Hold Zero!

by Jean Craighead George

  “Lucky guy,” Steve said, laughing with pleasure. “You can listen to the radio while you’re doing your homework. What stations do you get?”

  “I dunno, fourteen-fifty, I think.” Johnny closed his mouth smugly and grinned at his friends.

  “Can you get it now?” asked Craig.

  “No, it only happens when something metal touches the filling—like the brace. It’s too solid now.”

  “Shucks,” said Craig and tried to peer into Johnny’s mouth. “You oughta get him to wire you up for WZIK. Then you could listen to the ball games.”

  They putted into the slow stream, and Craig lowered the light, for they could see now they were on open water.

  Johnny pulled hard on his paddle. “What didja think of Officer Ricardo?” he asked.

  Steve said he thought he was pretty nice, and if they made a good show he would probably let them put the rocket off. Craig admitted he liked him but said he was worried about Mr. Brundage. “He’s pretty high principled,” he said. “In fact, very high principled!”

  The swamp buggy softly bumped the wooden wharf on the island. Johnny began to whistle as if the water-locked acre of land had already made him peaceful, but Craig could not forget the huge policeman and all the laws and regulations he stood for. It seemed that there was so much that had to be learned the hard way.

  4 BOOSTER NUMBER ONE

  CRAIG’S FINGERS FUMBLED as he tied the swamp buggy. He mumbled a few reassuring words to himself and slowly walked down the cobblestone path to the launch pit. He stumbled, looked down at the round stones he and his friends had carefully dug into the ground, and was proud to notice how neat they were after two freezing and heaving winters. A dandelion, its head half-blown, was wedged between two stones. He pulled it up and wound through the willow grove to the alders that grew at the edge of the meadow.

  The fire control bunker, the observation bunker, and the launching pit sat in the meadow. They were earth-colored and dark against the yellow-green of the grasses, for each was made of mud-filled gunny sacks, dried in the sun and stacked like adobe blocks. Steve, who had run ahead, was at the fire control bunker. Johnny was at the pit, legs apart, hands on his head, thinking. Craig paused again, glanced down the path that led into the hemlock grove, and he felt secretive about the rendezvous at its end—Batta.

  “Hurry up, Craig!” Johnny called. Craig doubled his pace to the launch pit and jumped in. The rocket stood before him. Almost three feet tall, it rose out of a ring of six first-stage rockets to stand like a spear in the dusk. The payload and nose cone were not on the booster; they lay in the equipment box. But even without these the rocket looked regal to Craig.

  “I should think Officer Ricardo would okay that,” he said to Johnny. “And this, too,” he added as he kicked the wall of mud bags.

  Johnny circled, examining them critically, to see if they would pass inspection. “I know they’re strong,” he said. “Nearly busted my back on ’em.” He turned to Craig. “But what about the bottom of the pit? We don’t have mud bags on the floor.”

  “Heck,” said Craig, “we spent a whole day pouring water on it and tamping it with those logs. We’ve always thought it was okay. We can’t worry about the floor now. Let’s cover the door to Batta.” He pushed back the rocket cover, a large corrugated iron pipe cut in half and welded to four legs on old wagon wheels by their friend Joe, a welder.

  They squatted down to examine the small wooden door that opened onto the tunnel leading into their underground retreat.

  “We don’t have time to dry out gunny sacks of mud,” said Johnny. “Maybe we’d just better hang them over the door.”

  Steve had come from the fire control bunker and was standing on the rim, arms folded, listening. “No,” he said. “Officer Ricardo might look behind them. We’ve gotta fill the bags with dirt and stack them as best we can.”

  “You’re right,” said Johnny and leaped out of the pit, dragging the gunny sacks. He picked up the shovel and started across the meadow toward the beach and the clay deposits.

  Steve opened the door to Batta and crawled down the passageway. In a few minutes he was back with a board. “I’m gonna build a shelf for the launch panel,” he announced, as he balanced it on his head and walked toward the fire control bunker. He stopped halfway and swung around. “By the way!” he called, “as of this minute the fire control bunker is officially the Batta Command Center.”

  Craig nodded, and stared into the equipment box with a vague plan in his head.

  “Hey! Help!” It was Johnny. “I can’t lift the durn bag.”

  Craig laughed and ran to him. He skidded down the beach and grabbed a side of the filled sack. He heaved. They both heaved, then sat down. “This isn’t gonna work,” Craig said. “I’d forgotten how heavy the earth is, and the rollers we used on the other bags are now pilings in the wharf.”

  “Think!” cried Johnny. “It’s almost dark. Durn it, Craig, you’re the guy who steals ideas from the animals. What does a box turtle or a rabbit do when it wants to hide?”

  “They’re disguised. Also, they sit still.”

  “Well, let’s disguise the door then,” said Johnny.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Tack the countdown data sheets on it, or something.”

  Craig lifted his head slowly. “And below the sheets,” he said, “we nail tubes and dials and condensers from the equipment box to make a fake instrument panel.”

  “Go! It’s go!” Johnny shouted and was up the beach and away before Craig could get to his feet.

  Craig hummed to himself as he and Johnny set happily to work, nailing a strange assemblage of equipment to the door.

  “Hey!” Steve called suddenly. “I can’t see. Somebody put on the lights. I can’t leave this shelf or it’ll fall.”

  Craig and Johnny stopped work and crossed the meadow to the thicket of maples. As they came to the grove of hemlocks, Craig heard an animal scurry over the huge boulders on their right. “The ’coon’s up,” he said and put his hand on the doorknob of a cabin marked “Power House.” The knob was an old coil loop antenna that Mr. Pappo had given them. Craig turned it and it clicked out of the notch in a small condenser below it. The door opened.

  They went in the cabin, made from logs notched at the ends for stability. Each fitted into the other, and they were chinked with the red-gray clay from the beach.

  Johnny lit a candle while Craig primed a gasoline camp stove. When it flamed up he put on a strange-looking teakettle and waited for the sound of boiling water. At the hiss he pressed a plug and cord into a fitting on the kettle. Gradually two 40-watt bulbs at the end of a long cord began to glow, then rose to full brightness. Johnny blew out the candle and shouldered the cord and bulbs. He chuckled.

  “Remember when Mr. Brian helped us make this thing?”

  “Yeah.” Craig pretended to recite a science lesson. “If the contact point of two unlike metals is heated one can turn steam into electricity. That was the day!”

  They walked back to the launching pit, reeling out the cord carefully. As Craig studied the light he remembered those days after school with Mr. Brian when they built the power system. “The Science Academy” they had dubbed themselves while they made the thermoelectric teakettle. Using a blowtorch, they had removed the original bottom of the kettle, had soldered on the two unlike metals. Then they had wired it. When it was done Mr. Pappo came to see it. He took notes in case one of his companies would be interested in manufacturing something like it for ski shacks and camping. He didn’t ask the boys what they planned to do with it, so they took it to Batta, added enough wire to get the lights around most of the island, and built a cabin for it.

  But Mr. Pappo warned them that such a device should be used near a fire extinguisher, and Mr. Brian had suggested making one. Phil offered a discarded extinguisher from his home. The class rebuilt and refueled it. Several days later, when the class was on another project, Phil had brought it to Batta.

 
Johnny nudged Craig to stop dreaming and help. He hung one light over the rim of the launching pit and took the other one to Steve. Then Craig and Johnny went back to their construction of a bogus instrument panel to cover the tunnel entrance. Craig picked up a large dial, told Johnny it was a receiver, and screwed it onto the door.

  “I’m jealous,” said Johnny. He drove three nails into the door and pressed a big radio tube between them. “Ha!” he said with satisfaction.

  Craig looked at it enviously, and he took out some wire for a new creation. Presently Steve joined them. “The Batta Command Center is all set!” he announced. “I’m using the old battery we got from the Telephone Surplus Department for power. I guess it’s strong enough.”

  “What’s the matter with Mom’s car battery?” Craig asked as he crisscrossed some wire from his dial to Johnny’s tube.

  “It’s still attached to the transceiver. Too much trouble to change.” Steve leaned over Johnny’s shoulder. He laughed at the sight before him. “What are you gonna say it does?” he asked with pleasure. “Looks spectacular.”

  “Yeah, what’ll we say this thing does?” Johnny asked Craig.

  “Tell him the truth,” Craig promptly replied. “Tell him it’s a fake panel to pretend on. Everybody thinks we’re pretending anyway.” He stood beside Johnny to observe the work.

  “Well, it sure doesn’t look like a door anymore,” said Steve.

  “You can say that again, but what does it look like?”

  “A panel to control the weege on the strand-fast,” Craig answered. “It muckles the third bango and hikes the throughpower.”

  “It also yawls the pocket trivel,” said Johnny.

  “And reeds the apple picker,” added Steve.

  “But mainly,” roared Johnny, “it buttons down the curiosity!”

  They laughed and threw their arms around each other. Then they put away their tools, pulled the cover over the rocket, and went to the dock. It was almost ten o’clock; the night was moonless and dark.

  Steve started the motor, and Craig, still thinking of nonsense sentences, unhitched the line. He shoved Johnny firmly onto the swamp buggy and sat down beside him. “Come on, Einstein, give me some room.”

  “Silence!” shouted Steve. His voice was ominously serious. “We must agree on one other thing. Do we tell Officer Ricardo all the secrets about the rocket?”

  “No,” said Craig. “Enough’s enough.”

  “No!” echoed Johnny.

  “All right then, but we gotta show him something. Is it all right with you guys if I get out the diagram showing how we built the booster?”

  “Sure,” Johnny said, “all that stuff’s impressive.”

  Craig hunched over his knees as he leveled the guiding flashlight into the reeds. He thought with pride of the diagrams and maps, the graphs and calculations. He could see the admiration on everyone’s face, especially Mr. Brundage’s, and he heard a barrage of adult voices saying, “Let them put it off. It’s wonderful!”

  He was grinning to himself when the craft drifted into a flock of sleeping ducks, heads under their wings, rafted on the water like loaves of bread. They thrust up their necks at the sound of the swamp buggy, then passed worried gabbles among themselves. Craig swung his light around the flock. They jumped quickly onto their wings and feet and skimmed over the water. A single duck, rafted beyond the others, was still sleeping. Craig threw the light on him, and his head went up. Wide-eyed with sudden fear, the bird did not wing off, but sat still. Craig was perplexed. He decided that there sat a duck who would soon be prey to some dark predator. It did not heed the signals of its flock. And that’s bad, he said to himself.

  “For gosh sakes!” Steve suddenly shouted. “Turn that light on the reeds or we’ll be spending the night with the durn ducks and herons!”

  Craig obeyed with a laugh. He was so proud of their rocket, so absolutely sure that anyone who saw it would approve, that nothing could upset him.

  In the darkness Johnny’s hand gripped his shoulder. Craig could feel Johnny’s pride and excitement, too. He shone the beam into the channel and whistled softly.

  5 THE INSPECTION

  OFFICER RICARDO WAS PROMPT. At eleven o’clock the next day Steve leaned out the second-story window of Craig’s house and announced, “One white police car. Red light, green, and going.”

  “Gee!” Craig jumped off his bed where he had been stretched out, waiting tensely. His stomach whirled and turned as he also leaned out the window next to Steve and saw the big officer open his patrol car door and unfold. His chest came above the roof of the car.

  “We’ll be right down,” Steve called.

  He cleared his throat and walked out of the room. Craig followed, his confidence of the night before somewhat pierced.

  Officer Ricardo was waiting for them at the bottom of the path. “I guess we’d better leave the squad car and walk,” he said. “It’s out of the way here.”

  Johnny was sitting on the side of the road when they came down the hill. Craig was relieved to see him rise confidently and shake the officer’s hand with a firm “Hello.” Johnny, he could see, felt fine. Craig decided he felt better, too.

  “This way, sir,” Johnny said and pointed to the hidden trail. “We have to go by boat.”

  “Oh,” said the officer. “What’ve you got, a rowboat?” No one knew how to answer him, so they simply stepped up their pace to the wharf, uncovered the swamp buggy, and turned, grinning, for his response.

  “You made it?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” said Steve proudly. “Just hop aboard.” He held out his hand for the big man.

  Officer Ricardo sat squarely in the center of the raft and brought his knees up to his chin.

  Craig sensed he was uneasy so he did not jump onto the craft in his usual way, but eased to the rear and took a paddle. Johnny started the motor. Steve unhitched the line.

  Craig saw Officer Ricardo look suspiciously at the big wheel as it slowly turned and dug into the water. “This is a fine boat,” he said. “Clever.” But his knuckles were white as they clenched his knees. Craig racked his mind for a way to relax him. From the cove ahead, he heard the gabbling of the ducks.

  “Hey,” Craig cried, “be quiet along here. You’ll see the finest assortment of ducks in the county.” He reached into his pocket and brought out some birdseed, waited until they turned the corner in view of the birds, and tossed it.

  There was a flash of color as some fifty to sixty ducks pivoted and swam toward the flying seeds. “Canvas ducks, mallards, blacks, two mergansers, and a blue-winged teal,” Craig said. “Lots of them gather here on their migration. No one but us bothers them. And we’re their friends.”

  Craig threw another handful of seed. The buggy tilted slightly and Officer Ricardo grabbed the floor. His frightened movement was sensed by the ducks. They turned and winged over the water into the splatterdock plants. Steve leaned to the left to counteract the tilt, and the craft settled back.

  “Sorry,” said Craig, “but don’t be nervous. She’s reallyimpossible to upset.”

  “Good drums,” said Johnny, kicking one.

  The swamp buggy edged out into the slow stream that gleamed like a sheet of black metal.

  “Well!” Officer Ricardo murmured. “I didn’t know all this was here. It’s beautiful. Just beautiful!” The buggy purred along evenly and Craig felt the officer relax.

  Then the island came into view. “Not bad,” the officer said, “you’ve got something here. A quiet island in the middle of a driving busy town. Nice.” He let go of his knees and took a long deep breath of air.

  They eased gently up to the wharf and Johnny leaped off. He offered the officer his hand, but the man refused and jumped nimbly to the dock.

  “Hmmm,” he said, looking at the wharf and pilings. “Very good!” He tested one of the piles. It did not budge.

  Steve seemed glad for this first impression. He brightened up as he took over. “Come this way,” he said and le
d the group down the cobblestone trail.

  Craig held up the rear, peering around Johnny’s shoulder now and then to see what the policeman was doing. He saw his head move from side to side as he crossed the meadow, noting the observation bunker, the command center, and finally the launching pit.

  “Well,” he said as he came up to the rim of the pit, “what do we have here? A rocket?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Steve with some surprise in his voice. “Isn’t that what you were expecting?”

  “Not exactly,” the officer said and stepped into the pit. Craig and Johnny moved quickly to pull back the cover so he would not strike his head. Then they watched him. Officer Ricardo turned around many times. He saw the countdown sheet and began to read aloud, “T-minus twelve. Pack flameproof recovery wadding into the body tube.” He looked up. He looked directly at Craig, then his glance passed on to Johnny, then Steve.

  “You all aren’t kidding, are you?” he said. There was some anger in his voice.

  “Well, no,” said Johnny. “We never said we were.”

  Officer Ricardo spun around slowly. He stopped and stared. “You should’ve told me,” he said. “This thing’s a rocket!”

  “Yes,” said Steve. He shifted his feet. “Perhaps we should explain.” He jumped into the pit beside the policeman and pointed to the booster. “This is a three-stage booster rocket. Stage one surrounds it in this circle of tubes. Two and three are in the tall rocket. The payload isn’t here. We keep it separately. There are twenty-four engines in this particular rocket, and they ought to get the rocket up two thousand, if not three thousand, feet.”

  “I see,” the officer said.

  “The rocket is launched from a command station,” Steve went on as he walked toward the bunker. Craig nudged Johnny, for Officer Ricardo was staring at the disguised door and scratching his head. Steve called, “Here we have an ignition control panel that sets the rocket off from a safe distance, that is, from behind this wall of mud bags.” He slapped them. Officer Ricardo slapped them, too, then turned his attention to the slender ignition control with its switches and needles.