Meanwhile, the creature that had attacked him had turned its attention to Grumbo’s boat. It bit it in half, then spit out the half in its mouth as if it tasted terrible.
Suddenly Snout managed to get the belt around his waist. Buckling it on, he came zooming down, straight toward the seabeast.
What are you doing? I thought.
I want to see if I can scare it! replied Snout.
He couldn’t. Rather than turning and swimming away, the creature lunged out of the water again, snapping its jaws. Snout turned and shot back toward the sky, out of range of those great teeth.
Suddenly I saw another figure go flying toward the beast. It was Mir-van. He was holding a gun of some sort, and when he got close enough, he gave the beast three blasts. It roared in anger, stretched out of the water, then fell forward with an enormous splash.
“Well done, partner,” murmured Grumbo, who was standing next to me.
“Is it dead?” asked Elspeth. She sounded almost disappointed, which I could understand. We wanted the beast out of the way. But it was magnificent, and it would be sad if it had had to be killed.
“Merely tranquilized,” said Grumbo. “Much like our friend Quat over there.”
I glanced in the direction he was pointing. If I had had a mouth, I would have gasped. Quat was gone.
“Drat!” said Grumbo. “The dose I gave him must not have been strong enough! Or maybe we shouldn’t have put him where the water could wash over him. It probably revived him more quickly. That’s what I get for being soft. Where do you suppose he’s gotten to?”
The question was answered soon enough. The water out where Snout had been fighting the beast began to bubble and change color. An instant later a spaceship erupted from the surface. It soared into the sky, disappearing into a tiny dot even as we watched.
Quat had gotten away, and taken our means of transportation with him.
* * *
Grumbo’s response when we told him we wanted to use his spaceship was to laugh.
“This is a matter of life and death,” said Madame Pong.
“Not mine,” replied Grumbo.
If we still had status as members of the Galactic Patrol, we could simply seize the ship, thought Snout, who was standing next to me while Madame Pong and Grumbo argued.
We could seize it anyway, I replied.
True, agreed Snout. Of course, I was speaking in legal terms to begin with. Just because you can do something under the law doesn’t mean you actually can do it, if you know what I mean. And even if we could convince Madame Pong to misrepresent us as still being members of the Galactic Patrol, I doubt Grumbo would give up the ship without a fight. Not sure we could win it.
In fact, Grumbo soon got a fight. But it came from an unexpected direction. About five minutes into the discussion, Nanda stepped in front of Grumbo and said to Madame Pong, “Are you telling me that the reason you want to use the ship is to save this being’s mother?” She was pointing at me and Seymour.
“Yes,” said Madame Pong, who had already said exactly that about fifteen times.
“Mr. Eyeball Guy’s mommy is in trouble!” yowled Krixna. She started to cry. Tears streamed from her yellow eyes. Silvery snot bubbled at the end of her bananalike nose.
Mir-van picked her up. “Don’t cry, honey,” he said soothingly. “We’ll take care of it.”
“Grumbo, you heartless cad,” said Nanda, “how can you ignore the fact that this being’s mother is in terrible danger?”
“His mother is not my business!” roared Grumbo—which only made Krixna weep all the harder.
“What is your business?” asked Madame Pong slyly.
Grumbo glanced from side to side, as if afraid someone else might be listening. “We deal in rare creatures,” he said. “As you well know.”
Madame Pong smiled. “How would you like to go to a restricted planet? You’ll find creatures there you can’t get anywhere else. They have a lovely thing called a cat. Very unusual. It ought to fetch a fine price from the collectors you do business with.”
A greedy gleam blossomed in Grumbo’s eyes. The noseworm crawled halfway out and lifted its head, as if listening more intently. Even so, Grumbo was not so easily won over. “We don’t need you to go to a restricted planet,” he pointed out. “We can do it any time we want, if we’re willing to risk arrest and massive fines.”
“Ah, but that’s the point,” said Madame Pong. “In exchange for a ride, I can offer you diplomatic immunity.”
Grumbo snorted. “Easy enough to say. Why should I believe you?”
Madame Pong reached into her pocket and pulled out a ring. With our extraordinary vision, Seymour and I could see, even from where we stood, that it was identical to the one she had given me, the one we still had stowed in our gear.
She handed the ring to Grumbo. He examined it for a moment, then smiled. “Madame, I retract my skepticism. You operate at a higher level than I had realized. Even so—”
“Even so nothing!” said Nanda. “We’re going, and that’s that.”
Grumbo shrugged. “As you can see, I am a prisoner to the whims of my partner’s family. All right, we’ll take you to this planet.”
He made it sound like he was doing it totally against his will.
But the greedy gleam in his eye was brighter than ever.
* * *
We packed and left within the hour. Before we went, Snout showed me a small device, a black sphere about the size of a baseball. “If the others come back while we’re gone, they’ll be able to detect this,” he told me. Twisting the top, he spoke into it: “Gone to pick up a friend; back as soon as possible.”
That’s not very clear, I thought to him.
Don’t want to be too specific, he replied, tossing the sphere into the bushes. It’s always possible it might fall into the wrong hands.
* * *
Once we were in space, I was again faced with the weird reality that even though we were traveling faster than most Earth scientists thought possible, it still felt terribly slow. I wanted to be home instantly, to make sure that Mom and the twins were all right, and to get them away from danger.
Which was why the week that followed was the longest of my life. I paced the halls of Grumbo’s ship, muttering and cursing to myself until Seymour finally said, Do you suppose I could go somewhere else to live for a while!
Sorry, I replied—and went right back to my fussing.
Snout spent hours trying to teach me new ways to stay calm. None of them worked. I was half insane with fear and anger and worry.
To make things worse, I had had to agree that once we got there, I would not go into the house. After all, the reason BKR wanted my mother was to use her as bait. And what did he want to catch with this bait? Me!
So I was going to have to wait somewhere else while they went to get her.
* * *
We hopscotched across space, zipping in and out of other dimensions to make the journey faster. The real question, and the one we had no way to answer, was “How far from Earth is BKR?” When we had left the Mentat, we had gone toward Earth. If Dad’s suspicions had been correct, BKR had gone away from it. So despite his head start, he had farther to travel. But how much farther? And when had he started?
It was like running a race where you had no idea when your opponent had started, or where he was coming from.
“There is nothing about the situation that can be changed by worrying,” said Snout.
This was absolutely true.
Unfortunately, it did nothing to stop me from worrying.
I did get a kick out of going into the ship’s storeroom to see the strange animals that Grumbo and Mir-van had collected to sell and trade. Almost every time I went there I would find Elspeth and Krixna playing some game. The two of them seemed to get along very well.
* * *
At last we were there. Zapping out of a dimensional leap, we saw the blue sphere of Earth floating in space ahead of us.
“W
hat a lovely planet,” said Nanda.
“It is,” murmured Madame Pong. “Troubled, but lovely. It has been a special interest of mine for some time.”
The planet grew larger in our viewscreen, the continents and oceans rapidly becoming more distinct.
Before long we could see the features of the land, the mountains and rivers, the forests and valleys.
Home! sang something deep within me. Home!
Elspeth stood beside Seymour and me, resting her hand on our neck.
“Look, Rod!” she said. “I can see your house!”
The very fact that it was still there filled me with hope. I longed to drop down this instant, to burst inside and call out to my mother and the twins.
But, of course, I couldn’t.
We soared past the house, down to the swamp that lies behind it. In the distance I could see the woods where I had always liked to play. The trees were blazing with autumn color. That was a shock. It had been summer when we had left to search for my father. Despite all that had happened since then, it seemed as though things should have stayed the same here at home.
We were traveling at reduced size, which made it easier to escape detection. After a little zipping around through the swamp, we found the spot I had been looking for—an old platform that some duck hunters had built in a tree and then abandoned years before Mom and Dad had built our house.
The wood of the platform was rotted and crumbling, but plenty solid enough to hold Seymour and Edgar and me, since we were only about an inch high.
“We’ll be back as soon as we can,” said Madame Pong as we climbed out onto the platform.
What she didn’t say, what neither of us said, was that if anything went wrong, if they couldn’t come back, then Seymour and Edgar and I would almost certainly die here.
But we all knew that it was better for me to die than for BKR to get his hands on what was inside my brain.
Which was why I was once again wearing the ring Madame Pong had given me—just in case BKR had gotten to Earth first.
The night was cool. Nanda, fretting, gave us a blanket.
Edgar nestled against Seymour and me, eeeping nervously. Hunkering down onto the platform, we watched as the ship flew back toward the house.
CHAPTER
16
Mom Is Not Amused
THE ONLY THING THAT MADE the waiting bearable was that Snout and I kept our mental connection. That way I could at least be aware of what was going on.
This let me watch as Snout did a quick bioscan of the house, and feel enormously relieved when he said to the others on the ship: “I detect three large life-forms inside. All indications are that it is Mrs. Allbright and the twins.”
Go on in! I thought urgently. You’ve got to get Mom and the twins and get out of there. Every moment counts.
Stay calm, he replied. We’ve already worked this out.
Indeed, we had had a long debate about how to make the initial contact while we were traveling. Going down to meet Mom at two-inch size would make the landing party harder to detect, should anyone be looking for them. But it would also leave them vulnerable to hawks, cats, or anything else that might want to try eating them.
On the other hand, going to the door at full size could create all sorts of problems if anyone, Earthling or alien, should happen to show up before they got inside.
Crashing through the window, which had been Elspeth’s preferred method, seemed unnecessarily dramatic, and likely to scare Mom and the kids.
Finally we had decided that the simplest thing to do would be to enlarge Elspeth, and let her go knock on the door.
Since this put her momentarily in charge of things, Elspeth had thought it was a terrific idea.
The others could easily have ridden in her pockets, of course. But we wanted to get Grumbo’s ship inside the house, to reduce the chances of it being seen. So they planned to wait in the apple tree until Mom and Elspeth had a chance to open one of the windows at the back of the house.
Through Snout, I fretfully watched the ship’s viewscreen as Elspeth approached the front door.
What if Mom wasn’t home? Sure, Snout’s bioscan had found four life-forms. But maybe there was someone besides Mom in the house—a babysitter or something. I didn’t think I could stand the suspense of waiting for her to return if she wasn’t here right now.
The call of a nearby bird startled me, reminding me that I was still out in the swamp, not actually in the ship.
I refocused my attention.
The door opened. It was Mom. She cried out in astonishment when she saw Elspeth, then threw her arms around my cousin. But at the same time I could see she was looking beyond Elspeth—looking for me. Her face was haggard and worn, and I had a feeling she had not slept well since I left.
Nothing is without consequences, Snout whispered in my mind. Even good actions carry a price.
The ship’s exterior microphone picked up Elspeth’s voice saying, “We have to get inside quickly, Aunt Jean.”
They hurried in and closed the door, leaving me wishing that Snout had X-ray vision.
Grumbo waited approximately two minutes, then flew to the back of the house. Mom and Elspeth were just opening the kitchen window. The ship flew through the window and landed on the kitchen counter.
Through the viewscreen, Snout—and therefore Seymour and I—could see the twins standing beside Mom, clinging to her dress. Linda, also known as Little Thing One, was jumping up and down with excitement. Eric, also known as Little Thing Two, had his thumb stuck in his mouth and his eyes open so wide I was afraid they might fall out of his head.
I could tell they had grown since I had been gone, and it made my heart hurt—not the fact that they had grown, but the fact that I had missed it happening.
Grumbo extended the ramp, and Snout and Madame Pong walked down onto the counter.
“Where’s Rod?” cried Mom. “Has something happened to him?”
“Roddie!” cried the twins. “Where’s Roddie?” Then Little Thing One squinted her eyes suspiciously. “And where’s Grakker?” she asked.
Madame Pong put her hands together in front of her. Making a slight bow, she said, “Greetings from the stars, Mrs. Allbright.”
She spoke in English, which startled me. I had gotten so used to hearing Standard Galactic I had forgotten about the language implant that made it possible for me to understand it.
Madame Pong started to say something else. Before she had gotten two words out of her mouth Mom cut her off, saying, “Where’s Rod?”
I blinked. I think it was the first time I had ever heard her interrupt someone.
“Rod is waiting for you,” said Madame Pong, her voice still calm and gracious. “For reasons too complicated to explain at the moment, it was not wise to bring him into the house.”
“Is he all right?” asked Mom. She sounded desperate, and frightened.
“The story is a long one,” said Madame Pong, sidestepping for the moment the issue of how “all right” I was. “We will be glad to share it with you in full detail a little later. Right now, you and the twins are in imminent danger. We need to remove you from the house at once.”
Mom’s eyes widened. “What kind of danger?” she asked, pulling the twins closer to her.
“BKR is after you. Please, I must insist that you get in the spaceship. All will be explained as soon as possible. But we want to get you away from here without a moment’s delay.”
Mom looked around uncertainly. She had no one to consult with, no one to ask for advice. Finally she sighed and said, “All right, we’ll go with you.”
“We’re goin’ on a spaceship!” cried Little Thing One. “Yay for the spaceship!”
“Yay for the spaceship!” echoed Little Thing Two.
“How long are we going for?” asked Mom.
“That is hard to say,” replied Madame Pong.
Mom turned pale. “We’ll need to pack.”
“We can manufacture everything you need on
the ship,” said Madame Pong. A note of urgency was creeping into her voice.
Mom thought for a second, then said, “Eric, Linda—run and get your teddy bears.”
Little Thing One and Little Thing two scurried out of the kitchen. “You can’t manufacture those,” Mom explained, with a note of smugness. “Not with the proper amount of loving wear and tear.” Then her eyes widened. “The dog! We can’t leave the dog!”
Madame Pong sighed. “We can bring the dog with us.”
Bonehead came bursting through the door about thirty seconds after Mom had called him. Then Grumbo used his ship’s shrinking ray to bring Mom, Elspeth, the twins, and the dog down to the proper size for the ship.
“Beam me up, Scottie!” cried Little Thing One, which made me wonder how much TV she had been watching while I was gone.
* * *
It took only a few seconds for them to fly back out to the swamp. They landed on the platform where Seymour, Edgar, and I had been waiting.
Inside the ship Madame Pong put her hand on Mom’s arm and said, “I must warn you, Rod is not quite as you last saw him.”
Mom frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Just come outside, and you’ll see,” said Madame Pong.
Grumbo lowered the ramp.
Mom followed Madame Pong down the sloping surface, onto the rotting wood of the duck blind. “Where’s Rod?” she said.
Seymour and I stepped out from behind the leaf where we had been hiding. Madame Pong stretched an elegant hand in my direction and said softly, “For the time being, Rod is sharing this body with his friend Seymour.”
“Are you serious?” screamed my mother. “I let my son go off with you on some insane trip into space, and you bring him back like this!?!”
I had never seen her so upset. I was actually afraid she might hurt Madame Pong. With an effort, she got herself under control. “You’re joking, aren’t you?” she said, her teeth clenched.
“Nope,” said Elspeth, helpful as ever, “that’s Rod!”
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