"A bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich with coleslaw, " said the Thing.
"And coffee. And orange juice."
"How did you know?" said all three nomes in unison.
"He ordered it when be checked in."
"Coleslaw!" moaned Gurder ecstatically. "Bacon! Coffee!"
"And orange juice," said Angalo. "Hah!"
Masklin stared upward. The tray had been left on the edge of a table.
There was a lamp near it. Masklin had lived in the Store long enough to know that where there was a lamp, there was a wire.
He'd never found a wire he couldn't climb.
Regular meals, that was the problem. He'd never been used to them. When he'd lived Outside, he'd got accustomed to going for days without food and then, when food did turn up, eating until he was greasy to the eyebrows. But the Store nomes expected something to eat several times an hour. The Store nomes ate all the time. They only had to miss half a dozen meals and they started to complain.
"I think I could get up there," he said.
"Yes. Yes," said Gurder.
"But is it all right to eat Grandson Richard's sandwich?" Masklin added.
Gurder opened his eyes. He blinked.
"That's an important theological point," he muttered. "But I'm too hungry to think about it, so let's eat it first, and then if it turns out to be wrong to eat it, I promise to be very sorry."
Boom-boom whop whop, foom boom ...
"The human says that the end. is now near and he is facing a curtain," the Thing translated. "This may be a shower curtain."
Masklin pulled himself up the wire and onto the table, feeling very exposed.
It was obvious that the Floridians had a different idea about sandwiches. Sandwiches had been sold back in the Store's Food Hall. The word meant something thin between two slices of damp bread. Floridian sandwiches, on the other hand, filled up an entire tray and if there was any bread it was lurking deep in a jungle of cress and lettuce.
He looked down.
"Hurry up!" said Angalo. "The water's stopped again!"
Boom-boom hoom whop boom whop ...
Masklin pushed aside a drift of green stuff, grabbed the sandwich, hauled it to the edge of the tray and pushed it down onto the floor.
Foom boom boom HOOOOooooOOOOmmmmm-WHOP.
The shower room door opened.
"Come on! Come o«!" Angalo yelled.
Grandson Richard, 39, came out. He took a few steps, and stopped.
He looked at Masklin.
Masklin looked at him.
There are times when Time itself pauses.
Masklin realized that he was standing at one of those points where History takes a deep breath and decides what to do next.
I can stay here, he thought. I can use the Thing to translate, and I cantry to explain everything to him. I can tell him how important it is forus to have a home of our own. I can ask him if he can do something tohelp the nomes in the quarry. I can tell him how the Store nomes thoughtthat his grandfather created the World. He'll probably enjoy knowingthat. He looks friendly, for a human.
He might help us.
Or he'll trap us somehow, and call other humans, and they'll all startmilling around and mooing, and we'll be put in a cage or something, andprodded. It'll be just like the Concorde drivers. They probably didn'twant to hurt us, they just didn't understand what we were. And we haven'tgot time to let them find out.
It's their world, not ours.
It's too risky. No. I never realized it before, but we've got to do itour way.
Grandson Richard, 39, slowly reached out a hand and said, Whoomp?
Masklin took a running jump.
Nomes can fall quite a long way without being hurt, and in any case abacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich broke his fall.
There was a blur of activity and the sandwich rose on three pairs oflegs. It raced across the floor, leaking mayonnaise.
Grandson Richard, 39, threw a towel at it. He missed.
The sandwich leapt over the doorway and vanished into the chirping, velvety, dangerous night.
There were other dangers besides falling off the branch. One of the frogswas eaten by a lizard. Several others turned back as soon as they wereout of the shade of their bromeliad because, as they pointed out ...
mipmip ... mipmip... .
The frog in the lead looked back at his dwindling group. There was one... and one ... and one ... and one ... and one, which added upto-it wrinkled its forehead in the effort of calculation-yes, one.
Some of the one were getting frightened. The leading frog realized thatif they were ever going to get to the new flower and survive there, there'd need to be a lot more than one frog. They need at least one, orpossibly even one. He gave them a croak of encouragement.
Mipmip, he said.
Chapter 5
Florida (or Floridia): A place where alligators, long-necked turtles, and space shuttles may befound. A place that is warm and wet, and there aregeese. Only foolish people think it is really anorange drink. Bacon, lettuce, and tomatosandwiches may be found here also. A lot more interesting than many other places. The shape whenseen from the air is like a bit stuck on a biggerbit. - From A Scientific Encyclopedia for theEnquiring Young Nome by Angalo de Haberdasheri.
Let the eye of your imagination be a camera... .
This is the globe of the world, a glittering blue and white ball like theornament on some unimaginable Christmas tree.
Find a continent ... Focus.
This is a continent, a jigsaw of yellows, greens, and browns.
Find a place... . Focus.
This is a bit of the continent, sticking out into the warmer sea to thesoutheast. Most of its inhabitants call it Florida.
Actually, they don't. Most of its inhabitants don't call it anything.
They don't even know it exists. Most of them have six legs, and buzz. Alot of them have eight legs, and spend a lot of time in webs waiting forsix-legged inhabitants to arrive for lunch. Many of the rest have fourlegs, and bark or moo or even lie in swamps pretending to be logs. Infact, only a tiny proportion of the inhabitants of Florida have twolegs, and even most of them don't call it Florida. They just go tweet, and fly around a lot.
Mathematically, an almost insignificant number of living things inFlorida call it Florida. But they're the ones who matter. At least, intheir opinion. And their opinion is the one that matters. In theiropinion.
Find a highway... . Focus... . Traffic swishing quietly through thesoft warm rain ... focus ... high weeds on the bank ... focus ...
grass moving in a way that isn't quite like grass moving in the wind ... Focus ... a pair of tiny eyes... .
Focus... . Focus... . Focus. ... Click!
Masklin crept back through the grass to the nomes' camp, if that's whatyou could call a tiny dry space under a scrap of thrown-away plastic.
It had been hours since they'd run away from Grandson Richard, 39, asGurder kept on putting it. The sun was rising behind the rain clouds.
They'd crossed a highway while there was no traffic, they'd blunderedaround in damp undergrowth, scurrying away from every chirp andmysterious croak, and finally they'd found the plastic. And they'd slept.
Masklin stayed on guard for a while, but he wasn't certain what he wasguarding against.
There was a positive side. The Thing had been listening to radio andtelevision and had found the place the going-straight-up shuttles wentfrom. It was only eighteen miles away. And they'd definitely madeprogress. They'd gone-oh, call it half a mile. And at least it was warm.
Even the rain was warm. And the bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich washolding up.
But there were still almost eighteen miles to go.
"When did you say the launch is?" said Masklin.
"Four hours time," said the Thing.
"That means we'll have to travel at more than four miles an hour," saidAngalo gloomily.
Masklin nodded. A nome, trying hard, could probably cover a mile and ahalf in an hour over open ground.
He hadn't given much thought to how they could get the Thing into space.
If he'd thought about it at all, he'd imagined that they could find theshuttle plane and wedge the Thing on it somewhere. If possible maybethey could go, too, although he wasn't too sure about that. The Thingsaid it was cold in space, and there was no air.