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.
"Huh?"
"On the floor. Just beyond where I dropped Madame Pompadour. The gadget." She went over, picked up her dolly, brushed away bits of ruined wormface, then took the camera-like thing and handed it to me. "Be careful. Don't point it toward you. Or me."
"Peewee," I said faintly, "don't you ever have an attack of nerves?"
"Sure I do. When I have leisure for it. Which isn't now. Do you know how to work it?"
"No. Do you?"
"I think so. I've seen them and the Mother Thing told me about them." She took it, handling it casually but not pointing it at either of us. "These holes on top-uncover one of them, it stuns. If you uncover them all, it kills. To make it work you push it here." She did and a bright blue light shot out, splashed against the wall. "The light doesn't do anything," she added. "It's for aiming. I hope there wasn't anybody on the other side of that wall. No, I hope there was. You know what I mean."
It looked like a cockeyed 35 mm. camera, with a lead lens-one built from an oral description. I took it, being very cautious where I pointed it, and looked at it. Then I tried it-full power, by mistake.
The blue light was a shaft in the air and the wall where it hit glowed and began to smoke. I shut it off.
"You wasted power," Peewee chided. "You may need it later."
"Well, I had to try it. Come on, let's go."
Peewee glanced at her Mickey Mouse watch-and I felt irked that it had apparently stood up when my fancy one had not. "There's very little time. Kip. Can't we assume that only this one escaped?"
"What? We certainly cannot! Until we're sure that all of them are dead, we can't do anything else. Come on."
"But- Well, I'll lead. I know my way around, you don't."
"No."
"Yes!"
So we did it her way; she led and carried the blue-light projector while I covered the rear and wished for a third eye, like a wormface. I couldn't argue that my reflexes were faster when they weren't, and she knew more than I did about our weapon.
But it's graveling, just the same.
The base was huge; half that mountain must have been honeycombed. We did it at a fast trot, ignoring things as complicated as museum exhibits and twice as interesting, simply making sure that no wormface was anywhere. Peewee ran with the weapon at the ready, talking twenty to the dozen and urging me on.
Besides an almost empty base, no ships in, and the wormfaces feeding, the Mother Thing's plan required that all this happen shortly before a particular hour of the Plutonian night.
"Why?" I panted.
"So she could signal her people, of course."
"But-" I shut up. I had wondered about the Mother Thing's people but didn't even know as much about her as I did about Wormface- except that she was everything that made her the Mother Thing. Now she was dead-Peewee said that she was outside without a space suit, so she was surely dead; that little soft warm thing wouldn't last two seconds in that ultra-arctic weather. Not to mention suffocation and lung hemorrhage. I choked up.
Of course, Peewee might be wrong. I had to admit that she rarely was- but this might be one of the times ... in which case we would find her. But if we didn't find her, she was outside and- "Peewee, do you know where my space suit is?"
"Huh? Of course. Right next to where I got this." She patted the nylon rope, which she had coiled around her waist and tied with a bow.
"Then the second we are sure that we've cleaned out the wormfaces I'm going outside and look for her!"
"Yes, yes! But we've got to find my suit, too. I'm going with you."
No doubt she would. Maybe I could persuade her to wait in the tunnel out of that bone-freezing wind. "Peewee, why did she have to send her message at night? To a ship in a rotation-period orbit? Or is there-"
My words were chopped off by a rumble. The floor shook in that loose-bearing vibration that frightens people and animals alike. We stopped dead. "What was that?" Peewee whispered.
I swallowed. "Unless it's part of this rumpus the Mother Thing planned-"
"It isn't. I think."
"It's a quake."
"An earthquake?"
"A Pluto quake. Peewee, we've got to get out of here!"
I wasn't thinking about where-you don't in a quake. Peewee gulped. "We can't bother with earthquakes; we haven't time. Hurry, Kip, hurry!" She started to run and I followed, gritting my teeth. If Peewee could ignore a quake, so could I-though it's like ignoring a rattlesnake in bed.
"Peewee... Mother Thing's people ... is their ship in orbit around Pluto?"
"What? Oh, no, no! They're not in a ship."
"Then why at night? Something about the Heavyside layers here? How far away is their base?" I was wondering how far a man could walk here. We had done almost forty miles on the Moon. Could we do forty blocks here? Or even forty yards? You could insulate your feet, probably. But that wind- "Peewee, they don't live here, do they?"
"What? Don't be silly! They have a nice planet of their own. Kip, if you keep asking foolish questions, we'll be too late. Shut up and listen."
I shut up. What follows I got in snatches as we ran, and some of it later. When the Mother Thing had been captured, she had lost ship, space clothing, communicator, everything; Wormface had destroyed it all. There had been treachery, capture through violation of truce while parleying. "He grabbed her when they were supposed to be under a King's ‘X' " was Peewee's indignant description, "and that's not fair! He had promised."