Podkayne of Mars

"How?" I glanced up at Titania. She was nursing Ariel but she never took her eyes off us.

Clark followed my glance. "I'll take care of that insect when the time comes, forget it. It has to be soon and it has to be at night."

"Why at night?" I was thinking that this smoggy paradise was bad enough when you could see a little, but in pitch-darkness- "Pod, let that cut in your face heal; you're making a draft. It's got to be while Jojo is locked up."

"Jojo?"

"That set of muscles she has working for her. The

native." -

"Oh, you mean Pinhead."

"Pinhead, Jojo, Albert Einstein. The happy-duster. He serves supper, then he washes the dishes, then she locks him up and gives him his night's ration of dust. Then he stays locked up until he sleeps it off, because she's as scared of him when he's high as anybody else is. So we make our try for it while he is caged-and maybe she'll be asleep, too. With luck the bloke who drives her sky wagon will be away, too; he doesn't always sleep here. But we can't count on it and it has got to be before the Tricorn shapes for Luna. When is that?"

"Twelve-seventeen on the eighth, ship Greenwich."

"Which is?"

"Local? Nine-sixteen Venusberg, Wednesday the twentieth."

"Check," he answered. "On both."

"But why?"

"Shut up." He had taken his slide rule from his bag and was setting it. For the conversion, I assumed, so I asked, "Do you want to know the Venus second for this Terran year?" I was rather proud to have it on the tip of my tongue, like a proper pilot; Mr. Clancy's time hadn't been entirely wasted even though I had never let him get cuddly.

"Nope. I know it." Clark reset the rule, read it and a

We agreed, within a few seconds, but that wasn't what I noticed; I was looking at the date hand. "Clark! Today's the nineteenth!"

"Maybe you thought it was Christmas," he said sourly. "And don't yip like that again. I can read you if you don't make a sound."

"But that's tomorrow!" (I did make it soundless.)

"Worse. It's less than seventeen hours from now... and we can't make a move until that brute is locked up. We get just one chance, no more."

"Our Uncle Tom doesn't get to the conference."

Clark shrugged. "Maybe so, maybe not. Whether he decides to go-or sticks around and tries to find us- I couldn't care less."

Clark was being very talkative, for Clark. But at best he grudges words and I didn't understand him. "What do you mean-if he sticks around?"

Apparently Clark thought he had told me, or that I already knew-but he hadn't and I didn't. Uncle Tom was already gone. I felt suddenly lost and forlorn. "Clark, are you sure?"

"Sure, I'm sure. She darn well saw to it that I saw him go. Jojo loaded him in like a sack of meal and I

saw the wagon take off into the smog. Uncle Tom is in Venusberg by now."

I suddenly felt much better. "Then he'll rescue us!" Clark looked bored. "Pod, don't be stupid squared." "But he will! Uncle Tom ... and Mr. Chairman

and Dexter-"

He cut me off. "Oh, for Pete's sake, Poddy! Analyze

it. You're Uncle Tom, you're in Venusberg, you've got all the help possible. How do you find this place?"

"Uh ...' I stopped. "Uh..." I said again. Then I closed my mouth and left it closed.

"Uh," he agreed. "Exactly Uh. You don't find it. Oh, in eight or ten years with a few thousand people doing nothing but searching, you could find it by elimination. Fat lot of good that would do. Get this through your little head, Sis: nobody is going to rescue us, nobody can possibly help us. We either break out of here tonightr we've had it." -

"Why tonight? Oh, tonight's all right with me. But if we don't get a chance tonight-"

"Then at nine-sixteen tomorrow," he interrupted, "we're dead."

"Huh? Why?"

"Figure it out yourself, Pod. Put yourself in old Gruesome's place. Tomorrow the Tricorn leaves. Figure it both ways: Uncle Tom leaves in it, or Uncle Tom won't leave. Okay, you've got his niece and nephew. What do you do with them? Be logical about it. Her sort of logic."

I tried, I really tried. But maybe I've been brought up wrong for that sort of logic; I can't seem to visualize killing somebody just because he or she had become a nuisance to me.

But I could see that Clark was right that far: after ship's departure tomorrow we will simply be nuisances to Mrs. Grew. If Uncle Tom doesn't leave, we are most special nuisances-and if he does leave and she

is counting on his worry about us to keep him in line at Luna City (it wouldn't, of course, but that is what she is counting on anyway), in that case every day she risks the possibility that we might escape and get word to Uncle.

All right, maybe I can't imagine just plain murder; it's outside my experience. But suppose both Clark and I came down with green pox and died- That would certainly be convenient for Mrs. Grew-now, wouldn't it?

"I scan it," I agreed.

"Good," he said. "I'll teach you a thing or four yet, Pod. Either we make it tonight ... or just past nine tomorrow she chills us both ... and she chills Jojo, too, and sets fire to the place."

"Why Jojo? I mean Pinhead."

"That's the real tipoff, Pod. The happy-duster. This is Venus... and yet she let us see that she was suppl~zing dust to a duster. She won't leave any witnesses.'

"Uncle Tom is a witness, too."

"What if he is? She's counting on his keeping his lip zipped until the conference is over....nd by then she's back on Earth and has lost herself among eight billion people. Hang around here and risk being caught? Pod, she's going to wait here only long enough to find out whether or not Uncle Tom catches the Tricorn. Then she'll carry out either Plan A, or Plan B-but both plans cancel us out. Get that through your fuzzy head."

I shivered. "All right. I've got it."

He gri

and Uncle Tom fubbed just about as badly, thinking he could make a straight payoff ... but I came out here prepared!"

"You did? With what? Your slide rule? Or maybe those comic books?"

Clark said, "Pod, you know I never read comic books; they were just protective coloration."

(And this is true, so far as I know- I thought I had uncovered his Secret Vice.)

"Then what?" I demanded.

"Just compose your soul in patience, Sister dear. All in good time." He moved his bag back of the bed, then added, "Move around here where you can watch down the hallway. If Lady Macbeth shows up, I'm reading comic books."

I did as he told me to but asked him one more questio

He blinked and looked stupid. "What bomb?"

"The one they paid you to sneak aboard the Tn corn, of course! What bomb indeed!"

"Oh, that. Golly, Poddy, you believe everything you're told. When you get to Terra, don't let anybody sell you the Pyramids-they're not for sale." He went on working and I smothered my a

Presently he said, "She couldn't possibly know anything about any bombs in the Tricorn, or she wouldn't have been a passenger in it herself."

Clark can always make me feel stupid. This was so obvious (after he pointed it out) that I refrained from comment. "How do you figure it, then?"

"Well, she could have been hired by the same people and not have known that they were just using her as a reserve."

My mind raced and another answer came up. "In which case there could be still a third plot to get Uncle Tom between here and Luna!"