Apparently Clark thought he had told me, or that I already knew-but he hadn't and I didn't. Uncle Tom was already gone. I felt suddenly lost and forlorn. "Clark, are you sure?"
"Sure, I'm sure. She darn well saw to it that I saw him go. Jojo loaded him in like a sack of meal and I
saw the wagon take off into the smog. Uncle Tom is in Venusberg by now."
I suddenly felt much better. "Then he'll rescue us!" Clark looked bored. "Pod, don't be stupid squared." "But he will! Uncle Tom ... and Mr. Chairman
and Dexter-"
He cut me off. "Oh, for Pete's sake, Poddy! Analyze
it. You're Uncle Tom, you're in Venusberg, you've got all the help possible. How do you find this place?"
"Uh ...' I stopped. "Uh..." I said again. Then I closed my mouth and left it closed.
"Uh," he agreed. "Exactly Uh. You don't find it. Oh, in eight or ten years with a few thousand people doing nothing but searching, you could find it by elimination. Fat lot of good that would do. Get this through your little head, Sis: nobody is going to rescue us, nobody can possibly help us. We either break out of here tonightr we've had it." -
"Why tonight? Oh, tonight's all right with me. But if we don't get a chance tonight-"
"Then at nine-sixteen tomorrow," he interrupted, "we're dead."
"Huh? Why?"
"Figure it out yourself, Pod. Put yourself in old Gruesome's place. Tomorrow the Tricorn leaves. Figure it both ways: Uncle Tom leaves in it, or Uncle Tom won't leave. Okay, you've got his niece and nephew. What do you do with them? Be logical about it. Her sort of logic."
I tried, I really tried. But maybe I've been brought up wrong for that sort of logic; I can't seem to visualize killing somebody just because he or she had become a nuisance to me.
But I could see that Clark was right that far: after ship's departure tomorrow we will simply be nuisances to Mrs. Grew. If Uncle Tom doesn't leave, we are most special nuisances-and if he does leave and she
is counting on his worry about us to keep him in line at Luna City (it wouldn't, of course, but that is what she is counting on anyway), in that case every day she risks the possibility that we might escape and get word to Uncle.
All right, maybe I can't imagine just plain murder; it's outside my experience. But suppose both Clark and I came down with green pox and died- That would certainly be convenient for Mrs. Grew-now, wouldn't it?
"I scan it," I agreed.
"Good," he said. "I'll teach you a thing or four yet, Pod. Either we make it tonight ... or just past nine tomorrow she chills us both ... and she chills Jojo, too, and sets fire to the place."
"Why Jojo? I mean Pinhead."
"That's the real tipoff, Pod. The happy-duster. This is Venus... and yet she let us see that she was suppl~zing dust to a duster. She won't leave any witnesses.'
"Uncle Tom is a witness, too."
"What if he is? She's counting on his keeping his lip zipped until the conference is over....nd by then she's back on Earth and has lost herself among eight billion people. Hang around here and risk being caught? Pod, she's going to wait here only long enough to find out whether or not Uncle Tom catches the Tricorn. Then she'll carry out either Plan A, or Plan B-but both plans cancel us out. Get that through your fuzzy head."
I shivered. "All right. I've got it."
He grinned. "But we don't wait. We execute our own plan-my plan-first." He looked unbearably smug and added, "You fubbed utterly and came out here without doing any of the things I told you to
and Uncle Tom fubbed just about as badly, thinking he could make a straight payoff ... but I came out here prepared!"
"You did? With what? Your slide rule? Or maybe those comic books?"
Clark said, "Pod, you know I never read comic books; they were just protective coloration."
(And this is true, so far as I know- I thought I had uncovered his Secret Vice.)
"Then what?" I demanded.
"Just compose your soul in patience, Sister dear. All in good time." He moved his bag back of the bed, then added, "Move around here where you can watch down the hallway. If Lady Macbeth shows up, I'm reading comic books."
I did as he told me to but asked him one more questionn another subject, as quizzing Clark when he doesn't want to answer is as futile as slicing water. "Clark? You figure Mrs. Grew is part of the gang that smuggled the bomb?"
He blinked and looked stupid. "What bomb?"
"The one they paid you to sneak aboard the Tn corn, of course! What bomb indeed!"
"Oh, that. Golly, Poddy, you believe everything you're told. When you get to Terra, don't let anybody sell you the Pyramids-they're not for sale." He went on working and I smothered my annoyance.
Presently he said, "She couldn't possibly know anything about any bombs in the Tricorn, or she wouldn't have been a passenger in it herself."
Clark can always make me feel stupid. This was so obvious (after he pointed it out) that I refrained from comment. "How do you figure it, then?"
"Well, she could have been hired by the same people and not have known that they were just using her as a reserve."
My mind raced and another answer came up. "In which case there could be still a third plot to get Uncle Tom between here and Luna!"
"Could be. Certainly a lot of people are taking an
interest in him. But I figure it for two groups. One group-almost certainly from Mars-doesn t want Uncle Tom to be there. at all. Another group-from Earth probably, at least old Gruesome actually did come from Earth-wants him to be there but wants him to sing their song. Otherwise when she had Uncle
Tom, she would never have .turned him loose; she would just have had Jojo shove him into a soft spot and wait for the bubbles to stop coming up." Clark dug out something and looked at it. "Pod, repeat this back and don't make a' sound. You are exactly twentythree kilometers from South Gate and almost due south of it-south seven degrees west."
I repeated it. "How do you know?"
He held -up a small black object about as big as two
• - packs of cigarettes. "Inertial tracker, infantry model. You can buy them anywhere here, anybody who ever
goes out into the bush carries one." He handed it to me.
I looked at it with interest; I had never seen one that small. Sand rats use them, of course, but they use bigger, more accurate ones mounted in their sand buggies-and anyhow, on Mars you- can always see
either the stars or the Sun. Not like this gloomy place!
I even knew how it' worked, more or less, because
inertial astrogation is a commonplace for spaceships
and guided missiles-vector integration of accelera
tions and times. But whereas the Tn corn's inertial
• tracker is- supposed to be good for one part in a mil
lion, this little gadget probably couldn't be read closer
than one in a thousand.
But it improved our chances at least a thousand to one! . -
"Clark! Did Uncle Tom have one of these? 'Cause if he did-"
He shook his hetid. "If he did, he never 'got a chance
- to read it. I figure they gassed him at once; he was
limp when they lifted him out of the air wagon. And I never had a chance to tell him whefe this dump is because this has been my first chance to look at mine. Now put it in your purse; you're going to use it to get back to Venusberg.'