They hurried through the registration process, getting name badges, bed linens, and Pathfinder T-shirts. “Who wants a top bunk?” Stanley asked as they headed toward the stairs to the sleeping quarters he called the Habitat.
“I do!” Rashawn said enthusiastically.
“Me too, mon!” Ziggy echoed him. “It’s closer to outer space.”
“Three feet up isn’t going to make much difference, Ziggy,” Jerome said. “I’ll stay close to the ground. I may need to escape in a hurry.”
“I’ll take a bottom bunk too,” Rico said. “Just seems safer.”
“Okay, we have two up and two down. Let’s get going,” Stanley said.
The four boys grabbed their gear and the bed linens and T-shirts they’d been given and hurried up the stairs.
Rico said a brief good-bye to his father, who had decided to spend the weekend playing golf nearby. “I’ll see you guys at graduation!” he called out to the boys, who were noisily climbing the stairs to the Habitat. They waved and didn’t even notice when he left.
“It looks like an army barrack!” Rico said in dismay as they entered the room they’d been assigned to. There were a total of seven narrow beds, five of them top bunks. Underneath three of the top bunks were desks. The room was clean, bare of the carpet and wallpaper and room decorations the boys were used to at their homes, and very, very small.
“Most astronauts are in the military, you know,” Stanley told them.
“That never occurred to me,” Rico said thoughtfully.
“What about bugs?” Jerome asked. “Have you seen any insects crawling or flying around the Habitat? I like to be prepared, you understand.”
Stanley chuckled. “Not that I’m aware of, Jerome. No more than the usual small bugs that you’d ordinarily find in Alabama this time of year. Certainly nothing dangerous. The dorms are cleaned and sanitized between each group of Space Campers, if that will make you feel any better.”
“Thanks, man,” Jerome said. He kneeled down on the concrete floor and peered under the bed, anyway.
Ziggy turned around in circles several times, searching the room with a quizzical look on his face.
“What are you doing, Ziggy?” Rashawn asked as he made up his bed.
“Something’s missing, mon,” Ziggy said.
“Well, it’s not fancy, but it’s got beds and lights and a place to store your gear,” Stanley offered. “The bathroom’s right outside, in this hall.”
“That’s not it, mon. There’s no television in this room!” Ziggy stated, his arms stretched out dramatically.
Stanley laughed. “Of course not. You won’t need it, you won’t miss it, and you won’t have time for it. By the time you get back to the Habitat tonight, you’ll be exhausted and glad to see these lumpy bunks.”
“Oh, I’ll miss it, mon. I already do,” Ziggy said with a sigh.
“Who will be in the other three bunks?” Rico asked.
“Three boys from Georgia,” Stanley replied. “They’re in the same grade as you guys.”
Rashawn looked a little surprised. “Somehow I thought it would just be the four of us here. I never even thought about the other kids who’d be coming to Space Camp.”
“Just a few rules,” Stanley announced. “No eating in the Habitat—we have a great cafeteria that will feed you well. No loud noises after lights-out. No girls in the boys’ Habitat. No boys on the girls’ floor. Just general common sense rules.”
“Girls? You got girls here?” Rashawn asked with interest.
“Sure. The girls’ Habitat is downstairs. Women can be astronauts too, you know,” Stanley said. “We probably have as many girls here this weekend as boys. As a matter of fact, the rest of your team is probably the girls from the school in Georgia.”
“Cool,” Rico said. “This place is gonna be really cool.”
SAMANTHA, THEIR COUNSELOR FOR THE PATHFINDER camp, had curly brown hair, a sprinkling of freckles on her nose, and a broad smile for her team as they met on the grass near the huge Pathfinder Shuttle that rested like a great beast on display. She wore the same navy blue shirt and beige pants that identified all the counselors, and she carried a clipboard that held a schedule for the day and the names of all the members of Team America.
Ziggy, Rico, Rashawn, and Jerome, dressed in their crisp, new, white Space Camp T-shirts, waited expectantly with the rest of their team as Samantha took attendance and made the effort to learn everyone’s name.
“We’re going to have a wonderful time here,” she told the group with a smile. “We’ll be up at dawn every morning, and back to the Habitat to rest at nine or ten each night.”
“Long day, mon. When do we eat?” Ziggy asked.
“You’ll get breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” Samantha explained. “And I bet you’ll like the food—it’s pretty kid-friendly. Pizza, Tater Tots, fries, chicken fingers—stuff like that.”
“Sweet!” one of the girls in the group said.
“You got chocolate-covered asparagus?” Ziggy asked with a grin.
“Ooh, yuck!” another girl said.
“What about hamburgers with jelly?”
Samantha laughed. “It’s going to be easy to remember you, Ziggy. You have quite an imagination.”
“He’s serious, Samantha,” Rashawn explained. “Ziggy has the strangest eating habits in the world!”
“Well, maybe tonight at dinner you can show me how to dip my French fries into my chocolate pudding!” Samantha told Ziggy.
“I’m going to like her, mon! She understands me!” Ziggy put his hand to his heart and fell to the grass, kicking his legs in the air. The rest of the kids in the group cracked up.
The other three boys who shared bunk space with Ziggy and his friends were Neil, Alan, and Cubby, sixth graders from a small private school in Georgia. Neil and Alan were twins. With fiery red hair that stood up in little spikes, and tall, skinny frames, they were easy to spot from a distance, but a little hard to tell apart even up close. Cubby wore a baseball cap turned backward and what had to be size-twelve tennis shoes. He had already impressed the other boys with his knowledge of space history.
“That shuttle is the Pathfinder, you know,” he said, pointing to the giant shuttle that was mounted fifty feet above their heads.
“How big is that sucker?” Jerome asked. “I feel like a bug standing under it.”
“Well, the three parts you see are the orbiter—that’s the shuttle that carries the astronauts—and the external fuel tank—the thing that looks like a giant hot dog—and the solid rocket boosters. Those are the two white tubes. When they’re full of fuel, they weigh over a million pounds each.”
“Wow.” Everyone in the group was silent, in awe of the giant space vehicle above them.
“Can it fly to the moon or to Mars, mon?” Ziggy asked.
“Well, this one doesn’t fly at all, but shuttles aren’t designed to fly so far away. For that, you need something like a Saturn rocket. Right, Samantha?” Cubby asked in a voice that said he knew she’d agree with him.
“Yes, Cubby, you’re right. It looks like we have a space expert on our team.”
Neil and Alan, the twins, rolled their eyes as if they’d heard Cubby’s space facts many times before. “Did you know that these two were named for astronauts?” Cubby asked the rest of the team.
“How do you know, Cubby? You weren’t there!” Alan said.
“But you told me, and your mom said it was true. I think it’s really cool,” Cubby said with a wistful look on his face. “I wish my mom had named me after a space hero.”
“So who are you named after?” Rashawn asked Neil.
“I’m named after Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon,” Neil explained.
“And Mom and Dad named me after Alan Shepard, first American man in space,” Alan said. “Our parents are engineers and work for NASA—I guess they have high hopes for us.”
“You’re lucky, mon,” Ziggy told the boys with a laugh. “She
could have named one of you after Sally Ride, the first woman in space!”
Neil rolled his eyes. “Our three-year-old sister, of course, is named . . .”
“Sally!” Alan finished. Ziggy and the others laughed.
“I’m glad to know we’ve got a group who’s really interested in space,” Samantha commented. “I’m proud to have each of you on Team America.” She then had each team member do a little introduction. The girls on their team, all students from Alan, Neil, and Cubby’s school, were Amy, Jessica, and Nicolina.
Ziggy begged to introduce himself first, by jumping up and down and waving his arms wildly in the air. His braids bounced around his head as he moved. Samantha laughed and nodded at him to begin.
“I’m Ziggy, and I’m here to find out about Martians, mon!” Ziggy told the group. “I may want to be an astronaut one day, and I need to know what Martians look like when I get into space! And if they get here first, I want to be able to speak their language and say hello.”
“There’s no such thing as Martians or any other beings from other planets,” Cubby said with authority.
“Have you ever been to Mars or Venus?” Nicolina asked Cubby. Her voice sounded whispery.
“Of course not!” Cubby answered.
“Then you don’t really know for sure, do you?” Amy added with a smile.
“Is it possible there’s anybody living on other planets, Samantha?” Rico asked.
“Well, anything is possible, Rico. That’s why space exploration is so exciting! We’re looking for answers to those and thousands of other questions. But I doubt if you’ll find little green people like in comic books.”
Ziggy made no comment, but he glanced up at the clear blue sky and grinned.
“Well, let’s get started,” Samantha told the group. “Our first tasks are a general orientation to space history and a movie in the Spacedome!”
“Ooh, are we gonna see Space Creatures from the Ghost Galaxy?” Rashawn asked. “It came out last week, and I heard it was really good.”
“None of that science fiction stuff,” Samantha replied. “What you’re going to see is real! Real scientists in space. Weightlessness. Liftoffs with all the smoke and noise. What Earth really looks like from space. It will blow your mind.”
“Cool!” the kids replied. They headed down the path to the Spacedome.
“When do we get to go on some of the rides?” Jessica asked Samantha as they walked.
“Oh, those aren’t rides, Jessica. They’re simulators, designed to show you what it feels like to walk, or move, or be propelled in space. We’ll do quite a bit of that tomorrow,” Samantha explained.
“I can’t wait!” Jessica said.
The group passed a small, marble monument about four feet high. Piled on top of it was a large stack of bananas. “What’s that, Samantha?” Rico asked.
Samantha stopped the group and said, “Gather around, kids. This is a good story. The very first beings in space weren’t people, but animals. The first dog, sent up by the Russians, in 1957, was a little terrier named Laika. Unfortunately, she didn’t survive the flight. She died in space.”
“Oh, that’s so sad,” Jessica said softly.
“So, what’s up with the bananas?” Rashawn asked. A few flies buzzed above the fruit.
“This monument is for Miss Abel and Miss Baker, the first monkeynauts!”
“Monkeynauts? That sounds like something I’d make up,” Ziggy said.
“Yes, the first Americans in space were monkeys,” Samantha explained. “They were launched into space and returned safely. Miss Baker lived to be twenty-seven years old—which is really old for a monkey! Visitors to the Space Center often leave bananas there in her honor.”
“So what happens to the bananas?” Neil asked. “Do they just sit there and rot?”
Samantha looked at the group, a mischievous grin on her face. “No one knows for sure,” she said mysteriously. “But every evening the bananas disappear, and new ones are placed there every day.”
“Aliens, maybe?” Ziggy asked hopefully.
“I seriously doubt it, Ziggy!” Neil told him. “Spacemen aren’t real.”
As their team headed down to the Space Center Museum, Ziggy glanced up at a couple of squirrels chattering at each other in one of the many trees that lined the path.
“Hey, Rico,” he whispered. “How do we know those squirrels aren’t visitors from another planet?”
“Because they’re squirrels, not Martians!”
“But how do you know for sure? It could be a really clever disguise,” Ziggy insisted.
“Wouldn’t this be the logical place to land and hide and observe humans? Nobody would even notice the ship they flew in if it looked like one of ours!”
“We’ve got enough real stuff to figure out here, Ziggy, without making up wild stories about alien squirrels.” Rico opened the door to the Space Museum, where they would learn about early space travel. Jerome and Rashawn trailed behind, happily talking to the three girls from Georgia.
There were so many visitors touring the Space Center, the children paid very little attention to the attractive African-American lady in a navy blue Space Academy jumpsuit who was walking just ahead of them. She glanced back at them as they talked about aliens, looked as if she was about to say something, but then hurried on into the building without speaking. Samantha looked at the woman as if she recognized her, but the lady seemed to be in a hurry, so Samantha let the moment pass.
“So who eats the bananas every night?” Ziggy asked as they entered the hall full of displays of real space suits and actual lunar vehicles.
“It couldn’t be the squirrels—they don’t eat fruit. They eat nuts and stuff like that.”
“See what I mean?” Ziggy said with a laugh. “I read somewhere that Martians love bananas, mon. Maybe we’ve got a mystery here after all!”
THAT NIGHT, AFTER AN IMAX MOVIE IN THE Spacedome that showed what it would be like to be in space, several lectures on early space history, a lengthy practice for their “mission,” during which they would pretend to be real members of a team launching a rocket into space, and building their own model rockets, the Pathfinder team dragged themselves wearily to the Habitat.
Cubby and the twins headed for the showers while Ziggy and his friends got ready for bed.
“Now I see why there’s no television in here,” Jerome said as he pulled off his T-shirt. “They really keep us going!”
“Didn’t that shuttle look awesome in the moonlight?” Ziggy whispered dreamily. “It looked like it could just take off and head for the next galaxy.”
“Yeah, it did look powerful,” Rico agreed. “It’s hard to believe it can’t fly.”
Ziggy looked thoughtful. “I still think it’s a very clever disguise for visitors from another planet. Remember that story we read about in our mythology book about the Trojan horse?”
Jerome nodded. “Yeah, that was a cool story. The Greek soldiers put a giant wooden horse outside the gates of Troy, and the Trojans brought it into the city because they thought it was a gift.”
“But the Greek soldiers were hiding inside, and when everyone was asleep, they crept out of the wooden horse and attacked the city,” Rashawn said.
“No one suspected that big old horse had secret soldiers hiding inside, mon!” Ziggy said excitedly. “Maybe there are space warriors hiding inside that shuttle.”
“That shuttle has been sitting there for years, Ziggy. If bad guys from space are inside it, why haven’t they come out and attacked yet?” Rico asked reasonably.
“I think they were waiting for us to get here, mon!” Ziggy said.
Jerome threw a pillow at Ziggy and laughed. “Well, I hope they don’t come out of there tonight. I’m sleepy!”
“I wish I could climb up there and look inside it,” Ziggy said quietly.
“First of all,” Rashawn said as he sat in the middle of the floor taking off his socks, “you act like this is a science fiction movie
. There are no secret creatures lurking inside that space shuttle.” He threw his smelly socks at Ziggy, who ducked.
“Also,” Jerome added, “I heard somewhere that they filled it up with cement when they mounted it there, to make sure space-happy kids like you don’t try anything. There would be nothing to see even if you could somehow climb the one hundred feet to the top of it.”
“Besides,” Rico said, “if you so much as put your big toe outside the door of this Habitat tonight, alarms will ring, adults will show up in their nightclothes—a horrible thought—and you’ll be sent home before the moonlight has time to shine on your face.”
“You know what, Ziggy,” Rashawn said. “You’d get us all in trouble and make our team look bad if you tried something like that.”
“Yes, but we’re the Black Dinosaurs club—shouldn’t we be solving a mystery while we’re here?” Ziggy asked.
“The only mystery I care about right now is what happened to my pj’s!” Rico said as he dumped out his bag of clothes.
“You’re sitting on them,” Cubby told him with a laugh as he climbed into his bunk. Rico grabbed the pajamas and stuffed his other clothes back into his bag.
“Hey, don’t worry. Ziggy is no fool, mon! But I can dream, can’t I? This whole place is about learning the science to help make dreams come true. Maybe one day I can do that.” He climbed into his top bunk. “But for now, I’m getting some sleep and dreaming of ways to get to space.” He pulled the covers over his head.
The next morning, the boys woke to an early wake-up call and a breakfast of waffles and eggs. For their first activity, Team America headed over to the Multi-Axis Trainer, which Samantha called the MAT. A little nervous, each camper in the group shifted from one foot to the other as Samantha adjusted the straps and checked it for safety.
“It looks like a giant eggbeater,” Ziggy said.
“Pretty big eggs,” Rico said with awe in his voice.
“Martian eggs, of course, mon,” Ziggy said, trying to sound unconcerned.
“It’s designed to show you how your body would react if you were in a space vehicle that went into a tumble, so it goes upside down and around and around—almost at the same time,” Cubby explained.