Tobias gripped the rope for another try, but I shoved him out of the way and started hauling myself up. I didn’t look back. I didn’t want third place. I wanted first, and I knew I had a shot at it. This morning we’d done more underwater trials, and even though I was a bit better, I was still clumsy and slow. Tobias was by far the best. He was my friend, but he was also my competition, and I needed an edge over him.
I scaled the wall, rappelled down the other side, and sprinted after Shepherd and Bronfman. Shepherd had the lead, and Bronfman was slowing. Maybe he thought he could slack off now. I gave it my all, and though I didn’t catch up with Shepherd, I skimmed past Bronfman and heard his shout of surprise as I crossed the finish.
When Tobias came in sixth, I went over to him.
“Sorry about pushing you,” I said.
He was hunched over, catching his breath. He waved a hand. “’S okay,” he panted. “I was just slowing you down.”
I thought he looked a little hurt, but I didn’t regret what I’d done.
Day eleven, and I swung my aching body out of bed before I was even fully awake, the morning bell ringing in my ears. Like everyone else in the dorm, I sat for a moment, staring at the notice board and the white piece of paper pinned in the middle. Wearily we all stood and made our way over. Bronfman was there first.
“Looks like you can sleep in, Cruse,” he said.
I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach. I couldn’t speak. I staggered over to the board.
There were two names on the paper, but neither of them was mine.
Bronfman slapped me on the shoulder, laughing. “Should’ve seen the look on your face, kid.”
“You’re an idiot, Bronfman,” said Tobias.
“Hey, it was just a joke,” the test pilot said, grinning. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist.”
I should’ve been angrier, but all I felt was relief.
“Just some questions we’d like you to answer, gents,” said Grendel Eriksson, handing each of us a booklet as thick as an atlas. “Nothing too difficult.”
“What’s that?” Tobias asked, pointing across the room.
“That’s where you’ll answer the questions,” said Eriksson.
Suspended from a complicated set of scaffolding was a narrow metal tube. Attached to its outside were all sorts of wires and mechanical arms and hosing. There was a small hatch at one end of the tube, and a wheeled set of stairs pushed up to it.
“One person goes in the tube?” I asked.
“Five people go in the tube,” Eriksson said with a smile.
It was day twelve, and we were down to thirty-six candidates. Our group only had five people now: me, Tobias, Shepherd, Bronfman, and Perry.
“When you finish your questions, you can come out,” said Eriksson. “In you go. Don’t forget your pencils.”
My stomach curdled. It was hard enough to see how one person would fit in that tube, much less five.
“Don’t like small spaces?” Shepherd asked me.
“Doesn’t bother me,” I lied. And to show him I wasn’t afraid, I walked up the steps first.
The hatch was tiny, and I had to crawl through on my hands and knees. The tube had no windows, just a single very dim light. I instantly regretted going in first, for I’d have to move to the very end. The space was so cramped, it was hard to twist myself into a sitting position. My knees were almost at my forehead. Tobias came next, then Shepherd, Bronfman, and Perry, all of us squished tight together.
Eriksson’s face appeared outside the hatch. “If there’re any problems, just sing out.” And he sealed us inside.
“This’ll take hours!” Tobias said, flipping through his booklet. “It’s eighty pages!”
“Best get at it,” said Shepherd calmly.
I did not feel calm. My heart pounded, and it was hard to keep my panic reined in. Was this what our spaceship was going to be like? It couldn’t be so small, could it? Maybe I wasn’t cut out to be an astralnaut after all. I closed my eyes, but that only made things worse, plunging the world into blackness. I opened my eyes and stared at the metal beneath my feet, focusing on the rivets holding the plates together. Beyond the metal plates was the outside: the room, and the building, and beyond it the whole wide world. Somehow this thought helped ease my claustrophobia.
I got to work. The first page was multiple-choice questions, fairly simple logic problems.
There was a mechanical drone from outside, and the tube tilted—not a lot, just enough to slide us all to the right, squishing against one another even more. Perry, at the low end, got the worst of it.
“Can you get your elbow out of my armpit, Bronfman?” he asked.
“Nowhere else for it to go,” Bronfman replied.
The tube leveled off, then rotated suddenly. We all pitched forward, banging our heads on the wall. We shuffled on our bums, readjusting ourselves.
“How’re we supposed to work like this?” Tobias demanded.
“That’s the point,” said Shepherd implacably, turning to the next page of his booklet.
I worked steadily for maybe ten minutes and then noticed the sweat trickling down my flanks. I glanced over and saw everyone’s forehead slick with perspiration.
“Hot in here,” said Perry.
“Open a window, would you, Blanchard?” said Bronfman. “And feel free to jump.”
“Bronfman, you smell bad,” Tobias said.
“That’s the sweet smell of success,” the test pilot retorted. “I’m on page twelve, by the way.”
I was only on page eight. My sweaty hand was smearing my answers.
“We’ll run out of air at this rate,” Perry said, just a trace of alarm in his voice. “Is anyone else feeling dizzy?”
I was, but wasn’t about to admit it.
“They’re testing us,” said Shepherd. “They want to see how we cope.”
“This thing’s got to be ventilated,” said Tobias.
As if on cue, there came a loud hiss, and I could feel the tube cooling.
“That’s better,” said Perry.
But it got colder and colder, and before long I was shivering, the sweat icy against my skin. I tried to keep working, but my fingers were growing numb.
A deafening bang against the tube made me drop my pencil. Then came a second bang, and a third, from different parts of the tube. The noise kept up and did not stop. My head rang. I saw Shepherd take the chewing gum from his mouth, break it into two, and stick it in both ears. He kept working.
The banging went on for some time, and after the banging came a high shrieking sound that was even worse. When the shrieking finally stopped, the tube got very hot again, and started swinging back and forth. I was used to the pitch and roll of airships, so the movement didn’t bother me too much, but I saw Perry dragging his hand across his sweaty forehead and looking a bit desperate.
“Yee-haw!” said Bronfman. “This is my kinda ride!”
“Put a cork in it, Bronfman,” said Perry.
“Can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen,” Bronfman said, pumping his legs to make the tube swing higher.
I was worried Perry might take a punch at him, but at that moment the light went out. The tube suddenly seemed much, much smaller.
“Great,” said Tobias. “How’re we supposed to do the blinking questions?”
There was a tiny flare of light, and Chuck Shepherd was holding a slim battery-powered flashlight. Its beam was very small and lit only the page of his own booklet. He kept working.
“You’re a regular Boy Scout, Shepherd,” I said.
“Always prepared,” he said.
“Can you lean that light over here a little, captain?” said Bronfman.
“No can do, lieutenant,” said Shepherd.
There was nothing to do but wait and sweat and try to ignore the ripe smell that was building inside the tube. To my relief, the light came back on after five minutes, the swinging stopped, and we could all get back to work.
“Damn it,” Tobias muttered.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“These math questions. Six pages of them. There’s no way I can do these.”
I was well into that section. Math had never come easily to me. At the Academy I’d struggled at first to master it, but now I mostly got by, and I certainly could handle the questions on this test.
“Just skip ahead,” I told him, and kept working.
I wanted to beat him. I wanted to beat everyone. Shepherd and Bronfman might fly ornithopters, but I bet I’d spent more time aloft than both of them put together. The sky was my domain. And I certainly had more right to the stars than an underwater welder. I realized I was glad Tobias was having trouble—and that made me feel suddenly ugly. I remembered how I’d shoved him out of the way on the obstacle course.
“Here,” I said, looking over. “Maybe I can help.”
I started showing him how to solve some of the problems. Tobias was smart; he’d catch on quickly enough.
“What’s the matter with you, Cruse?”
I looked up to see Shepherd staring at me in disgust.
“You’ve got an edge over him,” the Aeroforce captain told me. “You think you’re gonna get on that spaceship by being a nice guy?”
Bronfman sniffed, as if he couldn’t believe my stupidity.
Head-splitting screeching noises started up inside the tube, and I could feel the temperature drop swiftly. The tube began rotating back and forth in little erratic jerks. It was nearly impossible to read the questions.
“I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” muttered Perry.
“Just holler and Eriksson’ll spring you,” Shepherd said.
“More room for us,” quipped Bronfman. “But I bet you find your name on that bulletin board bright and early.”
“I’ve had just about enough of you, Bronfman,” Perry said.
“Can never have too much of a good thing,” said the test pilot.
“Bronfman,” said Tobias, his teeth chattering, “you’re so full of yourself, I’m surprised you don’t explode.”
“Pipe down, all of you,” said Shepherd. “The sooner you finish, the sooner you get to leave.”
“Maybe there’s a faster way,” I said. I was so cold that I was surprised my brain was still functioning. “There’re five of us. We divide the questions into five, and each does a chunk. We all finish at the same time. We get out sooner.”
“Sounds like cheating to me,” said Bronfman, shivering, but I thought he sounded interested.
“Why’s it cheating?” I said. “All Eriksson said was, when we were done we could come out. He didn’t say we couldn’t work together.”
“They want to see how we fly solo, Cruse,” Shepherd said.
“To hell with that,” Tobias said. “I’m in.”
“Me too,” said Perry.
“What about you, Bronfman?” I asked.
He stole a glance at Shepherd, then shook his head. “Nice try, kid, but I trust my own answers, not yours.”
We divided up the rest of the questions three ways and got to work. The tube swayed and jerked, grew hot and then cold again, and deafened us with its noises, but somehow we managed to finish the booklet. Perry slapped on the metal hull.
“Hey! We’re done in here! Let us out!”
Seconds later the hatch opened and Eriksson looked in. “That was quick. Who’s done?”
“Me, Cruse, and Blanchard,” Perry said.
“Interesting,” said Eriksson, stepping back to make room.
It really did give me an amazing amount of pleasure to crawl over Shepherd and Bronfman on my way out.
“Big mistake, Cruse,” the Aeroforce captain murmured.
“Hey, watch your knees, Cruse!” Bronfman said.
“See you fellows, later,” I said. “We’ll save some dinner for you.”
Day thirteen, the last day of training, and my body was so sore I could barely sit up in bed. My eyes went to the piece of paper on the notice board. I feared my name really would be on it this time. Maybe Shepherd was right, and we’d cheated inside the tube yesterday.
As usual, Bronfman was first to the board. He stared at it so long, I wondered if he saw his own name there.
“Who got the chop today?” Shepherd asked, walking over.
“It’s a death threat,” said Bronfman.
“You’re hilarious, Bronfman,” I said.
“No joke,” he said.
We were all over in a trice. The typed note was very brief.
Quit this dangerous enterprise before disaster befalls you.
The heavens were not made for man.
There was no signature. I felt a chill. Whoever had written this, they knew about the astralnaut program. They knew where our secret training facility was, and they knew how to get inside.
Eriksson strode into our dorm with his clipboard. “Congratulations, gents—no one got cut today. What’s this?”
He saw the note on the board and angrily ripped it down. “Mr. Lunardi’ll want to see this,” he said, and disappeared.
“Who’d write stuff like that?” Tobias asked.
“Babelites,” I said, suddenly sure.
“Who’re they?” Perry asked.
“I had a run-in with them.” And I told them about how they’d tried to use my ship to blow up the Celestial Tower.
It was a good story to tell, and even Bronfman kept his mouth shut, though at the end he said, “How come I never read about this in the papers?”
“They hushed it up,” I said. “That tower’s France’s new symbol of national pride. They don’t want anyone knowing how close they came to losing it.”
“Huh,” said Bronfman dubiously, but he looked a bit uncomfortable.
“You told any of this to Lunardi?” Shepherd asked.
I shook my head.
“Might be a good idea,” he said. “These fellows sound like half-wits, but they’re half-wits with guns.”
I quickly got dressed and made my way downstairs to find Mr. Lunardi.
It was unusually quiet in the cafeteria at breakfast—not just because there were only twenty-four of us left, but because everyone was nervously waiting to hear from Mr. Lunardi. I’d already been to his office and told him what I knew about the Babelites. He’d listened carefully, thanked me very much, and said he’d be speaking to us all shortly.
We all looked over as he strode in now.
“Gentlemen,” he said, holding up a note and whisking it about dismissively, “you’ve all seen these pinned up in your dorms. Doubtless they’re the work of the Babelites.” He smiled. “Some of you may have heard of these poor fellows. They think heaven is just above our heads. They’re afraid we might anger God if we go to outer space. I would never dare anger God, gentlemen, but his creation is vast, and I don’t believe heaven has such an exact location. The Babelites have been making all sorts of threats against the Celestial Tower in Paris. Most of them have been toothless, but, as you may have heard from Mr. Cruse, one of them was very serious indeed.”
“How’d they find us?” asked Bronfman. “I thought this place was supposed to be secret.”
“I’m actually surprised it wasn’t found out sooner,” said Lunardi. “This kind of news travels very swiftly. All it takes is one careless comment.”
“How’d they get into the building, though?” Perry wanted to know.
“We’ve already taken measures to make sure it can’t happen again,” said Mr. Lunardi. “I’m doubling our security staff and changing all the locks.”
“Sounds like some of them have pretty serious firepower,” one of the other trainees said.
“I’ve just been on the telephone with the Ministry of Defense,” said Mr. Lunardi. “They’re confident the Babelites can’t have had enough time to organize any significant threat over here. Likely these notes are the work of a single disgruntled fellow. He may not even be connected with the real Babelites.”
The thought was re
assuring. I looked around to see how everyone was taking this. Some of the trainees were nodding, relieved.
“Now, if any of you have misgivings,” Mr. Lunardi went on, “you’re free to step down from the program. I know some of you have families and other responsibilities. The decision’s yours. But remember who you are, gentlemen. You’ve all made it to the final trials. You’re hammered from strong stuff. Your eyes are on outer space. Progress. The future of our nation and our world! Will we let a handful of lunatics deter us?”
“Hell, no,” said Bronfman, and some of the other fellows laughed.
Reg Perry, I noticed, still looked a little unsure, as did Tobias. Shepherd looked as inscrutable as always. He wouldn’t be stepping down, and neither would I. I trusted Mr. Lunardi to take care of us.
Mr. Lunardi looked around the cafeteria and smiled. “Now, you have tomorrow off. Rest, relax, visit with friends and family if you can. I look forward to seeing you Monday for the final tests.”
A CYCLE IN STANLEY PARK
“Come along, Marjorie!” Kate called back over her shoulder. “Just once more around the park!”
Miss Simpkins was far behind us now, wobbling on her bicycle as she tried to keep up. She waved for us to slow down. Kate just waved back cheerfully.
“She’ll never catch up,” Kate said happily. “I adore my bicycle.”
“Great invention,” I said.
We pedaled along the broad boardwalk toward the regal span of Lionsgate Bridge. The weather was perfect, the breeze off the water just fresh enough to cool my sweat. It was Sunday afternoon, my day off before the final trials, and I’d rented a bike in Stanley Park. I had spent the morning with my mother and sisters, and Kate and I had arranged to meet as if by accident.
“What you said the other day to Miss Karr,” I began cautiously, “about never getting married. You weren’t serious, were you?”
She glanced over. “It makes perfect sense from my point of view.”
“You don’t think it would be lonely?”
“I’m sure it would, sometimes. But if you want to achieve your goals, it’s sometimes necessary to make sacrifices.”