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made her fingers into claws and began tickling David’s ribs over the covers. “Yes, I finished it, smart aleck!” she growled. Then she gently put a hand on the side of his smiling face and said, “Now go to sleep.”
    “ ’Kay. I’ll try.”
    She stepped over to Dad and plucked the magazine from his hands, tossing it onto David’s desk.
    “Hey!” Dad exclaimed. “Gimme that!”
    “Your bedtime, too, fella,” she said as she left the room.
    “You can read it later, Dad,” David whispered. “It’s a good one.”
    Dad moved to David’s side and sat on the edge of the bed. “Okay.”
    “Hey, your base commander came to our school today.”
    “Mad Dog Wilson?” he said and laughed. “Same old thing, huh?”
    “Yeah. Public relations for the base, I guess.”
    “You guess, huh?”
    “We talked about the new radar a little. I got to explain how it works.”
    “Good for you. Just stick with me, kid. I’ll show you the ropes.”
    Distant thunder rolled ominously through the sky and David’s eyes grew. “Did you hear that?”
    “Hear what?”
    “Thunder. Jeez, Dad, you must be getting pretty old. You’re losing your hearing already.”
    Dad kissed him and said, “Goodnight, wise guy.” He stood and went to the door.
    David leaned over the foot of the bed and turned on the small planetarium that was on his toy box. When Dad flicked the light off, the room became a window to outer space. The ceiling and walls were suddenly covered with pinpoints of light arranged to form a vast night sky all in one room.
    Dad started to close the door, stopped, and stepped back inside. “Almost forgot,” he said, reaching into his pocket. He held up a shiny new penny in a plastic case. “Here, a fifty-eight-D in mint condition.”
    David sat up in bed. “Wow!” Spots of light sparked off the shiny penny. “Thanks, Dad!”
    “Sure.” He looked around the starry room a moment until he spotted David’s shirt hanging on the back of a chair by the desk. “I’ll leave it for you here in your shirt pocket.” He dropped the penny in the pocket and went back to the door.
    “Thanks,” David said. “I love you, Dad.”
    “Love you, too, Champ. Good night.”
    He slowly pulled the door closed until all the light from the hall was blocked from the room, leaving David to gaze at the stars and constellations around him. After a moment, he swept the covers back and got out of bed, then went to the window where his telescope waited, staring blankly out at the night.
    He slid the window up and looked through the telescope, trying to find the meteors, hoping he’d be able to follow their rapid course. They moved too fast for his telescope, though, so he stepped around it and sat on the windowsill.
    Although none were as bright as the one he and Dad had witnessed earlier, he could still see them, flitting through the sky like distant thoughts being rejected by God. The thought made him smile.
    David hoped to be out there one day, to see firsthand what there was to see, to perhaps be the first astronaut ever to make contact with another intelligence . . . whatever kind of intelligence there was in space. He stared through his window at the endless sky, which came to life now and then with more meteorites, and imagined himself in a sleek spacesuit, at the controls of a ship, traveling swiftly and silently through space . . .
    A flicker of lightning brought him from his reverie. It was followed by the rumble of far-off thunder. A storm was coming in.
    He pushed away from the sill and crossed the room, getting into bed, still clinging to his thoughts of the future, of space travel and discovery.
    Turning on his side and snuggling into the pillow, David watched the stars on his walls and slowly, comfortably drifted off to sleep.

C H A P T E R

Four
    D avid sat bolt upright in bed, suddenly jarred from his sleep by a shattering crash of thunder and the howl of wind raging around the corners of the house.
    The planetarium was