Ice Cream and Venom by Kevin Long Page A

snap a picture of all three of them. He scribbled the time and date on the bottom, then wrote down his name, address, and phone number on a napkin and gave them both to Phil. "If she doesn't turn up by this time tomorrow, give all that to the police and have 'em come get me." Susan agreed, then went off to call the station manager and let him know she'd be missing the morning farm report. She claimed to be sick. She made a couple other calls as well. On the drive back to the parking lot to get Phil's car, he fell asleep in the cramped back seat of the Mustang.
    * * *
    The two of them drove down a winding dirt road running through a dozen acres of cornfields. Susan looked nervous as they got further from civilization—though perhaps 'civilization' was an over-generous thing to call Mayfield, and as they got closer to the farm, she got more nervous still. Lee tried to put her at ease with some disco on the radio and his incessant blather—"I can't stand this new wave punk crap the kids listen to these days, how about you?"—but that just made her more visibly skitchy. As they came up on the farm, he pointed to a cluster of grain silos.
    "Let me guess, the rocket is in the silos?"
    "Oh, no, the rocket is the silos. Huh. Look at that. I wonder who that could be?" There were two men standing by the front door in black suits, white shirts, and black ties.
    "Government agents here to rescue me?" Susan joked.
    "Do government agents ride bicycles?" Lee asked. He got out of the car, "Can I help you?" he asked.
    "Hi! I'm Elder Tom from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and this is Elder Grapeape..." They both looked pretty young.
    "Grape Ape?" Lee asked incredulously.
    "It's a long story," Grapeape said, "Anyway, I know it's late and all, but we're missionaries, and we got lost because doofus here had us riding bikes on the highway in the wrong direction, and my tires have gone flat, and I've been riding on rims for like the last five miles. Can we please call our sponsor family and have them come pick us up? We've been ringing the bell for like half an hour, but no one answered, we were about to leave..."
    "It's ok. Come on in."
    Inside they met a man in late middle age, whom Lee introduced as his "Crazy uncle Steve."
    "Wow, Lee, she's a dish! Ring a ding ding! Such supple breasts..."
    "Did you say 'crazy uncle,' or 'creepy uncle'?" Grapeape asked.
    "A little of both."
    Elder Tom made a phone call, then came back in and said "They're not answering. I'll have to try again later."
    "Why didn't you answer the door when they were ringing?" Lee asked.
    "They were ringing the bell? I didn't hear it. I'm a little deaf," he apologized to Grapeape.
    "Can we please get to the story," Susan asked, tiring of Crazy Uncle Steve leering at her.
    "We shouldn't go into this in front of the Mormons," Steve said. Both missionaries blanched.
    "Why not?" Lee asked, "We're going to tell everyone about it tomorrow anyway. It's not like security is an issue, right?"
    * * *
    Steve gave them all a somewhat-grudging tour of the Internal Bleeder. Susan and the Mormons cringed at the name. "It's kind of a joke," Lee said, "I hate pretension. Everyone gives space ships such pretentious names—'Enterprise,' 'Galactica,' 'Millennium Falcon,' 'Saturn,' 'Orion,' 'Eagle.' I hate that. You guys remember Apollo 10?"
    "Not really, Grapeape said.
    "The Capsule was named 'Charlie Brown' and the lander was named 'Snoopy.' There was another Apollo where the Capsule was named 'Gumdrop' and the LEM was named 'Spider.' That gave me the idea that if I ever had a spaceship, I'd not only give it a non-pretentious name, I'd give it the most anti-pretentious name I could think of." He was kind of worked up by the time he got to the end of this, but everyone else just stared at him blankly.
    "If freakshow is done," Crazy Uncle Steve said, "I'll continue: As you can see, it's built out of eight cranberry silos bolted together, six around a central one, and one on top