Peewee looked startled. "Wait right here!" She was gone before I could stop her. I went on sealing up while I worried-she hadn't even stopped to pick up the projector weapon. Shortly I said, "Tight, Oscar?"
("Tight, boy!")
Chin valve okay, blood-color okay, radio-I wouldn't need it-water- The tank was dry. No matter, I wouldn't have time to grow thirsty. I worked the chin valve, making the pressure low because I knew that pressure outdoors was quite low.
Peewee returned with what looked like ballet slippers for a baby elephant. She leaned close to my face plate and shouted, "They wear these. Can you get them on?" It seemed unlikely, but I forced them over my feet like badly fitting socks. I stood up and found that they improved traction; they were clumsy but not hard to walk in.
A minute later we were standing at the exit of the big room I had first seen. Its air-lock doors were closed now as a result of the Mother Thing's other bomb, which she had placed to blow out the gate-valve panels in the tunnel beyond. The bomb in the feeding chamber had been planted by Peewee who had then ducked back to their room. I don't know whether the Mother Thing timed the two bombs to go off together, or triggered them by remote-control-nor did it matter; they had made a shambles of Wormface's fancy base.
Peewee knew how to waste air through the air lock. When the inner door opened I shouted, "Time?"
"Fourteen minutes." She held up her watch.
"Remember what I said, just stay here. If anything moves, blue-light it first and ask questions afterwards."
"I remember."
I stepped in and closed the inner door, found the valve in the outer door, waited for pressure to equalize.
The two or three minutes it took that big lock to bleed off I spent in glum thought. I didn't like leaving Peewee alone. I thought all wormfaces were dead, but I wasn't sure. We had searched hastily; one could have zigged when we zagged-they were so fast.
Besides that, Peewee had said, "I remember," when she should have said, "Okay, Kip, I will." A slip of the tongue? That flea-hopping mind made "slips" only when it wanted to. There is a world of difference between "Roger" and "Wilco."
Besides I was doing this for foolish motives. Mostly I was going out to recover the Mother Thing's body-folly, because after I brought her in, she would spoil. It would be kinder to leave her in natural deep-freeze.
But I couldn't bear that-it was cold out there and I couldn't leave her out in the cold. She had been so little and warm ... so alive. I had to bring her in where she could get warm.
You're in bad shape when your emotions force you into acts which you know are foolish.
Worse still, I was doing this in a reckless rush because the Mother Thing had wanted that beacon set before a certain second, now only twelve minutes away, maybe ten. Well, I'd do it, but what sense was it? Say her home star is close by-oh, say it's Proxima Centauri and the wormfaces came from somewhere farther. Even if her beacon works-it still takes over four years for her S.O.S. to reach her friends!
This might have been okay for the Mother Thing. I had an impression that she lived a very long time; waiting a few years for rescue might not bother her. But Peewee and I were not creatures of her sort. We'd be dead before that speed-of-light message crawled to Proxima Centauri. I was glad that I had seen Peewee again, but I knew what was in store for us. Death, in days, weeks, or months at most, from running out of air, or water, or food-or a wormface ship might land before we died-which meant one unholy sabbat of a fight in which, if we were lucky, we would die quickly.
No matter how you figured, planting that beacon was merely "carrying out the deceased's last wishes"-words you hear at funerals. Sentimental folly.
The outer door started to open. Ave, Mother Thing! Nos morituri.
It was cold out there, biting cold, even though I was not yet in the wind. The glow panels were still working and I could see that the tunnel was a mess; the two dozen fractional-pressure stops had ruptured like eardrums. I wondered what sort of bomb could be haywired from stolen parts, kept small enough to conceal two in a body pouch along with some sort of radio rig, and nevertheless have force enough to blow out those panels. The blast had rattled my teeth, several hundred feet away in solid rock.
The first dozen panels were blown inwards. Had she set it off in the middle of the tunnel? A blast that big would fling her away like a feather! She must have planted it there, then come inside and triggered it-then gone back through the lock just as I had. That was the only way I could see it.
It got colder every step. My feet weren't too cold yet, those clumsy mukluks were okay; the wormfaces understood insulation. "Oscar, you got the fires burning?"
("Roaring, chum. It's a cold night.")
"You're telling me!"
Just beyond the outermost burst panel, I found her.
She had sunk forward, as if too tired to go on. Her arms stretched in front of her and, on the floor of the tunnel not quite touched by her tiny fingers, was a small round box about the size ladies keep powder in on dressing tables.
Her face was composed and her eyes were open except that nictitating membranes were drawn across as they had been when I had first seen her in the pasture back of our house, a few days or weeks or a thousand years ago. But she had been hurt then and looked it; now I half expected her to draw back those inner lids and sing a welcome.
I touched her.
She was hard as ice and much colder.
I blinked back tears and wasted not a moment. She wanted that little box placed a hundred yards out on the causeway and the bump on top twisted-and she wanted it done in the next six or seven minutes. I scooped it up. "Righto, Mother Thing! On my way!"
("Get cracking, chum!")
("Thank you, dear Kip... .")
I don't believe in ghosts. I had heard her sing thank-you so many times that the notes echoed in my head.
A few feet away at the mouth of the tunnel, I stopped. The wind hit me and was so cold that the deathly chill in the tunnel seemed summery. I closed my eyes and counted thirty seconds to give time to adjust to starlight while I fumbled on the windward side of the tunnel at a slanting strut that anchored the causeway to the mountain, tied my safety line by passing it around the strut and snapping it back on itself. I had known that it was night outside and I expected the causeway to stand out as a black ribbon against the white "snow" glittering under a skyful of stars. I thought I would be safer on that windswept way if I could see its edges-which I couldn't by headlamp unless I kept swinging my shoulders back and forth-clumsy and likely to throw me off balance or slow me down.
I had figured this carefully; I didn't regard this as a stroll in the garden -not at night, not on Pluto! So I counted thirty seconds and tied my line while waiting for eyes to adjust to starlight. I opened them.
And I couldn't see a darned thing!
Not a star. Not even the difference between sky and ground. My back was to the tunnel and the helmet shaded my face like a sunbonnet; I should have been able to see the walkway. Nothing.
I turned the helmet and saw something that accounted both for black sky and the quake we had felt-an active volcano. It may have been five miles away or fifty, but I could not doubt what it was-a jagged, angry red scar low in the sky.
But I didn't stop to stare. I switched on the headlamp, splashed it on the righthand windward edge, and started a clumsy trot, keeping close to that side, so that if I stumbled I would have the entire road to recover in before the wind could sweep me off. That wind scared me. I kept the line coiled in my left hand and paid it out as I went, keeping it fairly taut. The coil felt stiff in my fingers.
The wind not only frightened me, it hurt. It was a cold so intense that it felt like flame. It burned and blasted, then numbed. My right side, getting the brunt of it, began to go and then my left side hurt more than the right.