Jock was shivering and sweating. "They blue-lighted us, that"s what. They took Tim." He shuddered. "I"m glad it was him. I thought-well, maybe you"ve noticed I"m a little stout . . . they like fat."

"What do you mean? What have they done with him?"

"Poor old Tim. He had his faults, like anybody, but-He"s soup, by now . . . that"s what." He shuddered again. "They like soup-bones and all."

"I don"t believe it. You"re trying to scare me."

"So?" He looked me up and down. "They"ll probably take you next. Son, if you"re smart, you"ll take that letter opener of yours over to that horse trough and open your veins. It"s better that way."

I said, "Why don"t you? Here, I"ll lend it to you."

He shook his head and shivered. "I ain"t smart."

I don"t know what became of Tim. I don"t know whether the wormfaces ate people, or not. (You can"t say "cannibal." We may be mutton, to them.) I wasn"t especially scared because I had long since blown all fuses in my "scare" circuits.

What happens to my body after I"m through with it doesn"t matter to me. But it did to Jock; he had a phobia about it. I don"t think Jock was a coward; cowards don"t even try to become prospectors on the Moon. He believed his theory and it shook him. He halfway admitted that he had more reason to believe it than I had known. He had been to Pluto once before, so he said, and other men who had come along, or been dragged, on that trip hadn"t come back.

When feeding time came-two cans-he said he wasn"t hungry and offered me his rations. That "night" he sat up and kept himself awake. Finally I just had to go to sleep before he did.

I awoke from one of those dreams where you can"t move. The dream was correct; sometime not long before, I had surely been blue-lighted.

Jock was gone.

I never saw either of them again.

Somehow I missed them . . . Jock at least. It was a relief not to have to watch all the time, it was luxurious to bathe. But it gets mighty boring, pacing your cage alone.

I have no illusions about them. There must be well over three billion people I would rather be locked up with. But they were people.

Tim didn"t have anything else to recommend him; he was as coldly vicious as a guillotine. But Jock had some slight awareness of right and wrong, or he wouldn"t have tried to justify himself. You might say he was just weak.

But I don"t hold with the idea that to understand all is to forgive all; you follow that and first thing you know you"re sentimental over murderers and rapists and kidnappers and forgetting their victims. That"s wrong. I"ll weep over the likes of Peewee, not over criminals whose victims they are. I missed Jock"s talk but if there were some way to drown such creatures at birth, I"d take my turn as executioner. That goes double for Tim.

If they ended up as soup for hobgoblins, I couldn"t honestly be sorry- even though it might be my turn tomorrow.

As soup, they probably had their finest hour.

Chapter 8.

I was jarred out of useless brain-cudgeling by an explosion, a sharp crack -a ba.s.s rumble-then a whoosh! of reduced pressure. I bounced to my feet-anyone who has ever depended on a s.p.a.ce suit is never again indifferent to a drop in pressure.

I gasped, "What the deuce!"

Then I added, "Whoever is on watch had better get on the ball-or we"ll all be breathing thin cold stuff." No oxygen outside, I was sure-or rather the astronomers were and I didn"t want to test it.

Then I said, "Somebody bombing us? I hope.

"Or was it an earthquake?"

This was not an idle remark. That Scientific American article concerning "summer" on Pluto had predicted "sharp isostatic readjustments" as the temperature rose-which is a polite way of saying, "Hold your hats! Here comes the chimney!"

I was in an earthquake once, in Santa Barbara; I didn"t need a booster shot to remember what every Californian knows and others learn in one lesson: when the ground does a jig, get outdoors!

Only I couldn"t.

I spent two minutes checking whether adrenalin had given me the strength to jump eighteen feet instead of twelve. It hadn"t. That was all I did for a half-hour, if you don"t count nail biting.

Then I heard my name! "Kip! Oh, Kip!"

"Peewee!" I screamed. "Here! Peewee!"

Silence for an eternity of three heartbeats- "Kip?"

"Down HERE!"

"Kip? Are you down this hole?"

"Yes! Can"t you see me?" I saw her head against the light above.

"Uh, I can now. Oh, Kip, I"m so glad!"

"Then why are you crying? So am I!"

"I"m not crying," she blubbered. "Oh Kip ... Kip."

"Can you get me out?"

"Uh-" She surveyed that drop. "Stay where you are."

"Don"t go "way!" She already had.

She wasn"t gone two minutes; it merely seemed like a week. Then she was back and the darling had a nylon rope!

"Grab on!" she shrilled.

"Wait a sec. How is it fastened?"

"I"ll pull you up."

"No, you won"t-or we"ll both be down here. Find somewhere to belay it."

"I can lift you."

"Belay it! Hurry!"

She left again, leaving an end in my hands. Shortly I heard very faintly: "On belay!"

I shouted, "Testing!" and took up the slack. I put my weight on it-it held. "Climbing!" I yelled, and followed the final "g" up the hole and caught it.

She flung herself on me, an arm around my neck, one around Madame Pompadour, and both of mine around her. She was even smaller and skinnier than I remembered. "Oh, Kip, it"s been just awful."

I patted her bony shoulder blades. "Yeah, I know. What do we do now? Where"s W-"

I started to say, "Where"s Wormface?" but she burst into tears.

"Kip-I think she"s dead!"

My mind skidded-I was a bit stir-crazy anyhow. "Huh? Who?"

She looked as amazed as I was confused. "Why, the Mother Thing."

"Oh." I felt a flood of sorrow. "But, honey, are you sure? She was talking to me all right up to the last-and I didn"t die."

"What in the world are you talk- Oh. I don"t mean then. Kip; I mean now."

"Huh? She was here?"

"Of course. Where else?"

Now that"s a silly question, it"s a big universe. I had decided long ago that the Mother Thing couldn"t be here-because Jock had brushed off the subject. I reasoned that Jock would either have said that she was here or have invented an elaborate lie, for the pleasure of lying. Therefore she wasn"t on his list-perhaps he had never seen her save as a bulge under my suit.

I was so sure of my "logic" that it took a long moment to throw off prejudice and accept fact. "Peewee," I said, gulping, "I feel like I"d lost my own mother. Are you sure?"

" "Feel as if," " she said automatically. "I"m not sure sure ... but she"s outside-so she must be dead."

"Wait a minute. If she"s outside, she"s wearing a s.p.a.ce suit? Isn"t she?"

"No, no! She hasn"t had one-not since they destroyed her ship."

I was getting more confused. "How did they bring her in here?"

"They just sacked her and sealed her and carried her in. Kip-what do we do now?"

I knew several answers, all of them wrong-I had already considered them during my stretch in jail. "Where is Wormface? Where are all the wormfaces?"

"Oh. All dead. I think."

"I hope you"re right." I looked around for a weapon and never saw a hallway so bare. My toy dagger was only eighteen feet away but I didn"t feel like going back down for it. "What makes you think so?"

Peewee had reason to think so. The Mother Thing didn"t look strong enough to tear paper but what she lacked in beef she made up in brains. She had done what I had tried to do: reasoned out a way to take them all on. She had not been able to hurry because her plan had many factors all of which had to mesh at once and many of them she could not influence; she had to wait for the breaks.

First, she needed a time when there were few wormfaces around. The base was indeed a large supply dump and s.p.a.ce port and transfer point, but it did not need a large staff. It had been unusually crowded the few moments I had seen it, because our ship was in.

Second, it also had to be when no ships were in because she couldn"t cope with a ship-she couldn"t get at it.

Third, H-Hour had to be while the wormfaces were feeding. They all ate together when there were few enough not to have to use their mess hall in relays-crowded around one big tub and sopping it up, I gathered -a scene out of Dante. That would place all her enemies on one target, except possibly one or two on engineering or communication watches.

"Wait a minute!" I interrupted. "You said they were all dead?"

"Well ... I don"t know. I haven"t seen any."

"Hold everything until I find something to fight with."

"But-"

"First things first, Peewee."

Saying that I was going to find a weapon wasn"t finding one. That corridor had nothing but more holes like the one I had been down- which was why Peewee had looked for me there; it was one of the few places where she had not been allowed to wander at will. Jock had been correct on one point: Peewee-and the Mother Thing-had been star prisoners, allowed all privileges except freedom . . . whereas Jock and Tim and myself had been third-cla.s.s prisoners and/or soup bones. It fitted the theory that Peewee and the Mother Thing were hostages rather than ordinary P.W.s.

I didn"t explore those holes after I looked down one and saw a human skeleton-maybe they got tired of tossing food to him. When I straightened up Peewee said, "What are you shaking about?"

"Nothing. Come on."

"I want to see."

"Peewee, every second counts and we"ve done nothing but yak. Come on. Stay behind me."

I kept her from seeing the skeleton, a major triumph over that little curiosity box-although it probably would not have affected her much; Peewee was sentimental only when it suited her.

"Stay behind me" had the correct gallant sound but it was not based on reason. I forgot that attack could come from the rear-I should have said: "Follow me and watch behind us."

She did anyway. I heard a squeal and whirled around to see a wormface with one of those camera-like things aimed at me. Even though Tim had used one on me I didn"t realize what it was; for a moment I froze.

But not Peewee. She launched herself through the air, attacking with both hands and both feet in the gallant audacity and utter recklessness of a kitten.

That saved me. Her attack would not have hurt anything but another kitten but it mixed him up so that he didn"t finish what he was doing, namely paralyzing or killing me; he tripped over her and went down.

And I stomped him. With my bare feet I stomped him, landing on that lobster-horror head with both feet.

His head crunched. It felt awful.

It was like jumping on a strawberry box. It splintered and crunched and went to pieces. I cringed at the feel, even though I was in an agony to fight, to kill. I trampled worms and hopped away, feeling sick. I scooped up Peewee and pulled her back, as anxious to get clear as I had been to Join battle seconds before.

I hadn"t killed it. For an awful moment I thought I was going to have to wade back in. Then I saw that while it was alive, it did not seem aware of us. It flopped like a chicken freshly chopped, then quieted and began to move purposefully.

But it couldn"t see. I had smashed its eyes and maybe its ears-but certainly those terrible eyes.

It felt around the floor carefully, then got to its feet, still undamaged except that its head was a crushed ruin. It stood still, braced tripod-style by that third appendage, and felt the air. I pulled us back farther.

It began to walk. Not toward us or I would have screamed. It moved away, ricocheted off a wall, straightened out, and went back the way we had come. t reached one of those holes they used for prisoners, walked into it and dropped. I sighed, and realized that I had been holding Peewee too tightly to breathe. I put her down.

"There"s your weapon," she said.