Gremlins, Go Home!

4

Rolf looked nervously down the dark, deserted street. The whole town seemed to be asleep, and the only lights anywhere were the few street lamps glowing along the main avenue. One of the lamps was planted squarely in front of the hardware store.

“A black deed,” muttered Mr. Sheperton. “Breaking into the hardware store to steal things for the gremlins. I thought I had brought you up better than that.”

Rolf shushed him.

“You don’t understand. Be quiet.”

“Be quiet? I certainly will not be quiet!” Mr. Sheperton snapped back, but in a growly whisper. “Got half a mind to set up a howl that would bring on the police. If only the moon were full…”

Still standing uncertainly in the shadows of the Rocket City movie theater’s lobby, Rolf felt his nerves jangling. Shep was right. Stealing was no way to go. But if a little theft now would make the future right and safe again for the brown pelican and all the rest of the world’s creatures that were being threatened with destruction through pollution of one kind or another, certainly the end ought to justify the means?

“You were quiet enough at home tonight,” he said to Shep. “Why didn’t you say anything then?”

“Nothing for me to say,” the dog replied. “Did you want me to cook dinner for you?”

Rolf’s father had been out, as usual. The countdown for the Mars launch was too important for him to come home for dinner. His mother had been busy with the baby again, and when Rolf came home from Playalinda Beach he found that he had to fix his own dinner. He had opened a can of spaghetti and another of beef stew and eaten them both cold. Shep got his regular dogfood and half the beef stew.

Then Rolf had watched television for a while, fidgeting in the family room while his dinner made a cold lump inside him. He waited until it was late enough to slip out of the house. Rita Amaro had called to ask when his father would be on the TV news, and Rolf had hung up on her as quickly as he could.

Now, with everyone else asleep, Rolf still felt fidgety as he watched the empty street.

“If it’s the police you’re worried about,” said Mr. Sheperton coldly, “I’m sure the gremlins will be keeping them busy on other things. They can cause all the mischief in the world whenever they choose to.”

Rolf brightened a little. “Baneen said he’d help us…”

“Us?” Mr. Sheperton’s ears actually stood on end for an instant. “Not us, young man. You. You’re the one who’s decided on a life of crime.”

“Aw, come on. It’s only a few transistors.”

“For a start.”

Rolf didn’t feel like arguing. He looked up and down the street once more. “Why’d they have to put that street lamp right in front of the hardware store?”

And just at the moment, that particular lamp suddenly dimmed, sputtered, and went completely dark. The hardware store’s big front windows were swallowed by darkness.

“Baneen!” Rolf felt like shouting for joy. “He’s helping us after all! Just like he said he would.”

“Trust a gremlin to help you—to get into trouble,” muttered Mr. Sheperton darkly.

But Rolf wasn’t listening. He swiftly crossed the street and, keeping to the shadows along the building walls as much as possible, he hurried down the street toward the hardware store. Shep padded along behind him, his claws making tiny clicking sounds on the pavement. There were no other sounds. The night was as quiet as it was dark.

They slipped into the entryway of the hardware store. It was set in between two big plate-glass display windows. It was wonderfully dark in there. So dark, in fact, that Rolf couldn’t see the door very well at all. How can I pick the lock if I can’t see the keyhole? he wondered.

“Have you thought about the store’s burglar alarm?” asked Mr. Sheperton.

“Huh? Burglar alarm?” Rolf touched the door handle in the darkness…

And the door swung open!

Rolf felt it move, swing inward, and almost lost his balance. He lurched forward, trying to avoid falling, and suddenly found himself inside the hardware store.

“It wasn’t locked! They forgot to lock up!”

“More likely another sample of gremlin magic, I’d say,” Mr. Sheperton grumbled. “They’ll help you all they can… as long as you’re doing what they want. What they’re really doing, of course, is helping you to become as tricky and thieving as they are themselves.”

“Aw, come on Shep…”

The dog growled.

“Uh, Mr. Sheperton. All we have to do is find the right transistors and a little bit of wire. The store’ll never miss what we take.”

“But this is only the first step, Rolf. The gremlins won’t let you stop at this. Once you’ve started working for them, once you’ve allowed them to bewitch you with their promises, you’ll be hooked. They’ll always promise more than they give, and they’ll ask you to do bigger, riskier, more rascally tasks for them. In the end, they’ll have everything they want, and you’ll be behind bars. Or worse. I remember the case of one man, a young violinist…”

Rolf shook his head. “Never mind. I’ve got to find what we need.”

He took the folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket and tried to read O’Rigami’s careful printing. It was too dark to see much, but somehow the paper seemed to be much longer than it had been when he first took it.

“Better not show a light this close to the windows,” Rolf said, more to himself than Mr. Sheperton.

So he made his way slowly down the store’s main aisle, going by feel and memory more than sight. After a few bumps, he ducked behind the big counter where the cash register was. Squatting down on his heels, Rolf took his penlight from his pants pocket and clicked it on.

O’Rigami’s list did indeed look a lot longer than he had remembered it. The green letters shimmered as the tiny light shone on them, and Rolf blinked in astonishment as three new items wrote themselves in at the bottom of the list.

Taking a big breath, like a man about to plunge off a high diving board, Rolf got to his feet and started hunting through the store’s bins and drawers for the items O’Rigami needed.

It took a long time. Rolf had to work in the dark, risking the penlight only in quick flashes to read the labels on the storage bins and the boxes lined up on the shelves. And the gremlins’ list seemed to grow longer every time he looked at it.

Slowly a tiny pile of transistors, connectors, wire, and other items—including a green felt-tip pen, of all things—grew on the top of the back counter, next to the cash register.

Rolf was putting two more transistors on the counter. They were as tiny as fleas. Mr. Sheperton growled, “Stand still!”

Rolf froze.

The dog seemed to be sniffing the air. Then he said, “Keep your light off and get behind the counter. Quickly!”

No sooner had Rolf ducked behind it than a beam of light swept across the store. Peeking around the side of the counter, Rolf could see that a police car had nosed up to the curb and its headlights were shining right into the windows and door.

The door! Rolf felt his nerves jolting with electricity as he remembered that the door was unlocked. What can 1 do? Maybe the back door…

A policeman was already out of the car and heading for the door. Rolf didn’t dare move; he couldn’t even breathe. The officer walked slowly toward the unlocked door, glanced up at the still-dark street lamp, reached out and tried the door.

It stayed shut. He pushed on it, rattled it a few times, then turned back toward the car.

“It’s okay,” Rolf heard his muffled calling to the other policeman in the car. “Locked up tight. Better call the utility company and tell ’em they’ve got a bum light here.”

“Not now!” his partner yelled back. “The radio’s going nuts. All the burglar alarms in the shopping center across town have gone off at once. We’ve gotta get there and find out what’s going on.”

The policeman jumped into the car. Before he could shut the door, his partner had put the car into reverse and backed away from the curb. They swung down the street with their red gumball light flashing.

Darkness returned to the hardware store. Slowly, Rolf stood up. His legs ached with nervous cramps. He was shivering and drenched with a cold sweat.

Mr. Sheperton got up too, and leaned his forepaws on the counter top. He huffed at the scattered pile of electronics components. “Quite a scare for a measly ten dollars worth of trinkets.”

Rolf looked at the pile. Mr. Sheperton was right. All the junk on the table wouldn’t cost much more than ten dollars.

He suddenly patted the dog’s floppy-eared, furry head. “Come on Sh… Mr. Sheperton. Let’s get out of here.”

“And leave your booty?”

“We’ll get it tomorrow morning. Legally. After the bank opens and I can raid my savings account. I didn’t realize these things would be so cheap.”

Sure enough, when Rolf tried the front door it was unlocked again. And as he and Mr. Sheperton trotted down the street toward home, the street lamp in front of the store turned on brightly.

Breakfast was about the only time that Rolf ever saw his father anymore. Tom Gunnarson had never been a loud, jovial man. But these days he was uptight, wound up, and hardly said a word to anyone as Mrs. Gunnarson put bowls of cereal on the table for her two men.

“How’s the countdown going, Dad?” Rolf asked.

“Huh?” Tom Gunnarson seemed deep in private thought. He looked up at his son. “Oh, the countdown. Fine, right on schedule. Everything’s working just right. No hitches at all. No gremlins anywhere.”

Rolf nearly choked on a spoonful of cereal.

“G… gremlins?” he coughed.

“Mythical creatures,” Mr. Gunnarson explained absently. “Whenever something goes wrong with a piece of machinery, the technicians say that gremlins have gotten into it. Gremlins get blamed for anything that goes wrong—they’re supposed to be full of mischief. No such thing as gremlins, actually, of course.”

Swallowing hard, Rolf stayed silent.

“No,” his father went on, thoughtfully. “The countdown’s been remarkably free of gremlins. Everything’s going so smoothly that it’s kind of spooky. Which reminds me—I may have a happy surprise for all of us, to announce to you in a day or two.”

“If it’s all going so smoothly, why can’t you spend more time at home, then?” Rolf blurted.

“Rolf!” his mother snapped. “Don’t be fresh. You know your father would be home if he could be. The launch…”

But Tom Gunnarson put a lean, strong hand on his wife’s arm. “Actually, Rolf,” he said, “it wasn’t the launch itself that kept me busy last night.” His voice sounded slightly blurred, tired. “We had a long session with the security people…”

“Security?” Rolf squeaked. His heart gave a thump inside him.

“Yes. Somebody’s been sneaking boatloads of tourists into the cleared area around Playalinda Beach. That’s not really very dangerous right now, but the security people are getting very upset about it. That area has to be cleared before we can launch, and if some thieving boat captain is taking advantage of the tourists and holds up our launch…” Rolf’s father clenched his fist tightly enough to bend metal. Fortunately he wasn’t holding his spoon at that moment.

They finished breakfast in silence. Almost. The baby began crying as Rolf spooned the last of his milk-softened cereal flakes. Mrs. Gunnarson got up quickly and headed for the nursery. Used to be my playroom, Rolf couldn’t help reminding himself.

His father got up a moment later. “See you later, son.”

“Okay, Dad.”

Tom Gunnarson called to his wife from the front door. She called back from the nursery, told him to try to get home early enough for a good night’s rest. Then he was gone. Rolf sat in the kitchen. Alone, he thought, again. He pushed his chair back from the table and, without a word to his mother, went out the back door.

He was getting his bike out of the garage, when Rita came up. She was just Rolf’s age—in fact, they had grown up together, but now she looked to him like a stranger.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” he answered, busy rolling his bike out.

“Say, he was neat on television, last night,” she said.

“Who?” he grunted, without looking at her.

“Your dad!” she looked surprised. “Didn’t you watch him on TV last night? We saw him on the later news. And they had the same thing on again this morning, on the network show. Everybody in the country must have seen him this morning.”

“Big deal,” said Rolf.

“What d’you mean—big deal?” She stared at him.

“Big deal,” he insisted. “You know what’s important in the world today? Ecology, that’s what. But you think you’d see anyone on the tube because he’s doing work in ecology? But anybody connected with a space launch—that’s neeaat.” He drawled out the last word, sarcastically.

“Rolf, you—” She almost exploded. He looked at her, then. Rita Amaro was a happy girl, always smiling, her teeth flashing brightly against the dark tan of her skin. Rolf had decided secretly, last term in school after they had more or less gotten out of touch with each other, that she really was a pretty girl. When she grew up, she’d probably be beautiful enough to be a movie star or a stewardess, or something like that—and forget she had ever known anyone like him. Right now she looked ready to lose her temper. But she did not.

“He’s your father, Rolf!” she said. “I’d think you’d be proud. Man, you’re weird!”

“He doesn’t know anything about ecology,” muttered Rolf. “What’s more, he doesn’t care. He’s just an engineer.”

She opened her mouth and this time he did brace himself for an explosion, but instead, she closed her mouth again.

“Rolf,” she said, almost gently. “You’re… I don’t know what—”

“Weird,” Rolf got up on his bike and pushed off. “That’s what I am. Weird. And my father’s famous. Big deal!”

He left her standing in the driveway, looking after him as if she was still half-mad, half-something to which he could not put a name.

Shep appeared from somewhere as Rolf pedaled down the street toward the center of town, and raced alongside the bike. The morning sun wasn’t too high yet; the day was still cool. A good breeze was blowing. Rolf wanted to get to the hardware store just as they were opening up. But he had to stop at the bank first.

There was a big cherrypicker crane standing in front of the hardware store, and the hard-hatted electrician up in the cab was yelling down to his assistant on the truck:

“I tell ya I can’t find nothin’ wrong with it! Whoever called in and said this lamp was out must’ve been kiddin’!”

“It was the cops called in,” his helper yelled back.

The electrician shook his head. “Half the burglar alarms in town on the fritz and what’re the fuzz doin’? Sendin’ in phony complaints about street lamps!”

Rolf tried not to grin as he leaned his bike against the store front and walked in. Shep settled down on his belly beside the bike.

The pile of material was still on the back counter, beside the cash register. One of the young salesboys had just spotted it, and was standing there looking puzzled.

Rolf hurried back to him. “Uh, that’s my stuff,” he said. “I was in here yesterday just as they were closing up, and I didn’t have enough money to buy all that stuff, so I asked the man to leave it there so I could pick it up this morning.”

The salesboy frowned. He looked at the pile of electronic components, then at Rolf, then at the pile again.

“I was here last night, and I helped clean up after we closed shop. I don’t remember…” Then, with a shrug, he said, “Well, whatever. I’ll ring it up for you.”

It came to exactly $13.13, which didn’t leave much in Rolf’s savings account.

Shaking his head unhappily at the thought of how long it had taken him to save that money, Rolf stashed the paper bag on his bike’s rattrap and pushed on for Playalinda Beach.

“Come on, Shep,” he called. “I want to see what they’re going to do with this stuff.”