So I get the inertial tracker because Clark doesn't think I can maneuver in the bush without one, even if I wait for it to get light. He's probably right. But he claims that he can steer well enough to find that road using just his watch, a wet finger for the breeze, and polarized spectacles-which, so help me, he has with him.
I shouldn't have sneered at his comic books; he actually did come prepared, quite a lot of ways. If they hadn't gassed him while he was still locked in the passenger compartment of Mrs. Grew's air buggy, I think he could have given them a very busy, bad time. A
flame gun in his bag, a Remington pistol hidden on his person, knives, stun bombs-even a isecond inertial tracker, openly in the bag along with his clothes and comic books and slide rule.
I asked him why, and he put on his best superior look. "If anything went wrong and they grabbed me, they would expect me to have one. So I had one- and it hadn't even been started ... poor little tenderfoot who doesn't even know enough to switch the thing on when he leaves his base position. Old Gruesome got a fine chuckle out of that." He sneered. "She thinks I'm half-witted and I've done my best to help the idea along."
So they did the same thing with his bag that they did with my purse-cleaned everything out of it that looked even faintly useful for mayhem and murder, let him keep what was left.
And most of what was left was concealed by a false bottom so beautifully faked that the ~manufacturer wouldn't have noticed it.
Except, possibly, for the weight-I asked Clark about that. He shrugged. "Calculated risk," he said. "If you don't bet, you can't win. Jojo carried it in here still packed and she searched it in here-and didn't pick it up afterwards; she had both arms full of junk I didn't mind her confiscating."
(And suppose she had picked it up and noticed? Well, Brother would still have had his brain and his hands-and I think he could take a sewing machine apart and put it back together as a piece of artillery. Clark is a trial to me-but I have great confidence in him.)
I'm going to get some sleep now-or try to-as Pinhead has just fetched in our supper and we have a busy time ahead of us, later. But first I'm going to backtrack this tape and copy it; I have one fresh spool left in my purse. I'm going to give the copy to Clark
to give to Uncle, just in case. Just in case Poddy turns out to be bubbles in a swamp, I mean. But I'm not worried about that; it's a much nicer prospect than being Pinhead's roommate. In fact I'm not worried about anything; Clark has the situation well in hand.
But he warned me very strongly about one thing; "Tell them to get here well before nine-sixteen ... or don't bother to come at all."
"Why?" I wanted to know.
"Just do it."
"Clark, you know perfectly well that two grown men won't pay any attention unless I can give them a sound reason for it."
He blinked. "All right. There is a very sound reason. A half-a-kiloton bomb isn't very much ... but it still isn't healthy to be around when it goes off. Unless they can get in here and disarm it before that time- up she goes!"
He has it. I've seen it. Snugly fitted into that false bottom. That same three kilograms of excess mass I couldn't account for at Deimos. Clark showed me the timing mechanism and how the shaped charges were nestled around it to produce the implosion squeeze.
But he did not show me how to disarm it. I ran into his blankest, most stubborn wall. He expects to escape, yes-and he expects to come back here with plenty of help and in plenty of time and disarm the thing. But he is utterly convinced that Mrs. Grew intends to kill us, and if anything goes wrong and we don't break out
of here, or die trying, or anything... well, he intends to take her with us.
I told him it was wrong, I said that he mustn't take the law in his own hands. "What law!" he said. "There isn't any law here. And you aren't being logical, Pod. Anything that is right for a group to do is right for one person to do."
That one was too slippery for me to answer so I tried
simply pleading with him and he got sore. "Maybe you would rather be in the cage with JojoW'
"Well ... no." -
"Then shut up about it. Look, Pod, I planned all this out when she had me in that tank, trying to beat my ears:in, make me dea~ I kept my sanityby;ignoring what was being done to me-and concentrating on -when and how I would blow her to bits."
I wondered if he had indeed kept his sanity but I kept my doubts to myself and shut up. Besides I'm not sure that he's wrong; it may be that I'm just squeamish about blood-shed. "Anything that is moral for a group to do is moral for one person to do." There must be -a flaw in that, since I've always been taught that it is wrong to take the law in your own hands. But I can't find the- flaw and it sounds axiomatic, selfevident. Switch it ,around. If something is wrong for one person to do, can it possibly be made right by having a lot of people (a government) agree to do it
together? Even unanimously?
If a thing is wrong, it is wrong-and vox populi can't
change it~ -
Just the same, I'm not sure I can nap with an atom
bomb under by bed. -
Postludes
Putnam's was unhappy with Heinlein's original ending to Podkayne of Mars. In the originally published version Poddy survives. As originally written, she does not. Here follow both versions. First Heinlein's original . .
Postlude
(As Originally Written)
I guess I had better finish this.
My sister got right to sleep after I rehearsed her in what we were going to do. I stretched out on the floor but didn't go right to sleep. I'm a worrier, she isn't. I reviewed my plans, trying to make them tighter. Then slept.
I've got one of those built-in alarm clocks and I woke just when I planned to, an hour before dawn. Any later and there would be too much chance that Jojo might be loose, any earlier and there would be too much time in the dark. The Venus bush is chancy even when you can see well; I didn't want Poddy to step into something sticky, or step on something that would turn and bite her leg off. Nor me, either.
But we had to risk the bush, or stay and let old Gruesome kill us at her convenience. The first was a sporting chance; the latter was a dead certainty, even though I had a terrible time convincing Poddy that Mrs. Grew would kill us. Poddy's greatest weakness- the really soft place in her head, she's not too stupid
otherwise-is her almost total inability to grasp that some people are as bad as they are. Evil. Poddy never has understood evil. Naughtiness is• about as far as her imagination reaches.
But I understand evil, I can get right inside the skull of a person like Mrs. Grew and understand how she thinks.
Perhaps you infer from this that I am evil, or partly so. All right, want to make something of it? Whatever I am, I knew Mrs. Grew was evil before we ever left the Tniconn ... when Poddy (and even Girdle!) thought the slob was just too darling for words.
I don't trust a person who laughs when there is nothing to laugh about. Or is good-natured no matter what happens. If it's that perfect, it's an act, a phony. So I watched her ... and cheating at solitaire wasn't the only giveaway.
So between the bush and Mrs. Grew, I chose the bush, both for me and my sister.
Unless the air car was there and we could swipe it. This would be a mixed blessing, as it would mean two of them to cope with, them armed and us not. (I don't count a bomb as an arm, you can't point it at a person's head.)
Before I woke Poddy I took care of that alate pseudosimian, that "fairy." Vicious little beast. I didn't have a gun. But I didn't really want one at that point; they understand about guns and are hard to hit, they'll dive on you at once.