Space City

Chapter 2 - Neil Beyond the Sky

Neil scrambled into the taxi after Mr. Chapman to retrieve his grandfather's coin. The cab driver was a middle-aged man with a well-groomed salt and pepper beard. Jazz played on the radio.

"The Arsenal, please," Mr. Chapman said to the driver. He held out the coin, bravery side out, toward Neil. "This isn't an opportunity you dismiss. Your grandfather would've agreed."

Neil snatched the coin and slipped it into his pocket. What did the old man know about what his grandfather would have agreed with? Adults always thought they knew what was best, even when they didn't know you at all. But Mr. Chapman's words had implied that he knew Neil's grandfather, not just met him. The old man had surely served. Behind his big smile, he possessed a firm quality, like a seasoned military officer. Maybe he and Neil's grandfather had served together.

Mr. Chapman surprised him. "Tell me about your grandfather."

"But you've met him, right?"

"Yes, but you're his grandson."

Before his mother's death, Neil had spent countless evenings playing with model airplanes or drawing fighter jets by the fire as she recounted stories of his grandfather's military feats. He had flown for the British to defend London during the Blitz. Later, during the war, his grandfather had barely bailed from his plane before it collided with a Nazi jet near Paris. As he talked, he heard his mother reciting the stories to him as clearly as if she sat in the cab with them. He wished she were here telling the stories to Mr. Chapman.

The cab stopped at the back of a line of cars approaching the Redstone Arsenal gates, breaking Neil's reverie. He hadn't traveled onto the arsenal in years, since his grandfather last brought him. His pulse quickened at the prospect.

The six lane gate resembled the starting gate of a horse race, the cars entering like stallions loading up before shooting forward to start the race. The guard standing beside the booth they had pulled up to smiled and spoke to Mr. Chapman as if they were old friends. Mr. Chapman handed a badge to the guard, and the cab driver forked over his driver's license. The guard eyed Neil a moment, but didn't ask him for identification.

Fortunately, he didn't have the fake ID on him anymore. Prison was not the step up from his uncle's house that he hoped for. Then again...the food was probably better.

The guard examined the badge and driver's license for a moment, before he handed the IDs back and wished them a good day. Was he accustomed to Mr. Chapman bringing new academy students with him?

For the next half mile, open fields on either side of the road were filled with amarums — a knee high, thin plant with small, yellow flowers at the tips. The fields gave way to tall, southern pines intermixed with eastern red cedars. The trees, crowding the roads on all sides, created a buffer zone around the Arsenal.

They continued on past a ten-story, gray NASA building with the U.S. flag flying from the top. In front of the building, three rocket engines were on display. He knew them well, having studied most air- and spacecraft thanks to the books his grandfather had left him. The shortest engine, the J-2, was nearly twice the size of a full-grown man. On the top portions of each engine was a typical engine block with turbopumps, ducts, valves, and manifolds tightly wound together. The engine blocks rested on a large metallic thrust chamber, which resembled the bottom half of a ballroom gown, as if the engines were prepared for a dance.

To Neil's surprise, the cab carried them past many new and aging office complexes and out to a remote area overgrown with crab grass, amarums and kudzu. The driver parked beside a single, large white building, a little smaller than the NASA office they had passed earlier. Neil doubted anyone had used the building in the last twenty years. Surely this place wasn't the campus.