Astrotwins — Project Blastoff

by Mark Kelly

  “We’ve got time for one more activity before lunch,” Tommy said. “Ready?”

  Except for Howard, the kids got out their maps and were poised to run.

  “Arcade!” Tommy said.

  This time, to everyone’s surprise, Howard won, and Egg was second. When the others caught up, they saw that Egg had her hands on her hips and was giving Howard a lecture about cheating.

  Howard did not seem upset. Instead, he looked slightly more puzzled than usual.

  When Egg ran out of adjectives, it got quiet for a moment. Then, sounding frighteningly like a grown-up, she asked, “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “I didn’t cheat,” Howard said. “I just used different methodology.”

  Egg’s expression threatened to start the lecture all over again, but Tommy interrupted. “What do you mean, Howard?”

  “I’m not good at reading maps,” Howard said. “But I know Jenny—that is, Egg—is good at it. So when she got up from the bench quickly, I followed her, and when I saw the arcade I ran ahead and beat her. It’s just the luck of my having long legs, Jenny.”

  Tommy nodded. “Makes sense to me. In fact, for your creative solution to the problem, Howard, you get double points!”

  Howard smiled. “Thank you. I believe that puts me in the lead.”

  Scott groaned. “He’s got nineteen! He’s killing us all!”

  “Now, are we ready for some pinball?” Tommy asked. “You’ll be seeing Newtonian motion in action, not to mention vectors.”

  “Uh-oh,” said Scott. “Math.”

  “Yesss!” said Barry.

  “I didn’t think I liked math either till I saw I needed it to be a pilot,” said Tommy. “Planes crash if you miscalculate the relationships between lift, temperature, weight, wind speed, and thrust, not to mention the length of the runway.”

  “I didn’t know pilots had to understand all that,” Scott said.

  “Engineers do all they can to make flying easy on the pilot,” said Tommy. “But the pilot still has to understand the science and math. How do you think test pilots spend most of their time?”

  “Hot-rodding around in fast jets,” Mark said.

  Tommy smiled. “That’s a small part of it compared to analyzing the flying characteristics of the plane. Every flight yields hundreds of measurements, and it’s up to the pilot—among others—to assess them. In fact, test pilots are constantly looking at data and trying to deduce something that will help the engineers make the airplane better.”

  “You mean test pilots have homework?” Scott said.

  “That’s just what I mean,” said Tommy.

  Mark and Scott were disgusted. It was bad enough that smart kids got good grades and the admiration of grown-ups. If they also got great jobs like astronaut and test pilot, then maybe the two of them should start working harder in school?

  There was time to think about that one. It was still summer, after all.

  The arcade was dim and cavelike, not so popular on a beautiful day. There were plenty of pinball machines to go around, and Tommy organized the kids into a tournament.

  The merry mechanized music and flashing lights improved everyone’s mood—especially Scott’s and Mark’s, because they were good at pinball. At the end of the first game, Mark, Scott, and Lisa were victorious. Since Mark and Scott had the high point totals, they each played Lisa, setting up the championship match between Mark and Scott.

  “Pinball is good for two things,” Tommy explained. “First, it’s a way to gauge reaction times, and you have to react quickly in a spacecraft. Second, a good pinball player has to have solid hand-eye coordination, and so does a pilot.”

  Pinball turned out to be fun to watch, and there was a lot of fist pumping, yelling, and excitement. The last game went on for a long time, though, and Barry and Howard wandered away to check out a new kind of game played on a screen like a TV’s. In it, you used lines that acted like Ping-Pong paddles to bat a white dot back and forth. It wasn’t as interesting as pinball, but Barry and Howard still liked it. What could possibly be better, after all? The combination of a game and TV!

  By the time they returned, Mark was clasping his hands over his head like a boxing champ, and the Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty-Four” was playing. Scott scowled. He hated to lose—especially to his brother. Anyway, it was a dumb game—just luck and buttons.

  Now it was time for lunch, and the kids made their way back to Main Street, where they were supposed to meet Grandpa. Only when they got to the benches under the trees, Grandpa was nowhere to be found . . . .

  CHAPTER 22

  * * *

  “Isn’t this where he said he’d be?” Mark looked around at the benches beneath the shade trees at the end of Main Street.

  “I have an idea,” said Tommy. “Let’s make finding Mr. McAvoy part of the game. Whoever does gets a point—whether it’s for an individual or a group. Meet back here”—he looked at his watch—“in twenty minutes, at one o’clock.”

  “Come on, Howard,” Egg said. “You’re with me.”

  “What?” Howard said. “Oh. All right.”

  Mark heard his stomach growl. All the kids had spent the morning running around with nothing to eat, and only the occasional stop at a water fountain. He was hot and tired and hungry.

  Scott said to Mark, “Since he’s our grandpa, let’s stick together.”

  “Deal,” said Mark. Together they took off at a jog, determined to cover maximum territory no matter how hot and sweaty they were. From Main Street to the Ferris wheel to the carousel they ran, dodging teetering toddlers. Twice they thought they saw him, once in line for lemonade and once at a hamburger stand, but both times it turned out to be only a grandpa look-alike.

  No luck. Twenty minutes more exhausted, hungry, sweaty, and thirsty than before, they were back at the rendezvous, where they were astonished to find Grandpa there already.

  From the smug expressions on Egg’s and Howard’s faces, the twins could tell they must have been the ones who found him.

  Scott and Mark were glad to see their grandfather, but equally mad that they hadn’t gotten the points.

  “Where were you?” Mark asked.

  “How did you find him?” Scott asked Egg and Howard.

  “I’m fine; thanks for asking,” Grandpa said.

  “Sorry, Grandpa,” Scott and Mark chorused.

  “I got a bit warm outside and went into the soda fountain.” Grandpa pointed.

  “And we found him by asking people if they’d seen anyone matching Mr. McAvoy’s description,” said Egg.

  “An old man wearing a hat,” Howard clarified.

  “Thanks a lot!” said Grandpa, and Egg said at the same time, “Howard!” Then she added, “An old handsome man, Mr. McAvoy.”

  Asking for help had never occurred to either Scott or Mark. And surely they couldn’t get points for that, right? An astronaut was all alone in space.

  “Egg and Howard get ten points each,” said Tommy. “So now the scores are—”

  “No fair!” Barry protested.

  “Why not?” Lisa asked in her quiet way.

  “Whose side are you on?” Barry asked. He and Lisa had worked together to find—or more accurately, not find—Mr. McAvoy.

  Lisa raised one shoulder. “It was just a question.”

  Mark said, “We were wondering, too. Don’t astronauts have to be independent and work on their own?”

  “Being independent doesn’t mean not asking for help,” said Tommy. “All the astronauts have had Mission Control—a huge team of people—helping them when they were up in space. At one time or another, on every mission, they have needed the help from the ground. Look at Apollo 13. It was Mission Control that figured out what went wrong with the oxygen in the command module so that the three astronauts didn’t suffocate or become stranded in space.”

  Tommy then announced the new point totals. Pinball had given Mark and Scott a big boost, so that Mark was in the lead with thirty-s
even, then Scott with thirty. After that came Howard with twenty-nine, Lisa with twenty, Egg with nineteen, and finally Barry with seven.

  “How many more points can we earn, anyway?” Barry asked.

  “Uh, not sure,” said Tommy. “Why?”

  “I want to know if there’s any chance of my staging an amazing comeback, or whether I should just surrender,” Barry said.

  “Time for lunch?” Mark asked Grandpa.

  “Up to Tommy,” said Grandpa, “our fearless leader.”

  “First Big Fury, then lunch,” said Tommy. “Think about it. Do you really want to ride a roller coaster on a full stomach?” He bent from the waist and mimed retching. “Bleeeah!”

  “But I’m starving,” said Barry.

  “Me too,” said Mark.

  “That’s a negative point for each of you,” said Tommy. “Come on.” He headed for the Fury, tall and purple in the distance.

  “Is he just making this up as he goes along?” Egg whispered to Scott as they walked.

  “Maybe,” Scott said. “But we can’t ask him. We’ll lose more points!”

  While they waited in the long line for Big Fury, Tommy gave them a lecture about the virtues of patience.

  “But aren’t you even hungry?” Barry asked his brother.

  Tommy shrugged. “I’ve been through enough discomfort that a late lunch doesn’t bother me.”

  That reminder of what Tommy had endured in the war made Mark and Scott look at each other. Then something occurred to Scott. Maybe Tommy was trying to toughen them up with this game? Not just find out who had skills and physical prowess, but mental toughness, too? Maybe he was even trying to improve their mental toughness.

  “The change in G-forces on the roller coaster are like the change in G-forces when you’re accelerating in a fighter plane,” Tommy explained.

  “G stands for ‘gravitational,’” Mark said. “So G-forces measure how heavy you feel. One G means you’re as heavy as you are here on Planet Earth.”

  “Technically, a G is the gravitational acceleration of an object near Earth’s surface, if the object were in a vacuum,” Barry said. “One G is right around 32 feet per second per second. But your body feels the force as weight, so that’s where the idea of gravity comes in.”

  Tommy nodded. “When you’re accelerating up the hill on a roller coaster, you feel heavier than you are, and when you go down, it’s like you’re lighter. That’s why sometimes you feel like your stomach’s lurching around inside you.”

  By the time Mark and Scott had snaked their way to the front of the line, they were so excited they had forgotten about lunch. Mark looked at Egg. Was she nervous? What about Lisa? Or were they like Mom—unusually tough for girls? Barry was solid, Mark knew, if a little lazy. And Howard . . . ? He was a mystery. The normal things that might make anyone nervous didn’t seem to faze him. His usual state of mind, Mark was learning, might be described as confused curiosity.

  Just as they were ready to make the final turn toward the loading area, Tommy said, “Know what, guys? Change of plan. I think we should eat lunch first.”

  At first Mark didn’t even hear him. His attention was focused on the last car disappearing over the crest of the hill at the top of the track. Then the words sank in, and he didn’t believe them. Barry spoke up: “That’s bogus, Tommy!”

  “No fair,” said Egg.

  Howard looked more confused than usual; Lisa looked disappointed.

  Scott was angry and about to say so when he felt a glimmer of suspicion. What was it Tommy had said earlier about being patient? About how astronauts and pilots have to roll with punches and changes of plans? The engineering of rockets and spacecraft was still new. Things went wrong all the time, sometimes tragically. Many liftoffs had been delayed and the astronauts had had to come back the next day—or later—and try again.

  So now . . . was Tommy messing with them to see how they handled disappointment?

  “Come on, guys, step out of the line,” Tommy said.

  Barry put his foot down. “Not gonna happen, big bro.”

  Mark said, “It’s a test, isn’t it?”

  “Whaddaya mean?” Tommy was obviously suppressing a grin.

  Mark explained his theory, which was the same as Scott’s.

  “You guys might be giving me way too much credit for brainpower here,” Tommy said. “But do I take it I’m wrong and you don’t want to eat first? You’re ready for Big Fury?”

  “Yeah, we are!” said Mark.

  “Okay, then. Apologies all around. Go ahead and keep your places in line. I’ll catch up to you at the end.”

  “You don’t want to ride?” Lisa asked.

  Tommy shook his head and said flying in a war had provided enough thrills for one lifetime.

  “Oh—but one more thing,” he called out to them as they were about to climb onto the ride. “Raise your hands over your heads.”

  “What!?” said Howard.

  “I don’t even want to be an astronaut,” Lisa protested.

  Tommy grinned and raised his own hands to demonstrate. “Hands up, everybody! Anybody who gets scared and has to hold on loses a point!”

  Two minutes later, Scott and Mark were being secured into their car. Their hands were up and they were grinning like maniacs. The machinery groaned as the car made the long ascent at the start of the ride. Excited as he was, Mark remembered that a roller coaster operates on kinetic energy. The car being tugged upward built up potential energy that was released on the long, fast descent.

  Moments later, the kids experienced the laws of motion with gut-churning intensity. In response, Mark and Scott yelled; Egg and Barry screamed; Howard smiled; Lisa closed her eyes.

  The ride was only ninety seconds long. Scott and Mark managed to keep their hands up, but everyone else had grabbed onto the car’s railing at one time or another. Scott, like Egg, Howard, Barry, and Lisa, looked wobbly and a little green as he alighted. Mark was the only one with a big grin on his face. In fact, he would happily have done the ride again if only a line of people weren’t waiting for his place.

  Tommy took one look and said, “That clinches it.”

  Scott said, “What does?”

  “Mark already had the most points—thirty-six. And he was the one who recognized my scheme to test your ability to roll with the unexpected. Now he’s the only one of you that doesn’t look nauseated.” Tommy shrugged. “With enough training, I think any of you would make a good astronaut. But if you want the best astronaut right now, it’s Mark Kelly.”

  CHAPTER 23

  * * *

  Just before six o’clock at the Great Adventure main gate, the group going home to Greenwood Lake—Grandpa, Lisa, Egg, and Howard—said their good-byes to those going back to West Orange.

  Lisa pulled Scott aside. “Are you going to be all right?” she asked quietly.

  Scott had thought he was doing a good job of hiding his disappointment, but the anxious expression on Lisa’s face told him he’d failed at that, too.

  “Yeah, sure,” he told her. “That spacecraft we’re building looks pretty uncomfortable, actually. I mean, to keep weight down, we’re not even going to pad the seat, right?”

  Lisa giggled. “Okay, good. I wouldn’t want to orbit Earth sitting on a rock either. See you soon. We still have a lot of work to do.”

  “Yeah, see you soon,” Scott said.

  The drive back to West Orange wasn’t long. On the way, Tommy took Barry, Scott, and Mark out for burgers. They got home at nine o’clock.

  All evening, Scott tried hard to be a good sport, but in truth he felt crushed. Mark might like to tease him about being dropped on his head, but in fact they were about the same amount smart and the same amount strong. Mark knew this too—didn’t he? Heck, most of the time their grades were even the same, meaning equally not-that-great.

  But there were times when Scott felt like Mark always edged him out, just barely. And today it wasn’t only Little League or a bike race, it was
something important.

  What he had said to Lisa was mostly to make her feel better. Scott didn’t really care that the seat was hard or that the capsule was dinky or even that the astronaut might be in deadly danger. He had really wanted to be the first kid launched into orbit. And now he wouldn’t be.

  Back at home, Mark was so keyed up he couldn’t stop talking about pinball, the Big Fury, bumper cars, losing Grandpa, and how Tommy had turned everything into a contest.

  “So who won?” Dad asked.

  “Me!” Mark said.

  “Ah.” Mom looked at Scott. “I thought you were quieter than usual.”

  “I’m fine,” Scott insisted.

  Mom looked at Dad, and said, “Mmm-hmm.”

  “I’m fine,” Scott repeated.

  The family was in the living room—parents on the sofa, each boy sprawled in an easy chair. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was on the television with the sound turned down. Scott wished they were watching I Dream of Jeannie, which at least was about an astronaut, or Gilligan’s Island, which was about people lost on a desert island. It was his favorite show and his favorite character was the Professor.

  “Tommy said it wasn’t really the points in the contest that mattered,” Mark explained. “It was more like he wanted to see how well we reacted to changing circumstances. And we all showed we could do it—be flexible and mentally tough, I mean.”

  “Except Mark did it a little better than everybody else,” Scott couldn’t help adding. “Plus he didn’t look ready to throw up after the roller coaster.”

  Mark shrugged. “Hey, what can I say? I’m a superior being.”

  Mom shot Mark a look, and he said, “Only kidding,” but kept right on grinning.

  “Sounds like Tommy put you through basic training, only without the backpacks and push-ups,” Mr. Kelly said.

  “Did you know astronauts do survival training?” Mark asked. “Tommy told us. They spend days in the jungle and the desert in case their spacecraft are forced to land far away from the target.”

  “Why all this sudden interest in astronauts?” their mom asked.