Prologue: 1949

A horrible thing happened to Archie Grant when he was twelve years old. He was almost abducted, never to be seen again. If only the kidnapping had been successful, he would have been so much better off.

One Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1949, Archie was walking home from the matinee movie with his best pal and his friend’s little brother. Archie’s friend was called Zeke, which, considering that his German immigrant parents had saddled him with the moniker “Percival Hezekiah Stone” in a misguided attempt to help him blend in to their adopted homeland, was something of a blessing. Arguably, Zeke’s little brother, Wolfgang Ezekiel, age nine, had caught the worst of it by virtue of the fact that his elder sibling had laid prior claim to the only decent available nickname.

The movie itself had been nothing special, one of Abbott and Costello’s lesser works. As Archie and Zeke strolled down the sidewalk chatting excitedly at each other, with Wolfgang tagging along behind, the main topic of conversation, as usual, was the short feature that had appeared between the Movietone newsreel and the last intermission: The Amazing Adventures of Dash Mercury of Space Patrol!

“Bang! Pow!” Archie shouted, punching the air. “Did you see the way Dash Mercury beat up all the Emperor’s men?”

“I know!” Zeke agreed. “That was so cool. I can’t wait ‘til next week to see how Dash gets away from the space station before it explodes.”

Wolfgang squeezed in between the two other boys and looked up at them. “But it blew up already,” he insisted. “I saw.” Archie and Zeke burst into laughter. “It did!”

Zeke chided Wolfgang, in that tone of voice older brothers reserve for when their younger siblings give them the perfect opening to point out how dumb they are. “It was a cliffhanger, you goof. This week we saw it explode, so that next week we’ll go back to see how Dash escaped before it exploded.” Zeke’s youthful cynicism was just starting to take root. “They couldn’t call it ‘The Adventures of Dash Mercury’ if they killed off their hero. Duh.”

Wolfgang looked up at his brother, eyes wide. “Aren’t we going to go back next week anyway?”

Zeke opened his mouth to speak, paused, pondered a moment, then reached down and smacked Wolfgang lightly in the back of the head. “Hush up, twerp.”

As they were walking past the park next to the elementary school, Zeke said, “So, what do we want to do now? Mom doesn’t want us home before dark.”

Archie suggested, “Want to go skip rocks across Skinner’s Pond?”

“No, Skinner’s cows are in that field, and these are new shoes,” Zeke replied. “How about we go wading down by the creek and catch crawdads?”

“Swings!” Wolfgang interjected, pointing into the park. He was tired of walking and wanted to play. Also, crawdads gave him the willies.

“Hey, I know!” Archie exclaimed. “Wolfgang, you be the evil Emperor of the Universe. That swing set can be your throne room, and the slide is your death trap. Zeke, you be Bobby Jupiter. The Emperor has captured you and put you in the death trap. I’ll be Captain Dash Mercury and come rescue you.”

“Why do you get to be Dash Mercury?” objected Zeke.

“Because I thought of it. Zeke, you climb up on top of the slide, and if I don’t get to you in time, Wolfgang will push you down and that means you’re dead.”

“How do I play Emperor?” asked Wolfgang, who was interested in anything that let him both play on swings and maybe push his older brother to his pretend death.

“That’s dumb,” Zeke argued. “You get to do the rescuing and I just sit on the slide?”

“Come on. It’ll be fun.”

“If it’s so fun, then you be Bobby Jupiter and sit on the slide. I’ll come rescue you.”

Archie thought for a moment. “All right. How about this? The slide is the Emperor’s Death Ray and it’s aimed at Earth. Bobby Jupiter snuck in to try to stop it, but the Emperor saw him and now they’re fighting over it. You be the Emperor and Wolfgang can be Bobby.”

Wolfgang tugged on Archie’s arm. “Which one was Bobby?” While Archie and Zeke had been going to the bijou pretty much every Saturday that summer, Wolfgang had only been foisted on them by Zeke’s mother for the past couple of weeks. Even then, he had been more interested in his jujubes than anything happening on the screen, except for the cartoon. As a result, Wolfgang was only barely aware that something he’d seen this week had any connection to last week, let alone character names or plot points. He had in fact been briefly confused and frightened when he failed to notice the change from the newsreel to the serial, and thought the spacemen were coming after him. However, something in his little boy’s bones told him that going from someone named “Emperor of the Universe” to someone named “Bobby Jupiter” was a demotion.

“Bobby Jupiter, Boy Spaceman, remember?” Archie explained. “The little kid who flies around with Dash in his rocket and gets into all kinds of trouble? ‘Great Ganymede, Dash!’?”

Wolfgang attempted this. “Great gammy need.” He didn’t like it. “I wanna be the Emperor!” he proclaimed.

“No, you should be Bobby,” Zeke agreed. “He’s little, you’re little, it makes sense.”

“I’m not little!” Wolfgang protested, standing extra straight.

“No, you be Bobby, and I’ll be Dash and come save you from Archie.”

“Hey, I was going to be Dash!” Archie reminded Zeke.

“Too late. I called it.” Zeke crossed his arms and tried to look dashing.

“But I called it first.”

“Rock scissors paper,” Zeke proposed, holding up one fist ready to swing down into the waiting palm of his other hand.

“You’re on.”

The two boys stood facing each other in the grass at the edge of the park, fists in position. They each threw steely gazes at the other -- cold looks of pure, unbridled competitive spirit.

Off to the side, Wolfgang stood in a similar pose trying in vain to stare down two people at the same time who weren’t paying him any attention at all.

“Ready?” Archie asked. Zeke nodded, not breaking eye contact.

Together they chanted the count, smacking fists into palms with each beat. “One…two…three … go!” On “go,” Archie extended his first two fingers out into the internationally recognized symbol for scissors. The contest done, he looked down to see whether he had won or lost.

Zeke’s hand was a fist. Rock breaks scissors. Wolfgang had paper, but nobody cared.

Archie suggested, “Two out of three.”

"You can be Dash next time,” Zeke offered.

Archie grumbled, “All right, fine,” more because he was tired of arguing than anything else. “Come on, kid,” he said, waving for Wolfgang to follow him as he started trudging toward the swings. Zeke, meanwhile, ran off into the park so he could sneak up on the Death Ray from an unexpected direction.

When they reached the playset, Wolfgang clambered up the steps to the top of the slide. Once at the summit, he stood up, holding on to one handrail for balance, turned around to look down at Archie, shook his fist, and said, “You mean old emperor! I won’t let you use this death ray on Earth! I’ll stop you! I’m Jimmy Jupiter!”

“Bobby. Bobby Jupiter,” Archie corrected indifferently.

“Uh, yeah. I’m Bobby Jupiter!”

Archie recited without enthusiasm, “You foolish young boy. You cannot hope to defeat me. Dash Mercury was killed when my death ray destroyed Space Station Ajax. Without him, you are no match for me.” Archie stepped over to the bottom of the slide’s ladder, reached out and grasped one railing, and placed a foot on the bottom step. A gust of wind blew through the park just then which Archie heard rather than felt, as it shook the leaves on the trees, making a sort of hissing sound all around him. A moment later, it subsided.

To heck with Zeke, Archie thought. Why does he get to be the hero when it was my idea in the first place? Now I’m stuck having to deal with his annoying brother while he gets to sneak up on us. It’s not fair.

“Oh, yeah?” cried Wolfgang. “Well, I pull out my radio gun and shoot you!” He demonstrated this by miming pulling a gun out of a hip holster, pointing his right index finger at Archie, and making a “Zzzzt!” noise.

“Bobby Jupiter doesn’t have a radio gun, Wolfgang. Dash says he’s too young.”

“I shot you! Fall down,” Wolfgang insisted.

“No, you didn’t. You don’t have a gun.”

“Do too!” For emphasis, Wolfgang pointed and “Zzzzt!”-ed again.

“Besides, you’re one of the good guys. You can’t shoot at me unless I shoot at you first. Heroes don’t do that. It’s a rule.”

“Zzzzt!”

Archie rolled his eyes and sighed. “Forget it.” Looking back up at Wolfgang, he continued, “You can shoot me all you want, but I’m not going to act like you did, so it won’t do you any good.”

“Oh.” Wolfgang looked down at his finger gun like it was a Christmas set of mittens from Aunt Ruth when he was expecting a new fire truck. He let his fingers relax.

“Good.” Archie glanced around the park. “Where is Zeke anyway? He should have attacked by now.” Wolfgang shrugged. Archie called out, “Come on already, Dash Mercury! I have your young sidekick in my clutches! Earth is doomed! What are you going to do about it?” No response. “Zeke? You out there?” Archie stepped away from the slide and took a good look in every direction, to no avail. “Zeke! Seriously, show yourself!”

Archie glanced back at Wolfgang, who was watching him intently with worried eyes. “Don’t worry, kid. He’s just messing with us. Come on down from there.” Wolfgang climbed back down the slide’s ladder, sniffling. “Let’s go find that blockhead.”

They walked all over the park together, which wasn’t that much of an ordeal, really, but they didn’t find any sign of Zeke. Calling his name did nothing but spook a few squirrels. The only thing out of the ordinary at all that they came across was one location not unlike anyplace else in the park, about 50 yards away from the slide, where the hair on their arms stood up for no good reason. Archie assumed it was goose bumps brought on by the nervous, twisty feeling growing in his stomach, and thought nothing more about it. As they traversed the park, Archie noticed that Wolfgang was making special effort to walk on the same side of every large tree they passed.

When they were done, Archie told Wolfgang, “I bet he went home. He’s probably sitting on your front steps right now having a big laugh about leaving us out here wondering where he is.” Wolfgang stared blankly up at him and nodded. “Let’s go see.” Side by side, they walked out of the park, back out to the street, and headed for home. Wolfgang reached up and took Archie’s hand. Archie let him hold on.

Zeke wasn’t at home. He wasn’t at Archie’s house either, or at Skinner’s Pond, or at the crawdad hole, or at the dime store reading comics off the racks. The sun was getting low in the sky, and Archie knew with dreadful certainty that the moment was coming when he would have to tell Zeke’s huge Bavarian mother that he had lost her oldest son.