Heinlein, Robert A – Have Space Suit will Travel

“But that isn’t all,” Peewee went on worriedly.

“What else?”

She sighed. “This is why I wanted us to have a nice sight-see first. Uh . . .”

“Don’t chew on it. Spit it out.”

“Well . . . we have to be tried, too.”

“What?”

“Maybe ‘examined’ is the word. I don’t know. But I know this: we can’t go home until we’ve been judged.”

“But what have we done?” I burst out.

“I don’t know!”

My thoughts were boiling. “Are you sure they’ll let us go home then?”

“The Mother Thing refuses to talk about it.”

I stopped and took her arm. “What it amounts to,” I said bitterly, “is that we are under arrest. Aren’t we?”

“Yes-” She added almost in a sob, “But, Kip, I told you she was a cop!”

“Great stuff. We pull her chestnuts out of the fire-and now we’re arrested-and going to be tried-and we don’t even know why! Nice place, Vega Five. ‘The natives are friendly.’ ” They had nursed me-as we nurse a gangster in order to hang him.

“But, Kip-” Peewee was crying openly now. “I’m sure it’ll be all right. She may be a cop-but she’s still the Mother Thing.”

“Is she? I wonder.” Peewee’s manner contradicted her words. She was not one to worry over nothing. Quite the contrary.

My watch was on the washstand. I ungasketed to put it in an inside pocket. When I came out, Peewee was doing the same with Madame Pompadour. “Here,” I said, “I’ll take her with me. I’ve got more room.”

“No, thank you,” Peewee answered bleakly. “I need her with me. Especially now.”

“Uh, Peewee, where is this court? This city? Or another one?”

“Didn’t I tell you? No, I guess I didn’t. It’s not on this planet.”

“I thought this was the only inhabited-”

“It’s not a planet around Vega. Another star. Not even in the Galaxy.”

“Say that again?”

“It’s somewhere in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud.”

Chapter 10

I didn’t put up a fight-a hundred and sixty trillion miles from nowhere, I mean. But I didn’t speak to the Mother Thing as I got into her ship.

It was shaped like an old-fashioned beehive and it looked barely big enough to jump us to the space port. Peewee and I crowded together on the floor, the Mother Thing curled up in front and twiddled a shiny rack like an abacus; we took off, straight up.

In a few minutes my anger grew from sullenness to a reckless need to settle it. “Mother Thing!”

(“One moment, dear. Let me get us out of the atmosphere.”) She pushed something, the ship quivered and steadied.

“Mother Thing,” I repeated.

(“Wait until I lower us, Kip.”)

I had to wait. It’s as silly to disturb a pilot as it is to snatch the wheel of a car. The little ship took a buffeting; the upper winds must have been dillies. But she could pilot.

Presently there was a gentle bump and I figured we must be at the space port. The Mother Thing turned her head. (“All right, Kip. I sense your fear and resentment. Will it help to say that you two are in no danger? That I would protect you with my body? As you protected mine?”)

“Yes, but-”

(“Then let be. It is easier to show than it is to explain. Don’t clamp your helmet. This planet’s air is like your own.”)

“Huh? You mean we’re there?”

“I told you,” Peewee said at my elbow. “Just poof! and you’re there.”

I didn’t answer. I was trying to guess how far we were from home.

(“Come, children.”)

It was midday when we left; it was night as we disembarked. The ship rested on a platform that stretched out of sight. Stars in front of me were in unfamiliar constellations; slaunchwise down the sky was a thin curdling which I spotted as the Milky Way. So Peewee had her wires crossed-we were far from home but still in the Galaxy-perhaps we had simply switched to the night side of Vega Five.

I heard Peewee gasp and turned around.

I didn’t have strength to gasp.

Dominating that whole side of the sky was a great whirlpool of millions, maybe billions, of stars.