BARNSTORMER

Careful to keep trees and bushes between himself and the cottage, the boy legged it across the fields toward the glass rocket poised in Johnson's pasture, glittering and slim like a dark, slender dancer. To Pete it was all the promise in the world distilled into a pointed black glass bottle. But to the women in the cottage....

He glanced back. Apparently they hadn't seen him. He had to hurry, because he had something to ask Murph Vanderpool, the rocketman, and sometime tomorrow the rocket would be gone.

His grandmother and his mother would be glad when it was gone. To them it was a monstrous and terrible symbol of something, and, like an evil woman, most terrible because of its beauty.

"Just can't get away from them," his grandmother had said at lunch, gazing irefully out the window toward where it stood. She was a stiffbacked old lady with a valentine face where something wintry mixed with something mild. "I moved out here on the edge of a little town and thought I'd got away from 'em—and the television's full of 'em—and the magazines full of 'em—and now this barnstormer sets one down practically in the backyard!"

Pete curled his brows in a way that made the women remember his father. "What's wrong with rockets, Grammy?"

"No reason for them! No reason for men to want to go way off hundreds of miles from earth, getting lost, getting killed! We had jets—we should have been satisfied."

She sighed, and her daughter-in-law echoed it. Looking out the window their thoughts ran to space and rockets and their men, who had been rocketmen and who would never come back. What was left of them was still out there, moving eternally through lonesome space in straight lines or circling some dead moon or planet. The gray-haired woman's thoughts ran to the husband torn and destroyed when the early test ship burst on the moon-run, and the other woman's mind reached grieving toward her own husband, the gray-haired woman's son, whose ship had turned in an instant to a molten glob when its white metal coating suddenly peeled and it took the full, brutal hammer of the sun.

The younger ran her fingers through Pete's spiky hair. "Petey, you're not to see that barnstormer any more."

"Aw—fooher! Fooner!"

His grandmother raised her hands. "Where do they pick up that awful slang?"

Pete scowled out the window, thinking of the rocket, the knobs and slings and dials within it, the feel of speed and space and war about it, the slash-grinned young god who rode it. He had something to ask Murph.

"Aw fooner," he muttered.

His mother swung him to her lap. "Shall we tell him about the surprise?"

Pete thought he caught something odd—a nearly invisible craft or knowingness—in the glance they traded.

"You didn't get much for your birthday last week, Pete," his mother beamed, "so we decided to give you a kind of late birthday party. You're going to have that picnic on Indian Hill. It'll be an all-day picnic, with all the youngsters you know, hunting for arrowheads and relics. We're going in Mr. Fobey's copter."

"Oh boy! Indian Hill! At last!" Then he sobered, thinking of paunchy, bland-faced, nervous Mr. Fobey.

"Will Fobey bring his air sluice?"

"He says he will."

"All right then. Indian Hill! Whoopee!"

He kissed them, and went larking toward the door but his mother snagged him.

"I hope you aren't forgetting your chores, young man."

"Yeah—weeding. I don't see why we don't have all ponics, like everybody else. Gee whiz, can't I skip it just today. It's the next to the last day for the Hester."

"What's the Hester, for goodness sake?"

"Why, the rocket! The glass rocket!"

She held her son's head between her hands and held her eyes on his. "Pete, we told you not to go near that rocket. I mean it. Stay ... away ... from ... it! I know what I'm saying. Stay away from it!"

He scuffled his feet. "Okay mom. Okay then. Okay."

Half an hour later he was legging it across the fields, keeping trees and shrubs between himself and the cottage, and three quarters of an hour later he was handing a crescent wrench to Murph Vanderpool, who had found a loose bolt in the rig of the doube-slung pilot's cradle. Weeding was forgotten. His nostrils were full of hexadrine, his eyes were full of dials and levers and words like "parsecs" and "off ram—on ram," and his head was full of dreams.

The Hester. Ever so slightly scored along her sides with the nailhead meteorites she had brushed rushingly aside. An imperceptible waver in her hull where a Panasia heat shell had nearly downed her. Glamorous witch of space. Cleopatra's needle of outer gulfs.

He knew about her. The Federation had won the war when they began casting rockets of the new, light, tough glass, mass-producing swarms to oust Panasia in the battles fought in the black deeps beyond the bounds of earth with weapons that would have destroyed both sides if used on the home planet. And after the war thousands of the rockets had been sold, and many had gone to the young men like Murph whom the war had made into spacemen before they had a chance at any other business and who did not want now, ever, to be anything but spacemen, rocketmen. They went about the country selling rocket rides. Tradition had given them a name from another postwar epoch: barnstormers.

Pete handed the wrench to the barnstormer. "Which are the dark-light controls?"

"Holy tubes," grinned Murph, pushing the black hair from his eyes, "If you weren't such a handy kid you'd be a nuisance. Here." He pushed a button, and the dark hull grew clear, letting in the sunlight. Murph pushed deeper and the hull darkened. He twirled and a long, clear porthole appeared along the rows of seats.

"Polaroid can keep radion or light—sunlight can be enough to kill you. Or you can clear a place to look through."

"Can I work it, huh?"

"Just once."

Pete manipulated the button. Then he held his breath, glanced at Murph, and slipped into the pilot's cradle. It was too wide and deep but he imagined that he filled it. He imagined the switchboard alive and winking and his body weighing a thousand tons, then weighing nothing at all. The Hester had passed escape velocity, cast off gravity, and earth lay already ten thousand miles behind her. The board showed she had slewed a little because of the slight warp in the hull. He corrected course. Then he cut power, and the ship went driving on with nothing to stop it at thirty thousand miles an hour.

Murph let him sit there a full minute. Then he lifted him down.

"Let's go outside, see if there's any business."

There wasn't, and they lounged on a piece of canvas in the blackened blast area.

The band-radio around Pete's shoulder pulsed gently. He dialed it up.

"I know where you are, Peter. I want you back here right this instant. Your mother and I both...."

He dialed off.

"Anything else I can do for you, Murph?"

"Well—you might go to Rannel's store, after awhile, and get me a couple packs of self-lights. I'm about out of smokes."

"Be glad to."

Pete basked in the shared male moments. "What was it you were telling me about hyperspace yesterday?"

Murph told him more about hyperspace, the untapped dimension which had to exist, the magic hole in space into which a ship would slip someday and emerge not in new systems but new galaxies. "When we find hyperspace and get the photon drive—then we'll really be making it."

"Think we ever will?"

"Sure we will."

That was it. Sure we will. He lay and gazed into the sky. How far did it go? Someday he would be up there.

The radio pulsed again, and he told himself he didn't feel it. He rolled around and looked at Murph. He might as well ask his important question.

"Murph—are you gonna take me up?"

"Shoot, kid, I can't burn juice just taking one guy for a joyride."

"How about if you get a full load except one? Couldn't I sit in?"

Murph thought about it. "Well, you've been a lot of help and company, and you're a smart kid, too. I'll do it."

Pete didn't do anything so childish as leaping into the air but he allowed himself to walk over and stroke the alluring flanks of the Hester. He felt wonderful. And around the hull of the rocket strode his mother.

"Why didn't you answer us?"

"Gosh—did you call me? Maybe my radio isn't working."

She dialed and spoke into it. His grandmother answered. "I've got him," said his mother, and dialed down.

She took him by the arm and shook him. "Come along!"

"That's scranny! I've got to get Murph cigarettes! He's going to take me up! Ain't that right, Murph?"

Murph had scrambled up, red and apologetic. "I'm sorry, lady—I didn't know you wanted him home. I'm really sorry."

"You idiot!" was all she said, flouncing by him with Pete held by the arm.

She shook Pete more and more angrily as they half ran toward home. Then suddenly he felt her trembling all over, and she broke into tears.

She held him to her fiercely and suffocatingly. "They're not going to get you. You're going to promise!"

Bewildered and a little frightened, he pushed his head against her like a stubborn calf and was silent.

He felt a little chastened by the time they arrived home, but then things blew up again. Grammy pulled the trigger. Smiling, she hugged him and said, "Cheer up, Pete—tomorrow's the picnic on Indian Hill."

They were using Indian Hill to cancel out his last day with the Hester! He gritted his teeth with a scrawtch that raised goose pimples even on himself. "I won't go! It doesn't have to be tomorrow!"

Grammy's face began to winter and his mother's face grew harder as she said, very firmly, "It's tomorrow, and you certainly are coming."

"I won't!" he exploded, and ran out to the barn.

He lay in the hay in the tallest now, feeling like a miserable sick solitary cat. After awhile he dialed his radio, 29 on the eight orb, and Murph came right in.

"How's it goin', Murph?"

"Oh—it's you. You in trouble?"

"Nah—but I can't see you today. I wondered if you could take me up tomorrow? I mean, if there's room, that is?"

"Your Ma want you to go up?"

"It's okay—they just wanted me for chores today. How about it?"

"Sure, if there's room."

"Hooray! See you tomorrow."

"Okay, kid. And look—if you don't make it, I'll blow you a kiss."

"What's that?"

"I thought you knew. You know how the jet flame is? Blue. Well, if you change the fuel mix it goes orange. That's blowing a kiss. Every rocketman knows about it."

"Wow! I'll be there, though. You won't have to blow me one."

"Okay, Pete."

"Okay, Murph."

They dialed out.

He lay in the hay a long time, making his plans. In the morning the women were delighted with him. He bubbled about relics and Indian bones and pranced and paced and kept running to the window to look for Mr. Fobey's copter. When it settled and the port opened he whooped aboard, the first one on, and scrambled into the baggage hold. He slammed the little door and slid a screwdriver between the knob and the door frame.

Up forward, he heard the others boarding. I gotta work fast, he told himself.

Somebody began to pound on the little door. "Petey's in there!" piped a voice. "He won't let anybody else in!"

He could tell it was old blabbermouth Sally Doolittle, that all the kids called a nosey little squirt.

"I'm gonna watch through the glass deck!" he yelled. "It's my party, and I'm gonna watch alone."

Crouching in the small hold, he began to work at the catches of the unloading hatch. He wasn't sure it opened from the inside—but it had to. He had to drop through before the copter left the ground.

The motors started.

He heard his mother's voice. "That's not like you, Pete. What are you doing in there? Open this door!"

"I'm trying," he called. "The lock's busted."

He got the last catch loose and strained up on the hatch. As it opened the copter lifted. He stared downward. They were high and getting higher. He'd better drop quick. Murph wouldn't have been scared he told himself, and plummeted through the opening.

He hit on his toes, let his legs buckle, and rolled into a hedge. His feet felt as though bombs had gone off under them. He lay half stunned; waiting for the copter to get well off, then tried to stand up.

He was able to. He tried to walk, and was able to. He began to run across the fields, skirting trees and bushes. If the baggage door held shut and they didn't see him above, he had plenty of time to get to Murph and into the Hester.

He was halfway there when the copter veered and came humming back. It came dropping toward him and he knew he was spotted. He ran stumbling into a stretch of trees and woods, altered course and dropped behind a big rock at the edge of the trees. There were leaves drifted against it and he burrowed under them. Panting, sweaty and itching, with aching legs, he watched and listened as the copter landed.

The port opened and they poured out. "He doesn't know what he's doing," said his mother. "We're going to find him."

Mr. Fobey drew back a little, his rubbery face pink-creased and nervous. "In there—in all the brush and snakes and swamp?"

She set her jaw and touched his arm. "I'm counting on you, Mr. Fobey."

They entered the woods, the children ranging ahead like shrill, bloodhungry little pups, poking and peeping and rustling. Pete tried to lie like a stone beneath the leaves.

The adults might not have found him, but the children hunted him eagerly and fiercely, like some huge prize Easter egg, and the sudden screech of little Sally Doolittle skirled his discovery.

Mr. Fobey came up first. Pete stood up, leaf-cluttered, and screamed at him. "You're a stupid fat crot!" he shrilled. "A crot! A godamn stupid fat crot, and leave me alone, I'm not going with you!"

But he did go with them.

On Indian Hill, Fobey set up his air sluice, stripping off the soil as dust and laying it back down as dirt. They turned up flint arrowheads and pestels and they found a buried skeleton, an orange smear on the breast bone where a talisman bag had lain. The children cheered and laughed and quarrelled—all but Pete. Pete climbed a tall pine.

All afternoon he watched the black glass rocket lift high on its fine blue skirt and streak toward the cold black place of stars, and come dropping back like a needle that is light as a feather, to take on more joyriders and swoop back upward. It was like watching unfolding poems in motion.

I'll be a spaceman , he told himself. I don't care what happens, I'm going to be a spaceman! He stayed in the tree all day and watched the Hester rise and return and on the last flight, when she lifted on a voyage that would terminate in some other part of the country in some other field, he saw the regal blue of the jet suddenly flush to a deep rose orange, then back to blue, and he thought of Murph and was suddenly happy. His day would come.