'Wo. He appears to be randomly pressing buttons. It is to be hoped thathe does not press the wrong ones."
"I thought you could tell the Ship what to do!" said Masklin.
The Thing managed to sound shocked. "Not when a nome is in it," it said.
"I can't tell it not to do what a nome tells it to do. That's what beinga machine is all about."
Grandson Richard, 39, was shoving his way through the pushing, shoutingmass of humans, but it was hard going.
Masklin sighed.
"Ask Grandson Richard, 39, to put me down," he said. Then he added, "Andsay thank you. Say it ... it would have been nice to talk more."
The Thing did the translation.
Grandson Richard, 39, looked surprised. The Thing spoke again. Then hereached up a hand toward Masklin.
If he had to make a list of terrifying moments, Masklin would have putthis one at the top. He'd faced foxes, he'd helped to drive the Truck, he'd flown on a goose-but none of them were half so bad as letting ahuman being actually touch him. The huge whorled fingers uncurled andpassed on either side of his waist. He shut his eyes.
Angalo's booming voice said, "Masklin? Masklin? If anything bad'shappened to you, there's going to be trouble."
Grandson Richard's finger gripped Masklin lightly, as though the humanwas holding something very fragile. Masklin felt himself being slowlylowered toward the ground.
He opened his eyes. There was a forest of human legs around him.
He looked up into Grandson Richard's huge face, and trying to make hisvoice as deep and slow as possible, said the last word any nome said toany human:
"Good-bye."
Then he ran through the maze of feet.
Several humans with official-looking trousers and big boots were standing at the bottom of the ramp. Masklin scurried between them and ran on upward.
Ahead of him blue light shone out of the open hatchway. As he ran he saw two dots appear on the lip of the entrance.
The ramp was long. Masklin hadn't slept for hours. He wished he'd got some sleep on the bed when the humans were studying; it had looked quite comfortable.
Suddenly, all his legs wanted to do was go somewhere close and lie down.
He staggered to the top of the ramp and the dots became the heads of Gurder and Pion. They reached out and pulled him into the Ship.
He turned around and looked down into a sea of human faces, below him.
He'd never looked down on a human before.
They probably couldn't even see him. They're waiting for the little green men, he thought.
"Are you all right?" said Gurder urgently. "Did they do anything to you?"
"I'm fine, I'm fine," murmured Masklin. "No one hurt me."
"You look dreadful."
"We should have talked to them, Gurder," said Masklin. "They need us."
"Are you sure you're all right?" said Gurder, peering anxiously at him.
Masklin's head felt full of cotton wool. "You know how you believed in Arnold Bros. (est. 1905)?" he managed to say.
"Yes," said Gurder.
Masklin gave him a mad, triumphant grin.
"Well, he believed in you too! How about that?
And Masklin folded up, very gently.
Chapter 11
The Ship: The machine used by nomes to leaveEarth. We don't yet know everything about it, butsince it was built by nomes using Science, wewill. - From A Scientific Encyclopedia for theEnquiring Young Nome by Angalo de Haberdasheri.
The ramp wound in. The doorway shut. The Ship rose in the air until itwas high above the buildings.
And it stayed there, while the sun set. The humans below tried shiningcolored lights at it, and playing tunes at it, and eventually just speaking to it in every language known to humans. It didn't seem totake any notice.
Masklin woke up.
He was on a very uncomfortable bed. It was all soft. He hated lying onanything softer than the ground. The Store nomes liked sleeping on fancybits of carpet, but Masklin's bed had been a bit of wood. He'd used apiece of rag for a cover and thought that was luxury.
He sat up and looked around the room. It was fairly empty. There was justthe bed, a table, and a chair.
A table and a chair.
In the Store, the nomes had made their furniture out of matchboxes andcotton reels; the nomes living Outside didn't even know what furniturewas.
This looked rather like human furniture, but it was nome-sized.
Masklin got up and padded across the metal floor to the door. Nome-sized, again. A doorway made by nomes for nomes to walk through.
It led into a corridor, lined with doors. There was an old feel about it.
It wasn't dirty or dusty. It just felt like somewhere that had beenabsolutely clean for a very, very long time.
Something purred toward him. It was a small black box, rather like theThing, mounted on little treads. A little revolving brush on the frontwas sweeping dust into a slot. At least, if there had been any dust itwould have been sweeping it. Masklin wondered how many times it hadindustriously cleaned this corridor, while it waited for nomes to comeback.
It bumped into his foot, beeped at him, and then bustled off in theopposite direction. Masklin followed it.
After a while he passed another one. It was moving along the ceiling witha faint clicking noise, cleaning it.
He turned the corner, and almost walked into Gurder.
"You're up!"
"Yes," said Masklin. "Er. We're on the Ship, right?
"It's amazing ... !" Gurder began. He looked wild-eyed, and his hairwas sticking up at all angles.
"I'm sure it is," said Masklin reassuringly.
"But there's all these ... and there's great big ... and there arethese huge ... and you'd never believe how wide ... and there's somuch ..." Gurder's voice trailed off. He looked like a nome who would have to learn new words before he could describe things.
"It's too big!" he blurted out. He grabbed Masklin's arm.
"Come on," he said, and half ran along the corridor.
"How did you get on?" said Masklin, trying to keep up.
"It was amazing! Angalo touched this panel thing and it just moved asideand then we were inside and there was an elevator thing and then we werein this great big room with a seat and Angalo sat down and all theselights came on and he started pressing buttons and moving things!"
"Didn't you try to stop him?"
Gurder rolled his eyes. "You know Angalo and machines," he said. "But theThing is trying to get him to be sensible. Otherwise we'd be crashinginto stars by now," he added gloomily.
He led the way through another arch into-well, it had to be a room. Itwas inside the Ship. It was just as well he knew that, Masklin thought, because otherwise he'd think it was Outside. It stretched away, as big asone of the departments in the Store.
Vast screens and complicated-looking panels covered the walls. Most ofthem were dark. Shadowy gloom stretched away in every direction, except for a little puddle of light in the very center of the room.
It illuminated Angalo in a big padded chair. He had the Thing in front ofhim, on a sloping metal board studded with switches. He had obviouslybeen arguing with it. When Masklin walked up, he glared at him and said,
"It won't do what I tell it!"
The Thing looked as small and black and square as it could.
"He wants to drive the Ship," it said.
"You're a machine! You have to do what you're told!" snapped Angalo.
"I'm an intelligent machine, and I don't want to end up very flat at thebottom of a deep hole," said the Thing. "You can't pilot the Ship yet."
"How do you know? You won't let me try! I drove the Truck, didn't I? Itwasn't my fault all those trees and streetlights and things got in theway," he added, after catching Masklin's eye.
"I expect the Ship is more difficult," said Masklin diplomatically.
"But I'm learning about it all the time," said Angalo. "It's easy. Allthe buttons have got little pictures on them. Look ..." He pressed abutton.
One of the big screens lit up, showing the crowds outside the Ship.