Heinlein, Robert A – Have Space Suit will Travel

“Let’s go! They might come back any minute.”

“Yes, Kip.” She crawled into that jackdaw’s nest and bent over a sector.

Presently she looked up. Her face was white and thin and very little-girlish. “Kip … we aren’t going anywhere. I’m sorry.”

I let out a yelp. “What! What’s the matter? Have you forgotten how to run it?”

“No. The ‘brain’ is gone.”

“The which?”

“The ‘brain.’ Little black dingus about the size of a walnut that fits in this cavity.” She showed me. “We got away before because the Mother Thing managed to steal one. We were locked in an empty ship, just as you and I are now. But she had one and we got away.” Peewee looked bleak and very lost. “I should have known that he wouldn’t leave one in the control room-I guess I did and didn’t want to admit it. I’m sorry.”

“Uh . . . look, Peewee, we won’t give up that easily. Maybe I can make something to fit that socket.”

“Like jumping wires in a car?” She shook her head. “It’s not that simple. Kip. If you put a wooden model in place of the generator in a car, would it run? I don’t know quite what it does, but I called it the ‘brain’ because it’s very complex.”

“But-” I shut up. If a Borneo savage had a brand-new car, complete except for spark plugs, would he get it running? Echo answers mournfully. “Peewee, what’s the next best thing? Any ideas? Because if you haven’t, I want you to show me the air lock. I’ll take this-” I shook my wrecking bar “-and bash anything that comes through.”

“I’m stumped,” she admitted. “I want to look for the Mother Thing. If she’s shut up in this ship, she may know what to do.”

“All right. But first show me the air lock. You can look for her while I stand guard.” I felt the reckless anger of desperation. I didn’t see how we were ever going to get out and I was beginning to believe that we weren’t -but there was still a reckoning due. He was going to learn that it wasn’t safe to push people around. I was sure-I was fairly sure-that I could sock him before my spine turned to jelly. Splash that repulsive head.

If I didn’t look at his eyes.

Peewee said slowly, “There’s one other thing-”

“What?”

“I hate to suggest it. You might think I was running out on you.”

“Don’t be silly. If you’ve got an idea, spill it.”

“Well . . . there’s Tombaugh Station, over that way about forty miles. If my space suit is in the ship-”

I suddenly quit feeling like Bowie at the Alamo. Maybe the game would go an extra period- “We can walk it!”

She shook her head. “No, Kip. That’s why I hesitated to mention it. I can walk it … if we find my suit. But you couldn’t wear my suit even if you squatted.”

“I don’t need your suit,” I said impatiently.

“Kip, Kip! This is the Moon, remember? No air.”

“Yes, yes, sure! Think I’m an idiot? But if they locked up your suit, they probably put mine right beside it and-”

“You’ve got a space suit?” she said incredulously.

Our next remarks were too confused to repeat but finally Peewee was convinced that I really did own a space suit, that in fact the only reason I was sending on the space-operations band twelve hours and a quarter of a million miles back was that I was wearing it when they grabbed me.

“Let’s tear the joint apart!” I said. “No-show me that air lock, then you take it apart.”

“All right.”

She showed me the lock, a room much like the one we had been cooped in, but smaller and with an inner door built to take a pressure load. It was not locked. We opened it cautiously. It was empty, and its outer door was closed or we would never been able to open the inner. I said, “If Wormface had been a suspenders-and-belt man, he would have left the outer door open, even though he had us locked up. Then- Wait a second! Is there a way to latch the inner door open?”