Early morning a week later, Chuck came into Alex’s room bent under the heavy Signal Corps field radio strapped to his back. He was carrying a telescope.
“Come on,” he said. “It’s almost time. At the observatory the other day the navy guy in charge told me they launch the weather balloons at dawn. Looks like a storm’s coming, so maybe we’ll catch its signal, maybe even see it.”
He led them downstairs past their parents’ room and their mother’s workroom, Jeep following wagging hopefully.
“Take this and look over there,” Chuck ordered, handing Alex the telescope when they got out in the yard. “Toward DC. What you’re looking for is a black rubber balloon with a basket hanging at the bottom. That’s where the weather sensors and transmitter are.”
Chuck kept talking as he slipped the radio off his back and knelt down to work it. “The navy guy let me look at the transmitter even though it’s secret because I told him I was studying radio. It’s really small—half the size of a toaster. I even got the frequency it broadcasts at.”
Alex aimed where Chuck had pointed. There was a steady breeze. The leaves sounded like waves. All she could see were swells of low gray clouds. “Cumulonimbus,” she muttered. She’d been looking in Ebbs’s cloud book. “Storm clouds.”
Jeep looked up briefly, then yawned a long, wide-open moan of boredom.
Chuck had on the headphones and was adjusting the radio’s controls. He’d just said, “No signal yet,” when there was a rumble of thunder.
The dog started up whining and rattling his tags. He hated thunderstorms. Alex did too. She felt the down on her arms rise—a warning of electricity in the air, her father said. Chuck took off the headphones and began snapping up the radio’s cover. “Missed it. Too much static.”
“What if the balloon gets caught in the storm?” Alex asked. “Will the lightning blow it up?”
Chuck shook his head. “No. It’s not grounded, so the charge will just pass through it like it does with an airplane,” he said as he hoisted the radio onto his back, “but watch out if you’re on the pot in a thunderstorm. I heard about a guy who got zapped; bolt shot right up through the toilet—water’s a ground, you know—scorched his butt.”
“You gotta be kidding,” Alex said, but there was no reading Chuck’s face.
“See you after school,” he said, turning away. “I’m going over to the airport to watch the flying lessons, maybe get the instructor to give me a ride once the storm passes.
“Oh, wait,” he called as he struggled to shift the radio so he could fish some paper and a small screwdriver from his pocket. “I got this out of the latest Popular Science. The microphone they’re using at school for announcements—it still looks like this one?”
Alex studied the picture. “I guess.”
“Good. This is all you’ll need. After school, go to the assembly room and unscrew the microphone’s back. You’ll see two wires, a red and a black. Switch ’em like it shows in the picture, then screw the back on again.”
“What’ll happen?” Alex demanded.
“You’ll see tomorrow morning. Just make sure you bring back my screwdriver.”
* * *
As she walked to school Alex weighed Chuck’s dare. There’d been some she’d balked at, especially the stealing ones, but she was curious about the microphone. Nobody could do tricks with radios like Chuck.
She sweated as she hung around after school until the hall was clear. She sneaked into the assembly room. Her hands trembled as she switched the wires.
On her way home Jeep met her at the creek bridge as he always did, smiling his toothy, lips-pulled-back grin, snuffling, whimpering, snorting, his body wriggling with delight, his whole being asking Where have you been?
She potted up some more plants. When she figured Ebbs would be home from work she and Jeep went back up the hill. The plants were just an excuse. She wanted to get some arguments to use against John.
“My other brother says there’s nothing in space for us to bother with,” Alex said as they worked. “But Chuck thinks there’s life. That’s what he wants radar for—to watch for space aliens. You think they’re out there?”
“We have to go to find out,” Ebbs said. “But whether we find life or not, soon we’ll be creating it out there on our own with those seeds I’m working with, planting colonies in space like Captain John Smith did here.
“Looking for life in space is tricky,” she continued, “but there’s no trick to finding space rocks, which is something else I’m interested in.”
“Right. Ever seen one?”
Alex shook her head. “No. I collect rocks, though, crystals.”
Back inside Ebbs went over to the piled-up card table she used as her desk. She felt around at the bottom for a moment, knocking something off the top—a snapshot of a man with his arm around Ebbs’s waist. Ebbs picked it up, then handed Alex a shiny black square the size of a stamp.
“These small ones are called meteorites,” she said. “It would have gone through you like a white-hot bullet had you been standing in Australia where it crashed.”
Alex juggled it like it was still hot.
“Take it for luck,” Ebbs said. “It’s older than the sun.”
“Don’t you want it?”
“Of course I do! That’s why I kept it, why I’m offering it to you. You don’t want to make a gift of something you wouldn’t want to keep yourself, right?”
“Yeah, OK,” Alex said, embarrassed because she never gave away things she liked. “It really came from space?”
“Yup, one of the thousands that hit Earth every year.”
“What if …?” Alex started to say.
Ebbs shook her head. “Don’t worry. Since most of Earth is covered with water most of them land in the ocean, and that may be how life got started here, some bit of life-bearing space matter fell into the ocean and got us going, right down to the bit of celestial fire that burns in you.”
“What celestial fire burns in me?” Alex asked.
“The fire that makes your heart beat and your little finger go up and down,” Ebbs explained, moving hers. “Some scientists think our life-bearing rocks came from Mars. They think there was life there once, but then a massive asteroid wiped it out, sending a chunk of spore-bearing Mars rock to us like Noah’s ark.”
Alex was worried. “What do we do if we see something like that heading to Earth?”
“Right!” said Ebbs. “You see little ones burning themselves up all the time—shooting stars, comets, meteor showers. But a big one? An asteroid? Right now we can do nothing, and that’s where our project comes in. In outer space they travel slowly. They only pick up speed when they get close enough for Earth’s gravity to pull them in. The new radar dishes like the ones we’re testing on Wallops Island will help us spot something threatening when it’s still far away. Then with one of Doctor von Braun’s new rockets we’ll be able to blow it up or maybe nudge it back out into space, seeded with the stuff I’m working on—make it into a space farm.”
“Hey! That’s nothing compared to our big plan!”
“What’s that?” Alex asked.
“A big-enough asteroid could become our first space colony. That’s what we’re getting ready for—a place for you and Chuck to stop on your way to investigate life on another planet.”
“Mars,” Alex said. “We’re going to Mars.”