Podkayne of Mars

"Could be. Certainly a lot of people are taking an

interest in him. But I figure it for two groups. One group-almost certainly from Mars-doesn t want Uncle Tom to be there. at all. Another group-from Earth probably, at least old Gruesome actually did come from Earth-wants him to be there but wants him to sing their song. Otherwise when she had Uncle

Tom, she would never have .turned him loose; she would just have had Jojo shove him into a soft spot and wait for the bubbles to stop coming up." Clark dug out something and looked at it. "Pod, repeat this back and don't make a' sound. You are exactly twentythree kilometers from South Gate and almost due south of it-south seven degrees west."

I repeated it. "How do you know?"

He held -up a small black object about as big as two

• - packs of cigarettes. "Inertial tracker, infantry model. You can buy them anywhere here, anybody who ever

goes out into the bush carries one." He handed it to me.

I looked at it with interest; I had never seen one that small. Sand rats use them, of course, but they use bigger, more accurate ones mounted in their sand buggies-and anyhow, on Mars you- can always see

either the stars or the Sun. Not like this gloomy place!

I even knew how it' worked, more or less, because

inertial astrogation is a commonplace for spaceships

and guided missiles-vector integration of accelera

tions and times. But whereas the Tn corn's inertial

• tracker is- supposed to be good for one part in a mil

lion, this little gadget probably couldn't be read closer

than one in a thousand.

But it improved our chances at least a thousand to one! . -

"Clark! Did Uncle Tom have one of these? 'Cause if he did-"

He shook his hetid. "If he did, he never 'got a chance

- to read it. I figure they gassed him at once; he was

limp when they lifted him out of the air wagon. And I never had a chance to tell him whefe this dump is because this has been my first chance to look at mine. Now put it in your purse; you're going to use it to get back to Venusberg.'

"Uh ... it'll be bulky in my purse, it'll show. You better hide it wherever you had it. You won't lose me, I'm ~oing to hang onto your hand every step of the way.'

"Why not?"

"In the first place I'm not going to drag this bag with me and that's where it was hidden; I built a false bottom into it. In the second place we aren't going back together-"

"What? Why not? We certainly are! Clark, I'm responsible for you."

"That's a matter of opinion. Your opinion. Look, Poddy, I'm going to get you out of this silly mess. But don't try to use your head, it leaks. Just your memory. Listen to what I say and then do it exactly the way I tell you to-and you'll be all right."

"But-"

"Do you have a plan to get us out?"

"Then shut up. You start pulling your Big Sister act now and you'll get us both killed."

I shut up. And I must confess that his plan made considerable sense. According to Clark there is nobody in this house but us, Mrs. Grew, Titania and Ariel, Pinhead-and sometimes her drive. I certainly haven't seen or heard any evidences of anybody else and I suppose that Mrs. Grew has been doing it with an absolute minimum of witnesses-I know I would if I were (God forbid!) ever engaged in anything so outrageously criminal.

I've never seen the driver's face and neither has

Clark-on purpose, I'm sure. But Clark says that the driver sometimes stays overnight, so we must be prepared to cope with him.

Okay, assume that we cope. As soon as we are out of the house we split up; I go east, he goes west, for a couple of kilometers, in straight lines as near as bogs and swamps permit, which may be not very.

Then we both turn north-and Clark says that the ring road around the city is just three kilometers north of us; he drew me a sketch from memory of a map he had studied before he set out to "rescue Girdle."

At the ring road I go right, he goes left-and we each make use of the first hitchhike transportation, ranch house phone, or whatever, to reach Uncle Tom and/or Chairman Cunha and get lots of reinforcements in a hurry! -

The idea of splitting up is the most elementary of tactics, to make sure that at least one of us gets through and gets help. Mrs. Grew is so fat she couldn't chase anybody on a race track, much less a swamp. We plan to do it when she doesn't dare unlock Pinhead for fear of her own life. If we are chased, it will probably be the driver-and he can't chase two directions at once. Maybe there are other natives she can call on for help, but even so, splitting up doubles our chances.

So I get the inertial tracker because Clark doesn't think I can maneuver in the bush without one, even if I wait for it to get light. He's probably right. But he claims that he can steer well enough to find that road using just his watch, a wet finger for the breeze, and polarized spectacles-which, so help me, he has with him.

I shouldn't have sneered at his comic books; he actually did come prepared, quite a lot of ways. If they hadn't gassed him while he was still locked in the passenger compartment of Mrs. Grew's air buggy, I think he could have given them a very busy, bad time. A

flame gun in his bag, a Remington pistol hidden on his person, knives, stun bombs-even a isecond inertial tracker, openly in the bag along with his clothes and comic books and slide rule.

I asked him why, and he put on his best superior look. "If anything went wrong and they grabbed me, they would expect me to have one. So I had one- and it hadn't even been started ... poor little tenderfoot who doesn't even know enough to switch the thing on when he leaves his base position. Old Gruesome got a fine chuckle out of that." He sneered. "She thinks I'm half-witted and I've done my best to help the idea along."

So they did the same thing with his bag that they did with my purse-cleaned everything out of it that looked even faintly useful for mayhem and murder, let him keep what was left.

And most of what was left was concealed by a false bottom so beautifully faked that the ~manufacturer wouldn't have noticed it.

Except, possibly, for the weight-I asked Clark about that. He shrugged. "Calculated risk," he said. "If you don't bet, you can't win. Jojo carried it in here still packed and she searched it in here-and didn't pick it up afterwards; she had both arms full of junk I didn't mind her confiscating."

(And suppose she had picked it up and noticed? Well, Brother would still have had his brain and his hands-and I think he could take a sewing machine apart and put it back together as a piece of artillery. Clark is a trial to me-but I have great confidence in him.)

I'm going to get some sleep now-or try to-as Pinhead has just fetched in our supper and we have a busy time ahead of us, later. But first I'm going to backtrack this tape and copy it; I have one fresh spool left in my purse. I'm going to give the copy to Clark

to give to Uncle, just in case. Just in case Poddy turns out to be bubbles in a swamp, I mean. But I'm not worried about that; it's a much nicer prospect than being Pinhead's roommate. In fact I'm not worried about anything; Clark has the situation well in hand.

But he warned me very strongly about one thing; "Tell them to get here well before nine-sixteen ... or don't bother to come at all."

"Why?" I wanted to know.

"Just do it."

"Clark, you know perfectly well that two grown men won't pay any attention unless I can give them a sound reason for it."

He blinked. "All right. There is a very sound reason. A half-a-kiloton bomb isn't very much ... but it still isn't healthy to be around when it goes off. Unless they can get in here and disarm it before that time- up she goes!"