It stayed level; apparently it could adjust its legs, like the fabulous hillside snee.
When Hank came to the ice flow we had crossed on the way up to the notch, he stopped it and gave me a fresh ice pack. Apparently it did not object to ice in itself, but simply refused to go through holes, for when we started up again, it crossed the little glacier, slowly and cautiously, but steadily.
We headed on toward camp. "This," Hank announced happily, "is the greatest cross-country, rough-terrain vehicle ever built. I wish I knew what makes it go. If I had the patent on this thing, I'd be rich."
"It's yours; you found it."
"It doesn't really belong to me."
"Hank," I answered, "you don't really think the owner is going to come back looking for it, do you?"
He got a very odd look. "No, I don't, Bill. Say, Bill, uh, how long ago do you think this thing was put in there?"
"I wouldn't even want to guess."
There was only one tent at the camp site. As we came up to it, somebody came out and waited for us. It was Sergei.
"Where have you guys been?" he asked. "And where in Kingdom Come did you steal that?
"And what is it?" he added.
We did our best to bring him up to date, and presently he did the same for us. They had searched for us as long as they could, then Paul had been forced to move back to camp number one to keep the date with the Jitterbug. He had left Sergei behind to fetch us when we showed up. "He left a note for you," Sergei added, digging it out
It read:
"Dear Pen Pals,
"I am sorry to go off and leave you crazy galoots but you know the schedule as well as I do. I would stay behind myself to herd you home, but your pal Sergei insists that it is his privilege. Every time I try to reason with him he crawls further back into his hole, bares his teeth, and growls.
"As soon as you get this, get your chubby little legs to moving in the direction of camp number one. Run, do not walk. We'll hold the Jitterbug, but you know how dear old Aunt Hattie feels about keeping her schedule. She isn't going to like it if you are late.
"When I see you, I intend to beat your ears down around your shoulders.
"Good luck,
"P. du M.
"P.S. to Doctor Slop: I took care of your accordion."
When we had finished reading it Sergei said, "I want to hear more about what you found—about eight times more. But not now; we've got to tear over to camp number one. Hank, you think Bill can't walk it?"
I answered for myself, an emphatic "no." The excitement was wearing off and I was feeling worse again.
"Hmm—Hank, do you think that mobile junk yard will carry us over there?"
"I think it will carry us any place." Hank patted it.
"How fast? The Jitterbug has already grounded."
"Are you sure?" asked Hank.
"I saw its trail in the sky at least three hours ago."
"Let's get going!"
I don't remember much about the trip. They stopped once in the pass, and packed me with ice again. The next thing I knew I was awakened by hearing Sergei shout, "There's the Jitterbug! I can see it."
"Jitterbug, here we come," answered Hank. I sat up and looked, too.
We were coming down the slope, not five miles from it, when flame burst from its tail and it climbed for the sky.
Hank groaned. I lay back down and closed my eyes.
I woke up again when the contraption stopped. Paul was there, hands on his hips, staring at us. "About time you birds got home," he announced. "But where did you find that?"
"Paul," Hank said urgently, "Bill is very sick."
"Oh, oh!" Paul swung up and into the walker and made no more questions then. A moment later he had my belly bared and was shoving a thumb into that spot between the belly button and the hip bone. "Does that hurt?" he asked.
I was too weak to slug him. He gave me a pill.
I took no further part in events for a while, but what had happened was this: Captain Hattie had waited, at Paul's urgent insistence, for a couple of hours, and then had announced that she had to blast. She had a schedule to keep with the Covered Wagon and she had no intention, she said, of keeping eight thousand people waiting for the benefit of two. Hank and I could play Indian if we liked; we couldn't play hob with her schedule.
There was nothing Paul could do, so he sent the rest back and waited for us.
But I didn't hear this at the time. I was vaguely aware that we were in the walker wagon, travelling, and I woke up twice when I was repacked with ice, but the whole episode is foggy. They travelled east, with Hank driving and Paul navigating—by the seat of his pants. Some long dreamy time later they reached a pioneer camp surveying a site over a hundred miles away—and from there Paul radioed for help.
Whereupon the Jitterbug came and got us. I remember the landing back at Leda—that is, I remember somebody saying, "Hurry, there! We've got a boy with a burst appendix."
20. Home
There was considerable excitement over what we had found—and there still is—but I didn't see any of it. I was busy playing games with the Pearly Gates. I guess I have Dr. Archibald to thank for still being here. And Hank. And Sergei. And Paul. And Captain Hattie. And some nameless party, who lived somewhere, a long time ago, whose shape and race I still don't know, but who designed the perfect machine for traveling overland through rough country.
I thanked everybody but him. They all came to see me in the hospital, even Captain Hattie, who growled at me, then leaned over and kissed me on the cheek as she left. I was so surprised I almost bit her.
The Schultzes came, of course, and Mama cried over me and Papa gave me an apple and Gretchen could hardly talk, which isn't like her. And Molly brought the twins down to see me and vice versa.
The Leda daily Planet interviewed me. They wanted to know whether or not we thought the things we found were made by men?
Now that is a hard question to answer and smarter people than myself have worked on it since.
What is a man?
The things Hank and I—and the Project Jove scientists who went later—found in that cave couldn't have been made by men—not men like us. The walker wagon was the simplest thing they found. Most of the things they still haven't found out the use for. Nor have they figured out what the creatures looked like—no pictures.
That seems surprising, but the scientists concluded they didn't have eyes—not eyes like ours, anyhow. So they didn't use pictures.
The very notion of a "picture" seems pretty esoteric when you think it over. The Venetians don't use pictures, nor the Martians. Maybe we are the only race in the universe that thought up that way of recording things.
So they weren't "men"—not like us.
But they were men in the real sense of the word, even though I don't doubt that I would run screaming away if I met one in a dark alley. The important thing, as Mr. Seymour would say, they had—they controlled their environment. They weren't animals, pushed around and forced to accept what nature handed them; they took nature and bent it to their will.
I guess they were men.
The crystals were one of the oddest things about it and I didn't have any opinions on that. Somehow, those crystals were connected with that cave—or space ship hangar, or whatever it was. Yet they couldn't or wouldn't go inside the cave.