Have space suit-- will travel (19 page)

Under close chaperonage she built something. The gadget worked. Then something else. Presently she was in the labs daily, making things for her captors, things that delighted them. She always delivered; the privilege depended on it.

But each gadget involved parts she needed herself.

“She sneaked bits and pieces into her pouch,” Peewee told me. “They never knew exactly what she was doing. She would use five of a thing and the sixth would go into her pouch.”

“Her pouch?”

“Of course. That’s where she hid the ‘brain’ the time she and I swiped the ship. Didn’t you know?”

“I didn’t know she had a pouch.”

“Well, neither did they. They watched to see she didn’t carry anything out of the shop-and she never did. Not where it showed.”

“Uh, Peewee, is the Mother Thing a marsupial?”

“Huh? Like possums? You don’t have to be a marsupial to have a pouch. Look at squirrels, they have pouches in their cheeks.”

“Mmm, yes.”

“She sneaked a bit now and a bit then, and I swiped things, too. During rest time she worked on them in our room.”

The Mother Thing had not slept all the time we had been on Pluto. She worked long hours publicly, making things for wormfaces-a stereo-telephone no bigger than a pack of cigarettes, a tiny beetle-like arrangement that crawled all over anything it was placed on and integrated the volume, many other things. But during hours set apart for rest she worked for herself, usually in darkness, those tiny fingers busy as a blind watch-maker’s.

She made two bombs and a long-distance communicator-and-beacon.

I didn’t get all this tossed over Peewee’s shoulder while we raced through the base; she simply told me that the Mother Thing had managed to build a radio-beacon and had been responsible for the explosion I had felt. And that we must hurry, hurry, hurry!

“Peewee,” I said, panting. “What’s the rush? If the Mother Thing is outside, I want to bring her in-her body, I mean. But you act as if we had a deadline.”

“We do!”

The communicator-beacon had to be placed outside at a particular local time (the Plutonian day is about a week-the astronomers were right again) so that the planet itself would not blanket the beam. But the Mother Thing had no space suit. They had discussed having Peewee suit up, go outside, and set the beacon-it had been so designed that Peewee need only trigger it. But that depended on locating Peewee’s space suit, then breaking in and getting it after the wormfaces were disposed of.

They had never located it. The Mother Thing had said serenely, singing confident notes that I could almost hear ringing in my head: (“Never mind, dear. I can go out and set it myself.”)

“Mother Thing! You can’t!” Peewee had protested. “It’s cold out there.”

(“I shan’t be long.”)

“You won’t be able to breathe.”

(“It won’t be necessary, for so short a time.”)

That settled it. In her own way, the Mother Thing was as hard to argue with as Wormface.

The bombs were built, the beacon was built, a time approached when all factors would match-no ship expected, few wormfaces, Pluto faced the right way, feeding time for the staff-and they still did not know where Peewee’s suit was-if it had not been destroyed. The Mother Thing resolved to go ahead.

“But she told me, just a few hours ago when she let me know that today was the day, that if she did not come back in ten minutes or so, that she hoped I could find my suit and trigger the beacon-if she hadn’t been able to.” Peewee started to cry. “That was the f- f- first time she admitted that she wasn’t sure she could do it!”

“Peewee! Stop it! Then what?”

“I waited for the explosions-they came, right together-and I started to search, places I hadn’t been allowed to go. But I couldn’t find my suit!

Then I found you and-oh, Kip, she’s been out there almost an hour!” She looked at her watch. “There’s only about twenty minutes left. If the beacon isn’t triggered by then, she’s had all her trouble and died for n- n- nothing! She wouldn’t like that.” “Where’s my suit!”

We found no more wormfaces-apparently there was only one on duty while the others fed. Peewee showed me a door, air-lock type, behind which was the feeding chamber-the bomb may have cracked that section for gas-tight doors had closed themselves when the owners were blown to bits. We hurried past.

Logical as usual, Peewee ended our search at my space suit. It was one of more than a dozen human-type suits-I wondered how much soup those ghouls ate. Well, they wouldn’t eat again! I wasted no time; I simply shouted, “Hi, Oscar!” and started to suit up.

(“Where you been, chum?”)

Oscar seemed in perfect shape. Fats’ suit was next to mine and Tim’s next to it; I glanced at them as I stretched Oscar out, wondering whether they had equipment I could use. Peewee was looking at Tim’s suit. “Maybe I can wear this.”

It was much smaller than Oscar, which made it only nine sizes too big for Peewee. “Don’t be silly! It’d fit you like socks on a rooster. Help me. Take off that rope, coil it and clip it to my belt.”

“You won’t need it. The Mother Thing planned to take the beacon out the walkway about a hundred yards and sit it down. If she didn’t manage it, that’s all you do. Then twist the stud on top.”

“Don’t argue! How much time?”

“Yes, Kip. Eighteen minutes.”

“Those winds are strong,” I added. “I may need the line.” The Mother Thing didn’t weigh much. If she had been swept off, I might need a rope to recover her body. “Hand me that hammer off Fats’ suit.”

“Right away!”

I stood up. It felt good to have Oscar around me. Then I remembered how cold my feet got, walking in from the ship. “I wish I had asbestos boots.”

Peewee looked startled. “Wait right here!” She was gone before I could stop her. I went on sealing up while I worried-she hadn’t even stopped to pick up the projector weapon. Shortly I said, “Tight, Oscar?”

(“Tight, boy!”)

Chin valve okay, blood-color okay, radio-I wouldn’t need it-water- The tank was dry. No matter, I wouldn’t have time to grow thirsty. I worked the chin valve, making the pressure low because I knew that pressure outdoors was quite low.

Peewee returned with what looked like ballet slippers for a baby elephant. She leaned close to my face plate and shouted, “They wear these. Can you get them on?” It seemed unlikely, but I forced them over my feet like badly fitting socks. I stood up and found that they improved traction; they were clumsy but not hard to walk in.

A minute later we were standing at the exit of the big room I had first seen. Its air-lock doors were closed now as a result of the Mother Thing’s other bomb, which she had placed to blow out the gate-valve panels in the tunnel beyond. The bomb in the feeding chamber had been planted by Peewee who had then ducked back to their room. I don’t know whether the Mother Thing timed the two bombs to go off together, or triggered them by remote-control-nor did it matter; they had made a shambles of Wormface’s fancy base.

Peewee knew how to waste air through the air lock. When the inner door opened I shouted, “Time?”

“Fourteen minutes.” She held up her watch.

“Remember what I said, just stay here. If anything moves, blue-light it first and ask questions afterwards.”

“I remember.”

I stepped in and closed the inner door, found the valve in the outer door, waited for pressure to equalize.

The two or three minutes it took that big lock to bleed off I spent in glum thought. I didn’t like leaving Peewee alone. I thought all wormfaces were dead, but I wasn’t sure. We had searched hastily; one could have zigged when we zagged-they were so fast.

Besides that, Peewee had said, “I remember,” when she should have said, “Okay, Kip, I will.” A slip of the tongue? That flea-hopping mind made “slips” only when it wanted to. There is a world of difference between “Roger” and “Wilco.”

Besides I was doing this for foolish motives. Mostly I was going out to recover the Mother Thing’s body-folly, because after I brought her in, she would spoil. It would be kinder to leave her in natural deep-freeze.

But I couldn’t bear that-it was cold out there and I couldn’t leave her out in the cold. She had been so little and warm ... so alive. I had to bring her in where she could get warm.

You’re in bad shape when your emotions force you into acts which you know are foolish.

Worse still, I was doing this in a reckless rush because the Mother Thing had wanted that beacon set before a certain second, now only twelve minutes away, maybe ten. Well, I’d do it, but what sense was it? Say her home star is close by-oh, say it’s Proxima Centauri and the wormfaces came from somewhere farther. Even if her beacon works-it still takes over four years for her S.O.S. to reach her friends!

This might have been okay for the Mother Thing. I had an impression that she lived a very long time; waiting a few years for rescue might not bother her. But Peewee and I were not creatures of her sort. We’d be dead before that speed-of-light message crawled to Proxima Centauri. I was glad that I had seen Peewee again, but I knew what was in store for us. Death, in days, weeks, or months at most, from running out of air, or water, or food-or a wormface ship might land before we died-which meant one unholy sabbat of a fight in which, if we were lucky, we would die quickly.

No matter how you figured, planting that beacon was merely “carrying out the deceased’s last wishes”-words you hear at funerals. Sentimental folly.

The outer door started to open. Ave, Mother Thing! Nos morituri.

It was cold out there, biting cold, even though I was not yet in the wind. The glow panels were still working and I could see that the tunnel was a mess; the two dozen fractional-pressure stops had ruptured like eardrums. I wondered what sort of bomb could be haywired from stolen parts, kept small enough to conceal two in a body pouch along with some sort of radio rig, and nevertheless have force enough to blow out those panels. The blast had rattled my teeth, several hundred feet away in solid rock.

The first dozen panels were blown inwards. Had she set it off in the middle of the tunnel? A blast that big would fling her away like a feather! She must have planted it there, then come inside and triggered it-then gone back through the lock just as I had. That was the only way I could see it.

It got colder every step. My feet weren’t too cold yet, those clumsy mukluks were okay; the wormfaces understood insulation. “Oscar, you got the fires burning?”

(“Roaring, chum. It’s a cold night.”)

“You’re telling me!”

Just beyond the outermost burst panel, I found her.

She had sunk forward, as if too tired to go on. Her arms stretched in front of her and, on the floor of the tunnel not quite touched by her tiny fingers, was a small round box about the size ladies keep powder in on dressing tables.

Her face was composed and her eyes were open except that nictitating membranes were drawn across as they had been when I had first seen her in the pasture back of our house, a few days or weeks or a thousand years ago. But she had been hurt then and looked it; now I half expected her to draw back those inner lids and sing a welcome.

I touched her.

She was hard as ice and much colder.

I blinked back tears and wasted not a moment. She wanted that little box placed a hundred yards out on the causeway and the bump on top twisted-and she wanted it done in the next six or seven minutes. I scooped it up. “Righto, Mother Thing! On my way!”

(“Get cracking, chum!”)

(“Thank you, dear Kip. . . .”)

I don’t believe in ghosts. I had heard her sing thank-you so many times that the notes echoed in my head.

A few feet away at the mouth of the tunnel, I stopped. The wind hit me and was so cold that the deathly chill in the tunnel seemed summery. I closed my eyes and counted thirty seconds to give time to adjust to starlight while I fumbled on the windward side of the tunnel at a slanting strut that anchored the causeway to the mountain, tied my safety line by passing it around the strut and snapping it back on itself. I had known that it was night outside and I expected the causeway to stand out as a black ribbon against the white “snow” glittering under a skyful of stars. I thought I would be safer on that windswept way if I could see its edges-which I couldn’t by headlamp unless I kept swinging my shoulders back and forth-clumsy and likely to throw me off balance or slow me down.

I had figured this carefully; I didn’t regard this as a stroll in the garden -not at night, not on Pluto! So I counted thirty seconds and tied my line while waiting for eyes to adjust to starlight. I opened them.

And I couldn’t see a darned thing!

Not a star. Not even the difference between sky and ground. My back was to the tunnel and the helmet shaded my face like a sunbonnet; I should have been able to see the walkway. Nothing.

I turned the helmet and saw something that accounted both for black sky and the quake we had felt-an active volcano. It may have been five miles away or fifty, but I could not doubt what it was-a jagged, angry red scar low in the sky.

But I didn’t stop to stare. I switched on the headlamp, splashed it on the righthand windward edge, and started a clumsy trot, keeping close to that side, so that if I stumbled I would have the entire road to recover in before the wind could sweep me off. That wind scared me. I kept the line coiled in my left hand and paid it out as I went, keeping it fairly taut. The coil felt stiff in my fingers.