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.”