:

  SALVATION ARMY THRIFT SHOP

  Deliveries Only—No Dumping

  Please Take All Donations To Front Door

  “Why’d anyone take the trouble to break into this place ...” She shrugged. “I mean, we make maybe forty, fifty dollars a day, and it gets deposited at the bank after we close up. If you want to steal something, why bother? Most everything here would cost you less than a Happy Meal at McDonald’s ...”

  “So what was stolen?” I asked, feeling a sudden chill.

  “Just a few clothes, so far as I can tell. Found the hangers on the floor.” She glared at the locksmith. “You could’ve gotten here earlier, y’know.”

  “Sorry. Been a long day.” He finished with the keys, test-fitted them into the new lock. “Had another break-in just like this at Auto Plaza. Wonder who stole the welding equipment. . . ?”

  I was no longer paying much attention. “Gotta go,” I said. “Take it easy.” Then I nudged Ted and continued heading down the alley.

  “You’ve got something on your mind,” Ted said quietly, once we were out of Sharon’s earshot. “Want to talk about it?”

  “Maybe. I dunno.” Clothes stolen from a thrift shop. The same sort of clothes I’d seen some guys wearing only a few minutes earlier. The same guys who’d asked me the way to the local nuclear power plant. “Let’s talk about it later. I think better when I’ve got some food in me.”

  Louie’s didn’t have the best pizza in town—that distinction was held by Le Roma, out near the interstate—but it was the cheapest, if you didn’t mind a bit of grease. Ted and I ordered our usual Friday night poison—a large pizza with Italian sausage, mushrooms, and green peppers—and a pitcher of Pepsi, and threw a couple of quarters in the pinball machine while we waited. We’d tucked away about half of the pizza before either of us brought up the guys I’d met an hour ago.

  “What if they’re terrorists?” Ted suddenly asked.

  I’d just taken a drink from my soda when he said that; it almost came out through my nose. “Aw, man ...” I forced myself to swallow, then pulled a paper napkin from the dispenser and wiped my mouth. “You gotta be jokin’. Terrorists?”

  “Seriously. What if they’re scoping out the plant?” Ted stared at me from across the table. “Look at the setup. It’s perfect. Closed-down nuke only about a hundred miles from Boston ...”

  “A hundred and ten miles from Boston. Northwest and upwind ...”

  “Whatever. It’s still a sitting duck. You break in, set a bomb near the reactor, blow the thing ...”

  Ted may have been my best friend, but there were times when his imagination got the better of him. I glanced around to make sure no one was overhearing us; we were in a corner booth near the front window, and the waitress was on the other side of the room. Still, I wasn’t taking any chances.

  “Keep your voice down, willya?” I murmured. “Dude, the containment is steel-reinforced concrete, twenty feet thick. It’s built to withstand meltdowns, earthquakes, airplane crashes . . .”

  “Yeah, but what if . . . ?”

  “Just listen to me, okay?” I peeled off another slice of pizza. “Even if you had a bomb big enough to crack the dome, how would you get it in there? You’ve seen what kind of security they’ve got around that place. Chain-link fences, vehicle barriers, checkpoints, TV cameras, motion detectors, vault doors with keycard locks . . . not to mention a lot of guys
with guns.” I smiled. “I pity da fool who try to break inta dat joint.”

  As always, Ted grinned at my Mr. T impersonation; we’d grown up watching A-Team reruns on cable? “Yeah, but still...”

  “Besides, there isn’t any uranium in the reactor.” I took a bite, talked around a mouthful of food. “Don’t you read the paper? They started removing the fuel rods last spring, storing them in casks outside the building . . . and don’t get me started on how big those things are. Not only that, but...”

  I stopped myself. Until now, I was feeling rather smug, being able to rattle off stuff about the plant that I remembered from the tour we’d taken back in the sixth grade. What I’d been about to say, though, was so dumb that I swallowed it along with the cheese and sausage.

  “But what?” Ted asked.

  “I dunno.” I shrugged. “They just didn’t seem like terrorists.”

  “They didn’t seem like terrorists?” He laughed out loud. “What do you think they do, wear little stick-on name badges? ‘Hello, my name is Osama . . .’”

  “You know what I mean.” Even as I said this, though, I couldn’t help but remember the way Mickey reacted when she spotted Bo. Sure, cops tend to make guys my age a little nervous, even when we’ve done nothing wrong. If someone was murdered, and the police were to round up five suspects—Al Capone, Charles Manson, Saddam Hussein, Jack the Ripper, and me— and put us all in a lineup, guess which one the eyewitnesses would probably finger?

  Still, Mickey had been awful skittish. So was Tyler. And Alex . . . Alex was weird as a three-dollar bill.

  Nonetheless, I shook my head. “Look, whatever they are, they’re not terrorists. Probably just some guys from out of town who want to see the plant...”

  “On a Friday night? C’mon . . . this town ain’t that dead.” Ted started pulling bits of sausage off the pizza. I hated it when he did that. “You saw the way they were dressed ...”

  “Yeah, right.” I rescued another slice before he could dissect it. “This from the guy who wears a Fantastic Four T-shirt to gym class.”