Have Space Suit - Will Travel

Chapter 9

I had been dreaming that I was home; this awoke me with a jerk. "Mother Thing!"

("Good morning, my son. I am happy to see that you are feeling better.")

"Oh, I feel fine. I've had a good night's rest-" I stared, then blurted: "-you're dead!" I couldn't stop it.

Her answer sounded warmly, gently humorous, the way you correct a child who has made a natural mistake. ("No, dear, I was merely frozen. I am not as frail as you seem to think me.")

I blinked and looked again. "Then it wasn't a dream?"

("No, it was not a dream.")

"I thought I was home and-" I tried to sit up, managed only to raise my head. "I am home!" My room! Clothes closet on the left-hall door behind the Mother Thing-my desk on the right, piled with books and with a Centerville High pennant over it-window beyond it, with the old elm almost filling it-sun-speckled leaves stirring in a breeze.

My slipstick was where I had left it.

Things started to wobble, then I figured it out. I had dreamed only the silly part at the end. Vega-I had been groggy with codeine. "You brought me home."

("We brought you home ... to your other home. My home.")

The bed started to sway. I clutched at it but my arms didn't move. The Mother Thing was still singing. ("You needed your own nest. So we prepared it.")

"Mother Thing, I'm confused."

("We know that a bird grows well faster in its own nest. So we built yours.") "Bird" and "nest" weren't what she sang, but an Unabridged won't give anything closer.

I took a deep breath to steady down. I understood her-that's what she was best at, making you understand. This wasn't my room and I wasn't home; it simply looked like it. But I was still terribly confused.

I looked around and wondered how I could have been mistaken.

The light slanted in the window from a wrong direction. The ceiling didn't have the patch in it from the time I built a hide-out in the attic and knocked plaster down by hammering. It wasn't the right shade, either.

The books were too neat and clean; they had that candy-box look. I couldn't recognize the bindings. The over-all effect was mighty close, but details were not right.

("I like this room,") the Mother Thing was singing. ("It looks like you, Kip.")

"Mother Thing," I said weakly, "how did you do it?"

("We asked you. And Peewee helped.")

I thought, "But Peewee has never seen my room either," then decided that Peewee had seen enough American homes to be a consulting expert. "Peewee is here?"

("She'll be in shortly.")

With Peewee and the Mother Thing around things couldn't be too bad. Except- "Mother Thing, I can't move my arms and legs."

She put a tiny, warm hand on my forehead and leaned over me until her enormous, lemur-like eyes blanked out everything else. ("You have been damaged. Now you are growing well. Do not worry.")

When the Mother Thing tells you not to worry, you don't. I didn't want to do handstands anyhow; I was satisfied to look into her eyes. You could sink into them, you could have dived in and swum around. "All right, Mother Thing." I remembered something else. "Say... you were frozen? Weren't you?"

("Yes.")

"But- Look, when water freezes it ruptures living cells. Or so they say."

She answered primly, ("My body would never permit that!").

"Well-" I thought about it. "Just don't dunk me in liquid air! I'm not built for it."

Again her song held roguish, indulgent humor. ("We shall endeavor not to hurt you.") She straightened up and grew a little, swaying like a willow. ("I sense Peewee.")

There was a knock-another discrepancy; it didn't sound like a knock on a light-weight interior door-and Peewee called out, "May I come in?" She didn't wait (I wondered if she ever did) but came on in. The bit I could see past her looked like our upper hall; they'd done a thorough job.

("Come in, dear.")

"Sure, Peewee. You are in."

"Don't be captious."

"Look who's talking. Hi, kid!"

"Hi yourself."

The Mother Thing glided away. ("Don't stay long, Peewee. You are not to tire him.")

"I won't, Mother Thing."

(" ‘Bye, dears.")

I said, "What are the visiting hours in this ward?"

"When she says, of course." Peewee stood facing me, fists on hips. She was really clean for the first time in our acquaintance-cheeks pink with scrubbing, hair fluffy-maybe she would be pretty, in about ten years. She was dressed as always but her clothes were fresh, all buttons present, and tears invisibly mended.

"Well," she said, letting out her breath, "I guess you're going to be worth keeping, after all."

"Me? I'm in the pink. How about yourself?"

She wrinkled her nose. "A little frost nip. Nothing. But you were a mess."

"I was?"

"I can't use adequate language without being what Mama calls ‘unladylike.' "

"Oh, we wouldn't want you to be that."

"Don't be sarcastic. You don't do it well."

"You won't let me practice on you?"

She started to make a Peewee retort, stopped suddenly, smiled and came close. For a nervous second I thought she was going to kiss me. But she just patted the bedclothes and said solemnly, "You bet you can, Kip. You can be sarcastic, or nasty, or mean, or scold me, or anything, and I won't let out a peep. Why, I'll bet you could even talk back to the Mother Thing."

I couldn't imagine wanting to. I said, "Take it easy, Peewee. Your halo is showing."

"I'd have one if it weren't for you. Or flunked my test for it, more likely."

"So? I seem to remember somebody about your size lugging me indoors almost piggy-back. How about that?"

She wriggled. "That wasn't anything. You set the beacon. That was everything."

"Uh, each to his own opinion. It was cold out there." I changed the subject; it was embarrassing us. Mention of the beacon reminded me of something else. "Peewee? Where are we?"

"Huh? In the Mother Thing's home, of course." She looked around and said, "Oh, I forgot. Kip, this isn't really your-"

"I know," I said impatiently. "It's a fake. Anybody can see that."

"They can?" She looked crestfallen. "I thought we had done a perfect job."

"It's an incredibly good job. I don't see how you did it."

"Oh, your memory is most detailed. You must have a camera eye." -and I must have spilled my guts, too! I added to myself. I wondered what else I had said-with Peewee listening. I was afraid to ask; a fellow ought to have privacy.

"But it's still a fake," I went on. "I know we're in the Mother Thing's home. But where's that?"

"Oh." She looked round-eyed. "I told you. Maybe you don't remember -you were sleepy."

"I remember," I said slowly, "something. But it didn't make sense. I thought you said we were going to Vega."

"Well, I suppose the catalogs will list it as Vega Five. But they call it-" She threw back her head and vocalized; it recalled to me the cockcrow theme in Le Coq d'Or. "-but I couldn't say that. So I told you Vega, which is close enough."

I tried again to sit up, failed. "You mean to stand there and tell me we're on Vega? I mean, a ‘Vegan planet'?"

"Well, you haven't asked me to sit down."

I ignored the Peeweeism. I looked at "sunlight" pouring through the window. "That light is from Vega?"

"That stuff? That's artificial sunlight. If they had used real, bright, Vega light, it would look ghastly. Like a bare arc light. Vega is ‘way up the Russell diagram, you know."

"It is?" I didn't know the spectrum of Vega; I had never expected to need to know it.

"Oh, yes! You be careful, Kip-when you're up, I mean. In ten seconds you can get more burn than all winter in Key West-and ten minutes would kill you."

I seemed to have a gift for winding up in difficult climates. What star class was Vega? "A," maybe? Probably "B." All I knew was that it was big and bright, bigger than the Sun, and looked pretty set in Lyra.

But where was it? How in the name of Einstein did we get here? "Peewee? How far is Vega? No, I mean, ‘How far is the Sun?' You wouldn't happen to know?"

"Of course," she said scornfully. "Twenty-seven light-years."

Great Galloping Gorillas! "Peewee-get that slide rule. You know how to push one? I don't seem to have the use of my hands."

She looked uneasy. "Uh, what do you want it for?"

"I want to see what that comes to in miles."

"Oh. I'll figure it. No need for a slide rule."

"A slipstick is faster and more accurate. Look, if you don't know how to use one, don't be ashamed-I didn't, at your age. I'll show you."

"Of course I can use one!" she said indignantly. "You think I'm a stupe? But I'll work it out." Her lips moved silently. "One point five nine times ten to the fourteenth miles."

I had done that Proxima Centauri problem recently; I remembered the miles in a light-year and did a rough check in my head-uh, call it six times twenty-five makes a hundred and fifty-and where was the decimal point? "Your answer sounds about right." 159,000,000,000,000 weary miles! Too many zeroes for comfort.

"Of course I'm right!" she retorted. "I'm always right."

"Goodness me! The handy-dandy pocket encyclopedia."

She blushed. "I can't help being a genius."

Which left her wide open and I was about to rub her nose in it-when I saw how unhappy she looked.

I remembered hearing Dad say: "Some people insist that ‘mediocre' is better than ‘best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none. Pfah!"

"I'm sorry, Peewee," I said humbly. "I know you can't. And I can't help not being one... any more than you can help being little, or I can help being big."

She relaxed and looked solemn. "I guess I was being a show-off again." She twisted a button. "Or maybe I assumed that you understand me-like Daddy."

"I feel complimented. I doubt if I do-but from now on I'll try." She went on worrying the button. "You're pretty smart yourself, Kip. You know that, don't you?"

I grinned. "If I were smart, would I be here? All thumbs and my ears rub together. Look, honey, would you mind if we checked you on the slide rule? I'm really interested." Twenty-seven light-years-why, you wouldn't be able to see the Sun, It isn't any great shakes as a star.

But I had made her uneasy again. "Uh, Kip, that isn't much of a slide rule."

"What? Why, that's the best that money can-"

"Kip, please! It's part of the desk. It's not a slide rule."

"Huh?" I looked sheepish. "I forgot. Uh, I suppose that hall out there doesn't go very far?"

"Just what you can see. Kip, the slide rule would have been real-if we had had time enough. They understand logarithms. Oh, indeed they do!"

That was bothering me-"time enough" I mean. "Peewee, how long did it take us to get here?" Twenty-seven light-years! Even at speed-of-light-well, maybe the Einstein business would make it seem like a quick trip to me-but not to Centerville. Dad could be dead! Dad was older than Mother, old enough to be my grandfather, really. Another twenty-seven years back- Why, that would make him well over a hundred. Even Mother might be dead.

"Time to get here? Why, it didn't take any."

"No, no. I know it feels that way. You're not any older, I'm still laid up by frostbite. But it took at least twenty-seven years. Didn't it?"

"What are you talking about, Kip?"

"The relativity equations, of course. You've heard of them?"

"Oh, those! Certainly. But they don't apply. It didn't take time. Oh, fifteen minutes to get out of Pluto's atmosphere, about the same to cope with the atmosphere here. But otherwise, pht! Zero."

"At the speed of light you would think so."

"No, Kip." She frowned, then her face lighted up. "How long was it from the time you set the beacon till they rescued us?"

"Huh?" It hit me. Dad wasn't dead! Mother wouldn't even have gray hair. "Maybe an hour."

"A little over. It would have been less if they had had a ship ready... then they might have found you in the tunnel instead of me. No time for the message to reach here. Half an hour frittered away getting a ship ready-the Mother Thing was vexed. I hadn't known she could be. You see, a ship is supposed to be ready."

"Any time she wants one?"

"Any and all the time-the Mother Thing is important. Another half-hour in atmosphere maneuvering-and that's all. Real time. None of those funny contractions."

I tried to soak it up. They take an hour to go twenty-seven light-years and get bawled out for dallying. Dr. Einstein must be known as "Whirligig Albert" among his cemetery neighbors. "But how?"

"Kip, do you know any geometry? I don't mean Euclid-I mean geometry."

"Mmm... I've fiddled with open and closed curved spaces-and I've read Dr. Bell's popular books. But you couldn't say I know any geometry."

"At least you won't boggle at the idea that a straight line is not necessarily the shortest distance between two points." She made motions as if squeezing a grapefruit in both hands. "Because it's not. Kip-it all touches. You could put it in a bucket. In a thimble if you folded it so that spins matched."

I had a dizzying picture of a universe compressed into a teacup, nucleons and electrons packed solidly-really solid and not the thin mathematical ghost that even the uranium nucleus is said to be. Something like the "primal atom" that some cosmogonists use to explain the expanding universe. Well, maybe it's both packed and expanding. Like the "wavicle" paradox. A particle isn't a wave and a wave can't be a particle- yet everything is both. If you believe in wavicles, you can believe in anything-and if you don't, then don't bother to believe at all. Not even in yourself, because that's what you are-wavicles. "How many dimensions?" I said weakly.

"How many would you like?"

"Me? Uh, twenty, maybe. Four more for each of the first four, to give some looseness on the corners."

"Twenty isn't a starter. I don't know, Kip; I don't know geometry, either-I just thought I did. So I've pestered them."

"The Mother Thing?"

"Her? Oh, heavens, no! She doesn't know geometry. Just enough to pilot a ship in and out of the folds."

"Only that much?" I should have stuck to advanced finger-painting and never let Dad lure me into trying for an education. There isn't any end- the more you learn, the more you need to learn. "Peewee, you knew what that beacon was for, didn't you?"

"Me?" She looked innocent. "Well... yes."

"You knew we were going to Vega."

"Well ... if the beacon worked. If it was set in time."

"Now the prize question. Why didn't you tell me?"

"Well-" Peewee was going to twist that button off. "I wasn't sure how much math you knew and-you might have gone all masculine and common-sensical and father-knows-best. Would you have believed me?"

("I told Orville and I told Wilbur and now I'm telling you-that contraption will never work!") "Maybe not, Peewee. But next time you're tempted not to tell me something ‘for my own good,' will you take a chance that I'm not wedded to my own ignorance? I know I'm not a genius but I'll try to keep my mind open-and I might be able to help, if I knew what you were up to. Quit twisting that button."

She let go hastily. "Yes, Kip. I'll remember."

"Thanks. Another thing is fretting me. I was pretty sick?"

"Huh? You certainly were!"

"All right. They've got these, uh, ‘fold ships' that go anywhere in no time. Why didn't you ask them to bounce me home and pop me into a hospital?"

She hesitated. "How do you feel?"

"Huh? I feel fine. Except that I seem to be under spinal anesthesia, or something."

"Or something," she agreed. "But you feel as if you are getting well?"

"Shucks, I feel well."

"You aren't. But you're going to be." She looked at me closely. "Shall I put it bluntly, Kip?"

"Go ahead."

"If they had taken you to Earth to the best hospital we have, you'd be a ‘basket case.' Understand me? No arms, no legs. As it is, you are getting completely well. No amputations, not even a toe."

I think the Mother Thing had prepared me. I simply said, "You're sure?"

"Sure. Sure both. You're going to be all right." Suddenly her face screwed up. "Oh, you were a mess! I saw."

"Pretty bad?"

"Awful. I have nightmares."

"They shouldn't have let you look."

"They couldn't stop me. I was next of kin."

"Huh? You told them you were my sister or something?"

"What? I am your next of kin."

I was about to say she was cockeyed when I tripped over my tongue. We were the only humans for a hundred and sixty trillion miles. As usual, Peewee was right.

"So I had to grant permission," she went on.

"For what? What did they do to me?"

"Uh, first they popped you into liquid helium. They left you there and the past month they have been using me as a guinea pig. Then, three days ago-three of ours-they thawed you out and got to work. You've been getting well ever since."

"What shape am I in now?"

"Uh... well, you're growing back. Kip, this isn't a bed. It just looks like it."

"What is it, then?"

"We don't have a name for it and the tune is pitched too high for me. But everything from here on down-" She patted the spread. "-on into the room below, does things for you. You're wired like a hi-fi nut's basement."

"I'd like to see it."

"I'm afraid you can't. You don't know, Kip. They had to cut your space suit off."

I felt more emotion at that than I had at hearing what a mess I had been. "Huh? Where is Oscar? Did they ruin him? My space suit, I mean."

"I know what you mean. Every time you're delirious you talk to ‘Oscar' -and you answer back, too. Sometimes I think you're schizoid, Kip."

"You've mixed your terms, runt-that'ud make me a split personality. All right, but you're a paranoid yourself."

"Oh, I've known that for a long time. But I'm a very well adjusted one. You want to see Oscar? The Mother Thing said that you would want him near when you woke up." She opened the closet.

"Hey! You said he was all cut up!"

"Oh, they repaired him. Good as new. A little better than new."

("Time, dear! Remember what I said.")

"Coming, Mother Thing! ‘Bye, Kip. I'll be back soon, and real often."

"Okay. Leave the closet open so I can see Oscar."

Peewee did come back, but not "real often." I wasn't offended, not much. She had a thousand interesting and "educational" things to poke her ubiquitous nose into, all new and fascinating-she was as busy as a pup chewing slippers. She ran our hosts ragged. But I wasn't bored. I was getting well, a full-time job and not boring if you are happy-which I was.

I didn't see the Mother Thing often. I began to realize that she had work of her own to do-even though she came to see me if I asked for her, with never more than an hour's delay, and never seemed in a hurry to leave.

She wasn't my doctor, nor my nurse. Instead I had a staff of veterinarians who were alert to supervise every heartbeat. They didn't come in unless I asked them to (a whisper was as good as a shout) but I soon realized that "my" room was bugged and telemetered like a ship in flight test-and my "bed" was a mass of machinery, gear that bore the relation to our own "mechanical hearts" and "mechanical lungs" and "mechanical kidneys" that a Lockheed ultrasonic courier does to a baby buggy.

I never saw that gear (they never lifted the spread, unless it was while I slept), but I know what they were doing. They were encouraging my body to repair itself-not scar tissue but the way it had been. Any lobster can do this and starfish do it so well that you can chop them to bits and wind up with a thousand brand-new starfish.

This is a trick any animal should do, since its gene pattern is in every cell. But a few million years ago we lost it. Everybody knows that science is trying to recapture it; you see articles-optimistic ones in Reader's Digest, discouraged ones in The Scientific Monthly, wildly wrong ones in magazines whose "science editors" seem to have received their training writing horror movies. But we're working on it. Someday, if anybody dies an accidental death, it will be because he bled to death on the way to the hospital.

Here I was with a perfect chance to find out about it-and I didn't.

I tried. Although I was unworried by what they were doing (the Mother Thing had told me not to worry and every time she visited me she looked in my eyes and repeated the injunction), nevertheless like Peewee, I like to know.

Pick a savage so far back in the jungle that they don't even have installment-plan buying. Say he has an I.Q. of 190 and Peewee's yen to understand. Dump him into Brookhaven Atomic Laboratories. How much will he learn? With all possible help?

He'll learn which corridors lead to what rooms and he'll learn that a purple trefoil means: "Danger!"

That's all. Not because he can't; remember he's a supergenius-but he needs twenty years schooling before he can ask the right questions and understand the answers.

I asked questions and always got answers and formed notions. But I'm not going to record them; they are as confused and contradictory as the notions a savage would form about design and operation of atomic equipment. As they say in radio, when noise level reaches a certain value, no information is transmitted. All I got was "noise."

Some of it was literally "noise." I'd ask a question and one of the therapists would answer. I would understand part, then as it reached the key point, I would hear nothing but birdsongs. Even with the Mother Thing as an interpreter, the parts I had no background for would turn out to be a canary's cheerful prattle.

Hold onto your seats; I'm going to explain something I don't understand: how Peewee and I could talk with the Mother Thing even though her mouth could not shape English and we couldn't sing the way she did and had not studied her language. The Vegans-(I'll call them "Vegans" the way we might be called "Solarians"; their real name sounds like a wind chime in a breeze. The Mother Thing had a real name, too, but I'm not a coloratura soprano. Peewee used it when she wanted to wheedle her -fat lot of good it did her.) The Vegans have a supreme talent to understand, to put themselves in the other person's shoes. I don't think it was telepathy, or I wouldn't have gotten so many wrong numbers. Call it empathy.

But they have it in various degrees, just as all of us drive cars but only a few are fit to be racing drivers. The Mother Thing had it the way Novaes understands a piano. I once read about an actress who could use Italian so effectively to a person who did not understand Italian that she always made herself understood. Her name was "Duce." No, a "duce" is a dictator. Something like that. She must have had what the Mother Thing had.

The first words I had with the Mother Thing were things like "hello" and "good-bye" and "thank you" and "where are we going?" She could project her meaning with those-shucks, you can talk to a strange dog that much. Later I began to understand her speech as speech. She picked up meanings of English words even faster; she had this great talent, and she and Peewee had talked for days while they were prisoners.

But while this is easy for "you're welcome" and "I'm hungry" and "let's hurry," it gets harder for ideas like "heterodyning" and "amino acid" even when both are familiar with the concept. When one party doesn't even have the concept, it breaks down. That's the trouble I had understanding those veterinarians. If we had all spoken English I still would not have understood.

An oscillating circuit sending out a radio signal produces dead silence unless there is another circuit capable of oscillating in the same way to receive it. I wasn't on the right frequency.

Nevertheless I understood them when the talk was not highbrow. They were nice people; they talked and laughed a lot and seemed to like each other. I had trouble telling them apart, except the Mother Thing. (I learned that the only marked difference to them between Peewee and myself was that I was ill and she wasn't.) They had no trouble telling each other apart; their conversations were interlarded with musical names, until you felt that you were caught in Peter and the Wolf or a Wagnerian opera. They even had a leit-motif for me. Their talk was cheerful and gay, like the sounds of a bright summer dawn.

The next time I meet a canary I'll know what he is saying even if he doesn't.

I picked up some of this from Peewee-a hospital bed is not a good place from which to study a planet. Vega Five has Earth-surface gravity, near enough, with an oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water life cycle. The planet would not suit humans, not only because the noonday "sun" would strike you dead with its jolt of ultraviolet but also the air has poisonous amounts of ozone-a trace of ozone is stimulating but a trifle more-well, you might as well sniff prussic acid. There was something else, too, nitrous oxide I think, which was ungood for humans if breathed too long. My quarters were air-conditioned; the Vegans could breathe what I used but they considered it tasteless.

I learned a bit as a by-product of something else; the Mother Thing asked me to dictate how I got mixed up in these things. When I finished, she asked me to dictate everything I knew about Earth, its history, and how we work and live together. This is a tall order-I'm not still dictating because I found out I don't know much. Take ancient Babylonia-how is it related to early Egyptian civilizations? I had only vague notions.

Maybe Peewee did better, since she remembers everything she has heard or read or seen the way Dad does. But they probably didn't get her to hold still long, whereas I had to. The Mother Thing wanted this for the reasons we study Australian aborigines and also as a record of our language. There was another reason, too.

The job wasn't easy but there was a Vegan to help me whenever I felt like it, willing to stop if I tired. Call him Professor Josephus Egghead; "Professor" is close enough and his name can't be spelled. I called him Joe and he called me the leitmotif that meant "Clifford Russell, the monster with the frostbite." Joe had almost as much gift for understanding as the Mother Thing. But how do you put over ideas like "tariffs" and "kings" to a person whose people have never had either? The English words were just noise.

But Joe knew histories of many peoples and planets and could call up scenes, in moving stereo and color, until we agreed on what I meant. We jogged along, with me dictating to a silvery ball floating near my mouth and with Joe curled up like a cat on a platform raised to my level, while he dictated to another microphone, making running notes on what I said. His mike had a gimmick that made it a hush-phone; I did not hear him unless he spoke to me.

Then we would stumble. Joe would stop and throw me a sample scene, his best guess of what I meant. The pictures appeared in the air, positioned for my comfort-if I turned my head, the picture moved to accommodate me. The pix were color-stereo-television with perfect life and sharpness-well, give us another twenty years and we'll have them as realistic. It was a good trick to have the projector concealed and to force images to appear as if they were hanging in air, but those are just gimmicks of stereo optics; we can do them anytime we really want to-after all, you can pack a lifelike view of the Grand Canyon into a viewer you hold in your hand.

The thing that did impress me was the organization behind it. I asked Joe about it. He sang to his microphone and we went on a galloping tour of their "Congressional Library."

Dad claims that library science is the foundation of all sciences just as math is the key-and that we will survive or founder, depending on how well the librarians do their jobs. Librarians didn't look glamorous to me but maybe Dad had hit on a not very obvious truth.

This "library" had hundreds, maybe thousands, of Vegans viewing pictures and listening to sound tracks, each with a silvery sphere in front of him. Joe said they were "telling the memory." This was equivalent to typing a card for a library's catalog, except that the result was more like a memory path in brain cells-nine-tenths of that building was an electronic brain.

I spotted a triangular sign like the costume jewelry worn by the Mother Thing, but the picture jumped quickly to something else. Joe also wore one (and others did not) but I did not get around to asking about it, as the sight of that incredible "library" brought up the word "cybernetics" and we went on a detour. I decided later that it might be a lodge pin, or like a Phi Beta Kappa key-the Mother Thing was smart even for a Vegan and Joe was not far behind.

Whenever Joe was sure that he understood some English word, he would wriggle with delight like a puppy being tickled. He was very dignified, but this is not undignified for a Vegan. Their bodies are so fluid and mobile that they smile and frown with the whole works. A Vegan holding perfectly still is either displeased or extremely worried.

The sessions with Joe let me tour places from my bed. The difference between "primary school" and "university" caused me to be shown examples. A "kindergarten" looked like an adult Vegan being overwhelmed by babies; it had the innocent rowdiness of a collie pup stepping on his brother's face to reach the milk dish. But the "university" was a place of quiet beauty, strange-looking trees and plants and flowers among buildings of surrealistic charm unlike any architecture I have ever seen-I suppose I would have been flabbergasted if they had looked familiar. Parabolas were used a lot and I think all the "straight" lines had that swelling the Greeks called "entasis"-delicate grace with strength.

Joe showed up one day simply undulating with pleasure. He had another silvery ball, larger than the other two. He placed it in front of me, then sang to his own. ("I want you to hear this, Kip!")

As soon as he ceased the larger sphere spoke in English: "I want you to hear this. Kip!"

Squirming with delight, Joe swapped spheres and told me to say something.

"What do you want me to say?" I asked.

("What do you want me to say?") the larger sphere sang in Vegan.

That was my last session with Prof Joe.

Despite unstinting help, despite the Mother Thing's ability to make herself understood, I was like the Army mule at West Point: an honorary member of the student body but not prepared for the curriculum. I never did understand their government. Oh, they had government, but it wasn't any system I've heard of. Joe knew about democracies and representation and voting and courts of law; he could fish up examples from many planets. He felt that democracy was "a very good system, for beginners." It would have sounded patronizing, except that is not one of their faults.

I never met one of their young. Joe explained that children should not see "strange creatures" until they had learned to feel understanding sympathy. That would have offended me if I hadn't been learning some "understanding sympathy" myself. Matter of fact, if a human ten-year-old saw a Vegan, he would either run, or poke it with a stick.

I tried to learn about their government from the Mother Thing, in particular how they kept the peace-laws, crimes, punishments, traffic regulations, etc.

It was as near to flat failure as I ever had with her. She pondered a long time, then answered: ("How could one possibly act against one's own nature?")

I guess their worst vice was that they didn't have any. This can be tiresome.

The medical staff were interested in the drugs in Oscar's helmet-like our interest in a witch doctor's herbs, but that is not idle interest; remember digitalis and curare.

I told them what each drug did and in most cases I knew the Geneva name as well as the commercial one. I knew that codeine was derived from opium, and opium from poppies. I knew that dexedrine was a sulphate but that was all. Organic chemistry and biochemistry are not easy even with no language trouble. We got together on what a benzene ring was, Peewee drawing it and sticking in her two dollars' worth, and we managed to agree on "element," "isotope," "half life," and the periodic table. I should have drawn structural formulas, using Peewee's hands- but neither of us had the slightest idea of the structural formula for codeine and couldn't do it even when supplied with kindergarten toys which stuck together only in the valences of the elements they represented.

Peewee had fun, though. They may not have learned much from her; she learned a lot from them.

I don't know when I became aware that the Mother Thing was not, or wasn't quite, a female. But it didn't matter; being a mother is an attitude, not a biological relation.

If Noah launched his ark on Vega Five, the animals would come in by twelves. That makes things complicated. But a "mother thing" is one who takes care of others. I am not sure that all mother things were the same gender; it may have been a matter of temperament.

I met one "father thing." You might call him "governor" or "mayor," but "parish priest" or "scoutmaster" is closer, except that his prestige dominated a continent. He breezed in during a session with Joe, stayed five minutes, urged Joe to do a good job, told me to be a good boy and get well, and left, all without hurrying. He filled me with the warm self-reliance that Dad does-I didn't need to be told that he was a "father thing." His visit had a flavor of "royalty visiting the wounded" without being condescending-no doubt it was hard to work me into a busy schedule.

Joe neither mothered nor fathered me; he taught me and studied me- "a professor thing."

Peewee showed up one day full of bubbles. She posed like a mannequin. "Do you like my new spring outfit?"

She was wearing silvery tights, plus a little hump like a knapsack. She looked cute but not glamorous, for she was built like two sticks and this get-up emphasized it.

"Very fancy," I said. "Are you learning to be an acrobat?"

"Don't be silly, Kip; it's my new space suit-a real one."

I glanced at Oscar, big and bulky and filling the closet and said privately, "Hear that, chum?"

("It takes all kinds to make a world.")

"Your helmet won't fit it, will it?"

She giggled. "I'm wearing it."

"You are? ‘The Emperor's New Clothes'?"

"Pretty close. Kip, disconnect your prejudices and listen. This is like the Mother Thing's suit except that it's tailored for me. My old suit wasn't much good-and that cold cold about finished it. But you'll be amazed at this one. Take the helmet. It's there, only you can't see it. It's a field. Gas can't go in or out." She came close. "Slap me."

"With what?"

"Oh. I forgot. Kip, you've got to get well and up off that bed. I want to take you for a walk."

"I'm in favor. They tell me it won't be long now."

"It had better not be. Here, I'll show you." She hauled off and slapped herself. Her hand smacked into something inches from her face.

"Now watch," she went on. She moved her hand very slowly; it sank through the barrier, she thumbed her nose at me and giggled.

This impressed me-a space suit you could reach into! Why, I would have been able to give Peewee water and dexedrine and sugar pills when she needed them. "I'll be darned! What does it?"

"A power pack on my back, under the air tank. The tank is good for a week, too, and hoses can't give trouble because there aren't any."

"Uh, suppose you blow a fuse. There you are, with a lungful of vacuum."

"The Mother Thing says that can't happen."

Hmm-I had never known the Mother Thing to be wrong when she made a flat statement.

"That's not all," Peewee went on. "It feels like skin, the joints aren't clumsy, and you're never hot or cold. It's like street clothes."

"Uh, you risk a bad sunburn, don't you? Unhealthy, you tell me. Unhealthy even on the Moon."

"Oh, no! The field polarizes. That's what the field is, sort of. Kip, get them to make you one-we'll go places!"

I glanced at Oscar. ("Please yourself, pal," he said distantly. "I'm not the jealous type.")

"Uh, Peewee, I'll stick to one I understand. But I'd like to examine that monkey suit of yours."

"Monkey suit indeed!"

I woke up one morning, turned over, and realized that I was hungry.

Then I sat up with a jerk. I had turned over in bed.

I had been warned to expect it. The "bed" was a bed and my body was back under my control. Furthermore, I was hungry and I hadn't been hungry the whole time I had been on Vega Five. Whatever that machinery was, it included a way to nourish me without eating.

But I didn't stop to enjoy the luxury of hunger; it was too wonderful to be a body again, not just a head. I got out of bed, was suddenly dizzy, recovered and grinned. Hands! Feet!

I examined those wonderful things. They were unchanged and unhurt.

Then I looked more closely. No, not quite unchanged.

I had had a scar on my left shin where I had been spiked in a close play at second; it was gone. I once had "Mother" tattooed on my left forearm at a carnival. Mother had been distressed and Dad disgusted, but he had said to leave it as a reminder not to be a witling. It was gone. There was not a callus on hand or foot.

I used to bite my nails. My nails were a bit long but perfect. I had lost the nail from my right little toe years ago through a slip with a hatchet. It was back.

I looked hastily for my appendectomy scar-found it and felt relieved. If it had been missing, I would have wondered if I was me.

There was a mirror over the chest of drawers. It showed me with enough hair to warrant a guitar (I wear a crew cut) but somebody had shaved me.

On the chest was a dollar and sixty-seven cents, a mechanical pencil, a sheet of paper, my watch, and a handkerchief. The watch was running. The dollar bill, the paper, and the handkerchief had been laundered.

My clothes, spandy clean and invisibly repaired, were on the desk. The socks weren't mine; the material was more like felt, if you will imagine felted material no thicker than Kleenex which stretches instead of tearing. On the floor were tennis shoes, like Peewee's even to a "U.S. Rubber" trademark, but in my size. The uppers were heavier felted material. I got dressed.

I was wearing the result when Peewee kicked the door. "Anybody home?" She came in, bearing a tray. "Want breakfast?"

"Peewee! Look at me!"

She did. "Not bad," she admitted, "for an ape. You need a haircut."

"Yes, but isn't it wonderful! I'm all together again!"

"You never were apart," she answered, "except in spots-I've had daily reports. Where do you want this?" She put the tray on the desk.

"Peewee," I asked, rather hurt, "don't you care that I'm well?"

"Of course I do. Why do you think I made ‘em let me carry in your breakfast? But I knew last night that they were going to uncork you. Who do you think cut your nails and shaved you? That'll be a dollar, please. Shaves have gone up." I got that tired dollar and handed it to her. She didn't take it. "Aw, can't you take a joke?" "'Neither a borrower nor a lender be.'"

"Polonius. He was a stupid old bore. Honest, Kip, I wouldn't take your last dollar."

"Now who can't take a joke?"

"Oh, eat your breakfast. That purple juice," she said, "tastes like orange juice-it's very nice. The stuff that looks like scrambled eggs is a fair substitute and I had ‘em color it yellow-the eggs here are dreadful, which wouldn't surprise you if you knew where they get them. The buttery stuff is vegetable fat and I had them color it, too. The bread is bread, I toasted it myself. The salt is salt and it surprises them that we eat it-they think it's poison. Go ahead; I've guinea-pigged everything. No coffee."

"I won't miss it."

"I never touch the stuff-I'm trying to grow. Eat. Your sugar count has been allowed to drop so that you will enjoy it."

The aroma was wonderful. "Where's your breakfast, Peewee?"

"I ate hours ago. I'll watch and swallow when you do."

The tastes were odd but it was just what the doctor ordered-literally, I suppose. I've never enjoyed a meal so much.

Presently I slowed down to say, "Knife and fork? Spoons?"

"The only ones on-" She vocalized the planet's name. "I got tired of fingers and I play hob using what they use. So I drew pictures. This set is mine but we'll order more."

There was even a napkin, more felted stuff. The water tasted distilled and not aerated. I didn't mind. "Peewee, how did you shave me? Not even a nick."

"Little gismo that beats a razor all hollow. I don't know what they use it for, but if you could patent it, you'd make a fortune. Aren't you going to finish that toast?"

"Uh-" I had thought that I could eat the tray. "No, I'm full."

"Then I will." She used it to mop up the "butter," then announced, "I'm off!"

"Where?"

"To suit up. I'm going to take you for a walk!" She was gone.

The hall outside did not imitate ours where it could not be seen from the bed, but a door to the left was a bathroom, just where it should have been. No attempt had been made to make it look like the one at home, and valving and lighting and such were typically Vegan. But everything worked.

Peewee returned while I was checking Oscar. If they had cut him off me, they had done a marvelous job of repairing; even the places I had patched no longer showed. He had been cleaned so thoroughly that there was no odor inside. He had three hours of air and seemed okay in every way. "You're in good shape, partner."

("In the pink! The service is excellent here.")

"So I've noticed." I looked up and saw Peewee; she was already in her "spring outfit."

"Peewee, do we need space suits just for a walk?"

"No. You could get by with a respirator, sun glasses, and a sun shade."

"You've convinced me. Say, where's Madame Pompadour? How do you get her inside that suit?"

"No trouble at all, she just bulges a little. But I left her in my room and told her to behave herself."

"Will she?"

"Probably not. She takes after me."

"Where is your room?"

"Next door. This is the only part of the house which is Earth-conditioned."

I started to suit up. "Say, has that fancy suit got a radio?"

"All that yours has and then some. Did you notice the change in Oscar?"

"Huh? What? I saw that he was repaired and cleaned up. What else have they done?"

"Just a little thing. One more click on the switch that changes antennas and you can talk to people around you who aren't wearing radios without shouting."

"I didn't see a speaker."

"They don't believe in making everything big and bulky."

As we passed Peewee's room I glanced in. It was not decorated Vegan style; I had seen Vegan interiors through stereo. Nor was it a copy of her own room-not if her parents were sensible. I don't know what to call it -"Moorish harem" style, perhaps, as conceived by Mad King Ludwig, with a dash of Disneyland.

I did not comment. I had a hunch that Peewee had been given a room "just like her own" because I had one; that fitted the Mother Thing's behavior-but Peewee had seen a golden chance to let her overfertile imagination run wild. I doubt if she fooled the Mother Thing one split second. She had probably let that indulgent overtone come into her song and had given Peewee what she wanted.

The Mother Thing's home was smaller than our state capitol but not much; her family seemed to run to dozens, or hundreds-"family" has a wide meaning under their complex interlinkage. We didn't see any young ones on our floor and I knew that they were being kept away from the "monsters." The adults all greeted me, inquired as to my health, and congratulated me on my recovery; I was kept busy saying "Fine, thank you! Couldn't be better."

They all knew Peewee and she could sing their names.

I thought I recognized one of my therapists, but the Mother Thing, Prof Joe and the boss veterinarian were the only Vegans I was sure of and we did not meet them.

We hurried on. The Mother Thing's home was typical-many soft round cushions about a foot thick and four in diameter, used as beds or chairs, floor bare, slick and springy, most furniture on the walls where it could be reached by climbing, convenient rods and poles and brackets a person could drape himself on while using the furniture, plants growing unexpectedly here and there as if the jungle were moving in-delightful, and as useful to me as a corset.

Through a series of parabolic arches we reached a balcony. It was not railed and the drop to a terrace below was about seventy-five feet; I stayed back and regretted again that Oscar had no chin window. Peewee went to the edge, put an arm around a slim pillar and leaned out. In the bright outdoor light her "helmet" became an opalescent sphere. "Come see!"

"And break my neck? Maybe you'd like to belay me?"

"Oh, pooh! Who's afraid of heights?"

"I am when I can't see what I'm doing."

"Well, for goodness' sakes, take my hand and grab a post."

I let her lead me to a pillar, then looked out.

It was a city in a jungle. Thick dark green, so tangled that I could not tell trees from vine and bush, spread out all around but was broken repeatedly by buildings as large and larger than the one we were in. There were no roads; their roads are underground in cities and sometimes outside the cities. But there was air traffic-individual fliers supported by contrivances even less substantial than our own one-man ‘copter harnesses or flying carpets. Like birds they launched themselves from and landed in balconies such as the one we stood in.

There were real birds, too, long and slender and brilliantly colored, with two sets of wings in tandem-which looked aerodynamically unsound but seemed to suit them.

The sky was blue and fair but broken by three towering cumulous anvils, blinding white in the distance.

"Let's go on the roof," said Peewee.

"How?"

"Over here."

It was a scuttle hole reached by staggered slender brackets the Vegans use as stairs. "Isn't there a ramp?"

"Around on the far side, yes."

"I don't think those things will hold me. And that hole looks small for Oscar."

"Oh, don't be a sissy," Peewee went up like a monkey.

I followed like a tired bear. The brackets were sturdy despite their grace; the hole was a snug fit.

Vega was high in the sky. It appeared to be the angular size of our Sun, which fitted since we were much farther out than Terra is from the Sun, but it was too bright even with full polarization. I looked away and presently eyes and polarizers adjusted until I could see again. Peewee's head was concealed by what appeared to be a polished chrome basketball. I said, "Hey, are you still there?"

"Sure," she answered. "I can see out all right. It's a grand view. Doesn't it remind you of Paris from the top of the Arc de Triomphe?"

"I don't know, I've never done any traveling."

"Except no boulevards, of course. Somebody is about to land here."

I turned the way she was pointing-she could see in all directions while I was hampered by the built-in tunnel vision of my helmet. By the time I was turned around the Vegan was coming in beside us.

("Hello, children!")

"Hi, Mother Thing!" Peewee threw her arms around her, picking her up.

("Not so hasty, dear. Let me shed this.") The Mother Thing stepped out of her harness, shook herself in ripples, folded the flying gear like an umbrella and hung it over an arm. ("You're looking fit, Kip.")

"I feel fine, Mother Thing! Gee, it's nice to have you back."

("I wished to be back when you got out of bed. However, your therapists have kept me advised every minute.") She put a little hand against my chest, growing a bit to do so, and placed her eyes almost against my face plate. ("You are well?")

"I couldn't be better."

"He really is, Mother Thing!"

("Good. You agree that you are well, I sense that you are, Peewee is sure that you are and, most important, your leader therapist assures me that you are. We'll leave at once.")

"What?" I asked. "Where, Mother Thing?"

She turned to Peewee. ("Haven't you told him, dear?")

"Gee, Mother Thing, I haven't had a chance."

("Very well.") She turned to me. ("Dear Kip, we must now attend a gathering. Questions will be asked and answered, decisions will be made.") She spoke to us both. ("Are you ready to leave?")

"Now?" said Peewee. "Why, I guess so-except that I've got to get Madame Pompadour."

("Fetch her, then. And you, Kip?")

"Uh-" I couldn't remember whether I had put my watch back on after I washed and I couldn't tell because I can't feel it through Oscar's thick hide. I told her so.

("Very well. You children run to your rooms while I have a ship fetched. Meet me here and don't stop to admire flowers.")

We went down by ramp. I said, "Peewee, you've been holding out on me again."

"Why, I have not!"

"What do you call it?"

"Kip-please listen! I was told not to tell you while you were ill. The Mother Thing was very firm about it. You were not to be disturbed-that's what she said!-while you were growing well."

"Why should I feel disturbed? What is all this? What gathering? What questions?"

"Well ... the gathering is sort of a court. A criminal court, you might say."

"Huh?" I took a quick look at my conscience. But I hadn't had any chance to do anything wrong-I had been helpless as a baby up to two hours ago. That left Peewee. "Runt," I said sternly, "what have you done now?"

"Me? Nothing."

"Think hard."

"No, Kip. Oh, I'm sorry I didn't tell you at breakfast! But Daddy says never to break any news until after his second cup of coffee and I thought how nice it would be to take a little walk before we had any worries and I was going to tell you"

"Make it march."

"-as soon as we came down. I haven't done anything. But there's old Wormface."

"What? I thought he was dead."

"Maybe so, maybe not. But, as the Mother Thing says, there are still questions to be asked, decisions to be made. He's up for the limit, is my guess."

I thought about it as we wound our way through strange apartments toward the air lock that led to our Earth-conditioned rooms. High crimes and misdemeanors... skulduggery in the spaceways-yes, Wormface was probably in for it. If the Vegans could catch him. "Had caught him" apparently, since they were going to try him. "But where do we come in? As witnesses?"

"I suppose you could call it that."

What happened to Wormface was no skin off my nose-and it would be a chance to find out more about the Vegans. Especially if the court was some distance away, so that we would travel and see the country.

"But that isn't all," Peewee went on worriedly.

"What else?"

She sighed. "This is why I wanted us to have a nice sight-see first. Uh..."

"Don't chew on it. Spit it out."

"Well... we have to be tried, too."

"What?"

"Maybe ‘examined' is the word. I don't know. But I know this: we can't go home until we've been judged."

"But what have we done?" I burst out.

"I don't know!"

My thoughts were boiling. "Are you sure they'll let us go home then?"

"The Mother Thing refuses to talk about it."

I stopped and took her arm. "What it amounts to," I said bitterly, "is that we are under arrest. Aren't we?"

"Yes-" She added almost in a sob, "But, Kip, I told you she was a cop!"

"Great stuff. We pull her chestnuts out of the fire-and now we're arrested-and going to be tried-and we don't even know why! Nice place, Vega Five. ‘The natives are friendly.' " They had nursed me-as we nurse a gangster in order to hang him.

"But, Kip-" Peewee was crying openly now. "I'm sure it'll be all right. She may be a cop-but she's still the Mother Thing."

"Is she? I wonder." Peewee's manner contradicted her words. She was not one to worry over nothing. Quite the contrary.

My watch was on the washstand. I ungasketed to put it in an inside pocket. When I came out, Peewee was doing the same with Madame Pompadour. "Here," I said, "I'll take her with me. I've got more room."

"No, thank you," Peewee answered bleakly. "I need her with me. Especially now."

"Uh, Peewee, where is this court? This city? Or another one?"

"Didn't I tell you? No, I guess I didn't. It's not on this planet."

"I thought this was the only inhabited-"

"It's not a planet around Vega. Another star. Not even in the Galaxy."

"Say that again?"

"It's somewhere in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud."