"Yes, you can. Kick your chin valve-feel it, taste it. Fresh air!"

She tried, feebly; I gave her a quick strong shot, overriding her chin valve from outside. "Oh!"

"See? You've got air. You've got lots of air. Now get up."

"Oh, please, just let me lie here."

"No, you don't! You're a nasty, mean, spoiled little brat-and if you don't get up, nobody will love you. The Mother Thing won't love you. Mother Thing!-tell her!"

("Stand up, daughter!")

Peewee tried. I helped her, once she was trying. She trembled and clung to me and I kept her from falling. "Mother Thing?" she said faintly. "I did it. You ... still love me?"

("Yes, darling!")

"I'm dizzy... and I don't think I ... can walk."

"You don't have to, honey," I said gently and picked her up in my arms.

"You don't have to walk any farther." She didn't weigh anything.

The trail disappeared when we were down out of the foothills but the crawler's tracks were sharp in the dust and led due west. I had my air trimmed down until the needle of the blood-color indicator hung at the edge of the danger sector. I held it there, kicking my chin valve only when it swung past into DANGER. I figured that the designer must have left some leeway, the way they do with gasoline gauges. I had long since warned Peewee never to take her eyes off her own indicator and hold it at the danger limit. She promised and I kept reminding her. I pressed her helmet against the yoke of mine, so that we could talk.

I counted paces and every half-mile I told Peewee to call Tombaugh Station. It was over the horizon but they might have a high mast that could "see" a long way.

The Mother Thing talked to her, too-anything to keep her from slipping away again. It saved my strength to have the Mother Thing talk and was good for all of us.

After a while I noticed that my needle had drifted into the red again. I kicked the valve and waited. Nothing happened. I kicked it again and the needle drifted slowly toward the white. "How you fixed for air, Peewee?"

"Just fine. Kip, just fine."

Oscar was yelling at me. I blinked and noticed that my shadow had disappeared. It had been stretched out ahead at an angle to the tracks, the tracks were there but my shadow was not. That made me sore, so I turned around and looked for it. It was behind me.

The darn thing had been hiding. Games!

("That better!" said Oscar.)

"It's hot in here, Oscar."

("You think it's cool out here? Keep your eye on that shadow, bud-and on those tracks.")

"All right, all right! Quit pestering me." I made up my mind that I wouldn't let that shadow get away again. Games it wanted to play, huh?

"There's darn little air in here, Oscar."

("Breathe shallow, chum. We can make it.")

"I'm breathing my socks, now."

("So breathe your shirt.")

"Did I see a ship pass over?"

("How should I know? You're the one with the blinkers.")

"Don't get smart. I'm in no mood to joke."

I was sitting on the ground with Peewee across my knees and Oscar was really shouting-and so was the Mother Thing. ("Get up, you big ape! Get up and try.") ("Get up, Kip dear! Only a little way now.")

"I just want to get my wind."

("All right, you've got it. Call Tombaugh Station.")

I said, "Peewee, call Tombaugh Station."

She didn't answer. That scared me and I snapped out of it. "Tombaugh Station,, come in! Come in!" I got to my knees and then to my feet. Tombaugh Station, do you read me? Help! Help!"

A voice answered, "I read you."

"Help! M'aidez! I've got a little girl dying! Help!"

Suddenly it sprang up in front of my eyes-great shiny domes, tall towers, radio telescopes, a giant Schmidt camera. I staggered toward it. "May Day!"

An enormous lock opened and a crawler came toward me. A voice in my phones said, "We're coming. Stay where you are. Over and out."

A crawler stopped near me. A man got out, came over and touched helmets. I gasped: "Help me get her inside."

I got back: "You've given me trouble, bub. I don't like people who give me trouble." A bigger, fatter man got out behind him.

The smaller man raised a thing like a camera and aimed it at me. That was the last I knew.

Chapter 7

I don't know if they took us all that weary way back in the crawler, or if Wormface sent a ship. I woke up being slapped and was inside, lying down. The skinny one was slapping me-the man the fat one called "Tim." I tried to fight back and found that I couldn't. I was in a straitjacket thing that held me as snugly as a wrapped mummy. I let out a yelp.

Skinny grabbed my hair, jerked my head up, tried to put a big capsule into my mouth.

I tried to bite him.

He slapped me harder and offered me the capsule again. His expression didn't change-it stayed mean.

I heard: "Take it, boy," and turned my eyes. The fat one was on the other side. "Better swallow it," he said. "You got five bad days ahead."

I took it. Not because of the advice but because a hand held my nose and another popped the pill into my mouth when I gasped. Fatty held a cup of water for me to wash it down; I didn't resist that, I needed it.

Skinny stuck a hypodermic needle big enough for a horse into my shoulder. I told him what I thought of him, using words I hardly ever use. The skinny one could have been deaf; the fat one chuckled. I rolled my eyes at him. "You, too," I added weakly. "Squared."

Fatty clucked reprovingly. "You ought to be glad we saved your life." He added, "Though it wasn't my idea, you strike me as a sorry team. He wanted you alive."

"Shaddap," Skinny said. "Strap his head."

"Let him break his neck. We better fix our ourselves. He won't wait." But he started to obey.

Skinny glanced at his watch. "Four minutes."

The fat one hastily tightened a strap across my forehead, then both moved very fast, swallowing capsules, giving each other hypos. I watched as best I could.

I was back in the ship. The ceiling glowed the same way, the walls looked the same. It was the room the two men used; their beds were on each side and I was strapped to a soft couch between them.

Each hurriedly got on his bed, began zipping up a tight wrapping like a sleeping bag. Each strapped his head in place before completing the process. I was not interested in them. "Hey! What did you do with Peewee?"

The fat man chuckled. "Hear that, Tim? That's a good one."

"Shaddap."

"You-" I was about to sum up Fatty's character but my thoughts got fuzzy and my tongue was thick. Besides, I wanted to ask about the Mother Thing, too.

I did not get out another word. Suddenly I was incredibly heavy and the couch was rock hard.

For a long, long time I wasn't awake or truly asleep. At first I couldn't feel anything but that terrible weight, then I hurt all over and wanted to scream. I didn't have the strength for it.

Slowly the pain went away and I stopped feeling anything. I wasn't a body-just me, no attachments. I dreamed a lot and none of it made sense; I seemed to be stuck in a comic book, the sort P.T.A. meetings pass resolutions against, and the baddies were way ahead no matter what I did.

Once the couch gave a twisting lurch and suddenly I had a body, one that was dizzy. After a few ages I realized vaguely that I had gone through a skew-flip turn-over. I had known, during lucid moments, that I was going somewhere, very fast, at terribly high acceleration. I decided solemnly that we must be halfway and tried to figure out how long two times eternity was. It kept coming out eighty-five cents plus sales tax; the cash register rang "NO SALE" and I would start over.

Fats was undoing my head strap. It stuck and skin came away. "Rise and shine, bub. Time's awastin'."