Have space suit-- will travel (10 page)

Did you ever listen to a mockingbird? Sometimes singing melodies, sometimes just sending up a joyous noise unto the Lord? The endlessly varied songs of a mockingbird are nearest to the speech of the Mother Thing.

At last they held still, more or less, and Peewee said, “Oh, Mother Thing, I’m so happy!”

The creature sang to her. Peewee answered, “Oh. I’m forgetting my manners. Mother Thing, this is my dear friend Kip.”

The Mother Thing sang to me-and I understood.

What she said was: “I am very happy to know you, Kip.” It didn’t come out in words. But it might as well have been English. Nor was this half-kidding self-deception, such as my conversations with Oscar or Peewee’s with Madame Pompadour-when I talk with Oscar I am both sides of the conversation; it’s just my conscious talking to my subconscious, or some such. This was not that.

The Mother Thing sang to me and I understood.

I was startled but not unbelieving. When you see a rainbow you don’t stop to argue the laws of optics. There it is, in the sky.

I would have been an idiot not to know that the Mother Thing was speaking to me because I did understand and understood her every time. If she directed a remark at Peewee alone, it was usually just birdsongs to me-but if it was meant for me, I got it.

Call it telepathy if you like, although it doesn’t seem to be what they do at Duke University. I never read her mind and I don’t think she read mine. We just talked.

But while I was startled, I minded my manners. I felt the way I do when Mother introduces me to one of her older grande-dame friends. So I bowed and said, “We’re very happy that we’ve found you, Mother Thing.”

It was simple, humble truth. I knew, without explanation, what it was that had made Peewee stubbornly determined to risk recapture rather than give up looking for her-the quality that made her “the Mother Thing.”

Peewee has this habit of slapping names on things and her choices aren’t always apt, for my taste. But I’ll never question this one. The Mother Thing was the Mother Thing because she was. Around her you felt happy and safe and warm. You knew that if you skinned your knee and came bawling into the house, she would kiss it well and paint it with merthiolate and everything would be all right. Some nurses have it and some teachers . . . and, sadly, some mothers don’t.

But the Mother Thing had it so strongly that I wasn’t even worried by Wormface. We had her with us so everything was going to be all right. I logically I knew that she was as vulnerable as we were-I had seen them strike her down. She didn’t have my size and strength, she couldn’t pilot the ship as Peewee had been able to. It didn’t matter.

I wanted to crawl into her lap. Since she was too small and didn’t have a lap, I would gratefully hold her in mine, anytime.

I have talked more about my father but that doesn’t mean that Mother is less important-just different. Dad is active, Mother is passive; Dad talks, Mother doesn’t. But if she died, Dad would wither like an uprooted tree. She makes our world.

The Mother Thing had the effect on me that Mother has, only I’m used to it from Mother. Now I was getting it unexpectedly, far from home, when I needed it.

Peewee said excitedly, “Now we can go. Kip. Let’s hurry!”

The Mother Thing sang (“Where are we going, children?”)

“To Tombaugh Station, Mother Thing. They’ll help us.”

The Mother Thing blinked her eyes and looked serenely sad. She had great, soft, compassionate eyes-she looked more like a lemur than anything else but she was not a primate-she wasn’t even in our sequence, unearthly. But she had these wonderful eyes and a soft, defenseless mouth out of which music poured. She wasn’t as big as Peewee and her hands were tinier still-six fingers, any one of which could oppose the others the way our thumbs can. Her body-well, it never stayed the same shape so it’s hard to describe, but it was right for her.

She didn’t wear clothes but she wasn’t naked; she had soft, creamy fur, sleek and fine as chinchilla. I thought at first she didn’t wear anything, but presently I noticed a piece of jewelry, a shiny triangle with a double spiral in each corner. I don’t know what made it stick on.

I didn’t take all this in at once. At that instant the expression in the Mother Thing’s eyes brought a crash of sorrow into the happiness I had been feeling.

Her answer made me realize that she didn’t have a miracle ready (“How are we to fly the ship? They have guarded me most carefully this time.”)

Peewee explained eagerly about the space suits and I stood there like a fool, with a lump of ice in my stomach. What had been just a question of using my greater strength to force Peewee to behave was now an unsolvable dilemma. I could no more abandon the Mother Thing than I could have abandoned Peewee . . . and there were only two space suits.

Even if she could wear our sort, which looked as practical as roller skates on a snake.

The Mother Thing gently pointed out that her own vacuum gear had been destroyed. (I’m going to quit writing down all her songs; I don’t remember them exactly anyhow.)

And so the fight began. It was an odd fight, with the Mother Thing gentle and loving and sensible and utterly firm, and Peewee throwing a tearful, bad-little-girl tantrum-and me standing miserably by, not even refereeing.

When the Mother Thing understood the situation, she analyzed it at once to the inevitable answer. Since she had no way to go (and probably couldn’t have walked that far anyhow, even if she had had her sort of space suit) the only answer was for us two to leave at once. If we reached safety, then we would, if possible, convince our people of the danger from Wormface & Co.-in which case she might be saved as well . . . which would be nice but was not indispensable.

Peewee utterly, flatly, and absolutely refused to listen to any plan which called for leaving the Mother Thing behind. If the Mother Thing couldn’t go, she wouldn’t budge. “Kip! You go get help! Hurry! I’ll stay here.”

I stared at her. “Peewee, you know I can’t do that.”

“You must. You will so! You’ve got to. If you don’t, I’ll . . . I’ll never speak to you again!”

“If I did, I’d never speak to myself again. Look, Peewee, it won’t wash. You’ll have to go-“

“No!”

“Oh, shut up for a change. You go and I stay and guard the door with the shillelagh. I’ll hold ‘em off while you round up the troops. But tell them to hurry!”

“I-“ She stopped and looked very sober and utterly baffled. Then she threw herself on the Mother Thing, sobbing: “Oh, you don’t love me any more!”

Which shows how far her logic had gone to pot. The Mother Thing sang softly to her while I worried the thought that our last chance was t trickling away while we argued. Wormface might come back any second- and while I hoped to slug him a final one if he got in, more likely he had resources to outmaneuver me. Either way, we would not escape.

At last I said, “Look we’ll all go.”

Peewee stopped sobbing and looked startled. “You know we can’t.”

The Mother Thing sang (“How, Kip?”)

“Uh, I’ll have to show you. Up on your feet, Peewee.” We went where the suits were, while Peewee carried Madame Pompadour and half carried the Mother Thing. Lars Eklund, the rigger who had first worn Oscar according to his log, must have weighed about two hundred pounds; in order to wear Oscar I had to strap him tight to keep from bulging. I hadn’t considered retailoring him to my size as I was afraid I would never get him gas-tight again. Arm and leg lengths were okay; it was girth that was too big.

There was room inside for both the Mother Thing and me.

I explained, while Peewee looked big-eyed and the Mother Thing sang queries and approvals. Yes, she could hang on piggy-back-and she couldn’t fall off, once we were sealed up and the straps cinched.

“All right. Peewee, get into your suit.” I went to get my socks while she started to suit up. When I came back I checked her helmet gauges, reading them backwards through her lens. “We had better give you some air. You’re only about half full.”

I ran into a snag. The spare bottles I had filched from those ghouls had screw-thread fittings like mine-but Peewee’s bottles had bayonet-and-snap joints. Okay, I guess, for tourists, chaperoned and nursed and who might get panicky while bottles were changed unless it was done fast-but not so good for serious work. In my workshop I would have rigged an adapter in twenty minutes. Here, with no real tools-well, that spare air might as well be on Earth for all the good it did Peewee.

For the first time, I thought seriously of leaving them behind while I made a fast forced march for help. But I didn’t mention it. I thought that Peewee would rather die on the way than fall back into his hands-and I was inclined to agree.

“Kid,” I said slowly, “that isn’t much air. Not for forty miles.” Her gauge was scaled in time as well as pressure; it read just under five hours. Could Peewee move as fast as a trotting horse? Even at lunar gravity? Not likely.

She looked at me soberly. “That’s calibrated for full-size people. I’m little-I don’t use much air.”

“Uh . . . don’t use it faster than you have to.”

“I won’t. Let’s go.”

I started to close her gaskets. “Hey!” she objected.

“What’s the matter?”

“Madame Pompadour! Hand her to me-please. On the floor by my feet.”

I picked up that ridiculous dolly and gave it to her. “How much air does she take?”

Peewee suddenly dimpled. “I’ll caution her not to inhale.” She stuffed it inside her shirt, I sealed her up. I sat down in my open suit, the Mother Thing crept up my back, singing reassuringly, and cuddled close. She felt good and I felt that I could hike a hundred miles, to get them both safe.

Getting me sealed in was cumbersome, as the straps had to be let out and then tightened to allow for the Mother Thing, and neither Peewee nor I had bare hands. We managed.

I made a sling from my clothesline for the spare bottles. With them around my neck, with Oscar’s weight and the Mother Thing as well, I scaled perhaps fifty pounds at the Moon’s one-sixth gee. It just made me fairly sure-footed for the first time.

I retrieved my knife from the air-lock latch and snapped it to Oscar’s belt beside the nylon rope and the prospector’s hammer. Then we went inside the air lock and closed its inner door. I didn’t know how to waste its air to the outside but Peewee did. It started to hiss out.

“You all right, Mother Thing?”

(“Yes, Kip.”) She hugged me reassuringly.

“Peewee to Junebug,” I heard in my phones: “radio check. Alfa, Bravo, Coca, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot-“

“Junebug to Peewee: I read you. Golf, Hotel, India, Juliette, Kilo-“

“I read you, Kip.”

“Roger.”

“Mind your pressure. Kip. You’re swelling up too fast.” I kicked the chin valve while watching the gauge-and kicking myself for letting a little girl catch me in a greenhorn trick. But she had used a space suit before, while I had merely pretended to.

I decided this was no time to be proud. “Peewee? Give me all the tips you can. I’m new to his.”

“I will, Kip.”

The outer door popped silently and swung inward-and I looked out over the bleak bright surface of a lunar plain. For a homesick moment I remembered the trip-to-the-Moon games I had played as a kid and wished I were back in Centerville. Then Peewee touched her helmet to mine. “See anyone?”

“No.”

“We’re lucky, the door faces away from the other ships. Listen carefully. We won’t use radio until we are over the horizon-unless it’s a desperate emergency. They listen on our frequencies. I know that for sure. Now see that mountain with the saddle in it? Kip, pay attention!”

“Yes.” I had been staring at Earth. She was beautiful even in that shadow show in the control room-but I just hadn’t realized. There she was, so close I could almost touch her . . . and so far away that we might never get home. You can’t believe what a lovely planet we have, until you see her from outside . . . with clouds girdling her waist and polar cap set jauntily, like a spring hat. “Yes. I see the saddle.”

“We head left of there, where you see a pass. Tim and Jock brought me through it in a crawler. Once we pick up its tracks it will be easy. But first we head for those near hills just left of that-that ought to keep this ship between us and the other ships while we get out of sight. I hope.”

It was twelve feet or so to the ground and I was prepared to jump, since it would be nothing much in that gravity. Peewee insisted on lowering me by rope. “You’ll fall over your feet. Look, Kip, listen to old Aunt Peewee. You don’t have Moon legs yet. It’s going to be like your first time on a bicycle.”

So I let her lower me and the Mother Thing while she snubbed the nylon rope around the side of the lock. Then she jumped with no trouble. I started to loop up the line but she stopped me and snapped the other end to her belt, then touched helmets. “I’ll lead. If I go too fast or you need me, tug on the rope. I won’t be able to see you.”

“Aye aye, Cap’n!”

“Don’t make fun of me, Kip. This is serious.”

“I wasn’t making fun, Peewee. You’re boss.”

“Let’s go. Don’t look back, it won’t do any good and you might fall. I’m heading for those hills.”