Part 3 (1/2)

”The town will be deserted over the holiday; I may not open the fountain. Enjoy yourself. This summer has worn you a bit fine. Kip.”

I let myself be persuaded but I stayed until closing and swept up. Then I walked home, doing some hard thinking.

The party was over and it was time to put away my toys. Even the village half-wit knew that I had no sensible excuse to have a s.p.a.ce suit. Not that I cared what Ace thought . . . but I did have no use for it-and I needed money. Even if Stanford and M.I.T. and Carnegie and the rest turned me down, I was going to start this semester. State U. wasn't the best-but neither was I and I had learned that more depended on the student than on the school.

Mother had gone to bed and Dad was reading. I said h.e.l.lo and went to the barn, intending to strip my gear off Oscar, pack him into his case, address it, and in the morning phone the express office to pick it up. He'd be gone before I was back from the Lake of the Forest. Quick and clean.

He was hanging on his rack and it seemed to me that he grinned h.e.l.lo. Nonsense, of course. I went over and patted his shoulder. ”Well, old fellow, you've been a real chum and it's been nice knowing you. See you on the Moon-I hope.”

But Oscar wasn't going to the Moon. Oscar was going to Akron, Ohio, to ”Salvage.” They were going to unscrew parts they could use and throw the rest of him on the junk pile.

My mouth felt dry.

(”It's okay, pal,” Oscar answered.) See that? Out of my silly head! Oscar didn't really speak; I had let my imagination run wild too long. So I quit patting him, hauled the crate out and took a wrench from his belt to remove the gas bottles.

I stopped.

Both bottles were charged, one with oxygen, one with oxy-helium. I had wasted money to do so because I wanted, just once, to try a s.p.a.ceman's mix.

The batteries were fresh and power packs were charged.

”Oscar,” I said softly, ”we're going to take a last walk together. Okay?”

(”Swell!”) I made it a dress rehearsal-water in the drinking tank, pill dispensers loaded, first-aid kit inside, vacuum-proof duplicate (I hoped it was vacuum-proof) in an outside pocket. All tools on belt, all lanyards tied so that tools wouldn't float away in free fall. Everything.

Then I heated up a circuit that the F.C.C. would have squelched had they noticed, a radio link I had salvaged out of my effort to build a radio for Oscar, and had modified as a test rig for Oscar's ears and to let me check the aiming of the directional antenna. It was hooked in with an echo circuit that would answer back if I called it-a thing I had bread h.o.a.rded out of an old Webcor wire recorder, vintage 1950.

Then I climbed into Oscar and b.u.t.toned up. ”Tight?”

(”Tight!”) I glanced at the reflected dials, noticed the blood-color reading, reduced pressure until Oscar almost collapsed. At nearly sea-level pressure I was in no danger from hypoxia; the trick was to avoid too much oxygen.

We started to leave when I remembered something. ”Just a second, Oscar.” I wrote a note to my folks, telling them that I was going to get up early and catch the first bus to the lake. I could write while suited up now, I could even thread a needle. I stuck the note under the kitchen door.

Then we crossed the creek into the pasture. I didn't stumble in wading; I was used to Oscar now, sure-footed as a goat.

Out in the field I keyed my talkie and said, ”Junebug, calling Peewee. Come in, Peewee.”

Seconds later my recorded voice came back: ” 'Junebug, calling Peewee. Come in, Peewee.'”

I s.h.i.+fted to the horn antenna and tried again. It wasn't easy to aim in the dark but it was okay. Then I s.h.i.+fted back to spike antenna and went on calling Peewee while moving across the pasture and pretending that I was on Venus and had to stay in touch with base because it was unknown terrain and unbreathable atmosphere. Everything worked perfectly and if it had been Venus, I would have been all right.

Two lights moved across the southern sky, planes I thought, or maybe helis. Just the sort of thing yokels like to report as ”flying saucers.” I watched them, then moved behind a little rise that would tend to spoil reception and called Peewee. Peewee answered and I shut up; it gets dull talking to an idiot circuit which can only echo what you say to it.

Then I heard: ”Peewee to Junebug! Answer!”

I thought I had been monitored and was in trouble-then decided that some ham had picked me up. ”Junebug here. I read you. Who are you?”

The test rig echoed my words.

Then the new voice shrilled, ”Peewee here! Home me in!”

This was silly. But I found myself saying, ”Junebug to Peewee, s.h.i.+ft to directional frequency at one centimeter-and keep talking, keep talking!” I s.h.i.+fted to the horn antenna.

”Junebug, I read you. Fix me. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven-”

”You're due south of me, about forty degrees. Who are you?”

It must be one of those lights. It had to be.

But I didn't have time to figure it out. A s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p almost landed on me.

Chapter 4.

I said ”s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p,” not ”rocket s.h.i.+p.” It made no noise but a whoosh and there weren't any flaming jets-it seemed to move by clean living and righteous thoughts.

I was too busy keeping from being squashed to worry about details. A s.p.a.ce suit in one gravity is no track suit; it's a good thing I had practiced. The s.h.i.+p sat down where I had just been, occupying more than its share of pasture, a big black shape.

The other one whooshed down, too, just as a door opened in the first. Light poured through the door; two figures spilled out and started to run. One moved like a cat; the other moved clumsily and slowly-handicapped by a s.p.a.ce suit. S'help me, a person in a s.p.a.ce suit does look silly. This one was less than five feet tall and looked like the Gingerbread Man.

A big trouble with a suit is your limited angle of vision. I was trying to watch both of them and did not see the second s.h.i.+p open. The first figure stopped, waiting for the one in the s.p.a.ce suit to catch up, then suddenly collapsed-just a gasping sound, ”Eeeah!”-and clunk.

You can tell the sound of pain. I ran to the spot at a lumbering dogtrot, leaned over and tried to see what was wrong, tilting my helmet to bring the beam of my headlight onto the ground.

A bug-eyed monster- That's not fair but it was my first thought. I couldn't believe it and would have pinched myself except that it isn't practical when suited up.

An unprejudiced mind (which mine wasn't) would have said that this monster was rather pretty. It was small, not more than half my size, and its curves were graceful, not as a girl is but more like a leopard, although it wasn't shaped like either one. I couldn't grasp its shape-I didn't have any pattern to fit it to; it wouldn't add up.

But I could see that it was hurt. Its body was quivering like a frightened rabbit. It had enormous eyes, open but milky and featureless, as if nict.i.tating membranes were across them. What appeared to be its mouth- That's as far as I got. Something hit me in the spine, right between the gas bottles.

I woke up on a bare floor, staring at a ceiling. It took several moments to recall what had happened and then I s.h.i.+ed away because it was so darn silly. I had been out for a walk in Oscar . . . and then a s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p had landed . . . and a bug-eyed- I sat up suddenly as I realized that Oscar was gone. A light cheerful voice said, ”Hi, there!”

I snapped my head around. A kid about ten years old was seated on the floor, leaning against a wall. He-I corrected myself. Boys don't usually clutch rag dolls. This kid was the age when the difference doesn't show much and was dressed in s.h.i.+rt, shorts and dirty tennis shoes, and had short hair, so I didn't have much to go on but the rag dolly.

”Hi, yourself,” I answered. ”What are we doing here?”

”I'm surviving. I don't know about you.”

”Huh?”

”Surviving. Pus.h.i.+ng my breath in and out. Conserving my strength. There's nothing else to do at the moment; they've got us locked in.”

I looked around. The room was about ten feet across, four-sided but wedge-shaped, and nothing in it but us. I couldn't see a door; if we weren't locked, we might as well be. ”Who locked us in?”

”Them. s.p.a.ce pirates. And him.”

”s.p.a.ce pirates? Don't be silly!”