Mission: Mayhem (Casefiles #93)

Plot: At Space Academy, Frank and Joe space-investigate a series of space-accidents that may or may not have targeted terrestrial actor Greg Fontana.

“Borrowing” from the past: The Hardys are no strangers to space exploration. In The Skyfire Puzzle (#85), the last digest before the year-long hiatus that presaged the beginning of the Casefiles, the Hardys actually went into space on the space shuttle Skyfire. It was a logical development; after going to Easter Island and Antarctica, two of the most remote places on Earth (as they did in The Stone Idol, #65), where else is there to go? The Hardys trained and took off from Kennedy Space Center in Skyfire; they visited Kennedy Space Center in Sky Sabotage (#79) as well.

Frank and Joe both identify themselves as pilots in Mission: Mayhem, although they don’t actually fly. Frank’s flying experience is listed in Power Play (Casefiles #50); in addition, Frank claims to have “dead-stick landed” a plane without engine power. I have no idea whether that has been shown in the books, though. A précis of Joe’s experience can be found in In Plane Sight (#176).

Just in case you care: Frank and Joe are six feet and six feet, one inch tall, although Mission: Mayhem makes it vague about which brother is which height.

Joe’s skills: While watching other students perform a mock shuttle launch, Joe watches a “pretty young woman with blond hair, not much older than he was” perform her complicated mission-control duties. Joe’s first thought? “At seventeen, Joe knew he wasn’t ready for a job like this.” Come on! Joe’s looking at a pretty girl. He shouldn’t be thinking about, you know, complicated stuff like life and a career.

Later on, however, Joe does raid the lockers in the girls’ barracks, trying to pick the locks. So that’s something … and by “something,” I mean “creepy.”

Frank’s skills … : Are, of course, nonexistent. He sneaks off late at night with one of the female students, but it’s to compete against her on the multi-axis trainer — a sort of a gyroscope that spins students along all three axes. He tells himself he doesn’t know why he would do something so stupid; he suggests it will allow him to get to know her better or perhaps he wanted to succeed at the challenge the trainer presented. He does not suggest the most likely rationales: hormones, adrenaline rush, or competition with the girl. This is a boy who is repressing something, and that “something” is likely “adolescence.”

Joe suggests Frank wanted to “soften up the ice queen.” I’m not sure what dirty, dirty thing “soften up” is youth slang for, but I am interested in finding out.

Excuses, excuses: Laura and Fenton allow the boys to “take time off from school” to complete the week-long program. This ranks among the weakest excuses Frank and Joe have ever used to get out of school to do whatever they wanted; the only one that comes close is the revised Short-Wave Mystery, in which Fenton just writes the boys an excuse to show the school for the three days they miss. Yes, heating-system breakdowns, a collapsed school roof, and teacher’s conferences are extremely convenient, and the Hardys have had more summer and winter vacations during the theoretical year of high school most of the mysteries take place in than I ever had. But at least the writer was trying; it wasn’t just, hey, let’s go to Space Camp instead of school.

Do you want space fries with that space burger?: “Space” is an adjective that, if this book is to believed, is used so often in Huntsville that it loses all meaning. There’s Space Camp, of course; Frank and Joe are enrolled at Space Academy, which is a physically and mentally tougher course for older students. (Today, what Frank and Joe are doing is Advanced Space Academy, which is for high schoolers; Space Academy is for the junior high set.) They watch movies in the Space-Dome, and there’s also a Space Museum. There are others, too — I just stopped paying attention after the Space-Dome. They watched the movie Speed there — not the one with Keanu, but one that talks about how perception of speed has changed over the centuries.

While at Space Academy, Frank and Joe pass by the space shuttle Pathfinder. The Pathfinder is fictional, of course. The U.S. space shuttles were Columbia (1981-2003), Challenger (1983-6), Atlantis (1985-; last flight planned for June 28, 2011), Discovery (1984-2011), Endeavour (1992-; last flight planned for April 29, 2011), and Enterprise (1974-; never capable of space flight and now an exhibit at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian). As mentioned above, the Hardys went into space on the space shuttle Skyfire.

Let us take a moment to remember America’s space shuttle program, which will come to an end soon after 30 years. Hopefully it will not take another 30 years before America sets its sights that high again.

Wrong, Brainiac: Two allegedly smart people make dumb mistakes in this book. When a fire breaks out in student barracks, Frank tries to beat it out with blankets and then a mattress, both attempts failing. Another student wisely uses the fire extinguisher, which Frank “completely forgot.” Well, it was a crisis situation, so you could forgive Frank if he didn’t face crisis situations every couple of days. The other one is worse, in its way, especially since an astronaut teacher lets the mistake pass uncontested: Maria Galewski, class know-it-all, claims “Frank could graduate from college in the time it would take to travel to Mars.” No — it would take less than a year to get to Mars (about nine months), and the round trip would take less than two. We all know Frank is brilliant — as he himself immodestly says, “I know a lot about a lot of things” — but I don’t think he could finish a college degree in a year or even two.

Physically phit: Joe complains that running two miles in twelve minutes will mean he will have to average six minutes a mile. Well, Joe’s good at math, but not evidently at running; six miles a minute isn’t that impressive for a high school athlete. I was not a very good cross country runner when I was in high school, but I could almost do that over more than three miles. (Not quite, but I was the worst varsity runner on the team, eighth on a team of eight.) Whatever happened to the vaunted Hardy athletic ability? They’ve participated in five school sports and are “star athletes”; they’re also top sprinters and track stars at Bayport High (as per The Ghost at Skeleton Rock, #37, and The Demon’s Den, #81). In Game Plan for Disaster (#76), Frank and Joe were completing five-mile runs, although admittedly the book didn’t say they were completing them with any sort of speed.

Casual sexism is the best sexism: When the Hardys’ team leader says trainees are divided into six-man teams, Maria, one of the female students loudly clears her throat, forcing the former astronaut team leader to acknowledge that yes, females can be interested in being astronauts. Not so surprising for a book from 1994; not so surprising now, really. On the other hand, Dixon makes a point that Maria is a hyper-motivated jerk; when an asthmatic student collapses during a two-mile run, her first words to the student are, “You should keep yourself in better shape.” She also locks Frank into the multi-axis trainer until he succeeds at the replicating the sequence of flashing lights that are flashing at him. Frank almost passes out but succeeds; Maria says he needed the proper motivation.

Glory!: I have made the point that in the real world, the Hardys would not be very good investigators, as they have little or no conception of basic rights and seem to be more interested in their own glory than actually protecting people. Mission: Mayhem continues that theme. When their trainer gets booted from the program without a chance to defend himself, Frank is indignant, although basic Constitutional rights have never been a major concern of his before — and this is just an employment situation, rather than a criminal investigation. Frank also has an opportunity to get a suspect booted from the Space Academy premises — a move that would likely save lives, if the suspect was guilty, or clear the suspect, if more “accidents” happened. However, Frank wants to expose the malefactor, so he keeps Barron, the suspect, near.

Such is fame: A teenage actor is inserted into Space Academy to study for his next role; he tries to convince everyone he’s famous, but no one is buying it since his fame came from his role as a child. When he and his personal assistant are expecting everyone to recognize him, Joe shrugs. So what if he’s an actor? Will his name — or the name of his father — keep him out of jail in any state or in several other countries? No. No, it will not.

Snark: While Frank is trying to get info from a counselor by sounding sympathetic, Joe keeps butting in with his own comments, which are decidedly unsympathetic. Frank gives Joe a sharp look to keep him from talking: “Joe’s opinion he could get any time. … He hoped Joe would get the hint and either get with the program or stop talking.” This is one of those times I sympathize with Frank; even though he didn’t fill Joe in on what the plan is, Joe should have figured it out.

Whatever happened to Scott Randolph?: Another actor is mentioned as a potential rival to the actor at Space Academy; his name is Scott Randolph. Randolph Scott was a famous movie actor from the ‘30s to the ‘50s, mostly famous for his more than 60 Westerns. He was also rumored to have had an affair with Cary Grant, but that claim is hotly disputed.

Generic equivalent: Joe compares an instructor with bulging muscles to “the cartoon character made out of car tires that he’d seen in commercials.” Afraid to invoke the name of the Michellin Man, Joe? Is it out of some prurient, anti-commercialism? Or are you afraid that if you think the name too forcefully, the Michellin Man will emerge out of thin air and take you (or your soul) to France? Yes, it’s a horrible fate to contemplate, but it won’t really happen. The Michellin Man looks like a lumpy, horrifying beast called up from some mephitic abyss, but he’s just an advertising icon. There’s a subtle but identifiable difference.

Boffo?: Frank says the villain was hoping for a “boffo climax.” Joe wisely pretends not to understand what “boffo” means, as no East Coast teenager should ever admit to knowing that word.

Opinions: The culprit is obvious, the story ignores some of the Hardys’ more unforgettable adventures, but there’s something about Mission: Mayhem that I like. There’s a female character who is more than the equal of the boys, although she’s a bit aggressive about it; the Hardy Boys books have never been subtle. The “accidents” are (mostly) plausibly seen as accidents, although everyone seems to overlook the arson incident. Space Academy is a place the Hardys could logically get into and that Frank might be logically interested in. (Why Joe attends is a question best left unexamined.) Most importantly, there isn’t anything that makes me want to hurt Franklin W. Dixon. This is a Frank novel, as most of the challenges are mental rather than physical. Joe looks like an idiot for most of the book, but his stupidity is plausible for a 17-year-old boy. Somewhat implausibly, Joe doesn’t distinguish himself on the physical challenges, but there aren’t that many to deal with. The message is clear: space is a place where the mentally tough will distinguish themselves.

Grade: B-. Unexceptional and inoffensive.