Heinlein, Robert A – Have Space Suit will Travel

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.)