The Age Altertron by Mark Dunn

Author:Mark Dunn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: M P Publishing Limited
Published: 2009-09-25T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NiNE

In which the Professor berates himself, and a supermarket is robbed of all of its soft food, the reason to be revealed later

Walking in the bright moonlight, Rodney and Wayne and Becky and Petey (who had decided that he would like to come too, to thank the Professor personally for rescuing him from the cloud place, even though he was now prone to arthritis) kept to their own quiet thoughts for a while. It was nice to be able to walk again, even though the no-longer-youthful muscles in their legs felt tired and tight.

It was a strange thing to be strolling along so late at night, bathed in the light of a moon that looked no different from every other full moon they had known since they were first told by their parents what that giant, bright orb was doing so high in the sky. It was strange to be moving down a sidewalk whose every crack they had counted and tried to avoid (lest they break their mothers’ backs), past all the trees they had climbed and from whose branches they had hung down like monkeys, past familiar green lawns, now browning in the change of season, past the same cars and hedges and mailboxes and stop signs, and past the same Halloween decorations—scarecrows and Jack-o-lanterns that came out too early every year. It was as if nothing had changed, although a great deal had changed. And a great deal had been lost. Each child wondered as Becky had wondered: would they ever get it back again?

“I didn’t know that you wanted to be a children’s doctor,” Wayne said to Becky.

“Who works with puppets,” noted Petey.

Becky shrugged. “I thought you would make fun of me, the way

we used to laugh when Dr. Kelsey would forget where he put the knee thumper or his stethoscope.” Becky’s three companions smiled as they remembered Principal Kelsey’s equally absent-minded brother who was a pediatrician.

“But then, Wayne, I remembered that you once said you wanted to be a space cadet like ‘Tom Corbett, Space Cadet,’ on TV, so I thought it was okay to tell you something that I didn’t have much of a chance at either.”

“Why did you think that I couldn’t grow up to be a space cadet?”

“Because there isn’t such a thing as a space cadet,” said Becky. “Being a space cadet is a made-up job. Just like Tom Corbett is a made-up character.”

“You don’t think some day there will be astronauts, Becky?” posed Rodney. “Astronauts who will pilot their spaceships all the way to the moon and back?” Rodney glanced at the moon as he said this.

“Or to distant planets?” asked Petey, also looking at the moon but with a starry-eyed gaze.

“I suppose,” said Becky. “But by then, we’ll probably all be too old to go.”

The children walked on for a moment thinking quietly to themselves. Then Wayne broke the silence. “I wish that some day Professor Johnson would make a freezing machine that could put a person into

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