7

Rolf took a fast look at the two burly sailors climbing the dune toward him. He started running down the other side of the dune, but the loose sand slowed him down.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw that the sailors had topped the rise and weren't far behind him. And they were gaining fast.

Baneen was dithering around, running in excited circles, waving his hands helplessly.

And Mr. Sheperton?

Rolf heard the dog barking furiously, the way he barked at automobiles that went down their home street too fast. Turning slightly, Rolf saw Mr. Sheperton charging at the two sailors, his bared teeth looking ferocious, even in his fuzzy mop of a head.

The sailors backed off for a moment. Mr. Sheperton surprised them, maybe even scared them. Then one of them pulled something long and menacing from his belt. Rolf couldn't tell whether it was a knife or a club.

"Shep . . . no!"

But Mr. Sheperton wasn't backing away. As long as Rolf was in danger, and he himself was conscious, the dog would attack the sailors.

"Baneen . . . do something!"

Suddenly Mr. Sheperton's open mouth started to spout foam. His barking began to sound more like gargling.

The sailor with the club, or whatever it was, went round-eyed.

"Mad dog!" he yelled. Spinning around, he raced back toward the safety of the boat. His friend went with him.

Mr. Sheperton raced after them, nipping at their heels, until they got to the top of the dune. Then he stood his ground and barked at them several more times. Rolf knew what Mr. Sheperton was saying:

"And don't come back! Blackguards! Cowards!"

Satisfied that everything was in proper shape, Mr. Sheperton trotted back down the sandy hill to Rolf and Baneen. Only then did Rolf realize that if the dog was really foaming at the mouth, it meant he was seriously ill.

"Shep . . . are you . . . ?"

"I don't know how many times it will be necessary to tell you," the dog said, a bit cross and out of wind, "that my name is Mr. Sheperton. And you, Baneen, if you don't mind, would you kindly remove this ridiculous shaving lather you've put on my face? Tastes of lime. Ugh."

"Ah, for such a grand hero as yourself, Mr. Sheperton, it was hardly necessary for me to do anything at all." Baneen wiggled his fingers and the foam instantly dried into crystal flakes that were carried away by the wind.

And suddenly Rolf dropped to his knees and hugged the shaggy old dog. "Shep, Shep . . . I thought you were sick."

For once, Mr. Sheperton didn't correct the boy. He sat there and let Rolf hold him. His tail even wagged once or twice. Sounding rather embarrassed, he said at last, "Well, harumph . . . I suppose we'd better get away from here before those rascals work up the nerve to come back."

On the way back to the Hollow, Baneen kept talking about O'Rigami's space kite and how wonderful it would be to return to Gremla.

"And the most wonderful part of it all," the gremlin said, dancing lightly over the sand, "is that yourself will be in complete charge of the entire launching of the great, powerful rocket. The most important man of all, that'll be you, Rolf me bucko. Er. . . once you've attached the kite to the rocket properly, of course."

Rolf nodded. But inwardly he was wondering how he could possibly get to his father's rocket and attach the kite, even if O'Rigami made it invisible. Gremlin magic wasn't going to be enough for that job.

Mr. Sheperton stayed strangely quiet as they approached the Hollow. Rolf could see gremlins scurrying about, busy with a thousand unguessable tasks. Lugh stood in the middle, as usual, in a small mound of sand, pointing here, shouting there, his tiny bulldog's face red with scowling, his chin whiskers bristling.

Rolf picked up his bike and said farewell to Baneen. The gremlin, jigging happily, reminded him:

"Don't be forgetting tomorrow, now. Tomorrow O'Rigami will have the grand kite finished, and tomorrow night you'll be helping us to attach it properly to the rocket. Ah, Gremla, land of me youth! Soon we'll be back enjoying your dusty delights."

"Sure," Rolf said as he got on the bike. "Tomorrow."

He pedaled up and away from the Gremlin Hollow and got back on the road that led to the highway. But when he thought of the men with the boat and his own promise not to report them, he was conscious of an ugly, hollow feeling inside him.

Rolf's father wasn't home for dinner again that night. After helping his mother clean up the kitchen, Rolf went outside for a walk. The sun was low in the southwest, the breeze already had a bite of evening's coolness.

Mr. Sheperton came padding up to him, but Rolf said. "No, Shep. Stay. I want to think, not argue."

The dog muttered something about calling people by their proper names, as he trotted stiffly back toward the house.

Rolf walked out on the narrow sidewalk that fronted the lawn, and headed down the street slowly. "How deep am I getting myself into this?" he whispered to himself. "It all seems so crazy. For one thing, suppose something goes wrong when I'm helping the gremlins and I get caught?"

There was only one tree in this part of town worth climbing, a sturdy old live oak that had been growing for maybe fifty years before the houses had been built and the streets put in. Miraculously, it had escaped the bulldozers and builder, probably because it looked too big and tough to knock over easily.

The tree happened to be right next to the Amaros' old two-story house, close to Rita's window. Rolf hesitated in the dark at the foot of the tree, remembering all the times he had climbed up there for secret talks with her, back when they both had been real young kids. But now he needed to talk to her again, and the tree looked as climbable as ever.

He climbed up easily, but found that he'd gotten too big to crawl out on the limb that practically brushed her window. And the window was closed, because the house had recently been air conditioned.

Can't use our old signal, Rolf knew, remembering the way he'd whistle like a bobolink. How can I call her? 

While he sat there hunched up on the big branch near the tree trunk, Rita opened the window. Over her shoulder she called, "Okay, Momma. I've got my window open. Tell me when the air conditioner is working again, and I'll shut it."

Rolf thought he could hear Baneen giggling in the shadows of the tree.

"Hey, Rita!" he whispered.

She jerked back a little in surprise. "Rolf? What are you doing there?"

"I wanted to talk with you."

She smiled, and it looked better than moonlight to Rolf. "Just the way we used to," she said. "Wait a minute."

She ducked inside for a moment, then crawled out on the window ledge.

"Hey, no . . . the branch can't hold . . ."

But Rita already had one bluejeaned leg on the branch. "I'm not as heavy as you are."

Or as careful, Rolf thought. But she crawled out on the branch. It dipped and swayed under her weight, but Rita calmly shinnied up until she was sitting safely next to Rolf.

"We haven't done this in ages," she said happily.

"Yeah," Rolf nodded. It was fun. Almost, it took him back two years, to before he had started going out to the Preserve, alone.

More seriously, Rita said, "I was beginning to think you didn't like me anymore. You've stayed away so much lately. . . . I'm sorry I said you were weird."

Rolf had forgotten that. "Oh, that's okay."

"You really have been acting strange. You know?"

"I guess so. . . ." He didn't know where to begin, how to tell her.

For a moment they just sat there, bare feet dangling in the cool evening air.

"Rita?" Rolf said. "Listen. There is uh . . . something I need your help for."

"Sure Rolf. What is it?"

"Your father's still on the night shift, isn't he?"

"Yes." Then she added proudly, "He's been promoted to sergeant. He's got a whole shift of guards under him now."

"But he's still working right at the launch pad, isn't he?"

"Yes."

Hesitating for a moment more, Rolf finally decided to take the plunge. "Look . . . I need to get up close to the rocket. Up onto the top platform of the checkout tower. Tomorrow night."

"Tomorrow night?" Rita's voice sounded shocked. In the darkness it was difficult to make out the expression on her face. "But that's the night before the launch! Nobody's allowed . . ."

Slowly, and as carefully as he could, Rolf explained to Rita about the gremlins and how they wanted to use the Mars rocket to help the return to Gremla.

He was earnestly explaining about O'Rigami and the space kite when Rita began laughing. He stared at her, and she laughed so hard he had to put out a hand to keep her from falling off the branch. Her shoulders were pumping up and down, and she put a hand over her mouth to keep from making so much noise that her parents would catch them. "Mmpff, mmppfff," came the sound from behind her hand.

"Hey, it's not funny," Rolf said.

"Oh, Rolf," she gasped. "When you want to put somebody on, you sure can do it. . . ." She started giggling again.

"'Tis no joke, me lovely maid." It was Baneen's voice, coming from right behind Rolf's ear.

Rolf turned his head slightly and saw that the gremlin was perched on his shoulder. Strangely, he felt no weight on the shoulder at all. Then, looking back at Rita, he could see that her eyes had gone white and round. Her laughter was stopped. Her mouth was open, and her eyes were enormous.

"Allow me the grand pleasure of being introduced to this charming young lady," Baneen said.

Still holding Rita by one arm, Rolf said, "This is Baneen—one of the gremlins. Baneen, this is Rita Amaro."

"Charmed, I'm certain," said Baneen, and he took his little green cap off, making a low sweeping bow to the girl.

Rita recovered her voice. "You . . . you're real!"

"As real as your beautiful brown eyes, Rita me girl. And as happy as your darling laughter. But all the gremlins on this vast dreary world would be sadder than a mud toad's croak if it weren't for this fine, brave lad here."

"Aw, come on, Baneen," Rolf said.

"You . . . you really want Rolf to attach this . . . kite thing . . . to the Mars rocket?"

"Exactly!" Baneen smiled at her. "What a clever lass she is! Sure, and you've caught on right away, my dear."

"I'll be in charge of the final countdown," Rolf said. "I'll have to delay the launch six minutes from its scheduled liftoff time. Right, Baneen?"

"That's what O'Rigami figures—although frankly I've no head for numbers and I can't be sure if six minutes is the right amount. But what difference, six minutes or sixty? The rocket won't go until you give the word, Rolf, me bucko."

Rita seemed aghast. "Rolf, you could foul up the whole launching!"

"Ah, no," Baneen assured her. "Just a wee delay and a slight detour. No problem at all."

She shook her head. "This could be really serious."

"I'm going to do it," Rolf said quietly. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her about the Great Wish the gremlins had promised him. Then he remembered that she had always admired his father—who obviously had no concern for ecology.

"There's nothing to it, I tell you," Baneen repeated. "Why, with gremlin magic at work, we could put everyone in the launch center to sleep for a fortnight—ah, but we don't want to do that, desperate though we are."

"They've got to get off our planet and back to Gremla," said Rolf. "And I'm going to help them."

"I don't understand why. . . ."

"Well, lass, you see now, it's Lugh—big, blustering oaf that he is. A terrible-tempered gremlin. Terrible temper." Baneen shuddered. "He's a gremlin prince, you know. But our king, Hamrod the Heartless, was always playing tricks on Lugh. Loved to see the great burly Lugh of the Long Hand turn red with frustration and anger. So it was that Lugh stole the Great Corkscrew of Gremla, took himself and his entire household—all of us—and in one great magic huff-and-puff brought us all to Earth, these thousands of years ago."

Rolf and Rita listened, fascinated.

"Well, once safely here on this awful watery planet, Lugh found out two things. One, there were plenty of oafish humans about, to serve as the butt of his jokes. No longer was Lugh at the mercy of Hamrod; now he had humans at his mercy. The tables were turned, so to speak.

"But the second thing he found out that here on this watery place, gremlin magic is pitifully weak—water ruins magic, don't you know—so our tricks amount to mere pranks. Watered down, they are."

"Like wiping out a bulldozer?" Rolf asked.

"Aye, the Great Curse. Pitiful, wasn't it? Why, on safe, dusty Gremla when the Great Curse is invoked, forty comets explode and the stars dance for a month. But here . . ." Baneen's voice dropped to a melancholy whisper, "well, about all we can do is play little pranks. Stopping clocks and making machines behave poorly, suchlike. Not even Lugh's great magic can get all of us at once more than ten feet off the ground. That's why we need your mighty rocket to help us get back to Gremla."

Rita asked, "But why does Lugh want to return to Gremla if your king is so nasty to him?"

"Ah, there's the nub of it all," Baneen said, dabbing at the corner of one eye with his eyebrow. "A clever girl you are, Miss Rita. You see, underneath all of Lugh's bad temper and bluster, beats a heart of fairy gold. He knows how miserable all we gremlins have been here on dripping old Earth, and he's willing to sacrifice himself to save all of us. I doubt that we could last another few hundred years here on Earth, with all this water about. Doubt it strongly, that I do."

"I don't know . . ." Rita said uncertainly.

"Ah, but I do know what Lugh will do if he can't get human help for our return to Gremla," Baneen said, with a shudder in his voice. "It'll be terrible. He'll use every grain of gremlin magic to make life as miserable as possible for you humans. Many's the time I've heard him mutter," and Baneen's voice took on some of the deep roughness of Lugh's, "If we can't use that rocket to get us back to Gremla, the humans will never get to use it to take themselves to Mars."

It was Rolf's turn to be shocked. "You never told me that! You mean if we don't help you . . ."

"Lugh will keep the rocket from flying off," Baneen finished for him. "And it's himself has got the power to do it. That great rocket will just sit there and grow moss on it before Lugh lets it go."