Project Rescue

by Mark Kelly

  It used to be that the Russian and the American space programs competed with each other. This was called the space race. However, last summer a Russian Soyuz met up with an American Apollo spacecraft in space, and the astronauts and cosmonauts inside shook hands and ate together, so now we are all friends. At least for now . . . and at least while we are in space.

  Chapter 3

  * * *

  FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 1976

  As usual on a school morning, Scott and Mark came in for breakfast a few minutes before eight o’clock. They were dressed but rumpled. It was unclear whether they had combed their hair.

  Mom had worked the night shift the previous day. Early in the morning she awakened the twins, said hello–good-bye to them, and went off to bed to catch a few hours of sleep.

  This left Dad in charge of breakfast. Now he set out cereal bowls, milk, and orange juice on the table in the kitchen. The boys sat down and poured cereal, Cap’n Crunch for Mark, Frosted Flakes for Scott.

  “Hey, pass me the milk, okay?” Scott asked his brother.

  Standing by the sink, Mr. Kelly rubbed his ears. “Funny. I didn’t hear my own son say ‘please.’ ”

  Scott rolled his eyes. “Please.”

  “Sarcastic people don’t get milk, do they?” Mark appealed to his dad.

  “Sheesh, I’ll grab it myself,” Scott said, and he reached across Mark, who batted his arm away, causing Scott to tip over sideways. To steady himself, he slapped his hand on the table . . . and knocked the milk carton to the floor.

  Milk splashed everywhere, and both boys spoke at once: “It’s his fault!”

  Mr. Kelly sighed. “I’d have to say you’re both right there. And you’ll both be cleaning up, too. Pronto—or you won’t have time for breakfast at all.”

  The twins made enough messes that they had cleanup down to a system. Scott grabbed a sponge. Mark got the paper towels.

  Meanwhile, Major Nelson, who had been dozing in the corner by the back door, lifted his head and laid it down again. Spilled milk did not deserve further investigation.

  “You know, you knuckleheads have been at each other a lot lately,” Mr. Kelly said to his sons. “Is everything okay?”

  “Sure, fine.” Mark threw the sodden mass of paper towels into the wastebasket under the kitchen sink.

  “There’s just nothing much exciting going on.” Scott sat down again and grabbed the box of Frosted Flakes.

  “When does baseball season start?” Dad asked.

  “Tryouts are next week,” said Mark. “But Scott will never make the team. He’s turned into a big klutz.”

  Scott looked up. “Take that back.”

  “Who tripped over his own sneakers last night?” said Mark.

  Scott rose partway out of his chair and brandished the cereal spoon. “I said take that—”

  Dad raised his hand. “I am going to turn on the news,” he said, “and you two are going to observe absolute and total silence. Got it?”

  On a shelf above the kitchen counter was a portable TV. Dad reached up and switched it on. There was a pause while the tube warmed up, then Today show host Barbara Walters appeared in twelve-inch black-and-white glory.

  Even though the boys weren’t especially interested in news, they couldn’t help glancing at the screen. Then, when they grasped what Barbara Walters was saying, they both stopped eating.

  “. . . known about Ilya Ilyushin, a cosmonaut thought to be trapped inside the Salyut space station now orbiting some 220 miles above the surface of Earth. NASA says it has no information on the purpose of Ilyushin’s mission. A spokesman would confirm only that the cosmonaut’s Soyuz spacecraft launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Kazakhstan republic of the Soviet Union two weeks ago.

  “Now to NBC’s Jay Barbree at the Kennedy Space Center. Good morning, Jay. What is NASA telling us about what went wrong with the Soviet mission?”

  “Good morning, Barbara. To answer your question, NASA isn’t telling us much at all. Whether that’s because the Soviet authorities aren’t sharing information or for some other reason, we’re not sure.

  “Earlier, I talked to a noted space expert who reminded me that spacecraft are such complex pieces of machinery, any number of problems might have arisen. Perhaps there has been a meteorite strike. Perhaps a piece of equipment shook loose during launch. Perhaps one of the experiments on board has caused an electrical short circuit—”

  Barbara cut in. “Did you say ‘experiments,’ Jay?”

  “I did say ‘experiments,’ Barbara.”

  “Any word as to the nature of those experiments?”

  “That’s a negative, Barbara. Indeed, this has been a very frustrating story to report. Soviet authorities are not accustomed to Western-style press freedoms. If the experiments are like those aboard previous Salyut stations, it’s likely they are biological in nature. Like their counterparts in the United States, the Russians are interested in how spaceflight and zero gravity affect various organisms and organic systems.

  “At the same time, there are other possibilities. . . .”

  “What would those be, Jay?” Barbara asked.

  “Well, some in U.S. government circles have speculated that the Soviet space program has a secret military purpose. If that’s so, it opens the door to all sorts of experimental possibilities, from espionage to weaponry.”

  “Scary stuff, Jay,” said Barbara.

  “There is that potential,” said Jay.

  “And are there plans for a rescue mission? Should rescue become necessary, that is,” said Barbara.

  “None have been released at this time,” Jay said. “Now, back to you, Barbara.”

  “Thanks, Jay.” Barbara appeared on the screen again. “Repeating this hour’s top story, an unspecified mechanical problem on the Russian Salyut space station reportedly has marooned the lone cosmonaut inside, leaving him as of now with no means of returning to Earth.

  “Russian authorities say they are confident the problem can be fixed, and in the meantime, Cosmonaut Ilya Ilyushin remains in good health and good spirits. I’m sure I speak for all Americans when I say we’re holding a good thought for the stranded space traveler.

  “In other news—”

  Chapter 4

  * * *

  The boys never learned what the other news was. They had stopped listening. Mark was imagining himself suited up and spacewalking to the rescue of Ilya Ilyushin. Scott was feeling bad for a guy who was all by himself looking through Salyut’s window at Earth, wondering if he’d ever see his home again.

  It was eight twenty by this time, and school started at eight forty-five. Dad looked over his shoulder to ask whether the Salyut mission was the one the boys and Barry had written their report on. But before he could finish the question, he noticed Scott’s and Mark’s cereal bowls were practically full. “What is with you knuckleheads? At this rate, you’re gonna miss the bus!”

  “Do you think NASA has a rocket ready on the pad that could maybe rescue that cosmonaut?” Mark asked, and at the same time Scott said, “Do you know if Ilya Ilyushin has kids?”

  “Your sympathy for that Russian is admirable,” Dad said, “but he’ll still be stuck after school. Now slurp up, grab your lunches, and get moving!”

  * * *

  The math lesson that morning was ratios. “If the ratio of girls to boys in the class is three to two, and there are nine girls, how many boys are there?”

  “Not enough,” Mark answered, causing most of the boys to laugh and most of the girls to roll their eyes.

  “Very funny, Mark Kelly,” said Mr. Hackess. “Do you want to try expressing that in numerical form?”

  “He means do the problem,” said Barry helpfully.

  Mark thought for a second. “Six boys.”

  “Genius in our midst,” said Scott, under his breath.

  “What was that, Scott?” Mr. Hackess raised his eyebrows.

  “My brother is a genius,” Scott said.

  “You
take that back,” Mark said.

  Mary Anne, a dark-haired girl with brown eyes who sat in the front row, swiveled around to look at Mark. “I think ‘genius’ is usually a compliment.”

  “I would think so too, except my brother’s being sarcastic,” Mark said.

  “No, I wasn’t. You got the problem right,” Scott said, “for once.”

  “Everyone in the class got the problem right, didn’t they?” said Barry. “It’s easy.”

  “Moving on . . . ,” said Mr. Hackess.

  The boys had done their homework, most of it anyway, and Mr. Hackess was doing a decent job at the blackboard, too. Even so, after a few minutes, both Mark and Scott’s minds began to wander and they looked out the window.

  Last summer when they had had to do math to build and fly Crazy 8, they had picked it up quickly. But now the best rewards they could hope for were an A on a test and a “Good going!” from Mom and Dad.

  Getting As on tests was nice, and Mom and Dad were nice too. But as incentives, they just couldn’t compete with space travel, and sometimes—like today—the boys had a hard time paying attention in class.

  At lunchtime, it was raining outside, so the whole school had to squeeze into the cafeteria and eat together, no recess. The room was damp, hot, and sticky. The fluorescent lighting turned everybody’s carrots, chips, and sandwiches a sick shade of pale green.

  “When’s Hackess handing back our reports, anyway?” Barry swung his leg over the metal bench across the table from Mark. Scott had taken a seat at the other end of the same table.

  “Beats me,” Mark said. “Did you hear on the news about that Ilya cosmonaut guy?”

  Barry bit into his sandwich. “We should rescue him, whaddaya think?” he said with his mouth full.

  “ ‘We’ you and me, or ‘we’ the United States of America?” Mark asked. “And would you mind closing your mouth, please?”

  Barry deliberately opened wide to display a whole lot of half-chewed tuna salad.

  Mark cringed. “Gross!”

  Barry laughed, swallowed, and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “ ‘We’ meaning you and me and Egg and Scott and everybody. It would be a good project for Tommy, too—get him out of his funk. That’s what my mom calls it.”

  “One problem.” Scott had been listening in. “We don’t happen to have a spacecraft anymore.”

  “What happened to it?” a fifth grader named Karen asked. The Crazy 8 mission had made national news in the fall, and for a while Barry and the twins had been major school celebrities.

  “The government came with a helicopter and fished it out of Greenwood Lake. That’s by where our grandpa lives, the lake where Scott splashed down,” Mark explained. “After that, I don’t really know.”

  “NASA’s probably studying it for tips on engineering,” Barry said.

  “Wherever it is, it’s too beat-up and burnt-up to fly again,” said Mark. “We built it to be like a Mercury spacecraft, a one-shot deal.”

  “Maybe NASA would lend us a shiny new spacecraft,” Scott said, “if they’ve got a spare lying around.”

  “You wouldn’t want to go up in space again, would you, Scott?” said another fifth grader at the table, Michael. “It’s pretty dangerous, right?”

  Scott didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, I want to go again! It’s the best thing I ever did.”

  “Hey,” said Barry, “what about if this time the brainiac gets his turn?”

  Mark jumped in, “Unh-unh, this time I’m up! With Crazy 8, I got robbed.”

  “Uh, guys?” Scott said. “Just to remind you, as far as anybody knows, there is no ‘this time.’ ”

  “Besides,” said the boy named Michael, “that Ilya guy’s not even an American. My mom says Russians are communists, and you can’t trust ’em. She says the Russians ought to rescue their own cosmonaut.”

  Some of the kids at the table nodded, but Scott frowned and Mark suddenly noticed how uncomfortably his tailbone was pressed against the narrow metal bench.

  Quietly, Barry said, “Communist or not, he’s a person, and he’s in a lot of trouble.”

  Chapter 5

  * * *

  When Scott thought back on it later, he decided Project Rescue really started with that kid Michael’s comment at lunch. As Grandpa Joe would have said, it stuck in his craw. And all that afternoon—whether he was labeling a volcano on a map or calculating more ratios—he was actually thinking about what Barry had said, and he was thinking that Barry was right.

  What mattered about people was that they were people—not what country they were born in or what politics they liked. That seemed especially obvious when you pictured someone stranded all alone in cold, unforgiving space.

  Mark, on the other hand, wasn’t thinking about Michael’s comment, or Barry’s, either. His thoughts were all over the place. Would he make the baseball team that year? Would there be corned beef and cabbage again for dinner? Would the weather clear up enough for bike riding after school?

  Mark even wondered when Hackess would give back the reports and what grade they were going to get. Not that he would ever admit to Barry or Scott that he cared about that kind of stuff.

  But despite his scattered thoughts, Mark understood right away when he and his brother got home from school and his brother said, “We could call Mrs. O’Malley.”

  Peggy O’Malley was the mother of Jenny, nicknamed Egg because she was an egghead. Egg had been the third member of the Crazy 8 team—right after the twins themselves. It was Egg’s mom who turned out to have the government connections that had kept them from getting in trouble for launching an unauthorized spaceship. It was Egg’s mom who had said NASA might want their help on future missions.

  Along with Howard and Lisa, the O’Malleys lived in West Milford, New Jersey, near the Crazy 8 launch site at Greenwood Lake. By car, it was about ninety minutes away from the Kellys’ house, and what with school and their parents’ jobs, the twins hadn’t been up there since November.

  “Would calling Mrs. O’Malley do any good, do you think?” Mark asked Scott.

  The boys were sitting at the kitchen table again. Both their parents were out—their dad at work and their mom, according to the note on the fridge, running errands and back soon. They were drinking milk and eating apples. The rule was they each had to eat a whole apple before they could get out the Oreos.

  “Maybe Mrs. O’Malley will know more about what’s going on than they had on the news,” Scott said.

  Mark smiled. “You can’t pull that on me, Scott Kelly. I’m your brother, remember? What you’re really saying is let’s remind Mrs. O’Malley we’re available to fly to the rescue . . . just in case NASA’s forgotten all about us.”

  Scott returned the grin. “It can’t hurt to ask.”

  “Nah, it can’t, except that Mom and Dad’ll never let us phone her,” Mark said. “It’s long-distance, remember? Too expensive, they’ll say.”

  The boys were discussing how to get around the long-distance problem when, arms full of groceries, Mom shouldered the back door open.

  Scott was on his feet in an instant. “Is there more to bring in? Can I help?”

  Mom set the bags on the kitchen counter, then turned toward her sons. “Out with it, Scott. Either you’ve done something or you want something.”

  “He wants the helpful-twin-of-the-year award,” Mark put in. “I’d try for it too, but I’m not a big enough kiss-up to compete.”

  “If offering to help is kissing up, I’m all in favor,” Mom said. “But this is all the groceries, so you’re off the hook.”

  “Okay, well, in that case . . . ,” Scott spoke quickly. “Can we call Jenny’s mom? Mrs. O’Malley, I mean? I know it’s long-distance, but I have some birthday money left, and Mark says he’ll clean the bathroom for a month to pay back his share.”

  Mark said, “Hang on about that bathroom part—”

  But Mom was already nodding. “When I heard the news about that cosmonaut, I thought you mig
ht want to phone Egg’s mom. It’s okay with me. Go ahead.”

  Mark and Scott looked at each other. Was their mom feeling okay? “What about how long-distance phone calls cost money?” Mark asked.

  “This is an emergency,” Mom said. “There might be something you can do to help—something short of going to the rescue, I hope. That sounds dangerous.”

  Mark and Scott didn’t hesitate. They were afraid Mom would change her mind.

  “You get on the extension!” Mark told his brother, who headed down the hall to his parents’ room without any argument.

  Mom’s address book was in a kitchen drawer. Mark pulled it out, found the O’Malleys’ number, dialed, and listened to the rings: One . . . two . . . three . . .

  Maybe Mrs. O’Malley was away on a business trip. Was Mrs. O’Malley some kind of big shot? Mark had always wondered. . . .

  It wasn’t till the fifth ring that a familiar voice answered. “Hello?”

  “Egg, hi, it’s Mark—Mark Kelly!”

  “Scott Kelly too,” his brother chimed in.

  “Oh, you guys!” Egg said. “It’s so great to hear from you. Is everything okay? Are you calling about the cosmonaut? ’Cause if you are—guess what—I’ve got news, news and a big surprise.”

  Chapter 6

  * * *

  The next day was Saturday. Since for once Mr. and Mrs. Kelly both had the day off, it was all four Kellys who piled into the family’s Ford Country Squire station wagon at seven a.m., picked Barry up at his house a few blocks away, and headed west on Highway 80, then north on 287 toward Grandpa Joe’s house at Greenwood Lake.

  All three boys were excited about the day trip—excited enough that they hadn’t even minded getting up super early on a weekend.

  “Tell me again what Egg told you on the phone yesterday,” Barry said. He was squeezed between the twins in the backseat. “Her exact words this time.”

  “I’m not sure I can remember her exact words,” Mark said.