"All right, Angalo," he said. "Lead the way. I know you want to."
It was two minutes later.
The three of them were sitting under a seat.
Masklin had never really thought about the insides of aircraft. He'd spent days up on the cliff behind the quarry, watching them take off. Of course, he'd assumed there were humans inside. Humans got everywhere. Buthe'd never really thought about the insides. If ever there was anythingthat looked made up of outsides, it was a plane.
But it had been too much for Gurder. He was in tears.
"Electric light," he moaned. "And more carpets! And big soft seats!
They've even got antimacassars on them! And there isn't any mud anywhere!
There are even signs'."
"There, there," said Angalo helplessly, patting him on the shoulder. "Itwas a good Store, I know." He looked up at Masklin.
"You've got to admit it's unsettling," he said. "I was expecting ...
well, wires and pipes and exciting levers and things. Not somethinglike the Arnold Bros. Furnishings Department!"
"We shouldn't stay here," said Masklin. "There'll be humans all over theplace pretty soon. Remember what the Thing said."
They helped Gurder up and trotted under the rows of seats with himbetween them. But it wasn't like the Store in one important way, Masklin realized. There weren't many places to hide. In the Store there wasalways something to get behind or under or wriggle through.
He could already hear distant sounds. In the end they found a gap behinda curtain, in a part of the aircraft where there were no seats. Masklincrawled inside, pushing the Thing in front of him.
They weren't distant sounds now. They were very close. He turned hishead, and saw a human foot a few inches away.
At the back of the gap there was a hole in the metal wall where somethick wires passed through. It was just big enough for Angalo andMasklin, and big enough for a terrified Gurder with the two of thempulling on his arms. There wasn't too much room, but at least theycouldn't be seen.
They couldn't see, either. They lay packed together in the gloom, trying to make themselves comfortable on the wires.
After a while Gurder said, "I feel a bit better now."
Masklin nodded.
There were noises all around them. From somewhere far below came a series of metallic clanks. There was the mournful sound of human voices, and then a jolt.
"Thing?" he whispered.
"Yes?"
"What's happening?"
"The plane is getting ready to become airborne."
"Oh."
"Do you know what that means?"
"No. Not really."
"It is going to fly in the air. 'Borne' means to be carried, and 'air'
means air. To be borne in the air. Airborne."
Masklin could hear Angalo's breathing.
He settled himself as best he could between the metal wall and a thick bundle of wires, and stared into the darkness.
The nomes didn't speak. After a while there was a faint jerk and a sensation of movement.
Nothing else happened. It went on not happening.
Eventually Gurder, his voice trembling with terror, said, "Is it too late to get off, if we-?"
A sudden distant thundering noise finished the sentence for him. A dull rumbling shook everything around them very gently but very firmly.
Then there was a heavy pause, like the moment a ball must feel between the time it's thrown up and the time it starts to come down, and something picked up all three of them and slid them into a struggling heap.
The floor tried to become the wall.
The nomes hung on to one another, stared into one another's faces, and screamed.
After a while, they stopped. There didn't seem much point in continuing.
Besides, they were out of breath.
The floor very gradually became a proper floor again, and didn't show any further ambitions to become a wall.
Masklin pushed Angalo's foot off his neck.
"I think we're flying," he said.
"Is that what it was?" said Angalo weakly. "It looks kind of more graceful when you see it from the ground."
"Is anyone hurt?"
Gurder pulled himself upright.
"I'm all bruises," he said. He brushed himself down. And then, because there is no changing nomish nature, he added, "Is there any food around?"
They hadn't thought about food.
Masklin stared behind him into the tunnel of wires.
"Maybe we won't need any," he said, uncertainly. "How long will it take to get to Florida, Thing?"
"The captain has just said it will be many hours," said the Thing.*
[* An hour lasts nearly as long as half a day, to a nome.]
"We'll starve to death!" said Gurder.
"Maybe there's something to hunt?" said Angalo hopefully.
"I shouldn't think so," Masklin said. "This doesn't look a mouse kind ofplace."
"The humans'll have food," said Gurder. "Humans always have food."
"I knew you were going to say that," said Angalo.
"It's just common sense."
"I wonder if we can see out a window?" said Angalo. "I'd like to see howfast we're going. All the trees and things whizzing past, and so on?"
"Look," said Masklin, before things got out of hand. "Let's just wait fora while, eh? Everyone calm down. Have a bit of a rest. Then maybe we canlook for some food."
They settled down again. At least it was warm and dry. Back in the dayswhen he'd lived in a hole in a bank Masklin had spent far too much timecold and wet to turn up his nose at a chance to sleep warm and dry.
He dozed.
Airborne.
Air ... born ...
Perhaps there were hundreds of nomes who lived in the airplanes in thesame way that nomes had lived in the Store. Perhaps they got on withtheir lives under the carpeted floor somewhere, while they were whiskedto all the places Masklin had seen on the only map the nomes had everfound. It had been in a pocket diary, and the names of the faraway placeswritten on it were like magic-Africa, Australia, China, Equator, Printedin Hong Kong, Iceland... .
Perhaps they'd never looked out the windows. Perhaps they'd never knownthat they were moving at all.
He wondered if this was what Grimma had meant by all the stuff about thefrogs in the flower. She'd read it in a book. You could live your wholelife in some tiny place and think it was the whole world. The troublewas, he'd been angry. He hadn't wanted to listen.
Well, he was out of the flower now and no mistake.
The frog had brought some other young frogs to its spot among the leavesat the edge of the world of the flower.
They stared at the branch. There wasn't just one flower out there, therewere dozens, although the frogs weren't able to think like this becausefrogs can't count beyond one.
They saw lots of ones.
They stared at them. Staring is one of the few things frogs are good at.
Thinking isn't. It would be nice to say that the tiny frogs thought longand hard about the new flower, about life in the old flower, about theneed to explore, about the possibility that the world was bigger than a pool with petals around the edge.
In fact, what they thought was ... mipmip ... mipmip ... mipmip.
But what they felt was too big for one flower to contain.
Carefully, slowly, not at all certain why, they plopped down onto the branch.
There was a polite beeping from the Thing.
"You may be interested to know," it said, "that we've broken the sound barrier."
Masklin turned wearily to the others.
"All right, own up," he said. "Who broke it?"
"Don't look at me," said Angalo. "I didn't touch anything."
Masklin crawled to the edge of the hole and peered out.
There were human feet out there. Female human feet, by the look of it.
They usually were the ones with the less practical shoes.
You could learn a lot about humans by looking at their shoes. It was about all a nome had to look at, most of the time. The rest of the human was normally little more than the wrong end of a pair of nostrils, a long way up.