Charlie's Spaceship

Charlie laughed like the little child he was, then turned another dial and said, "watch this!" I began to float. We were in zero gravity. It was so funny watching poor Daisy float. Charlie and I played around for about five or ten minutes, I'm really not sure how long, and then he returned to the control panel, turned a dial ever so slightly and said, "watch out!" and then gravity gently returned.

We came upon another star and again, the craft was filled with white light for about a minute or two, and then, the light faded, and the shell slowly stopped rotating.

"Open the hatch," said Charlie.

"Is it OK for me?" I asked him.

"I would never hurt my friend," he said. I still wasn't sure but I had no choice. I was going to be the first human being to set foot on another world.

Gently, I opened the hatch and what a world it was. The colors were so different. It was as if some mad man had just gone berserk and painted everything with the most unusual hues in his palate that he could possibly find. The shapes and textures looked vaguely familiar so that was slightly reassuring.

Charlie and Daisy bounded out of the craft and down the short stairs and onto the solid ground. I could only follow as best I could. We were in a field of some kind, not unlike the field we had left from. There were no buildings within sight but there appeared to be a small pathway leading away and the two of them romped forward. The gravity seemed slightly less than Earth and the sky was very pale blue, and it and the thinness of the air reminded me of the higher attitudes in the Rockies. I was not sure that I wasn't dreaming but it seemed so very real.

After no more than five minutes, we came to another clearing and spotted two tall beings. From a distance, I would say they would have been about my size, slightly human looking but definitely not human. Paleish in color, they had long robes which covered almost their entire bodies. The arms were long and spindly and their heads had an almost science fiction look to them and again, I wondered if I hadn't seen far too many episodes of Star Trek.

Charlie and Daisy ran over to them and Daisy barked, more in curiosity than fear I think and I just stood at a distance and watched them for a few moments, looking perhaps as a young child returned home to his parents, for that was exactly what it was.

After some discussion, Charlie and one of the beings took off down the path while the other one approached me. No, I did not say "take me to your leader", not that I would have anyway. I was just so in awe of my surroundings. I had stooped down to touch the soil and vegetation beneath my feet and smelled the not unpleasant scent in the air and I was busy just observing as the being approached.

"Thank you for returning our child," said the being in very polite and formal English, a bit stilted perhaps and pronounced stiffly and slowly.

"You are very welcome," I replied slowly. "Where am I?"

"You have so very many questions don't you?"

"Of course I do. It is in our nature. We are a curious people."

"We know. Our child, you call him Charlie, has already transferred his vast knowledge to us. It is now part of who we are and will be. Your methods for sharing knowledge are so primitive and slow you may not understand how, but the moment he arrived here, he shared everything he learned with all of us. That is how I know your language. That is how I know your name and how I know you are a good, decent person."

"I have tried," I merely replied.

"That is why you were brought here, because he thinks you are ready to learn and that you will use wisely. Please, walk with me."

And so I walked with an alien being, perhaps a woman I think, down a path, through a clearing and came upon what I could only call a small village. Charlie and Daisy were there, the center of attention. My guide explained a little about their world and gave and told me a little of their way of life and I tried desperately to remember it. Like an idiot, I had left the video camera in the craft and thought to go back but my guide informed me later that it would not have mattered as the magnetic interference from the craft would have erased the tape (which it did, but that's getting a head of the story again.)

There were about a dozen other people there, mostly staring at Daisy until I arrived, and then they stared at me for a moment. One waved some kind of rod over me and it was explained that they now had all my biological information, down to my DNA.

"This is my home," explained Charlie as he turned to them, said something and turned back to me. "I told them you are my friend."

"I am honored to be here," I replied.

Charlie and his mother showed me a little of their village. It was so unusual, I can barely describe it. It was nothing like anything I had ever seen or imagined.

"Our children learn from the adults and the adults learn from the children," said the woman. "That is why Charlie was on your world, to learn and to teach us," she explained as we walked.

"But something went wrong, didn't it?" I asked.

"Yes, his ship crashed. He survived with the knowledge of how to build a new ship, just as you too will have that knowledge. He learned how to survive on your world and he has done well because you have helped him. We thank you for your help."

They were taking me back to the craft. "You cannot stay here much longer," she said. "It will not be healthy if you do and we would never wish harm to you," she said.

"And what about Daisy, the dog?" I asked.

"She will be an honored guest here. Her life will be much as it was. You have my word."

"And how do I get back home? I don't know how to operate this ship."

She handed me three small disks. They seemed to have almost no weight, but they were about the size and shape of a half dollar. "This one is all you will ever need to know about the ship. Hold it, let it touch you and you will understand. These other two are for the two who took such good care of Charlie. Give one to each of them and they too will understand."

I stood at the side of the craft, resting there in a field on another planet and was just amazed. I had a brother in law who was now in orbit above earth and there I was, a billion miles away in the blink of an eye.

Charlie and I said goodbye to each other and he wished me well as I climbed back inside the small craft. I found the disk and held it in my hand. I gazed at it for a moment or two and then I knew. It was all so amazingly simple.

With a flick of the dials, I took control of my little craft and before I knew it, I was racing through the stars again and as if by magic, after an all too short time, I was back home.

I opened the hatch. It was as if nothing had changed. I stepped out.

"What happened?" asked Mary.

"It worked! I was there, on another planet. My God, it was incredible, just incredible."

"But, you didn't go anywhere. Nothing happened. The hull spun around for a few minutes and then stopped."

It was only twenty minutes since Charlie and I had gotten into the craft.

"Charlie, what about Charlie?" she asked.

"He's home, he's at home on his other world," I tried to explain. Oh, did I try to explain. Finally, I just gave her the disk, and then she understood.

"It really happened, didn't it? I mean, I just didn't believe you at first, but it really happened."

At least she believed me and so did Jack later that afternoon.

Nancy also believed me and that helped.

The story should have ended there but an adopted child just cannot vanish into thin air without problems for someone and that someone was me. The words kidnapping, and murder were used over the next few days.

I was arrested.

Thank God it was a little town, out in the middle of nowhere and thank God nobody associated me with my family's business otherwise I think my father would have disowned me. It was bad enough that I was accused of some crime, but this of all things.

I knew trouble was coming about an hour or two after I got back. I mean, I wasn't that stupid or anything. I hired a lawyer right away and when the police read me my rights, I knew who to call.

"They're talking about murder," he explained to me in my cell.

"Charlie is very much alive."

"Then they will talk about kidnapping."

"And they can't even prove he existed," I said.

"But everyone saw him."

"And the pictures of him are fuzzy and out of focus," I replied. I learned that from Mary after I was arrested.

"Then where is he?"

He did not believe my story. Nobody except Jack, Mary Nancy and perhaps my sister Emily thought that I was anything but guilty as charged.

"Perhaps you had another nervous breakdown," suggested my lawyer. "An insanity defense perhaps?"

"Obviously I must be crazy for thinking that craft can fly. That alone should be proof."

"Nobody can get inside it, you know," he said referring to the craft. "They tried to move it with a crane. You said you towed it out there with tractor?"

"Mary and the kids watched and taped it."

"Yes, we saw the tape. The police want to know how you did that."

I paused for a moment. "What if I bring back some proof that the craft can go into space and return?"

"What kind of proof?"

"A moon rock perhaps, soil from Mars, perhaps I could jumpstart that Martian lander with the dead battery. How about that?"

"You're serious aren't you? No one will ever agree to that."

Everyone thought my idea was totally insane, or almost everyone. There was the concept of innocent until proven guilty and as the days passed, they realized it was not going to be easy to prove me guilty. Like I said, they had no body and Jack and Mary stood beside me, even after they found out how rich I was, which they did when I posted a million dollar bail, then I posted theirs and we all got out.

I had to tell Jack and Mary at least some of the truth about myself, or as much as I could deal with then. We all had dinner a couple of days later along with Nancy who was looking after Jack and Mary's kids. It had gotten real ugly for them too.

"You've got to end this, John," pleaded Jack. "I know you didn't hurt Charlie. If I thought for a second that you had or could, I'd say so, but even without the disk, I believed you."

But the disk didn't work for anyone else, just them.

"I can't plead guilty to something I didn't do." That much was obvious.

Hope came a couple of days later. The district attorney was willing to take me up on my offer. "Come back with proof and I might consider dropping the charges."

"I need a spacesuit first," I explained.

"Hey, that's your problem, not mine," he replied.

Money solves things. NASA wouldn't loan me one, but the Russians were more than willing to sell me one, right off the shelf. It came with instructions and a technician even came along to help me with it.

A couple of days later, with what seemed like half the police in the rural county watching, I climbed into the space suit and walked over to the craft. It had prevented anyone else from entering it but I had no problem at all. It allowed me inside as if it sensed my presence or perhaps it was because I believed. There was someone else who tried to enter behind me and it refused him entry.

At precisely ten minutes before the sun was due to be directly overhead, I turned a couple of dials, the craft was filled with light, then a few more twists and I saw stars for only a moment or two and then, I landed on Mars.

NASA had sent a craft there to explore but something had happened to it and it never responded once it landed. I found it right away and set my craft down almost on top of it. I opened my hatch and became the first human being to set foot on the Martian surface.

The craft had contained a Martian rover which, upon landing had ended up upside down and almost wedged against a boulder. I set it upright, found the solar panels to be bent and straightened them out and got them deployed. It took about thirty minutes of hard work and I wanted to stick around and make sure it worked, but as long as I was around, it never would. The craft caused temporal and magnetic disturbances that would interfere with any normal communications. It would have been great if it could have taken a picture of me, there on the Martian soil. I did take some samples but that was all I could do before climbing back inside my craft.

My next stop was the moon and the site where Apollo 12 landed. They left behind a few small artifacts which I gathered up. How could anyone doubt me now, I wondered.

By my reckoning, I was gone a couple of hours, but as before, it was only twenty minutes.

I had my doubters. I had taken the soil with me, said some. I faked the evidence. On and on. It was all a charade. I still had no proof.

My lawyer believed me now though. At least that was a start.

It might have stayed like that, and I might have gone to jail for a very long time but not for another almost disaster.

After the Columbia shuttle disaster, NASA became almost paranoid about the heat shield on the shuttles. They found a way to patch damaged sections in space and even sent a repair kit up to the international space station. The problem was, when Endeavor was found to be missing some tiles, the shuttle was on the opposite side of the world and running low on fuel. There was no way it was going to make it to the space station and then land.

I was approached by a man from NASA. "Can you do it?" he asked me. "Can you get the repair kit from the station over to Endeavor and how quickly?" he asked one evening.

"Yes, I can do it, but not until noon tomorrow."

"I need you up there now," he almost snapped at me.

"And you're one of the people who said I faked the Martian and Lunar soil samples, aren't you?"

"You never left ground. You could not possibly have gone there."

"If I can't leave the ground, then why are you asking me to try?"

"I was told to," he snapped, "by the President of the United States and by God, if the President asks me to do something, I do it whether I like it or not, even if I think it's the craziest damn thing I've ever heard of."

"Then you can tell the President that I would be honored to help, but I will need some cooperation and something in return." He glared at me. "I didn't kidnap Charlie and he's very much alive so I won't be prosecuted for anything, will I? Secondly, you'd better contact the space station and the shuttle and tell them to expect a visitor and that when I arrive, communications won't work. It's too complicated to explain, but it won't. Thirdly, my brother in law Jerry is up at the station, he loves fresh lobster, and I'd love to bring him one."

And here I had thought the President was just another jerk and he was agreeing to my requests. I even had it all in writing before I climbed into the space suit along with an insulated box with a lobster in it for Jerry.

"Can I come along?" asked Nancy as I was getting ready to leave.

"Sorry, only one space suit. Once I open the hatch, all the air will go out and that will be the end of you. Besides, I got myself into this. It's best I got myself out."

We kissed and then I once again walked out to the craft, climbed up inside, closed the hatch and then turned the dials.

It was the briefest of flights to the space station. I had to literally knock on the door to be let inside.

"I don't believe this," exclaimed Jerry when he opened the hatch.

"Nice surprise," I said handing him the lobster.

"You're not in the space program. How the hell did you get here and why the hell all the secrecy?"

"It's a story nobody believes and it's a bit long and complicated. Let's just say I'm a mad scientist who has built his own little space ship and leave it at that."

"My wife did say you were a bit strange."

I only had a few more minutes to chat, then I took the repair kit with me and hauled it over to my own ship, then flew it over to the Endeavor.

They saw my craft from the window, in fact I made a point of being seen, and they had more than a hard time believing it, but there I was and with me was the repair kit. It could not be doubted this time.

"I'd like to hang around and help you," I said, "but this Russian suit leaks and it's past my lunch time."

Ten minutes after high noon, I emerged again from my craft.

It took a few minutes to reestablish communications with the space station and Endeavor but Jerry had his lobster and the Endeavor had its parts and me, I got it all I guess.

Yes, the district attorney dropped all charges. I had saved the crew of the Endeavor and proved that although the craft never left the ground, that I had been out there and back. Nobody understood it, but, nobody cared much either. The crew was safe.

I also got the space ship, well Jack and I did. We became partners, part owner of the only nonflying space ship in the world. We weren't sure what we were going to do with it yet, but we'd figure something out.

And, oh yes, about six months later, I married Nancy. Just thought you ought to know. I think that was the best part. I'd tell you where we honeymooned, but you'd never believe me, but we didn't have to worry about the phones.

Then again, maybe you would believe me.