by Ben Bova
Somewhere a loudspeaker was saying, “Thirty seconds and counting… The launch tower is now starting to roll away from the rocket vehicle and spacecraft.”
And the tower was beginning a slow, grinding, growling motion.
“Lugh, ye great hulking heap of princely magic!” Baneen cried out, hopping on the steel platform as if it were covered with hot coals. “Come… oooch!… quick. There’s grand news!”
“Twenty seconds and counting…”
Lugh appeared at the edge of the kite, as if he were standing on a wing of it. “What is it now, trickster? Are you staying with the humans, after all?”
“Listen—ouch!—quick, Lugh me darling. There’s no need to leave Earth. None at all. For any of us!”
Before Lugh could reply, though, Rolf broke in, “Where’s Shep—Mr. Sheperton?”
“Ten seconds, nine,…”
“The dog?” Lugh scowled. “Tried to rip our kite off the rocket, he did. I cooled him off. Down there!”
Lugh pointed, turned his back and walked off toward the edge of the platform. Rolf stared down in the direction the other had indicated and saw Mr. Sheperton paddling weakly in a large pond of water.
That’s the water that feeds into the exhaust cooling sprays! Rolf realized. In a few seconds the pumps will suck Shep down and then fire him right into the hot exhaust gases when the rocket takes off!
“Nine, eight…”
“Stop the launch!” Rolf yelled. Desperately, he looked about him. Lugh still stood with his back turned. Then a glitter caught Rolf’s eye. The Great Corkscrew of Gremla was taking form beside him. He glanced at it, and saw standing behind it O’Rigami, La Demoiselle, and O’Kkane Baro, along with other gremlins whose names he did not know. The voice of Baneen whispered in his ear.
“Pull it out, lad—quickly. We’ll help!”
Already, O’Rigami and the others were disappearing into the glitter of the case of the Great Corkscrew. Frantically, Rolf took hold and pulled. There was a moment when nothing happened and then suddenly the Great Corkscrew slid easily from its case and the brilliant light flashing from it glittered all around. Lugh spun about.
“Stop the launch!” shouted Rolf, holding the Corkscrew aloft and waving it at the gremlin prince.
“Five… four…” boomed the loudspeaker. Lugh stood, staring.
Rolf could not wait any longer for Lugh to act. He threw the Corkscrew aside, and dived for the hook at the end of the escape wire. In an eyeblink he was sliding madly back down the wire, racing toward the ground and the water at the edge of the launch pad, nothing between him and a five-hundred-foot fall except the strength of his fingers as they clutched the hook of the handgrip.
The loudspeaker droned. “Two, one… zero…”
Rolf’s feet touched the ground and he ran pell-mell to the edge of the tank and without an instant’s hesitation, dived in. Mr. Sheperton was still struggling in the water as if some invisible force were binding his legs.
“Shep, Shep—I’m here! I’ll save you!” Rolf yelled as he swam toward the dog.
“Too late…” gargled Mr. Sheperton, weakly, and his head sank beneath the surface of the water.
In the Launch Control room—a place filled with technicians and engineers sitting at row after row of control consoles—Mr. Gunnarson snapped a ballpoint pen in half and threw the pieces on the floor beside his desk.
“No ignition! The rockets didn’t light off!”
A half dozen men huddled around him.
“Must be the firing sequencer.”
“Or the main squib.”
“Or a pump failure.”
Mr. Gunnarson wanted to slam the desk with both his fists. Instead, he swallowed hard and said as calmly as he could.
“Are there any malfunction lights showing on the consoles?”
“No, everything’s green.”
He took a deep breath. “All right. Set the countdown sequencer back to T minus two minutes and go through it again. Maybe we’ve just got a loose connection. Tell the astronauts that we’re recycling to T minus two—and counting!”
“Right!” The men scurried back to their consoles.
Mr. Amaro appeared at Mr. Gunnarson’s elbow. “There’s been some funny kind of disturbance around the pad—a couple of kids on motorcycles…”
“Not now!” Mr. Gunnarson snapped. “We’ve got a bird loaded and ready to go. Like a live bomb out there!”
One instant Rolf was diving under the water to grab at Shep’s sinking form, and the next instant he was standing in the middle of the Gremlin Hollow, dripping wet, with Shep beside him.
“What the—”
Shep shook himself, and a shower of water sprayed from his soaked fur. “Hey, wait, cut it out!” Rolf yelled, trying to protect himself with his hands.
He rubbed the water from his eyes and felt the hot Florida sun baking him dry. Then the air of the Hollow shimmered and Rita appeared, holding both their bicycles, looking rather surprised and troubled.
“Rolf, you’re all right!”
“Yeah, sure… but…”
Suddenly the air about them was filled with fireflies, thousands of dancing lights that spun around their heads and settled to the ground. Wherever one of the sparkling lights touched down, it turned into a gremlin. And now the gremlins were laughing and dancing lightly, grabbing each other and whirling around, arm in arm. Baneen was dancing with La Demoiselle. O’Rigami was twirling with O’Kkane Baro.
Lugh appeared, and he was neither laughing nor dancing. Rolf had never seen the gremlin leader look more grim or more terrible. At the sight of their prince, the other gremlins stopped dancing and their laughter faded into silence.
“So!” said Lugh, looking up at Rolf and at the same time seeming to tower mountainously over him. “You’d trick a gremlin would you—you’d try to pull the wool over the eyes of Lugh of the Long Hand? Well, it’s a short delay you’ll find you’ll have gained, in a moment—and a long time of sorrow to repent interfering with our departure! So, you bid me stop the launch by virtue of the Great Wish gained when you drew our Corkscrew from its case, did you? I suppose you’ll not be shy about drawing the Corkscrew forth once more, just to show me while my eyes are on you, how the strength to do so is in you, and you alone?”
“I…”
“Ah, now, Lugh!” chattered Baneen, appearing beside Rolf with O’Rigami and the rest. “Sure, and it’s a terrible hard thing to do, drawing the Great Corkscrew from its holding place. You wouldn’t be requiring the lad to do it more than once, and that second time right on the heels of his first mighty effort. How much better to admit ourselves beaten—”
“SILENCE!” roared Lugh. Silence fell over the Hollow. “BOY, LET ME SEE YOU DRAW THE CORKSCREW FORTH!”
The Great Corkscrew, once more in its case, winked into existence in front of Rolf. Half-paralyzed by Lugh’s voice, he reached out and took hold of it, pulling at it. And then, a strange thing began to happen…
In front of Rolf’s eyes… in front of Lugh, himself… first Baneen, and then, one by one, O’Rigami, La Demoiselle, and O’Kkane Baro, along with other nameless gremlins, began once more to disappear into the glare and glitter of the case… and the Corkscrew once more came forth in Rolf’s hand.
Lugh stared. For a second his jaw worked, but no sound came out. Then, incredulously, he spoke.
“What… what is this? MUTINY?”
Baneen and the others reappeared.
“Ah, Lugh, darling!” cried the little gremlin. “Sure, and we’d never go against your wishes, ordinarily. But it’s fond of this world we are, to be sure, after all these thousands of years, and—”
“Silence!” thundered Lugh. “What kind of gremlins are you?”
“We are ze good gremlins!” cried La Demoiselle. “Eet ees because we are true gremlins zat we fight to stay on ze Earth!”
“FIGHT?” roared Lugh. “Well the lot of you know that it’s myself alone—” he shook one knobby fist, “is more than
a match for all of you put together. What, must I take you all up under my arm and carry you back to Gremla by force? If so be it, I will—”
He began to roll up his sleeves.
“Wait!” shouted Rolf. Lugh paused and looked at him. “Wait,” Rolf said again, more quietly. “This is my fault, but somebody’s got to tell you you’re wrong—”
“Silence, human!” rumbled Lugh ominously, continuing to roll up his sleeves.
“I’m not going to be silent,” said Rolf. “You’re just like I was—”
Lugh paused in rolling his sleeves, and stared at Rolf in astonishment.
“I?” he said. “Lugh of the Long Hand, like a mere human-lad?”
“That’s right,” said Rolf, determined now to get the words said, no matter how Lugh would react to them. “I kept trying to make my parents be the way I wanted them, in spite of the fact that they had other responsibilities. And you’ve been trying to turn Earth into another Gremla—into Gremla all over again, with the drawing of the Great Corkscrew and someone being king, and all that—and now that it hasn’t worked, you’re going to run away, back to Gremla and Hamrod the Heartless. Even Hamrod’s better than admitting you were wrong!”
Lugh’s ears rotated slowly, twice.
“Do I hear what I think I hear?” he muttered. “A human, saying such to me ?”
“It’s time somebody said it to you!” Rolf shouted. “None of the other gremlins want to go back to Hamrod. They’ve come to love Earth—and so have you, only you won’t admit it! If you’d admit it to yourself, you’d be willing to work with humans, even if none of them has a big enough soul to draw the Great Corkscrew from its case without help, any more than there’s any gremlin who can. Can you pull the Great Corkscrew loose by yourself? Of course not! So what makes you the one to decide whether all the gremlins on Earth have to go back to Gremla?”
Lugh began to swell… his actual body began to enlarge until he seemed to be growing to twice his normal size. As for his aura, that large impression that hovered over him at all times, it grew and grew until it seemed as large as a mountain. He spoke—and his voice was so deep that it seemed to come from the bowels of the earth and shake the very Hollow around them like an earthquake.
“L I G H T N I N G!” said Lugh, in that awful voice.
Suddenly the sky was black with clouds over their heads. A roll of thunder rumbled, echoing the sound of Lugh’s voice and a jagged spear of lightning shot down from the clouds and was caught, still jagged and so bright none of them could look at it, in Lugh’s right hand.
He poised the shaft of lightning, aiming it toward Rolf.
“B O Y!” he said. “A D M I T Y O U L I E!”
Wincing away from the blinding glare of the lightning shaft burning in Lugh’s hand, Rolf shook his head stubbornly.
“No!” he cried. “I’m right! You’re the one who’s wrong!”
For a moment there was a terrible hush in the Hollow. Lugh stood still. Then he lifted his arm.
Suddenly the lightning shaft flew from his hand back up to the clouds. The clouds themselves rolled up and disappeared. Bright sunshine poured down again on them all; and a great sigh of relief went up from thousands of gremlin throats.
“Ah, sure, your honor!” piped the voice of Baneen. “And wasn’t it yourself said that if you could find a human who cared more for another creature than himself, you’d give that human the Great Wish? And haven’t we here a lad who today risked everything, his own life included, for that of his faithful dog—and sure, if a dog’s not a creature now, what is?”
Lugh stared fiercely at Baneen, and then at Rolf, and then off into the distance.
“Quick, lad!” whispered Baneen in Rolf’s ear. “Make your wish— now!”
“I wish,” said Rolf, rapidly, “that gremlins would work with humans from now on to clean up the world and keep it clean and safe!”
“There, Lugh, darling!” cried Baneen, dancing in front of the gremlin prince. “It was yourself heard his wish. Do you grant it, now?”
Lugh glared at Baneen and turned to glare again at Rolf.
“Harrumph!” he growled, deep in his throat. “Rahumpf! HAHR-rumphff… all right!”
He turned and stalked off. The gremlins in the Hollow burst into wild cheering.
Abruptly, the ground shook. The air vibrated as if some giant’s breath were roaring across the world. And off in the distance, as wave after wave of thunder rolled across the Hollow, they all saw the Mars rocket lifting up, up, climbing straight into the cloudless blue sky on a tongue of sheer flame.
“A beautifur feat of engineering,” Rolf heard O’Rigami say.
The Mars rocket climbed higher, the roar of its mighty engines diminished. It became a distant speck, then a bright, fast-moving star shining in the morning sky. Then it got so far away that none of them could see it any longer.
Rolf felt as if he wanted to cheer, but it was all too magnificent and overpowering for something as small as one human voice. But it really did not matter. The gremlins were all cheering, for him. Rita was trying to hug him. The gremlins nearby were trying to hug him. Mr. Sheperton was standing on his hind legs, trying to lick Rolf’s face. It was all sort of a wonderful mess.
13
“…Crazy, the whole business,” said Rolf’s father, thoughtfully. “Absolutely crazy! On the other hand, does it matter? The bird got off all right, with only that short two-minute hold at the last minute—”
“What caused that?” asked Rolf’s mother. “You didn’t tell me.”
“One of those one-in-a-million things,” Rolf’s father dismissed the hold with a wave of his hand. “A loose connection in the ignition wiring. When we recycled and tried again, the light was white and there was no evidence that it had ever been anything else. But I’m not talking about that…”
Rolf fidgeted in his chair at the breakfast table. Rita, he knew, would be waiting at her place for him, by this time, but he dared not call attention to himself by leaving the table. His father, like most generally easygoing men, had one or two crotchets. One of them was that the whole family should be together at the breakfast table.
“…We never see each other the rest of the time,” he was in the habit of saying. “The least we can do is sit down and have a decent breakfast together before the day starts.”
All of which, of course, did not mean that Rolf could not leave the table—but he would bother his father by doing so, and his father’s reaction, when bothered, was suddenly to start remembering all the questions he normally did not get around to asking Rolf, such as where he was all day yesterday, and why didn’t he use his dependent’s pass to watch the rocket launch, and what had he been doing lately anyway? Rolf could lose more time than he would just sitting and waiting for his father to remember it was time to go to the office.
“…Almost enough to make you believe in gremlins,” his father was saying.
“Gremlins?” Rolf’s mother asked, trying to get a spoonful of applesauce into the baby without half of it going on to the flowered bib around the baby’s neck.
“Gremlins—imaginary little troublemakers that are always keeping things from working right,” said Rolf’s Dad with another wave. “Someone dreamed them up during World War II, I think. I didn’t mean it seriously about believing in them. Not that there aren’t all kinds of things…”
His mind wandered.
“What things, dear?” asked Rolf’s mother, wiping the baby’s chin with the bib.
“Well, that business the guards reported about some people on motorcycles running all over the place.”
“Did they find them?” Rolf’s mother asked. “The checkout girl in the supermarket was saying…”
Rolf’s dad snorted. He sounded almost like Shep.
“I’ve heard the rumors!” he said. “Bicycles riding at a hundred ninety miles an hour up one side of the VAB and down the other? Bicycles bouncing all over the Press Stand? Ridiculous. Besides, if there was anyone actually invol
ved in something like that, how would they have gotten out of the Space Center, with every security man and car on duty looking for them?
“Well, at least everything’s A-okay with the spacecraft. The astronauts have been reporting that everything’s working absolutely perfectly. No gremlins aboard the spacecraft!”
Rolf struggled to keep a straight face.
Mr. Gunnarson sneezed.
“Are you catching a cold?” demanded Rolf’s mother, looking suddenly at him.
“No… no, I don’t think so,” said Rolf’s father. “Just thinking about that sneezing fit everybody had out at the launch a minute or two after the hold was called. No one knows about that either. There’s a notion that some unusual cloud of pollen blew in about that time. Well, there you are. Things all over the place not making sense—”
He gestured at the newspaper he had just laid down.
“Half a dozen U.S. senators opposed to the Wildlife Reclamation bill got caught in an elevator that stuck between floors and missed their chance to vote against the bill. It passed,” he said. “Some boat owner who’d been sneaking people into the Playalinda Beach area to watch launches ran it up on the beach there and was stranded. Got caught. Claimed he was going into a canal a friend of his had made months before—only somebody had moved the canal. Nonsense! Actually, he’d missed the canal entrance by a good fifty yards. Must have been blind. Then, here, it says that it looks as if the Space Program’s going to get a financial shot in the arm so that the Space Lab can get to work on wider-ranging studies of how to combat air pollution and topsoil erosion while surveying for more deposits of natural resources.”
“Wasn’t the Space Lab doing a lot of that sort of thing anyway?” Rolf’s mother asked, lifting Rolf’s baby sister out of her highchair.
