Blast Off!

by Nate Ball

  “The robot club must have had a party in here,” Olivia said. There were several half-assembled robots on one of the lab tables next to a box labeled ROBOT PARTS. There were also plates of half-eaten cookies, a bowl of cheese balls, a platter of M&Ms, and assorted two-liter soda bottles and cups standing everywhere on the table. “Your brother and his robot-nerd friends are slobs.”

  I dragged a tall lab stool over to the cabinet. It made a loud screeching sound.

  Olivia, who was now tossing M&Ms in the air and catching them in her mouth, said, “Gosh, Zack, why don’t you shoot off some fireworks while you’re at it.”

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” I said, dropping my backpack onto the lab table in front of the cabinet. “But c’mon, Olivia, we only have about an hour to save the world from Amp’s . . . friends.”

  I climbed up and stood on the stool. I reached up to the tub with the magnets and yanked it off the shelf with all my strength. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as heavy as I thought. I wobbled and started to fall backward off the stool. I had to drop the tub behind me or I was going to fall backward and break my neck. “Amp!” I shouted. “Look out!”

  The tub crashed onto the lab table with a hideous cracking sound, almost flattening a terrified Amp, who had crawled out to watch me borrow a magnet.

  The tub split into two parts. Magnets, batteries, marbles, and dominoes shot off in every direction. Several plastic soda bottles went bouncing crazily across the table, sending stale chips and cheese balls into the air in what can be best described as a junk food explosion. I watched with wide eyes as three of the spinning soda bottles flew off the table.

  “ZACK!” Olivia screamed.

  Apparently the slobs in the robot club didn’t bother to tighten the caps of their bottles either, because now the shaken-up soda came spurting out of the tops.

  The grape soda bottle whizzed around in a circle and showered a stunned Olivia with huge purple dots.

  The root beer bottle hissed for an instant and shot straight across the floor, hitting Skip the Skeleton in his unmentionable area. Skip leaned dangerously forward, like he was about to jump over a creek. Then, to my horror, Skip’s neck broke, leaving just his skull dangling.

  The still-fizzing two-liter root beer bottle was on the floor, trapped up in Skip’s rib cage.

  As the fizzing petered out, the room got eerily quiet.

  The lab was now covered in cheese balls, M&Ms, stale chips, plastic cups, magnets, batteries, marbles, dominoes, bones, soda slime, and empty bottles.

  “That could have gone better,” Amp said quietly.

  “What just happened?” Olivia whispered, holding her dripping arms out to the side. For a second I thought she was crying, but it was just grape soda dripping down her face.

  “I’m think I’m going to jail for the rest of my life,” I squeaked.

  16

  What a Blast

  Olivia finally broke the silence. “That was awesome,” she said, looking around the now destroyed science lab.

  She walked over to an empty bottle and picked it up. “The cap split open,” she said, “which must be why the soda fizzed out like that.”

  “Are you crazy?” I yelped, still standing on my stool. “We killed Skip!”

  “Skip’s a skeleton. He was already a goner,” Olivia said, lifting his head up for a moment to look him in the eye sockets.

  “Excuse me, but I think your Mr. Hoog is coming this way,” Amp said. “He must have heard the commotion.”

  “My life is over,” I whispered.

  “This way!” Amp shouted. “We need to escape!” He headed for the emergency exit at the back of the lab, which opened onto the playground.

  “Aren’t we going to clean this place up?” I croaked.

  “They’ll just think the robot club made this mess,” Olivia hissed. “Besides, we don’t have time. Remember?”

  “What about our fingerprints?” I said. “They must be everywhere.”

  “You watch too much TV,” Olivia said.

  “We really should go now,” Amp warned us, picking up one of the magnets off the floor and waving it at us.

  Olivia took the broken cap off the bottle and tossed it on the floor. She reached into a container of black rubber stoppers and found one that fit the bottle. “Hey, maybe we could use this to launch Amp’s ship—sorta like the booster rocket they use on the space shuttle.” She shook the bottle and the soda fizzed up again. “What do you think?”

  “I think I’m going to be sent to a camp for troubled youth,” I said.

  “You’re overly dramatic,” Olivia said.

  “GUYS!” Amp shouted in an even higher pitch than usual. “NOW!”

  Olivia ran for the door. I followed her through the door.

  “WAIT!” I had forgotten my backpack on the lab table!

  I spun and grabbed the door just before it locked me out. I dashed across hundreds of cheese balls, crunch-crunching the whole way, and grabbed my backpack just as I heard Mr. Hoog’s keys jangling on the other side of the door. In a matter of seconds, I made it back out the door, scooped up Amp, hid him in my backpack, and took off after Olivia across the school’s soccer field.

  We squeezed through a hole in the gate at the back of the school and ran next to a dry creek alongside the back of the school.

  We jogged for half a mile or so. After cutting across an old muddy field, we reached our street. Olivia spoke for the first time. “I’ve been thinking,” she gasped.

  “Oh no,” I said, pressing my palms onto my knees as I tried to catch my breath.

  “No, seriously,” she said, hitting me with the soda bottle. “If we can get the fizz to come out really strong, the bottle will fly into the air. It could launch Amp’s ship.”

  “But how do we force the air in and the fizz out the bottom?”

  “We poke a hole in the stopper,” she suggested, “and we shake up the soda so that it’s super fizzy.”

  I thought about that for a second. “I don’t think that’ll be enough force to push Amp’s ship into the air. It’s pretty small and not very heavy, but still . . .”

  We both stood there thinking about it. I couldn’t think of anything. Apparently, Olivia was stumped, too.

  “We’ll think of something,” she said.

  “The sooner the better,” I said, not thinking of anything yet.

  “In the meantime, I’ll make a hole in the stopper,” she said, jogging off. “I’ll meet you in your backyard in ten minutes,” she called back over her shoulder.

  “Hurry,” I said, focusing on the task in front of us and already forgetting about the mess we had made back at the school’s lab. “We have exactly forty-five minutes to save the world!”

  17

  Smart Stuff

  The more I thought about blasting Amp’s ship into the air, the more nervous I became.

  Amp was encouraged when I told him about our idea, but he was also distracted with worry, mumbling to himself as he punched numbers into a small calculator-looking device that he had pulled from his belt. He also sent about ten “Council Notes” off, each one sounding more and more worried. For the last one, I overheard him say:

  “Council Note: Propulsion. It means creating enough force to cause movement. Gravity. It is the Earth force that holds me to the ground. I am going to try, but I fear the propulsion from this experiment is not going to be nearly strong enough to overcome gravity. If I don’t make into orbit, please have someone water my plants at home.”

  We waited for Olivia to come back, and Amp tried resetting a device on his spaceship with the magnet he had picked up from the classroom floor. He shouted what sounded like Erdian curse words a few times and huffed off into the house. He emerged moments later with his helmet on, looking slightly more optimistic.

  And while he was doing that, I thought about that bottle. The fizzing soda didn’t seem to be powerful enough to lift Amp’s ship into space. Not to mention how we’d keep the soda in if we used a stopper with
a hole in it. And that’s when an idea danced into my brain: What if we jammed air into the bottle, like with a straw, until it was ready to burst? That would increase the pressure in the bottle, so soda would shoot out the bottom. It would also keep the soda in until we were ready to release it.

  I looked at Amp. He was shaking his head. “What?” I said.

  “Keep thinking,” he said, nervously adjusting his tool belt.

  The straw probably wasn’t the ideal strategy. That might work for a balloon to fly around the room, but if you’re building a rocket it’s just not enough energy, or power, or force, or whatever.

  “Ready for takeoff?” Olivia said from behind me. Her head was poking through a break in the fence between our houses. “Check it out,” she said handing me the bottle. “The hole is tiny.”

  I looked at the stopper and started to violently shake the bottle as hard as I could.

  “What are you doing?” Olivia asked.

  I quickly turned the bottle over and looked at the stopper. The soda left in the bottle had gotten all foamy, but just fizzy drips were coming out the hole. “See, this isn’t going to work,” I said. “We need more air in there. Like a ton of air. I was thinking of using a straw.”

  “That’ll never work,” she said, looking at me with half-closed eyes.

  “I know,” I said. We both stood staring at the bottle.

  “Are you helping, or just watching?” Olivia asked when she noticed Amp watching us. “Hey, nice hat.”

  “It’s a helmet,” Amp said, offended.

  Olivia slapped her thigh. “Well? Can you throw us a bone here, spaceman, before your people show up and start shooting up the place?”

  “Oh, that would not be good,” Amp said distractedly. He seemed to remember something, and started tapping again on his calculator.

  “What’s his problem? There’s no time for math,” Olivia said, turning back to me. “If we could just pump air inside this thing . . .”

  “Wait as second!” I shouted. “That’s it. A pump! My bike pump! I have a needle thing I use to pump up my basketball.”

  “That could work,” Olivia said. “Go get it, dude! We’re at T minus thirty and counting.”

  In less than a minute, I was pumping air into that bottle like a madman. The bike pump’s needle just cleared the end of the stopper inside the bottle. At first, the stopper popped off before much air got it, so I removed the needle and pushed the stopper in as hard as I could. Then I pushed the needle back in and we took turns pumping.

  Air bubbles rose up through the soda and the bottle became hard as steel.

  We set the bottle on the outdoor wooden table. I slowly pulled the needle out, but once it cleared the stopper nothing happened. “I thought something would come out of the hole,” I said.

  “Let me pull the stopper out,” Olivia said.

  “Wait!” I shouted, but it was too late. Olivia was blasted with fizzing soda and the bottle shot across the table right at my stomach. I barely managed to jerk out of its way.

  It flew several feet in the air then skidded across the cement. It hit a big planter with a small lemon tree in it and spun around wildly several times, making a loud pshhhhhht sound, spraying soda everywhere.

  It had only lasted a few seconds, but Olivia and I jumped around like we had just won a million dollars in the lottery. We both gave Amp a high five—or a high three in his case.

  Soon, we settled down and stared at the now resting bottle.

  “Great, but now we’re out of soda,” Olivia said.

  “No worries. We just need some quick adjustments,” I said. I filled the bottle all the way up with water from the hose.

  “Really?” Olivia said.

  “You two do know what you’re doing, right?” Amp asked. “Remember that I am the one who’ll be blasting off.”

  “Of course,” I said. “It’s all about the air pressure,” I added confidently, pumping air into the bottle I’d filled almost completely with water. The pressure rose till the stopper finally popped out, and that one barely made it off the edge of table.

  “Wonderful,” Amp sighed.

  “All part of the process,” I smiled, knowing full well that science was all about trial and error. “I guess that one was way too heavy to launch.”

  I filled the bottle halfway with water. Then I pumped while Olivia held the sides, pointing the rocket straight up from the table. That was much better, going almost ten feet into the air, but it still lacked the oomph we needed.

  “I have an idea,” Olivia said. She filled the bottle with just a cup of water and did all the pumping while I did the holding, leaning away so the bottle wouldn’t hit me in the face. That one finally popped off on its own, but it was a dud.

  “Okay, one-third full must be just right, Goldilocks,” I said, “like the first time in the lab.”

  “Okay, Baby Bear, but we still have a few more tweaks to make. And we better hurry, because it must be at least four fifteen by now.”

  “Time waits for no alien,” I declared.

  18

  Launch

  “These should help shoot the rocket straight up and let us launch from a safer distance,” Olivia said, pounding a fourth wooden stake into the grass with a croquet mallet.

  We had agreed that in order for our bottle rocket to shoot straight up, it needed some wings, like the rockets in the movies. That was my job. I had cut cardboard fins out of an old shoebox and was in the process of carefully taping them to the sides of our bottle. “This looks totally wicked,” I said.

  “Kind of messy, though,” Olivia said, looking at my taping job. “C’mon, Zack, this isn’t rocket science.”

  “Ha, ha, ha,” I said. “Maybe I’ll tape you to this rocket and blast you to the moon.”

  I picked up a small square cement brick out of the dirt near my mom’s rosebushes and dropped it inside the four stakes on the grass. “Our launchpad,” I said proudly.

  We got some fresh root beer from my refrigerator and poured it slowly into the rocket with a funnel until it was about a third full. Olivia shoved in the black stopper and I pushed in the pump needle.

  We carefully placed the bottle on the launchpad, stepped back, and nodded for a few seconds, admiring our own handiwork.

  “Okay,” Olivia said, turning to Amp, “let’s go get your ship.”

  “Already?” he said, speaking for the first time in a while. He looked less blue, like his color was fading. He was chewing on his finger.

  “You look terrible, Amp,” Olivia said.

  “I’m a little nervous,” he squeaked.

  “It’s four twenty-five, Amp,” I explained. “We only have fifteen minutes to get you up there.”

  “How high will it lift me?” he asked, looking up nervously.

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure. Pretty high.”

  “This is not how we do things on Erde,” he said.

  “Look, Amp, this is the best two kids from Earth can whip together in an afternoon,” I said. “It’s now or never, little guy. Are you a hero or a zero? “

  He nodded and adjusted his helmet. “Okay, Zack, bring down my ship.”

  I sprinted upstairs and carried down Amp’s spaceship. Olivia held it in place as I secured it to our rocket with the same packing tape I had used for the wings.

  “It hardly weighs anything,” Olivia marveled. “So weird.”

  I ran inside to check the clock on the kitchen stove. “It’s four thirty-five!” I shouted. “We’re out of time. Prepare for blastoff!”

  Amp jumped into the palm of my hand. He had his game face on. He still looked a few shades lighter than he should, but he was ready.

  “Good luck,” I said, giving Amp a high three.

  Olivia did the same. “Happy trails, squirt,” she said.

  I placed Amp inside his ship. The door closed tight, and before I could step back it started whirring, clicking, and hissing steam out of its tiny holes.

  “Whoa,” Olivia said, jumping bac
k. “That is crazy cool.”

  I picked up the snorkeling mask I had found while searching for the bike pump in the garage and snapped it over my face. I shoved the snorkel’s mouthpiece into my mouth. “Retha,” I mumbled.

  “You look ridiculous,” Olivia said.

  “Leth do thith.” I said, smiling as best I could.

  19

  We Have Liftoff

  I tried my best not to think about the fact that the fate of the universe now rested on a rocket Olivia and I had built in about the time it takes to broil a chicken.

  Instead, I focused my mind on pushing the last of the air into the bottle before launch. It was so hard to pump, I thought my arms might blast off before the rocket did.

  “All clear for takeoff, Rocket One,” Olivia announced unsteadily. “All systems go. Five, four, three, two, one . . . BLAST OFF!”

  I leaned on the pump, forcing a last tiny gurgle of air bubbles into the straining bottle.

  “BLAST OFF!” Olivia screamed, kicking me in the foot.

  “Ith thtuck!” I mumbled through the snorkel’s mouthpiece, straining to keep my weight over the pump handle.

  “ZACK, WE’RE GOING TO BE TOO LATE! WE’RE OUT OF TIME! DO SOMETHING!”

  I gasped, yanked the handle up for one more push, and practically gave myself the Heimlich maneuver as I threw my whole body weight onto the pump, stomach-first. One tiny bubble emerged through the needle into the root beer. And then:

  PSHSHSHSTTT!

  My goggles were suddenly covered with soda foam, and the rocket in front of me had disappeared. My face was soaked. I fell off the pump onto my back and watched our rocket shoot straight into the air above me, turning just slightly as it soared perfectly skyward.

  It had worked!

  Through the goggles, I saw the slowly shrinking bottle easily clear our second-story roof and continue into the sky. But then it slowed and seemed to stick in the air. It hung there for what felt like three seconds, but nothing happened.