Have space suit-- will travel by Robert A. Heinlein Read Free Book Online Page A

fuse.
    “You’re ‘Peewee’?”
    “That’s what I’m called-I’m relaxed about it. You see, I heard, ‘Junebug, calling Peewee,’ and decided that Daddy had found out about the spot I was in and had alerted people to help me land. But if you aren’t ‘Junebug,’ you wouldn’t know about that. Who are you?”
    “Wait a minute, I am ‘Junebug.’ I mean I was using that call. But I’m Clifford Russell-‘Kip’ they call me.”
    “How do you do. Kip?” she said politely.
    “And howdy to you, Peewee. Uh, are you a boy or a girl?”
    Peewee looked disgusted. “I’ll make you regret that remark. I realize I am undersized for my age but I’m actually eleven, going on twelve. There’s no need to be rude. In another five years I expect to be quite a dish-you’ll probably beg me for every dance.”
    At the moment I would as soon have danced with a kitchen stool, but I had things on my mind and didn’t want a useless argument. “Sorry, Peewee. I’m still groggy. You mean you were in that first ship?”
    Again she looked miffed. “I was piloting it.”
    Sedation every night and a long course of psychoanalysis. At my age. “You were-piloting?”
    “You surely don’t think the Mother Thing could? She wouldn’t fit their controls. She curled up beside me and coached. But if you think it’s easy, when you’ve never piloted anything but a Cessna with your Daddy at your elbow and never made any kind of landing, then think again. I did very well!-and your landing instructions weren’t too specific. What have they done with the Mother Thing?”
    “The what?”
    “You don’t know? Oh, dear!”
    “Wait a minute, Peewee. Let’s get on the same frequency. I’m ‘Junebug’ all right and I homed you in-and if you think that’s easy, to have a voice out of nowhere demand emergency landing instructions, you better think again, too. Anyhow, a ship landed and another ship landed right after it and a door opened in the first ship and a guy in a space suit jumped out-“
    “That was I.”
    “-and something else jumped out-“
    “The Mother Thing.”
    “Only she didn’t get far. She gave a screech and flopped. I went to see what the trouble was and something hit me. The next thing I know you’re saying, ‘Hi, there.’ “ I wondered if I ought to tell her that the rest, including her, was likely a morphine dream because I was probably lying in a hospital with my spine in a cast.
    Peewee nodded thoughtfully. “They must have blasted you at low power, or you wouldn’t be here. Well, they caught you and they caught me, so they almost certainly caught her. Oh, dear! I do hope they didn’t hurt her.”
    “She looked like she was dying.”
    “As if she were dying,” Peewee corrected me. “Subjunctive. I rather doubt it; she’s awfully hard to kill-and they wouldn’t kill her except to keep her from escaping; they need her alive.”
    “Why? And why do you call her ‘the Mother Thing’?”
    “One at a time, Kip. She’s the Mother Thing because . . . well, because she is, that’s all. You’ll know, when you meet her. As to why they wouldn’t kill her, it’s because she’s worth more as a hostage than as a corpse-the same reason the kept me alive. Although she’s worth incredibly more than I am-they’d write me off without a blink if I became inconvenient. Or you. But since she was alive when you saw her, then it’s logical that she’s a prisoner again. Maybe right next door. That makes me feel much better.”
    It didn’t make me feel better. “Yes, but where’s here?”
    Peewee glanced at a Mickey Mouse watch, frowned and said, “Almost halfway to the Moon, I’d say.”
    “What?!”
    “Of course I don’t know. But it makes sense that they would go back to their nearest base; that’s where the Mother Thing and I scrammed from.”
    “You’re telling me we’re in that ship?”
    “Either the one I swiped or the other one. Where did you think you were, Kip? Where else could you