Chapter 26: Phoning Home
It took nearly an hour for Nick and Jimmy to find their way back to the base. Cindy sat on the border of the campsite, twiddling her headset in her hands. "Jimmy, Nick, are you alright?" she asked while running up to them. "What were those gunshots?"
"I'll leave you two alone," Nick whispered to Jimmy while walking back to camp.
Cindy watched as he walked away. "Where's he going? Too busy to answer my questions?"
Jimmy shook his head. "He needs to let Betty know that he's ok. I think they, have a thing."
"Oh," Cindy said while picturing the two of them together. "Well, that's nice, but what the heck happened out there?"
Jimmy grabbed her hand and led her back to camp. "It was just a big misunderstanding. Nick simply lost track of time, and the gunshots were him taking his own private target practice. No Yolkians, no boy trapped in a well, nothing,"
Cindy breathed a sigh of relief. "That's good. You really had me worried, Jimmy." Jimmy smiled at her. "I mean, you and Nick. Both of you had me worried."
Jimmy squeezed her hand a little as they walked past the alarm system in the middle of the camp. "Do you realize," he began while shaking his head in disbelief, "that we have only been on this asteroid twelve hours?"
Cindy stopped walking and looked at her watch. Jimmy was right, it wasn't even nine thirty. "Man, what a chaotic day," she said, summing up all that had occurred over the past twelve hours. She continued leading Jimmy around the camp.
"We set up camp, organized the guns and other supplies, got in some target practice, had our first real scare with Nick missing," he listed the events to her.
"You know what the weirdest thing is?" she asked him. He shook his head. "I'm not the least bit tired."
Jimmy realized that he was wide awake as well. "Me neither. Weird. Remember that first night, how exhausted we all were? Now I don't think that I could fall asleep if I tried."
As Jimmy and Cindy passed by Nick's tent, he emerged. "Sorry, I couldn't help but overhearing," he told them. He stepped in stride with them and continued walking. "If you're not tired, I have a job that really needs to get done before we fight the Yolkians. It's dull, but someone's gotta do it," he said with a shrug.
Jimmy looked to Cindy, who nodded. "Yeah, why not? What is it?" he asked Nick.
"We need to fill all of the empty magazines with bullets. The magazines are for the rifles and pistols. We should also load up the shotguns," he explained.
"Let me get Sheen. I haven't seen him much today," Jimmy told Cindy and Nick. "Besides, he seems to have a knack for guns."
"Fine, meet you there," Nick told him. Jimmy nodded and ran off towards Sheen's tent. Nick stared after him for a moment before walking with Cindy towards the supply tents. "I'm really sorry that I worried you guys. I didn't mean to. I just, like Jimmy said, lost track of time."
"It's alright," told him while entering the tent. "So, how does this work?"
Nick pulled an empty magazine out of a case in the corner. "Simple. Take a magazine and a box of bullets. Then grab a bullet and push it into the magazine from the front," he explained while demonstrating. "Make sure that the bottom of the bullet is being forced down onto the magazine spring. Then do it again until the magazine is full of fifteen bullets."
Cindy nodded and grabbed a magazine and a box of ammo. "How did you do with your target practice? How good of a shot are you?"
Nick waited a moment before answering. He quickly finished putting his fifteenth bullet into the magazine. He then cleared some space and put the magazine on the ground, starting a loaded pile. "Better than you and Jimmy, but worse than Sheen." He grabbed another magazine and chuckled. "That kid sure is something, ain't he? Definitely the weirdest and dumbest kid I've ever met, but he's our best shot. What do you call that? Someone who sucks at everything except for one thing that they're really good at?"
"Idiot savant," Cindy told him while frowning.
"That's it," he said while snapping his fingers and getting started on loading his new magazine.
"Although I only think he's the first part," she mumbled.
Jimmy slowly walked towards Sheen's tent, taking time to admire the twinkling stars in the sky. After a few moments he came up to his friend's shelter and pulled back the flap. "Knock, knock," he said while peeking his head inside.
"Hang on," Sheen whispered to Jimmy while covering his headset's microphone. Jimmy nodded and stood by the door.
"Yeah, Jimmy's here. I'll talk to you soon. And stay off of that leg, I saw you limping yesterday!" Sheen shouted into the headset. "Bye. Night," he said with a dreamy smile while taking his headset off.
"Libby?" Jimmy asked.
"Yeah," Sheen said while laying down on his sleeping bag and putting his arms behind his head. "I miss her already, man. It's been what, a week since I've last seen her?"
"Try a day and a half," Jimmy told him with a smile. "Nick, Cindy, and I are loading all of the guns. Want to join us?"
Sheen jumped up, nodding vigorously. "Let's go!" he shouted while grabbing his headset.
"We better stop by Nick's tent and mine. I should get our headsets too," he said while he and Sheen walked out of the tent.
"Catch," Jimmy said as he walked into the ammunition. He tossed Nick's headset, and Nick caught it and quickly placed it on.
"Phoning home?" he asked Jimmy.
Jimmy nodded as he took a seat beside Cindy. She handed him a magazine and a box of ammo. "We'll check in with Control Team in a minute. What are we doing here, Nick?"
Nick repeated the loading instructions for Sheen and Nick. "Think you can handle that, Jimmy? I know you can, Sheen."
Sheen smiled, happy that someone finally trusted him. "Definitely," he agreed while starting to load his first magazine.
Jimmy turned on his headset before starting to load his magazine. "Neutron calling Folfax, Neutron calling Folfax. Do you read me, Libby?" he asked.
A slight pause, and then, "Loud and clear, Neutron. Good to hear from you. Am I talking to anyone else?"
"Best friend here," Cindy spoke into the microphone. "Great to hear from you, Libs. Been way too long."
"General Dean here. Hey Libby."
"Sheen again. Glad to hear from you. Are you feeling alright?"
"Feeling fine, Sheen," Libby sweetly told her boyfriend. "Not much has changed in the last fifteen minutes."
Jimmy was about to start a conversation, but there was one more voice coming through their headsets. "This is Carl. Carl Wheezer. Can you guys hear me?"
Jimmy gave a wide smile at the sound of his best friend. "Carl! Glad to hear from you. Where have you been all day?"
"Yeah, did you sneak into that petting zoo again?" Sheen asked, also smiling at his friend's voice.
"No, Libby had me making meals for everyone. We miss your Black Cows, Sheen," he explained. "I never know how much syrup to put in."
Sheen laughed. "Well, I'll make a fresh batch when I get back home."
Jimmy looked to see Cindy smiling as well. "It's glad to have the old gang back together," she told everyone.
"Hear, hear," Jimmy agreed. "What's Control Team's status, Libby?"
"Very good, Jimmy. We've been pretty busy today," she answered. "I've been teaching everyone how to work all of the stuff in your lab. We've got around a dozen of our best computer geeks adjusting your rocket's automated thrust patterns, zeroing in on our parents' location, and about a dozen more odd jobs. That fortress is coming along, although I think everyone here realizes that it's just something to kill time, not really a necessity. I've run four more searches, and there is no sign of alien life in Retroville or anywhere else in Texas."
Cindy nodded. "That's good to hear. For once, I'm glad that I was wrong."
Jimmy smiled at Cindy, and she smiled back. Nick glanced over at Jimmy and gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod.
"Libby, can you do me a favor?" he asked while taking his gaze off of the lovebirds and back onto
his half-loaded magazine.
"Hold on, Nick. Jimmy, Cindy, I just want to let you know that Sheen filled me in on the details of Nick's little disappearance today. He didn't hang up on me."
"We were in the middle of…" Cindy began to explain, but Libby cut her off.
"Don't worry about it. I know that you guys have a lot going on there, and that you don't have time to explain every detail to me. It's alright."
"Thanks for understanding," Jimmy told her. He finished loading his first magazine and tossed it aside.
Jimmy went to grab another empty magazine, but he slapped his forehead and shook his head. "Nick, your favor reminds me of something as well. Remember how earlier today I asked for a status report on all of our guns and supplies?"
"Yeah, why?"
"Well, you never told me how many people we have. Did you count them?"
Nick nodded. "Counting us four in the tent, we have one hundred and thirty-seven."
Jimmy stared at him in disbelief. "That's impossible. We only took forty rockets up here. There was no reason for there to be more than one person in a rocket. We could have died trying to disable that force field, and we almost did."
"I was surprised too. I asked around, and apparently," Nick explained while opening a new box of ammo, "when some kids saw their friends going up there, they decided that they'd go as well. Some people were such good friends that they would rather die with their buddies then live without them. Looks like we've got some brave souls fighting on our side."
Jimmy slowly nodded. "Yeah, guess so."
There was a moment of silence as they thought that over. Finally, Nick repeated his question. "Libby, could you do me a favor?"
Another beat of silence. "Oh, sorry. Of course. What is it?"
"Could you tell me how long until we reach the Yolkian planet? I want to see how many more days I have to train everyone."
"Hang on a second," she said while cracking her knuckles before furiously typing on her keyboard. "Well, this is interesting," she said while studying the data. "Jimmy, were you giving a rough estimate when you told everyone that it would take two weeks to get to the Yolkian planet?"
Jimmy laughed. "That's putting it lightly. I forgot all about that. I had been pretty tired and had a huge workload. I wasn't thinking too clearly, I just sort of guessed. I was way off, wasn't I?"
Libby chuckled on her end. "Only slightly. At your speed, you should arrive at your parents' location in only three days."
Nick frowned. "I only have three days to train everyone?"
Cindy shrugged. "From what I saw, we were doing pretty well. And since our camp is fully set up, we can focus on training from now on. You'll do fine, Nick."
Cindy quickly turned her attention from Nick to Jimmy. "Jimmy, I think you're slipping. You were off by quite a lot on that ETA," she teased curling her ponytail around in her fingers.
"Well, I have been a little distracted lately," he flirtatiously told her.
Libby and Carl stared at each other back in the lab's control room. "Did we miss something?" she asked.
"You missed a lot," Nick whispered.
"Jimmy, there's something else. It's a little odd," she told him while going over the data on her monitor.
"How odd?" Jimmy asked, feeling the first pangs of the familiar headache that always accompanied his confusion.
"Not as odd as the whole disappearing force field thing," Libby explained. "Hang on. Carl, take a look at this," she said while pulling up a huge map of the universe that Jimmy had sketched. She zoomed in on the area near the Yolkian planet. "These coordinates are different, right?" she asked him while pointing to two sets of numbers on the screen.
"Looks like it," he agreed.
"Jimmy, talking to you again," Libby told him.
"Go ahead," Jimmy answered.
"Alright, here we go. I'm looking at the map of the universe that you have sketched based upon your adventures and studies. Now, our parents are being held on the Yolkian planet, right?"
"Almost certainly," Jimmy told her. Cindy, Sheen, and Nick pushed their headset's receivers further into their ears, listening intently.
"Well, the rough location of your parents is a little off from the location of the Yolkian's planet. At your speed, it's two hours closer."
"That is strange," he told Libby while closing his eyes and thinking.
"So, they're not on the Yolkian planet?" Nick asked.
"Is there another planet or moon where the parents are?" Cindy asked.
"Not according to Jimmy's map," Libby explained to them. She frowned as she continued zooming in on the coordinates that represented everyone's parents. "Nothing. Man, this adventure just keeps getting weirder and weirder, doesn't it?"
Suddenly Jimmy opened his eyes. He laughed a little while shaking his head and smiling. "It's not weird at all. The Yolkians live on a planet," he explained.
"Wow, great epiphany," Cindy interrupted. Jimmy shot her a glare, and she smiled. "Kidding, I'm kidding. Sorry. Old habit. Go ahead."
"As I was saying," Jimmy grumbled, "they live on a planet. Planets have orbits. I never bothered to study the Yolkian's planet's orbit. That's why the planet is at a different location than the one I have on my map. It's simply at another point in the orbit."
Libby listened to what he was saying and nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense." Libby turned off her computer and leaned back in her seat. "Well, that's about all I have to report. I'll check in again tomorrow. Night, everyone."
"Goodnight," Carl said while following Libby out of the control room and into the lab's lobby.
Everyone inside the tent said their goodbyes before turning their headsets off. Nick glanced at the growing pile of loaded magazines beside him. "Once we're done with the pistols we still have to fill the rifle's magazines and load the shotguns. We've still got a lot of work to do."
Jimmy yawned for the first time that night. That action proved infectious, as everyone else in the tent quickly yawned. A wave of fatigue seemed to wash over the room. "It's…" he began while looking down at his wrist, "ten o'clock. And I'm tired all of a sudden. Let's finish this tomorrow night. We'll head to the firing range first thing in the morning. We'll work on our marksmanship all morning and afternoon, and then head back here. Does that sound good to everyone?" Jimmy asked.
Sheen let out another huge yawn, ready to go to sleep now that he had wished his girlfriend a good night. "Fine by me. I'm beat," he answered while standing up and stretching.
"Me too," Nick agreed while putting his bullets and magazine aside. "See you guys bright and early. I'm heading back to the tent."
He and Sheen walked out of the tent and split up, heading to their own tents. Cindy and Jimmy smiled at each other while still inside. "Well, um, goodnight, Cindy."
"Goodnight Jimmy," she said while batting her lashes.
"Can I walk you to your tent?" he asked while invitingly letting his hand hang loosely by his side.
"Well, it is pretty dark. Buddy system, right?" she joked while grabbing his hand and leading him towards her new home.