"I don"t advise it," she said frostily. "I bite."
I believed her. And scratch. And other things. None of them pleasant. I changed the subject. "Why didn"t you tell me, Peewee?"
"I was afraid you might try to get out."
"Huh? I certainly would have!"
"Precisely. But I wanted that panel closed ... as long as he was out there."
Maybe she was a genius. Compared with me. "I see your point. All right, let"s see if we can get it open." I examined the panel. The wad of gum was there, up high as she could reach, and from the way it was mashed it did seem possible that it had fouled the groove the panel slid into, but I couldn"t see any crack down the edge.
I tried the point of my big blade on it. The panel seemed to creep to the right an eighth of an inch-then the blade broke.
I closed the stub and put the knife away. "Any ideas?"
"Maybe if we put our hands flat against it and tried to drag it?"
"Okay." I wiped sweat from my hands on my shirt. "Now . . . easy does it. Just enough pressure for friction."
The panel slid to the right almost an inch-and stopped firmly.
But there was a hairline crack from floor to ceiling.
I broke off the stub of the big blade this time. The crack was no wider. Peewee said, "Oh, dear!"
"We aren"t licked." I backed off and ran toward the door.
"Toward," not "to"-my feet skidded, I leveled off and did a leisurely bellywhopper. Peewee didn"t laugh.
I picked myself up, got against the far wall, braced one foot against it and tried a swimming racing start.
I got as far as the door panel before losing my footing. I didn"t hit it very hard, but I felt it spring. It bulged a little, then sprang back.
"Wait a sec, Kip," said Peewee. "Take your socks off. I"ll get behind you and push-my tennis shoes don"t slip."
She was right. On the Moon, if you can"t get rubber-soled shoes, you"re better off barefooted. We backed against the far wall, Peewee behind me with her hands on my hips. "One . . . two . . . three . . . Go!" We advanced with the grace of a hippopotamus.
I hurt my shoulder. But the panel sprung out of its track, leaving a s.p.a.ce four inches wide at the bottom and tapering to the top.
I left skin on the door frame and tore my shirt and was hampered in language by the presence of a girl. But the opening widened. When it was wide enough for my head, I got down flat and peered out. There was n.o.body in sight-a foregone conclusion, with the noise I had made, unless they were playing cat-and-mouse. Which I wouldn"t put past them. Especially him.
Peewee started to wiggle through; I dragged her back. "Naughty, naughty! I go first." Two more heaves and it was wide enough for me. I opened the small blade of my knife and handed it to Peewee. "With your shield or on it, soldier."
"You take it."
"I won"t need it. "Two-Fisted Death," they call me around dark alleys." This was propaganda, but why worry her? Sans pew et sans reproche- maiden-rescuing done cheaply, special rates for parties.
I eased out on elbows and knees, stood up and looked around. "Come on out," I said quietly.
She started to, then backed up suddenly. She reappeared clutching that bedraggled dolly. "I almost forgot Madame Pompadour," she said breathlessly.
I didn"t even smile.
"Well," she said defensively, "I have to have her to get to sleep at night. It"s my one neurotic quirk-but Daddy says I"ll outgrow it."
"Sure, sure."
"Well, don"t look so smug! It"s not fetishism, not even primitive animism; it"s merely a conditioned reflex. I"m aware that it"s just a doll-I"ve understood the pathetic fallacy for ... oh, years and years!"
"Look, Peewee," I said earnestly, "I don"t care how you get to sleep. Personally I hit myself over the head with a hammer. But quit yakking. Do you know the layout of these ships?"
She looked around. "I think this is the ship that chased me. But it looks the same as the one I piloted."
"All right. Should we head for the control room?"
"Huh?"
"You flew the other heap. Can you fly this one?"
"Unh ... I guess so. Yes, I can."
"Then let"s go." I started in the direction they had lugged me.
"But the other time I had the Mother Thing to tell me what to do! Let"s find her."
I stopped. "Can you get it off the ground?"
"Well . . . yes."
"We"ll look for her after we"re in the air-"in s.p.a.ce," I mean. If she"s aboard we"ll find her. If she"s not, there"s not a thing we can do."
"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 s.p.a.ce 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 bra.s.s 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 b.u.t.ton 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce suit?" she said incredulously.
Our next remarks were too confused to repeat but finally Peewee was convinced that I really did own a s.p.a.ce suit, that in fact the only reason I was sending on the s.p.a.ce-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 b.u.t.ton-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. n.o.body 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce Corps could do that, if and when-I simply made sure that there was not a s.p.a.ce suit in any of them.
And found them!-in a compartment next to the one we had been prisoners in.