The Cat Who Walked Through Walls

by Robert A. Heinlein

  Gwen exclaimed, "Oh, goodness! That does it!"

  "Yes," agreed Dr. Schultz. "An eyepatch draws the attention of most observers so strongly that it takes a conscious effort of will to see the features. I always keep one on hand. That fez and the presence of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine was a happy coincidence."

  "You had a fez on hand?"

  "Not exactly. It does have a former owner. When he wakes up, he may miss it... but I do not think he will wake up soon. Uh, my friend Mickey Finn is taking care of him. But you might avoid any Shriners from Temple Al Mizar. Their accents may help; they are from Alabama."

  "Doctor, I'll avoid all Shriners as much as I can; I think I should board at the last minute. But what about Gwen?"

  The Reverend Doctor produced another fez. 'Try it, dear lady."

  Gwen tried it on. It tended to fit down over her like a candle snuffer. She lifted it off. "I don't think it does a thing for me; it's not right for my complexion. What do you think?"

  "I'm afraid you're right."

  I said, "Doctor, Shriners are twice as big as Gwen in all directions and they bulge in different places. It will have to be something else. Grease paint?"

  Schultz shook his head. "Grease paint always looks like grease paint."

  "That's a very bad likeness of her on the terminal. Nobody could recognize her from that."

  "Thank you, my love. Unfortunately there are a good many people in Golden Rule who do know what I look like... and just one of them at the boarding lock tonight could lower my life expectancy drastically. Hmm. With just a little effort and no grease paint I could look my right age. Papa Schultz?"

  "What is your right age, dear lady?"

  She glanced at me, then stood on tiptoes and whispered in Dr. Schultz's ear. He looked surprised. "I don't believe it. And, no, it won't work. We need something better."

  Mrs. Kondo spoke quickly to her husband; he looked suddenly alert; they exchanged some fast chatter in what had to be Japanese. He shifted to English. "May I, please? My wife has pointed out that Mistress Gwen is the same size, very nearly, as our daughter Naomi-and, in any case, kimonos are quite flexible."

  Gwen stopped smiling. "It's an idea-and I thank you both. But I don't look Nipponese. My nose. My eyes. My skin."

  There was some more batting around of that fast but long-winded language, three-comered this time. Then Gwen said, "This could extend my life. So please excuse me." She left with Mama-San.

  Kondo went back into his main room-there had been lights asking for service for several minutes; he had ignored them. I said to the good Doctor, "You have already extended our lives, simply by enabling us to take refuge with Tiger Kondo. But do you think we can carry this off long enough to board the shuttle?"

  "I hope so. What more can I say?"

  "Nothing, I guess."

  Papa Schultz dug into a pocket. "I found opportunity to get you a tourist card from the gentleman who lent you that fez ... and I have removed his name. What name should go on it? It can't be 'Ames' of course-but what?"

  "Oh. Gwen reserved space for us. Bought tickets."

  "By your right names?"

  "I'm not certain."

  "I do hope not. If she used Ames' and 'Novak' the best you can hope for is to try to be first in line for no-shows. But I had better hurry to the ticket counter and get reservations for you as 'Johnson' and-"

  "Doc."

  "Please? On the next shuttle if this one is booked solid."

  "You can't. You make reservations for us and-phtt! You're spaced. It may take them till tomorrow to figure it out. But they will."

  "But-"

  "Let's wait and see just what Gwen did. If they aren't back in five minutes, I'll ask Mr. Kondo to dig them out."

  A few minutes later a lady came in. Father Schultz bowed and said, "You're Naomi. Or are you Yumiko? Good to see you again, anyhow."

  The little thing giggled and sucked air and bowed from the waist. She looked like a doll-fancy kimono, little silk slippers, flat white makeup, an incredible Japanese hairdo. She answered, "Ichiban geisha girr is awr. My Ingris are serdom."

  "Gwen!" I said.

  "Prease?"

  "Gwen, it's wonderful! But tell us, fast, the names you used in making our reservations."

  "Ames and Novak. To match our passports."

  "That tears it. What'll we do. Doc?"

  Gwen looked back and forth between us. "Pray tell me the difficulty?"

  I explained. "So we go to the gate, each of us well disguised-and show reservations for Ames and Novak. Curtain. No flowers."

  "Richard, I didn't quite tell you everything."

  "Gwendolyn, you never do quite tell everything. More Lim-burger?"

  "No, dear. I saw that it might turn out this way. Well, I suppose you could say that I wasted quite a lot of money. But I- Uh, after I bought our tickets-tickets we can't use now and arc wasted-I went to Rental Row and put a deposit on a U-Pushit. A Volvo Flyabout."

  Schultz said, "Under what name?"

  I said, "How much?"

  "I used my right name-"

  Schultz said, "God help us!"

  "Just a moment, sir. My right name is Sadie Lipschitz... and only Richard knows it. And now you. Please keep it to yourself, as I don't like it. As Sadie Lipschitz I reserved the Volvo for my employer. Senator Richard Johnson, and placed a deposit. Six thousand crowns."

  I whistled. "For a Volvo? Sounds like you bought it."

  "I did buy it, dear; I had to. Both rental and deposit had to be cash because I didn't have a credit card. Oh, I do have; I have enough cards to play solitaire. But Sadie Lipschitz has no credit. So I had to pay six thousand down simply to reserve it-to rent it but on a purchase contract. I tried to get him down a bit but with all the Shriners in town he was sure he could move it."

  "Probably right."

  "I think so. If we take it, we still have to complete payment on the full list price, another nineteen thousand crowns-"

  "My God!"

  "-plus insurance and squeeze. But we get the unused balance back if we turn it in here, or Luna City, or Hong Kong Luna, in thirty days. Mr. Dockweiler explained the reason for the purchase contract. Asteroid miners, or boomers rather, had been hiring cars without putting up the full price, taking them to some hideout on Luna, and refitting them for mining."

  "A Volvo? The only way you could get a Volvo to the asteroids would be by shipping it in the hold of a Hanshaw. But nineteen-no, twenty-five thousand crowns. Plus insurance and graft. Bald, stark robbery."

  Schultz said to me rather sharply, "Friend Ames, I suggest that you stop behaving like the fabled Scotsman faced by a coin-operated refresher. Do you accept what Mrs. Ames could arrange? Or do you prefer die Manager's fresh-air route? Fresh- but thin."

  I took a deep breath. "Sorry. You're right, I can't breathe money. I just hate to get clipped. Gwen, I apologize. All right where is Hertz from here? I'm disoriented."

  "Not Hertz, dear. Budget Jets. Hertz did not have a unit ten."

  IX

  "Murphy was an optimist." (O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law, as cited by A. Bloch)

  To reach the office of Budget Jets we had to go around the end of the spaceport waiting room and into it at the axis, then directly to Budget's door. The waiting room was crowded- the usual lot, plus Shriners and their wives, most of them belted to wall rests, some floating free. And proctors-too many of them.

  Perhaps I should explain that the waiting room-and the booking office and the lock to the passenger tunnel and the offices and facilities of Rental Row-are all in free fall, weightless; they do not take part in the stately spin that gives the habitat its pseudo-gravity. The waiting room and related activities are in a cylinder inside a much larger cylinder, the habitat itself. The two cylinders share a common axis. The big one spins; the smaller one does not-like a wheel turning on an axle.

  This requires a vacuum seal at the outer skin of the habitat where the two cylinders touch-a mercury type, I believe, but I
've never seen it. The point is that, even though the surrounding habitat spins, the habitat's spaceport must not spin, because a shuttle (or a liner, or a freighter, or even a Volvo) requires a steady place in free fall to dock. The docking nests for Rental Row are a rosette around the main docking facility.

  In going through the waiting room I avoided eye contact and went straight to my destination, a door in a forward corner of the waiting room. Gwen and Bill were tailed up behind me. Gwen had her purse hooked over her neck and was guarding the bonsai maple with one arm and clinging to my ankle with her other hand; Bill was holding on to one of her ankles and towing a package wrapped in Macy's wrapping, with Macy's logo prominent on it. I don't know what that wrapping paper originally covered but it now concealed Gwen's smaller case, her not-clothes.

  Our other baggage? Following the first principle of saving one's neck, we'd chucked it. It would have marked us as phony-for a one-day side trip Shriners on holiday do not carry great loads of baggage. Gwen's smaller case we could salvage because, disguised with Macy's wrapping, it looked like the sort of shopping many of the Shriners had obviously done. And so did the little tree-just the sort of awkward, silly purchase tourists indulge in. But the rest of our baggage had to be abandoned.

  Oh, perhaps it could be shipped to us someday, if safe means could be worked out. But I had written it off our books. Doc Schultz, by scolding me for crabbing over the cost of the deal Gwen had arranged, had reoriented me. I had let myself become soft and sedentary and domesticated-he had forced me to shift gears to the real world, where there are only two sorts:

  the quick and the dead.

  A truth of which I again became acutely aware in crossing that waiting room: Chief Franco came in behind us. He appeared to be unaware of us and I strove to appear unaware of him. He seemed intent only on reaching a group of his henchmen guarding the lock to the passenger tunnel; he dived straight toward them while I was pulling my little family along a lifeline stretching from the entrance to the corner I wanted to reach.

  And did reach it and got through Budget Jets' door, and it contracted behind us and I breathed again and reswallowed my stomach.

  In the office of Budget Jets we found me manager, a Mr. Dockweiler, belted at his desk, smoking a cigar, and reading the Luna edition of the Daily Racing Form. He looked around as we came in and said, "Sorry, friends, I don't have a thing to rent or sell. Not even a witch's broom.*'

  I thought about who I was-Senator Richard Johnson, representing the enormously wealthy systemwide syndicate of sassafras snifters, one of the most powerful wheeler-dealers at The Hague-and let the Senator's voice speak for me. "Son, I'm Senator Johnson. I do believe that one of my staff made a reservation in my name earlier today-for a Hanshaw Superb."

  "Oh! Glad to meet you. Senator," he said as he clipped his paper to his desk and unfastened his seat belt. "Yes, I do have your reservation. But it's not a Superb. It's a Volvo."

  "What! Why, I distinctly told that girl - Never mind. Change it, please."

  "I wish I could, sir. I don't have anything else."

  "Regrettable. Would you be so kind as to consult your competitors and find me a-"

  "Senator, there is not a unit left for rent anywhere in Golden Rule. Morris Garage, Lockheed-Volkswagen, Hertz, Interplan-et-we've all been querying each other the past hour. No soap. No go. No units."

  It was time to be philosophical. "In that case I had better drive a Volvo, hadn't I, son?"

  The Senator again got just a touch cranky when required to pony up full list price on what was clearly a much-used car- I complained about dirty ashtrays and demanded that they be vacuumed out... then I said not to bother (when the terminal behind Dockweiler's head stopped talking about Ames and Novak) and said, "Let's check me mass and available delta vee; I want to lift."

  For a mass reading Budget Jets does not use a centrifuge but the newer, faster, cheaper, much more convenient, elastic inertiometer-I just wonder if it is as accurate. Dockweiler had us all get into the net at once (all but the bonsai, which he shook and wrote down as two kilos-near enough, maybe), asked us to hug each other with the Macy's package held firmly amongst us three, then pulled the trigger on the elastic support-shook our teeth out, almost; then he announced that our total mass for lift was 213.6 kilos.

  A few minutes later we were strapping to the cushions and Dockweiler was sealing the nose and then the inner door of the nest. He had not asked for IDs, tourist cards, passports, or motor vehicle pilot's licenses. But he had counted that nineteen thousand twice. Plus insurance. Plus cumshaw.

  I punched "213.6 kg" into my computer pilot, then checked my instrument board. Fuel read "full" and all the idiot lights showed green. I pushed the "ready" button and waited. Dockweiler's voice reached us via the speaker: "Happy landing!"

  "Thank you."

  The air charge went Whwnpf! and we were out of the nest and in bright sunlight. Ahead and close was the exterior of the spaceport. I squeezed the process control for a one-eighty reverse. As we swung, the habitat moved away and into my left viewport; ahead the incoming shuttle came into view-I did nothing about her; she had to keep clear of me, since I was undocking-and, into my right viewport came one of the most impressive sights in the system: Luna from close up, a mere three hundred kilometers-I could reach out and touch her.

  I felt grand.

  Those lying murdering scoundrels were left behind and we were forever out of reach of Sethos's whimsical tyranny. At first, living in Golden Rule had seemed happily loose and carefree. But I had learned. A monarch's neck should always have a noose around it-it keeps him upright.

  I was in the pilot's couch; Gwen had the copilot's position on my right. I looked toward her and then realized that I was still wearing that silly eyepatch. No, delete "silly"-it had, quite possibly, saved my life. I took it off, stuffed it into a pocket. Then I took that fez off, looked around for somewhere to put it-tucked it under my chest belt. "Let's see if we are secure for space," I said.

  "Isn't it a little late for that, Richard?"

  "I always do my check-off lists after I lift," I told her. "I'm the optimistic type. You have a purse and a large package from Macy's; how arc they secured?"

  "They arc not, as yet. If you will refrain from goosing mis craft while I do it, I'll unstrap and net them." She started to unstrap.

  "Woops! Before unstrapping you must get permission from the pilot."

  "I thought I had it."

  "You do now. But don't make that mistake again. Mr. Christian, His Majesty's Ship Bounty is a taut ship and will remain that way. Bill! How are you doing back there?"

  " 'M okay."

  "Are you secure in all ways? When I twist her tail, I don't want any loose change flying around the cabin."

  "He's belted in properly," Gwen assured me. "I checked him. He is holding Tree-San's pot flat against his tummy and he has my promise that, if he lets go of it, we will bury him without rites."

  "I'm not sure it will stand up under acceleration."

  "Neither am I but there was no way to pack it. At least it will be in the correct attitude for acceleration-and I'm reciting some spells. Dear man, what can I do with this wig? It's the one Naomi uses for public performances; it's valuable. It was sweet indeed of her to insist that I wear it-it was the final, convincing touch, I think-but I don't see how to protect it. It's at least as sensitive to acceleration as Tree-San."

  "Durned if I know-and that's my official opinion. But I doubt that I will need to push this go-buggy higher than two gee." I thought about it. "How about the glove compartment? Take all of the Kleenex out of the dispenser and crumple it up around the wig. And some inside it. Will that work?"

  "I think so. Time enough?"

  "Plenty of time. I made a quick estimate at Mr. Dockweiler's office. In order to land at Hong Kong Luna port and in sunlight I should start moving into a lower orbit about twenty-one hundred. Loads of time. So go ahead, do whatever you need to do... while I tell the computer pilot what I want
to do. Gwen, can you read all the instruments from your side?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Okay, that's your job, that and the starboard viewport. I'll stick to power, attitude, and this baby computer. By the way, you're licensed, aren't you?"

  "No point in asking me now, is there? But let not your heart be troubled, dear; I was herding sky junk before I was out of high school."

  "Good." I did not ask to see her license-as she had pointed out, it was too late to matter.

  And I had noticed that she had not answered my question.

  (If ballistics bores you, here is another place to skip.)

  A daisy-clipping orbit of Luna (assuming that Luna has daisies, which seems unlikely) takes an hour and forty-eight minutes and some seconds. Golden Rule, being three hundred kilometers higher than a tall daisy, has to go farther than the circumference of Luna (10,919 kilometers), namely 12,805 kilometers. Almost two thousand kilometers farther-so it has to go faster. Right?

  Wrong. (I cheated.)

  The most cock-eyed, contrary to all common sense, difficult aspect of ballistics around a planet is this: To speed up, you slow down; to slow down, you speed up.

  I'm sorry. That's the way it is.

  We were in the same orbit as Golden Rule, three hundred klicks above Luna, and floating along with the habitat at one and a half kilometers per second (1.5477 k/s is what I punched into the pilot computer... because that was what it said on the crib sheet I got in Dockweiler's office). In order to get down to the surface I had to get into a lower (and faster) orbit... and the way to do that was to slow down.

  But it was more complex than that. An airless landing requires that you get down to the lowest (and fastest) orbit... but you have to kill that speed so that you arrive at contact with the ground at zero relative speed-you must keep bending it down so that contact is straight down and without a bump (or not much) and without a skid (or not much)-what they call a "synergistic" orbit (hard to spell and even harder to calculate).

  But it can be done. Armstrong and Aldrin did it right the first time. (No second chances!) But despite all their careful mathematics it turned out there was one hell of a big rock in their way. Sheer virtuosity and a hatful of fuel bought them a landing they could walk away from. (If they had not had that hatful of fuel left, would space travel have been delayed half a century or so? We don't honor our pioneers enough.)