Have Space Suit - Will Travel

by Robert A. Heinlein

  The place was warm, which was well as there was nothing resembling bed or bedclothes. I had already concluded that I might be here quite a while and was wondering about eating and sleeping.

  I decided I was tired of this nonsense. I had been minding my own business, out back of my own house. Everything else was Wormface's fault! I sat down on the floor and thought about slow ways to kill him.

  I finally gave up that foolishness and wondered about Peewee and the Mother Thing. Were they here? Or were they dead somewhere between the mountains and Tombaugh Station? Thinking it over glumly, I decided that poor little Peewee was best off if she had never wakened from that second coma. I wasn't sure about the Mother Thing because I didn't know enough about her—but in Peewee's case I was sure.

  Well, there was a certain appropriateness to the fix I was in; a knight-errant usually lands in a dungeon at some point. But by rights, the maiden fair ought to be imprisoned in a tower in the same castle. Sorry, Peewee; as a knight-errant, I'm a good soda jerk. Or jerk. "His strength is as the strength of ten because his heart is pure."

  It wasn't funny.

  I got tired of punishing myself and looked to see what time it was—not that it mattered. But a prisoner is traditionally expected to scratch marks on the wall, tallying the days he's been in, so I thought I might as well start. My watch was on my wrist but not running and I couldn't start it. Maybe eight gees was too much for it, even though it was supposed to be shockproof, waterproof, magnetism-proof, and immune to un-American influences.

  After a while I lay down and went to sleep.

  I was awakened by a clatter.

  It was a ration can hitting the floor and the fall hadn't helped it, but the key was on it and I got it open-corned beef hash and very good, too. I used the empty can to drink from—the water might be poisoned, but did I have a choice?—and then washed the can so that it wouldn't smell.

  The water was warm. I took a bath.

  I doubt if many American citizens during the past twenty years have ever needed a bath as much as I did. Then I washed my clothes. My shirt, shorts, and socks were wash-and-wear synthetics; my slacks were denim and took longer to dry, but I didn't mind; I just wished that I had one of the two hundred bars of Skyway Soap that were home on the floor of my closet. If I had known I was coming to Pluto, I would have brought one.

  Washing clothes caused me to take inventory. I had a handkerchief, sixty-seven cents in change, a dollar bill so sweat-soaked and worn that it was hard to make out Washington's picture, a mechanical pencil stamped "Jay's Drive-In—the thickest malts in town!"—a canard; I make the thickest—and a grocery list I should have taken care of for Mother but hadn't because of that silly air conditioner in Charton's Drugstore. It wasn't as bedraggled as the dollar bill because it had been in my shirt pocket.

  I lined up my assets and looked at them. They did not look like a collection that could be reworked into a miracle weapon with which I would blast my way out, steal a ship, teach myself to pilot it, and return triumphantly to warn the President and save the country. I rearranged them and they still didn't.

  I was correct. They weren't.

  I woke up from a terrible nightmare, remembered where I was, and wished I were back in the nightmare. I lay there feeling sorry for myself and presently tears started welling out of my eyes while my chin trembled. I had never been badgered "not to be a crybaby"; Dad says there is nothing wrong with tears; it's just that they are socially not acceptable—he says that in some cultures weeping is a social grace. But in Horace Mann Grammar School being a crybaby was no asset; I gave it up years ago. Besides, it's exhausting and gets you nowhere. I shut off the rain and took stock.

  My action list ran like this:

  1. Escape from this cell.

  2. Find Oscar, suit up.

  3. Go outdoors, steal a ship, head home if I could figure out how to gun it.

  4. Figure out a weapon or stratagem to fight off the wormfaces or keep them busy while I sneaked out and grabbed a ship. Nothing to it. Any superman capable of teleportation and other assorted psionic tricks could do it. Just be sure the plan is foolproof and that your insurance is paid up.

  5. Crash priority: make sure, before bidding farewell to the romantic shores of exotic Pluto and its friendly colourful natives, that neither Peewee nor the Mother Thing is here if they are, take them along—because, contrary to some opinions, it is better to be a dead hero than a live louse. Dying is messy and inconvenient but even a louse dies someday no matter what he will do to stay alive and he is forever having to explain his choice. The gummed-up spell that I had had at the hero business had shown that it was undesirable work but the alternative was still less attractive.

  The fact that Peewee knew how to gun those ships, or that the Mother Thing could coach me, did not figure. I can't prove that, but I know.

  Footnote: after I learned to run one of their ships, could I do so at eight gravities? That may simply call for arch supports for a wormface but I knew what eight gees did to me. Automatic pilot? If so, would it have directions on it, in English? (Don't be silly, Clifford!)

  Subordinate footnote: how long would it take to get home at one gravity? The rest of the century? Or just long enough to starve to death?

  6. Occupational therapy for the lulls when I went stale on the problems. This was important in order to avoid coming apart at the seams. O. Henry wrote stories in prison, St. Paul turned out his strongest epistles incarcerated in Rome, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in jail—next time I would bring a typewriter and paper. This time I could work out magic squares and invent chess problems. Anything was better than feeling sorry for myself. Lions put up with zoos and wasn't I smarter than a lion? Some, anyhow?

  And so to work—One: how to get out of this hole?

  I came up with a straight-forward answer: there wasn't any way. The cell was twenty feet on a side with a ceiling twelve feet high; the walls were as smooth as a baby's cheek and as impervious as a bill collector. The other features were the hole in the ceiling, which ran about six feet still higher, the stream of water and its catch basin, and a glowing area in the ceiling. For tools I had the stuff previously listed (a few ounces of nothing much, nothing sharp, nor explosive, nor corrosive), my clothes, and an empty tin can.

  I tested how high I could jump. Even a substitute guard needs springs in his legs—I touched the ceiling. That meant a gravity around one-half gee. I hadn't been able to guess, as I had spent an endless time under one-sixth gravity followed by a few eons at eight gees; my reflexes had been mistreated.

  But, although I could touch the ceiling, I could neither walk on it nor levitate. I could get that high, but there was nothing a mouse could cling to.

  Well, I could rip my clothes and braid a rope. Was there anything near the hole on which to catch it? All I could recall was smooth floor. But suppose it did catch? What next? Paddle around in my skin until Wormface spotted me and herded me back down, this time with no clothes? I decided to postpone the rope trick until I worked out that next step which would confound Wormface and his tribe.

  I sighed and looked around. All that was left was that jet of water and the floor basin that caught it.

  There is a story about two frogs trapped in a crock of cream. One sees how hopeless it is, gives up and drowns. The other is too stupid to know he's licked; he keeps on paddling. In a few hours he has churned so much butter that it forms an island, on which he floats, cool and comfortable, until the milkmaid comes and chucks him out.

  That water spilled in and ran out. Suppose it didn't run out?

  I explored the bottom of the catch basin. The drain was large by our standards, but I thought I could plug it. Could I stay afloat while the room filled up, filled the hole above, and pushed me out the spout? Well I could find out, I had a can.

  The can looked like a pint and a "pint's a pound the world 'round" and a cubic foot of water weighs (on Earth) a little over sixty pounds. But I had to be sure. My feet are eleven inches long; they'v
e been that size since I was ten—I took a lot of ribbing until I grew up to them. I marked eleven inches on the floor with two pennies. It turns out that a dollar bill is two and a half inches wide and quarter is a smidgeon under an inch. Shortly I knew the dimensions of room and can pretty accurately.

  I held the can under the stream, letting it fill and dumping it fast, while I ticked off cans of water on my left hand and counted seconds. Eventually I calculated how long it would take to fill the room. I didn't like the answer, so I did it over.

  It would take fourteen hours to fill the room and the hole above, plus an hour to allow for crude methods Could I stay afloat that long?

  You're darn tootin' I could!—if I had to. And I had to. There isn't any limit to how long a man can float if he doesn't panic.

  I balled my slacks and stuffed them in the drain. I almost lost them, so I wrapped them around the can and used the bundle as a cork. It stayed put and I used the rest of my clothes to caulk it. Then I waited, feeling cocky. Maybe the flood would create the diversion I needed for the rest of the caper. Slowly the basin filled.

  The water got about an inch below floor level and stopped.

  A pressure switch, I suppose. I should have known that creatures who could build eight-gee, constant-boost ships would design plumbing to "fail-safe." I wish we could.

  I recovered my clothes, all but one sock, and spread them to dry. I hoped the sock would foul a pump or something but I doubted it; they were good engineers.

  I never really believed that story about the frogs.

  Another can was tossed down—roast beef and soggy potatoes. It was filling but I began to long for peaches. The can was stenciled "Available for subsidized resale on Luna" which made it possible that Skinny and Fatty had come by this food honestly. I wondered how they liked sharing their supplies? No doubt they did so only because Wormface had twisted their arms. Which made me wonder why Wormface wanted me alive? I was in favour of it but couldn't see why he was. I decided to call each can a "day" and let the empties be my calendar.

  Which reminded me that I had not worked out how long it would take to get home on a one-gee boost, if it turned out that I could not arrange automatic piloting at eight gees. I was stymied on getting out of the cell, I hadn't even nibbled at what I would do if I did get out (correction: when I got out), but I could work ballistics.

  I didn't need books. I've met people, even in this day and age, who can't tell a star from a planet and who think of astronomical distances simply as "big." They remind me of those primitives who have just four numbers: one, two, three, and "many." But any tenderfoot Scout knows the basic facts and a fellow bitten by the space bug (such as myself) usually knows a number of figures.

  "Mother very thoughtfully made a jelly sandwich under no protest." Could you forget that after saying it a few times? Okay, lay it out so:

  Mother

  MERCURY

  $.39

  Very

  VENUS

  $.72

  Thoughtfully

  TERRA

  $1.00

  Made

  MARS

  $1.50

  A

  ASTEROIDS

  (assorted prices, unimportant)

  Jam

  JUPITER

  $5.20

  Sandwich

  SATURN

  $9.50

  Under

  URANUS

  $19.00

  No

  NEPTUNE

  $30.00

  Protest

  PLUTO

  $39.50

  The "prices" are distances from the Sun in astronomical units. An A.U. is the mean distance of Earth from Sun, 93,000,000 miles. It is easier to remember one figure that everybody knows and some little figures than it is to remember figures in millions and billions. I use dollar signs because a figure has more flavour if I think of it as money—which Dad considers deplorable. Some way you must remember them, or you don't know your own neighbourhood.

  Now we come to a joker. The list says that Pluto's distance is thirty-nine and a half times Earth's distance. But Pluto and Mercury have very eccentric orbits and Pluto's is a dilly; its distance varies almost two billion miles, more than the distance from the Sun to Uranus Pluto creeps to the orbit of Neptune and a hair inside; then swings way out and stays there a couple of centuries —it makes only four round trips in a thousand years.

  But I had seen that article about how Pluto was coming into its "summer." So I knew it was close to the orbit of Neptune now, and would be for the rest of my life my life expectancy in Centerville; I didn't look like a preferred risk here. That gave an easy figure: 30 astronomical units.

  Acceleration problems are simple: s= ½ a t²; distance equals half the acceleration times the square of elapsed time. If astrogation were that simple any sophomore could pilot a rocket ship—the complications come from gravitational fields and the fact that everything moves fourteen directions at once. But I could disregard gravitational fields and planetary motions; at the speeds a wormface ship makes neither factor matters until you are very close. I wanted a rough answer.

  I missed my slipstick. Dad says that anyone who can't use a slide rule is a cultural illiterate and should not be allowed to vote. Mine is a beauty—a K&E 20" Log-log Duplex Decitrig. Dad surprised me with it after I mastered a ten-inch polyphase. We ate potato soup that week—but Dad says you should always budget luxuries first. I knew where it was. Home on my desk.

  No matter. I had figures, formula, pencil and paper.

  First a check problem. Fats had said "Pluto," "five days," and "eight gravities."

  It's a two-piece problem; accelerate for half time (and half distance); do a skew-flip and decelerate the other half time (and distance). You can't use the whole distance in the equation, as "time" appears as a square—it's a parabolic.

  Was Pluto in opposition? Or quadrature? Or conjunction? Nobody looks at Pluto—so why remember where it is on the ecliptic? Oh, well, the average distance was 30 A.U.s—that would give a close-enough answer.

  Half that distance, in feet, is: ½x30x93,000,000x5280.

  Eight gravities is: 8x32.2 ft./sec./sec.—speed increases by 258 feet per second every second up to skewflip and decreases just as fast thereafter. So—

  ½x30x93,000,000x5280= ½x8x32.2xt²

  —and you wind up with the time for half the trip, in seconds. Double that for full trip. Divide by 3600 to get hours; divide by 24 and you have days. On a slide rule such a problem takes forty seconds, most of it to get your decimal point correct. It's as easy as computing sales tax.

  It took me at least an hour and almost as long to prove it, using a different sequence—and a third time, because the answers didn't match (I had forgotten to multiply by 5280, and had "miles" on one side and "feet" on the other—a no-good way to do arithmetic)—then a fourth time because my confidence was shaken. I tell you, the slide rule is the greatest invention since girls.

  But I got a proved answer. Five and a half days. I was on Pluto.

  Or maybe Neptune—

  No, on Neptune I would not be able to jump to a twelve-foot ceiling; Pluto alone matched all facts. So I erased and computed the trip at one gravity, with turnover.

  Fifteen days.

  It seemed to me that it ought to take at least eight times as long at one gee as at eight—more likely sixty-four. Then I was glad I had bulled my way through analytical geometry, for I made a rough plot and saw the trouble. Squared time cut down the advantage—because the more boost, the shorter the trip, and the shorter the trip the less time in which to use the built-up speed. To cut time in half, you need four times as much boost; to cut it to a quarter, you need sixteen times the boost, and so on. This way lies bankruptcy.

  To learn that I could get home in about two weeks at one gravity cheered me. I couldn't starve in two weeks. If I could steal a ship. If I could run it. If I could climb out of this hole. If—

  Not "if," but "when!" I was too late for college this year;
fifteen more days wouldn't matter.

  I had noticed, in the first problem, the speed we had been making at skew-flip. More than eleven thousand miles per second. That's a nice speed, even in space. It made me think. Consider the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, four and three-tenths light-years away, the distance you hear so often on quiz shows. How long at eight gees?

  The problem was the same sort but I had to be careful about decimal points; the figures mount up. A light-year is—I had forgotten. So multiply 186,000 miles per second (the speed of light) by the seconds in a year (365.25x24x3600) and get—5,880,000,000,000 miles

  —multiply that by 4.3 and get—

  25,284,000,000,000

  Call it twenty-five trillion miles. Whew!

  It works out to a year and five months—not as long as a trip around the Horn only last century

  Why, these monsters had star travel!

  I don't know why I was surprised; it had been staring me in the face. I had assumed that Wormface had taken me to his home planet, that he was a Plutonian, or Plutocrat, or whatever the word is. But he couldn't be.

  He breathed air. He kept his ship warm enough for me. When he wasn't in a hurry, he cruised at one gee, near enough. He used lighting that suited my eyes. Therefore he came from the sort of planet I came from.

  Proxima Centauri is a double star, as you know if you do crossword puzzles, and one is a twin for our own Sun—size, temperature, spectral pattern. Is it a fair guess that it has a planet like Earth? I had a dirty hunch that I knew Wormface's home address.

  I knew where he didn't come from. Not from a planet that runs a couple of centuries in utter airlessness with temperatures pushing absolute zero, followed by a "summer" in which some gases melt but water is solid rock and even Wormface has to wear a space suit. Nor from anywhere in our system, for I was sure as taxes that Wormface felt at home only on a planet like ours. Never mind the way he looked; spiders don't look like us but they like the things we like—there must be a thousand spiders in our houses for every one of us.