by T.A. Barron
He reached a trembling arm toward Kate.
“No, Grandfather,” she protested, tucking the picnic cloth around him again. “You should rest! Please stay in the chair! If you need something from the lab, I can get it for you.”
Grandfather looked at her resignedly. “All right … Just until I’m a little more rested. Here’s what I need you to do.” He leaned forward in the rocker and whispered anxiously: “Go to the green box. Right next to—”
At that instant, Cumberland barked loudly and bounded out of the kitchen and down the hallway.
“What is it?” Kate asked.
Grandfather shook his head. “That’s not like him.”
From down in the lab, they heard the dog bark again frantically.
“I’ll go check it out,” said Kate as she ran down the long hallway, leaving Grandfather in the rocker.
As she entered the lab, she felt suddenly colder.
Just then she noticed the desk lamp was flickering and sputtering noisily. A blur of motion near the desk caught her eye.
“The ghost!” she screamed, as a frigid, formless cloud of white vapor began swirling around the desk—hovering, as if it were searching for something.
Then it began to coalesce around Grandfather’s green box. Slowly, as Kate watched in horror, the green box lifted into the air, borne by the white vapors gathered around it.
“Stop!” she screamed, lunging after the green box. “You can’t have it!”
The phantom cloud quivered, then suddenly blew her backward with the force of a hurricane—straight into the table laden with Grandfather’s equipment.
Shattered glass and equipment flew in all directions. The table collapsed as she landed, sending tools and prisms skidding across the floor. The computer design terminal tottered precariously for an instant, then crashed to the floor with an explosion of glass. Brightly colored chemicals sprayed the walls and Kate’s clothes.
“Stop!” she screamed, picking herself up again. Her head was sore and her wrist was bleeding from a flying shard of glass. All she could think of was Grandfather’s life’s work being destroyed.
The green box continued to float toward the door of the lab.
“No!” cried Kate hysterically. “That belongs to Grandfather!”
“Nnnoooo,” came a voice like an iceberg cracking in two. It wasn’t the kind of voice that Kate could hear with her ears; rather, it vibrated deep down inside of her bones. “Ittt bbellonnnggss tttoo mmmeeee.”
As suddenly as a bolt of lightning, Cumberland leaped at the green box, knocking it free from the ghost’s grasp. The box skidded across the room and came to rest in the corner. Meanwhile, the retriever ran to Kate’s side and began licking her wounded wrist.
For an instant, the ghost seemed to dissipate, like a cloud of poisonous gas dispersing with the breeze. Eyeing the box, Kate started to regain her feet.
Suddenly she saw one of Grandfather’s largest lasers teetering and about to fall—directly on top of them.
“Look out!” she yelled, rolling to her side just as the heavy contraption came crashing to the floor.
Above the explosion of metal and glass, Cumberland’s squeal of agony pierced the air.
“No!” cried Kate, crawling toward the helpless dog. “No!”
Cumberland lay motionless under the weight of the toppled machine. As Kate tried to lift the tangle of metal off his body, the air shivered with a laughter colder than death.
Like an evil wind, the ghost gathered up the green box, whisked through the door, and disappeared.
Kate could barely see for all the tears that filled her eyes. But she pulled and pried with all her strength. There was a sound of grinding metal when, at last, she lifted the heavy machine from Cumberland’s body. Pushing against it with her shoulder, she shoved it aside.
Miraculously, the dog moved his prominent tail.
“Cumberland! You’re alive!”
He whimpered pitifully, and Kate hugged his neck, burying her face in his flowing cloak. “You’re alive!”
With an effort, Cumberland wriggled into a crouch position. He whimpered again, then licked Kate’s ear. Slowly, he rose to his feet and took a few halting steps.
“You’re limping terribly.” She tried to examine the dog’s raised paw, but he drew it away as soon as she touched it. “And you may have broken a rib or something worse.”
Kate forced herself to stand. Her head hurt where she had hit it, and she felt nauseous and dizzy. As she surveyed the room, her heart sank. Smashed equipment, splattered chemicals, broken glass, and scattered papers surrounded her. It looked as if someone had dropped a bomb in the middle of the lab.
At that moment, the full weight of the disaster descended. The box! The green box was gone!
“What’s going on here?” Grandfather, looking exhausted, stepped into the lab. “It sounded like—oh, my God. This place is destroyed!”
Kate darted to the doorway and hugged him tightly. “The ghost,” she blurted. “The ghost was here. In the lab!”
“Here? A ghost?” His voice was incredulous.
He kneeled to look her in the eye. “Are you all right, Kaitlyn? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” she said bravely, wiping the tears from her face. “Just a little dizzy. I hit my head, that’s all. But he nearly killed Cumberland.”
“What?”
The golden retriever barked loudly and limped over to them. Grandfather patted him and scratched behind his ear. “Cumberland, you old trooper! You’re a match for any ghost.” He turned again to Kate. “What did this ghost look like?”
“Like a ghost! Like a cloud or something … It wasn’t solid—sometimes it was practically invisible. We had a terrible fight. We tried to stop it from …” Tears began to well up again, but she fought them back. “Oh, Grandfather! It stole your green box.”
“What?” The old man rose and scanned his desk, now surrounded by the wreckage of the lab. The spot where the box had once rested was vacant.
To Kate’s astonishment, a slow smile spread across his face.
“But—but I don’t understand,” she objected. “It stole your box. Your special green box.”
“Yes, I know,” answered Grandfather, still looking at his desk and smiling broadly.
“Then what’s so funny?”
He didn’t respond.
“What’s so funny?”
“It stole the wrong thing.”
“Wrong thing!” exclaimed Kate. “I thought—”
“You thought the box was what I wanted. I know. That’s because I hadn’t finished telling you exactly what to bring me.”
“But the green box—”
“Was needed for my research, that’s all. Now that I’ve found the formula for PCL, it’s no longer necessary. And I am quite sure it’s not what our intruder was really after.”
Stepping stiffly over broken glass and metal, Grandfather worked his way to the desk where the green box had once rested. Behind the minicomputer rested the rack of brightly colored beakers, still unbroken after the battle. From this rack, he pulled one simple beaker which held a half-inch deep pool of radiant green liquid.
“The best way to hide something special,” Grandfather declared, “is to make it look as ordinary as possible.” Holding the beaker high in the air, he announced: “This is what our intruder wanted, I’ll warrant.”
“What is it?” asked Kate, peering closely at the beaker. “What’s so special about it?”
With considerable difficulty, Grandfather lifted his desk chair upright and sat down heavily. Then he turned to her and whispered in a tense voice: “There is something I didn’t tell you last night, Kaitlyn. Something very important. I’ve not only identified all the ingredients of PCL—although that was difficult enough, believe me! No, I’ve done something far more difficult.”
He glanced at the sparkling green fluid in the beaker and a smile flickered across his face. “I have actually made some PCL.”
“Grandfather!”
“Yes.” Grandfather straightened himself in the chair. “Last night I made the very first batch. No easy trick, without the intense heat and pressure of a star to help the chemistry along. But it worked. Now this beaker holds a small amount of the most precious substance found anywhere in the universe: pure condensed light.”
“I can’t believe it!” shouted Kate. “You fooled the ghost.”
“Not for long, though. Once that intruder—whatever sort of being it really is—discovers it was fooled, my guess is it will come back.”
Nervously, Kate glanced at the doorway. “Why would it want your PCL?”
Grandfather placed the beaker on the edge of the desk and frowned. “I don’t know. It’s useless to speculate. And right now we have more urgent matters to deal with. Can you make it over there to the astro-vivometer? Push the button marked Update, then bring me the printout so I can see it.”
Deftly, Kate maneuvered across the wreckage-strewn floor to the astro-vivometer, which was still clattering noisily. She retrieved the printout and carried it back to Grandfather.
As she handed it to him, a look of such gravity filled his face that she at first thought he was having another heart attack.
“Heavens!” he muttered. “How can this be happening?”
“How bad is it?” asked Kate, almost afraid to hear the answer.
Grandfather looked at her with an ashen face. “Very bad. Very bad, indeed. The PCL drain is accelerating rapidly.” He reached for her hand, and his voice was less than a whisper. “Unless something happens, the Sun will collapse in …”
Kate’s heart froze in her chest. “In how long? Grandfather, how long?”
The old astronomer did not answer. “I must do something drastic,” he whispered resolutely.
Fear flooded Kate’s veins. “Grandfather, you’re not well enough to do anything—let alone anything drastic. You could have another heart attack!”
“That’s right,” he said in a voice as hard as stone. “That’s another reason I must act now. Too much is at stake, and we have almost no time left.”
With that, he reached deep into one of his lab coat pockets. Carefully, he removed a small velvet box which resembled an ordinary ring case. As Kate looked on fearfully, he opened the box to reveal an unusual ring with a turquoise band. Instead of a jewel, however, upon the band was mounted a small transparent container crafted in the shape of a butterfly.
With a touch of his finger, Grandfather flipped open the top of the butterfly container on the ring. Then, holding the velvet box securely, he began to pour in the fluid. Concentrating intently, he watched it flow into the ring like sparkling syrup. Before he had emptied half of the beaker, the wings of the butterfly brimmed at full capacity, and the top snapped closed automatically. Waves of illumination flowed through the entire ring, like glowing coals at the base of a fire.
“What are you going to do with that?” demanded Kate, eyeing the velvet box and the mysterious object it held.
Grandfather’s brow furrowed deeply. “I am going to do what I have labored many years to do, Kaitlyn. I had only hoped that the first time would be a moment of triumph, instead of desperation.”
“But what are you going to do?”
The old astronomer looked deeply into her eyes. “I’m going to put on this ring. The instant I touch it, the pure condensed light inside it will set free the most alive part of myself, the part most akin to light.”
“You mean you’ll turn into light?”
“No, Kaitlyn. I will turn into heartlight. And then I can travel anywhere in the universe.”
Kate shook her head in disbelief. “How can a ring do that?”
“It’s made from a special conductive material, whose molecular structure is designed to bring the PCL in the ring into contact with the heartlight in my body. When that contact happens—well, just watch.”
“But, Grandfather! You can’t be sure it’s going to work.”
“I’m sure, Kaitlyn. I’m sure.”
“Can’t you at least wait until you’re more rested?”
“There is no time left to wait,” said Grandfather as he replaced the beaker on the desk.
“But where will you go? What can you do?”
“I will go to the one place in the universe that might provide me with enough information to find a cure—the place where more PCL is manufactured than anywhere else. I will go to—”
“Trethoniel!” Kate exclaimed.
“Yes! I don’t know what I’m looking for, exactly. It may be some kind of substance, or process, that allows Trethoniel to make such enormous quantities of PCL. If somehow Trethoniel’s secret could be applied to the Sun—”
“No, Grandfather, you can’t! It’s too dangerous. Your machine might be wrong … This could be a gigantic mistake. You’d be risking your life for nothing.”
Grandfather shook his head. “It’s no mistake. I am convinced.”
“But you can’t possibly go to Trethoniel and back in time.”
The wild eyebrows climbed skyward. “Yes, I can. You see, Kaitlyn, time in interstellar travel is greatly expanded compared to time on Earth. It should take me only two or three minutes of our time to fly to Trethoniel, learn whatever I can about how it manufactures so much PCL, and return to help the Sun. Of course, it will feel like a lot more time, but by your watch I’ll only be gone a few minutes. Besides, this ring holds only four minutes’ supply of PCL—measured in Earth time, that is. So whether I like it or not, I can’t be gone any longer than that.”
“Only four minutes?” Kate struggled to comprehend.
“Yes. I haven’t been able to figure out how to make PCL liberate heartlight for more than four minutes. There seems to be some sort of physical barrier halting the reaction at that point. I had hoped eventually to find some way to extend it, but without the green box, that’s impossible now. And we have no more time for such experiments, anyway.”
He looked thoughtfully at the radiant ring resting in the box. “I had even hoped that one day, Kaitlyn, you could travel with me—perhaps to the moon, or even to Mars …” His eyes glistened as he turned to her. “Maybe someday we’ll still have that chance.”
“No!” cried Kate, her own vision clouded with tears. A feeling of foreboding, stronger even than she had felt last night, swelled inside of her. “I don’t want you to go! I have a feeling—a terrible feeling—that if you go you’ll be in danger—worse danger than you can possibly imagine. Grandfather … please don’t go. The risks are too great.”
Grandfather touched her head gently. “There are risks, my child. I’m not going to say there aren’t. There are still a few adjustments to the PCL I’d hoped to make before trying it out—one or two random elements I’ve not yet identified. Still, I think the ring should work. The risks are worth it, if there’s any chance of saving the Sun. Can’t you understand? All life on Earth is going to perish unless something changes soon. Everyone and everything on it will disappear forever.”
Kate sighed miserably and looked at the floor.
“I am an old man, Kaitlyn. I’m going to die soon enough as it is. You must understand. I’ve got to try.”
She raised her head slowly. “Can I see the ring one more time?” she asked, her voice quivering.
The old man held out his hand, with the velvet box resting in his palm. The butterfly ring gleamed, radiant and mysterious.
Suddenly, she snatched the box from his hand.
“Kaitlyn!” shouted Grandfather, lurching after it.
“No!” Kate jumped out of reach. “I’m not going to let you do this to yourself,” she declared. “You could be wrong about the way PCL works. You could even be wrong about the Sun. I won’t let you do it, Grandfather.”
A fire blazed in the old man’s eyes, but he held his voice steady. “Now, Kaitlyn. Give me back the ring.”
“I won’t,” she replied, darting behind the desk. Her mind was made up.
“Please,” he
begged, his hands shaking.
“No.”
“Kaitlyn, please.” He dropped his hands, and defeat was in his eyes. “All right,” he whispered. “If I promise not to go anywhere until I’ve made absolutely certain that the astro-vivometer is right—that there’s no chance at all of any mistakes—will you give me back the ring?”
Kate hesitated. “What if it takes you more time than the Sun has left to check the machine?”
The astronomer sighed in resignation. “That’s a risk I’ll just have to take. A risk we’ll all have to take. But maybe—maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s some mistake after all.”
“Do you really truly promise?” demanded Kate. “And not like your promises to finish working by a certain time! I want a real promise. The kind that makes you fry in agony and pain and horribleness if you break it.”
Grandfather was beaten. Shoulders slumped, he whispered: “I promise.”
Slowly, Kate walked over to his side. Closing the top of the velvet box, she placed it in his lab coat pocket. “I’m sorry, Grandfather, but I had to do it.”
The old man didn’t respond. He merely gazed despondently at the astro-vivometer in the corner. At length, he lifted his eyes toward her. “I feel so drained,” he said wearily. “Since you’ve laid these chains on me, would you mind getting me some of that tea I never got to finish? It would give me the energy I need to walk over there and start working on the machine.”
Feeling both triumphant and a little sad, Kate nodded. “One cup of tea with cream coming up.”
She walked through the lab door and down to the kitchen, with Cumberland limping behind her. Making a whole pot of tea was as easy as a cup, so she prepared a full teapot of his favorite brew. Her thoughts drifted back to the ghost in the lab, and she shivered despite the heat of the stove. When the tea was ready, she put it on a tray and carried it carefully down the hallway.
As she turned into the lab, she suddenly let out a shriek. The teapot smashed on the floor.
Grandfather was gone.
“No!” she cried, running to the empty chair where he had been seated just a moment before. “He promised!”
