Invaders From Mars (2 page)

“David!” Mom called again. “You’ll be late!”

“Okay, okay!”

David moved the telescope across the top of the hill, trying to catch her again, but she was gone.

A flash of yellow! David froze, squinting to see it again. But it wasn’t on the hillside. It was on the road, moving toward the house.

His bus.

“Whoa!” he squeaked, jerking his head away from the telescope. David spun around and bounded toward his bed, rolled across the mattress and landed upright on the other side, stumbling toward his desk, toward his penny jar. Perched atop the little mountain of nearly eight hundred pennies was a small felt bag. In it, David kept his rarest, most valuable pennies, and he carried it to school with him every day, just to be on the safe side. David hurriedly reached for the little pouch, wrapped his fingers around it, swiping it away from the top of the other pennies, and knocking the jar over in his rush. The coins rolled and slid across the desktop and spilled over the edge like water over a fall, scattering loudly over the floor, rolling under the bed and night stand, spinning like little tops.

David was so startled by the clamor that he spun around, lifting one arm and hitting his elbow against the display case. The case teetered back and forth a moment, rattling rocks and crystals on their shelves, then it fell forward and clattered onto the desk.

The rocks and pennies clinked together. David, his eyes still wide from the start he’d gotten, watched as two pennies spun and twirled around a small cylindrical crystal, slower and slower, until they finally collapsed on top of the crystal, as if exhausted.

“What are you
doing
up there?” Mom called. “David?”

He surveyed the mess around him and sighed. It would have to wait until after school. “Coming!” He grabbed his backpack hanging on the back of a chair, and left the room.

Out in the hall, he could hear his parents’ voices more clearly.

“They’re gonna cut my arm off again!” Dad said.

“Fine, George, as long as they don’t cut off your—”

“Ellen, I’m serious.”

David’s feet clumped down the stairs.

“I thought your design was okay,” Mom said. David could hear her distinctive footsteps in the kitchen—light and quick.

“Okay? It’s
flawless!
But now they want to cut the payload by 108 kilos. So the first thing they’ll do, of course, is slice the bio-lab arm off the probe.”

David stepped through the kitchen doorway and turned to his dad, who was at the stove making pancakes. “But, Dad,” David said, the bus nearly forgotten now in light of what he’d heard, “the space probe won’t work without the arm you designed!”

Dad smiled at him. “Morning, Champ. Yeah, I know it won’t.”

“So what are you worried about?” Mom asked as she gathered up her books on the kitchen table. She flashed her confidence smile, the one she always gave David when he was worried about an upcoming spelling test or was afraid he was going to botch his lines in a school play. It was warm and bright and seemed to say:
Everything’s gonna be fine!

Dad’s worries seemed to fade a bit, if not disappear completely, and he returned the smile. “Who’s worried?”

David sprinted over to the refrigerator and took out a can of Dr Pepper, then grabbed a couple of Twinkies from the box on the corner of the counter and stuffed them into his pack.

“Bye!” he chirped, heading out of the kitchen.

“Whoa, Silver!” Mom called. “Wait just a minute.”

“But my bus is here, Mom!”

“No, it’s not.” She moved around behind him and put her hands on his shoulders, steering him over to the table. “Sit down and eat.”

As he pulled out a chair, David glanced at the blackened pan lying like a corpse in the sink. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d failed to escape one of Dad’s breakfasts, and it probably wouldn’t be the last time he’d try. Dad could design space probes and shuttles probably better than anybody in the world, David supposed, but he couldn’t make a pancake to save his life.

Mom reached into David’s pack and pulled out the soda and Twinkies, saying, “Your father has made you a lovely breakfast, David. We don’t want it to go to waste.” She returned the goodies he’d grabbed.

David looked at his dad, tall and lean with shiny dark hair and tiny soft wrinkles that deepened when he smiled. Pouring batter into a clean pan, Dad said, “Got pancakes, Champ. Your favorite.”

David turned to his mom, tried to give her a pleading look, hoping she would say he could go.

Instead, she smiled and said, “Just sit.”

The school bus rumbled to a stop out front and honked its horn.

Mom stepped around the table, opened the window, and stuck her head out, waving. “Never mind, Bob!” she yelled. “George will take him today. Thanks!”

“Hey, Dave!” Dad called behind him. “Heads up!”

David turned to see his dad approaching with a plate in one hand and the pan in the other. He set the plate down before David and began waving the pan up and down slightly, smiling with anticipation.

Oh, no,
David thought, pressing his back into the chair,
he’s gonna try that again.

Dad flipped the pancake up over the plate and jerked the pan out of the way. The pancake flipped in the air and slapped into David’s lap.

Never failed.

David rolled his eyes and groaned, “Dad . . .”

“Good shot!” Mom laughed, gathering her books into her arms.

“No damage done.” Dad gingerly lifted the pancake from David’s lap and dropped it onto the plate.

“See you guys this afternoon,” Mom said. She kissed David on the head.

“Where’re
you
going?” David asked.

“I have class.”

“But Mom, Dad’s made a
lovely
breakfast for you! We don’t want it to go to waste!”

“That’s right, hon,” Dad said solemnly, pouring out another pancake. “Just sit.”

Mom looked at them both and sighed, taking a seat across from David. “I’m outnumbered.”

David laughed with his dad; they’d won.

“If this course doesn’t drive me crazy,” Mom said, shoving her books aside, “you two will.”

David hitched the strap of the backpack over his shoulder as he followed Dad out the front door to the pickup truck. Mom was backing her car out of the driveway and David waved to her before getting in the pickup.

“George!” she called, sticking her head out the window. “Take him straight to school. He’s late already.”

“I will, hon. Have a good day!” Dad raised his arm and waved, then got in and started the truck. “Hey, Champ,” he said, his voice low, as if Mom might be able to hear, “what do you say we drive by the base. I’ll show you the new radar.”

“Yeah!” David dropped his pack between his feet and rubbed his hands together, getting that familiar jolt of excitement he always got when he and Dad were alone and doing something fun, something secret, and (more often than not) something Mom had said not to do. Not that David didn’t like his mom—he
loved
her. She was a great mom. She was always ready with a big hug; she always spent a lot of time making his Halloween costume every year, which was
always
the best—last year she’d spent weeks making his lizard costume and it looked scarier than anything he could’ve bought at the store—and she made better potato salad than any of his friends’ mothers.

But Dad knew how to have fun! While Mom sometimes objected to David reading “all those violent comic books,” Dad
never
missed an issue of
Ironman.
Every Saturday night, David and his dad stayed up to watch Sci-Fi Theater together on channel twelve, and sometimes they even stayed up for the late show if there was a good monster movie scheduled. It was almost as if Dad wasn’t a dad at all, but another kid, just like David.

Once David had asked his father why he’d decided to become a NASA engineer.

“So I could play with bigger toys,” Dad had said, making those little wrinkles deepen.

Dad always seemed to have a little glimmer in his eyes, like a secret he was keeping just for David. Both Mom and Dad were great parents, but there was something special between David and his dad. Something different.

“The meteor shower’s tonight,” Dad said.

“That’s right!” David turned toward him in the seat. “Can we go outside and watch it?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

David chewed his lip a moment, wondering if he should ask the next question. “Can we stay up late?”

“Well . . . we’ll see. You know how your mom is about our bedtimes on weeknights.”

“Okay. We’ll see.” That usually meant that chances were kind of slim.

“Speaking of bedtimes,” Dad said, “how’re you sleeping?”

“Fine.”

“No nightmares?”

“Well . . . once in a while. But not bad,” he added quickly, “really.” He waited for a response from his dad.

A nod and a smile.

David was relieved. He didn’t want to go back to Dr. Wycliffe.

Early last year, David had begun having nightmares. He would wake up screaming almost every night. He usually wouldn’t remember the nightmares, but knew they were horrifying.

Mom had told him to stop reading comic books and watching monster movies.

“Don’t worry,” Dad had said, trying to reassure Mom as much as David. “I used to have nightmares, too. All boys do. Let him have his comics and monsters. The dreams will go away on their own eventually.”

When they continued, Mom had insisted that David see a doctor. A psychologist.

“A head doctor!” David had protested, nearly breathless with dread. “A—whatta you call ’em?—a
shrink!
You think I’m crazy!”

“No, no, Champ,” Dad had said softly, putting his arm around David. “We don’t think you’re crazy. Mom just thinks . . .
we
think that it might be a good idea for you to see this doctor. Maybe he can find out why you’re having nightmares and help you get rid of them. Remember when Dr. Stewart took your tonsils out to get rid of that awful sore throat? It’s sort of like that.”

But it
hadn’t
been like that. Dr. Stewart was a pleasant man with silver hair who gave his patients chewing gum before they left the office.

Dr. Wycliffe had been short and fat with a pinched voice. The first thing David had noticed about him was his hair. There had been something odd about it. On his third and last visit to Wycliffe, he figured out what it was: the hair wasn’t real! It was a wig! A “too-pay,” Dad had called it. David decided that any guy who’d wear a wig had to be pretty loopy. Besides that, he couldn’t stand Dr. Wycliffe’s squeaky voice and the way he was constantly flicking his pudgy little nose with his finger, as if it were always itching.

Dad had talked it over with Mom and they’d decided that David wouldn’t have to go back to Dr. Wycliffe if he really didn’t want to. Maybe the nightmares would go away.

They did, eventually, just as Dad had said they would. But David still had one now and then. Sometimes he dreamed about Dr. Wycliffe’s “too-pay”: a black, furry animal squatting on the fat man’s head.

David leaned forward in the seat as they approached the marine base. It was set a short distance off the road, surrounded by a tall chain-link fence with barbed wire around the top. At the front entrance, uniformed guards stood around what looked like the box office at the Sky-Vu Drive-in and a large sign hung over the gate. It read in bold letters:

U.S. MARINE CORPS BASE
CAMP LEWIS B. PULLER
CALIFORNIA

“Can we go in, Dad?”

“Uh-uh.”

“C’mon, just for a minute? We’ve come
this
far.”

“Not today. We’re late already. You want us to get caught playing hooky?”

David squinted at him.
“Hooky?
You mean cuttin’ class, Dad. Nobody says
hooky
anymore.”

“Whatever. They’ve probably got bloodhounds searching for you right now, sniffing at your dirty old sweat socks.”

David laughed and punched his dad’s shoulder. Then he spotted the radar and leaned forward again, putting his hands on the dashboard. “There!” he exclaimed, pointing. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

Within the compound, two large radar dishes slowly and diligently swept back and forth, scanning the sky.

“Yep,” Dad said. “They’re fully operational now.”

“How does it work?”

“Okay, see, it’s a phased-array system,” he explained, hunkering forward over the steering wheel, as if he were leaning over a campfire to tell a story. “A short pulse of energy is transmitted into the sky, and if something’s out there, the energy is reflected back and detected on a sensitive receiver.”

As Dad drove slowly by, David watched the two radar dishes, his lower lip tucked between his teeth. He tried to imagine what those energy pulses would look like if he could see them as they shot into the sky—like big, glowing candy bars? Like bolts of lightning?—and he tried to imagine them bouncing off the side of an enemy jet or . . . or maybe even an alien spaceship, zooming back to earth like high-tech Paul Reveres with a message of impending danger.

Two jets roared by overhead, flying low and breaking through David’s daydream.

“What if the energy pulses missed, Dad?” David asked.

He shook his head. “If something’s out there, they’ll find it.”

David turned around in the seat and got on his knees, watching the dishes grow smaller as they drove on.

“What if they didn’t come back?”

Dad thought about that a moment, then said slowly, “Well, then, I guess we’d have to put an ad in the paper offering a reward to anyone who finds and returns some lost energy pulses.”

For a moment, David thought his dad was serious; then he saw the crooked smile and laughed, turning back around in the seat.

“You sure we can’t go in for just a minute, Dad?” he asked.

“Positive. But . . .” Dad paused, looking at David from the corner of his eye. “. . . if you want, you can steer until we get to the main road.”

“Okay!”

They scooted the bench seat back a notch and David squirmed onto his dad’s lap. He put a hand on each side of the wheel.

“Eyes on the road,” Dad said, his voice soft.

“Eyes on the road,” David echoed.