"I suppose there's absolutely no possibility that launches have anythingto do with lunches?" said Masklin wistfully.
'Wo."
"Pity. Well-have you any suggestions about how we get on the machine?"
"That is almost impossible."
"I thought you'd say that."
"But you could put me on, " the Thing added.
"Yes, but how? Tie you to the outside?"
'Wo. Get me close enough and I will do the rest."
"What rest?"
"Call the Ship."
"Yes, where is the Ship? I'm amazed satellites and things haven't bumped into it."
"It is waiting."
"You're a great help, sometimes."
"Thank you."
"That was meant to be sarcastic."
"I know."
There was a rustling beside Masklin and his Floridian co-rider pushed aside a feather. It was the boy he had seen with Shrub. He'd said nothing, but just stared at Masklin and the Thing. Now he grinned, and said afew words.
"He wants to know if you feel sick."
"I feel fine," Masklin lied. "What's his name?"
"His name is Pion. He is Shrub's oldest son."
Pion gave Masklin another encouraging grin.
"He wants to know what it is like in a jet," said the Thing. "He says it sounds exciting. They see them sometimes, but they keep away from them."
The goose canted sideways. Masklin tried to hang on with his toes as well as his fingers.
"It must be much more exciting than geese, he says," said the Thing.
"Oh, I don't know," said Masklin weakly.
Landing was much worse than flying. It would have been better on water, Masklin was told later, but Shrub had brought them down on land. Thegeese didn't like that much. It meant that they had almost to stand onthe air, flapping furiously, and then drop the last few inches.
Pion helped Masklin down onto the ground, which seemed to him to bemoving from side to side. The other travelers tottered toward him throughthe throng of birds.
"The ground!" panted Angalo. "It was so close! No one seemed to mind!"
He sagged to his knees.
"And they made honking noises!" he said. "And kept swinging from side to side! And they're all knobbly under the feathers!"
Masklin flexed his arms to let the tension out.
The land around them didn't seem a lot different from the place they'd left, except that the vegetation was lower and Masklin couldn't see any water.
"Shrub says that this is as close as the geese can go," the Thing said.
"It is too dangerous to go any farther."
Shrub nodded, and pointed to the horizon.
There was a white shape on it.
"That?" said Masklin.
"That's it?" said Angalo.
"Yes."
"Doesn't look very big," said Gurder quietly.
"It's still quite a long way off," said Masklin.
"I can see helicopters," said Angalo. "No wonder Shrub didn't want to take the geese any closer."
"And we must be going," said Masklin. "We've got an hour, and I reckon that's barely enough. Er. We'd better say good-bye to Shrub. Can you ex plain, Thing? Tell her that-that we'll try to find her again. Afterward.
If everything's all right. I suppose."
"If there is any afterward," Gurder added. He looked like a badly washed dishcloth.
Shrub nodded when the Thing had finished translating, and then pushed Pion forward.
The Thing told Masklin what she wanted.
"What? We can't take him with us!" said Masklin.
"Young names in Shrub's people are encouraged to travel," said the Thing.
"Pion is only fourteen months old and already he has been to Alaska."
"Try to explain that we're not going to a Laska," said Masklin. "Try to make her understand that all sorts of things could happen to him!"
The Thing translated.
"She says that is good. A growing boy should always seek out new experiences."
"What? Are you translating me properly?" said Masklin suspiciously.
"Yes."
"Well, have you told her it's dangerous?"
"Yes. She says that danger is what being alive is all about."
"But he could be killed!" Masklin shrieked.
"Then he will go up into the sky and become a star."
"Is that what they believe?"
"Yes. They believe that the operating system of a nome starts off as a goose. If it is a good goose, it becomes a nome. When a good nome dies, NASA takes it up into the sky and it becomes a star."
"What's an operating system?" said Masklin. This was religion. He always felt out of his depth with religion.
"The thing inside you that tells you what you are," said the Thing.
"It means a soul," said Gurder wearily.
"Never heard such a lot of nonsense," said Angalo cheerfully. "At least, not since we were in the Store and believed we came back as garden ornaments, eh?" He nudged Gurder in the ribs.
Instead of getting angry about this, Gurder just looked even more despondent.
"Let the lad come if he likes," Angalo went on. "He shows the right spirit. He reminds me of me when I was like him."
"His mother says that if he gets homesick be can always find a goose to bring him back, " said the Thing.
Masklin opened his mouth to speak.
But there were times when you couldn't say anything because there was nothing to say. If you had to explain anything to someone else, then there had to be something you were both sure of, someplace to start, and Masklin wasn't sure that there was anyplace like that around Shrub. He wondered how big the world was to her. Probably bigger than he could imagine. But it stopped at the sky.
"Oh, all right," he said. "But we have to go right away. No time for long tearful-"
Pion nodded to his mother and came and stood by Masklin, who couldn't think of anything to say. Even later on, when he understood the geese nomes better, he never quite got used to the way they cheerfully parted from one another. Distances didn't seem to mean much to them.
"Come on, then," he managed.
Gurder glowered at Topknot, who had insisted on coming this far. "I really wish I could talk to that nome," he said.
"Shrub told me he's quite a decent nome, really," said Masklin. "He's just a bit set in his ways."
"Just like you," said Angalo.
"Me? I'm not-" Gurder began.
"Of course you're not," said Masklin, soothingly. "Now, let's go."
They jogged through scrub two or three times as high as they were.
"We'll never have time," Gurder panted.
"Save your breath for running," said Angalo.
"Do they have smoked salmon on shuttles?" said Gurder.
"Dunno," said Masklin, pushing his way through a particularly tough clump of grass.
"No, they don't," said Angalo authoritatively. "I remember reading about it in a book. They eat out of tubes."
The nomes ran in silence while they thought about this.
"What, toothpaste?" said Gurder, after a while.
"No, not toothpaste. Of course not toothpaste. I'm sure not toothpaste."
"Well, what else do you know that comes in tubes?"
Angalo thought about this.
"Glue?" he said, uncertainly.
"Doesn't sound like a good meal to me. Toothpaste and glue?"
"The people who drive the space jets must like it. They were all smiling in the picture I saw," said Angalo.
"That wasn't smiling, that was probably just them trying to get their teeth apart," said Gurder.
"No, you've got it all wrong," Angalo decided, thinking fast. "They have to have their food in tubes because of gravity."
"What about gravity?"
"There isn't any."
"Any what?"
"Gravity. So everything floats around."