I feel a little better about it to have admitted it baldly. I sort of hope that, when the time comes, I won't whimper and I won~t plead. But I ... just
don't ... know.
And then somebody was shoved in with me and it was Clark!
I jumped up off the bed and threw my arms around him and lifted him right off his feet and was blubbering over him. "Oh, Clarkie! Brother, brother, are you hurt? What did they do to you? Speak to me! Are you deaf?"
Ri~ht in my ear he said, "Cut out the sloppy stuff, Pod.'
So I knew he wasn't too badly hurt, he sounded just like Clark. I repeated, more quietly, "Are you deaf?"
He barely whispered in my ear, "No, but she thinks I am, so we'll go on letting her think so." He untangled himself from me, took a quick look in his bag, then rapidly and very thoroughly went over every bit of the room-giving Titania just wide enough berth to keep her from diving on him.
Then he came back, shoved his face close to mine and said, "Poddy,. can you read lips?"
"No. Why?"
"The hell you can't, you just did."
Well, it wasn't quite true; Clark had barely whispered-and I did find that I was "hearing" him as much from watching his mouth as I was from truly hearing him. This is a very funny thing but Clark says that almost everybody reads lips more than they think they do, and he had noticed it and practiced it and can really read lips-only he never told anybody because sometimes it is most useful.
He had me talk so low that I couldn't hear it myself and he didn't talk much louder. He told me, "Look, Pod, I don't know that Old Lady Grew"-he didn't say "Lady"-"has this room wired. I can't find any changes in it since she had me in it before. But there are at least four places and maybe more where a mike could be. So we keep quiet-because it stands to reason she put us together to hear what we have to say to each other. So talk out loud all you want to... but just static. How scared you are and how dreadful it is that I can't hear anything and such-like noise."
So we did and I moaned and groaned and wept over my poor baby brother and he complained that he couldn t hear a word I was saying and kept asking me to find a pencil and write what I was saying-and in between we really did talk, important talk that Clark didn't want her to hear.
I wanted to know why he wasn't deaf-had he actually been in that tank? "Oh, sure," he told me, "but I wasn't nearly as limp by then as she thought I was, either. I had some paper in my pocket and I chewed it up into pulp and corked my ears." He looked pained. "A twenty-spot note. Most expensive earplugs anybody ever had, I'll bet. Then I wrapped my shirt around my head and ignored it. But stow that and listen."
He was even more vague about how he had managed to get himself trapped. "Okay, okay, so I got
hoaxed. You and Uncle don't look so smart, either- and anyhow, you're responsible."
"I am - not either responsible!" I whispered indignantly.
"If you're not responsible, then you're irresponsible, which is worse. Logic. But forget it, we've got important things to do now. Look, Pod, we're going to crush out of here."
"How?" I glanced up at Titania. She was nursing Ariel but she never took her eyes off us.
Clark followed my glance. "I'll take care of that insect when the time comes, forget it. It has to be soon and it has to be at night."
"Why at night?" I was thinking that this smoggy paradise was bad enough when you could see a little, but in pitch-darkness- "Pod, let that cut in your face heal; you're making a draft. It's got to be while Jojo is locked up."
"Jojo?"
"That set of muscles she has working for her. The
native." -
"Oh, you mean Pinhead."
"Pinhead, Jojo, Albert Einstein. The happy-duster. He serves supper, then he washes the dishes, then she locks him up and gives him his night's ration of dust. Then he stays locked up until he sleeps it off, because she's as scared of him when he's high as anybody else is. So we make our try for it while he is caged-and maybe she'll be asleep, too. With luck the bloke who drives her sky wagon will be away, too; he doesn't always sleep here. But we can't count on it and it has got to be before the Tricorn shapes for Luna. When is that?"
"Twelve-seventeen on the eighth, ship Greenwich."
"Which is?"
"Local? Nine-sixteen Venusberg, Wednesday the twentieth."
"Check," he answered. "On both."
"But why?"
"Shut up." He had taken his slide rule from his bag and was setting it. For the conversion, I assumed, so I asked, "Do you want to know the Venus second for this Terran year?" I was rather proud to have it on the tip of my tongue, like a proper pilot; Mr. Clancy's time hadn't been entirely wasted even though I had never let him get cuddly.
"Nope. I know it." Clark reset the rule, read it and announced, "We both remember both figures the same way and the conversion checks. So check timepieces." We both looked at our wrists. "Mark!"
We agreed, within a few seconds, but that wasn't what I noticed; I was looking at the date hand. "Clark! Today's the nineteenth!"
"Maybe you thought it was Christmas," he said sourly. "And don't yip like that again. I can read you if you don't make a sound."
"But that's tomorrow!" (I did make it soundless.)
"Worse. It's less than seventeen hours from now... and we can't make a move until that brute is locked up. We get just one chance, no more."
"Our Uncle Tom doesn't get to the conference."
Clark shrugged. "Maybe so, maybe not. Whether he decides to go-or sticks around and tries to find us- I couldn't care less."
Clark was being very talkative, for Clark. But at best he grudges words and I didn't understand him. "What do you mean-if he sticks around?"
Apparently Clark thought he had told me, or that I already knew-but he hadn't and I didn't. Uncle Tom was already gone. I felt suddenly lost and forlorn. "Clark, are you sure?"
"Sure, I'm sure. She darn well saw to it that I saw him go. Jojo loaded him in like a sack of meal and I
saw the wagon take off into the smog. Uncle Tom is in Venusberg by now."
I suddenly felt much better. "Then he'll rescue us!" Clark looked bored. "Pod, don't be stupid squared." "But he will! Uncle Tom ... and Mr. Chairman
and Dexter-"
He cut me off. "Oh, for Pete's sake, Poddy! Analyze
it. You're Uncle Tom, you're in Venusberg, you've got all the help possible. How do you find this place?"
"Uh ...' I stopped. "Uh..." I said again. Then I closed my mouth and left it closed.
"Uh," he agreed. "Exactly Uh. You don't find it. Oh, in eight or ten years with a few thousand people doing nothing but searching, you could find it by elimination. Fat lot of good that would do. Get this through your little head, Sis: nobody is going to rescue us, nobody can possibly help us. We either break out of here tonightr we've had it." -
"Why tonight? Oh, tonight's all right with me. But if we don't get a chance tonight-"
"Then at nine-sixteen tomorrow," he interrupted, "we're dead."
"Huh? Why?"
"Figure it out yourself, Pod. Put yourself in old Gruesome's place. Tomorrow the Tricorn leaves. Figure it both ways: Uncle Tom leaves in it, or Uncle Tom won't leave. Okay, you've got his niece and nephew. What do you do with them? Be logical about it. Her sort of logic."
I tried, I really tried. But maybe I've been brought up wrong for that sort of logic; I can't seem to visualize killing somebody just because he or she had become a nuisance to me.
But I could see that Clark was right that far: after ship's departure tomorrow we will simply be nuisances to Mrs. Grew. If Uncle Tom doesn't leave, we are most special nuisances-and if he does leave and she
is counting on his worry about us to keep him in line at Luna City (it wouldn't, of course, but that is what she is counting on anyway), in that case every day she risks the possibility that we might escape and get word to Uncle.