Rolf grabbed him by the shoulder. “Baneen! Can you get us to the launch pad inside of six minutes?”
The gremlin shook himself. “Well I could… no, that wouldn’t work. Or if—no, that’s no good…”
“Quick!” Rita said. “It’s got to be right away!”
“There’s only one way to do it,” Baneen said, looking up at them. “But it means I’ll have to go with you—and all that iron and steel—” He shuddered.
“We’ve got to!” Rolf insisted.
Baneen squared his shoulders. “You’re right, lad. There’s nothing else to do. Even though it may be the end of me, what matters one poor wee gremlin when—”
“Can it!” Rita shouted. “Let’s get going!”
“Right!” cried Baneen. “Onto your bikes, you two.” And he glided up and sat on Rolf’s handlebar.
“The bikes?” Rita asked.
“We’ve only got five minutes,” said Rolf.
“Trust me,” said Baneen, with an almost saintly smile on his gremlin face.
It wasn’t like any bike ride in the history of the world. The instant their feet touched the pedals, the bicycles took off like racing cars and went faster and faster. The bush and sand dunes went blurring past.
“There’s the road now!” Baneen yelled over the howling wind. He was hanging onto the plastic handgrip of the handlebar with one tiny hand, and keeping his hat jammed on his head with the other. “Follow it in to the base!”
They were going at least seventy miles an hour, Rolf guessed—and straight toward the double line of cars that still jammed the road.
“We’ll crash,” cried Rolf, as he squeezed the handbrakes. But the brakes didn’t slow the bike at all. He and Rita—with Baneen hanging on by one hand—hurtled directly at the traffic on the road.
12
For one instant it seemed they were going to smash right into the side of a big mobile home. Then the handlebars twitched by themselves, and suddenly both bikes were weaving in and out among the cars and trailers and campers, zooming along the road at fantastic speed, the wind screeching past so fast that Rolf could scarcely breathe.
Frantic drivers jammed on their brakes. Children and mothers sat staring, pop-eyed, as the two bikes roared past them at the speed of jet planes. Half the time Rolf simply closed his eyes as they scooted between cars, around trucks, and—he swore— over a busload of tourists from Dayton, Ohio.
Baneen had slipped off the handgrip and was flapping in the wind, hanging on with one hand and screaming madly.
“Ouch! Oh! All this—oof!—iron and steel! Ouch! Great Gremla protect me—ouch!”
Behind them the cars they passed set up a honking, like a mechanical chorus of angry machines. They zipped past a checkpoint, and the guard standing beside his gray sedan let the radio microphone drop from his hand as he stared at the two nearly supersonic bikes roaring by. His partner picked up the microphone and started babbling into it.
They passed the entrance to the Space Center so fast that the guards there were knocked down by the blast of wind. They scrambled to their feet and started yelling into their microphones:
“Two bicycles—must be doing five-hundred miles an hour—yeah, yeah, bicycles ! No, I don’t have sunstroke!”
Back at the Manned Launch Center, Rita’s father shook his head at the hastily typed report that had just been handed to him. Security guards were bustling around the room he was in, other men and women were sitting at radio desks and working typewriters.
Mr. Amaro’s eyes widened as he read the report. “Five-hundred miles an hour? Bicycles? Are they all going crazy out there?”
An excited voice came through one of the radio loudspeakers: “I can see ’em! They’re a couple of kids—the bikes are goin’ so fast they’re just a blur. And they’re headin’ straight for the VAB!”
Mr. Amaro crumpled the typewritten sheet in his hand. “Crazy or not, nobody’s getting into the Vehicle Assembly Building without a pass! Come on.”
Meanwhile Rolf and Rita were zooming along, heading for the enormous, massive shape of the VAB, where the rockets are put together before they are taken out to their launch pads.
“Ouch! Oh! Will we never get there?” Baneen was groaning.
“Look!” Rita yelled over the howling wind. “Security cars coming!”
Rolf saw the white cars speeding toward them from both sides of the VAB. “We can’t go around!” he shouted. “They’ve got both sides blocked!”
“Do something!” Rita yelled to Baneen.
“All right—owoo!” cried Baneen. “Straight up, then—ooch, ouch! The whole building’s full of iron, isn’t it?”
They hurtled directly at the straight solid wall of the VAB as if they were going to smash themselves against it. Rolf involuntarily closed his eyes, and the next thing he knew their bikes were racing straight up the wall, defying gravity and going as fast as ever.
Down at the base of the building, Mr. Amaro hopped out of his car before the driver had even brought it to a complete stop. He snapped his head back so fast that his uniform cap fell off.
“I don’t believe it!” he muttered to himself. “I see it, but it’s impossible!”
The two bikes went right up to the top of the wall and disappeared over the edge of the roof.
“It’s like being on top of a mountain,” Rolf yelled as they bounced onto the roof of the VAB. “This is the highest point in all Florida, I bet.”
“It’s nice being away from all those horns and the people yelling,” Rita agreed.
But they only had a moment to enjoy the quiet and the view. With Baneen still ouch ingevery inch of the way, they hurtled straight for the far edge of the roof.
Rolf felt his stomach drop away as his bike—and Rita’s—raced right off the roof and did a “Wheelie” on the back wall of the VAB. They both sailed down the wall with only their rear wheels touching. Rolf squinted downward. There was nothing between his madly pedaling feet and the ground except hundreds of feet of very thin air.
“Don’t look down!” he yelled to Rita, as his hands suddenly went clammy.
“Why not?” Rita hollered back. “It’s fun! Man, is that a long way down!”
Rolf concentrated on keeping his teeth from chattering.
They got to the ground and scooted off again, just as a couple of security cars pulled around the corner of the building.
“Whew,” said Baneen, pulling himself back up to a sitting position. “At least we’re away from that nasty iron for a moment or two.”
Rolf glanced at his wristwatch. Two minutes to go before liftoff.
They were heading straight for the giant rocket and its launch stand, with a half dozen white security cars trailing along behind them, sirens blaring distantly. But now Rolf saw that between them and the launch stand were more cars, and hundreds of people sitting in the press stands.
“How can we get around them?” he asked Baneen.
“Not around,” puffed Baneen. “Over.” Then the gremlin asked in a lower, sadder tone, “By the way, lad, that launching stand and the great tall tower—they’re made of iron, aren’t they?”
“Steel,” said Rolf.
Baneen’s eyes rolled up and the corners of his mouth dropped. “Ah, well—up and away!”
The bicycles soared into the air for a short distance, then bounced back to the ground. Another hop, longer this time, took them over a row of parked cars. Baneen winced and fidgeted. Then they bounded over a startled group of photographers, who jumped and shouted, and knocked over each others’ tripods in their surprise.
Bouncing, they reached the press stands where the reporters and photographers were eagerly watching the final moments of countdown. They soared over the watchers, who yelled and ducked as the bikes cleared their heads by inches.