“Well…all right. I see your logic; I don’t have to like it.” She tagged along. “Kip? How many gravities can you stand?”
“Huh? I haven’t the slightest idea. Why?”
“Because these things can go lots faster than I dared try when I escaped before. That was my mistake.”
“Your mistake was in heading for New Jersey.”
“But I had to find Daddy!”
“Sure, sure, eventually. But you should have ducked over to Lunar Base and yelled for the Federation Space Corps. This is no job for a popgun; we need help. Any idea where we are?”
“Mmm… I think so. If he took us back to their base. I’ll know when I look at the sky.”
“All right. If you can figure out where Lunar Base is from here, that’s where we’ll go. If not—Well, we’ll head for New Jersey at all the push it has.”
The control-room door latched and I could not figure out how to open it. Peewee did what she said should work—which was to tuck her little finger into a hole mine would not enter—and told me it must be locked. So I looked around.
I found a metal bar racked in the corridor, a thing about five feet long, pointed on one end and with four handles like brass knucks on the other. I didn’t know what it was—the hobgoblin equivalent of a fire ax, possibly—but it was a fine wrecking bar.
I made a shambles of that door in three minutes. We went in.
My first feeling was gooseflesh because here was where I had been grilled by him. I tried not to show it. If he turned up, I was going to let him have his wrecking bar right between his grisly eyes. I looked around, really seeing the place for the first time. There was sort of a nest in the middle surrounded by what could have been a very fancy coffee maker or a velocipede for an octopus; I was glad Peewee knew which button to push. “How do you see out?”
“Like this.” Peewee squeezed past and put a finger into a hole I hadn’t noticed.
The ceiling was hemispherical like a planetarium. Which was what it was, for it lighted up. I gasped.
It was suddenly not a floor we were on, but a platform, apparently out in the open and maybe thirty feet in the air. Over me were star images, thousands of them, in a black “sky”—and facing toward me, big as a dozen full moons and green and lovely and beautiful, was Earth!
Peewee touched my elbow. “Snap out of it, Kip.”
I said in a choked voice, “Peewee, don’t you have any poetry in your soul?”
“Surely I have. Oodles. But we haven’t time. I know where we are, Kip—back where I started from. Their base. See those rocks with long jagged shadows? Some of them are ships, camouflaged. And over to the left—that high peak, with the saddle?—a little farther left, almost due west, is Tombaugh Station, forty miles away. About two hundred miles farther is Lunar Base and beyond is Luna City.”
“How long will it take?”
“Two hundred, nearly two hundred and fifty miles? Uh, I’ve never tried a point-to-point on the Moon—but it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”
“Let’s go! They might come back any minute.”
“Yes, Kip.” She crawled into that jackdaw’s nest and bent over a sector.
Presently she looked up. Her face was white and thin and very little-girlish. “Kip…we aren’t going anywhere. I’m sorry.”
I let out a yelp. “What! What’s the matter? Have you forgotten how to run it?”
“No. The ‘brain’ is gone.”
“The which?”
“The ‘brain.’ Little black dingus about the size of a walnut that fits in this cavity.” She showed me. “We got away before because the Mother Thing managed to steal one. We were locked in an empty ship, just as you and I are now. But she had one and we got away.” Peewee looked bleak and very lost. “I should have known that he wouldn’t leave one in the control room—I guess I did and didn’t want to admit it. I’m sorry.”
“Uh…look, Peewee, we won’t give up that easily. Maybe I can make something to fit that socket.”
“Like jumping wires in a car?” She shook her head. “It’s not that simple, Kip. If you put a wooden model in place of the generator in a car, would it run? I don’t know quite what it does, but I called it the ‘brain’ because it’s very complex.”
“But—” I shut up. If a Borneo savage had a brand-new car, complete except for spark plugs, would he get it running? Echo answers mournfully. “Peewee, what’s the next best thing? Any ideas? Because if you haven’t, I want you to show me the air lock. I’ll take this—” I shook my wrecking bar “—and bash anything that comes through.”
“I’m stumped,” she admitted. “I want to look for the Mother Thing. If she’s shut up in this ship, she may know what to do.”
“All right. But first show me the air lock. You can look for her while I stand guard.” I felt the reckless anger of desperation. I didn’t see how we were ever going to get out and I was beginning to believe that we weren’t—but there was still a reckoning due. He was going to learn that it wasn’t safe to push people around. I was sure—I was fairly sure—that I could sock him before my spine turned to jelly. Splash that repulsive head.
If I didn’t look at his eyes.
Peewee said slowly, “There’s one other thing—”
“What?”
“I hate to suggest it. You might think I was running out on you.”
“Don’t be silly. If you’ve got an idea, spill it.”
“Well…there’s Tombaugh Station, over that way about forty miles. If my space suit is in the ship—”
I suddenly quit feeling like Bowie at the Alamo. Maybe the game would go an extra period—“We can walk it!”
She shook her head. “No, Kip. That’s why I hesitated to mention it. I can walk it…if we find my suit. But you couldn’t wear my suit even if you squatted.”
“I don’t need your suit,” I said impatiently.
“Kip, Kip! This is the Moon, remember? No air.”
“Yes, yes, sure! Think I’m an idiot? But if they locked up your suit, they probably put mine right beside it and—”
“You’ve got a space suit?” she said incredulously.
Our next remarks were too confused to repeat but finally Peewee was convinced that I really did own a space suit, that in fact the only reason I was sending on the space-operations band twelve hours and a quarter of a million miles back was that I was wearing it when they grabbed me.
“Let’s tear the joint apart!” I said. “No—show me that air lock, then you take it apart.”
“All right.”
She showed me the lock, a room much like the one we had been cooped in, but smaller and with an inner door built to take a pressure load. It was not locked. We opened it cautiously. It was empty, and its outer door was closed or we would never been able to open the inner. I said, “If Wormface had been a suspenders-and-belt man, he would have left the outer door open, even though he had us locked up. Then—Wait a second! Is there a way to latch the inner door open?”
“I don’t know.”
“We’ll see.” There was, a simple hook. But to make sure that it couldn’t be unlatched by button-pushing from outside I wedged it with my knife. “You’re sure this is the only air lock?”
“The other ship had only one and I’m pretty certain they are alike.”
“We’ll keep our eyes open. Nobody can get at us through this one. Even old Wormface has to use an air lock.”
“But suppose he opens the outer door anyhow?” Peewee said nervously. “We’d pop like balloons.”
I looked at her and grinned. “Who is a genius? Sure we would…if he did. But he won’t. Not with twenty, twenty-five tons of pressure holding it closed. As you reminded me, this is the Moon. No air outside, remember?”
“Oh.” Peewee looked sheepish.
So we searched. I enjoyed wrecking doors; Wormface wasn’t going to like me. One of the first things we found was a smelly little hole that Fatty and Skinny lived in. The door was not locked, which was a
shame. That room told me a lot about that pair. It showed that they were pigs, with habits as unattractive as their morals. The room also told me that they were not casual prisoners; it had been refitted for humans. Their relationship with Wormface, whatever it was, had gone on for some time and was continuing. There were two empty racks for space suits, several dozen canned rations of the sort sold in military-surplus stores, and best of all, there was drinking water and a washroom of sorts—and something more precious than fine gold or frankincense if we found our suits: two charged bottles of oxy-helium.
I took a drink, opened a can of food for Peewee—it opened with a key; we weren’t in the predicament of the Three Men in a Boat with their tin of pineapple—told her to grab a bite, then search that room. I went on with my giant toad sticker; those charged air bottles had given me an unbearable itch to find our suits—and get out!—before Wormface returned.
I smashed a dozen doors as fast as the Walrus and the Carpenter opened oysters and found all sorts of things, including what must have been living quarters for wormfaces. But I didn’t stop to look—the Space Corps could do that, if and when—I simply made sure that there was not a space suit in any of them.
And found them!—in a compartment next to the one we had been prisoners in.
I was so glad to see Oscar that I could have kissed him. I shouted, “Hi, Pal! Mirabile visu!” and ran to get Peewee. My feet went out from under me again but I didn’t care.
Peewee looked up as I rushed in. “I was just going to look for you.”
“Got it! Got it!”
“You found the Mother Thing?” she said eagerly.
“Huh? No, no! The space suits—yours and mine! Let’s go!”
“Oh.” She looked disappointed and I felt hurt. “That’s good…but we have to find the Mother Thing first.”
I felt tried beyond endurance. Here we had a chance, slim but real, to escape a fate-worse-than-death (I’m not using a figure of speech) and she wanted to hang around to search for a bug-eyed monster. For any human being, even a stranger with halitosis, I would have done it. For a dog or cat I would, although reluctantly.
But what was a bug-eyed monster to me? All this one had done was to get me into the worst jam I had ever been in.
I considered socking Peewee and stuffing her into her suit. But I said, “Are you crazy? We’re leaving—right now!”
“We can’t go till we find her.”
“Now I know you’re crazy. We don’t even know she’s here…and if we do find her, we can’t take her with us.”
“Oh, but we will!”
“How? This is the Moon, remember? No air. Got a space suit for her?”
“But—” That stonkered her. But not for long. She had been sitting on the floor, holding the ration can between her knees. She stood up suddenly, bouncing a little, and said, “Do as you like; I’m going to find her. Here.” She shoved the can at me.
I should have used force. But I am handicapped by training from early childhood never to strike a female, no matter how richly she deserves it. So the opportunity and Peewee both slid past while I was torn between common sense and upbringing. I simply groaned helplessly.
Then I became aware of an unbearably attractive odor. I was holding that can. It contained boiled shoe leather and gray gravy and smelled ambrosial.
Peewee had eaten half; I ate the rest while looking at what she had found. There was a coil of nylon rope which I happily put with the air bottles; Oscar had fifty feet of clothesline clipped to his belt but that had been a penny-saving expedient. There was a prospector’s hammer which I salvaged, and two batteries which would do for headlamps and things.
The only other items of interest were a Government Printing Office publication titled Preliminary Report on Selenology, a pamphlet on uranium prospecting, and an expired Utah driver’s license for “Timothy Johnson”—I recognized the older man’s mean face. The pamphlets interested me but this was no time for excess baggage.
The main furniture was two beds, curved like contour chairs and deeply padded; they told me that Skinny and Fatty had ridden this ship at high acceleration.
When I had mopped the last of the gravy with a finger, I took a big drink, washed my hands—using water lavishly because I didn’t care if that pair died of thirst—grabbed my plunder and headed for the room where the space suits were.
As I got there I ran into Peewee. She was carrying the crowbar and looking overjoyed. “I found her!”
“Where?”
“Come on! I can’t get it open, I’m not strong enough.”
I put the stuff with our suits and followed her. She stopped at a door panel farther along the corridor than my vandalism had taken me. “In there!”
I looked and I listened. “What makes you think so?”
“I know! Open it!”
I shrugged and got to work with the nutpick. The panel went sprung! and that was that.
Curled up in the middle of the floor was a creature.
So far as I could tell, it might or might not have been the one I had seen in the pasture the night before. The light had been poor, the conditions very different, and my examination had ended abruptly. But Peewee was in no doubt. She launched herself through the air with a squeal of joy and the two rolled over and over like kittens play-fighting.
Peewee was making sounds of joy, more or less in English. So was the Mother Thing, but not in English. I would not have been surprised if she had spoken English, since Wormface did and since Peewee had mentioned things the Mother Thing had told her. But she didn’t.
Did you ever listen to a mockingbird? Sometimes singing melodies, sometimes just sending up a joyous noise unto the Lord? The endlessly varied songs of a mockingbird are nearest to the speech of the Mother Thing.
At last they held still, more or less, and Peewee said, “Oh, Mother Thing, I’m so happy!”
The creature sang to her. Peewee answered, “Oh. I’m forgetting my manners. Mother Thing, this is my dear friend Kip.”
The Mother Thing sang to me:
—and I understood.
What she said was: “I am very happy to know you, Kip.”
It didn’t come out in words. But it might as well have been English. Nor was this half-kidding self-deception, such as my conversations with Oscar or Peewee’s with Madame Pompadour—when I talk with Oscar I am both sides of the conversation; it’s just my conscious talking to my subconscious, or some such. This was not that.
The Mother Thing sang to me and I understood.
I was startled but not unbelieving. When you see a rainbow you don’t stop to argue the laws of optics. There it is, in the sky.
I would have been an idiot not to know that the Mother Thing was speaking to me because I did understand and understood her every time. If she directed a remark at Peewee alone, it was usually just birdsongs to me—but if it was meant for me, I got it.
Call it telepathy if you like, although it doesn’t seem to be what they do at Duke University. I never read her mind and I don’t think she read mine. We just talked.
But while I was startled, I minded my manners. I felt the way I do when Mother introduces me to one of her older grande-dame friends. So I bowed and said, “We’re very happy that we’ve found you, Mother Thing.”
It was simple, humble truth. I knew, without explanation, what it was that had made Peewee stubbornly determined to risk recapture rather than give up looking for her—the quality that made her “the Mother Thing.”
Peewee has this habit of slapping names on things and her choices aren’t always apt, for my taste. But I’ll never question this one. The Mother Thing was the Mother Thing because she was. Around her you felt happy and safe and warm. You knew that if you skinned your knee and came bawling into the house, she would kiss it well and paint it with merthiolate and everything would be all right. Some nurses have it and some teachers…and, sadly, some mothers don’t.
But the Mother Thing had it so strongly that I wasn’t even worried b
y Wormface. We had her with us so everything was going to be all right. Logically I knew that she was as vulnerable as we were—I had seen them strike her down. She didn’t have my size and strength, she couldn’t pilot this ship as Peewee had been able to. It didn’t matter.
I wanted to crawl into her lap. Since she was too small and didn’t have a lap, I would gratefully hold her in mine, anytime.
I have talked more about my father but that doesn’t mean that Mother is less important—just different. Dad is active, Mother is passive; Dad talks, Mother doesn’t. But if she died, Dad would wither like an uprooted tree. She makes our world.
The Mother Thing had the effect on me that Mother has, only I’m used to it from Mother. Now I was getting it unexpectedly, far from home, when I needed it.
Peewee said excitedly, “Now we can go, Kip. Let’s hurry!”
The Mother Thing sang:
(“Where are we going, children?”)
“To Tombaugh Station, Mother Thing. They’ll help us.”
The Mother Thing blinked her eyes and looked serenely sad. She had great, soft, compassionate eyes—she looked more like a lemur than anything else but she was not a primate—she wasn’t even in our sequence, unearthly. But she had these wonderful eyes and a soft, defenseless mouth out of which music poured. She wasn’t as big as Peewee and her hands were tinier still—six fingers, any one of which could oppose the others the way our thumbs can. Her body—well, it never stayed the same shape so it’s hard to describe, but it was right for her.
She didn’t wear clothes but she wasn’t naked; she had soft, creamy fur, sleek and fine as chinchilla. I thought at first she didn’t wear anything, but presently I noticed a piece of jewelry, a shiny triangle with a double spiral in each corner. I don’t know what made it stick on.
I didn’t take all this in at once. At that instant the expression in the Mother Thing’s eyes brought a crash of sorrow into the happiness I had been feeling.
Her answer made me realize that she didn’t have a miracle ready:
(“How are we to fly the ship? They have guarded me most carefully this time.”)
Have Space Suit—Will Travel Page 7
