Читать книгу The Gismo Trilogy MEGAPACK®: The Complete Young Adult Series - Keo Felker Lazarus - Страница 9

CHAPTER 5

Spaceship at Midnight

Slowly, Jerry put the telephone receiver back on the hook and began to unwind the wires on the gismo. He grinned at Ron, who was lifting the earphones from his head. “Now do you believe me?”

Ron grinned back and laid the headset by the crystal radio. “What do you think! Spaceships tonight! Wow!” He gave the globe a whirl. “‘When your continent is halfway through darkness,’ that’s midnight, right?”

“Right!” Jerry slipped the gismo into his jeans pocket. “Think you can stay awake that long?”

“Are you kidding?” Ron jumped down from the workbench. “I’d stay awake for a week to see a real spaceship!”

“Me, too.” Jerry followed Ron out of the shop.

Ron turned. “Hey, tomorrow’s Saturday. Bring your sleeping bag over, and we’ll camp out here in the yard tonight. That way we can watch for the spaceship together.”

“Neat idea!” Jerry exclaimed. “I’ll bring my pup tent.”

“Okay, but we’re sleeping with our heads outside so we can watch the sky. Man! Real spaceships! I can hardly wait. Let’s set the tent up right now.”

“I’ll have to ask Mom.” Jerry started for the hole in the hedge.

“Listen, Jerry, don’t mention why we want to sleep out. She might not understand. You know how parents are.”

“Sure, I know.” Jerry smiled back and disappeared through the hedge.

He was back soon, the rolled pup tent balanced on his head. He dropped it on the ground. “Mom says it’s okay. Where shall we set the tent up?”

Ron strolled over to a spot near the center of the back lawn. With his hands in his hip pockets, he squinted up at the sky. “How about here? No trees in the way.”

Jerry joined Ron and squinted up, too. He lifted his hands, spread them out flat, side by side, circled them around his head, and zoomed them down to flutter in front of him like a hovering saucer. “Okay, spaceship right here, midnight!”

It was growing dusk when they crawled into the pup tent. “I brought along some eats.” Jerry pulled an apple from each jean pocket.

“Me, too.” Ron held up a box of Whacky Snacks.

Jerry peeled his jeans off and climbed into his sleeping bag. “Mom wanted to know why I was going to bed so early,” he said.

Ron grinned. “What did you tell her?”

“I said I was tired.”

“Did she buy that?”

“Nope, so I told her you and I had lots of things to discuss.”

“Yeah, well, grown-ups don’t understand you got to adjust to things a lot when you sleep outside, like this air mattress, for instance. Here, hold my flashlight, Jerry, while I blow this sack up some more.”

Jerry held the flashlight and listened to the air wheeze through the air mattress tubes as Ron blew into it. “Wonder what my mom and dad would say if I’d told them we were going to see a real live spaceship tonight.”

Ron flipped his thumb over the air mattress valve and screwed the valve shut. “They’d have thought you were kidding.”

“Yeah. They’d probably say ‘watch out, don’t get too close,’ like they were going along with a gag.”

Ron snaked down into his sleeping bag and pulled the zipper up. “Sure, grown-ups are all alike. They think we’re always making things up just to get their attention, or something.”

The two boys lay with their heads outside the tent. Crickets chirped in the grass. Far in the distance they could hear the drone of the city street sweeper on its nightly trip around Bridgeville. The stars were beginning to prick through the dark blue above. Jerry put his hands under his head and gazed up at the twinkling lights.

“Where do you suppose he lives? Monaal, I mean,” Jerry said.

“Maybe on Mars or Venus,” Ron suggested.

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because if he did, he wouldn’t be talking about his galaxy and our galaxy.”

“But other galaxies are too far away,” Ron said. “Why, it would take a million years for spaceships to come from the nearest galaxy to ours.”

“Maybe they don’t have the same length years we do. Maybe they’ve figured out how to live as long as they want to.”

Ron rolled over and leaned on his elbow. “But what kind of metal would they use for spaceships that could travel for a million years?”

“Probably some sort of metal we don’t even know about. Gases on their planet could be different. Gravity could be different. Everything could be different.”

“Yeah,” Ron nodded. “Even the people could be different… Two heads, four arms, six feet.”

“Not too much different, Ron. They talk like we do. Monaal did anyway.”

“That still bugs me,” Ron shook his head. “How does he know our language?”

“Maybe they’ve studied our radio and television signals that are bouncing off our space satellites. If they’re advanced enough to build spaceships that travel from one galaxy to another, they’re sharp enough to decode our signals.”

“But why would they learn to talk our language? What are they up to? Man! I’ve got a lot of questions to ask Monaal!” Ron reached for the Whacky Snacks box and set it between them.

“Me, too,” Jerry sighed and tossed a handful of Whacky Snacks into his mouth.

It was near midnight when Jerry sat up and felt inside his sleeping bag. Ron, heavy-lidded, lay on his back. “What you fussing around for?”

“Oh, a bunch of Whacky Snacks got in here somehow.”

“Yeah, I feel a couple in my sack, too, but I’m too tired to look for them. I’m beginning to think Monaal’s forgotten all about us. Isn’t it about morning?”

Jerry glanced toward the east. “It isn’t getting light yet.”

Ron rolled over on his side. “I’m going to sleep. Wake me up if anything happens.”

“Okay,” Jerry threw a Whacky Snack onto the grass and burrowed into his sleeping bag. He turned over and was plumping his pillow when he caught the motion of light toward the north. He sat up. A wedge of tiny stars seemed to be moving across the sky. They grew into globes of light. When they were directly overhead, the leading light glided away from the group and fluttered down like a leaf, growing larger and larger.

Jerry reached over and shook Ron. “Wake up! It’s here, Ron, it’s here!”

Ron rose sleepily on one elbow. “What’s here?”

“The spaceship, stupid! Look!” He pointed at the globe of light which had grown to the size of a large platter. It hovered over the park.

Ron, wide awake now, sat up in his sleeping bag. The glowing disc tilted to one side and glided silently toward the yard. Its brightness faded somewhat, and Jerry could clearly see a wide circle of red and white lights revolving underneath the rim. The spaceship drew nearer and nearer until it blotted out the sky. The crickets had stopped chirping. Jerry was aware of a strange buzzing sound that seemed to come from directly above his forehead. The great spaceship floated over the yard until it reached the garage. There it bobbed not ten feet from the roof with a high, soft whining sound.

Jerry could see the red and white revolving lights reflected on the concave metal surface beneath, where a hatch was sliding open directly in the center. From the brightly lighted interior of the ship, a silver-colored metal wand began to descend slowly.

Jerry and Ron both gasped. On a small platform at the bottom of the wand, stood a little man dressed in a glinting metallic suit.