Charlie Numbers and the Man in the Moon

by Ben Mezrich

  Charlie headed to his own folding table. As he went, he cast another look toward the referee’s table, where the ref was still at the microphone, telling the competitors they would have three minutes to make a new plane. Next to the ref, Charlie could still see the three men he’d noticed earlier, when he’d first gotten to the starting line. All three were carrying notebooks and wearing matching flight jackets. The NASA emblem was impossible to miss, emblazoned on each of the jackets’ right shoulder. NASA had sent officials to witness the finals, and no doubt they were taking notes on the competitors. Charlie had to assume his name was now near the top of whatever lists they might be making.

  Exciting—and terrifying. He wondered how quickly they’d tear out that page if they knew what he was really doing in the competition, or how he’d gotten there. He pushed the thought away as he reached his team’s folding table.

  “Almost done,” Kentaro said, as his fingers moved rapidly, creasing edges and double-folding flaps on a piece of pristine white paper. “I’m going to add the tiniest bit of weight to the nose. I think we can get another few inches, if the throw is just right.”

  Marion had his sketchbook open to their design, his stubby finger tracing the edges of his drawing as he watched Kentaro fold. Jeremy looked like he was about to pass out, his gangly arms wrapped around his body to keep him upright. Crystal was the only one who didn’t look worried. In fact, she looked confident.

  “Charlie,” she said, quietly. “I want you to make a slight adjustment to your throw. Instead of thirty-six degrees, try for thirty-three.”

  “Isn’t that too low?”

  She raised a hand, feeling the air.

  “It’s five degrees cooler today than yesterday. That means the higher air is going to be a little less dense. A lower flight will be a longer flight. Trust me.”

  If Charlie was going to trust anyone today, it was going to be Crystal.

  Finally, Kentaro made the last fold and held the plane up in front of the team.

  “It’s beautiful,” Charlie managed.

  Kentaro grinned.

  “I really think I’m getting the hang of this. Maybe I should go into business. Kentaro Mori’s Paper Plane Emporium. We could sell them down by the train station.”

  Charlie took the plane from his hand just as a loud buzzer went off across the hall. It was time.

  Charlie jogged back through the crowd to the starting line. He reached it just as Ryan arrived, Kelly at his side. Charlie watched as Kelly handed Ryan their plane—still a flying fox design, but with a more tapered tail. Kelly gave Ryan’s arm a squeeze, then looked right at Charlie.

  “Good luck,” she said. “If someone’s got to beat us, I’m glad it might be you.”

  Charlie blushed. Ryan groaned.

  “Yeah, I’d be thrilled to be beaten by a runt with a plane made by a hobbit.”

  Back to the old Ryan. The ref came over next to them, a coin in his hand. As he flipped it, he nodded to Charlie to make the call.

  “Heads,” Charlie cried.

  The whole room seemed to suck into itself as the coin spun in the air. When it landed tails, Charlie grimaced to himself. That meant he’d be throwing first. It was always an advantage to throw second. Ryan and Kelly both stepped back, giving Charlie room. It felt like every eye in the place was on him. Sweat beaded on the back of his neck, but he tried to close his mind off, to focus on the plane, the track, and the numbers.

  Thirty-three degrees. He could see the angle like it was drawn right in the air. He took a deep breath, cocked his arm—and threw.

  The only sound in the room was shaped paper cutting through air. Charlie’s plane rose ten feet toward the ceiling, then began to level off. It’s flight was slow, like before, but even steadier—as if the extra folds Kentaro had added had adjusted the material of the nose just enough to counter the difference in air density from the day before. The plane was simply sailing, as if it were never going to come down.

  “Unbelievable.”

  The whisper came from Charlie’s left, and he glanced over to see Richard Caldwell standing by the sideline. Richard was watching the plane, and the look on his face was nearly ecstatic. To Richard, this wasn’t about the competition, it was about the planes themselves. Richard was a true scientist. Charlie had to believe that such a kid couldn’t have come from a bad father. Richard had mentioned again and again that his father was hard on him, but Charlie couldn’t believe that the man was a thief.

  Charlie turned his gaze back to his plane and was shocked to see that it was still sailing forward. It wasn’t until another ten seconds passed that the nose started to dip downward. And then it descended, gradually, softly, slowly. Finally, it touched down.

  “One hundred and ninety!”

  Charlie gasped. He couldn’t believe that something he’d thrown had gone that far. As Ryan stepped forward to take his place at the starting line, he could see the fear in the bigger kid’s eyes. The confidence was gone, the bluster evaporated.

  “Good luck,” Charlie said.

  Ryan didn’t answer. Instead, he cocked his muscled arm as far back as he could and let it fly.

  His fox tore into the air at an incredible speed, cutting an upward arc toward the ceiling. Twice as high as Charlie’s plane, and more than twice as fast. The crowd made a sound somewhere between a gasp and a cheer. Nobody had seen a plane go that fast. Higher and higher—faster and faster—and then, something began to happen.

  The plane began to slow. As Crystal had predicted, the higher air was slightly less dense—and that density was causing drag against the fox ears and tail. The plane began to tremble, and then it was going downward, finishing the second half of the parabola.

  “No,” Ryan mouthed. “No, no, no.”

  Charlie felt his pain. Ryan’s mouth curved downward, and his shoulders slumped. Charlie wanted to say something to make the kid feel better. Even though he had a mean streak a mile wide, it was obvious this competition was truly important to him. If what Kelly had said was true, Ryan needed to win if he was going to afford college one day. Charlie wanted to win. But Ryan needed to win.

  But even needs couldn’t trump math, and in the end, this was a contest of numbers. Ryan’s numbers didn’t add up. The four forces were out of balance. His plane descended lower, lower, then tipped forward, plunging straight to the ground.

  “A hundred and eighty-eight.”

  Another great throw, but not far enough. The crowd erupted again. Charlie turned to shake Ryan’s hand, but the kid was already slumping back toward his team. Charlie saw Kelly putting her arm on his shoulder. Then she caught Charlie’s gaze.

  “Congrats,” she said.

  Then she looked toward Richard, who was stepping forward, his perfectly symmetrical plane in hand. She turned back toward Charlie.

  “Win, Charlie. You deserve it.”

  Charlie felt his face blanch. He couldn’t believe she wanted him to beat Caldwell. He was still staring at her as Caldwell took his position next to him. Kentaro, Marion, Jeremy, and Crystal had arrived as well, all of them jumping up and down. Kentaro had a new plane in his hand, ready to go. It looked even better than the previous planes. The referee approached, that fate-deciding coin in hand.

  “You pick,” Caldwell said, still clearly impressed. “You’ve earned it.”

  Charlie shook his head. Part of him wanted nothing more than to fulfill Kelly’s request—to beat Richard Caldwell, to beat the best and prove himself truly worthwhile. But Kelly and Richard were both wrong. Charlie didn’t deserve anything. And he still had work to do.

  He stepped back, then pulled Kentaro forward to the starting line.

  “Actually, I’m not going to be throwing this time. Our lead designer is taking my place.”

  Kentaro looked smaller and more terrified than ever as he took his place next to Richard at the line. The referee shrugged, then flipped the coin.

  “Call it!” he shouted.

  “Tails!” Kentaro managed, h
is voice a squeak above the crowd.

  And heads it was. The crowd roared as Richard stepped back, leaving Kentaro alone on the line.

  Charlie knew what Kentaro was feeling—the mixture of fear and excitement and pride, the tenseness flowing through his muscles, and the daggers stabbing at the pit of his stomach. He wished he could stand there and watch, he wished he could be there for support, but instead, he slipped backward through the crowd. And just as he had predicted, nobody noticed, not even Kelly. They were too busy watching the final two competitors. Too busy waiting for those final two throws.

  Charlie didn’t stop moving until he was out the door and in the hallway that led into the rest of the museum. A second later, Crystal exited after him, already pulling the key card out of her pocket.

  “That was amazing,” she said. “And it worked perfectly. Nobody is going to notice that we’re gone until the contest is over. Jeremy and Marion will look out for Caldwell’s dad and keep tabs on Anastasia. So for now, it’s just you and me.”

  She grabbed his hand and led him down the hall, the key card out in front of her. She was reading the map off the back of the plastic, taking them toward the bright green dot. To Charlie’s surprise, once they had matched their location to the perspective of the tiny map, they didn’t have far to go. Down the hall, one turn, and they were inside the room with the gigantic nose of the Boeing 747. They passed through a smattering of tourists, then under the shadow of the curved half an aircraft. Charlie fought the urge to look up to see his reflection traipse across the smooth fuselage as he followed Crystal to the far corner of the room.

  In front of them was a huge Boeing jet engine, nearly the size of a pickup truck. The engine was cylindrical, shaped vaguely like a stubby rocket, a swirling fan covering its cavernous front, and its tail tapering off to a near point. Crystal stopped in front of the engine, looking closely at the card.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” Charlie said, looking over her shoulder. “The green dot is right here.”

  Crystal lowered the card, and then pointed toward the floor. Charlie saw that the engine was up on a legged pedestal; there was about a foot of space beneath the massive machine and the carpeted floor.

  “What?”

  “Look closer.”

  Charlie squinted and saw a discolored square of carpet, right beneath the engine’s tail. He checked behind himself, making sure none of the other tourists were looking, and then bent down on one knee.

  The square of carpet came up without much effort. Underneath was an electronic keypad, similar to the one outside Buzz Caldwell’s study.

  “See, I told you Aeronautics Infinity didn’t have a lab inside the Air and Space Museum,” Crystal said.

  “It has one underneath,” Charlie finished for her.

  Crystal handed him the key card, and he swiped it through a slot above the keypad. There was a quiet whirr, and a section of the carpet beneath the engine whiffed open, revealing metal stairs leading downward.

  17

  “CHROME. I SEE A lot of chrome. Somebody better be getting paid a pretty penny to do all the polishing, because this place sparkles like the Fourth of July.”

  Crystal was only two steps ahead of him as they descended the stairs into the underground lab, but she’d already managed to find a light switch, bathing the thousand-square-foot cube of a room in bright fluorescent light. And she was right. Now Charlie could see the chrome, flashing up at him from nearly every angle.

  The lab was state-of-the-art, much nicer than anything he’d ever seen while visiting his dad and mom at MIT. Aside from the chrome—shelves, glass cabinets, sinks, test-tube racks—the place was mostly a cinder-block cube, filled with sophisticated devices and workstations. Charlie was able to pick out autoclaves and centrifuges, test tubes, and enough beakers to build a mini glass metropolis; Charlie also recognized a pair of giant electron microscopes by the far wall.

  But what dominated his thoughts as he reached the bottom step, right behind Crystal, was a huge object he saw in the corner to his left, between two of the sink stations. Crystal saw it too, letting out a low whistle.

  “Now that’s a safe.”

  It was a humongous monstrosity of a safe. Six feet tall, with a thick metal door that looked to be iron or steel. Right in the center of the door was a single wheel—a simple locking mechanism, no buttons or keys. Anachronistic, maybe, in this place of electronics and engines, but to Charlie, it made perfect sense. Electronics could be beaten by intelligence and math; he and Crystal had already proven that fact back at Caldwell’s house. Old-fashioned iron and steel didn’t care how smart you were or what tricks you had up your sleeve.

  Charlie had a sinking feeling in his stomach as he followed Crystal across the lime-green tiles that covered the floor. He felt certain that what they were looking for had to be in that safe, but he couldn’t imagine how they were going to get inside.

  As they got closer he focused on the big wheel in the center of the door. It wasn’t chrome, but it still shone like the cabinets and sinks, bathed in the fluorescent light. Even from a distance, he could see how the wheel worked. It could spin clockwise or counterclockwise. To open the door, you had to know the precise directions to spin it: which way, and how many times each way. Unlike the numbered electronic lock, the possibilities were impossible to calculate—the number of turns each way had no limits, no numerical parameters.

  As Crystal came to a stop in front of the wheel, she reached out and touched the heavy metal of the door.

  “This has to be a foot thick. There’s no way to cut or burn our way in, even if we had the materials. I could try the lycopodium powder. We could see where the wheel was touched.”

  “That isn’t going to help,” Charlie said. “You have to turn it in the proper sequence. Left, right, left, whatever.”

  “Like a steering wheel,” Crystal said, crestfallen. “Then it’s finished, Charlie. We can’t get through.”

  Charlie paused, as what she said pricked at his thoughts. Like a steering wheel.

  “Or a cyclic stick,” he whispered.

  Crystal looked at him.

  Charlie stepped forward and put his hands on the wheel. The metal felt cold against his palms. He thought back to the dinner party and the tail end of the story he’d heard Richard Caldwell telling Kelly and Ryan. Charlie had mostly been focused on Kelly at the time, but he could still remember Caldwell’s words. My father barely got control of the thing, by using an old trick he’d picked up in the air force to stabilize the chopper. . . .

  Left. Left. Right. Left. Right. Right.

  Charlie turned the wheel as the sequence ran through his head. The wheel creaked with each motion. Left, left, right, left, right, right—

  Bang. There was the sound of an iron tumbler falling free, and suddenly the huge door was swinging outward. Charlie jumped back, nearly knocking Crystal over as they both got out of the way. The next thing they knew, they were facing an open vault, about four feet deep. The vault was lined with shelves. Charlie took a step forward, quickly looking through the shelves, and then his gaze rested on a row of three vials near the center of the vault.

  “Moon rocks,” Charlie said quietly. Then he paused.

  Two of the vials contained the same gray, pockmarked stones that Anastasia had shown him back at the Nagassack lunchroom. But the third vial appeared to have an entirely different substance in it. Even compared to all the chrome in the lab, the flecked material inside the vial sparkled like trapped fireflies. Instead of being stone shaped, the material was long and flat, not something that had been found—something that had been manufactured.

  “What is that?” Charlie said.

  Crystal reached forward and carefully took the third vial out of the vault. She looked at it closely, then gave it a shake. Charlie waited for her response. She was, after all, an expert, perhaps as qualified as any university professor.

  “I think I saw something over here that might help,” she said, stepping back from
the safe and heading toward one of the nearby cabinets.

  “You’re not going to try and run it through an electron microscope, are you? We don’t have time for that.”

  “Don’t be foolish. I’m going to do something much simpler. Here we go.”

  She grabbed a small black object, about the size of stapler, out of the cabinet. Then she held the object right up against the glass of the vial.

  There was a click as the shiny specimen moved against the glass, the sparkling flecks on the material standing on end like little hairs.

  “Magnetic,” she said, showing Charlie that the stapler-shaped object in her hands was, indeed, a magnet. “This material is manufactured metal, with magnetic properties. I can see that it’s incredibly smooth yet probably pliable. And it’s not made out of any materials that metal has been made out of before.”

  “Then what’s it made out of?” Charlie asked.

  Crystal pointed to the two other vials still on the shelf in the vault.

  “Moon rocks.”

  Charlie blinked. So that’s what this was about. Not just stolen moon rocks, a new metal made out of stolen moon rocks. His mind began putting the pieces together. Anastasia had left NASA because she had wanted to profit from the development of new aerospace metals. She now worked for a competing aerospace company. She wasn’t after the moon rocks, she was after the metal Buzz Caldwell and his firm had synthesized from the rocks.

  That still didn’t explain what the rocks were doing here, or whether Caldwell had stolen them from NASA. But it solidified the fact that what Charlie and his friends were engaged in was corporate espionage of the highest order.

  He couldn’t let Anastasia have this metal, or these rocks. But he couldn’t just leave them here and try to go to the police, or NASA. It would still be his word against hers. He needed real, solid evidence. He needed to see this through.

  He reached out and grabbed the two vials full of moon rocks, then took the vial of the new metal from Crystal. He put all three into his backpack.