Blast Off! (8 page)

18

Launch

“T
hese should help shoot the rocket straight up and let us launch from a safer distance,” Olivia said, pounding a fourth wooden stake into the grass with a croquet mallet.

We had agreed that in order for our bottle rocket to shoot straight up, it needed some wings, like the rockets in the movies. That was my job. I had cut cardboard fins out of an old shoebox and was in the process of carefully taping them to the sides of our bottle. “This looks totally wicked,” I said.

“Kind of messy, though,” Olivia said, looking at my taping job. “C'mon, Zack, this isn't rocket science.”

“Ha, ha, ha,” I said. “Maybe I'll tape you to this rocket and blast you to the moon.”

I picked up a small square cement brick out of the dirt near my mom's rosebushes and dropped it inside the four stakes on the grass. “Our launchpad,” I said proudly.

We got some fresh root beer from my refrigerator and poured it slowly into the rocket with a funnel until it was about a third full. Olivia shoved in the black stopper and I pushed in the pump needle.

We carefully placed the bottle on the launchpad, stepped back, and nodded for a few seconds, admiring our own handiwork.

“Okay,” Olivia said, turning to Amp, “let's go get your ship.”

“Already?” he said, speaking for the first time in a while. He looked less blue, like his color was fading. He was chewing on his finger.

“You look terrible, Amp,” Olivia said.

“I'm a little nervous,” he squeaked.

“It's four twenty-five, Amp,” I explained. “We only have fifteen minutes to get you up there.”

“How high will it lift me?” he asked, looking up nervously.

I shrugged. “I'm not sure. Pretty high.”

“This is not how we do things on Erde,” he said.

“Look, Amp, this is the best two kids from Earth can whip together in an afternoon,” I said. “It's now or never, little guy. Are you a hero or a zero? “

He nodded and adjusted his helmet. “Okay, Zack, bring down my ship.”

I sprinted upstairs and carried down Amp's spaceship. Olivia held it in place as I secured it to our rocket with the same packing tape I had used for the wings.

“It hardly weighs anything,” Olivia marveled. “So weird.”

I ran inside to check the clock on the kitchen stove. “It's four thirty-five!” I shouted. “We're out of time. Prepare for blastoff!”

Amp jumped into the palm of my hand. He had his game face on. He still looked a few shades lighter than he should, but he was ready.

“Good luck,” I said, giving Amp a high three.

Olivia did the same. “Happy trails, squirt,” she said.

I placed Amp inside his ship. The door closed tight, and before I could step back it started whirring, clicking, and hissing steam out of its tiny holes.

“Whoa,” Olivia said, jumping back. “That is crazy cool.”

I picked up the snorkeling mask I had found while searching for the bike pump in the garage and snapped it over my face. I shoved the snorkel's mouthpiece into my mouth. “Retha,” I mumbled.

“You look ridiculous,” Olivia said.

“Leth do thith.” I said, smiling as best I could.

19

We Have Liftoff

I
tried my best not to think about the fact that the fate of the universe now rested on a rocket Olivia and I had built in about the time it takes to broil a chicken.

Instead, I focused my mind on pushing the last of the air into the bottle before launch. It was so hard to pump, I thought my arms might blast off before the rocket did.

“All clear for takeoff, Rocket One,” Olivia announced unsteadily. “All systems go. Five, four, three, two, one . . . BLAST OFF!”

I leaned on the pump, forcing a last tiny gurgle of air bubbles into the straining bottle.

“BLAST OFF!” Olivia screamed, kicking me in the foot.

“Ith thtuck!” I mumbled through the snorkel's mouthpiece, straining to keep my weight over the pump handle.

“ZACK, WE'RE GOING TO BE TOO LATE! WE'RE OUT OF TIME! DO SOMETHING!”

I gasped, yanked the handle up for one more push, and practically gave myself the Heimlich maneuver as I threw my whole body weight onto the pump, stomach-first. One tiny bubble emerged through the needle into the root beer. And then:

PSHSHSHSTTT!

My goggles were suddenly covered with soda foam, and the rocket in front of me had disappeared. My face was soaked. I fell off the pump onto my back and watched our rocket shoot straight into the air above me, turning just slightly as it soared perfectly skyward.

It had worked!

Through the goggles, I saw the slowly shrinking bottle easily clear our second-story roof and continue into the sky. But then it slowed and seemed to stick in the air. It hung there for what felt like three seconds, but nothing happened.

The nose of the rocket—Amp's ship—tipped over back toward Earth, and the whole taped-together contraption fell slowly back down to the lawn, a trail of leftover soda leaking out of it as it fell.

Amp's ship hit the grass about fifty feet from where it'd taken off from with an unspectacular thud.

Olivia and I stared in silence.

“Amp, are you still alive in there?” Olivia called out in a whisper.

We waited, breaths held.

Then the door of the spaceship slid open and Amp poked his tiny blue head out. “That was not high enough,” he reported matter-of-factly.

Olivia and I both gasped in relief that he was still alive.

But then the reality of situation hit me and I spit out the snorkel's mouthpiece. “That means the invasion force is launching from Erde right now?”

“Yeah, about that,” he said sheepishly. “Funny thing there. As I was being launched into the air by your very impressive piece of engineering here, I realized my calculations were incorrect.”

“What's that mean?” I croaked.

He pulled his little calculator device out of his belt. “I remembered that this device calculates what time it is based on its current location, which of course right now is your planet.”

Olivia and I looked at each other, not understanding.

Amp cleared his throat. “A day on Earth is much shorter than a day on my planet.”

“How much shorter?” I finally thought to ask.

“Let me see. I just need to manually override the settings. Give or take a few minutes, because I haven't figured it out down to the second yet, I think we actually have about 119 days.”

“Are you kidding me?” Olivia roared. “I almost had a heart attack, Amp.”

“A hundred nineteen days . . .” I moaned, falling onto my back and staring up at the blue sky through my still-soaked snorkeling mask. “Amp, I swear I'd strangle you if I weren't completely exhausted.”

I couldn't help but start laughing, which spread to Olivia, and finally to Amp, who I'm convinced wasn't sure why he was laughing—he was just trying to fit in.

Lying there on the damp grass, I felt proud and relieved at the same time, knowing that I had launched an actual rocket and that my odd little friend from another planet wouldn't be leaving us quite so soon.

20

In the Catbird Seat

Y
ou would think the son who had an alien invader secretly stashed in his bedroom and had just caused a jaw-dropping mess at his elementary school would be the topic of conversation at dinner that night.

I wasn't.

Taylor was.

“Tell me again, son,” my dad said to Taylor, “I thought you and the boys in the robot club normally clean up after your meetings. What happened?”

“We usually do, Dad,” Taylor said, picking at his mashed potatoes with his electric fork. “We left a few things on the table, sure, but it wasn't a big deal.”

“Not according to Mr. Hoog,” my mom said sternly. “The email we got from Principal Luntz was very critical of the robot club. Poor Mr. Hoog is probably still there mopping up.”

“So weird,” Taylor mumbled, mystified how a few cups and bottles became the worst mess in elementary school history.

“I, for one, am also disappointed, little brother,” I said, enjoying not being in the hot seat for once.

My dad shot me his patented mad-dad look, but he didn't say anything.

After a moment of quiet, I spoke up. “Speaking of the lab, some of the magnets in there are neodymium magnets,” I announced. “They're a really strong, stable, permanent magnet. They're actually an alloy made up of neodymium, iron, and boron. Those are elements, in case you didn't already know.”

My dad looked up from his steak and stared at me like
I
was the alien in the house. Even Taylor looked up from his mashed potatoes.

“What just happened?” my mom asked, looking around the table.

“Zack knows something I don't know,” Taylor answered glumly. “The whole world is upside down.”

“Wow, Zack,” my dad said. “This year really is going to be different, isn't it?”

“Oh, it's different already,” I said, popping a string bean in my mouth.

“Use your utensils, honey,” Mom said. “Germs.”

“I heard you and Olivia made a rocket and shot it off in the backyard.” My dad chuckled with amazement.

“Oh, dear, that sounds dangerous,” my mom said.

“We were super careful,” I said. “I even wore a mask.”

My dad turned to Taylor. “Looks like we might have more than one young scientist at this table—a rocket scientist, no less.”

Taylor groaned and went back to re-mashing his potatoes.

“Oh, Mom and Dad,” I said, “do you two know anything about tungsten? It's an element. It's the W on the periodic table. Atomic weight of seventy-four. It has a super-high melting point. Carbon is the only element with a higher melting point. Anyway, do you think we might be able to get some?”

The room got so quiet I could almost hear my food being digested.

Suddenly my dad started laughing, like I had just done the most amazing card trick in history. My mom started clapping with excitement. Taylor just held his face in his hands.

“Why on earth would you want that?” my mom asked excitedly.

“Just curious, I guess,” I said. “About science and stuff.”

“I know next to nothing about how much tungsten costs,” my dad said. “But I think we can look it up on the internet.”

“If it's safe,” my mom added. “We don't want it in the house if it's radioactive.”

“It's not radioactive,” Taylor said from between his hands.

At that point, my mom jumped up from her chair and came over and gave me a big hug and a couple of kisses on the cheek.

“Nice work, Zack,” I heard Amp say inside my head. “You are a very sharp cookie, my friend. Now finish eating. We have more work to do!”

I couldn't help but smile, knowing that this year just might be better—or at least more interesting—than I could have ever imagined.

The End