“No, sir,” another cannoneer called out, aiming the floodlight they used to watch the airspace over Oslo.
“Are you sure that’s a jet fighter?” the commandant asked, putting the field glasses to his eyes and pointing them at the sky, at the thing illuminated by the floodlight.
“Nothing else flies that fast, Commandant! And the midnight flight from Paris has already gone over.”
“Holy moly!” the commandant moaned. “It must be the Finns! And of course they’re attacking at dawn, those sneaky people!”
“Do you want us to shoot at them?”
“Of course we should shoot at them! That’s kind of the whole point to having a fortress and cannons and wearing these stupid uniforms!”
“But should we use the missile-that-never-misses?”
“Of course we should use the missile-that-never-misses. How else do you think you’re going to hit something as wily as a Finnish jet fighter?”
“We only have one missile-that-never-misses, Mr. Commandant. Are you sure we shouldn’t save it for a . . . uh, special occasion?”
The commandant scoffed.
“And what would be more special than a Finnish jet fighter about to bomb us back to the Stone Age, if I might ask?”
“No, sir, I suppose you’re right.” They all stared up at the sky.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” the commandant asked.
“Um, for you to say ‘launch,’ ” the chief cannoneer replied.
“Oh, thanks anyway, but it’s way too early for lunch. The sun’s not even up yet.”
“No, the launch command. You have to give it to me before I can fire the missile.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, you have to give the command. That’s why you’re called the commandant.”
“Right, right.” The commandant raised his field glasses to his eyes and stared up into the sky again at the thing that was flying high above, so high and so fast it wasn’t so easy to determine exactly what it was. But it pretty much has to be a Finnish jet fighter. So why am I hesitating like this? Lisa’s father thought. Was it because he thought it might be something else? Was it because deep down inside he knew the Finns were nice, clever people who didn’t bomb relatively good neighbors just because those relatively good neighbors had sold Christmas? Or was it because he actually didn’t like shooting things down? Well, it was too late to think about that now. He was the commandant. He sighed deeply.
“Fire,” he mumbled.
“What?”
“Fire, I said!”
One of the cannons boomed.
And a big, white missile shot into the starry sky. It was heading for the thing flying up there, which had to be a jet fighter. Even if Lisa’s father had thought for an instant that he’d seen Santa’s sleigh up there. But who with any sense in his head believes in Santa Claus?
“NILLY!” STANISLAW YELLED. “The satellite image and radar both show that Akershus Fortress just shot a missile at you, so hightail it out of there ASAP!”
“Aye, aye, boss!” Nilly saluted and lowered the reins. With that the sleigh arced steeply upward into the night sky.
Lisa, Doctor Proctor, and Stanislaw watched the greenish gleam of the radar screen where the sleigh was a little dot that said blop-blop and the missile was a little dot that said blip-blip.
“Now he knows about it, so he can just turn and get out of the missile’s path,” Doctor Proctor said.
“That won’t help.”
“What did you say, Lisa?”
Lisa put her hand over the microphone so Nilly wouldn’t be able to hear them. “I said turning won’t help.”
Doctor Proctor furrowed his brow and asked, “What makes you . . . ?”
“That’s a missile-that-never-misses,” Lisa said. “My dad says it costs one million crowns. And the reason it’s so expensive is that . . .”
“ . . . it’s an intelligent missile!” Doctor Proctor exclaimed, putting his hands to his cheeks in horror.
“What are you guys talking about?” Stanislaw growled.
“Once the missile locks on to its intended target, and this one has, it has radar that can locate the target no matter where it goes!”
“And what does that mean?” Stanislaw asked. Stanislaw knocked a knuckle against the radar screen where the blip dot was already much closer to the blop dot.
Doctor Proctor and Lisa stared at each other.
“It means Nilly and the reindeer don’t have a chance!” Doctor Proctor whispered.
A Little Less Than Twenty-Four Hours to Go
IN THE SLEIGH’S side-view mirror Nilly saw the white missile closing in from behind. “Test pilot Nilly to headquarters,” he said. “There’s something weird about this missile. It seems to turn the same way I do.”
“I’m afraid that’s a missile-that-never-misses you’ve got on your tail,” Stanislaw said.
“Wh-what do I do?” Nilly asked.
When his question was met by an uncomfortably long silence, he understood that there was no obvious answer.
Finally he heard Lisa’s voice yell, “Just fly as fast as you can, Nilly!”
“O . . . kay . . . ,” said Nilly, who thought he was already flying quite fast. In his side-view mirror, though, he saw the missile continuing to close in. “But are you sure the fastest we can go is fast enough?”
Again the silence before he received an answer was much longer than Nilly would have liked. And the answer didn’t make him much happier:
“Fly . . . um, faster than you can,” Doctor Proctor yelled. “And make some sudden turns, and . . . uh, stuff.”
“Come on, Nilly,” Lisa yelled. “We know you can do it!”
“Can I?” asked Nilly, who had picked up his pace, but the white missile in the mirror just got bigger and bigger.
“Remember that you’re Doctor Proctor’s best test pilot!” Doctor Proctor said.
“Yes, that’s certainly true,” Nilly said.
“Nilly!” Stanislaw screamed. “Do . . . something! You’re going to be Christmas dinner in four seconds . . . three . . . two . . .”
Nilly raised the reins as high as he could over his head.
As the jet reindeer pointed their reindeer muzzles toward the ground, they went into a dive and heard the whistle from the missile as it passed over their heads. Nilly’s ears popped, and the lights from the houses and streets down below approached. He turned around in his seat and looked for the missile.
“Well, reindeer, do you think we tricked it?”
They didn’t answer, but sped panting toward the ground.
Nilly lowered the reins and felt how he was being pushed down in his seat as the sleigh abruptly flattened out after the dive. He pulled on the left rein so they did an extra loop around the city hall tower and flew between the buildings down a quiet nighttime street.
“There,” Nilly said. “Now I think we lost—”
“It’s right behind you!” Stanislaw screamed.
“Aaah!” Nilly shrieked, adjusting the reins so the sleigh shot straight ahead. He turned right at a deserted traffic light even though the light was red, flew up some stairs, under a bridge, through a church steeple where the change in air pressure he created rocked the bells and caused them to ring a couple of times, over the massive Christmas tree at University Square, right through one of the giant neon letter Os in the ad for Toro Soup on the roof of the Majorstuen transit hub building. But the missile followed him turn after turn. With every feint and dodge they made, it kept steadily gaining on them.
The sleigh raced up the hillside, toward the woods. The well-lit ski jump up at Holmenkollen came into view.
And Nilly just had time to catch the frightened expression on the face of the ski jumper coming toward them through the air before they passed each other, the jumper on his way down and Nilly and the reindeer on their way up. The sleigh runners gently made contact with the steep ski-jumping ramp, but the reindeer stepped on the gas. Up, up, to the top of the jump ramp they sped and th
en off into thin air, still going up. Nilly was terrified for his life and at the same time out of his mind with delight and exhilaration. He had jumped on the ski jump at Holmenkollen! Of course, he’d jumped the wrong direction, but still!
Nilly glanced in his mirror. The missile was a little farther behind them than a moment ago, wasn’t it? Maybe the reindeer were a little better than the missile at flying uphill like this?
“Come on!” Nilly urged. “Prove to me that you guys are real jet reindeer!” And the reindeer surged forward in their harnesses and continued straight up. And up.
And up.
The air grew colder and thinner, so cold and thin that Nilly’s teeth were chattering and he was breathing hard and the reindeer even harder.
Nilly turned around and looked down. The missile was still there.
And it didn’t seem to have chattering teeth or be breathing harder.
MR. THRANE STOOD in the bucket of his bulldozer in the palace park looking at the sky. He thought he saw a comet with a glowing tail behind it—no, two comets. Well, he would have to let comets be comets since it was time to finish up. He contemplated the snowman in front of him. It was at least sixteen feet tall and six feet wide. In short, it was the biggest snowman in the history of the snowman contest, so this would finally, finally be the year. Not only did he own Christmas and was going to make a fortune off everyone’s Christmas shopping, but Mr. Thrane was going to accomplish what neither Mr. Thrane Senior nor Mr. Thrane Senior Senior had accomplished: winning the gold medal for Oslo’s biggest snowman. Big bulldozer tracks ran through the park, and in some places he had bulldozed so much snow that the withered, brown grass underneath showed. There really wasn’t much snow left for the other idiot contestants. So in a few hours, when it was light out and they arrived and got to see this monster snowman, they were guaranteed to just turn around and go home again, those pathetic losers. All that was left now was for Mr. Thrane to stick the big carrot into the snowman’s enormous head and then quickly get the bulldozer out of sight. It was still dark out, but people would start waking up soon, and some of them would walk through the palace park on their way to their last day of work before the Christmas holidays. And if they noticed the bulldozer, it might occur to them to go see the snowman contest committee and tell them that Mr. Thrane had cheated. And even if that was true, obviously even the biggest numbskull knew that it was far better to cheat without anyone knowing about it and win the gold medal than to cheat in such a way that everyone found out about it and not win the gold medal.
“Bring me a little closer,” Mr. Thrane yelled to his twins, who were sitting in the bulldozer’s driver’s seat arguing over which one of them would drive and which one would control the digging bucket.
The bulldozer started moving.
“Stop!” Mr. Thrane screamed, and the bulldozer stopped so abruptly that Mr. Thrane fell over in the bucket. He stood back up, his face red with rage. “Tell me this: Can’t you boys drive a bulldozer?”
“We’re just kids, Dad!” Truls protested.
“Yes,” Mr. Thrane said. “Little babies who drive like old biddies!” He leaned out over the edge of the bucket but couldn’t reach the snowman’s head. “Raise the bucket some more, Trym!”
The bucket jerked upward and stopped abruptly, causing Mr. Thrane to first hiccup and then bite his tongue.
He closed his eyes and counted slowly to ten in his mind, wondering how a genius like himself could have produced two idiots the likes of his sons. Because there was no doubt he was a genius. Who but a genius could have fooled the king into selling Christmas? Especially since no one had known the king even owned Christmas. No, there was only one word for something so sly, shrewd, and sneaky, and that was “genius”! But they still needed to stick in this crummy carrot nose. Mr. Thrane tried again, reaching from the bucket with the carrot in his hand. But something felt too tight. It was his suspenders. He loosened them a little and reached again toward the sixteen-foot-tall snowman.
“How’s it going, Dad?” Truls called out.
“Can you reach, Dad?” Trym yelled.
“Yes!” Mr. Thrane grunted. The carrot was nearing the snowman’s head. Only an inch or two to go now.
“NILLY!” LISA YELLED desperately at the control panel. “Nilly!”
“The sleigh is too high. He’s out of range. We can’t see him on the screen and we’ve lost radio contact,” Stanislaw said.
“Will we . . . ? Will we ever see or hear him again?”
“I don’t know. This radio transmitter wasn’t intended for regular shortwave radio but rather high-voltage, strong-current, wide-wave Santa frequency.”
Lisa turned to Doctor Proctor and asked, “What is he saying?”
“Santas are born with a kind of radio receiver in their brains,” the inventor explained. “That means they can hear anything anyone says on the Santa frequency no matter where they are on earth.”
“And Nilly only has a normal radio,” Lisa said, on the verge of tears. “Because Nilly is only a normal boy.”
“But even being Santa wouldn’t help him now, I’m afraid,” Stanislaw said, pointing at the radar.
Lisa stared. The blip dot was almost on top of the blop dot now.
“Only a normal boy,” Doctor Proctor repeated, sounding as if he, too, wanted to cry.
“LOOP!” NILLY YELLED. “How do you do a loop-the-loop?” But there was no answer in his earpiece.
The reindeer continued up and up, higher and higher in front of him, but the missile was getting closer and closer behind him.
He flicked the reins, crossed them, clicked his tongue, yelled, “whoa!” and snapped his fingers. But nothing helped. He could hear the sizzling sound from the missile behind him now.
“Møø!” he yelled.
“Møø!” the reindeer said.
“Møø-møø!” Nilly yelled.
“Møø-møø!”
“No, loop-the-loop! Roll! Backward! Uh . . . um . . . øøm-øøm?”
“Øøm-øøm!”
And with that, the reindeer curved up, over, and back until they were flying upside down, pulling the sleigh behind them so that it was hanging upside down in the middle of a perfect loop, and for a second Nilly was sure he would fall out. But then the reindeer were under him and the downward part of the loop began. Nilly heard only the whoosh of the missile, which was still on its way up before he saw the glow of Oslo below them start to grow. The glow became individual buildings, houses, streetlights, headlights, and boat lanterns out on the black fjord. And although he knew the missile was after them again, Nilly thought he might as well enjoy the fun bits of life while he could. So he let out a long, “Yiiiipppeee!”
He aimed at the thing that was lit up the brightest, the structure that was biggest and in the heart of the city.
The palace.
Nilly was going so fast now that the fillings in his teeth were rattling, so he closed his mouth and concentrated. And as the sleigh passed the flag at the top of the king’s flagpole, Nilly quickly lowered the reins. The sleigh flattened out and passed in front of the palace at such a raw, rushing, rump-shaking speed that the air pressure knocked the hats clean off the two guards on duty.
Nilly steered between the trees in the park on the palace grounds, up over a hill, along a footpath, past a bench, over a frozen pond, between two enormous oak trees. And there, suddenly, right in front of him, a white giant appeared, and Nilly realized it was too late to avoid impact.
“YOU SEE, TRULS and Trym?” yelled Mr. Thrane, who had just jabbed the carrot into the snowman’s head. He took a step back in the bulldozer’s bucket and beheld his perfect creation with pride. Or, wait a minute. It wasn’t completely perfect. The carrot nose was a tad crooked. Mr. Thrane sighed, leaned out of the bucket again and grasped the carrot. As he did so he noticed something out of the corner of his eye, something approaching alarmingly fast. Then everything exploded in a huge cloud of snow, and Mr. Thrane fell out of the bucket. He spat and
blinked, and once he got the snow off his face, he realized he was lying on top of his soon-to-be-prize-winning snowman, which wasn’t anywhere near as impressively large now that it’s head was missing. All that was left was the carrot, which Mr. Thrane was still clutching in his hand.
“Did you guys see that?” He moaned.
“Daddy . . . ,” Trym said.
“We see something else . . . ,” Truls said.
Mr. Thrane turned around. And there, from between the oak trees, he saw a white missile speeding toward them.
“No!” he screamed, clinging protectively to his headless snowman. “Please . . . don’t!”
But missiles don’t care about “please” or “don’t” or “hang on a second.” They hurtle on no matter what they encounter, and—poof!—there went the whole snowman, disintegrated into a cloud of snow that slowly settled like a small flurry over the park, the bulldozer, and the twins.
Truls coughed. Trym coughed.
And then they looked at each other and asked, “Where’s Daddy?”
“THE MISSILE SEEMS to have slowed down a little. It’s flying slower than the sleigh now,” Stanislaw said, pointing to the radar screen. “Strange.”
“But that’s wonderful!” Lisa said, jumping up and down and clapping her hands.
“I’m afraid it won’t last,” Stanislaw said, and pointed to the reindeer-pulse-ometer. “The reindeer are exhausted.”
Just then the radio crackled.
“Nilly to headquarters! SOS! SOS!”
“We’ve reestablished radio contact! The picture’s back,” Stanislaw said, pointing to the video screen.
“Nilly!” Doctor Proctor cried. “Where are you?”
“We’re flying over the rooftops downtown!” Nilly yelled. “But the reindeer are at their limit. We’re flying lower and lower! We’re going to crash soon!”
“If they crash, the missile will hit them,” Doctor Proctor said. “We have to think of something, and fast!”
“He should come back here!” Lisa said. “No, I guess then the missile would just follow and blow us all to smithereens. He should . . . he should . . .”