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 nictitating 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 shied away because it was so darn silly. I had been out for a walk in Oscar... and then a space ship 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 shirt, 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. Pushing 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. Space pirates. And him."
"Space pirates? Don't be silly!"
The kid shrugged. "Just my name for them. But better not think they're silly if you want to keep on surviving. Are you ‘Junebug'?"
"Huh? You sound like a junebug yourself. Space pirates, my aunt!" I was worried and very confused and this nonsense didn't help. Where was Oscar? And where was I?
"No, no, not a junebug but ‘Junebug'-a radio call. You see, I'm Peewee."
I said to myself, Kip old pal, walk slowly to the nearest hospital and give yourself up. When a radio rig you wired yourself starts looking like a skinny little girl with a rag doll, you've flipped. It's going to be wet packs and tranquilizers and no excitement for you-you've blown every fuse.
"You're ‘Peewee'?"
"That's what I'm called-I'm relaxed about it. You see, I heard, ‘Junebug, calling Peewee,' and decided that Daddy had found out about the spot I was in and had alerted people to help me land. But if you aren't ‘Junebug,' you wouldn't know about that. Who are you?"
"Wait a minute, I am ‘Junebug.' I mean I was using that call. But I'm Clifford Russell-‘Kip' they call me."
"How do you do. Kip?" she said politely.
"And howdy to you, Peewee. Uh, are you a boy or a girl?"
Peewee looked disgusted. "I'll make you regret that remark. I realize I am undersized for my age but I'm actually eleven, going on twelve. There's no need to be rude. In another five years I expect to be quite a dish-you'll probably beg me for every dance."
At the moment I would as soon have danced with a kitchen stool, but I had things on my mind and didn't want a useless argument. "Sorry, Peewee. I'm still groggy. You mean you were in that first ship?"
Again she looked miffed. "I was piloting it."
Sedation every night and a long course of psychoanalysis. At my age. "You were-piloting?"
"You surely don't think the Mother Thing could? She wouldn't fit their controls. She curled up beside me and coached. But if you think it's easy, when you've never piloted anything but a Cessna with your Daddy at your elbow and never made any kind of landing, then think again. I did very well!-and your landing instructions weren't too specific. What have they done with the Mother Thing?"
"The what?"
"You don't know? Oh, dear!"
"Wait a minute, Peewee. Let's get on the same frequency. I'm ‘Junebug' all right and I homed you in-and if you think that's easy, to have a voice out of nowhere demand emergency landing instructions, you better think again, too. Anyhow, a ship landed and another ship landed right after it and a door opened in the first ship and a guy in a space suit jumped out-"
"That was I."
"-and something else jumped out-"
"The Mother Thing."
"Only she didn't get far. She gave a screech and flopped. I went to see what the trouble was and something hit me. The next thing I know you're saying, ‘Hi, there.' " I wondered if I ought to tell her that the rest, including her, was likely a morphine dream because I was probably lying in a hospital with my spine in a cast.
Peewee nodded thoughtfully. "They must have blasted you at low power, or you wouldn't be here. Well, they caught you and they caught me, so they almost certainly caught her. Oh, dear! I do hope they didn't hurt her."
"She looked like she was dying."
"As if she were dying," Peewee corrected me. "Subjunctive. I rather doubt it; she's awfully hard to kill-and they wouldn't kill her except to keep her from escaping; they need her alive."
"Why? And why do you call her ‘the Mother Thing'?"
"One at a time, Kip. She's the Mother Thing because... well, because she is, that's all. You'll know, when you meet her. As to why they wouldn't kill her, it's because she's worth more as a hostage than as a corpse-the same reason the kept me alive. Although she's worth incredibly more than I am-they'd write me off without a blink if I became inconvenient. Or you. But since she was alive when you saw her, then it's logical that she's a prisoner again. Maybe right next door. That makes me feel much better."
It didn't make me feel better. "Yes, but where's here?"
Peewee glanced at a Mickey Mouse watch, frowned and said, "Almost halfway to the Moon, I'd say."
"What?!"
"Of course I don't know. But it makes sense that they would go back to their nearest base; that's where the Mother Thing and I scrammed from."
"You're telling me we're in that ship?"
"Either the one I swiped or the other one. Where did you think you were, Kip? Where else could you be?"
"A mental hospital."
She looked big-eyed and then grinned. "Why, Kip, surely your grip on reality is not that weak?"
"I'm not sure about anything. Space pirates-Mother Things."
She frowned and bit her thumb. "I suppose it must be confusing. But trust your ears and eyes. My grip on reality is quite strong, I assure you- you see, I'm a genius." She made it a statement, not a boast, and somehow I was not inclined to doubt the claim, even though it came from a skinny-shanked kid with a rag doll in her arms.
But I didn't see how it was going to help.
Peewee went on: " ‘Space pirates'... mmm. Call them what you wish. Their actions are piratical and they operate in space-you name them. As for the Mother Thing... wait until you meet her."
"What's she doing in this hullabaloo?"
"Well, it's complicated. She had better explain it. She's a cop and she was after them-"
"A cop?"
"I'm afraid that is another semantic inadequacy. The Mother Thing knows what we mean by cop and I think she finds the idea bewildering if not impossible. But what would you call a person who hunts down miscreants? A cop, no?"