He took off the red helmet, and his hair was black and short. He took off one of his thick gloves and held out his hand, grinning all the time with the friendliest smile that Danny could imagine. “I’m Virgil Grissom,” he said. “They call me Gus.”
Danny, of course, knew who he was. Who else could have come flying in to see him in this sparkling white machine? But he couldn’t answer; he couldn’t speak. Danny put his own hand into the hand of the astronaut, and he touched this man who had gone flying around the whole Earth in little more than an hour, again and again, who had seen the sun come up and the sun go down three times in a day, the only man in all the world who had been twice into space.
“You must be Danny River,” this man said now, squeezing Danny’s hand. “It’s a real pleasure to meet you, Danny. You’re famous, you know.”
Danny blushed. He giggled. Gus Grissom was among what Beau had called “the seven great men,” and here he was telling Danny that he was famous?
“Holy man,” said Danny. “Holy man, this is great, Mr. Grissom.”
The astronaut laughed. “Gus,” he said. “Okay?”
Then Danny remembered himself why he was there and what was important. He said, “This is Rocket.”
“I figured it was,” said Gus. “I read about him in the paper this morning. I’ve been hearing about him nonstop on the radio. But nobody said he’s such a friendly little pooch.”
“He isn’t so friendly to everyone,” said Danny. “It’s just he knows who you are.”
The grin never left Gus Grissom’s face. It only grew wider. “He looks like my old Blackie.”
Gus shook hands with the sheriff, then took Danny aside, to sit with Rocket in the shade of the airplane’s wing. Rocket stayed right beside Gus, and Danny didn’t mind at all.
“Soon as I saw the paper this morning, and your story right there on the front page, I said I had to meet that boy,” said Gus. “I jumped straight into the T-38.”
“Thank you for coming,” said Danny. “Do you think you can save Rocket?”
That great, happy grin at last changed to something else. Gus looked at Danny and slowly shook his head.
“But you believe me, don’t you?” said Danny. “That’s why you came, isn’t it, Mr. Grissom?” He couldn’t bring himself to say Gus.
Gus Grissom looked out at the runway and the fields. He squinted, as though the sun was shining straight in his eyes. “I won’t lie to you, son,” he said. “It was you I came to see, not the dog. I don’t see there’s much I can do there.”
“You promised Beau you’d help,” said Danny.
“That’s your brother?”
“Yes. He wrote to you and you wrote back and said you’d help him if ever you could. You said if he came to the Cape you’d help him.”
Gus was still squinting. He looked worried now, even ashamed.
“You remember that, don’t you?” said Danny.
“No.” Gus shook his head. He was holding his red helmet, turning it in his hands. “I don’t live at the Cape, Danny. My home’s in Houston.”
“But the letter…”
“I never see those letters,” said Gus. “There’s some gals in an office take care of that. They send the same answer to everyone, son.”
“You signed it.”
“They have rubber stamps.”
Danny blinked. He felt that hole in his stomach, and it was bigger and deeper than ever. It seemed almost funny that he’d gone so far and tried so hard just because a lady in an office had put a rubber stamp on a piece of paper. But it really wasn’t funny at all.
Gus told him the same thing that Alice had said. He told him that no one would take the dog away now. But he didn’t know Creepy Colvig any more than Alice did. Poor Rocket understood it all; Danny could see that. Why, the dog was nearly crying, its eyes as wet as Danny’s.
“What was it you hoped I would do?” said Gus.
“I don’t even know,” said Danny.
As they sat quietly below the wing, the sheriff came up to the plane. All the people who’d come from the tower were starting to gather round it, and he couldn’t keep them back anymore. He walked right up to the T-38 with his snakeskin boots tapping on the runway. Then he bent down and looked underneath, and said, “I have to get going pretty soon.”
“Can’t I wait a little bit more?” said Danny.
“Got nothing to do with me,” said the sheriff.
“But—”
“It’s okay, Danny,” said Gus Grissom. “I’m going to fly you home. You and your dog.”
“Wow!” shouted Danny. “No kidding.”
“Honest Injun.”
“Holy smoke! Holy crow!” cried Danny. “You hear that, Rocket?”
The dog was leaping about, doing those quick twirls that nearly bent him double, talking a mile a minute. Gus Grissom watched him, and laughed. “Well, that’s the darnedest thing,” he said.
“Beau was always crazy about flying,” said Danny. “He said there were only two things he wanted to do, and one was to fly in a jet.”
“What was the other?” asked Gus.
“To float through space,” said Danny.
“Well, we can’t go quite that high,” said Gus, with a chuckle. “But we’ll go just as high as we can.”
“Thanks,” said Danny. “Thanks a million. I know you don’t believe me, but—”
“No, I can’t say that I do, son.” Gus Grissom was grinning again. “But if you believe it, then I’m not going to argue. You knew your brother, and you know the dog, and it would sure be a swell old world if you were right.”
“I am,” said Danny.
“Let’s get you suited up, son.”
fifty-two
The T-38 sat high and level on its wheels. The nose was at the height of Gus Grissom’s shoulder, well above Danny’s head. He didn’t see how he and Rocket could possibly climb into the cockpit.
But Gus brought out a thing like a handle, and when he fitted it into the side of the plane it hung down to make a step. A little higher, a second step hinged out from the fuselage.
Gus climbed up, and from the cockpit he brought down a flight suit like his own, and a helmet that matched his, and a parachute with its harness. He helped Danny into the blue coveralls. “That’s John Glenn’s old suit,” he said. “He’s not real huge, so it might fit you.” He hung the parachute on Danny’s shoulders, then squashed the helmet on his head.
Danny stood there with the sleeves of the suit rolled up to his elbows, its legs in huge bundles at his ankles, his helmet flopping on his head. He imagined he looked like a real astronaut, like one of the seven great men. Then Gus said, “You look like one of the seven dwarfs,” and that punctured him a bit. But Gus smiled with such friendliness that Danny laughed with him.
Gus boosted him to the first step, and Danny managed from there, though he nearly tangled himself in the parachute. He clambered into a seat that was gray and hard, with only a small blue cushion. His feet straddled the control stick, and all around were gauges and dials and switches. He had thought once that his father’s septic truck was the neatest thing in the world. Then he’d seen Cody’s truck and thought it was so much better. But this made even Cody’s big rig look like one of the silly plastic cars on a kiddies’ merry-go-round.
Gus stood on the step and, leaning under the canopy, settled Danny into the seat. He fastened belts around his waist and shoulders, then raised the whole thing as high as it would go, hoisting him up with the whirr of an electric motor.
Next he got down and fetched Rocket. He slipped the dog right into Danny’s flight suit, then drew up the zipper so that the boy and his dog were bundled together.
“Now, I got Gordo to rig this up, him and Deke Slayton,” said Gus, as though they were just two ordinary guys and not half god, half man. “They did the best they could with a few minutes’ notice.” He fished out, from the side of the seat, an oxygen mask for Danny. Spliced into its hose was another hose, joined in a bi
g knot of duct tape that was silvery gray. It made a V of hoses, with two masks—one for Danny, and a smaller one for Rocket. Gus plugged it into a fitting, attaching hoses and cables. “Your pooch won’t need it most of the time; we’ll stay low,” he said. “But when I tell you to, you’ll have to put this over his nose, you understand?”
“Yes,” said Danny.
“Now, he won’t want to wear it, I guarantee that. He’ll do any old thing to shake it off,” said Gus. “But without it he can’t breathe up there. And he has to breathe, Danny. Like you or me.”
“It’s okay. He understands,” said Danny. “He won’t mind wearing it.”
Gus laughed. “Try it out.”
There was a thin strap on the mask. It was far too big for the head of a little dog, so Gus tied a big knot that made it shorter by half. He gave the mask to Danny, and Rocket lowered his head, as though waiting for it to be slipped over him. He didn’t whine and he didn’t growl; he just sat bundled in Danny’s suit and let the mask be put on his nose.
“Now, that beats all,” said Gus.
Danny adjusted the rubber so that nothing covered Rocket’s eyes. Gus showed him how to start the oxygen, and Rocket breathed his normal breaths.
“Well, that’s some dog, I have to say.” Gus patted Rocket’s head, then explained to Danny some of the controls and gauges. “It’s all identical to what’s up front,” he said. “Between your legs, right in your way there, that’s the stick. You’ll see it moving when I move mine. Push it left, we bank left. Push it forward, the nose goes down. Try to keep your hands off it, Danny. If you need something to hold on to, grab that handle there.”
He pointed to the gauges right in front of Danny. “The artificial horizon,” he explained, tapping the biggest dial, right in the middle. “It shows if we’re banking or climbing or what.” On its left was the altimeter. “That tells our height,” said Gus. “Now, this one gives the speed in knots, and that one there’s just a fancy clock.” His hand was moving quickly now, and wherever he pointed, Rocket was looking. “The rest of these you don’t have to worry about. Now, there’s just one thing I’ll get you to do, Danny. You’ll have to pull out the pin in the ejector before we taxi. That’s right here.” He leaned across Danny and made sure the boy put his hand in the right place. “You see? It slides out real easy.”
From the buildings around the control tower, a man drove out in a truck with a great big box on its back. He parked right in front of the T-38 and pulled out a long, thick hose that was just like the one on Old Man River’s septic truck.
“Is he pumping us out?” asked Danny.
Gus gave him a funny look. “That’s the starter truck, Danny. It’s going to blow air through the engines to get them turning.” He ruffled Rocket’s hair and tapped his knuckles on Danny’s helmet. “Happy flying,” he said, and closed the canopy.
Gus Grissom got into the front seat. He put on his helmet and mask. He talked to Danny through the intercom. “Okay?”
“Okay!” said Danny.
The man from the truck vanished under the T-38 with the long hose. The big box on the truck was an air compressor, and it made a terrible din and a rattle. Then Danny heard the jet engines turning. They whined and hummed, then started.
The man came out, dragging the hose. He stood beside the wings as Gus tested the controls. Danny watched the control stick waggle back and forth. He saw the rudder pedals moving beyond his feet. His legs weren’t long enough to reach them.
The man stuffed the air hose beside the compressor and drove away in the truck. Through the intercom, Gus said, “Danny, pull out your pin now. Hold it up so I can see.” Then he taxied the T-38 toward the tower and turned it around.
The back of Gus Grissom’s red helmet and the instrument panel blocked Danny’s view. He had to tip sideways to see much of anything out of the front, and Rocket was doing that now. But Danny could look out the sides, and with the wings behind him he could see nearly straight down at the ground.
The engines turned more quickly, more loudly.
“Hang on, Danny,” said Gus in the intercom. “You’ll feel a bit of a push.”
A bit of a push! It was like his father leaping from a stoplight in the Pontiac, but it went on and on without stopping. It pushed Danny back in his seat, and pushed Rocket against his chest, and the runway sped by, and the little airplanes and the hangars, and the people who’d come to watch. In only a moment Danny traveled faster than he’d ever gone in his life. Then the control stick moved backward, and the T-38 lifted into the air with a pull at his stomach. It tipped its nose high and went blasting up above the fields with the engines making a deep and pleasant whoosh that beat steadily all around him. He saw houses shrink to specks, and whole fields to little patches. Next the control stick moved sideways, and the jet leaned over, and it pushed him down in the seat as it swung around to the north.
“How you doing?” asked Gus.
“It’s great,” said Danny into his mask.
“And Rocket?”
“Man, he’s loving it.”
Yes, Rocket was loving it. His eyes were sparkling with that look of pure joy, his mouth open and grinning. He looked out through the canopy, and down at the controls, and up at Danny and licked his face.
“You want to go higher?” asked Gus.
“You bet.”
They climbed nearly straight up. Danny watched the altimeter as they passed ten thousand feet. Twelve thousand feet. Now all the little patches of fields looked as small as the houses had looked. Still they went up, straight up to a blue sky. Fifteen thousand feet. Twenty thousand. Twenty-five thousand feet.
“Better give the dog some air,” said Gus, and Danny put the mask on Rocket’s nose. “Tell me when it’s on.”
“It’s on,” said Danny.
Gus chuckled. “Afterburners, Danny. Another push.”
Into the steady sound of the jets came an extra little swoosh. Again Danny felt the seat shove at his back. He saw the airspeed indicator nudging up to five hundred knots. The altimeter moved steadily. Thirty thousand feet. Thirty-five thousand feet.
The air was changing color, growing darker. At forty-five thousand feet, Danny was looking up at a black sky. He could see the moon and the stars in the daytime, the bright band of the Milky Way right above him, and still they were climbing. To either side and below him, the world stretched to huge horizons.
At fifty-three thousand feet, Gus said, “We’re ten miles up.”
Danny could see Rocket’s eyes staring above the edge of the oxygen mask. They were bright as stars themselves, with a funny glow in this strange light at the edge of space. He whispered into his own mask, “You’re doing it, Beau. You’re getting what you always wanted.”
Then the T-38 leveled off, and the engines slowed. Now it really felt to Danny that he was floating in space. If he didn’t look down, there was no earth. It was only dark blue sky beside him, stars and the moon above.
“That’s Saturn high on the left. Mars on the right,” said Gus in a quiet voice. “It’s really something, isn’t it, Danny.”
Danny nodded. He didn’t have words to say what it was like.
“I’d live up here if I could,” said Gus. “Who needs the world, eh, Danny? Who needs all the troubles on the ground?”
They flew for long minutes up there, hurtling over cities and counties. Danny was shocked when he looked at the airspeed dial and saw that they were blasting through the sky at six hundred miles an hour. It felt as though they were standing still. He hugged his dog so tightly that he nearly squeezed the mask from Rocket’s nose. He could feel now that Rocket was happy, and that whatever happened next, when they returned to the troubles on the ground, the dog wouldn’t mind. Beau had gone floating through space.
Gus rolled the airplane on its back. The big dome of the canopy filled with nothing but the blue and green of Earth. He rolled it right around and upside down again, the world becoming space, becoming world again. They started down.
>
“Watch your altimeter there,” said Gus.
Danny stared at the dial. He saw the meter quiver and swing.
“We’ve busted through the sound barrier,” said Gus. “We’re going faster now than the speed of sound.”
They kept dropping, plunging toward the ground until they were again at ten thousand feet. Then Danny took off Rocket’s mask, and the dog licked his cheek.
“Do you want to fly her, Danny?” asked Gus.
“Can I?”
“You bet.”
Danny put his hands on the control stick. He could feel a heaviness in it, and knew that Gus was still holding it, that he wasn’t really flying the jet himself. Gus told him to pull it back. “Gently,” he said.
Danny pulled. The nose shot up, and the T-38 leapt a thousand feet. He pushed the stick instead, and the nose went down. He banked to the left; he banked to the right. Then he flew straight and level above green forests and a river. He saw Gus Grissom lift his arms and press both his palms to the glass of the canopy, and Danny’s heart did a turn as he realized he was actually flying. When Gus took the controls again, they did a loop and a roll, and they went tearing off to the west because Gus saw a thunderhead there.
So they shredded through the clouds at a speed faster than sound, and tore out through their tops, and dashed along canyons and mountains of clouds.
Before Danny really knew they were heading there, he was home. Gus brought the plane to a beautiful landing at the airport not five miles from Hog’s Hollow. It touched its wheels on the ground; then the nose lifted up, and the drag of the air slowed it down.
They taxied to a stop. Danny looked out through the canopy at his mother and Old Man River.
fifty-three
Mrs. River ran to the jet in her long dress and flat shoes. She was there when Danny came out—down a real ladder that a man in a jumpsuit clipped into place. She laughed at the sight of Rocket poking his head from the flight suit. Then Rocket jumped free and welcomed her with barks and bounces. Mrs. River hugged Danny as tightly as he had hugged Rocket.
“Oh, Danny,” she said.
Gemini Summer Page 16
