They bounced down on the apron of ground between the viewing stand and the canal of water that ran between the launch stand and the VAB.
“Water!” screeched Baneen. “Merciful Gremla!”
The canal was about two hundred yards across, and deep, as Rolf knew. And they were hurtling for it too fast to swerve aside.
“Up and over!” shouted Baneen, his voice quavering.
The two bicycles soared up like gliders and rose over the canal. Baneen put a hand over his eyes while he wailed, “Water… oo!”
Rolf also closed his eyes. He didn’t mind flying in a plane, but in a bicycle… !
He felt his bike touch down again, but on something that wasn’t quite solid ground. Opening his eyes, Rolf saw that they were pedaling up a wire, with Rita’s bike right in front of him. Like circus acrobats, they raced up the steeply angled wire.
Pushing down a lump in his throat, Rolf shouted ahead to Rita, “This is the escape wire—the astronauts use this to slide down from the spacecraft in case something goes wrong right before the rocket ignites.”
Rita half-turned in her seat to look at him over her shoulder. “I know. Isn’t it fun?” She was grinning broadly.
Fun! Rolf felt paralyzed as they raced up the slim strand of wire, and she thought it was fun. She’s got more faith in gremlin magic than I have!
Meanwhile, more than a dozen white security cars had pulled up to a screaming halt beside the launch pad.
Half a dozen guards ran over to Mr. Amaro’s car. He jumped out and started shouting to them:
“Well, where are they? Have you seen them?”
“No, sir. Can’t find them anywhere!” None of the men was looking high enough to see the two bicycles zooming up the escape wire. The bikes were just a blur anyway; they were going so fast.
“Well, spread out,” Mr. Amaro ordered. “They must have sneaked in among the crowd someplace.”
One of the guards, his face sweaty and worried-looking, asked, “Sir, should we ask Mission Control to put a hold on the countdown? Those kids might be anyplace—”
“No,” Mr. Amaro said. “They’ve got awfully fast motorbikes, I’ll admit. But they’d have to be able to fly to get across the canal and into the launch area itself. There’s no chance of that.”
“Right,” the other guard agreed.
Up, up and up the two bikes raced while Baneen shuddered and moaned. “Iron and steel, iron and steel. Ooohhh.”
Finally they thumped to a stop, and Rolf saw that they were now on the same platform he had come to the night before, in the elevator. The spacecraft was standing at one end of the platform, smooth and white. The space kite itself was hanging from the spacecraft’s outer skin, looking tiny and barely visible—but at the same time, Rolf thought it looked big as a jetliner. He could see thousands of gremlins jostling around inside the kite, flickering in and out of visibility like a set of winking Christmas lights.
Somewhere a loudspeaker was saying, “Thirty seconds and counting… The launch tower is now starting to roll away from the rocket vehicle and spacecraft.”
And the tower was beginning a slow, grinding, growling motion.
“Lugh, ye great hulking heap of princely magic!” Baneen cried out, hopping on the steel platform as if it were covered with hot coals. “Come… oooch!… quick. There’s grand news!”
“Twenty seconds and counting…”
Lugh appeared at the edge of the kite, as if he were standing on a wing of it. “What is it now, trickster? Are you staying with the humans, after all?”
“Listen—ouch!—quick, Lugh me darling. There’s no need to leave Earth. None at all. For any of us!”
Before Lugh could reply, though, Rolf broke in, “Where’s Shep—Mr. Sheperton?”
“Ten seconds, nine,…”
“The dog?” Lugh scowled. “Tried to rip our kite off the rocket, he did. I cooled him off. Down there!”
Lugh pointed, turned his back and walked off toward the edge of the platform. Rolf stared down in the direction the other had indicated and saw Mr. Sheperton paddling weakly in a large pond of water.
That’s the water that feeds into the exhaust cooling sprays! Rolf realized. In a few seconds the pumps will suck Shep down and then fire him right into the hot exhaust gases when the rocket takes off!
“Nine, eight…”
“Stop the launch!” Rolf yelled. Desperately, he looked about him. Lugh still stood with his back turned. Then a glitter caught Rolf’s eye. The Great Corkscrew of Gremla was taking form beside him. He glanced at it, and saw standing behind it O’Rigami, La Demoiselle, and O’Kkane Baro, along with other gremlins whose names he did not know. The voice of Baneen whispered in his ear.
“Pull it out, lad—quickly. We’ll help!”
Already, O’Rigami and the others were disappearing into the glitter of the case of the Great Corkscrew. Frantically, Rolf took hold and pulled. There was a moment when nothing happened and then suddenly the Great Corkscrew slid easily from its case and the brilliant light flashing from it glittered all around. Lugh spun about.
“Stop the launch!” shouted Rolf, holding the Corkscrew aloft and waving it at the gremlin prince.
“Five… four…” boomed the loudspeaker. Lugh stood, staring.
Rolf could not wait any longer for Lugh to act. He threw the Corkscrew aside, and dived for the hook at the end of the escape wire. In an eyeblink he was sliding madly back down the wire, racing toward the ground and the water at the edge of the launch pad, nothing between him and a five-hundred-foot fall except the strength of his fingers as they clutched the hook of the handgrip.
The loudspeaker droned. “Two, one… zero…”
Rolf’s feet touched the ground and he ran pell-mell to the edge of the tank and without an instant’s hesitation, dived in. Mr. Sheperton was still struggling in the water as if some invisible force were binding his legs.
“Shep, Shep—I’m here! I’ll save you!” Rolf yelled as he swam toward the dog.
“Too late…” gargled Mr. Sheperton, weakly, and his head sank beneath the surface of the water.
In the Launch Control room—a place filled with technicians and engineers sitting at row after row of control consoles—Mr. Gunnarson snapped a ballpoint pen in half and threw the pieces on the floor beside his desk.
“No ignition! The rockets didn’t light off!”
A half dozen men huddled around him.
“Must be the firing sequencer.”
“Or the main squib.”
“Or a pump failure.”
Mr. Gunnarson wanted to slam the desk with both his fists. Instead, he swallowed hard and said as calmly as he could.
“Are there any malfunction lights showing on the consoles?”
“No, everything’s green.”
He took a deep breath. “All right. Set the countdown sequencer back to T minus two minutes and go through it again. Maybe we’ve just got a loose connection. Tell the astronauts that we’re recycling to T minus two—and counting!”
“Right!” The men scurried back to their consoles.
Mr. Amaro appeared at Mr. Gunnarson’s elbow. “There’s been some funny kind of disturbance around the pad—a couple of kids on motorcycles…”
“Not now!” Mr. Gunnarson snapped. “We’ve got a bird loaded and ready to go. Like a live bomb out there!”
One instant Rolf was diving under the water to grab at Shep’s sinking form, and the next instant he was standing in the middle of the Gremlin Hollow, dripping wet, with Shep beside him.