Gremlins, Go Home!

by Ben Bova

  And like tiny lights going out all around Rolf, Mr. Sheperton and Rita, the hordes of gremlins began to disappear, leaving the Hollow empty with a strange and aching loneliness that Rolf could actually feel. It was a feeling such as he had never imagined before. Suddenly Lugh’s last few words made sense to him, and he understood why the gremlins were really leaving Earth and why it was up to him to stop them.

  “Wait!” he cried.

  But all the gremlins in the Hollow were gone now except Lugh, O’Rigami and Baneen. Even as he shouted, O’Rigami gave the two humans and the dog a polite bow and disappeared. Lugh winked out almost the same instant, and Baneen thinned to transparency, flickering like a candle flame that was dying.

  11

  “Wait, Baneen!” Rolf shouted again, desperately.

  For a second, it seemed that Baneen was almost gone. Then he grew solid again.

  “Forgive me, lad,” he said softly, “but I can’t wait. It’s time for us all to be going now, and they’re waiting for me aboard the space kite. Farewell…”

  A single tear ran down the side of his nose. He lifted a hand in a wave and began to fade again.

  “Just a minute—please, Baneen—just a minute!” Rolf shouted. “Listen! I know why you’re going! But you don’t need to!”

  “Farewell…” sang Baneen, mournfully. As he grew fainter and fainter he said, “A long farewell to Earth.” His tone changed abruptly and he almost smiled as he added, “And, Rolf me boy, sorry to have tricked you into helping us. It was the only way we could get away, you know.”

  “That’s not important,” Rolf insisted. “What’s important is—I know why you’re going! And you don’t need to!”

  “Ah, yes. Too bad that—you know what ?” Baneen flickered halfway back to solid visibility.

  Rolf could hardly stand still, and Rita was eyeing him in astonishment. Mr. Sheperton was sitting on his haunches, mumbling something.

  “I know why you gremlins are leaving, I tell you!” said Rolf desperately. “And you don’t have to! Come back, Baneen. Listen to me for just a minute!”

  Baneen flickered again, faded almost completely out, then grew more and more solid until he once more stood before them as real as themselves.

  “Now lad, it’s no use trying to trick a gremlin. Sure, we’ve known all the tricks ourselves since your ancestors were painting themselves blue and hiding in caves.”

  “It’s not a trick!” Rolf said. “I really do know why you’re going back to Gremla. I would have figured it out before, but you kept telling me how you had no use for Earth and how beautiful Gremla was. But you all really like it here on Earth, don’t you?”

  “Ah, what difference does it make? In less than a minute we’ll be all aboard the space kite and ready for blastoff. Look—” Baneen pointed a tiny green finger. The mist of the Hollow seemed to be dissolving. Well, not exactly dissolving as much as shrinking, pulling itself together into one ball of milky whiteness that grew smaller and smaller as Rolf and the others watched it.

  “You see?” Baneen said. “The magic gate is closing. I’ve got to get through it before it shrinks altogether and I’m stranded here while my brothers and sisters fly back to Gremla.” He edged toward the shrinking sphere of whiteness.

  Rolf grabbed at his skinny arm. “If you hated Earth so much, why didn’t you leave centuries ago?”

  Baneen looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Well, as I told you, lad, there’s that dampness which keeps our magic from lifting us more than a wee distance above the ground. It’s helpless we were, entirely, until you humans got the idea of building space rockets…”

  The milky white sphere was down to the size of a big beach ball.

  “You gremlins had nothing to do with our inventing rockets?” Rolf demanded.

  “Well now,” said Baneen, squirming in Rolf’s grip, “maybe we did give the idea a wee push here and there. What with Mr. Da Vinci, and those Chinese fellows, and Mr. Goddard later on—”

  The sphere was down to the size of a basketball. Baneen pulled, trying to get away from Rolf.

  “Wait,” said Rolf. “Listen to me. It was all Lugh’s doing, wasn’t it? All of you had come to like it here, but Lugh wasn’t going to have anything to do with humans unless they were perfect, would he? He tried to make humans live up to a test that gremlins themselves couldn’t even pass, nowadays. And when they couldn’t do it, he decided to take you all back to Gremla—but none of you really want to go, now. You’re all Earth gremlins—look at you, so Irish-sounding anybody’d expect to see you start sprouting shamrocks! O’Rigami, Japanese to the core! O’Kkane Baro, who’s probably more gypsy than gremlin, from the way he looks to me. And La Demoiselle, who’s not only so French you can’t believe it, but all wound up in a bit of Earth history that won’t mean a thing back on Gremla. Don’t tell me, all of the rest of you really want to leave Earth! It’s just Lugh! Isn’t it?”

  “Y-yes…” stammered Baneen—and clapped a hand over his mouth immediately. “What am I saying? Miscalling my own Prince—but it’s true. Indeed it’s true. Lugh would have it that we mustn’t associate with humans unless they were able to show themselves worthy of our association. Not but what most of us have done our wee best, here and there, when the opportunity came up, little tricks to nudge your people in the right direction. But little avail it was, what with Lugh giving you a mighty push to hurry up and develop your machines and your engines, and all the rest of it, until you had something that could fly us back to Gremla as secret passengers. But how could you know about Lugh, lad?”

  “Because I was the same way,” Rolf said. “I was doing exactly the same thing, this last year. My mother was all wrapped up in my baby sister, and my dad had to work night and day for this launch, but I blamed them both for not being able to give me all the time they used to. I was expecting them to be perfect where I was concerned, no matter what they had to deal with anyplace else. I finally realized what I was doing, by seeing Lugh do the same thing. He’s never gotten over the way it used to be back on Gremla, and he wanted Earth to be Gremla all over again. But it isn’t—and he’s just got to live with it, the way I have to live with my own family.”

  He let go of Baneen’s arm, but the gremlin merely stood now, staring at him.

  “Glory be!” breathed Baneen. “If Lugh could hear you—perhaps he’d change his mind yet.

  “But—” the little gremlin wrung his hands together, “he’d never stop now, not for any simple word—”

  “I’ll stop him!” barked Mr. Sheperton. “I’ll stop the whole pack of them, see if I don’t!”

  With that, the dog leaped at the magic gate.

  “No!” yelped Baneen.

  But Mr. Sheperton dove right through and disappeared. And the gate shriveled and shrank like a popped balloon, right behind him. As soon as Mr. Sheperton’s tail flicked out of sight, the milky white sphere disappeared altogether.

  “He’s ruined the gate!” Baneen cried. “And he’ll ruin the space kite on the other side!” Then Baneen’s eyes really went wide with terror. “And how am I going to get aboard? HOW AM I GOING TO GET ABOARD?”

  Rolf simply stood there, stunned. It was Rita who recovered her senses first.

  “How much time do we have before the rocket takes off?” she asked.

  That snapped Rolf back. He glanced at his wristwatch. “Oh no!! There’s only six minutes left!”

  Baneen was scampering around, distraught, pulling his eyebrows down into his mouth and chewing on them, mumbling, “Hmlgghmmgrmll—”

  Rolf grabbed him by the shoulder. “Baneen! Can you get us to the launch pad inside of six minutes?”

  The gremlin shook himself. “Well I could… no, that wouldn’t work. Or if—no, that’s no good…”

  “Quick!” Rita said. “It’s got to be right away!”

  “There’s only one way to do it,” Baneen said, looking up at them. “But it means I’ll have to go with you—and all that iron and steel—” He shuddered.r />
  “We’ve got to!” Rolf insisted.

  Baneen squared his shoulders. “You’re right, lad. There’s nothing else to do. Even though it may be the end of me, what matters one poor wee gremlin when—”

  “Can it!” Rita shouted. “Let’s get going!”

  “Right!” cried Baneen. “Onto your bikes, you two.” And he glided up and sat on Rolf’s handlebar.

  “The bikes?” Rita asked.

  “We’ve only got five minutes,” said Rolf.

  “Trust me,” said Baneen, with an almost saintly smile on his gremlin face.

  It wasn’t like any bike ride in the history of the world. The instant their feet touched the pedals, the bicycles took off like racing cars and went faster and faster. The bush and sand dunes went blurring past.

  “There’s the road now!” Baneen yelled over the howling wind. He was hanging onto the plastic handgrip of the handlebar with one tiny hand, and keeping his hat jammed on his head with the other. “Follow it in to the base!”

  They were going at least seventy miles an hour, Rolf guessed—and straight toward the double line of cars that still jammed the road.

  “We’ll crash,” cried Rolf, as he squeezed the handbrakes. But the brakes didn’t slow the bike at all. He and Rita—with Baneen hanging on by one hand—hurtled directly at the traffic on the road.

  12

  For one instant it seemed they were going to smash right into the side of a big mobile home. Then the handlebars twitched by themselves, and suddenly both bikes were weaving in and out among the cars and trailers and campers, zooming along the road at fantastic speed, the wind screeching past so fast that Rolf could scarcely breathe.

  Frantic drivers jammed on their brakes. Children and mothers sat staring, pop-eyed, as the two bikes roared past them at the speed of jet planes. Half the time Rolf simply closed his eyes as they scooted between cars, around trucks, and—he swore— over a busload of tourists from Dayton, Ohio.

  Baneen had slipped off the handgrip and was flapping in the wind, hanging on with one hand and screaming madly.

  “Ouch! Oh! All this—oof!—iron and steel! Ouch! Great Gremla protect me—ouch!”

  Behind them the cars they passed set up a honking, like a mechanical chorus of angry machines. They zipped past a checkpoint, and the guard standing beside his gray sedan let the radio microphone drop from his hand as he stared at the two nearly supersonic bikes roaring by. His partner picked up the microphone and started babbling into it.

  They passed the entrance to the Space Center so fast that the guards there were knocked down by the blast of wind. They scrambled to their feet and started yelling into their microphones:

  “Two bicycles—must be doing five-hundred miles an hour—yeah, yeah, bicycles ! No, I don’t have sunstroke!”

  Back at the Manned Launch Center, Rita’s father shook his head at the hastily typed report that had just been handed to him. Security guards were bustling around the room he was in, other men and women were sitting at radio desks and working typewriters.

  Mr. Amaro’s eyes widened as he read the report. “Five-hundred miles an hour? Bicycles? Are they all going crazy out there?”

  An excited voice came through one of the radio loudspeakers: “I can see ’em! They’re a couple of kids—the bikes are goin’ so fast they’re just a blur. And they’re headin’ straight for the VAB!”

  Mr. Amaro crumpled the typewritten sheet in his hand. “Crazy or not, nobody’s getting into the Vehicle Assembly Building without a pass! Come on.”

  Meanwhile Rolf and Rita were zooming along, heading for the enormous, massive shape of the VAB, where the rockets are put together before they are taken out to their launch pads.

  “Ouch! Oh! Will we never get there?” Baneen was groaning.

  “Look!” Rita yelled over the howling wind. “Security cars coming!”

  Rolf saw the white cars speeding toward them from both sides of the VAB. “We can’t go around!” he shouted. “They’ve got both sides blocked!”

  “Do something!” Rita yelled to Baneen.

  “All right—owoo!” cried Baneen. “Straight up, then—ooch, ouch! The whole building’s full of iron, isn’t it?”

  They hurtled directly at the straight solid wall of the VAB as if they were going to smash themselves against it. Rolf involuntarily closed his eyes, and the next thing he knew their bikes were racing straight up the wall, defying gravity and going as fast as ever.

  Down at the base of the building, Mr. Amaro hopped out of his car before the driver had even brought it to a complete stop. He snapped his head back so fast that his uniform cap fell off.

  “I don’t believe it!” he muttered to himself. “I see it, but it’s impossible!”

  The two bikes went right up to the top of the wall and disappeared over the edge of the roof.

  “It’s like being on top of a mountain,” Rolf yelled as they bounced onto the roof of the VAB. “This is the highest point in all Florida, I bet.”

  “It’s nice being away from all those horns and the people yelling,” Rita agreed.

  But they only had a moment to enjoy the quiet and the view. With Baneen still ouch ingevery inch of the way, they hurtled straight for the far edge of the roof.

  Rolf felt his stomach drop away as his bike—and Rita’s—raced right off the roof and did a “Wheelie” on the back wall of the VAB. They both sailed down the wall with only their rear wheels touching. Rolf squinted downward. There was nothing between his madly pedaling feet and the ground except hundreds of feet of very thin air.

  “Don’t look down!” he yelled to Rita, as his hands suddenly went clammy.

  “Why not?” Rita hollered back. “It’s fun! Man, is that a long way down!”

  Rolf concentrated on keeping his teeth from chattering.

  They got to the ground and scooted off again, just as a couple of security cars pulled around the corner of the building.

  “Whew,” said Baneen, pulling himself back up to a sitting position. “At least we’re away from that nasty iron for a moment or two.”

  Rolf glanced at his wristwatch. Two minutes to go before liftoff.

  They were heading straight for the giant rocket and its launch stand, with a half dozen white security cars trailing along behind them, sirens blaring distantly. But now Rolf saw that between them and the launch stand were more cars, and hundreds of people sitting in the press stands.

  “How can we get around them?” he asked Baneen.

  “Not around,” puffed Baneen. “Over.” Then the gremlin asked in a lower, sadder tone, “By the way, lad, that launching stand and the great tall tower—they’re made of iron, aren’t they?”

  “Steel,” said Rolf.

  Baneen’s eyes rolled up and the corners of his mouth dropped. “Ah, well—up and away!”

  The bicycles soared into the air for a short distance, then bounced back to the ground. Another hop, longer this time, took them over a row of parked cars. Baneen winced and fidgeted. Then they bounded over a startled group of photographers, who jumped and shouted, and knocked over each others’ tripods in their surprise.

  Bouncing, they reached the press stands where the reporters and photographers were eagerly watching the final moments of countdown. They soared over the watchers, who yelled and ducked as the bikes cleared their heads by inches.

  They bounced down on the apron of ground between the viewing stand and the canal of water that ran between the launch stand and the VAB.

  “Water!” screeched Baneen. “Merciful Gremla!”

  The canal was about two hundred yards across, and deep, as Rolf knew. And they were hurtling for it too fast to swerve aside.

  “Up and over!” shouted Baneen, his voice quavering.

  The two bicycles soared up like gliders and rose over the canal. Baneen put a hand over his eyes while he wailed, “Water… oo!”

  Rolf also closed his eyes. He didn’t mind flying in a plane, but in a bicycle… !

  He felt
his bike touch down again, but on something that wasn’t quite solid ground. Opening his eyes, Rolf saw that they were pedaling up a wire, with Rita’s bike right in front of him. Like circus acrobats, they raced up the steeply angled wire.

  Pushing down a lump in his throat, Rolf shouted ahead to Rita, “This is the escape wire—the astronauts use this to slide down from the spacecraft in case something goes wrong right before the rocket ignites.”

  Rita half-turned in her seat to look at him over her shoulder. “I know. Isn’t it fun?” She was grinning broadly.

  Fun! Rolf felt paralyzed as they raced up the slim strand of wire, and she thought it was fun. She’s got more faith in gremlin magic than I have!

  * * *

  Meanwhile, more than a dozen white security cars had pulled up to a screaming halt beside the launch pad.

  Half a dozen guards ran over to Mr. Amaro’s car. He jumped out and started shouting to them:

  “Well, where are they? Have you seen them?”

  “No, sir. Can’t find them anywhere!” None of the men was looking high enough to see the two bicycles zooming up the escape wire. The bikes were just a blur anyway; they were going so fast.

  “Well, spread out,” Mr. Amaro ordered. “They must have sneaked in among the crowd someplace.”

  One of the guards, his face sweaty and worried-looking, asked, “Sir, should we ask Mission Control to put a hold on the countdown? Those kids might be anyplace—”

  “No,” Mr. Amaro said. “They’ve got awfully fast motorbikes, I’ll admit. But they’d have to be able to fly to get across the canal and into the launch area itself. There’s no chance of that.”

  “Right,” the other guard agreed.

  * * *

  Up, up and up the two bikes raced while Baneen shuddered and moaned. “Iron and steel, iron and steel. Ooohhh.”

  Finally they thumped to a stop, and Rolf saw that they were now on the same platform he had come to the night before, in the elevator. The spacecraft was standing at one end of the platform, smooth and white. The space kite itself was hanging from the spacecraft’s outer skin, looking tiny and barely visible—but at the same time, Rolf thought it looked big as a jetliner. He could see thousands of gremlins jostling around inside the kite, flickering in and out of visibility like a set of winking Christmas lights.