Heinlein, Robert A – Have Space Suit will Travel

My words were chopped off by a rumble. The floor shook in that loose-bearing vibration that frightens people and animals alike. We stopped dead. “What was that?” Peewee whispered.

I swallowed. “Unless it’s part of this rumpus the Mother Thing planned-”

“It isn’t. I think.”

“It’s a quake.”

“An earthquake?”

“A Pluto quake. Peewee, we’ve got to get out of here!”

I wasn’t thinking about where-you don’t in a quake. Peewee gulped. “We can’t bother with earthquakes; we haven’t time. Hurry, Kip, hurry!” She started to run and I followed, gritting my teeth. If Peewee could ignore a quake, so could I-though it’s like ignoring a rattlesnake in bed.

“Peewee . . . Mother Thing’s people … is their ship in orbit around Pluto?”

“What? Oh, no, no! They’re not in a ship.”

“Then why at night? Something about the Heaviside layers here? How far away is their base?” I was wondering how far a man could walk here. We had done almost forty miles on the Moon. Could we do forty blocks here? Or even forty yards? You could insulate your feet, probably. But that wind- “Peewee, they don’t live here, do they?”

“What? Don’t be silly! They have a nice planet of their own. Kip, if you keep asking foolish questions, we’ll be too late. Shut up and listen.”

I shut up. What follows I got in snatches as we ran, and some of it later. When the Mother Thing had been captured, she had lost ship, space clothing, communicator, everything; Wormface had destroyed it all. There had been treachery, capture through violation of truce while parleying. “He grabbed her when they were supposed to be under a King’s ‘X’ ” was Peewee’s indignant description, “and that’s not fair! He had promised.”

Treachery would be as natural in Wormface as venom in a Gila monster; I was surprised that the Mother Thing had risked a palaver with him. It left her a prisoner of ruthless monsters equipped with ships that made ours look like horseless carriages, weapons which started with a “death ray” and ended heaven knows where, plus bases, organization, supplies.

She had only her brain and her tiny soft hands.

Before she could use the rare combination of circumstances necessary to have any chance at all she had to replace her communicator (I think of it as her “radio” but it was more than that) and she had to have weapons. The only way she could get them was to build them.

She had nothing, not a bobby pin-only that triangular ornament with spirals engraved on it. To build anything she had to gain access to a series of rooms which I would describe as electronics labs-not that they looked like the bench where I jiggered with electronics, but electron-pushing has its built-in logic. If electrons are to do what you want them to, components have to look pretty much a certain way, whether built by humans, wormfaces, or the Mother Thing. A wave guide gets its shape from the laws of nature, an inductance has its necessary geometry, no matter who the technician is.

So it looked like an electronics lab-a very good one. It had gear I did not recognize, but which I felt I could understand if I had time. I got only a glimpse.

The Mother Thing spent many, many hours there. She would not have been permitted there, even though she was a prisoner-at-large with freedom in most ways and anything she wanted, including private quarters with Peewee. I think that Wormface was afraid of her, even though she was a prisoner-he did not want to offend her unnecessarily.

She got the run of their shops by baiting their cupidity. Her people had many things that wormfaces had not-gadgets, inventions, conveniences. She began by inquiring why they did a thing this way rather than another way which was so much more efficient? A tradition? Or religious reasons?

When asked what she meant she looked helpless and protested that she couldn’t explain-which was a shame because it was simple and so easy to build, too.

Under close chaperonage she built something. The gadget worked. Then something else. Presently she was in the labs daily, making things for her captors, things that delighted them. She always delivered; the privilege depended on it.