“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 they 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. Space 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 assure 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: “‘Space pirates’…mmm. Call them what you wish. Their actions are piratical and they operate in space—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.”
I did so. “How do you know when they’ll turn over, Peewee?”
“I haven’t been unconscious—they just tripped me and carried me inside—so I know when we took off. If we assume that the Moon is their destination, as it probably is, and if we assume one gravity the whole jump—which can’t be far off; my weight feels normal. Doesn’t yours?”
I considered it. “I think so.”
“Then it probably is, even though my own sense of weight may be distorted from being on the Moon. If those assumptions are correct, then it is almost exactly a three-and-a-half-hour trip and—” Peewee looked at her watch. “—E.T.A. should be nine-thirty in the morning and turn-over at seven-forty-five. Any moment now.”
“Is it that late?” I looked at my watch. “Why, I’ve got a quarter of two.”
“You’re on your zone time. I’m on Moon time—Greenwich time, that is. Oh, oh! Here we go!”
The floor tilted, swerved, and swooped like a roller coaster, and my semicircular canals did a samba. Things steadied down as I pulled out of acute dizziness.
“You all right?” asked Peewee.
I managed to focus my eyes. “Uh, I think so. It felt like a one-and-a-half gainer into a dry pool.”
“This pilot does it faster than I dared to. It doesn’t really hurt, after your eyes uncross. But that settles it. We’re headed for the Moon. We’ll be there in an hour and three quarters.”
I still couldn’t believe it. “Peewee? What kind of a ship can gun at one gee all the way to the Moon? They been keeping it secret? And what were you doing on the Moon anyhow? And why were you stealing a ship?”
She sighed and spoke to her doll. “He’s a quiz kid, Madame Pompadour. Kip, how can I answer three questions at once? This is a flying saucer, and—”
“Flying saucer! Now I’ve heard everything.”
“It’s rude to interrupt. Call it anything you like; there’s nothing official about the term. Actually it’s shaped more like a loaf of pumpernickel, an oblate spheroid. That’s a shape defined—”
“I know what an oblate spheroid is,” I snapped. I was tired and upset from too many things, from a cranky air conditioner that had ruined a good pair of pants to being knocked out while on an errand of mercy. Not to mention Ace Quiggle. I was beginning to think that little girls who were geniuses ought to have the grace not to show it.
“No need to be brisk,” she said reprovingly. “I am aware that people have called everything from weather balloons to street lights ‘flying saucers.’ But it is my considered opinion—by Occam’s Razor—that—”
“Whose razor?”
“Occam’s. Least hypothesis. Don’t you know anything about logic?”
“Not much.”
“Well… I suspect that about every five-hundredth ‘saucer sighting’ was a ship like this. It adds up. As for what I was doing on the Moon—” She stopped and grinned. “I’m a pest.”
I didn’t argue it.
“A long time ago when my Daddy was a boy, the Hayden Planetarium took reservations for trips to the Moon. It was just a publicity gag, like that silly soap contest recently, but Daddy got his name on the list. Now, years and years later, they are letting people go to the Moon—and sure enough, the Hayden people turned the list over to American Express—and American Express notified the applicants they could locate that they would be given preference.”
“So your father took you to the Moon?”
“Oh, heavens, no! Daddy filled out that form when he was only a boy. Now he is just about the biggest man at the Institute for Advanced Study and hasn’t time for such pleasures. And Mama wouldn’t go if you paid her. So I said I would. Daddy said ‘No!’ and Mama said ‘Good gracious, no!’…and so I went. I can be an awful nuisance when I put my mind on it,” she said proudly. “I have talent for it. Daddy says I’m an amoral little wretch.”
“Uh, do you suppose he might be right?”
“Oh, I’m sure he is. He understands me, whereas Mama throws up her hands and says she can’t cope. I was perfectly beastly and unbearable for two whole weeks and at last Daddy said ‘For Blank’s sake let her go!—maybe we’ll collect her insurance!’ So I did.”
“Mmmmm…that still doesn’t explain why you are here.”
“Oh, that. I was poking around where I shouldn’t, doing t
hings they told us not to. I always get around; it’s very educational. So they grabbed me. They would rather have Daddy but they hope to swap me for him. I couldn’t let that happen, so I had to escape.”
I muttered, “‘The butler did it.’”
“What?”
“Your story has as many holes as the last chapter of most whodunits.”
“Oh. But I assure you it is the simple—oh, oh! here we go again!”
All that happened was that the lighting changed from white to blue. There weren’t any light fixtures; the whole ceiling glowed. We were still sprawled on the floor. I started to get up—and found I couldn’t.
I felt as if I had just finished a cross-country race, too weak to do anything but breathe. Blue light can’t do that; it’s merely wavelengths 4300 to 5100 angstroms and sunlight is loaded with it. But whatever they used with the blue light made us as limp as wet string.
Peewee was struggling to tell me something. “If…they’re coming for us…don’t resist…and…above all—”
The blue light changed to white. The narrow wall started to slide aside.
Peewee looked scared and made a great effort. “—above all…don’t antagonize…him.”
Two men came in, shoved Peewee aside, strapped my wrists and ankles and ran another strap around my middle, binding my arms. I started to come out of it—not like flipping a switch, as I still didn’t have energy enough to lick a stamp. I wanted to bash their heads but I stood as much chance as a butterfly has of hefting a bar bell.
They carried me out. I started to protest. “Say, where are you guys taking me? What do you think you’re doing? I’ll have you arrested. I’ll—”
“Shaddap,” said one. He was a skinny runt, fifty or older, and looked as if he never smiled. The other was fat and younger, with a petulant babyish mouth and a dimple in his chin; he looked as if he could laugh if he weren’t worried. He was worrying now.
“Tim, this can get us in trouble. We ought to space him—we ought to space both of ’em—and tell him it was an accident. We can say they got out and tried to escape through the lock. He won’t know the dif—”
“Shaddap,” answered Tim with no inflection. He added, “You want trouble with him? You want to chew space?”
“But—”
“Shaddap.”
They carried me around a curved corridor, into an inner room and dumped me on the floor.
I was face up but it took time to realize this must be the control room. It didn’t look like anything any human would design as a control room, which wasn’t surprising as no human had. Then I saw him.
Peewee needn’t have warned me; I didn’t want to antagonize him.
The little guy was tough and dangerous, the fat guy was mean and murderous; they were cherubs compared with him. If I had had my strength I would have fought those two any way they liked; I don’t think I’m too afraid of any human as long as the odds aren’t impossible.
But not him.
He wasn’t human but that wasn’t what hurt. Elephants aren’t human but they are very nice people. He was built more like a human than an elephant is but that was no help—I mean he stood erect and had feet at one end and a head at the other. He was no more than five feet tall but that didn’t help either; he dominated us the way a man dominates a horse. The torso part was as long as mine; his shortness came from very squat legs, with feet (I guess you would call them feet) which bulged out, almost disc-like. They made squashy, sucking sounds when he moved. When he stood still a tail, or third leg, extruded and turned him into a tripod—he didn’t need to sit down and I doubt if he could.
Short legs did not make him slow. His movements were blurringly fast, like a striking snake. Does this mean a better nervous system and more efficient muscles? Or a native planet with higher gravity?
His arms looked like snakes—they had more joints than ours. He had two sets, one pair where his waist should have been and another set under his head. No shoulders. I couldn’t count his fingers, or digit tendrils; they never held still. He wasn’t dressed except for a belt below and above the middle arms which carried whatever such a thing carries in place of money and keys. His skin was purplish brown and looked oily.
Whatever he was, he was not the same race as the Mother Thing.
He had a faint sweetish musky odor. Any crowded room smells worse on a hot day, but if I ever whiff that odor again, my skin will crawl and I’ll be tongue-tied with fright.
I didn’t take in these details instantly; at first all I could see was his face. A “face” is all I can call it. I haven’t described it yet because I’m afraid I’ll get the shakes. But I will, so that if you ever see one, you’ll shoot first, before your bones turn to jelly.
No nose. He was an oxygen breather but where the air went in and out I couldn’t say—some of it through the mouth, for he could talk. The mouth was the second worst part of him; in place of jawbone and chin he had mandibles that opened sideways as well as down, gaping in three irregular sides. There were rows of tiny teeth but no tongue that I could see; instead the mouth was rimmed with cilia as long as angleworms. They never stopped squirming.
I said the mouth was “second worst”; he had eyes. They were big and bulging and protected by horny ridges, two on the front of his head, set wide apart.
They scanned. They scanned like radar, swinging up and down and back and forth. He never looked at you and yet was always looking at you.
When he turned around, I saw a third eye in back. I think he scanned his whole surroundings at all times, like a radar warning system.
What kind of brain can put together everything in all directions at once? I doubt if a human brain could, even if there were any way to feed in the data. He didn’t seem to have room in his head to stack much of a brain, but maybe he didn’t keep it there. Come to think of it, humans wear their brains in an exposed position; there may be better ways.
But he certainly had a brain. He pinned me down like a beetle and squeezed out what he wanted. He didn’t have to stop to brainwash me; he questioned and I gave, for an endless time—it seemed more like days than hours. He spoke English badly but understandably. His labials were all alike—“buy” and “pie” and “vie” sounded the same. His gutturals were harsh and his dentals had a clucking quality. But I could usually understand and when I didn’t, he didn’t threaten or punish; he just tried again. He had no expression in his speech.
He kept at it until he had found out who I was and what I did and as much of what I knew as interested him. He asked questions about how I happened to be where I was and dressed the way I was when I was picked up. I couldn’t tell whether he liked the answers or not.
He had trouble understanding what a “soda jerk” was and, while he learned about the Skyway Soap contest, he never seemed to understand why it took place. But I found that there were a lot of things I didn’t know either—such as how many people there are on Earth and how many tons of protein we produce each year.
After endless time he had all he wanted and said, “Take it out.” The stooges had been waiting. The fat boy gulped and said, “Space him?”
He acted as if killing me or not were like saving a piece of string. “No. It is ignorant and untrained, but I may have use for it later. Put it back in the pen.”
“Yes, boss.”
They dragged me out. In the corridor Fatty said, “Let’s untie his feet and make him walk.” Skinny said, “Shaddap.”
Peewee was just inside the entrance panel but didn’t move, so I guess she had had another dose of that blue-light effect. They stepped over her and dumped me. Skinny chopped me on the side of the neck to stun me. When I came to, they were gone, I was unstrapped, and Peewee was sitting by me. She said anxiously, “Pretty bad?”
“Uh, yeah,” I agreed, and shivered. “I feel ninety years old.”
“It helps if you don’t look at him—especially his eyes. Rest a while and you’ll feel better.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s only forty-five m
inutes till we land. You probably won’t be disturbed before then.”
“Huh?” I sat up. “I was in there only an hour?”
“A little less. But it seems forever. I know.”
“I feel like a squeezed orange.” I frowned, remembering something. “Peewee, I wasn’t too scared when they came for me. I was going to demand to be turned loose and insist on explanations. But I never asked him a question, not one.”
“You never will. I tried. But your will just drains out. Like a rabbit in front of a snake.”
“Yes.”
“Kip, do you see why I had to take just any chance to get away? You didn’t seem to believe my story—do you believe it now?”
“Uh, yes. I believe it.”
“Thanks. I always say I’m too proud to care what people think, but I’m not, really. I had to get back to Daddy and tell him…because he’s the only one in the entire world who would simply believe me, no matter how crazy it sounded.”
“I see. I guess I see. But how did you happen to wind up in Centerville?”
“Centerville?”
“Where I live. Where ‘Junebug’ called ‘Peewee.’”
“Oh. I never meant to go there. I meant to land in New Jersey, in Princeton if possible, because I had to find Daddy.”
“Well, you sure missed your aim.”
“Can you do better? I would have done all right but I had my elbow joggled. Those things aren’t hard to fly; you just aim and push for where you want to go, not like the complicated things they do about rocket ships. And I had the Mother Thing to coach me. But I had to slow down going into the atmosphere and compensate for Earth’s spin and I didn’t know quite how. I found myself too far west and they were chasing me and I didn’t know what to do…and then I heard you on the space-operations band and thought everything was all right—and there I was.” She spread her hands. “I’m sorry, Kip.”
“Well, you landed it. They say any landing you walk away from is a good one.”
“But I’m sorry I got you mixed up in it.”
“Uh…don’t worry about that. It looks like somebody has to get mixed up in it. Peewee…what’s he up to?”
Have Space Suit—Will Travel Page 5