It paused.
"Oh," said Masklin. He thought about it. "These would be the little green men you mentioned?"
"Very-wait a moment. Wait a moment."
"What? What?" said Masklin urgently.
"I can hear the Ship."
Masklin listened as hard as he could.
"I can't hear a thing," he said.
"Not sound. Radio."
"Where is it? Where is it, Thing? You've always said the Ship's up there, but where?"
The remaining tree frogs crouched among the moss to escape the heat of the afternoon sun. Low in the eastern sky was a sliver of white. It would be nice to think that the tree frogs had legends about it. It would be nice to think that they thought the sun and moon were distant flowers-a yellow one by day, a white one by night. It would be nice to think they had legends about them, and said that when a good frog died its soul would go to the big flowers in the sky.
The trouble is that it's frogs we're talking about here. Their name for the sun was ... mipmip... . Their name for the moon was ...
mipmip... . Their name was everything was ... mipmip ... and when you're stuck with a vocabulary of one word it's pretty hard to have legends about anything at all.
The leading frog, however, was dimly aware that there was something wrong with the moon.
It was growing brighter.
"We left the Ship on the moon?" said Masklin. "Why?"
"That's what your ancestors decided to do," said the Thing. "So they could keep an eye on it, I assume."
Masklin's face lit up slowly, like clouds at sunrise.
"You know," he said, excitedly, "Right back before all this, right back when we used to live in the old hole, I used to sit out at nights and watch the moon. Perhaps in my blood I really knew that, up there-"
'Wo, what you were experiencing was probably primitive superstition," said the Thing.
Masklin deflated. "Oh. Sorry."
"And now, please be quiet. The Ship is feeling lost and wants to be told what to do. It has just woken up after fifteen thousand years."
"I'm not very good at mornings myself," Masklin said.
There is no sound on the moon, but this doesn't matter, because there is no one to hear anything. Sound would just be a waste.
But there is light.
Fine moondust billowed high across the ancient plains of the moon's dark crescent, expanding in boiling clouds that went high enough to catch the rays of the sun. They glittered.
Down below, something was digging itself out.
"We left it in a holey said Masklin.
Lights rippled back and forth across all surfaces of the Thing.
"Don't say that's why you always lived in holes," it said. "Other nomes don't live in holes."
"No, that's true," said Masklin. "I ought to stop thinking only about the-"
He suddenly went quiet. He stared out of the glass tank, where a human was trying to interest him in marks on a blackboard.
"You've got to stop it," he said. "Right now. Stop the Ship. We've got it all wrong. Thing, we can't go! It doesn't belong to just us! We can't take the Ship!"
The three nomes lurking near the shuttle launching place watched the sky.
As the sun neared the horizon the moon sparkled like a Christmas decoration.
"It must be caused by the Ship!" said Angalo. "It must be!" He beamed at the others. "That's it, then. It's on its way!"
"I never thought it would work." Gurder said.
Angalo slapped Pion on the back, and pointed.
"See that, my lad?" he said. "That's the Ship, that is! Ours!"
Gurder rubbed his chin, and nodded thoughtfully at Pion.
"Yes," he said, "That's right. Ours."
"Masklin says there's all kinds of stuff up there," said Angalo dreamily.
"And masses of space. That's what space is well known for, lots of space.
Masklin said the Ship goes faster than light goes, which is probablywrong, otherwise how'd you see anything? You'd turn the lights on and allthe light would drop backward out of the room. But it's pretty fast."
Gurder looked back at the sky again. Something at the back of his mind was pushing its way to the front, and giving him a curious gray feeling.
"Our Ship," he said. "The one that brought nomes here."
"Yeah, that's right," said Angalo, hardly hearing him.
"And it'll take us all back," Gurder went on.
"That's what Masklin said, and-"
"All nomes," said Gurder. His voice was as flat and heavy as a sheet of lead.
"Sure. Why not? I expect I'll soon work out how to drive it back to the quarry, and we can pick them all up. And Pion here, of course."
"What about Pion's people?" said Gurder.
"Oh, they can come too," said Angalo expansively. "There's probably even room for their geese!"
"And the others?"
Angalo looked surprised. "What others?"
"Shrub said there were lots of other groups of nomes. Everywhere."
Angalo looked blank. "Oh, them. Well, I don't know about them. But we need the Ship. You know what it's been like ever since we left the Store."
"But if we take the Ship away, what will they have if they need it?"
Masklin had just asked the same question.
The Thing said, "01001101010101110101010010110101110010."
"What did you say?"
The Thing sounded tetchy. "If I lose concentration, there might not be a Ship for anyone, " it said. "I am sending fifteen thousand instructions per second."
Masklin said nothing.
"That's a lot of instructions, " the Thing added.
"By rights the Ship must belong to all the nomes in the world," said Masklin.
"010011001010010010-"
"Oh, shut up and tell me when the Ship is going to get here."
"0101011001 ... Which do you want me to do? ... 01001100 ..."
"What?"
"I can shut up or I can tell you when the Ship is going to arrive. I can't do both."
"Please tell me when the Ship is going to arrive," said Masklin patiently, "and then shut up."
"Four minutes."
"Four minutes!"
"I could be three seconds off," said the Thing. "But I calculate it as four minutes. Only now it's three minutes thirty-eight seconds. It'll be three minutes and thirty-seven seconds any second now-"
"I can't hang around in here if it's coming that soon!" said Masklin, all thoughts of his duty to the nomes of the world temporarily forgotten.
"How can I get out? This thing's got a lid on."
"Do you want me to shut up first, or get you out and then shut up?" said the Thing.
"Please!"
"Have the humans seen you move?" said the Thing.
"What do you mean?"
"Do they know bow fast you can run?"
"I don't know," said Masklin. "I suppose not."
"Get ready to run, then. But first, put your hands over your ears."
Masklin thought it would be best to obey. The Thing could be deliberately infuriating at times, but it didn't pay to ignore its advice.
Lights on the Thing made a brief star-shaped pattern.
It started to wail. The sound went up and then went beyond Masklin's hearing. He could feel it even with his hands over his ears; it seemed to be making unpleasant bubbles in his head.
He opened his mouth to shout at the Thing, and the walls exploded. One moment there was glass, and the next there were bits of glass, drifting out like a jigsaw puzzle where every piece had suddenly decided it wanted some personal space. The lid slid down, almost hitting him.
"Now, pick me up and run," ordered the Thing, before the shards had spilled across the table.