"The town will be deserted over the holiday; I may not open the fountain. Enjoy yourself. This summer has worn you a bit fine. Kip."
I let myself be persuaded but I stayed until closing and swept up. Then I walked home, doing some hard thinking.
The party was over and it was time to put away my toys. Even the village half-wit knew that I had no sensible excuse to have a s.p.a.ce suit. Not that I cared what Ace thought . . . but I did have no use for it-and I needed money. Even if Stanford and M.I.T. and Carnegie and the rest turned me down, I was going to start this semester. State U. wasn"t the best-but neither was I and I had learned that more depended on the student than on the school.
Mother had gone to bed and Dad was reading. I said h.e.l.lo and went to the barn, intending to strip my gear off Oscar, pack him into his case, address it, and in the morning phone the express office to pick it up. He"d be gone before I was back from the Lake of the Forest. Quick and clean.
He was hanging on his rack and it seemed to me that he grinned h.e.l.lo. Nonsense, of course. I went over and patted his shoulder. "Well, old fellow, you"ve been a real chum and it"s been nice knowing you. See you on the Moon-I hope."
But Oscar wasn"t going to the Moon. Oscar was going to Akron, Ohio, to "Salvage." They were going to unscrew parts they could use and throw the rest of him on the junk pile.
My mouth felt dry.
("It"s okay, pal," Oscar answered.) See that? Out of my silly head! Oscar didn"t really speak; I had let my imagination run wild too long. So I quit patting him, hauled the crate out and took a wrench from his belt to remove the gas bottles.
I stopped.
Both bottles were charged, one with oxygen, one with oxy-helium. I had wasted money to do so because I wanted, just once, to try a s.p.a.ceman"s mix.
The batteries were fresh and power packs were charged.
"Oscar," I said softly, "we"re going to take a last walk together. Okay?"
("Swell!") I made it a dress rehearsal-water in the drinking tank, pill dispensers loaded, first-aid kit inside, vacuum-proof duplicate (I hoped it was vacuum-proof) in an outside pocket. All tools on belt, all lanyards tied so that tools wouldn"t float away in free fall. Everything.
Then I heated up a circuit that the F.C.C. would have squelched had they noticed, a radio link I had salvaged out of my effort to build a radio for Oscar, and had modified as a test rig for Oscar"s ears and to let me check the aiming of the directional antenna. It was hooked in with an echo circuit that would answer back if I called it-a thing I had bread h.o.a.rded out of an old Webcor wire recorder, vintage 1950.
Then I climbed into Oscar and b.u.t.toned up. "Tight?"
("Tight!") I glanced at the reflected dials, noticed the blood-color reading, reduced pressure until Oscar almost collapsed. At nearly sea-level pressure I was in no danger from hypoxia; the trick was to avoid too much oxygen.
We started to leave when I remembered something. "Just a second, Oscar." I wrote a note to my folks, telling them that I was going to get up early and catch the first bus to the lake. I could write while suited up now, I could even thread a needle. I stuck the note under the kitchen door.
Then we crossed the creek into the pasture. I didn"t stumble in wading; I was used to Oscar now, sure-footed as a goat.
Out in the field I keyed my talkie and said, "Junebug, calling Peewee. Come in, Peewee."
Seconds later my recorded voice came back: " "Junebug, calling Peewee. Come in, Peewee.""
I shifted to the horn antenna and tried again. It wasn"t easy to aim in the dark but it was okay. Then I shifted back to spike antenna and went on calling Peewee while moving across the pasture and pretending that I was on Venus and had to stay in touch with base because it was unknown terrain and unbreathable atmosphere. Everything worked perfectly and if it had been Venus, I would have been all right.
Two lights moved across the southern sky, planes I thought, or maybe helis. Just the sort of thing yokels like to report as "flying saucers." I watched them, then moved behind a little rise that would tend to spoil reception and called Peewee. Peewee answered and I shut up; it gets dull talking to an idiot circuit which can only echo what you say to it.
Then I heard: "Peewee to Junebug! Answer!"
I thought I had been monitored and was in trouble-then decided that some ham had picked me up. "Junebug here. I read you. Who are you?"
The test rig echoed my words.
Then the new voice shrilled, "Peewee here! Home me in!"
This was silly. But I found myself saying, "Junebug to Peewee, shift to directional frequency at one centimeter-and keep talking, keep talking!" I shifted to the horn antenna.
"Junebug, I read you. Fix me. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven-"
"You"re due south of me, about forty degrees. Who are you?"
It must be one of those lights. It had to be.
But I didn"t have time to figure it out. A s.p.a.ce ship almost landed on me.
Chapter 4.
I said "s.p.a.ce ship," not "rocket ship." It made no noise but a whoosh and there weren"t any flaming jets-it seemed to move by clean living and righteous thoughts.
I was too busy keeping from being squashed to worry about details. A s.p.a.ce suit in one gravity is no track suit; it"s a good thing I had practiced. The ship sat down where I had just been, occupying more than its share of pasture, a big black shape.
The other one whooshed down, too, just as a door opened in the first. Light poured through the door; two figures spilled out and started to run. One moved like a cat; the other moved clumsily and slowly-handicapped by a s.p.a.ce suit. S"help me, a person in a s.p.a.ce suit does look silly. This one was less than five feet tall and looked like the Gingerbread Man.
A big trouble with a suit is your limited angle of vision. I was trying to watch both of them and did not see the second ship open. The first figure stopped, waiting for the one in the s.p.a.ce suit to catch up, then suddenly collapsed-just a gasping sound, "Eeeah!"-and clunk.
You can tell the sound of pain. I ran to the spot at a lumbering dogtrot, leaned over and tried to see what was wrong, tilting my helmet to bring the beam of my headlight onto the ground.
A bug-eyed monster- That"s not fair but it was my first thought. I couldn"t believe it and would have pinched myself except that it isn"t practical when suited up.
An unprejudiced mind (which mine wasn"t) would have said that this monster was rather pretty. It was small, not more than half my size, and its curves were graceful, not as a girl is but more like a leopard, although it wasn"t shaped like either one. I couldn"t grasp its shape-I didn"t have any pattern to fit it to; it wouldn"t add up.
But I could see that it was hurt. Its body was quivering like a frightened rabbit. It had enormous eyes, open but milky and featureless, as if nict.i.tating membranes were across them. What appeared to be its mouth- That"s as far as I got. Something hit me in the spine, right between the gas bottles.
I woke up on a bare floor, staring at a ceiling. It took several moments to recall what had happened and then I shied away because it was so darn silly. I had been out for a walk in Oscar . . . and then a s.p.a.ce ship had landed . . . and a bug-eyed- I sat up suddenly as I realized that Oscar was gone. A light cheerful voice said, "Hi, there!"
I snapped my head around. A kid about ten years old was seated on the floor, leaning against a wall. He-I corrected myself. Boys don"t usually clutch rag dolls. This kid was the age when the difference doesn"t show much and was dressed in shirt, shorts and dirty tennis shoes, and had short hair, so I didn"t have much to go on but the rag dolly.
"Hi, yourself," I answered. "What are we doing here?"
"I"m surviving. I don"t know about you."
"Huh?"
"Surviving. Pushing my breath in and out. Conserving my strength. There"s nothing else to do at the moment; they"ve got us locked in."
I looked around. The room was about ten feet across, four-sided but wedge-shaped, and nothing in it but us. I couldn"t see a door; if we weren"t locked, we might as well be. "Who locked us in?"
"Them. s.p.a.ce pirates. And him."
"s.p.a.ce pirates? Don"t be silly!"
The kid shrugged. "Just my name for them. But better not think they"re silly if you want to keep on surviving. Are you "Junebug"?"
"Huh? You sound like a junebug yourself. s.p.a.ce pirates, my aunt!" I was worried and very confused and this nonsense didn"t help. Where was Oscar? And where was I?
"No, no, not a junebug but "Junebug"-a radio call. You see, I"m Peewee."
I said to myself, Kip old pal, walk slowly to the nearest hospital and give yourself up. When a radio rig you wired yourself starts looking like a skinny little girl with a rag doll, you"ve flipped. It"s going to be wet packs and tranquilizers and no excitement for you-you"ve blown every fuse.
"You"re "Peewee"?"
"That"s what I"m called-I"m relaxed about it. You see, I heard, "Junebug, calling Peewee," and decided that Daddy had found out about the spot I was in and had alerted people to help me land. But if you aren"t "Junebug," you wouldn"t know about that. Who are you?"
"Wait a minute, I am "Junebug." I mean I was using that call. But I"m Clifford Russell-"Kip" they call me."
"How do you do. Kip?" she said politely.
"And howdy to you, Peewee. Uh, are you a boy or a girl?"
Peewee looked disgusted. "I"ll make you regret that remark. I realize I am undersized for my age but I"m actually eleven, going on twelve. There"s no need to be rude. In another five years I expect to be quite a dish-you"ll probably beg me for every dance."
At the moment I would as soon have danced with a kitchen stool, but I had things on my mind and didn"t want a useless argument. "Sorry, Peewee. I"m still groggy. You mean you were in that first ship?"
Again she looked miffed. "I was piloting it."
Sedation every night and a long course of psychoa.n.a.lysis. At my age. "You were-piloting?"
"You surely don"t think the Mother Thing could? She wouldn"t fit their controls. She curled up beside me and coached. But if you think it"s easy, when you"ve never piloted anything but a Cessna with your Daddy at your elbow and never made any kind of landing, then think again. I did very well!-and your landing instructions weren"t too specific. What have they done with the Mother Thing?"
"The what?"
"You don"t know? Oh, dear!"
"Wait a minute, Peewee. Let"s get on the same frequency. I"m "Junebug" all right and I homed you in-and if you think that"s easy, to have a voice out of nowhere demand emergency landing instructions, you better think again, too. Anyhow, a ship landed and another ship landed right after it and a door opened in the first ship and a guy in a s.p.a.ce suit jumped out-"
"That was I."
"-and something else jumped out-"
"The Mother Thing."
"Only she didn"t get far. She gave a screech and flopped. I went to see what the trouble was and something hit me. The next thing I know you"re saying, "Hi, there." " I wondered if I ought to tell her that the rest, including her, was likely a morphine dream because I was probably lying in a hospital with my spine in a cast.
Peewee nodded thoughtfully. "They must have blasted you at low power, or you wouldn"t be here. Well, they caught you and they caught me, so they almost certainly caught her. Oh, dear! I do hope they didn"t hurt her."
"She looked like she was dying."
"As if she were dying," Peewee corrected me. "Subjunctive. I rather doubt it; she"s awfully hard to kill-and they wouldn"t kill her except to keep her from escaping; they need her alive."
"Why? And why do you call her "the Mother Thing"?"
"One at a time, Kip. She"s the Mother Thing because . . . well, because she is, that"s all. You"ll know, when you meet her. As to why they wouldn"t kill her, it"s because she"s worth more as a hostage than as a corpse-the same reason the kept me alive. Although she"s worth incredibly more than I am-they"d write me off without a blink if I became inconvenient. Or you. But since she was alive when you saw her, then it"s logical that she"s a prisoner again. Maybe right next door. That makes me feel much better."
It didn"t make me feel better. "Yes, but where"s here?"
Peewee glanced at a Mickey Mouse watch, frowned and said, "Almost halfway to the Moon, I"d say."
"What?!"
"Of course I don"t know. But it makes sense that they would go back to their nearest base; that"s where the Mother Thing and I scrammed from."
"You"re telling me we"re in that ship?"
"Either the one I swiped or the other one. Where did you think you were, Kip? Where else could you be?"
"A mental hospital."
She looked big-eyed and then grinned. "Why, Kip, surely your grip on reality is not that weak?"
"I"m not sure about anything. s.p.a.ce pirates-Mother Things."
She frowned and bit her thumb. "I suppose it must be confusing. But trust your ears and eyes. My grip on reality is quite strong, I a.s.sure you- you see, I"m a genius." She made it a statement, not a boast, and somehow I was not inclined to doubt the claim, even though it came from a skinny-shanked kid with a rag doll in her arms.
But I didn"t see how it was going to help.
Peewee went on: " "s.p.a.ce pirates" . . . mmm. Call them what you wish. Their actions are piratical and they operate in s.p.a.ce-you name them. As for the Mother Thing . . . wait until you meet her."
"What"s she doing in this hullabaloo?"
"Well, it"s complicated. She had better explain it. She"s a cop and she was after them-"
"A cop?"
"I"m afraid that is another semantic inadequacy. The Mother Thing knows what we mean by cop and I think she finds the idea bewildering if not impossible. But what would you call a person who hunts down miscreants? A cop, no?"
"A cop, yes, I guess."
"So would I." She looked again at her watch. "But right now I think we had better hang on. We ought to be at halfway point in a few minutes- and a skew-flip is disconcerting even if you are strapped down."
I had read about skew-flip turn-overs, but only as a theoretical maneuver; I had never heard of a ship that could do one. If this was a ship. The floor felt as solid as concrete and as motionless. "I don"t see anything to hang on to."
"Not much, I"m afraid. But if we sit down in the narrowest part and push against each other, I think we can brace enough not to slide around. But let"s hurry; my watch might be slow."
We sat on the floor in the narrow part where the angled walls were about five feet apart. We faced each other and pushed our shoes against each other, each of us bracing like an Alpinist inching his way up a rock chimney-my socks against her tennis shoes, rather, for my shoes were still on my workbench, so far as I knew. I wondered if they had simply dumped Oscar in the pasture and if Dad would find him.
"Push hard, Kip, and brace your hands against the deck."