Go Big or Go Home by Will Hobbs Page B

plunked ourselves down on a couch opposite his rolling desk chair, where he was already waiting expectantly.
    As I fished in my backpack, the professor reached into the pocket of his lab coat for his glasses. Once they were perched on his nose, he reached out his long arm and took Fred in hand. As he eyeballed the traveler from every angle, the few wisps of hair on the top of his head stood on end. I didn’t take that for a reaction, just static electricity due to our dry Black Hills air. The professor wasn’t reacting at all.
    Quinn shrugged at me. I shrugged back, then ran my eyes over the rocks on the scientist’s desk, the computers, the microscopes, a glass cabinet full of vials, star charts on the walls, big enlargements of photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
    â€œIt’s basaltic, almost certainly,” the professor announced at last. “Basaltic shergottite.”
    My chest tightened up. I had to take a quick breath. “You’re saying it’s not a meteorite?”
    â€œBeyond question it’s a meteorite. Which of you would be the finder?”
    â€œI would be the finder,” I volunteered. Quinn looked at me like I was talking funny.
    â€œAnd what makes you think it was from Saturday evening’s event?”
    When I explained how I’d come by it, the professor’s eyes got big as flying saucers. “Right through your roof and your bed! Bravo! Think of the odds on that!”
    â€œAstronomical,” I suggested.
    My pun flew past the professor—he was all wound up. “Life is surpassingly strange, my friends, and full of improbable surprises. There’s a world of difference between the improbable and the impossible. Brady’s near death by meteorite reminds me of the demise of Aeschylus, one of the great dramatists of ancient Greece, who was killed by a falling tortoise.”
    â€œSick!” Quinn exclaimed. “True story?”
    â€œIndeed. The tortoise, you see, was dropped by a bearded vulture, known for dropping tortoises on rocks in order to crack them open like walnuts. From a height, it has been surmised, the bird mistook the great man’s bald head for a rock. Take a certain individual and calculate the odds of him being killed by falling tortoise—oh, my.”
    Quinn squirmed a little, afraid the professor was going to get us off track. “That’s all very interesting, Dr. Rip, but is Brady’s meteorite valuable?”
    For some reason, the professor didn’t seem thrilledabout answering that question. “Relatively speaking, most meteorites are a dime a dozen. Did you know that millions bombard us every year?”
    â€œNo way,” Quinn objected.
    The professor was watching me and saw that I was on his side. He waited to see if I could explain, and I took him up on it. “Most are only as big as a grain of sand, Quinn, or maybe the size of a pebble.”
    â€œHow come you never told me?”
    â€œI dunno. It never came up.”
    â€œBrady’s an astronomy freak. Ask him anything, Professor.”
    â€œI’d be delighted. Let’s start with our own solar system. Name the planets beginning with the one closest to the sun.”
    I did, adding at the end that Pluto had been disqualified.
    â€œWhat are the clouds of Venus composed of?”
    â€œSulfuric acid.”
    â€œCan you name the giant moon of Saturn, which has an atmosphere?”
    â€œTitan.”
    â€œBravo. Approximately how many moons has Jupiter?”
    â€œMore than sixty.”
    â€œExcellent, Brady. Mars has two small moons. Can you name them?”
    â€œPhobos and Deimos. Fear and terror.”
    â€œWhat’s unusual about them?”
    â€œTheir shape—probably they were asteroids before Mars captured them.”
    â€œBrilliant.”
    I hoped all this quizzing meant the professor was going to tell us some really important stuff, now that he could see I wasn’t just some