CATCH A FALLING STAR

iUniverse, Inc.

Chapter One

Grace plopped breakfast dishes on top of the unwashed supper dishes from the night before. Glass and plastic clanked. Silverware rattled and slid to the bottom of the ceramic kitchen sink. Her kitchen was awash in all sorts of uncleanness. The garbage pail was so full the plastic lid wouldn't completely shut. The linoleum tiles were blotched with black and brown patches of stickiness, their white color grayed by too many weeks without the kiss of Mr. Clean. The stove had grease spatters and gobbets of burned food on its top, unclean pans stacked within its wide oven mouth. There were untended bits of paper, mostly junk mail, piled atop the refrigerator.

"Gracie," called the man on the couch in the other room. "Come on in and watch the Today show. Willard's gonna say something funny any second."

Grace looked at the backs of her two hands. They were worn with years of housework. They were also too fat. The doctor said she needed to exercise and lose weight, or the next one would kill her. She used to exercise constantly, but now ... what was the point?

She walked into what used to be the dining room but was now the sit-and-watch-TV-as-you-eat room. Newspapers were scattered all over the floor, some from today, most from the previous week.

Her grandmother's table was pushed back into a corner. It was solid oak, with four carved lion's feet to hold it up. It could be opened in the middle to add a table board or two for company. No company had come in years.

Alden sat on the sofa, unshaven and wearing his tank-top undershirt. He had an oily seed-corn cap on the top of his large, balding head. He looked up at her and patted the seat beside him, indicating that she should sit.

"Gracie, honey, cheer up. It's a new day—a new week. Things are bound to get better."

Grace flounced down on the sofa. The man knew how to wreck a good pout.

"I'm only thirty-eight, Alden," she announced. "It's not fair that I feel so old. I hate my life."

"Now, Gracie, you remember your blood pressure. You've got to do more healthy things. You can't stay in the house and fuss all the time. The more you worry, the worse it is for you. The doctor said so."

She didn't answer. She watched Bryant Gumbel telling about something that happened in Washington, something about the country of Iraq. She didn't pay much attention to what he was saying. She was thinking that this handsome broadcaster was actually older than she was. Yet that child on the street two weeks ago had called her grandma. She hadn't even had a child of her own yet, and she was being mistaken for somebody's grandmother.

"Let's go up to Mason City today," suggested Alden. "The drive and the fresh air will do you good. We can look around in the department store. You like JCPenney's."

"Oh, Alden, I just don't feel well. Maybe this weekend. Besides, you need to get out and find a job. The money we got from selling the farm will not last forever."

"You're right. I need something to do. I'm getting fat living a fancy life in town. I miss the old Farmall. I just wish there were more jobs around."

"I'm sorry I never gave you a son, Alden," she said with an air of confession. "Maybe with a boy to help, we wouldn't have lost your father's farm."

"Now, don't start on that. We lost that farm because we defaulted on loans and were forced to sell. You had nothing to do with it."

The conversation was over. Alden knew better than to let her talk about the child she couldn't have. It was the subject that seemed to be killing her. She was incapable of going through a pregnancy and coming out alive. As a couple, they had been unable to adopt. They were both family-type people from many generations back. They were simply doomed never to live the same sort of life their parents had. Being childless was a demon that neither one of them could truly face alone.

"Let's go to Mason City. The Ford has plenty of gas. I'll look for work up there."

The subject was changed. Grace was distracted for the moment. The Morrells were safe from their demons for a few more hours.

Canto 2: The Bicycle-Wheel Laboratory

Tim Kellogg was a towheaded boy, the son of an English teacher, and the leader of the infamous Norwall Pirates. He had grown up spending a lot of time around adults, so his parents didn't worry too much when he made friends with the smartest man in Norwall, Orben Wallace, otherwise known as the Bicycle-Wheel Genius.

He was a strange type, this Professor Wallace. He was a doctor of engineering who had sworn off electronics in favor of gear power. It wasn't the most complete swearing-off you ever heard of. It meant no TV or electric razors, but lights were okay, and so were electric heaters ... and he had a thing about computers. They were like family.

Now, most parents would be leery of a single adult male whose friends were young boys, but the eccentric Mr. Wallace was not a source of worry. The Kelloggs had learned from independent sources that he had been a solid family man with a wife and young son, both of whom were killed in a terrible, mysterious lab accident. The man liked Tim because he so strongly resembled the blond son in his many cherished photos. Mr. Wallace had proved already, on a couple of occasions, that he would sooner die than let anything bad happen to Tim.

So it was that Tim crept into the yard of the laboratory that day with the intent to satisfy some curiosity.

It was a wondrous place if you looked below the surface. What seemed like a row of broken-down dishwashers in the yard was, in fact, a series of homemade aquariums containing a number of sealed ecosystems. Plants, animals, air, dirt, and water were all sealed inside, in combinations that varied slightly from tank to tank and were all carefully monitored by computer systems. The large, rusted recycling bin that stood up against the side of the house was really a concealed entrance to the basement lab. There were two fireman's poles inside, one labeled Batman and the other Robin.

Tim pushed the proper access code into the pocket calculator that lay on the ground beside the recycling bin. The pop and whoosh of hermetic seals was followed directly by the secret door popping open to allow access to the poles. Tim grabbed Robin and slid down into the dingy darkness.

Inside the lab was a whole other world. Colored lights blinked on and off everywhere, as if one was standing inside a Christmas tree. The entire room was cocooned in various Rube Goldberg devices made of gears, pulleys, ratchet arms, and of course, bicycle wheels.

Orben himself was working on what looked on the surface to be an old-fashioned Coke machine, which it actually once had been. His little blond twin-forked goatee twitched as he tightened gears and twisted flywheels.

"So, Professor Einstein, is that your new time machine?" Tim greeted him with a sardonic grin.

"One should not be so flippant with important names in the history of science, young Tim. And the answer to your ludicrous question would have to be yes, though it's much more complex than that little misnomer would suggest."

Tim raised an eyebrow at the cryptic response. He was used to big words, because they were a part of both his upbringing and his father's profession, but the ideas that Orben used them to give shape to were often overwhelming.

"Would you care to explain?" Tim hazarded.

"No. You are unaware of most of...