Go Big or Go Home (5 page)

W
E FLEW DOWN THE
mountain onto the prairie in Custer State Park and hung a right, to the west. Tourists were parked all along the shoulder taking pictures of a small herd of buffalo that had gotten out of the fence, which wasn't unusual. Some of the tourists were out of their cars and getting much too close. Hadn't they seen the yellow, diamond-shaped warnings posted every couple of miles along the road? They pictured a buffalo dumping a stick man head over heels.

“Check this out.” Quinn was pointing to a man in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. Snapping pictures as he went, the guy was walking up to a humongous buffalo bull that was lying down and chewing its cud. The tourist finally held up at about five yards but kept shooting as the bull rose to its feet—not a good sign. Didn't he
know this was a wild animal?

We got off our bikes wondering if we were about to witness one of those incidents where a tourist gets flattened and stomped by two thousand pounds of bent-out-of-shape buffalo. They're unpredictable beasts, and can charge in a heartbeat. “Look out,” Quinn called to the man in the flashy shirt. “Object through lens is closer than it might appear!”

The guy looked over at us all annoyed like we were being punks. He took another step, lifted the camera, took a few more pictures. Ominously, the bull swallowed its cud and lowered its massive head slightly. The guy turned his back like you might on a statue and ambled in the direction of his car, unscathed. As for the bull, it burped up its cud and went back to grinding the wad on its molars, but remained standing.

We were about to jump back on our bikes. “Uh-oh,” Quinn said. “Monkey see, monkey do.”

A little boy, disposable camera in hand, was wobbling toward the bull. The kid looked barely four, too young to be into extreme sports.

On he went, closer and closer, herky-jerky on his chubby little legs. Where were his parents?

The little photographer stopped exactly where the clueless tourist had, and he sighted through his viewfinder. The small eyes of the mountainous animal were locked on him like lasers. What was taking the kid so long to get a picture? The bull lowered his head and pawed the ground. Uh-oh.

By now a lot of the people watching from along the shoulder were alert to the impending catastrophe. Shouts and cries went up; people were pointing. “Somebody do something!” a woman wailed. Somebody had to, but nobody did until I took off at a dead sprint.

Running full out, I heard the bull snort, saw the blur of its charge. I got there a second before the animal's head and horns did, and I was able to scoop the kid out of the path of destruction.

The buffalo skidded to a stop and turned around to face me, mad as a one-ton hornet.

The monster trotted toward me, paused, lowered his head. From the side, someone came flying at me—the little boy's dad? The man grabbed the kid from my arms, spun, and ran as fast as he could. The bull chased after him, stopped short, let him go. Then the buffalo swung around and glared at me. He lowered his head and pawed the ground. It was me he wanted.

I darted to the left—he cut me off. I darted to the right—he cut me off. “Nice buffalo,” I said, but there wasn't anything nice about him. The beast lowered his massive head to show me his sharp, curling horns. He was practically breathing fire.

And now he was charging. This much I knew for sure: if I turned and ran, I was history. The world's fastest human couldn't outrun one of these things.

The bull was closing so fast and so furiously, its thundering hoofs shook the earth. The enormous head and horns were tilted down like a battering ram, its
angry tail sticking up like a stinger. A couple seconds was all I had. An idea popped into mind like a string of pictures. The thing to do was to run
toward
him instead of away from him.

I was going to have to time this just right. My eyes locked onto the wide crown of his skull.
Now!
I told myself, and charged the charging bull with three quick steps. Off the third step I bounded up and came down with both feet together like I was at the end of a diving board. As my knees uncoiled, I threw myself up and forward, way forward, hands outstretched and close together.

Barely before impact, I was airborne, and nearly upside down. I planted my hands on the base of the buffalo's horns and vaulted high as I could, tucking and tumbling in midair. The whole sickening length of the beast passed beneath me. Somehow I landed on two feet.

Quick as I could, I turned around to face the buffalo. He was whirling around, too.

Here he comes, I thought, but the storm in his buffalo brain had passed. The bull stood there a few seconds looking puzzled, then went off to join the herd.

I headed for Quinn at the side of the road. All the people standing around started to applaud. Then a bunch flocked toward me, taking pictures and stuff. One guy had his wallet out and was trying to give me a hundred-dollar bill. “You saved my kid! Here, take it!”

I brushed his hand aside, Quinn looking at me like I was crazy. By now there must've been fifty people crowding around, and I was getting claustrophobic. A
couple of cute girls wanted me to pose with them. One said, “Could you, like, sign your T-shirt, and give it to me?”

“Let's get out of here,” I said to Quinn from the side of my mouth, and took off. I grabbed my bike off the ground and swung aboard.

Quinn caught up as we passed by the famous Game Lodge where President Coolidge used to keep cool during the summertime. The shoulder there was extra wide, and Quinn was able to ride alongside. “That was nuts,” he yelled, “start to finish.”

“Insane,” I agreed.

One of the cars going by slowed to our speed, and the windows came down. It was those girls again, leaning out of the windows with cameras. “You with the hair,” one of them yelled. “Get out of the picture!”

They took pictures of me on my bike, then sped off shrieking toward Custer.

Quinn was riding at my side again. “Brady, you're a total stud!”

“Knock it off, Quinn.” I stood on the pedals and raced in front of him. I was totally pumped. I couldn't believe what had happened back there.

Quinn caught up. “Give us your T-shirt! Give us your T-shirt!'”

The shoulder was narrowing, and Quinn had to drop in behind me. We scorched the next few miles. “Stop, you lunatic!” he yelled finally, and I did.

In the shade of a big cottonwood, we sat and drank
some water. I felt myself calming down at last. “Vaulting over a buffalo,” Quinn started in, “where'd you come up with that, Brady? You did a three-sixty, at least. You even stuck the landing!”

“I can almost remember…Oh yeah, it was from a library book.”

“A library book, eh?”

“Yeah, I was doing a report on ancient Crete.”

“Crete?”

“You know, the island in the Mediterranean. They had this sport that was like bullfighting, only different. It was more of an athletic contest. Instead of killing the bull, the idea was to grab it by the horns and vault over it.”

“You read that, and you remembered it?”

“I was really into the illustrations.”

“So that's supposed to explain everything?”

“I guess.”

“No way! What were you thinking, trying to save that kid?”

“I wasn't thinking, I just reacted.”

“You ran so fast you were a total blur. What's going on, Brady?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about the way you ran circles around me with the basketball this morning, the way you attacked Iron Mountain like a Tour de France rider. Both of those were amazing enough. Okay, you saw the buffalo-vault deal in a book, but that doesn't explain how
you were able to pull it off. What's going on, you goofball?”

“I wish I knew.”

“How long has it been going on?”

“Just since this morning.”

“Something's happened to you, Brady. This isn't normal.”

“I know.”

“Well, do you feel any different?”

“I'm getting a sort of tingling all over, kind of like I stuck my finger in an electrical outlet.”

“All the time, or does it come and go?”

“It comes and goes.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Not really. I'm kind of getting used to it. You think I should go to the doctor or something? I hate going to the doctor.”

“I wouldn't, as long as it doesn't hurt. Maybe you're a genetic mutant, something like that. You get to be fourteen and a half, and this gene nobody else has suddenly kicks in…”

“Just what I want to be, a mutant.”

“I wish I had it, whatever ‘it' is.”

With that we got back on our bikes. The easy route home would have been to go through the town of Custer. We stuck to the original plan, hung a hard right, and started the climb up the Needles Highway, another narrow and twisty mountain road. Quinn led the way up, and we didn't do any racing. We stopped at the top
where the road threads its way through thirty- and forty-foot granite needles, then we burned down the other side of the mountain through the tunnels and alongside Sylvan Lake, the crown jewel of the Black Hills.

It was late in the afternoon when we rode into Hill City. Both of us found our eyes drawn to Grabba Java. The drive-through was closed, but Maggie was still inside, cleaning up. Crystal was outside at one of the picnic tables, drinking a smoothie.

Naturally we had to stop and check in with her. As we slid in on the other side of the table, Crystal asked about our ride. We said it was great, and then she kind of bit her lip and said, “I hate to tell you this, Brady, but Buzz and Max are really fried at you.”

I gulped, and the blood at my temples began to pound. “What about?”

“About that meteorite in your backpack. I made the mistake, I guess, of telling them about it. They told me this long, confusing story about you coming onto their place, them saving you from Attila, you claiming you'd come over to get back a rock that Attila had taken from your mother's flower bed.”

“That's all true, except the rock he'd taken from the flower bed was my meteorite.”

“That's the part they were fried about, you faking them out, not telling them the truth.”

“What exactly did they say?”

“That you were a big liar.”

“Nice. I've really done it now. That's the last thing I
need, getting those guys mad at me.”

“I'm sorry I brought it up. I thought you'd want to know.”

“Don't feel sorry, Crystal. It's all my fault.” From the corner of my eye I saw Quinn looking at me like, You didn't tell me about this whole episode, and why not?

Still trying to explain myself to Crystal, I said, “I guess I didn't trust that they'd give it back to me if they knew what it was. You think they would have?”

She would only shrug. “I just hope they let it drop, Brady. Those guys can have long memories.”

Tell me about it, I thought.

Crystal said good luck, which was ominous. We got on our bikes and headed for home. We were five minutes down the Mickelson Trail, riding side by side, before I broke the silence. “I'm an idiot,” I said.

Quinn didn't want to argue the point. What he said back was “There went our invitation to see those guys demo their catapult.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING WAS
Monday, and the museum in Hill City opened at 9:30. We were waiting on the doorstep when it did.

We resisted the temptation to buy any new fossils at the gift shop and headed into the exhibits. Towering above us, Stan the Tyrannosaurus rex was the star attraction. Paleontologists working out of this small but mighty museum had dug up as many T-rexes as the rest of the world combined.

The swinging doors behind the saber-toothed tiger led to the labs and the offices. We were going to need some directions.

Here came a man in a white lab coat with a cup of Grabba Java in his hand. He was moving fast and was headed where we wanted to go. Quinn spoke up, almost
stepping into his path. “Excuse me. We're looking for the meteorite expert guy.”

I always want scientists to look like Einstein. This one didn't look a bit like Einstein, but he did look eccentric. He was tall as a tree, his face was narrow as a brick, and he had a forest of white ear hair. The scientist stopped and bent down his head like a curious giraffe. “The meteorite expert guy,” he repeated thoughtfully, with a very British accent.

“I think he's here just for the summer,” I added helpfully.

“My, yes, a fellow by the name of Dr. Ripley Ripley. Can you imagine parents doing that to a child? Let me give you a tip—he doesn't like his first name. He likes his last name just fine.”

“Should we call him Dr. Ripley?” I ventured.

“Call me Dr. Rip,” he replied with a grin.

We shook hands, told him who we were and where we were from. “I'm from Oxford,” he told us, “known for shirts, shoes, and scholars. Now, how may I help you lads?”

I slung off my backpack. “We brought a meteorite for you to look at, Dr. Rip.”

“Ah, so you think you've found a meteorite, do you? After our meteor shower, I suppose I'll be looking at quite a few rocks these next few days.”

“We're pretty sure this one's the real deal,” Quinn said.

Pretty
sure? I thought.

“The light is much better in my office. Let's go back and have a look, shall we? Follow me back through the warrens, middens, and dolmens, but stay close. You might get lost in geologic time.”

Our scientist led us through a big room with a team of dinosaur techies at work. You could see the outlines of the huge fossil bone they were freeing from the surrounding rock with little picks like dental tools. Before long the professor was opening his office door for us.

“Sit down, lads, sit down.” We plunked ourselves down on a couch opposite his rolling desk chair, where he was already waiting expectantly.

As I fished in my backpack, the professor reached into the pocket of his lab coat for his glasses. Once they were perched on his nose, he reached out his long arm and took Fred in hand. As he eyeballed the traveler from every angle, the few wisps of hair on the top of his head stood on end. I didn't take that for a reaction, just static electricity due to our dry Black Hills air. The professor wasn't reacting at all.

Quinn shrugged at me. I shrugged back, then ran my eyes over the rocks on the scientist's desk, the computers, the microscopes, a glass cabinet full of vials, star charts on the walls, big enlargements of photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

“It's basaltic, almost certainly,” the professor announced at last. “Basaltic shergottite.”

My chest tightened up. I had to take a quick breath. “You're saying it's not a meteorite?”

“Beyond question it's a meteorite. Which of you would be the finder?”

“I would be the finder,” I volunteered. Quinn looked at me like I was talking funny.

“And what makes you think it was from Saturday evening's event?”

When I explained how I'd come by it, the professor's eyes got big as flying saucers. “Right through your roof and your bed! Bravo! Think of the odds on that!”

“Astronomical,” I suggested.

My pun flew past the professor—he was all wound up. “Life is surpassingly strange, my friends, and full of improbable surprises. There's a world of difference between the
improbable
and the
impossible.
Brady's near death by meteorite reminds me of the demise of Aeschylus, one of the great dramatists of ancient Greece, who was killed by a falling tortoise.”

“Sick!” Quinn exclaimed. “True story?”

“Indeed. The tortoise, you see, was dropped by a bearded vulture, known for dropping tortoises on rocks in order to crack them open like walnuts. From a height, it has been surmised, the bird mistook the great man's bald head for a rock. Take a certain individual and calculate the odds of him being killed by falling tortoise—oh, my.”

Quinn squirmed a little, afraid the professor was going to get us off track. “That's all very interesting, Dr. Rip, but is Brady's meteorite valuable?”

For some reason, the professor didn't seem thrilled
about answering that question. “Relatively speaking, most meteorites are a dime a dozen. Did you know that millions bombard us every year?”

“No way,” Quinn objected.

The professor was watching me and saw that I was on his side. He waited to see if I could explain, and I took him up on it. “Most are only as big as a grain of sand, Quinn, or maybe the size of a pebble.”

“How come you never told me?”

“I dunno. It never came up.”

“Brady's an astronomy freak. Ask him anything, Professor.”

“I'd be delighted. Let's start with our own solar system. Name the planets beginning with the one closest to the sun.”

I did, adding at the end that Pluto had been disqualified.

“What are the clouds of Venus composed of?”

“Sulfuric acid.”

“Can you name the giant moon of Saturn, which has an atmosphere?”

“Titan.”

“Bravo. Approximately how many moons has Jupiter?”

“More than sixty.”

“Excellent, Brady. Mars has two small moons. Can you name them?”

“Phobos and Deimos. Fear and terror.”

“What's unusual about them?”

“Their shape—probably they were asteroids before Mars captured them.”

“Brilliant.”

I hoped all this quizzing meant the professor was going to tell us some really important stuff, now that he could see I wasn't just some doofus with a meteorite.

“Can you possibly name the largest volcano in the solar system?”

“Olympus Mons, on Mars. Three times higher than Everest.”

A smile spread across the professor's face, and those wisps on his dome stood up again. “I have one final question for you, with a bit of a preface. Almost all meteorites come from the asteroid belt, as you no doubt know—from material left over, it's thought, from the beginning of our solar system four and a half billion years ago. Meteorites that don't come from the asteroid belt are younger, much more rare, and of far greater scientific interest. Yours is one of these. Where did it originate?”

I thought and thought. I wracked my brain. “I give up,” I said finally.

Quinn jumped up from the couch. “Congratulations, Professor! You finally stumped him. I told you it wouldn't be easy.”

Dr. Rip held out the space traveler in his open hand. “Keep in mind, this is a piece of extraterrestrial basalt, which began as molten lava flowing from the gut of a volcano.”

“Fred's from Mars?”

“Fred?” wondered the professor. “You've given the meteorite a name?”

“Wait a second,” Quinn cried. “Fred can't be from Mars!”

The professor was all intense and aglow. He turned his attention to Quinn. “Consider this, my doubtful friend. Basaltic shergottites on Earth occur
only
in meteorites. As you know, we've been landing Rovers on Mars for decades. The chemical signature of certain rocks on Mars matches perfectly with that of the basaltic shergottites found in the meteorites on Earth.”

Quinn was sticking to his guns. “Doesn't make sense. And here's why not: Mars has
gravity!
Rocks don't go flying off the surface of Mars!”

Dr. Rip did a knee slap, and his eyes lit up. “Brilliant objection, but I think you'll enjoy the explanation of how they could do just that. Picture a gigantic asteroid or comet colliding with Mars. Think of the force, and remember this: ‘For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.' Fred and thousands of his relatives are ejected beyond the gravity of Mars and into their own orbit around the sun. Around and around Fred goes, for millions of years, until one day he is snagged by the gravity of Earth, and down he comes!”

“That's rad,” Quinn raved. “Fred got kicked off Mars by a big asteroid! So, let's cut to the chase, Professor. Is he valuable?”

“Quite.”

“
How
valuable?”

“Let me put it this way. Only thirty-four Mars rocks have ever been found on Earth.”

“Thirty-four! Fred's
extremely
rare, Brady! Take a guess, Professor. How much could Brady get for him?”

Get for him? I thought. Since when had I decided to part company with him?

“I suppose it would depend on whether he sold Fred intact or in slices,” the professor replied. “That's not my field, lads. Personally, I find it disturbing whenever they are sold. It's especially a shame when they get diced up and scattered all over.”

“Man, oh man,” I said. “Have we got a lot to think about. You've been great, Dr. Rip, just great. Thanks!”

The professor turned Fred over in his palm. “Do me one favor. See this nice nub here on his backside? Would you give me this much, let me keep and study this nub off Fred's bottom? For my research? It shouldn't hurt him a bit.”

“I guess it's okay,” I said, and Quinn nodded his approval.

Dr. Ripley reached for a pair of goggles and disappeared for a few minutes. When he returned with Fred, there was a sawed-off spot where his nub had been. The professor made a small speech. It was the first time he'd ever had a Martian meteorite walk off the street and into his life. “I'm terribly honored and grateful,” he told us.

A few minutes later we jumped on our bikes with an appointment to come back at four the next afternoon and find out if the professor had learned anything. We were so pumped up, it felt like our wheels weren't touching the ground.