"Well, you landed it. They say any landing you walk away from is a good one."
"But I'm sorry I got you mixed up in it."
"Uh... don't worry about that. It looks like somebody has to get mixed up in it. Peewee... what's he up to?"
"They, you mean."
"Huh? I don't think the other two amount to anything. He is the one."
"I didn't mean Tim and Jock-they're just people gone bad. I meant them-him and others like him."
I wasn't at my sharpest-I had been knocked out three times and was shy a night's sleep and more confusing things had happened than in all my life. but until Peewee pointed it out I hadn't considered that there could be more than one like him-one seemed more than enough.
But if there was one, then there were thousands-maybe millions or billions. I felt my stomach twist and wanted to hide. "You've seen others?"
"No. Just him. But the Mother Thing told me."
"Ugh! Peewee... what are they up to?"
"Haven't you guessed? They're moving in on us."
My collar felt tight, even though it was open. "How?"
"I don't know."
"You mean they're going to kill us off and take over Earth?"
She hesitated. "It might not be anything that nice."
"Uh... make slaves of us?"
"You're getting warmer. Kip-I think they eat meat."
I swallowed. "You have the jolliest ideas, for a little girl."
"You think I like it? That's why I had to tell Daddy."
There didn't seem to be anything to say. It was an old, old fear for human beings. Dad had told me about an invasion-from-Mars radio broadcast when he was a kid-pure fiction but it had scared people silly. But people didn't believe in it now; ever since we got to the Moon and circled Mars and Venus everybody seemed to agree that we weren't going to find life anywhere.
Now here it was, in our laps. "Peewee? Are these things Martians? Or from Venus?"
She shook her head. "They're not from anywhere close. The Mother Thing tried to tell me, but we ran into a difficulty of understanding."
"Inside the Solar System?"
"That was part of the difficulty. Both yes and no."
"It can't be both."
"You ask her."
"I'd like to." I hesitated, then blurted, "I don't care where they're from -we can shoot them down ... if we don't have to look at them!"
"Oh, I hope so!"
"It figures. You say these are flying saucers... real saucer sightings, I mean; not weather balloons. If so, they have been scouting us for years. Therefore they aren't sure of themselves, even if they do look horrible enough to curdle milk. Otherwise they would have moved in at once the way we would on a bunch of animals. But they haven't. That means we can kill them-if we go about it right."
She nodded eagerly. "I hope so. I hoped Daddy would see a way. But-" She frowned. "-we don't know much about them... and Daddy always warned me not to be cocksure when data was incomplete. ‘Don't make so much stew from one oyster, Peewee,' he always says."
"But I'll bet we're right. Say, who is your Daddy? And what's your full name?"
"Why, Daddy is Professor Reisfeld. And my name is Patricia Wynant Reisfeld. Isn't that awful? Better call me Peewee."
"Professor Reisfeld- What does he teach?"
"Huh? You don't know? You don't know about Daddy's Nobel Prize? Or anything?"
"I'm just a country boy, Peewee. Sorry."
"You must be. Daddy doesn't teach anything. He thinks. He thinks better than anybody... except me, possibly. He's the synthesist. Everybody else specializes. Daddy knows everything and puts the pieces together."
Maybe so, but I hadn't heard of him. It sounded like a good idea... but it would take an awfully smart man-if I had found out anything, it was that they could print it faster than I could study it. Professor Reisfeld must have three heads. Five.
"Wait till you meet him," she added, glancing at her watch. "Kip, I think we had better get braced. We'll be landing in a few minutes... and he won't care how he shakes up passengers."
So we crowded into the narrow end and braced each other. We waited. After a bit the ship shook itself and the floor tilted. There was a slight bump and things got steady and suddenly I felt very light. Peewee pulled her feet under her and stood up. "Well, we're on the Moon."
Chapter 5
When I was a kid, we used to pretend we were making the first landing on the Moon. Then I gave up romantic notions and realized that I would have to go about it another way. But I never thought I would get there penned up, unable to see out, like a mouse in a shoe box.
The only thing that proved I was on the Moon was my weight. High gravity can be managed anywhere, with centrifuges. Low gravity is another matter; on Earth the most you can squeeze out is a few seconds going off a high board, or by parachute delay, or stunts in a plane.
If low gravity goes on and on, then wherever you are, you are not on Earth. Well, I wasn't on Mars; it had to be the Moon.
On the Moon I should weigh a little over twenty-five pounds. It felt about so-I felt light enough to walk on a lawn and not bend the grass.
For a few minutes I simply exulted in it, forgetting him and the trouble we were in, just heel-and-toe around the room, getting the wonderful feel of it, bouncing a little and bumping my head against the ceiling and feeling how slowly, slowly, slowly I settled back to the floor. Peewee sat down, shrugged her shoulders and gave a little smile, an annoyingly patronizing one. The "Old Moon-Hand"-all of two weeks more of it than I had had.
Low gravity has its disconcerting tricks. Your feet have hardly any traction and they fly out from under you. I had to learn with muscles and reflexes what I had known only intellectually: that when weight goes down, mass and inertia do not. To change direction, even in walking, you have to lean the way you would to round a turn on a board track- and even then if you don't have traction (which I didn't in socks on a smooth floor) your feet go out from under you.
A fall doesn't hurt much in one-sixth gravity but Peewee giggled. I sat up and said, "Go and laugh, smartie. You can afford to-you've got tennis shoes."
"I'm sorry. But you looked silly, hanging there like a slow-motion picture and grabbing air."
"No doubt. Very funny."
"I said I was sorry. Look, you can borrow my shoes."
I looked at her feet, then at mine, and snorted. "Gee, thanks!"
"Well... you could cut the heels out, or something. It wouldn't bother me. Nothing ever does. Where are your shoes. Kip?"
"Uh, about a quarter-million miles away-unless we got off at the wrong stop."
"Oh. Well, you won't need them much, here."
"Yeah." I chewed my lip, thinking about "here" and no longer interested in games with gravity. "Peewee? What do we do now?"
"About what?"
"About him."
"Nothing. What can we do?"
"Then what do we do?"
"Sleep."
"Huh?"
"Sleep. ‘Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care.' ‘Tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep.' ‘Blessings on him who invented sleep, the mantle that covers all human thoughts.' "
"Quit showing off and talk sense!"
"I am talking sense. At the moment we're as helpless as goldfish. We're simply trying to survive-and the first principle of survival is not to worry about the impossible and concentrate on what's possible. I'm hungry and thirsty and uncomfortable and very, very tired... and all I can do about it is sleep. So if you will kindly keep quiet, that's what I'll do."
"I can take a hint. No need to snap at me."