The panic that had erupted in Rolf as the object suddenly began to grow in size and conspicuousness, suddenly began to die down. For the first time he noticed that as the kite got bigger, it was also getting filmier and filmier, until he could begin to see right through it… indeed, until it finally faded away into invisibility. Rolf stood gazing at last at a spacecraft that looked as if it had nothing attached to it at all.
So that was the secret of the space kite! He might have known the gremlins would have figured out some way to keep their space vehicle from being noticed by the human astronauts that would be boarding the metal spacecraft in the morning. He turned without wasting any more time, and hurried back to the secondary elevator to start his ride down again.
He reached the changeover point and switched to the primary elevator. This slid him downward with the noiselessness of smoothly running electrical equipment; and he had all but forgotten about the guard when it reached bottom and the door opened automatically.
“Who’s that?” called a voice from the pad just outside. “What’s going on there?”
A second later the bright beam of a flashlight lanced through the open door of the elevator cage and there was the sound of running footsteps.
Rolf shrank back into a corner of the elevator, his heart thumping like the heart of a wild rabbit in a trap. If only he knew some gremlin magic—at least enough to make himself invisible. There was no way out but the open doorway of the elevator and the guard was coming straight for it. In a moment he would be discovered; and then…
The guard burst into the cage, actually running past Rolf.
“Who’s here?” shouted the guard. “Who—”
He started to turn around. There was no chance to dodge past him without being seen. In desperation, Rolf stammered out the first thing he could think of.
“M-May the Great and Thunderous Curse of Gremla fall upon your head!” he stammered out loud.
“Wha—aaaCHOO!” exploded the guard, turning around. His flashlight wavered from floor to ceiling, out of control, as he burst into a series of gargantuan sneezes. “Who said… ACHooo! Ach—”
Rolf did not wait to answer him. Slipping past the blinded, sneezing man, he headed out across the pad, and down its slope toward his bicycle as the echos of body-racking sneezes floated after him through the floodlit night.
After that narrow escape, it was almost nothing to wait for a moment when the guard on Number Twelve Gate had his back turned, and slip past him into the open freedom of the Wildlife Preserve where Shep and Baneen were waiting with the invisibility that would shield him on the road home.
10
THE launch was set for ten a.m., Eastern Daylight Time. At seven-thirty that morning, as Rolf and Rita rode their bikes out toward the Preserve, with Mr. Sheperton tagging along beside them, the roads were already crowded with carloads of people who had driven in to watch the Mars rocket’s liftoff.
In the Indian and Banana rivers, small boats were anchored for the same purpose. And several miles offshore in the deep ocean water, there were even a couple of large cruise ships whose passengers had come to watch the event.
“At least the poachers won’t cause any trouble,” Rolf shouted to Rita as they pedaled. “Their boat’s still being repaired, thanks to Baneen.”
“And how are we going to get into the Refuge?” Rita asked him. “There’ll be police and security cars all over the place—it’s closed up tight now.”
Rolf didn’t answer for a moment. He was busy shifting the rolled-up poster on the handlebars of his bike. The poster was too long to be carried safely on the rattrap behind him.
“Baneen’s going to meet us halfway there and help us get there,” he said at last.
“By making us invisible?” asked Rita.
With a shrug, Rolf answered, “I don’t know. Gremlin magic is pretty strange. Sometimes it works fine, but just when you need it most—”
A gray sedan with official markings on its side nosed out of the traffic and started coming up toward them on the shoulder of the road. Rolf and Rita pulled their bikes aside. Rolf’s heart was hammering with sudden memories of the night before. Did the guard recognize me after all? But the sedan went right past them; the two officers inside didn’t even flick an eye at him.
With a loud “Whew!” Rolf started pedaling again.
“You know,” Rita said, pulling up alongside him, “it’s sort of too bad that the gremlins are going. They’re kind of fun.”
Rolf blinked at her. He had been thinking about something for a long time now, he realized. Just when it started to bother him, he wasn’t sure. Possibly it was right after the trouble with the bulldozer out at the Hollow when both Lugh and Baneen had admitted that they didn’t like people such as the boat captain who had been bringing people out to the Preserve illegally and polluting the environment. He couldn’t put it into words, but something about the gremlins was nagging at him.
“You’re right,” he said to Rita. “I don’t know if it’s a good thing that they’re going—”
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Mr. Sheperton growled.
Rita still looked startled every time she heard Mr. Sheperton speak. She could accept the gremlins, but the dog’s speaking always seemed to surprise her.
“Now listen Shep… er, Mr. Sheperton,” Rolf said crossly. “I know Baneen and the others can’t always be trusted to tell the exact truth, but even if they haven’t been on Earth for millions of years or whatever it is, they’ve been around here for a long time. I wonder if maybe we don’t need them?”
They were cycling past a car that had all its windows open as it inched along in the heavy traffic. A small boy’s high-pitched voice piped, “He’s talkin’ to his doggy, Mommy. Look, he’s talkin’ to his doggy.”
“Yes, dear,” answered a woman’s voice, absently. “Isn’t that nice of him?”
“Need gremlins?” Rita asked as they continued along the jam-packed road. “But all they do is cause trouble. I thought they admitted that themselves.”
“That’s what Baneen says,” Rolf admitted. “But I wonder how much of that is just showoff stuff—”
“Like diving off a high board?” Mr. Sheperton suggested drily.
“Man, can’t you say anything pleasant anymore?” Rolf snapped.
“Gremlins can’t be trusted,” Mr. Sheperton insisted. “We need them like a flea needs flea powder. Look at what they’ve done to you: turned you into a thief, almost, and gotten you to sneak into the launch pad. Why, if you’d been caught—”
“Well I wasn’t,” said Rolf. “Not because you helped, either!”
Rita tried to nip the argument by getting back to the original subject. “If we need the gremlins the way you said we did, they must know about it, with their ability to see the future and all. So why are they leaving?”
“That’s what I’d like to find out,” said Rolf. “The real reason they’re going. I’ve got the feeling that they’ve told me already, but in a very sneaky, roundabout, gremlinish sort of way. Some of the things that Lugh and Baneen had said… I can’t seem to put my finger on exactly what it is. If I knew what it was that was really making them go, maybe I could talk them out of it.”
“Talk a gremlin out of anything,” muttered Mr. Sheperton, from beside Rolf’s bike. “That’s like talking the moon out of the sky. They’re too much the experts at talking people into things, to be talked themselves. If you want to convince a gremlin of something, you’ve got to show him proof that is proof!”
Rolf just shook his head, feeling very confused.
“Ah, now, here we are, and a grand and lovely morning to you all,” said Baneen’s voice.