Jeep rested comfortably, stuffed and tired at Alex’s feet, as von Braun questioned the trespassers. “All in one day, with the dog, you two sail from Smith Point in Virginia out to Tangier Island, you meet a friend there and eat, then you stow away on the mail boat to Crisfield, then you hitchhike and eat again and steal a boat, then you run out of fuel and you wade ashore and break in here—our most secure missile base—singing and marching, and you do not get shot, they just give you soap and clothes and feed you again and give you binoculars? Is it possible?”
“It’s what we did,” Alex said proudly, “and on the way I got seasick and the boom knocked me into the water and I got burned by jellyfish. But it wasn’t Ebbs who sent us here,” she added, looking over at Chuck. “Getting to Wallops was our idea.”
The FBI launch arrived with a roar and a great splashing wake to take the interlopers off the island. It was a sleek mahogany runabout. As it docked, the tied-up navy boats nearby rocked like drab pigeons next to a peacock. The plainclothes agents were armed, certain they were collecting spies. The one in charge was shocked when he saw his prisoners.
“A pair of strays,” the captain explained, giving the chief a bland smile. “Landed here by accident. Out fishing, ran out of gas, came ashore at the closest place, which is here. No breach of security, nothing criminal, no record. All we need you for is to give ’em a ride back to Chincoteague.”
“That’s it? Them?” the chief asked, incredulous.
“Like I told you, these kids landed here by accident,” the captain repeated. “Now you’ve got to get ’em out of here.”
“Get ’em to where?” the agent asked disgustedly.
“To TJ’s,” Alex said. “Call him. He lives at Jester’s Used Books, Jesters and Main, Chincoteague.”
Alex and Chuck stood with von Braun while the agent called and got directions from TJ, then waited and started speaking with someone else. They could hear a deep woman’s voice as the agent began stammering, “Yessum. Yessum. Yessum.”
“Ask if Captain Ebbs is there,” von Braun ordered.
The agent jerked around, disconcerted to hear von Braun’s heavy accent.
“Captain Ebbs,” von Braun repeated. “Is she there?”
“Are you Captain Ebbs?” the agent asked the woman on the line.
She was.
“Give me the telephone,” said von Braun.
He spoke in German for a moment. There was no reading his face, but when he handed back the phone he said, “I go along.”
“Thank you for dinner and all, Captain,” Alex said politely as they got into the launch. “And please tell the contractor thank you for the binoculars.”
The captain said nothing, sighing and shaking his head as he turned away.
“How come the new rocket is so small?” Chuck asked von Braun as they rode in the boat. “The V-2 with you and Ebbs in the picture is bigger.”
“A lot of space in the V-2 was for the fuel,” von Braun explained, “alcohol and the oxidizer. This one runs on something new. Its range is less, but the payload—that’s the big thing—it is almost the same.”
“What’s payload?” Alex asked.
“The weight of the bomb in the nose,” von Braun replied, “or, better, what may someday be your space travel capsule, Astronaut Alexis. So now you two have classified information,” he said with a strange smile, “so if the spies get you and torture you, you’ll have to tell them what I just told you. But they won’t bother. Do you know why? Because they already know,” he said, glancing in the direction of the FBI men, who were listening as hard as they could.
“The milk-and-egg lady who comes over to Wallops every other day,” von Braun explained, “she’s in their pay, as are ten or twelve other people on Chincoteague.”
Chuck let out a silent whistle of amazement as he caught Alex’s eye.
A government car met the FBI launch. Minutes later, the five federal agents accompanying Jeep, Alex, Chuck, and von Braun showed up at Jester’s Used Books.
Ebbs and Pete, along with TJ and his mother, were waiting outside. Ebbs opened the car door for her old friend.
“He said you sent them,” von Braun said as he climbed out.
“Absolutely not!” Ebbs said, glaring at Chuck. “I wrote you about him, but this, he—and Alex—did all on their own. I didn’t even know you’d be there.”
Von Braun looked at Alex and nodded. “Astronaut Alexis is a most intrepid young lady,” he said. “So now, Captain Ebbs, explain how it is we get to rendezvous here tonight. I have heard their account; now I want to hear yours.”
Ebbs described their trip down the Potomac and out to Tangier. “After lunch they took off to explore the island,” she continued. “When I heard the Captain Sam’s whistle and they weren’t around, I figured what they’d done, so my friend Pete and I hustled over to the mainland and started looking for them. No trouble tracking them: ‘Older boy and his sister with a brown dog? Yeah, I seed ’em, watched ’em hitching,’ the candy and sundries-store lady told us. ‘Jester boy picked ’em up in his tomato truck.’ We went to the Jesters’ and met the boy—that’s him over there—and he took us out to where he’d dropped them. Nothing to see there. On the way back we stopped at Cousin Marge’s café. Right off Marge began to blow: ‘Oh, they was here all right. Fed their dog on the floor, didn’t leave no tip, and then they stoled Mr. Brownlowe’s boat. De-linquents!’
“There was nothing for us to do but come back here to the Jesters’ and wait—and watch. There’s no civilian telephoning out there. I figured Alex would get them back here safe sooner or later.”
Alex rocked back a little hearing that, but she knew it was true.
“We saw the sky light up,” Ebbs continued, “then your rocket went streaking across like a white-hot pencil. What seemed a long time later we heard the roar. The Jester boy told us he’d invited them to dinner—and here they are.”
“Ach!” Von Braun snorted.
The agents started to leave.
“No,” said von Braun. “Wait here. In a few minutes you must take me back.”
The chief gave him a sour look.
As everybody moved toward the bookshop door, TJ cornered his new friends.
“You got on Wallops and stood there where they did the launch, then got the FBI to haul you back here in army clothes with no jail or fine or nothing, and they gave you those binoculars?” he whispered, shaking his head. “Wow!”
“Chuck saved the launch,” Alex said. “It wouldn’t have gone up if he hadn’t told them how to fix it.”
Once they were all inside, von Braun turned to Ebbs. “What are you going to do with these two? She has school she must finish,” he said, pointing to Alex. “But Charles—what do you do with him?”
“Let me work for you,” Chuck said. “Give me a job.”
Von Braun pursed his lips. “Why did you do this?” he asked, almost as if he hadn’t heard.
Chuck took a deep breath. “Because during the war we hid in the basement shelter from what you were going to drop on us like you did to London. I wanted to be able to see what was coming—see better than what the searchlights could pick up. When I started learning about radar I figured that was it. I came here because I wanted to see the dishes, see how they worked, see the rockets you’re making.”
He stopped, his face flushed. Alex and Jeep stood tensed.
Von Braun took it in unblinking.
“You are a boy with clever hands,” he said finally. “During the war we hear stories about boys like you. If an American jeep breaks, the driver jumps out and tinkers around until he fixes it, sometimes with something he makes out of what he’s got in his pocket or a bit of wire or a tin can he finds by the road.
“With us, it is different, or it was. Work was done by class. The driver was of a higher class than the mechanic, so when his machine failed someone from the repair depot was summoned. I was often scolded by my superiors for getting my hands dirty.
“Your American rocket genius—Goddard—he was a tinkerer too, but he was also professor of physics. You, Charles, you are just a tinkerer, no?”
Chuck stared at him.
“You have talent I can use,” von Braun continued slowly, thoughtfully, “an inventor’s energy, but what about your schooling? Ebbs says you are not technically trained beyond what you have taught yourself about radio. With us, every person on the shop floor must be able to read plans and do calculations. Nothing ever gets built exactly to plan. You have to be able to do the math to make things fit.
“You are ignorant and you are dangerous. You would tickle the porcupine—never mind the danger to yourself, but what about everyone around? What about her?” he asked, pointing to Alex.
“A fearless man is a more dangerous comrade than a coward,” he said grimly. “You have scars, but you have not learned the lessons of those scars. Sneaking onto Wallops—you could have got shot, you and Alexis too, yes? And then what next gets into your head?”
Alex could see the muscles working in Chuck’s face.
“Give me my chance and you’ll see,” Chuck said in a strangled voice. “I’ll prove myself. You need me. I don’t have to read plans. I can figure things out on my own. I can fix things, find stuff for you, and then you can send me up in the man-carrying rocket I’ve been reading about.”
“What if you crashed or couldn’t bail out, just kept going?” von Braun asked.
“That’s OK,” Chuck said eagerly. “Especially the keeping going part. I’d get to see it all!”
Alex caught her breath. It was like what she remembered from Captain Smith: I wanted to get out of bounds, escape the gravity of the known world.
“It is the answer I expected from you,” von Braun said after a pause. “You are impulsive, reckless. It is a virtue in this work to be hungry for risks—they are everywhere. You cannot teach someone that hunger; it is like telling a timid man how to cross the river on a narrow log. He takes one step and falls in, while the reckless one skips across. But you need the discipline of training, Charles, and the discipline of restraint. With you it is all living on the edge, everything made up as you go along, test after test for the thrill of it—climbing towers, stealing airplanes, sneaking into the highest-security zone. Real work does not burn so hot, so fast. How can you slow yourself down?”
Alex watched to see what Chuck would say. He didn’t say anything.
“Let me see if I can get him ready for you,” Ebbs said quietly. “He reminds me of the young German rocketeer I heard about who borrowed airplanes as a teenager and went all over looking into things he was not supposed to see. His father could do nothing with him—they hardly spoke—but then someone took him in hand and turned him around. Perhaps you could do as much for this one.”
Von Braun smiled grimly. “We will talk,” he said.
“He can do anything,” Alex said. “Anything! Just show him and watch!”
Von Braun shook his head. “Alexis, there is a big difference between his doing anything—the anything that comes into his head—and his doing the something I need done, which he would probably find boring after his experiences so far. Can you—can anyone—make him do only what he is ordered? Anyway, now I must go back and face those who will hold me responsible for this breach of security. There are many who would like to see me far away from their rocket projects. In Germany I never had such a thing happen—but I had no Charles there either.”
He stood at the door. “I make no promises, Captain Ebbs. We will talk later. Now I must go back before I lose my Cinderella coachmen and their lovely yacht,” he said, pointing to the FBI men.
To Alex they looked like they’d been eating lemons.