Have space suit-- will travel (8 page)

If low gravity goes on and on, then wherever you are, you are not on Earth. Well, I wasn’t on Mars; it had to be the Moon.

On the Moon I should weigh a little over twenty-five pounds. It felt about so-I felt light enough to walk on a lawn and not bend the grass.

For a few minutes I simply exulted in it, forgetting him and the trouble we were in, just heel-and-toe around the room, getting the wonderful feel of it, bouncing a little and bumping my head against the ceiling and feeling how slowly, slowly, slowly I settled back to the floor. Peewee sat down, shrugged her shoulders and gave a little smile, an annoyingly patronizing one. The “Old Moon-Hand”-all of two weeks more of it than I had had.

Low gravity has its disconcerting tricks. Your feet have hardly any traction and they fly out from under you. I had to learn with muscles and reflexes what I had known only intellectually: that when weight goes down, mass and inertia do not. To change direction, even in walking, you have to lean the way you would to round a turn on a board track- and even then if you don’t have traction (which I didn’t in socks on a smooth floor) your feet go out from under you.

A fall doesn’t hurt much in one-sixth gravity but Peewee giggled. I sat up and said, “Go and laugh, smartie. You can afford to-you’ve got tennis shoes.”

“I’m sorry. But you looked silly, hanging there like a slow-motion picture and grabbing air.”

“No doubt. Very funny.”

“I said I was sorry. Look, you can borrow my shoes.”

I looked at her feet, then at mine, and snorted. “Gee, thanks!”

“Well . . . you could cut the heels out, or something. It wouldn’t bother me. Nothing ever does. Where are your shoes. Kip?”

“Uh, about a quarter-million miles away-unless we got off at the wrong stop.”

“Oh. Well, you won’t need them much, here.”

“Yeah.” I chewed my lip, thinking about “here” and no longer interested in games with gravity. “Peewee? What do we do now?”

“About what?”

“About him.”

“Nothing. What can we do?”

“Then what do we do?”

“Sleep.”

“Huh?”

“Sleep. ‘Sleep, that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care.’ ‘Tired Nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep.’ ‘Blessings on him who invented sleep, the mantle that covers all human thoughts.’ “

“Quit showing off and talk sense!”

“I am talking sense. At the moment we’re as helpless as goldfish. We’re simply trying to survive-and the first principle of survival is not to worry about the impossible and concentrate on what’s possible. I’m hungry and thirsty and uncomfortable and very, very tired . . . and all I can do about it is sleep. So if you will kindly keep quiet, that’s what I’ll do.”

“I can take a hint. No need to snap at me.”

“I’m sorry. But I get cross as two sticks when I’m tired and Daddy says I’m simply frightful before breakfast.” She curled up in a little ball and tucked that filthy rag doll under her chin. “G’night, Kip.”

“Good night, Peewee.”

I thought of something and started to speak . . . and saw that she was asleep. She was breathing softly and her face had smoothed out and no longer looked alert and smart-alecky. Her upper lip pooched out in a baby pout and she looked like a dirty-faced cherub. There were streaks where she had apparently cried and not wiped it away. But she had never let me see her crying.

Kip, I said to myself, you get yourself into the darndest things; this is much worse than bringing home a stray pup or a kitten.

But I had to take care of her ... or die trying.

Well, maybe I would. Die trying, I mean. It didn’t look as if I were any great shakes even taking care of myself.

I yawned, then yawned again. Maybe the shrimp had more sense than I had, at that. I was more tired than I had ever been, and hungry and thirsty and not comfortable other ways. I thought about banging on the door panel and trying to attract the fat one or his skinny partner. But that would wake Peewee-and it might antagonize him.

So I sprawled on my back the way I nap on the living-room rug at home. I found that a hard floor does not require any one sleeping position on the Moon; one-sixth gravity is a better mattress than all the foam rubber ever made-that fussy princess in Hans Christian Andersen’s story would have had no complaints.

I want to sleep at once.

It was the wildest space opera I had ever seen, loaded with dragons and Arcturian maidens and knights in shining space armor and shuttling between King Arthur’s Court and the Dead Sea Bottoms of Barsoom. I didn’t mind that but I did mind the announcer. He had the voice of Ace Quiggle and the face of him. He leaned out of the screen and leered, those wormy cilia writhing. “Will Beowulf conquer the Dragon? Will Tristan return to Iseult? Will Peewee find her dolly? Tune in this channel tomorrow night and in the meantime, wake up and hurry to your neighborhood druggist for a cake of Skyway’s Kwikbrite Armor Polish, the better polish used by the better knights sans peur et sans reproche. Wake up!” He shoved a snaky arm out of the screen and grabbed my shoulder.

I woke up.

“Wake up,” Peewee was saying, shaking my shoulder. “Please wake up, Kip.”

“Lea’ me alone!”

“You were having a nightmare.”

The Arcturian princess had been in a bad spot. “Now I’ll never know how it came out. Wha’ did y’ want to wake me for? I thought the idea was to sleep?”

“You’ve slept for hours-and now perhaps there is something we can do.”

“Breakfast, maybe?”

She ignored that. “I think we should try to escape.”

I sat up suddenly, bounced off the floor, settled back. “Wups! How?”

“I don’t know exactly. But I think they have gone away and left us. If so, we’ll never have a better chance.”

“They have? What makes you think so?”

“Listen. Listen hard.”

I listened. I could hear my heart beat, I could hear Peewee breathing, and presently I could hear her heart beating. I’ve never heard deeper silence in a cave.

I took my knife, held it in my teeth for bone conduction and pushed it against a wall. Nothing. I tried the floor and the other walls. Still nothing. The ship ached with silence-no throb, no thump, not even those vibrations you can sense but not hear. “You’re right, Peewee.”

“I noticed it when the air circulation stopped.”

I sniffed. “Are we running out of air?”

“Not right away. But the air stopped-it comes out of those tiny holes up there. You don’t notice it but I missed something when it stopped.”

I thought hard. “I don’t see where this gets us. We’re still locked up.”

“I’m not sure.”

I tried the blade of my knife on a wall. It wasn’t metal or anything I knew as plastic, but it didn’t mind a knife. Maybe the Comte de Monte Cristo could have dug a hole in it-but he had more time. “How do you figure?”

“Every time they’ve opened or closed that door panel, I’ve heard a click. So after they took you out I stuck a wad of bubble gum where the panel meets the wall, high up where they might not notice.”

“You’ve got some gum?”

“Yes. It helps, when you can’t get a drink of water. I-“

“Got any more?” I asked eagerly. I wasn’t fresh in any way but thirst was the worst-I’d never been so thirsty.

Peewee looked upset. “Oh, poor Kip! I haven’t any more . . . just an old wad I kept parked on my belt buckle and chewed when I felt driest.” She frowned. “But you can have it. You’re welcome.”

“Uh, thanks, Peewee. Thanks a lot. But I guess not.”

She looked insulted. “I assure you, Mr. Russell, that I do not have anything contagious. I was merely trying to-“

“Yes, yes,” I said hastily. “I’m sure you were. But-“

“I assumed that these were emergency conditions. It is surely no more unsanitary than kissing a girl-but then I don’t suppose you’ve ever kissed a girl!”

“Not lately,” I evaded. “But what I want is a drink of clear cold water- or murky warm water. Besides, you used up your gum on the door panel. What did you expect to accomplish?”

“Oh. I told you about that click. Daddy says that, in a dilemma, it is helpful to change any variable, then reexamine the problem. I tried to introduce a change with my bubble gum.”

“Well?”

“When they brought you back, then closed the door, I didn’t hear a click.”

“What? Then you thought you had bamboozled their lock hours and hour ago-and you didn’t tell me?”

“That is correct.”

“Why, I ought to spank you!”

“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 space 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 nobody 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 space,’ I mean. If she’s aboard we’ll find her. If she’s not, there’s not a thing we can do.”