Danny Dunn and the Voice from Space

by Raymond Abrashkin

  “I thank you,” he concluded, wiping his forehead.

  His mother, who had been staring open-mouthed at him, ran forward.

  “My baby!” she shrilled. “What’s wrong? Why are you babbling like that?”

  “I’m all right, Ma,” Joe protested.

  “I’m sure he is, Mrs. Pearson,” said Professor Bullfinch. “And I think we got the message.”

  “I don’t understand. What message?” Mrs. Pearson said.

  “A message from a planet with three curious young beings living on it, I think,” laughed Mrs. Dunn.

  Danny reddened. “Well, there’s nothing wrong with our wanting to see another country, is there?” he said.

  “For my part,” said Dr. Badger, “I thought Joe made out a very good case. Unfortunately, I don’t think our budget will pay for three junior observers.”

  “I, for one, was very impressed by Joe’s arguments,” Professor Bullfinch said, thoughtfully. “I think travel to a foreign land would be an excellent way of making some of Danny’s school work more understandable. What do you say, Mrs. Dunn?”

  “I was just thinking how nice it would be not to do any housework for a month or so,” Mrs. Dunn replied.

  “Oh, Mom! Do you mean it?” Danny said.

  Mrs. Miller looked at her husband. “I don’t see why Irene and I should be left at home all summer, while you enjoy yourself abroad,” she said.

  Irene threw herself into her mother’s arms. Joe scratched his head. “That’s great,” he grumbled. “I make the big speech, and I’m the only one who doesn’t get to go.”

  But his mother hugged him and said indignantly, “Nonsense! I may have been slow to understand, but if the others are going, so are we. I’m sure your father will agree. Won’t you, William?”

  Mr. Pearson, all this time, had been quietly cleaning his plate, for in his love of good food he resembled his son. He now dabbed his lips with his napkin, and said placidly, “I had made up my mind to it as soon as Dr. Badger read that letter. Not that Joe wasn’t persuasive—I was very proud of the speech he made. But as it happens, I think I can fit in a business trip to England very nicely. And if they’re going to listen for a message from outer space, I want to be somewhere near at hand.”

  “Then it’s all settled,” Professor Bullfinch said, with satisfaction.

  He raised his coffee cup.

  “To Project Gnome,” he said, “and to our expedition. Two great adventures—across the ocean, and across space!”

  CHAPTER 6

  The Ocean Voyage

  The immense ocean liner towered over her berth on the Hudson River, her red and black smoke stacks rising high above the city’s traffic. Tiny figures filed slowly up the steep gangplanks like ants swarming into their nest in a tree trunk. One of the ants—a red-headed one—paused and glanced behind him.

  “Gosh, we’re a regular parade,” he exclaimed.

  Behind Danny, the others stretched in a long line. Irene and Joe were at his heels carrying their overnight bags, then came Mrs. Dunn holding her new hat on with one hand and clutching a parcel in the other, then Mr. and Mrs. Pearson struggling with suitcases, then Dr. Miller helping Mrs. Miller, who was so laden that she could barely see where to put her feet, then Professor Bullfinch clasping the Zero-maker, and finally Dr. Badger, swinging his briefcase and whistling cheerfully as he brought up the rear.

  “If we’re a parade, Dr. Badger’s the band,” giggled Irene.

  They found their way to their cabins, and while the grownups began unpacking and stowing away luggage, the three children ran off to explore the ship. It was like some fantastic city of the future, with its long corridors stretching like gleaming underground streets, its shops, its great public dining halls and lounges. It had its own libraries, its own movie theaters, gymnasiums and swimming pools, its own electricity, water supply, and hospitals. And deep inside were huge steel chambers, smelling of warm oil and filled with the shining machinery which kept everything going.

  When they got back to their cabins, they found things more or less in order, although Mrs. Pearson was still anxiously counting suitcases. In the cabin which Professor Bullfinch shared with Dr. Badger, there were half a dozen newspapermen with their notebooks open, interviewing the two scientists.

  “Are these your assistants, Professor?” one of the reporters said, jokingly, as the young people came in.

  “They are friends of mine,” said the Professor, introducing the three. “And actually, Danny is at least partly responsible for the cryostat—or as we all call it, the Zero-maker. A cryostat is a machine that makes very low temperatures, but I prefer Danny’s word.”

  “I really didn’t have much to do with the discovery,” Danny protested. “It was an accident.”

  “Some of the most successful discoveries have been the results of accident,” Professor Bullfinch said.

  “You’re pretty young to be a scientist, Sonny,” grinned a reporter. “Would you try explaining for my readers all about E = mc²?”

  Danny’s red hair bristled at the man’s tone. “Sure,” he replied. “It’s a formula developed by Professor Einstein to express the fact that matter can be converted into energy according to a simple rate of exchange where energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light. This idea led to the mass-energy conversion in nuclear reactions. But maybe you’d like me to put it into simpler language for you?”

  “Danny!” warned the Professor. “Please remember your manners.”

  The reporter was mopping his forehead, as the other newspapermen laughed. “It’s okay, Professor,” he said, “I asked for that. I guess I was the one who was rude. Are all these kids scientists?”

  “We’re not scientists yet,” Irene said. “We just hope to be.”

  “Danny and Irene are interested in physics,” Joe put in, “but I’m only scientific about diet and nutrition and stuff like that.”

  “Really?” said the reporter. “You mean, biology—physiology?”

  “Uh-uh,” Joe said simply. “I just like to eat.”

  From the corridor came the sound of a gong, and a voice calling, “All visitors ashore!”

  The reporters closed their notebooks. “Well, I certainly wish you gentlemen luck,” said one of them. “We’ll be waiting for the results of your project.”

  “But you don’t really believe anything will come of it, do you?” smiled Dr. Badger.

  The newspaperman hesitated. “I’m just a reporter,” he replied. “Whatever happens, I’ll write about it. But to tell you the truth—” He shrugged. “No, sir, I don’t think you’ll get any message from any way-out monsters.”

  The ship’s deep-voiced whistle sounded. The children rushed to the upper deck, to be joined soon after by the grownups. Slowly, the great liner drew away from the dock. Down the river she glided, past Liberty with her proud torch, beneath the vast spider web of the Verrazano Bridge, and so, at last, out into the open ocean.

  “Now I feel it’s really started,” Irene said.

  At sea, the days passed magically. It was like being in space, as Danny said, for every morning the same wide, empty water surrounded them. Sometimes it was smooth and sunny, sometimes slate-colored and dashed with whitecaps, but always their ship was alone.

  “It’s funny,” Joe said, “that ships should be crossing the Atlantic all the time, but we never see any of them.”

  “It’s an awfully big ocean,” said Irene.

  There were plenty of games—Ping-Pong, deck tennis, shuffleboard, treasure hunts, and contests for the making of funny hats. There were movies and, every evening, music and dancing. To Joe’s delight, their dining room was like that of a wonderful restaurant, but there were no prices on the menu and he could choose every course of a ten-course meal, if he wanted to. “I just wish I had more room inside,” he would groan, sadly. There were lots of
other young people, too, and some of them had heard of Professor Bullfinch’s work and talked to the three friends with envy and admiration.

  One day, Danny and Irene were in the Professor’s stateroom watching him check over the Zero-maker. Dr. Badger was going through some papers with his briefcase open beside him.

  “Look at this, you two,” he said. “This should interest you.”

  He handed them a large picture cut from a newspaper.

  “That’s the first photo relayed back from our latest Mars probe,” he explained. “It was to appear the day we left New York, and the Times correspondent was kind enough to give it to me.”

  “It doesn’t look like much of anything,” Danny said. “Just gray blobs and dark smears.”

  “It is rather confusing,” said Dr. Badger. “It takes a good deal of experience and study to recognize what you’re seeing. But that’s the landscape of Mars, sent from a distance of about fifty miles above the surface of the planet.”

  Danny and Irene bent over the photographs. Danny began fumbling through his pockets and produced a small magnifying glass.

  “Maybe we can see if there are any signs of life,” he said.

  He squinted at the picture and shook his head. “You see even less under the magnifier,” he sighed. “It’s nothing but dots.”

  “Dots?” Irene repeated.

  “Look for yourself. Millions of dots. Some are very small, some are larger—they’re all different sizes.”

  “Certainly,” the Professor put in. “That’s how the picture is sent to us over the 35 million miles of space.”

  “By dots?” Danny looked puzzled. “How can dots send a picture?”

  “Using a simple code,” said the Professor. “Look here. Suppose you’re a hundred miles away from me, and I want to send you a picture. Well, before we start, I arrange with you to have a piece of paper with nine squares on it. Radio would be the fastest way for me to send my message. So we decide that if I send you a short peep that will mean to leave a square empty, and if I send a long poop that will mean put an ‘X’ in a square. Got a pencil? All right, draw the square and get ready. Now, starting from the top and going from left to right, I send you a message that says: poop, poop, poop, peep, poop, peep, peep, poop, peep. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s the picture?”

  Danny looked at what he had drawn. “Looks like the letter ‘T.’ ”

  “That’s just what it is. Now, let’s carry that a lot further. Imagine a paper with thousands of squares. In each one I can not only put a dot but can make it larger or smaller—that is, there will be more black dot or white space in each square—according to the strength of my signal. That way, it’s possible for me to send more complicated messages which will turn into a very detailed picture.”

  Danny gave a low whistle. “Neat!”

  “It’s something like the way television works, isn’t it?” asked Irene.

  “Mm, yes. The same general idea,” said Professor Bullfinch.

  Danny stared at the photograph with his chin propped on his hands, his elbows on the table. “And down there, among all those little dots there might be houses of some kind—people— Martians!” he mused. “Maybe Project Gnome will get a message from Mars, instead of from some distant planet.”

  “I don’t think so, Dan,” Dr. Badger said. “We know a lot about Mars now—that it has almost no water and very little oxygen. There may be life of some kind, but I doubt it would be the kind that can send messages. More likely, it’s simple plants, or maybe animals, but I don’t think there are any human types there.”

  “Human types?” Danny straightened. “Why do they have to be human? Maybe they could be crystals, or—or gas—or something we can’t even imagine. Gosh, if you do get a message from creatures somewhere else in the universe you don’t think they’re going to be like us, do you?”

  “Why not?” said Dr. Badger.

  “Well, because—why, just because—I don’t know why not,” Danny finished lamely.

  Dr. Badger laughed. “I know. Because it would be more fun if they were completely different. Right? I don’t say they have to be exactly like us, Dan. After all, there’s endless variety in the forms of life on our own planet. But the best chance for life to develop in the first place seems to be on a planet something like ours, with an oxygen-hydrogen-carbon cycle, going around a G-type sun something like our own. All right, if that’s the case, there’s no reason to suppose life wouldn’t evolve pretty much the way it did on earth. So intelligent beings would probably have brains, and eyes of some sort, and legs, and arms with hands, or ways of grasping things—”

  He broke off. The door of the stateroom was flung open. Joe came charging in.

  “Guess what?” he panted. “The earth isn’t square after all! It’s round.”

  “Huh?” Danny gasped.

  “That’s right,” said Joe. “We just sighted land.”

  They hurried after him up the stairs to the open deck. The sea glittered under the afternoon sun, and off in the distance, on the horizon, lay a darker, more solid mass.

  “That’s England,” Joe said, as proudly as if he had discovered it himself.

  Irene stood on tiptoe. The wind whipped her hair about her face. She shaded her eyes with one hand.

  “A whole ’nother country,” she said, softly. “How funny!”

  “What’s so comical about it?” asked Joe.

  “Oh, don’t be silly. You know what I mean. After traveling all those thousands of miles, to come at last to a different place where everything’s different from at home—”

  Danny nodded agreement. “I know. Makes you understand how explorers must feel.”

  Joe whipped out his notebook and wrote busily for a few minutes. Then he cleared his throat importantly and read:

  Poem, on the Occasion of Sighting Land after Five Days

  My heart is jumping like a kitten;

  There’s Britain!

  A new, surprising-, unexpected-, anything-land:

  England!

  And now I have to step ashore and flee

  The sea.

  And the thing I will miss most is not gulls or water or deck games, or

  ships, or steering wheels

  But free meals.

  “How does he do it?” Danny marveled.

  Irene looked up at Professor Bullfinch, who stood beside her at the rail. “When will we land?” she said. “Should we go and start packing?”

  “We’ve got plenty of time,” said the Professor. “Enjoy the ship while you can. This part of the adventure doesn’t end until early tomorrow morning.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “That Thing Is Dangerous!”

  Both Dr. Badger and Mr. Pearson had arranged to rent automobiles, and when they had gone through the various details of landing they found the cars waiting for them at the dock. Most of their luggage was shipped ahead, and with no more than their overnight bags they piled in, the three children with Dr. Badger and Professor Bullfinch, and the Millers and Mrs. Dunn with the Pearsons.

  “Wait a sec,” Joe said, with a puzzled frown, as he squeezed into his place. “The steering wheel of this car is on the wrong side.”

  “No, Joe,” the Professor replied. “It’s on the right side.”

  “I can see that. But the right side of the car is the wrong side.”

  Dr. Badger said patiently, “In England, Joe, they drive on the left side of the road. So the steering wheel belongs on the right hand side of the car.”

  “Two,” murmured Irene, who was keeping count of all the differences. She had already noted the strange helmets and uniforms of the policemen on the pier.

  “That’s why I’m letting Badge drive,” said the Professor. “He’s considerably more experienced with a car than I am.”

&nbs
p; Dr. Badger called over to Mr. Pearson, “All set?”

  “Okay.” Mr. Pearson was at the wheel of the other car. “Let’s just take it easy until we get through the city of Southampton.”

  They drove out of the dock gates, past a large park, and into High Street, as the main street of Southampton was called.

  “Why, it all looks very modem,” Irene said with disappointment. “It’s like an American city, only the buildings aren’t so tall.”

  The Professor nodded, turning around in the front seat so he could speak to them more easily. “Southampton was badly bombed during the Second World War,” he explained. “They had to do a tremendous amount of rebuilding. Just wait. You’ll see plenty of the old England before very long.”

  The Professor was right. Within the next hour, as they drove steadily northwestward, Irene dropped her counting game, for there was simply too much to look at that was new. There were thatched cottages, houses whose black beams made patterns in white plaster fronts, villages with narrow streets in which ancient buildings crowded together. There were no billboards along the roads. Now and then they would pass tall gateposts with iron gates through which they could glimpse fine mansions among the trees, and once they saw the crumbling walls of a castle, which set Joe to quoting long sections of Edward Eager’s Knight’s Castle. There were strange words, too: the gas stations advertised petrol instead of gasoline, a road sign warned against bends instead of curves, the drug stores were called chemists, and shops labeled Family Butchers made Irene squeal, “Murderers!” Once, when they saw a notice saying LOOSE CHIPPINGS they thought they were coming to a village with an odd name, but it turned out to mean only that the road was being repaired and had gravel on it.

  By late afternoon, they were all feeling exhausted. They had driven for nearly four hours, and the landscape had changed from flat meadows to rolling hills and then to even steeper hills which dropped away to rich fields again. “I always thought England was a tiny country!” Danny remarked. But at last, they went through a small village, and at its far edge stopped in front of a rambling stone building with a picture of a golden bell hung above its door.