Life on Mars (17 page)

“Did you know we're moving?” I asked.

“I figured when your parents were house hunting in Vegas.”

“Right. In Vegas. Away from my friends and from space.”

“How do you get away from space? It's over your head all the time.”

“But … the light pollution,” I said meekly. “Never mind. I'm sure Mars will be in opposition lots of times in my life.”

“Every couple of years,” he agreed.

“Cash?”

Grunt.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Can I stop you?”

“How come you stay outside all night and don't come home until morning? I saw you once. So did Priya.”

Cash ignored my question and swiped at the curtains to
peer outside. The sky was bathed in evening indigo. A lightning bug flashed. Night would be fast upon us. He pulled himself up out of his chair with a groan, then grabbed the bag and the box. “You ready?”

I jumped up, eager to go.

It didn't feel real, walking behind Cash through the dewy backyard. My teeth chattered nervously, and I glanced up at CICM-HQ to make sure I didn't see myself sitting up there, asleep, dreaming that I was walking with Cash through the backyards.

Of course, I wasn't there, but Comet was, and he followed us, jumping at the fence, his head popping up, tongue flapping, every few feet. When we'd passed the fence line, he danced around in the corner, barking and bellowing, as if to warn me that I was with a bad guy.

“I'll be back, Comet,” I called, only half reassuring him and mostly reassuring myself, as the woods got nearer and my palms started to sweat. “Is there any poison ivy in there?” I asked, but Cash didn't answer. “Are there snakes?” Nothing. “Ticks?” Not a word. I gulped. “Open graves?”

Cash acted like he didn't hear what I was saying and plowed on into the trees, where a path led into the blanket of woods. I followed him, not sure if I was doing the smartest thing in the world, but I had gone too far to go back now. As the woods closed in around our path, I felt comforted having the moon as my companion on this walk. The moon and I had been buddies since pretty much the day I was born.

Even though it was a warm summer, the nightfall had turned everything cooler and the sweat on my skin picked up breezes that coaxed goose bumps onto my arms and legs. I listened for animals, but the only sounds I could hear were the echoes of Comet's barks in the distance.

I began to think that we might be walking forever. I started to feel far away from home. A nervous squickiness started to rise in my stomach.

“Hey,” I asked. “How much farther?”

But just then I saw what looked like illumination between some of the branches up ahead. Not man-made illumination, but more like the blue light of a clear summer night sky.

“Is that where we're going? What's up ahead?”

“You ask a lot of questions, kid,” Cash grumbled over his shoulder, but he tromped on.

Finally, he stopped, and I eased next to him. “Whoa,” I breathed. “I didn't know this was back here.”

Before us was a huge clearing on a hill, which rose out of the ground, a rolling mighty mound of earth. From this perch you could see the farmland behind us, more hills, silhouettes of a few cows with their muzzles stretched to the ground, a sleepy farmhouse snuggled into a valley like a baby in a crib. Beyond the farmhouse, a pond, throwing the moonlight back up into the sky, looking like a slick of silver on the ground. I thought maybe I could even see the ball field way out in the distance.

Best of all was what was above us. With no streetlights or house lights or stop lights or stadium lights anywhere near us, the hill set the stage for the sky. The moon sat upon us, huge and marbled, and surrounding it were more stars than I'd ever seen before, twinkling and undulating, almost as if they were beckoning me. If ever I believed that something in the sky might be alive, this was the moment of proof. In that moment, I finally understood what Carl Sagan meant. I felt like starstuff.

I took a few steps and sat down, my neck craned. Suddenly I could feel gravity working, could feel myself being pinned to this earth by the motion of our spinning through the great galaxy.

Cash walked up next to me and stood with his hands on his hips. He, too, surveyed the sky.

I laid back, my hands behind my head, and watched the sky come alive, as if it were putting on a show just for me.

There she was, Ursa Major, the Great Bear, her back thigh the bowl of the Big Dipper and her tail the handle. I watched her lumber along, the stars her joints and rippling bear muscles. I remembered the old Native American tale about the three stars that form the Big Dipper's handle being three warriors who were chasing Ursa Major, her blood staining the autumn trees red. I'd known the story since I was a little kid, but I'd never actually seen it in motion before, not like this.

“I have a blanket,” Cash said, and I jumped, having forgotten that he was here with me. He rummaged around in his trash bag and pulled out a ratty old quilt. He dropped the quilt on the ground next to me and then reached in again and pulled out some sandwiches and a couple of water bottles.

Aha! Tuna salad and a blanket! Not a dead body and instruments of torture at all! What was Tripp thinking? Wow, he'll feel really dumb when I tell him how wrong he was with the whole zombie thing.

Cash grabbed the box and pulled it open. I gasped again.

“Whoa! Are those Fujinon twelve-forty-D third generation with image stabilizer binoculars?”

He held them out toward me. “You want to look through them?”

My mouth hung open so long that my tongue turned to dust and I might have eaten a bug. I nodded. He pressed them into my hand. He might have just as well handed me a block of gold or a wriggling baby Saturnite or the keys to the International Space Station.

I took the binoculars and peered through them, training them on star after dazzling star. I pointed them at the moon, that great chunk of rock that hurtled around us, pulling at our tides, riling up our werewolves. I roved through the sky, looking for the red dot of Mars, hoping for the return blink of light I'd been waiting so long to see.

“Do you think it's possible to make contact with Mars from Liberty?” I asked.

Cash pulled his tuna sandwich out of its baggie and took a bite. “A good scientist thinks anything is possible,” he said.

I lowered the binoculars and opened my sandwich. I took a bite. Much better than egg salad, and it had the added benefit of not smelling like the Porta-Pottys at the apple orchard, too. “I want to be the first person to discover life on Mars,” I said. “I've pretty much devoted my whole life to it.”

He met my eyes. “Me, too,” he said. “But I suppose you've got a lot longer to prove it than I do.”

We chewed, side by side, and he helped me find the teapot
shape of Sagittarius, pointing at the “steam” coming out of the spout—otherwise known as the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

“Cash?”

“Yeah?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what, kid?”

I shifted so I was facing him. “All of it. Why did you tell me about Hermie Schwanlaker and why did you let me in your space room and why did you take me out here?”

Cash glanced at me. “You ask too many questions, kid. Anyone ever tell you that?”

I nodded. Actually, yeah. A lot of people have told me that. “But why are you?”

He studied the sky for a bit more, and at first I thought he was going to ignore me again. “Earlier you asked me why I stay out here all night,” he said. “And the answer is that I can't tear myself away. I know I should go home, get in a warm bed, sleep. But I can't make myself stop looking.” He jabbed a finger upward. “Up there. Does that make sense to you?”

I tipped my head back and drank in the stars greedily. “Yes,” I said. “Totally.”

“That is why I'm doing this,” he said. “Because it makes sense to you.”

After we finished our sandwiches and our waters, Cash took the binoculars and placed them back in their box.

“I suppose I should get you back before your parents have my hide,” he said.

Reluctantly, I stood and folded the blanket. I didn't want to go back. I wanted to stay out on the hill forever, looking through the binoculars and talking stars with a real-life astronaut.

But if I ever wanted to come back again, Cash was right, it wouldn't be a good idea to freak out Mom. She was pretty irrational about Cash. It was like she thought he was a serial murderer or something. (I know, I know. You don't need to remind me. But that was weeks ago. I was a kid. I could think crazy stuff.)

“Can I come back here with you again sometime?” I asked as we shoved the blanket back into the trash bag.

Cash produced a cigar out of his hoodie pocket and lit it up. He grunted and shrugged. By now I knew that was his way of saying yes.

The next time we went to the hill, I brought CICM with me.

We got settled, spread out our quilt, and unwrapped our sandwiches, which were corned beef. I brought a bag of potato chips to share.

“So I was thinking,” I said, after we were done eating. I unzipped my backpack and pulled out CICM. “Maybe we could try to communicate with Mars together. We could be the first two people to discover life on another planet.”

“Let me see that, kid.”

Cash looked at my ragtag machine and suddenly I felt embarrassed by it, like I was carrying around something a kindergartner would make. He pulled and tweaked at some things here and there, moving the mirrors around, adjusting the magnifying glass. He pushed the power button on the flashlight and watched the beam sprout. Up on the hill I could see how there was no way the beam was reaching all the way
into space. It was barely making it more than a few feet in the air. I felt silly for ever thinking it could make contact with a Martian.

“It's stupid,” I mumbled, embarrassed, snatching it back from him. “Forget I brought it.”

“No, no,” he said, reaching for it again. “This is a good model.”

“You had way better stuff at NASA,” I said. I sounded pouty, but I couldn't help it.

“Yes, but that doesn't matter.”

“Of course it matters. If NASA can't find life on Mars with all their equipment, how am I going to find it with a flashlight and a few mirrors?” I hated that this was the first time I'd ever realized it, that no way could I do what NASA hadn't yet done. What a dummy for thinking I could.

“You won't,” Cash said. “But I like your idea.”

My head snapped up. “You do?”

He nodded and fidgeted with the contraption for a few more minutes. “We've just got to make it bigger.”

“We do?”

“I've got a spotlight in my basement. And I can get us some mirrors. Maybe even a magnifying lens. We can play around with it a little bit, see what happens.”

“We can?”

He handed CICM back to me. “You ever heard of Morse code?”

I had. We'd talked about it very briefly in American
history class during our pony express unit. For a while Tripp and I tried tapping messages to each other during class with our pencils, but Tripp only ever answered with gibberish—ISBYKKQ—and when I asked him about it, he always said he got sidetracked thinking about playing the drums. And then Mrs. Hamill, our teacher, would get a funny upward crick in her neck and holler out, “Stop tapping your pencils on your desks!” and we'd have to stop.

“What if we tried to send messages via Morse code?” he asked. “That way, if we get an intelligent response, maybe it will be in the form of actual words.”

“You think Martians know Morse code?” I asked.

“I told you, Arty, a good scientist thinks anything is possible until proven otherwise. Tell you what. Next time, you bring this little guy back here and I'll bring some other supplies, and we'll get started.”