"Mother Thing?" Peewee said timidly. "Where is home?"
("See the right half of it, dear, where the outer arm trails into nothingness? We came from a point two-thirds the way out from the center."
"No, no! Not Vega. I want to know where the Sun is!"
("Oh, your star. But, dear, at this distance it is the same.")
We learned how far it is from the Sun to the planet Lanador 167,000 light-years. The Mother Thing couldn't tell us directly as she did not know how much time we meant by a "year"-how long it takes Terra to go around the Sun (a figure she might have used once or not at all and as worth remembering as the price of peanuts in Perth). But she did know the distance from Vega to the Sun and told us the distance from Lanador to Vega with that as a yardstick-six thousand one hundred and ninety times as great. 6190 times 27 light-years gives 167,000 light-years. She courteously gave it in powers of ten the way we figure, instead of using factorial five (1x2x3x4x5 equals 120) which is how Vegans figure. 167,000 light-years is 9.82 x 1017 miles. Round off 9.82 and call it ten. Then -1,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles -is the distance from Vega to Lanador (or from the Sun to Lanador; Vega and the Sun are back-fence neighbors on this scale.)
A thousand million billion miles.
I refuse to have anything to do with such a preposterous figure. It may be "short" as cosmic distances go, but there comes a time when the circuit breakers in your skull trip out from overload.
The platform we were on was the roof of an enormous triangular building, miles on a side. We saw that triangle repeated in many places and always with a two-armed spiral in each corner. It was the design the Mother Thing wore as jewelry.
It is the symbol for "Three Galaxies, One Law."
I'll lump here things I learned in driblets: The Three Galaxies are like our Federated Free Nations, or the United Nations before that, or the League of Nations still earlier; Lanador houses their offices and courts and files-the League's capital, the way the FFN is in New York and the League of Nations used to be in Switzerland. The cause is historical; the people of Lanador are the Old Race; that's where civilization began.
The Three Galaxies are an island group, like Hawaii State, they haven't any other close neighbors. Civilization spread through the Lesser Cloud, then through the Greater Cloud and is seeping slowly through our own Galaxy-that is taking longer; there are fifteen or twenty times as many stars in our Galaxy as in the other two.
When I began to get these things straight I wasn't quite as sore. The Mother Thing was a very important person at home but here she was a minor official-all she could do was bring us in. Still, I wasn't more than coolly polite for a while-she might have looked the other way while we beat it for home.
They housed us in that enormous building in a part you could call a "transients" hotel," although "detention barracks" or "jail" is closer. I can't complain about accommodations but I was getting confoundedly tired of being locked up every time I arrived in a new place. A robot met us and took us down inside-there are robots wherever you turn on Lanador. I don't mean things looking like the Tin Woodman; I mean machines that do things for you, such as this one which led us to our rooms, then hung around like a bellhop expecting a tip. It was a three-wheeled cart with a big basket on top, for luggage if we had any. It met us, whistled to the Mother Thing in Vegan and led us away, down a lift and through a wide and endlessly long corridor.
I was given "my" room again-a fake of a fake, with all errors left in and new ones added. The sight of it was not reassuring; it shrieked that they planned to keep us there as long as-well, as long as they chose.
But the room was complete even to a rack for Oscar and a bathroom outside. Just beyond "my" room was a fake of another kind-a copy of that Arabian Nights horror Peewee had occupied on Vega Five. Peewee seemed delighted, so I didn't point out the implications.
The Mother Thing hovered around while we got out of space suits. ("Do you think you will be comfortable?")
"Oh, sure," I agreed unenthusiastically.
("If you want food or anything, just say so. It will come.")
"So? Is there a telephone somewhere?"
("Simply speak your wishes. You will be heard.")
I didn't doubt her-but I was almost as tired of rooms that were bugged as of being locked up; a person ought to have privacy.
"I'm hungry now," Peewee commented. "I had an early breakfast."
We were in her room. A purple drapery drew back, a light glowed in the wall. In about two minutes a section of wall disappeared; a slab at table height stuck out like a tongue. On it were dishes and silverware, cold cuts, fruit, bread, butter,, and a mug of steaming cocoa. Peewee clapped and squealed. I looked at it with less enthusiasm.
("You see?") the Mother Thing went on with a smile in her voice. ("Ask for what you need. If you need me, I'll come. But I must go now.")
"Oh, please don't go, Mother Thing."
("I must, Peewee dear. But I will see you soon. By the bye, there are two more of your people here.")
"Huh?" I put in. "Who? Where?"
("Next door.") She was gone with gliding swiftness; the bellhop speeded up to stay ahead of her.
I spun around. "Did you hear that?"
"I certainly did!"
"Well-you eat if you want to; I'm going to look for those other humans."
"Hey! Wait for me!"
"I thought you wanted to eat."
"Well..." Peewee looked at the food. "Just a sec." She hastily buttered two slices of bread and handed one to me. I was not in that much of a hurry; I ate it. Peewee gobbled hers, took a gulp from the mug and offered it to me. "Want some?"
It wasn't quite cocoa; there was a meaty flavor, too. But it was good. I handed it back and she finished it. "Now I can fight wildcats. Let's go, Kip."
"Next door" was through the foyer of our three-room suite and fifteen yards down the corridor, where we came to a door arch. I kept Peewee back and glanced in cautiously.
It was a diorama, a fake scene.
This one was better than you see in museums. I was looking through a bush at a small clearing in wild country. It ended in a limestone bank. I could see overcast sky and a cave mouth in the rocks. The ground was wet, as if from rain.
A cave man hunkered down close to the cave. He was gnawing the carcass of a small animal, possibly a squirrel.
Peewee tried to shove past me; I stopped her. The cave man did not appear to notice us which struck me as a good idea. His legs looked short but I think he weighed twice what I do and he was muscled like a weight lifter, with short, hairy forearms and knotty biceps and calves. His head was huge, bigger than mine and longer, but his forehead and chin weren't much. His teeth were large and yellow and a front one was broken. I heard bones crunching.
In a museum I would have expected a card reading "Neanderthal Man -circa Last Ice Age." But wax dummies of extinct breeds don't crack bones.
Peewee protested, "Hey, let me look."
He heard. Peewee stared at him, he stared toward us. Peewee squealed; he whirled and ran into the cave, waddling but making time.
I grabbed Peewee. "Let's get out of here!"
"Wait a minute," she said calmly. "He won't come out in a hurry." She tried to push the bush aside.
"Peewee!"
"Try this," she suggested. Her hand was shoving air. "They've got him penned."
I tried it. Something transparent blocked the arch. I could push it a little but not more than an inch. "Plastic?" I suggested. "Like Lucite but springier?"