I gulped. That hole looked as deep as a well and less inviting.
“Down,” he repeated. “Now.”
“Do it, bub,” Fats advised. “Jump or be pushed. Get down that hole before he gets annoyed.”
I tried to run.
Wormface was around me and chivvying me back before I was well started. I slammed on the brakes and backed up-glanced behind just in time to turn a fall into a clumsy jump.
It was a long way to the bottom. Landing did not hurt the way it would have on Earth, but I turned an ankle. That didn’t matter; I wasn’t going anywhere; the hole in the ceiling was the only exit.
My cell was about twenty feet square. It was, I suppose, carved out of solid rock, although there was no way to tell as the walls and floor and ceiling were the same elephant hide used in the ship. A lighting panel covered half the ceiling and I could have read if I’d had anything to read. The only other detail was a jet of water that splashed out of a hole in the wall, landed in a depression the size of a washtub, and departed for parts unknown.
The place was warm, which was well as there was nothing resembling bed or bedclothes. I had already concluded that I might be here quite a while and was wondering about eating and sleeping.
I decided I was tired of this nonsense. I had been minding my own business, out back of my own house. Everything else was Wormface’s fault! I sat down on the floor and thought about slow ways to kill him.
I finally gave up that foolishness and wondered about Peewee and the Mother Thing. Were they here? Or were they dead somewhere between the mountains and Tombaugh Station? Thinking it over glumly, I decided that poor little Peewee was best off if she had never wakened from that second coma. I wasn’t sure about the Mother Thing because I didn’t know enough about her-but in Peewee’s case I was sure.
Well, there was a certain appropriateness to the fix I was in; a knight-errant usually lands in a dungeon at some point. But by rights, the maiden fair ought to be imprisoned in a tower in the same castle. Sorry, Peewee; as a knight-errant, I’m a good soda jerk. Or jerk. “His strength is as the strength of ten because his heart is pure.”
It wasn’t funny.
I got tired of punishing myself and looked to see what time it was-not that it mattered. But a prisoner is traditionally expected to scratch marks on the wall, tallying the days he’s been in, so I thought I might as well start. My watch was on my wrist but not running and I couldn’t start it. Maybe eight gees was too much for it, even though it was supposed to be shockproof, waterproof, magnetism-proof, and immune to un-American influences.
After a while I lay down and went to sleep.
I was awakened by a clatter.
It was a ration can hitting the floor and the fall hadn’t helped it, but the key was on it and I got it open-corned beef hash and very good, too. I used the empty can to drink from-the water might be poisoned, but did I have a choice?-and then washed the can so that it wouldn’t smell.
The water was warm. I took a bath.
I doubt if many American citizens during the past twenty years have ever needed a bath as much as I did. Then I washed my clothes. My shirt, shorts, and socks were wash-and-wear synthetics; my slacks were denim and took longer to dry, but I didn’t mind; I just wished that I had one of the two hundred bars of Skyway Soap that were home on the floor of my closet. If I had known I was coming to Pluto, I would have brought one.
Washing clothes caused me to take inventory. I had a handkerchief, sixty-seven cents in change, a dollar bill so sweat-soaked and worn that it was hard to make out Washington’s picture, a mechanical pencil stamped “Jay’s Drive-In-the thickest malts in town!”-A canard; I make the thickest-and a grocery list I should have taken care of for Mother but hadn’t because of that silly air conditioner in Charton’s Drugstore. It wasn’t as bedraggled as the dollar bill because it had been in my shirt pocket.