Astrotwins — Project Blastoff

by Mark Kelly

  “I didn’t mean to hurt him,” Mark said.

  “You shot a rubber band at my head,” Scott reminded him.

  “Yeah, okay. But I didn’t mean to hurt your foot,” Mark said.

  Grandpa cleared his throat. “I can’t help but notice that whenever you two are around, there’s a high level of conflict.”

  The twins couldn’t really argue with that.

  “And a correspondingly high level of destruction.”

  Given the state of Scott’s foot, not to mention the vivid purple stain on the linoleum floor, they couldn’t argue there, either.

  “Now, do you boys think that’s a good thing?”

  “No, sir,” they said.

  “So the question becomes, what ought we—meaning you—do about it?”

  The boys mumbled variations of “We don’t know, Grandpa.” Then Mark added, “Do you have any suggestions?”

  It so happened that he did. “I’ve just been reading about the Apollo-Soyuz mission you boys are so interested in. You know, up till now, the United States and the Soviet Union have been bitter enemies. The two countries’ working together on this huge scientific project is a step forward for world peace.”

  Mark tried to follow his grandfather’s logic. “So you’re saying that since Scott and I act like enemies sometimes, we should rendezvous in space?”

  “I’m saying why not work together on something constructive? You’re great kids who can do anything you set your minds to. What if you built a go-kart or something?”

  Scott and Mark liked the idea of a project. When they were five, they had stayed up to watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. Back then, they both wanted to be astronauts. But when they started school it turned out to be boring, and they didn’t do that well, and their teachers didn’t think they were that smart. So the dream of exploring space had faded. Now, as Grandpa spoke, it came back.

  Scott said, “I’d rather build a spaceship than a go-kart.”

  Mark nodded. “Me too. And maybe that Egg girl can help us. Didn’t she say her teacher has some kind of secret formula?”

  “Shhhh!” Scott said.

  “Egg girl?” Grandpa repeated.

  “Jenny,” Mark said.

  Grandpa looked puzzled, but didn’t ask for an explanation. Instead, he said, “Suit yourselves. Go on and build a spaceship in that case.” Then he looked back at his newspaper. “And if you need any help, let me know.”

  Mark had had a brainstorm. “Well, actually, Grandpa, what if you let us use your workshop?”

  Grandpa shifted in his chair, but kept his eyes on the newspaper. “We’ll see,” he said.

  The boys grinned at each other. In Grandpa-speak, that meant yes.

  CHAPTER 5

  * * *

  “How do you build a spaceship, anyway?” Mark asked his brother.

  He and Scott were lying in their own beds at home on Sunday morning. They could hear their dad making pancakes in the kitchen. They knew it was their dad because Mom had worked the swing shift—four to midnight—and would still be sleeping. She was a police officer too, the first woman on their town’s force.

  “It might be pretty hard,” Scott said. “I think we need a whole lot of gasoline. It burns up and the fire pushes the spacecraft into space.”

  Mark rolled his eyes. “Don’t be an idiot. Anybody knows you don’t put gasoline in a rocket ship.”

  “Okay, genius,” Scott said, “what do you put in it?”

  “Rocket fuel,” said Mark. “Like what Egg’s teacher invented.”

  “And just how is that different from gasoline?” Scott asked.

  “Well, it’s obviously way different because, uh . . . it just is. And I think you’re right that we need a lot. What else do we need?”

  “Metal,” said Scott.

  “And where do we get metal?” Mark climbed out of bed and stretched.

  “You have a bad attitude, you know that?” Scott sat up. “We’ll find it. Maybe Grandpa’s got extra in his workshop. He’s got everything else.”

  “I just think it might be a good idea to have a plan first,” said Mark.

  In their hearts, Mark and Scott were as messy as any eleven-year-old boys anywhere. But unlike Grandpa, their parents wouldn’t tolerate chaos. For that reason, the twins’ bedroom looked tidy—provided you didn’t pay a visit to the dust bunnies under the bed or scrutinize the depths of the clothes closet.

  Now Mark tugged the corners of his red comforter so that it was more or less straight and punched his pillow. Scott, whose comforter was navy blue, did the same. Then they pulled on clean T-shirts over their pajama bottoms and went out to the kitchen to see how breakfast was coming.

  “Sheesh, I thought you boys’d never get up,” Dad said by way of greeting. “You’re burnin’ daylight, you know that?”

  Mark wrinkled his nose. “Better than burning pancakes, Dad.”

  Scott laughed. “Good one.”

  “Hmph.” With a spatula, Dad looked under the edge of a pancake on the griddle. “Nothing wrong with this one that syrup won’t cure. Set the table, you two. And get out the milk. Oh—and Major Nelson’s been wondering where his breakfast is, too.”

  Major Nelson, under the kitchen table, thumped his tail.

  * * *

  After breakfast, the boys cleaned up, and then they had a whole glorious summer day at their disposal. Usually, that would mean riding bikes before it got too hot, but to Mark’s astonishment, Scott disappeared into the den and came back out with a yellow legal pad.

  “Wait—I’m gonna ask Mom for the thermometer,” Mark said. “You must be sick.”

  “Very funny, loser,” said Scott. “I’m just doing what you said—making a plan. Turns out it wasn’t that dumb of an idea. To make a spaceship, we need metal. What else?”

  CHAPTER 6

  * * *

  Mark sat down beside his brother on the living room sofa. Major Nelson trotted in from the kitchen, circled twice, and dropped to his favorite spot on the carpet.

  “A parachute,” Mark said.

  “In case the astronaut has to bail out?” Scott said.

  “No, to slow the spaceship down when it’s time to land,” said Mark. “And then I think we need a second one that floats it back to Earth.”

  “Back to Greenwood Lake, you mean,” said Scott. “That’s where we’re going to splash down.”

  “And we need electrical wiring for the controls. And a heat shield,” said Mark.

  Scott looked up. “A what?”

  “I read it in Life magazine.” Mark shrugged. “I’m not sure what it is, exactly, but it keeps the spaceship from burning like an overcooked pancake when it’s coming back through the atmosphere.”

  Scott wrote it down. “Sounds important. Anything else?”

  “A window,” said Mark. “And a periscope. That way you can see all around, like out of a submarine.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Scott. “It would be pretty crazy to go all that way and not see anything.”

  “A spacesuit,” said Mark. “A camera. Air tanks. Hoses.”

  Scott was writing feverishly, then looked up. “Switches, cables, fuses, circuit breakers . . .”

  Mark nodded. “Yeah, keep writing. And something else—a fire extinguisher.”

  Scott didn’t want to think about a fire extinguisher, but he wrote it down just the same. Like his brother, he was well aware of the Apollo 1 disaster in 1967, when three astronauts died in a fire in a capsule still on the launchpad.

  “We need a radio, too,” Scott said, “to talk to Mission Control.”

  “Mission Control can be Egg’s job,” Mark said.

  “What if she wants to go into space? Be an astronaut?” Scott asked.

  Mark shook his head. “Girls can’t be astronauts.”

  “Maybe they can,” Scott said. “Some people say girls can’t be cops either, but look at Mom.”

  Mark thought about that. “Ye-a-a-ah—but NASA doesn’t take girl astronauts.�
��

  “There’s a first time for everything,” Scott said. “So maybe Egg will fly with us and be the first—only no one will know, because the whole thing’s a secret.”

  “You bet it will be a secret,” Mark said. “What if our friends found out we flew in space with a girl? It would be over for us.”

  This made both boys laugh, but it also raised an important question. How many astronauts could their spaceship hold? And who would they be? Each twin was sure about one thing. If he was going to do all the work to build a spaceship, he was definitely going up in space.

  Scott flexed his fingers, which were tired from so much writing, and showed the list to his brother. His handwriting was small and neat. Mark usually made fun of him for it. But now it made the list look good—a good first step for their project.

  In fact, the twins agreed it was such a good first step that they could take the rest of the day off. They stood up to go out to the garage and get their bikes. Major Nelson stood up too, and wagged his tail.

  “Sorry, Nelson.” Mark scratched the dog behind his ears. “But you have to stay inside.”

  Major Nelson and bicycles were not a good combination. For some reason, the dog seemed to think the only good bicycle was one that had been chased, knocked down, and flattened.

  “By the way, what kind of spaceship are we building?” Scott asked as he and Mark headed out.

  “We should keep it simple,” Mark said, “so maybe, like, a Mercury spacecraft. The Mercury program was the first to send Americans into space, starting with Alan Shepard in 1961.”

  Scott rolled his eyes. “Do you have to be such a know-it-all?”

  “I can’t help it if I’m the smart one,” Mark said. “Just like you can’t help it you got dropped on your head. Anyway, the early Mercury flights were short. John Glenn’s was just three orbits. A short flight would solve another problem I was thinking of.”

  “What?” Scott asked.

  “The bathroom problem. I mean, who wants to wear diapers in space?”

  “Ewww!” Scott grimaced. “Not me.”

  CHAPTER 7

  * * *

  When Mark and Scott were home in West Orange, their favorite pastime—even better than fighting with each other, getting in trouble, or taking stuff apart—was riding bikes. Like all their friends, they had Schwinn Sting-Rays—low-slung one-speeds with banana seats. The bikes, both purple, had been a birthday gift from their parents the year before. The Kellys had figured that if the bikes were identical, the twins would not be able to fight over them.

  Wrong.

  What they fought about was which bike belonged to which twin, disputes that ended only after Mark crashed his on the steep hill at the end of the block, leaving it dented, scarred, and easily identified.

  Now, still in their own driveway, the twins saw that their neighbor Lori was on the sidewalk riding her new birthday bike, her mom hovering over her. Lori had just turned five, and her pink bike had training wheels.

  “You’re doing great, Lori,” Mark said.

  Concentrating too hard to look up, Lori said, “Thank you very much.” Her mom smiled and waved.

  The twins circled once, then took off down Greenwood Avenue toward their friend Barry Leibovitz’s house.

  As they raced by, another neighbor—Mr. Frank—backed his big white sedan out of his driveway.

  “MiG at two o’clock!” Scott called to his brother.

  “I’ve got him in my sights!” Mark answered.

  “Go for missile lock—”

  “I’m too close! I’m going to guns—”

  The white car turned and came down the street behind them.

  “He’s on your tail!”

  “Brake hard and he’ll fly by—”

  “Closing . . . closing . . . ratta-tat-tat!” Mark pumped his fist as Mr. Frank, little knowing he’d been shot down, drove by and waved.

  In Barry’s driveway, the bikes lurched to a stop and the boys vaulted over the front-porch railing. They were going to ring the bell, but Barry opened the door and said, “Greetings, earthlings!”

  Barry was into science fiction.

  “Hey, come out and ride with us—can you?” Mark asked.

  “I think,” Barry said. “My parents aren’t home. Let me tell my brother.”

  Barry’s big brother, Tommy, had been an Air Force pilot in the Vietnam War. While flying a secret mission he still couldn’t talk about, he had been shot down and held prisoner for months. Now that the war was finally over, he was living with his family till he could find a job and a place of his own.

  Tommy was slouched on the sofa in the living room, watching a Beverly Hillbillies rerun. Since leaving the Air Force, he had let his hair grow long, and he had a beard. He was wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt, jeans, and sandals. One time Mark had heard his mom say it was a good thing she knew Tommy Leibovitz was a war hero or she would’ve taken him for a hippie.

  Tommy looked up when the three boys came in. “What’s happenin’?”

  Barry explained he wanted to ride bikes.

  Tommy nodded. “Cool.” Then he looked back at the TV.

  “Is your brother okay?” Scott asked when they were all outside.

  Barry shrugged. “I guess. Mom says he’s been through a lot and we have to cut him some slack.”

  “I like his stories about flying,” said Mark. “We wouldn’t know anything about being a pilot except for him.”

  “Does he ever talk about being in the Air Force? A POW?” Scott asked.

  “Not too much,” Barry said. “All I know is, he was imprisoned in someplace called the Hanoi Hilton. It sounds like a hotel, but I guess it wasn’t so nice.”

  “Come on”—Mark jumped on his bike—“where are we goin’ today?”

  CHAPTER 8

  * * *

  The three boys cruised around town, racing one another, shooting Russian missiles out of the sky, and popping wheelies till they were too hot and sweaty to continue.

  “A root beer float would taste pretty good about now,” Mark said as they coasted past the Dairy Queen on Pleasant Valley Way.

  “Too bad we’re still payin’ Dad back for the calculator,” Scott said.

  “I’ve got money,” said Barry. “You can owe me.”

  “No lie?” Mark made a sharp right so Barry couldn’t change his mind.

  The boys parked their bikes by the restaurant door and locked them together.

  “My mom pays me to balance her checkbook,” Barry explained.

  “I knew you were good at math,” Scott said as they walked inside, “but I didn’t know you were that good.”

  “Balancing a checkbook is arithmetic, not math,” said Barry.

  “There’s a difference?” Mark said.

  “Arithmetic is just keeping track of figures like what an adding machine can do,” Barry said. “Math is more like a language to help you work with anything numbers describe.”

  Scott raised his eyes to heaven. “Help!” he cried. “I’m surrounded by know-it-alls!”

  Mark slapped his brother on the back. “You’re probably good at something. And someday, if you’re lucky, we’ll find out what.”

  Scott slugged his brother’s arm, and Barry laughed.

  The root beer floats were forty-five cents. Barry ordered three and paid for them. Then the boys sat down at a table inside so they could enjoy the air-conditioning. When Barry asked about Greenwood Lake, the twins told him they’d done a whole lot of chores for their grandpa.

  “Sounds brutal. Didn’t you have any fun?” Barry asked.

  “We’re going back next week, and then we’ll have fun. We’ve got this project we’re working on,” said Mark.

  “What project?” Barry asked at the same time Scott was signaling, What gives? It’s a secret!

  “Oh yeah,” Mark responded to his brother. “Never mind,” he told Barry.

  “Hey—no fair,” said Barry. “Didn’t I just lend you guys money?”

  “He’s
got a point,” Mark said to his brother, who was slurping the last of his melted ice cream.

  “Plus we’re planning to tell Egg,” Scott said.

  “You’ve got a friend named Egg?” Barry said. “Weird.”

  “Worse yet, she’s a girl,” said Mark.

  “Double weird,” said Barry. “But what’s the secret?”

  Mark and Scott took turns explaining, and were annoyed when Barry’s response was to laugh so uncontrollably that everyone else at the Dairy Queen looked over to see if he was having a fit.

  “Do you have any idea how hard that would be?” Barry asked after he had calmed down. “It took NASA four years to put a man in space, and they had millions of dollars and hundreds of scientists and engineers.”

  “That’s the point,” said Mark. “NASA already figured out how. All we have to do is copy. Same as Scott does in school.”

  Scott ignored the insult. Barry shook his head. “As my grandmother would say, Oy vey! You guys have a lot to learn.”

  Listening, Scott momentarily felt like an idiot. Maybe he and his brother were crazy. Maybe they should just give up and build a go-kart. But then he had another thought.

  “Mark and I don’t know that much about math. But you do. How about if you come with us to Grandpa’s and help?”

  “Hey, yeah!” Mark said. “Grandpa wouldn’t mind. And there’s plenty of room in Twin Territory.”

  Barry said that sounded good, even if he didn’t have a lot of confidence in Mark and Scott’s project. Barry loved his brother, but Tommy’s homecoming had been an adjustment for the family. Barry wouldn’t mind a vacation.

  CHAPTER 9

  * * *

  Mark and Scott wanted to telephone Egg to make a plan for their next visit to Greenwood Lake and tell her about the project. Maybe they’d even read her the list they made. But their parents vetoed a phone call.

  “It’s long-distance, the toll charges are expensive, and you guys are still in debt,” Dad said that night at dinner. “Why not write her a letter? Stamps only cost ten cents.”