“A rifle shell that big?” Remy flicked a leaf away with his twig. “Why that’d be big enough to climb into-“
Remy stiffened as though he had been jabbed. Rising to his knees, he grabbed my arm, his mouth opening wordlessly. He jabbed his twig repeatedly at the railings dump, yanking my arm at the same time.
“Remy!” I cried, alarmed at his antics. “What on earth’s the matter?”
“It’s-” he gasped. “It’s a rocket! A rocket! A spaceship! That guy’s building a spaceship and he’s got it down in the shaft of the Selkirk!”
Remy babbled in my ear all the way home, telling again and again why it had to be a spaceship and, by the time we got home, I began to believe him. The sight of the house acted as an effective silencer for Remy.
“This is a secret,” he hissed as we paused on the porch before going into the house. “Don’t you dare say a word to anyone!”
I promised and kept my promise but I was afraid for Remy all evening. He’s as transparent as a baby when he gets excited and I was afraid he’d give it away any minute. Both Mother and Father watched him and exchanged worried looks-he acted feverish. But somehow we made it through the evening.
His arguments weren’t nearly so logical by the cold light of early morning and his own conviction and enthusiasms were thinned by the hard work he had to put in before noon at the campsites.
Armed with half a cake and a half-dozen oranges, we cautiously approached the Selkirk that afternoon. My shoulders felt rigid as we approached the old shack and I Sensed apprehensively around for the shotgun barrel-I knew that shape! But nothing happened. No one was home.
“Well, dern!” Remy sat down by me on a boulder near the door. “Where d’you suppose he went?”
“Fishing, maybe,” I suggested. “Or to town.”
“We would have seen him if he were fishing on the Cayuse. And he’s an Outsider-he’d have to use the road to go to town, and that goes by our place.”
“He could have hiked across the hills instead,”
“That’d be silly. He’d just parallel the road that way.”
“Well, since he isn’t here-” I paused, lifting an inquiring eyebrow.
“Yeah! Let’s do. Let’s go take a look in the shaft!” Remy’s eyes were bright with excitement. “Put this stuff somewhere where the ants won’t get into the cake. We’ll eat it later, if he doesn’t turn up.”
We scrambled across the jumble of broken rock that was the top of the dump, but when we arrived where the mouth of the shaft should be, there was nothing but more broken rock. We stumbled and slipped back and forth a couple of times before I perched up on a boulder and, closing my eyes, Sensed for metal.
It was like being in a shiny, smooth flood. No matter on which side of me I turned, the metal was there and, with that odd illusion that happens visually sometimes, the metal under me suddenly seemed to cup upward and contain me instead of my perching over it. It was frightening and I opened my eyes.
“Well?” asked Remy, impatiently.
“It’s there,” I said. “It’s covered over, but it’s there. We’re too close, now, though. I can’t get any idea of shape at all. It could be a barn door or a sheet of foil or a solid cube. All I know is that it’s metal, it’s under us, and there’s lots of it.”
“That’s not much help.” Remy sagged with disappointment.
“No, it’s not,” I said.
“Let’s lift,” said Remy. “You did better from the air.”
“Lift? With him around?”
“He’s not around now,” said Remy.
“He might be and we just don’t Sense him.”
“How could we keep from it?” asked Remy. “We can always Sense Outsiders. He has no way to shield-“
“But if that thing’s a rocket and he’s in it, that means he’d be shielded-and that means there’s some way to get in it-“
We looked at each other and then scrambled down the dump. It was pretty steep and rugged and we lifted part of the way. Otherwise we might have ended up at the bottom of a good-sized rockslide-us under. We searched the base of the hill, trying to find an entrance. We searched all afternoon, stopping only a few minutes to shake the ants off of and out of the cake and eat it and the oranges, burying the peels carefully before we went back to work. We finally gave up, just before sunset, and sprawled in the aspen thicket at the base of the dump, catching our breath before heading home.
I raised up on one elbow, peering upward to the heights 1 couldn’t see. “He’s there now,” I said, exasperated. “He’s back. How’d he get past us?”
“I’m too tired to care,” said Remy, rubbing the elbow he’d banged against a rock-and that’s pretty tired for Remy.
“He’s crying,” I said softly. “He’s crying like a child.”
“Is he hurt?” Remy asked, straightening.
“No-o-o, I don’t think so,” I said, trying to reach him more fully. “It’s sorrow and loneliness-that’s why he’s crying.”
We went back the next day. This time I took a deep-dish apple pie along. Most men have a sweet tooth and miss desserts the most when they’re camping. It was a juicy pie and, after I had dribbled juice down the front of me and down onto Remy where he lifted below, I put it into a nice, level inanimate lift and let it trail behind me.
I don’t know exactly what we expected, but it was rather an anticlimax to be welcomed casually at the Selkirk-no surprise, no shotgun, no questions, but plenty of thanks for the pie. Between gulps and through muffling mouthfuls, we learned that the old man’s name was Thomas.
“Should have been Doubting Thomas,” he told us unhappily. “Didn’t believe a word my son said. And when he used up all our money buying-” He swallowed hard and blinked and changed the subject.
We never did find out much about him and, of course, ignored completely whatever it was in the shaft of the Selkirk. At least we did that trip and for many more that followed. Remy was learning patience the hard way, but I must admit he was doing wonderfully well for Remy. One thing we didn’t find out was the whereabouts of his son. Most of the time for Thomas his son had no other name except My Son. Sometimes he talked as though his son were just over the hill. Other times he was so long gone that he was half forgotten.
Not long after we got on visiting terms with Tom, I felt I’d better alert Remy. “He’s not completely sane,” I told him.
“Sometimes he’s as clear as can be. Other times his thoughts are as tangled as baling wire.”
“Old age,” suggested Remy. “He’s almost eighty.”
“It might be,” I said. “But he’s carrying a burden of some kind. If I were a Sorter, I could Go-In to him and tell what it is, hut every time he thinks of whatever is troubling him, his thoughts hurt him and get all tangled up.”
“Harmless, though,” said Remy.
“Yes?” I brought back to his mind the shotgun blast we had been greeted with. Remy moved uneasily. “We startled him then,” he said.
“No telling what will startle him. Remember, he’s not always tracking logically. We’d better tread lightly for a while.”
One day about a week later, a most impatient week for Remy, we were visiting with Tom again-or rather watching him devour half a lemon pie at one sitting-when we got off onto mines and mining towns.
“Father said the Selkirk was quite a mine when it was new. They took over a million dollars’ worth of silver out of her. Are you working her any?” Remy held his breath as he waited Tom’s response to this obvious fishing.
“No,” said Tom. “I’m not a miner. Don’t know anything about mines and ores and stuff. I was a sheet metal man before I retired.” He frowned and stirred uneasily. “I can’t remember much of what I used to do. My memory isn’t so good any more. Not since my son filled me up with this idea of getting to the moon.” I felt Remy freeze beside me. “He’s talked it so much and worked at it so hard and sunk everything we ever owned into it that I can’t think of anything else any more either. It’s like a horn blaring in my ears all the time. Gets so bad sometimes—” He pressed his hands to his ears and shook his head.