All right, maybe I can't imagine just plain murder; it's outside my experience. But suppose both Clark and I came down with green pox and died- That would certainly be convenient for Mrs. Grew-now, wouldn't it?
"I scan it," I agreed.
"Good," he said. "I'll teach you a thing or four yet, Pod. Either we make it tonight ... or just past nine tomorrow she chills us both ... and she chills Jojo, too, and sets fire to the place."
"Why Jojo? I mean Pinhead."
"That's the real tipoff, Pod. The happy-duster. This is Venus... and yet she let us see that she was suppl~zing dust to a duster. She won't leave any witnesses.'
"Uncle Tom is a witness, too."
"What if he is? She's counting on his keeping his lip zipped until the conference is over....nd by then she's back on Earth and has lost herself among eight billion people. Hang around here and risk being caught? Pod, she's going to wait here only long enough to find out whether or not Uncle Tom catches the Tricorn. Then she'll carry out either Plan A, or Plan B-but both plans cancel us out. Get that through your fuzzy head."
I shivered. "All right. I've got it."
He grinned. "But we don't wait. We execute our own plan-my plan-first." He looked unbearably smug and added, "You fubbed utterly and came out here without doing any of the things I told you to
and Uncle Tom fubbed just about as badly, thinking he could make a straight payoff ... but I came out here prepared!"
"You did? With what? Your slide rule? Or maybe those comic books?"
Clark said, "Pod, you know I never read comic books; they were just protective coloration."
(And this is true, so far as I know- I thought I had uncovered his Secret Vice.)
"Then what?" I demanded.
"Just compose your soul in patience, Sister dear. All in good time." He moved his bag back of the bed, then added, "Move around here where you can watch down the hallway. If Lady Macbeth shows up, I'm reading comic books."
I did as he told me to but asked him one more questionn another subject, as quizzing Clark when he doesn't want to answer is as futile as slicing water. "Clark? You figure Mrs. Grew is part of the gang that smuggled the bomb?"
He blinked and looked stupid. "What bomb?"
"The one they paid you to sneak aboard the Tn corn, of course! What bomb indeed!"
"Oh, that. Golly, Poddy, you believe everything you're told. When you get to Terra, don't let anybody sell you the Pyramids-they're not for sale." He went on working and I smothered my annoyance.
Presently he said, "She couldn't possibly know anything about any bombs in the Tricorn, or she wouldn't have been a passenger in it herself."
Clark can always make me feel stupid. This was so obvious (after he pointed it out) that I refrained from comment. "How do you figure it, then?"
"Well, she could have been hired by the same people and not have known that they were just using her as a reserve."
My mind raced and another answer came up. "In which case there could be still a third plot to get Uncle Tom between here and Luna!"
"Could be. Certainly a lot of people are taking an
interest in him. But I figure it for two groups. One group-almost certainly from Mars-doesn t want Uncle Tom to be there. at all. Another group-from Earth probably, at least old Gruesome actually did come from Earth-wants him to be there but wants him to sing their song. Otherwise when she had Uncle
Tom, she would never have .turned him loose; she would just have had Jojo shove him into a soft spot and wait for the bubbles to stop coming up." Clark dug out something and looked at it. "Pod, repeat this back and don't make a' sound. You are exactly twentythree kilometers from South Gate and almost due south of it-south seven degrees west."
I repeated it. "How do you know?"
He held -up a small black object about as big as two
• - packs of cigarettes. "Inertial tracker, infantry model. You can buy them anywhere here, anybody who ever
goes out into the bush carries one." He handed it to me.
I looked at it with interest; I had never seen one that small. Sand rats use them, of course, but they use bigger, more accurate ones mounted in their sand buggies-and anyhow, on Mars you- can always see
either the stars or the Sun. Not like this gloomy place!
I even knew how it' worked, more or less, because
inertial astrogation is a commonplace for spaceships
and guided missiles-vector integration of accelera
tions and times. But whereas the Tn corn's inertial
• tracker is- supposed to be good for one part in a mil
lion, this little gadget probably couldn't be read closer
than one in a thousand.
But it improved our chances at least a thousand to one! . -
"Clark! Did Uncle Tom have one of these? 'Cause if he did-"
He shook his hetid. "If he did, he never 'got a chance
- to read it. I figure they gassed him at once; he was
limp when they lifted him out of the air wagon. And I never had a chance to tell him whefe this dump is because this has been my first chance to look at mine. Now put it in your purse; you're going to use it to get back to Venusberg.'
"Uh ... it'll be bulky in my purse, it'll show. You better hide it wherever you had it. You won't lose me, I'm ~oing to hang onto your hand every step of the way.'
"Why not?"
"In the first place I'm not going to drag this bag with me and that's where it was hidden; I built a false bottom into it. In the second place we aren't going back together-"
"What? Why not? We certainly are! Clark, I'm responsible for you."
"That's a matter of opinion. Your opinion. Look, Poddy, I'm going to get you out of this silly mess. But don't try to use your head, it leaks. Just your memory. Listen to what I say and then do it exactly the way I tell you to-and you'll be all right."
"But-"
"Do you have a plan to get us out?"
"Then shut up. You start pulling your Big Sister act now and you'll get us both killed."
I shut up. And I must confess that his plan made considerable sense. According to Clark there is nobody in this house but us, Mrs. Grew, Titania and Ariel, Pinhead-and sometimes her drive. I certainly haven't seen or heard any evidences of anybody else and I suppose that Mrs. Grew has been doing it with an absolute minimum of witnesses-I know I would if I were (God forbid!) ever engaged in anything so outrageously criminal.
I've never seen the driver's face and neither has
Clark-on purpose, I'm sure. But Clark says that the driver sometimes stays overnight, so we must be prepared to cope with him.
Okay, assume that we cope. As soon as we are out of the house we split up; I go east, he goes west, for a couple of kilometers, in straight lines as near as bogs and swamps permit, which may be not very.
Then we both turn north-and Clark says that the ring road around the city is just three kilometers north of us; he drew me a sketch from memory of a map he had studied before he set out to "rescue Girdle."
At the ring road I go right, he goes left-and we each make use of the first hitchhike transportation, ranch house phone, or whatever, to reach Uncle Tom and/or Chairman Cunha and get lots of reinforcements in a hurry! -
The idea of splitting up is the most elementary of tactics, to make sure that at least one of us gets through and gets help. Mrs. Grew is so fat she couldn't chase anybody on a race track, much less a swamp. We plan to do it when she doesn't dare unlock Pinhead for fear of her own life. If we are chased, it will probably be the driver-and he can't chase two directions at once. Maybe there are other natives she can call on for help, but even so, splitting up doubles our chances.