The Space Ship Under the Apple Tree

by Slobodkin, Louis

  “No charge black vacuum box,” said the little man. “Use too much Zurianomatichrome Power.”

  He held up the wire for Eddie to see. More than one-third of the shiny wire had been used up charging all the little vacuum boxes in his equipment.

  “Now look for Zurianomatichrome Wire,” said the little man, and he and Eddie searched every nook and cranny of the barn and barnyard.

  The afternoon wore on. They hunted high and they hunted low. After they’d searched through the hay in the hayloft for the third time Eddie wanted to quit.

  “Lookit here,” he said finally. “It’s not up here and I’ve got some chores to do and I’ve gotta get my supper. Gotta get Grandma’s cow out of the pasture. What do you say we look for the wire tomorrow?”

  The little man went on searching through the hayloft without saying a word for a moment or two.

  “What harm can it do if we don’t find the wire today?” Eddie insisted. “Gosh, the wire’s here somewheres. It can’t do any harm if we wait till tomorrow.”

  The little man looked up at Eddie.

  “What is harm?” he asked. Then he consulted his little box with the luminous cards.

  “Harm means like dangerous, no?” he said.

  “Well, sort of,” said Eddie. Then a thought almost set him in a panic. “Say, wait a minute. Is this wire dangerous laying around like that? Like that radium stuff, I mean, you know radioactivity and things like that?”

  The little man shook his head emphatically.

  “No! Much superior material,” be said proudly. “No harm, no danger. Zurianomatichrome no explode except in vacuum boxes made by Martinean scientist. Only harm is for Zurianomatichrome. Must find wire now!”

  And he went back to his search as if his explanation had closed the subject.

  “What kinda harm could happen to the wire if we don’t find it right now?” asked Eddie impatiently.

  “Secret Power Z can no stand Earth Moisture,” said the little man seriously. Then since Eddie looked doubtful he got out his little dictionary box again and looked through it quickly until he found a card which he read.

  “Earth Moisture, United States America — Ice, Water, Soda Pop, Lemonade, Root Beer, Dew....”

  “Oh!” said Eddie. “You mean if you don’t get it under a dry cover before nightfall and the dew begins to settle...”

  The little man nodded before Eddie had finished his question.

  “Yes, Zurianomatichrome Wire lose power if touches Earth Moisture,” he said and went back to work.

  “Well... Gosh.... Well, I’m sorry,” said Eddie slowly, “but I gotta go. Gotta do my chores. So long. Hope you find it.”

  The little man did not answer. He kept right on searching frantically. And he was still in the barn, walking along one of the beams (hanging head down the way Eddie had first seen him), when Eddie brought his grandmother’s cow, Bessie, in from pasture about sunset.

  “Any luck? Did you find your wire?” asked Eddie gently.

  The little man looked down at Eddie and shook his head. Then he marched along the rafter, down the wall and quietly sat down on the barn floor.

  “Grandma says you can have supper with us if you’ll come up to the house.” Again the little man sadly shook his head.

  “And she says you can bunk up in my room if you want to. I told her about your sleeping there last night.”

  The little man shook his head once more.

  “Must return to Astral Rocket Disk,” he said wearily. “Must contact Martinea. Must report emergency.”

  He took the short piece of Secret Power Z wire from his pocket.

  “No much power left,” he said sadly. “Maybe no contact Martinea.”

  And that was the last thing he said before he went out of the barn, traveling at only five miles an hour to save the power in his non-gravity shoes. And it was at that speed that he slowly went up the road toward the orchard.

  That night when Eddie’s grandmother said, as they sat on the porch, “Look, Eddie, look at the sky. There’s some summer lightning up over the ridge back of Grandfather’s apple tree. It’s just a flicker of lightning. It must be some far-off storm,” Eddie did not say anything.

  He knew better. He knew that the weak flicker of bluish light was not lightning. It was the signals the little man was trying to send out to Martinea. And he felt sorry for the little man alone in his space ship, because anyone could see those signals would never reach across the great distance to Martinea. They were hardly strong enough to be seen on Eddie’s grandmother’s front porch.

  6. The Blue Light

  BEFORE sunup next morning, even before the roosters got up to call the sun, everybody who lived on Eddie’s grandmother’s farm was awake! The little man was back searching the barn again. And all the fowls and animals who lived in the barn were squawking, clucking, mooing. All raised their voices in protest at being shaken out of their beds and pushed off their roosts in the dark hours of the morning.

  Right after breakfast Eddie ran over to the barn to help search for the lost Zurianomatichrome Wire. The little man did not speak or look at Eddie as he came in the door. He had already searched and re-searched the barn for hours. Now he appeared discouraged and he moved slowly around the barn floor pushing a wisp of straw with his foot now and then. Eddie moved with much more spirit than the little man did. He began once again to move the bags of feed. They had gone through the feed bags twice yesterday. It was harder doing it alone. Eddie turned to call the little man to give him a hand. After all it was his spool of wire they were looking for.

  And as he turned from the feed bin some strange something caught his eye.

  “Hey! What’s that?” he cried. He pointed with excitement to a curious blue light which glowed from certain spots on the barn floor.

  The little man turned and looked at the spots Eddie pointed to, and he just shrugged his shoulders.

  “This natural,” he said in a lifeless voice. “This where fragments of Zurianomatichrome Wire touch floor. This light comes after Zurianomatichrome Power is thin. Soon will disappear. Maybe one, maybe two day. Use thin power to light interior Astral Rocket Disk.”

  Eddie remembered the cool blue light which came from the walls of the inner room in the space ship and said, “Oh!”

  Now that the little man had talked, Eddie tried to keep the conversation going in an effort to cheer him up. Eddie asked him as gently as he could if he had contacted Martinea. The little man just shook his head and said nothing. Eddie said other things, but since he could get no response, he gave it up. He tried whistling quietly as he searched for the wire. And after a while he just quit whistling, too.

  The big old gander came hissing pompously into the barn and broke the silence. The little man threw a dark scornful glance over his shoulder at the gander and turned back to his work. But suddenly, he turned quickly to the gander again with a piercing glare.

  “STOP!” he shouted as he ran for the bewildered bird.

  The old gander stood his ground firmly and hissed his defiance. But the rush of the little man was too much for him and he turned to flee. He was too late. The little man had an unbreakable grip around the old gander’s neck.

  “Hey there!” shouted Eddie, scrambling out of the feed box. “What are you doing there? Let go of my grandmother’s gander.... What goes on?”

  “Look!” screamed the little man as he forced the frightened gander’s head around with one hand and he pointed with the other. “Look!... Look!... Sign of Zurianomatichrome on bird mouth!”

  Eddie looked and sure enough, it was there! Along the beak of the old gander was the blue-tinged light! The sign of thin Zurianomatichrome power!

  “What do you know?... Gosh... “he said softly. “Gosh, do you think he ate up the wire?”

  “Will see,” said the little man grimly as he hunted in his pockets for one of his instruments. “Hold bird!”

  Eddie got a tight grip on the old gander’s neck.

  “Now, liste
n, you’re not going to cut open — You’re not going to hurt this old gander, are you?” he asked anxiously.

  “No hurt,” promised the little man, adjusting a knob on his telescope. “This X-Ray Microscope Telescope.”

  “O.K. I’ll hold him,” said Eddie. “I got a good grip on him now.”

  But the big gander thought differently and he swung his huge wings and wrenched himself free of Eddie’s arms. His free right wing threw Eddie into one corner of the barn and his left one sent the little man sprawling. Then hissing and honking hysterically he raced in dizzy wild circles around the barn with Eddie and the little man in hot pursuit.

  They made many wild grabs at the big gander but with no success. Finally, they cornered him in Bessie’s stall.

  “Attack together!” cried the little man.

  And they both threw themselves at the same moment at the cornered gander.

  “Got him!” gasped Eddie breathlessly.

  “Now will see Zurianomatichrome Wire inside goose bird yes or no,” said the little man.

  He pressed the larger end of his X-Ray Microscope Telescope against the top of the bird’s head and peered into the smaller end of it. Then still peering through his telescope he moved it down the neck of the bird, down along his back to the tip of his tail.

  “Find it?” asked Eddie eagerly.

  The little man stood up and shook his head.

  “No Zurianomatichrome Wire in goose bird,” he said. His voice was tragic.

  “Gosh! Well, how come—” Eddie started to say but something happened that made him shout out, “Hey, grab the goat! Lookit the goat! His whiskers! He’s got the blue light!”

  The little man whirled in the nick of time to grab the horns of the goat, who (through curiosity) had stuck his head around the wall to watch them examine the old gander.

  “Stop! No go!” cried the little man as he tugged at the struggling goat. “Here signs of Zurianomatichrome Wire, too. Hold goat!”

  Eddie let go of the gander and got a good grip on the goat. The goat butted forward and tugged backward but Eddie hung on as the little man gave the goat the X-Ray Microscope Telescope treatment.

  But even though the blue light glowed from the goat’s whiskers, the tip of his nose, his lips and his front teeth after the examination the little man heaved a sigh and said there were no traces of the lost wire inside the goat.

  “Are you sure? You mean there’s none at all in the goat?” exclaimed Eddie.

  The little man shook his head.

  “Well, how come?” said Eddie. “Gosh, that old goat chews anything and everything — paper, tin cans. I’ve even seen him nibbling on the screen door once. He might have chewed up the wire.”

  “No! no Zurianomatichrome in goat,” repeated the little man. “Let goat go.”

  Eddie let the goat go and as they watched him scamper out to the barnyard Eddie had a thought.

  “Say, I betcha I know what happened. Betcha both of them nibbled a little on the wire. Maybe one of them carried it away somewhere. I have seen the old gander walking around the barnyard dangling a piece of wood or something in his beak sometimes. And I’ve seen this old goat doing the same thing, just carrying something around sort of absentminded like. Betcha that’s what happened. One of them carried it somewhere and then they just dropped it.”

  The little man looked at Eddie with a surprised expression on his face. Then he dug into his little dictionary box to find a special word among its luminous cards.

  “Detective! You good detective!” he said graciously. “Yes, this possible. Goose bird or goat walk with wire some place. Now I must be good detective. Must follow goose bird and goat to find wire.”

  And that’s what he did. For the next few days the little man shadowed the goose and the goat. He tiptoed or ran after them wherever they went. It was very difficult because the goose and the goat rarely went anywhere together or at the same time. The little man would race after one, then race after the other.

  Sometimes shadowing one he’d keep track of the other by watching him through his telescope. Eddie helped him, too, sometimes and he did what he could to explain away the strange behavior of the little man to his grandmother. He told her that the little man (whom she always called Marty) was very interested in the goose and the goat. He had never seen a goose or a goat before and that there were no geese or goats in the place where the little man came from. Of course all that was true.

  And Eddie’s grandmother said, “Oh, the poor boy! Never to have ever seen geese or goats before. Oh, the poor boy!”

  7. The Space Ship Earthbound

  THE blueberries that grew in the big patch back of the orchard had ripened all at once and Eddie had to go berry-picking. His grandmother canned the berries and made blueberry pies and muffins. It was Eddie’s job to pick them when they ripened every summer. So he did not see much of the little man while he shadowed the goat and the goose. He would have liked to help the little man because he felt sorry for him but he did not have the time.

  The little man spent the daylight hours usually chasing the goat. The goat ranged free all over the farm. But the goose stuck close to the barnyard. He had a regular line of march through and around the barnyard down to the brook and back again. The little man could watch the goose from a distance with his telescope as he chased the goat. In the late afternoon the goat stayed in the barnyard so he was able to watch them both in the same place at the same time.

  After his berry-picking Eddie joined the little man as he sat quietly down by the brook watching the big gander waddle around in the shallow waters. He would sit beside him and try to get the little man to talk. But with little success. The little man was usually too weary (from chasing the goat) to talk much. Eddie talked about scouting and about his friends in New York and things like that. Sometimes they would sit together and say nothing for a long while.

  It seemed to Eddie that the little man should not be called Marty. He couldn’t get himself to call him Marty as his grandmother did. Somehow the little man reminded Eddie of a story he had once read about a man named Icarus who tried to fly with a pair of homemade wings. The wings came apart and Icarus fell to earth. Eddie could not remember how the story ended.

  But he thought that Icarus must have felt like the little man felt now that he was grounded and had lost the power to fly in his space ship. And he decided if he were to give the little man a name he would have called him Icarus... or maybe Icky for short.

  One evening as they sat at the edge of the brook, Eddie dangled a piece of branch in the water. He would stir up the muddy bottom and pick up dead leaves or some such rubbish with the tip of his stick and he would let it splash back into the water.

  “You know,” he said, “maybe you ought to do something else for a while. Want to come picking berries with me?”

  The little man shook his head.

  “How about fishing? We can catch some bullheads up the brook a way.”

  The little man shook his head again.

  “Grandma asked me about you the other day. Says she’s seen you around the barnyard... wants you to stop in for supper sometime.”

  Still the little man did not say anything. He had been living up in the orchard in his space ship and when Eddie had asked him what he ate (since he did look rather peaked) he said he ate concentrated food.

  “Look, there’s no sense moping around,” said Eddie, digging away with his stick in the brook bottom. “If you can’t find that Secret Power Z wire, you can’t find it. So....”

  Eddie’s stick had dug up a large mass of muck from the brook and as he was just about to let it splash back into the water the little man came to life and grabbed the stick from his hand.

  “Stop!” he cried, all excited. “Look! Look on end stick!”

  He pointed to the mass of muck. There, looped around the tip of the stick covered with old leaves and twigs, was the long-lost spool of Zurianomatichrome Wire!

  It was not shiny any more. Eddie would hard
ly have recognized it, the spool of wire was now so dull and black.

  “What’d you know!” shouted Eddie. “It’s been here all, along. Bet the old gander brought it down here.”

  The little man jumped to his feet and quickly cleaned away the debris that clung to the spool of wire. Then after carefully drying it as well as he could on Eddie’s jeans (which he still wore) he took a little gaugelike instrument from one of his pockets. He placed the tip of the wire in the gauge and watched the needle on the face of the instrument. The needle did not budge at all. It did not even quiver!

  “No power,” said the little man bitterly. “All power gone. Earth Moisture kill power in Zurianomatichrome.”

  “Gosh,” said Eddie gently, as he put his hand on the little man’s shoulder. “I’m terribly sorry. Gosh, that’s too bad.”

  The little man without a word shook Eddie’s hand off his shoulder, turned his back and slowly walked away toward the apple orchard. Eddie tried to think of something to say to cheer him up but he could not. He looked after him for a while, then he went up to his grandmother’s house and sat on the porch.

  “Grandma,” he said, when his grandmother came out and sat on her rocker, “my friend found his spool of wire.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad, Eddie,” she said. “So glad for him, I mean. He’s been so anxious to find it and so down-hearted, it seems to me. Couldn’t get him to say a word whenever I saw him.”

  “Guess he’s not much happier now,” said Eddie.

  “Why?” asked his grandmother. “He wanted that spool of wire pretty bad, but for the life of me I can’t tell why. Well, now he’s got it.”

  “Not much good now, he says. Found it in the brook and he says it’s all spoiled....”

  “Dear me, that is too bad,” said Eddie’s grandmother and she clucked her tongue. “Eddie, I’ll tell you what. That little boy is lonesome. Now I know enough about boys to tell when a boy is lonesome. I think you ought to introduce him to some of your friends. Do you know where he lives?”