PODKAYNE OF MARS 1963, Robert A. Heinlein A Puke (TM) Audioboo

PODKAYNE OF MARS Robert A. Heinlein This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Formatted from a Scan for computer speech, 2023.
Copyright (c) 1963 by Robert A. Heinlein Postlude to Podkayne of Mars, original version (c) 1989 by Robert A. & Virginia Heinlein Trust UDT 20 June 1983
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Book Baen Publishing Enterprises P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, N.Y. 10471
ISBN: 0-671-72179-8
Cover art by Stephen Hickman First Baen printing, August 1993
Distributed by SIMON & SCHUSTER 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, N.Y. 10020
Printed in the United States of America For Gale and Astrid.

Chapter One.
All my life I’ve wanted to go to Earth. Not to live, of course-just to see it. As everybody knows, Terra is a wonderful place to visit but not to live. Not truly suited to human habitation.
Personally, I’m not convinced that the human race originated on Earth. I mean to say, how much reliance should you place on the evidence of a few pounds of old bones plus the opinions of anthropologists who usually contradict each other anyhow when what you are being asked to swallow so obviously flies in the face of all common sense?
Think it through-the surface acceleration of Terra is clearly too great for the human structure; it is known to result in flat feet and hernias and heart trouble. The incident solar radiation on Terra will knock down dead an unprotected human in an amazingly short time, and do you know of any other organism which has to be artificially protected from what is alleged to be its own natural environment in order to stay alive? As to Terran ecology.
Never mind. We humans just couldn’t have originated on Earth. Nor (I admit) on Mars, for that matter-although Mars is certainly as near ideal as you can find in this planetary system today. Possibly the Missing Planet was our first home-even though I think of Mars as “home” and will always want to return to it no matter how far I travel in later years, and I intend to travel a long, long way.
But I do want to visit Earth as a starter, not only to see how in the world eight billion people manage to live almost sitting in each other’s laps, less than half of the land area of Terra is even marginally habitable, but mostly to see oceans, from a safe distance. Oceans are not only fantastically unlikely but to me the very thought of them is terrifying. All that unimaginable amount of water, unconfined. And so deep that if you fell into it, it would be over your head. Incredible!
But now we are going there!
Perhaps I should introduce us. The Fries Family, I mean. Myself: Podkayne Fries, “Poddy” to my friends and we might as well start off being friendly. Adolescent female: I’m eight plus a few months, at a point in my development described by my Uncle Tom as “frying size and just short of husband high,” a fair enough description since a female citizen of Mars ma contract plenary marriage without guardian’s waiver on her ninth birthday, and I stand 157 centimeters tall in my bare feet and mass 49 kilograms. “Five feet two and eyes of blue” daddy calls me, but he is a historian and romantic. But I am not romantic and would not consider even a limited marriage on my ninth birthday; I have other plans.
Not that I am opposed to marriage in due time, nor do I expect to have any trouble snagging the male of my choice. In these memoirs I shall be frank rather than modest because they will not be published until I am old and famous, and I will certainly revise them before then. In the meantime I am taking the precaution of writing English in Martian Oldscript, a combination which I’m sure Daddy could puzzle out, only he wouldn’t do such a thing unless I invited him to. Daddy is a dear and does not snoopervise me. My brother Clark would pry, but he regards English as a dead language and would never bother his head with Oldscript anyhow.
Perhaps you have seen a book titled: Eleven Years Old: The Pre-Adolescent Adjustment Crisis in the Male. I read it, hoping that it would help me to cope with my brother. Clark is just six, but the “Eleven Years” referred to in that title are Terran years because it was written on Earth. If you will apply the conversion factor of 1.8808 to attain real years, you will see that my brother is exactly eleven of those undersized Earth years old.
That book did not help me much. It talks about “cushioning the transition into the social group”, but there is no present indication that Clark ever intends to join the human race. He is more likely to devise a way to blow up the universe just to hear the bang. Since I am responsible for him much of the time and since he has an I.Q. of 160 while mine is only 145, you can readily see that I need all the advantage that greater age and maturity can give me. At present my standing rule with him is: Keep your guard up and never offer hostages.
Back to me-I’m colonial mongrel in ancestry, but the Swedish part is dominant in my looks, with Polynesian and Asiatic fractions adding no more than a not unpleasing exotic flavor. My legs are long for my height, my waist is 48 centimeters and my chest is 90, not all of which is rib cage, I assure you, even though we old colonial families all run to hypertrophied lung development; some of it is burgeoning secondary sex characteristic. Besides that, my hair is pale blond and wavy and I’m pretty. Not beautiful-Praxiteles would not have given me a second look-but real beauty is likely to scare a man off, or else make him quite unmanageable, whereas prettiness, properly handled, is an asset.
Up till a couple of years ago I used to regret not being male, in view of my ambitions, but I at last realized how silly I was being; one might as well wish for wings. As Mother says: “One works with available materials”, and I found that the materials available were adequate. In fact I found that I like being female; my hormone balance is okay and I’m quite well adjusted to the world and vice versa. I’m smart enough not unnecessarily to show that I am smart; I’ve got a long upper lip and a short nose, and when I wrinkle my nose and look baffled, a man is usually only too glad to help me, especially if he is about twice my age. There are more ways of computing a ballistic than by counting it on your fingers.
That’s me: Poddy Fries, free citizen of Mars, female. Future pilot and someday commander of deep-space exploration parties. Watch for me in the news.
Mother is twice as good-looking as I am and much taller than I ever will be; she looks like a Valkyrie about to gallop off into the sky. She holds a system wide license as a Master Engineer, Heavy Construction, Surface or Free Fall, and is entitled to wear both the Hoover Medal with cluster and the Christiana Order, Knight Commander, for bossing the rebuilding of Deimos and Phobos. But she’s more than just the traditional hairy engineer; she has a social presence which she can switch from warmly charming to frostily intimidating at will, she holds honorary degrees galore, and she publishes popular little gems such as “Design Criteria with Respect to the Effects of Radiation on the Bonding of Pressure-Loaded Sandwich Structures.”
It is because Mother is often away from home for professional reasons that I am, from time to time, the reluctant custodian of my younger brother. Still, I suppose it is good practice, for how can I ever expect to command my own ship if I can’t tame a six-year-old savage? Mother says that a boss who is forced to part a man’s hair with a wrench has failed at some point, so I try to control our junior nihilist without resorting to force. Besides, using force on Clark is very chancy; he masses as much as I do and he fights dirty.
It was the job Mother did on Deimos that accounts for Clark and myself. Mother was determined to meet her construction dates; and Daddy, on leave from Ares U. with a Guggenheim grant, was even more frantically determined to save every scrap of the ancient Martian artifacts no matter how much it delayed construction; this threw them into such intimate and bitter conflict that they got married and for a while Mother had babies.
Daddy and Mother are Jack Spratt and his wife; he is interested in everything that has already happened, she is interested only in what is going to happen, especially if she herself is making it happen. Daddy’s title is Van Loon Professor of Terrestrial History but his real love is Martian history, especially if it happened fifty million years ago. But do not think that Dad is a cloistered don given only to contemplation and study. When he was even younger than I am now, he lost an arm one chilly night in the attack on the Company Offices during the Revolution-and he can still shoot straight and fast with the hand he has left.
The rest of our family is Great-Uncle Tom, Daddy’s father’s brother. Uncle Tom is a parasite. So he says. It is true that you don’t see him work much, but he was an old man before I was born. He is a Revolutionary veteran, same as Daddy, and is a Past Grand Commander of the Martian Legion and a Senator-at-Large of the Republic, but he doesn’t seem to spend much time on either sort of politics, Legion or public; instead he hangs out at the Elks Club and plays pinochle with other relics of the past.
Uncle Tom is really my closest relative, for he isn’t as intense as my parents, nor as busy, and will always take time to talk with me. Furthermore he has a streak of Original Sin which makes him sympathetic to my problems. He says that I have such a streak, too, much wider than his. Concerning this, I reserve my opinion.
That’s our family and we are all going to Earth. Wups! I left out three-the infants. But they hardly count now and it is easy to forget them. When Daddy and Mother got married, the PEG Board-Population, Ecology, and Genetics-pegged them at five and would have allowed them seven had they requested it, for, as you may have gathered, my parents are rather high grade citizens even among planetary colonials all of whom are descended from, or are themselves, highly selected and drastically screened stock.
But Mother told the Board that five was all that she had time for and then had us as fast as possible, while fidgeting at a desk job in the Bureau of Planetary Engineering. Then she popped her babies into deep-freeze as fast as she had them, all but me, since I was the first. Clark spent two years at constant entropy, else he would be almost as old as I am-deepfreeze time doesn’t count, of course, and his official birthday is the day he was decanted. I remember how jealous I was, Mother was just back from conditioning Juno and it didn’t seem fair to me that she would immediately start raising a baby.
Uncle Tom talked me out of that, with a lot of lap sitting, and I am no longer jealous of Clark-merely wary.
So we’ve got Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon in the subbasement of the creche at Marsopolis, and we’ll uncork and name at least one of them as soon as we get back from Earth. Mother is thinking of revivifying Gamma and Epsilon together and raising them as twins (they’re girls) and then launching Delta, who is a boy, as soon as the girls are housebroken. Daddy says that is not fair, because Delta is entitled to be older than Epsilon by natural priority of birth date. Mother says that is mere worship of precedent and that she does wish Daddy would learn to leave his reverence for the past on the campus when he comes home in the evening.
Daddy says that Mother has no sentimental feelings-and Mother says she certainly hopes not, at least with any problem requiring rational analysis-and Daddy says let’s be rational, then, twin older sisters would either break a boy’s spirit or else spoil him rotten.
Mother says that is unscientific and unfounded. Daddy says that Mother merely wants to get two chores out of the way at once-whereupon Mother heartily agrees and demands to know why proved production engineering principles should not be applied to domestic economy?
Daddy doesn’t answer this. Instead he remarks thoughtfully that he must admit that two little girls dressed just alike would be kind of cute name them “Margret” and “Marguerite” and call them “Peg” and “Meg”, Clark muttered to me, “Why uncork them at all?
Why not just sneak down some night and open the valves and call it an accident?”
I told him to go wash out his mouth with prussic acid and not let Daddy hear him talk that way. Daddy would have walloped him properly. Daddy, although a historian, is devoted to the latest, most progressive theories of child psychology and applies them by canalizing the cortex through pain association whenever he really wants to ensure that a lesson will not be forgotten. As he puts it so neatly: “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”
I canalize most readily and learned very early indeed how to predict and avoid incidents which would result in Daddy’s applying his theories and his hand. But in Clark’s case it is almost necessary to use a club simply to gain his divided attention.
So it is now clearly evident that we are going to have twin baby sisters. But it is no headache of mine, I am happy to say, for Clark is quite enough maturing trauma for one girl’s adolescence. By the time the twins are a current problem I expect to be long gone and far away.
Interlude.
Hi, Pod.
So you think I can’t read your worm tracks.
A lot you know about me! Poddy-oh, excuse me, “Captain” Podkayne Fries, I mean, the famous Space Explorer and Master of Men-Captain Poddy dear, you probably will never read this because it wouldn’t occur to you that I not only would break your “code” but also write comments in the big, wide margins you leave.
Just for the record, Sister dear, I read Old Anglish just as readily as I do System Ortho. Anglish isn’t all that hard and I learned it as soon as I found out that a lot of books I wanted to read had never been translated. But it doesn’t pay to tell everything you know, or somebody comes along and tells you to stop doing whatever it is you are doing. Probably your older sister.
But imagine calling a straight substitution a “code”! Poddy, if you had actually been able to write Old Martian, it would have taken me quite a lot longer. But you can’t. Shucks, even Dad can’t write it without stewing over it and he probably knows more about Old Martian than anyone else in the System.
But you won’t crack my code-because I haven’t any.
Try looking at this page under ultraviolet light-a sun lamp, for example.
Chapter Two.
Oh, Unspeakables!
Dirty ears! Hangnails! Snel-frockey! Spit! WE AREN’T GOING!
At first I thought that my brother Clark had managed one of his more charlatanous machinations of malevolent legerdemain. But fortunately (the only fortunate thing about the whole miserable mess) I soon perceived that it was impossible for him to be in fact guilty no matter what devious subversions roil his id. Unless he has managed to invent and build in secret a time machine, which I misdoubt he would do if he could, nor am I prepared to offer odds that he can’t. Not since the time he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks and charge them to my code number without (so far as anyone could ever prove) disturbing the company’s seal on the control box.
We’ll never know how he did that one, because, despite the fact that the company offered to Forgive All and pay a cash bonus to boot if only he would please tell them how he managed to beat their unbeatable seal-despite this, Clark looked blank and would not talk. That left only circumstantial evidence, meaning, it was clearly evident to anyone who knew us both (Daddy and Mother, namely) that I would never order candy-stripe ice cream smothered in hollandaise sauce, or, no, I can’t go on; I feel ill. Whereas Clark is widely known to eat anything which does not eat him first.
Even this clinching psychological evidence would never have convinced the company’s adjuster had not their own records proved that two of these obscene feasts had taken place while I was a house guest of friends in Syrtis Major, a thousand kilometers away. Never mind, I simply want to warn all girls not to have a Mad Genius for a baby brother. Pick instead a stupid, stolid, slightly subnormal one who will sit quietly in front of the solly box, mouth agape at cowboy classics, and never wonder what makes the pretty images.
But I have wandered far from my tragic tale.
We aren’t going to have twins.
We already have triplets.
Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon, throughout all my former life mere topics of conversation, are now Grace, Duncan, and Elspeth in all too solid flesh-unless Daddy again changes his mind before final registration; they’ve had three sets of names already. But what’s in a name?-they are here, already in our home with a nursery room sealed on to shelter them, three helpless unfinished humans about canal-worm pink in color and no features worthy of the name. Their limbs squirm aimlessly, their eyes don’t track, and a faint, queasy odor of sour milk permeates every room even when they are freshly bathed. Appalling sounds come from one end of each-in which they heterodyne each other-and even more appalling conditions prevail at the other ends. I’ve yet to find all three of them dry at the same time.
And yet there is something decidedly engaging about the little things; were it not that they are the proximate cause of my tragedy I could easily grow quite fond of them. I’m sure Duncan is beginning to recognize me already.
But, if I am beginning to be reconciled to their presence, Mother’s state can only be described as atavistically maternal. Her professional journals pile up unread, she has that soft Madonna look in her eyes, and she seems somehow both shorter and wider than she did a week ago.
First consequence: she won’t even discuss going to Earth, with or without the triplets.
Second consequence: Daddy won’t go if she won’t go-he spoke quite sharply to Clark for even suggesting it.
Third consequence: since they won’t go, we can’t go. Clark and me, I mean. It is conceivably possible that I might have been permitted to travel alone, since Daddy agrees that I am now a “young adult” in maturity and judgment even though my ninth birthday lies still some months in the future, but the question is formal and without content since I am not considered quite old enough to accept full responsible control of my brother with both my parents some millions of kilometers away, nor am I sure that I would wish to, unless armed with something at least as convincing as a morning star, and Daddy is so dismayingly fair with that he would not even discuss permitting one of us to go and not the other when both of us had been promised the trip.
Fairness is a priceless virtue in a parent-but just at the moment I could stand being spoiled and favored instead.
But the above is why I am sure that Clark does not have a time machine concealed in his wardrobe. This incredible contretemps, this idiot’s dream of interlocking mishaps, is as much to his disadvantage as it is to mine.
How did it happen? Gather ye round. Little did we dream that, when the question of a family trip to Earth was being planned in our household more than a month ago, this disaster was already complete and simply waiting the most hideous moment to unveil itself. The facts are these: the creche at Marsopolis has thousands of newborn babies marbleized at just short of absolute zero, waiting in perfect safety until their respective parents are ready for them. It is said, and I believe it, that a direct hit with a nuclear bomb would not hurt the consigned infants; a thousand years later a rescue squad could burrow down and find that automatic, self-maintaining machinery had not permitted the tank temperatures to vary a hundredth of a degree.
In consequence, we Marsmen, not “Martians,” please!-Martians are a non-human race, now almost extinct, Marsmen tend to marry early, have a full quota of babies quickly, then rear them later, as money and time permit. It reconciles that discrepancy, so increasingly and glaringly evident ever since the Terran Industrial Revolution, between the best biological age for having children and the best social age for supporting and rearing them.
A couple named Breeze did just that, some ten years ago, married on her ninth birthday and just past his tenth, while he was still a pilot cadet and she was attending Ares U. The applied for three babies, were pegged accordingly, and got them all out of the way while they were both finishing school. Very sensible.
The years roll past, he as a pilot and later as master, she as a finance clerk in his ship and later as purser, a happy life. The spacelines like such an arrangement; married couples spacing together mean a taut, happy ship.
Captain and Missus Breeze serve their ten-and-a-half (twenty Terran) years and put in for half-pay retirement, have it confirmed-and immediately radio the creche to uncork their babies, all three of them.
The radio order is received, relayed back for confirmation; the creche accepts it. Five weeks later the happy couple pick up three babies, sign for them, and start the second half of a perfect life.
So they thought. But what they had deposited was two boys and a girl; what they got was two girls and a boy. Ours.
Believe this you must-it took them the better part of a week to notice it. I will readily concede that the difference between a brand-new boy baby and a brand-new girl baby is, at the time, almost irrelevant. Nevertheless there is a slight difference. Apparently it was a case of too much help-between a mother, a mother-in-law, a temporary nurse, and a helpful neighbor, and much running in and out, it seems unlikely that any one person bathed all three babies as one continuous operation that first week. Certainly Missus Breeze had not done so-until the day she did, and noticed, and fainted-and dropped one of our babies in the bath water, where it would have drowned had not her scream fetched both her husband and the neighbor lady.
So we suddenly had month-old triplets.
The lawyer man from the creche was very vague about how it happened; he obviously did not want to discuss how their “foolproof” identification system could result in such a mixup. So I don’t know myself, but it seems logically certain that, for all their serial numbers, babies’ footprints, record machines, et cetera, there is some point in the system where one clerk read aloud “Breeze” from the radioed order and another clerk checked a file, then punched “Fries” into a machine that did the rest.
But the fixer man did not say. He was simply achingly anxious to get Mother and Daddy to settle out of court-accept a check and sign a release under which they agreed not to publicize the error.
They settled for three years of Mother’s established professional earning power while the little fixer man gulped and looked relieved.
But nobody offered to pay me for the mayhem that had been committed on my life, my hopes, and my ambitions.
Clark did offer a suggestion that was almost a sensible one, for him. He proposed that we swap even with the Breezes, let them keep the warm ones, we could keep the cold ones.
Everybody happy-and we all go to Earth.
My brother is far too self-centered to realize it, but the Angel of Death brushed him with its wings at that point. Daddy is a truly noble soul, but he had had almost more than he could stand.
And so have I. I had expected today to be actually on my way to Earth, my first space trip farther than Phobos-which was merely a school field trip, our “Class Honeymoon.” A nothing thing.
Instead, guess what I’m doing.
Do you have any idea how many times a day three babies have to be changed?

Chapter Three.
Hold it! Stop the machines! Wipe the tapes! Cancel all bulletins.
WE ARE GOING TO EARTH AFTER ALL!
Well, not all of us. Daddy and Mother aren’t going, and of course, the triplets are not. But. Never mind; I had better tell it in order.
Yesterday things just got to be Too Much. I had changed them in rotation, only to find as I got the third one dry and fresh that number one again needed service. I had been thinking sadly that just about that moment I should have been entering the dining saloon of S S Wanderlust to the strains of soft music. Perhaps on the arm of one of the officers perhaps even on the arm of the Captain himself had I the chance to arrange an accidental Happy Encounter, then make judicious use of my “puzzled kitten” expression.
And, as I reached that point in my melancholy daydream, it was then that I discovered that my chores had started all over again. I thought of the Augean Stables and suddenly it was just Too Much and my eyes got blurry with tears.
Mother came in at that point and I asked if I could please have a couple of hours of recess?
She answered, “Why, certainly dear,” and didn’t even glance at me. I’m sure that she didn’t notice that I was crying; she was already doing over, quite unnecessarily, the one that I had just done. She had been tied up on the phone, telling someone firmly that, while it was true as reported that she was not leaving Mars, nevertheless she would not now accept another commission even as a consultant-and no doubt being away from the infants for all of ten minutes had made her uneasy, so she just had to get her hands on one of them.
Mother’s behavior had been utterly unbelievable. Her cortex has tripped out of circuit and her primitive instincts are in full charge. She reminds me of a cat we had when I was a little girl-
Miss Polka Dot Ma’am and her first litter of kittens. Miss Pokie loved and trusted all of us-except about kittens. If we touched one of them, she was uneasy about it. If a kitten was taken out of her box and placed on the floor to be admired, she herself would hop out, grab the kitten in her teeth and immediately return it to the box, with an indignant waggle to her seat that showed all too plainly what she thought of irresponsible people who didn’t know how to handle babies.
Mother is just like that now. She accepts my help simply because there is too much for her to do alone. But she doesn’t really believe that I can even pick up a baby without close supervision.
So I left and followed my own blind instincts, which told me to go look up Uncle Tom.
I found him at the Elks Club, which was reasonably certain at that time of day, but I had to wait in the ladies’ lounge until he came out of the card room. Which he did in about ten minutes, counting a wad of money as he came. “Sorry to make you wait,” he said, “but I was teaching a fellow citizen about the uncertainties in the laws of chance and I had to stay long enough to collect the tuition. How marches it, Podkayne mavourneen?”
I tried to tell him and got all choked up, so he walked me to the park under the city hail and sat me on a bench and bought us both packages of Chokiatpops and I ate mine and most of his and watched the stars on the ceiling and told him all about it and felt better.
He patted my hand. “Cheer up, Flicka. Always remember that, when things seem darkest, they usually get considerably worse.” He took his phone out of a pocket and made a call.
Presently he said, “Never mind the protocol routine, miss. This is Senator Fries. I want the Director.” Then he added, in a moment, “Hymie? Tom Fries here. How’s Judith? Good, good.
Hymie, I just called to tell you that I’m coming over to stuff you into one of your own liquid helium tanks. Oh, say about fourteen or a few minutes after. That’ll give you time to get out of town. Clearing.” He pocketed his phone. “Let’s get some lunch. Never commit suicide on an empty stomach, my dear; it’s bad for the digestion.”
Uncle Tom took me to the Pioneers Club where I have been only once before and which is even more impressive than I had recalled. It has real waiters men so old that they might have been pioneers themselves, unless they met the first ship. Everybody fussed over Uncle Tom and he called them all by their first names and they all called him “Tom” but made it sound like “Your Majesty” and the master of the hostel came over and prepared my sweet himself with about six other people standing around to hand him things, like a famous surgeon operating against the swift onrush of death.
Presently Uncle Tom belched behind his napkin and I thanked everybody as we left while wishing that I had had the forethought to wear my unsuitable gown that Mother won’t let me wear until I’m nine and almost made me take back-one doesn’t get to the Pioneers Club every day.
We took the James Joyce Fogarty Express Tunnel and Uncle Tom sat down the whole way, so I had to sit, too, although it makes me restless; I prefer to walk in the direction a tunnel is moving and get there a bit sooner. But Uncle Tom says that he gets plenty of exercise watching other people work themselves to death.
I didn’t really realize that we were going to the Marsopolis Creche until we were there, so bemused had I been earlier with my own tumultuous emotions. But when we were there and facing a sign reading: OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR-PLEASE USE OTHER DOOR, Uncle Tom said, “Hang around somewhere; I’ll need you later,” and went on in.
The waiting room was crowded and the only magazines not in use were Kiddie Kapers and Modern Homemaker, so I wandered around a bit and presently found a corridor that led to the Nursery.
The sign on the door said that visiting hours were from 16 to 18 thirty. Furthermore, it was locked, so I moved on and found another door which seemed much more promising. It was marked: POSITIVELY NO ADMITANCE. But it didn’t say “This Means You” and it wasn’t locked, so I went in.
You never saw so many babies in your whole life!
Row upon row upon row, each in its own little transparent cubicle. I could really see only the row nearest me, all of which seemed to be about the same age, and much more finished than the three we had at home. Little brown dumplings they were, cute as puppies. Most of them were asleep, some were awake and kicking and cooing and grabbing at dangle toys that were just in reach. If there had not been a sheet of glass between me and them I would have grabbed me a double armful of babies.
There were a lot of girls in the room, too-well, young women, really. Each of them seemed to be busy with a baby and they didn’t notice me. But shortly one of the babies nearest me started to cry whereupon a light came on over its cubicle, and one of the nurse girls hurried over, slid back the cover, picked it up and started patting its bottom. It stopped crying.
“Wet?” I inquired.
She looked up, saw me. “Oh, no, the machines take care of that. Just lonely, so I’m loving it.” Her voice came through clearly in spite of the glass, a hear and speak circuit, no doubt, although the pickups were not in evidence. She made soft noises to the baby, then added, “Are you a new employee? You seem to be lost.
“Oh, no,” I said hastily, “I’m not an employee. I just.”
“Then you don’t belong here, not at this hour. Unless,” she looked at me rather skeptically, “just possibly you are looking for the instruction class for young mothers?”
“Oh, no, no!” I said hastily. “Not yet.” Then I added still more hastily, “I’m a guest of the Director.”
Well, it wasn’t a fib. Not quite. I was a guest of a guest of the Director, one who was with him by appointment. The relationship was certainly concatenative, if not equivalent.
It seemed to reassure her. She asked, “Just what did you want? Can I help you?”
“Uh, just information. I’m making a sort of a survey. What goes on in this room?”
“These are age six-month withdrawal contracts,” she told me. “All these babies will be going home in a few days.” She put the baby, quiet now, back into its private room, adjusted a nursing nipple for it, made some other sort of adjustments on the outside of the cubicle so that the padding inside sort of humped up and held the baby steady against the milk supply, then closed the top, moved on a few meters and picked up another baby. “Personally,” she added, “I think the age six month contract is the best one. A child twelve months old is old enough to notice the transition. But these aren’t. They don’t care who comes along and pets them when they cry, but nevertheless six months is long enough to get a baby well started and take the worst of the load off the mother. We know how, we’re used to it, we stand our watches in rotation so that we are never exhausted from being ‘up with the baby all night’, and in consequence we aren’t short-tempered and we never yell at them-and don’t think for a minute that a baby doesn’t understand a cross tone of voice simply because he can’t talk yet. He knows! And it can start him off so twisted that he may take it out on somebody else, years and years later. There, there, honey,” she went on but not to me, “feel better now? Feeling sleepy, huh? Now you just hold still and Martha will keep her hand on you until you are fast asleep.”
She watched the baby for a moment longer, then withdrew her hand, closed the box and hurried on to where another light was burning. “A baby has no sense of time,” she added as she removed a squalhing lump of fury from its crib. “When it needs love, it needs it right now. It can’t know that.” An older woman had come up behind her. “Yes, Nurse?”
“Who is this you’re chatting with? You know the rules.”
“But, she’s a guest of the Director.”
The older woman looked at me with a stern no nonsense look. “The Director sent you in here?”
I was making a split-second choice among three non-responsive answers when I was saved by Fate. A soft voice coming from everywhere at once announced:
“Miss Podkayne Fries is requested to come to the office of the Director. Miss Podkayne Fries, please come to the office of the Director.”
I tilted my nose in the air and said with dignity, “That is I. Nurse, will you be so kind as to phone the Director and tell him that Miss Fries is on her way?” I exited with deliberate haste.
The Director’s office was four times as big and sixteen times as impressive as the principal’s office at school. The Director was short and had a dark brown skin and a gray goatee and a harried expression. In addition to him and to Uncle Tom, of course, there was present the little lawyer man who had had a bad time with Daddy a week earlier-and my brother Clark. I couldn’t figure out how he got there, except that Clark has an infallible homing instinct for trouble.
Clark looked at me with no expression; I nodded. The Director and his legal beagle stood up. Uncle Tom didn’t but he said, “Doctor Hyman Schoenstein, Mister Poon Kwai Yau-my niece Podkayne Fries. Sit down, honey; nobody is going to bite you. The Director has a proposition to offer you.”
The lawyer man interrupted. “I don’t think.”
“Correct,” agreed Uncle Tom. “You don’t think. Or it would have occurred to you that ripples spread out from a splash.”
“But, Doctor Schoenstein, the release I obtained from Professor Fries explicitly binds him to silence, for separate good and sufficient consideration, over and above damages conceded by us and made good. This is tantamount to blackmail. I.”
Then Uncle Tom did stand up. He seemed twice as tall as usual and was grinning like a fright mask. “What was that last word you used?”
“I?” The lawyer looked startled. “Perhaps I spoke hastily. I simply meant.”
“I heard you,” Uncle Tom growled. “And so did three witnesses. Happens to be one of the words a man can be challenged for on this still free planet. But, since I’m getting old and fat, I may just sue you for your shirt instead. Come along, kids.”
The Director spoke quickly. “Tom, sit down, please. Mister Poon, please keep quiet unless I ask for your advice. Now, Tom, you know quite well that you can’t challenge nor sue over a privileged communication, counsel to client.”
“I can do both or either. Question is: will a court sustain me? But I can always find out.”
“And thereby drag out into the open the very point you know quite well I can’t afford to have dragged out. Simply because my lawyer spoke in an excess of zeal. Mister Poon?”
“I tried to withdraw it. I do withdraw it.”
“Senator?”
Uncle Tom bowed stiffly to Mister Poon, who returned it. “Accepted, sir. No offense meant and none taken.” Then Uncle Tom grinned merrily, let his potbelly slide back down out of his chest, and said in his normal voice, “Okay, Hymie, let’s get on with the crime. Your move.”
Doctor Schoenstein said carefully, “Young lady, I have just learned that the recent disruption of family planning in your home-which we all deeply regret, caused an additional sharp disappointment to you and your brother.”
“It certainly did!” I answered, rather shrilly I’m afraid.
“Yes. As your uncle put it, the ripples spread out.
Another of those ripples could wreck this establishment, make it insolvent as a private business. This is an odd sort of business we are in here, Miss Fries. Superficially we perform a routine engineering function, plus some not unusual boarding nursery services. But in fact what we do touches the most primitive of human emotions. If confidence in our integrity, or in the perfection with which we carry out the service entrusted to us, were to be shaken.” He spread his hands helplessly. “We couldn’t last out the year. Now I can show you exactly how the mishap occurred which affected your family, show you how wildly unlikely it was to have it happen even under the methods we did use, prove to you how utterly impossible it now is and always will be in the future for such a mistake to take place again, under our new procedures. Nevertheless”, he looked helpless again, “if you were to talk, merely tell the simple truth about what did indeed happen once you could ruin us.”
I felt so sorry for him that I was about to blurt out that I wouldn’t even dream of talking! Even though they had ruined my life-when Clark cut in. “Watch it, Pod! It’s loaded.”
So I just gave the Director my Sphinx expression and said nothing. Clark’s instinctive self-interest is absolutely reliable.
Doctor Schoenstein motioned Mister Poon to keep quiet. “But, my dear lady, I am not asking you not to talk. As your uncle the Senator says, you are not here to blackmail and I have nothing with which to bargain. The Marsopolis Creche Foundation, Limited, always carries out its obligations even when they do not result from formal contract. I asked you to come in here in order to suggest a measure of relief for the damage we have unquestionably-though unwittingly-done you and your brother. Your uncle tells me that he had intended to travel with you and your family, but that now he intends to go via the next Triangle Line departure. The Tricorn, I believe it is, about ten days from now. Would you feel less mistreated if we were to pay first-class fares for your brother and you-round trip, of course-in the Triangle Line?”
Would I! The Wanderlust has, as her sole virtue, the fact that she is indeed a spaceship and she was shaping for Earth. But she is an old, slow freighter. Whereas the Triangle Liners, as everyone knows, are utter palaces! I could but nod.
“Good. It is our privilege and we hope you have a wonderful trip. But, uh, young lady, do you think it possible that you could give us some assurance, for no consideration and simply out of kindness, that you wouldn’t talk about a certain regrettable mishap?”
“Oh? I thought that was part of the deal?”
“There is no deal. As your uncle pointed out to me, we owe you this trip, no matter what.”
“Why-why, Doctor, I’m going to be so busy, so utterly rushed, just to get ready in time, that I won’t have time to talk to anyone about any mishaps that probably weren’t your fault anyhow!”
“Thank you.” He turned to Clark. “And you, son?” Clark doesn’t like to be called “son” at best. But don’t think it affected his answer. He ignored the vocative and said coldly, “What about our expenses?”
Doctor Schoenstein flinched. Uncle Tom guffawed and said, “That’s my boy! Doc, I told you he had the simple rapacity of a sand gator. He’ll go far-if somebody doesn’t poison him.”
“Any suggestions?”
“No trouble. Clark. Look me in the eye. Either you stay behind and we weld you into a barrel and feed you through the bunghole so that you can’t talk-while your sister goes anyhow-or you accept these terms. Say a thousand each-no, fifteen hundred-for travel expenses, and you keep your snapper shut forever about the baby mix-up, or I personally, with the aid of four stout, black hearted accomplices, will cut your tongue out and feed it to the cat. A deal?”
“I ought to get ten percent commission on Sis’s fifteen hundred. She didn’t have sense enough to ask for it.”
“No cumshaw. I ought to be charging you commission on the whole transaction. A deal?”
“A deal,” Clark agreed.
Uncle Tom stood up. “That does it, Doc, in his own unappetizing way he is as utterly reliable as she is. So relax. You, too, Kwai Yau, you can breathe again. Doe, you can send a check around to me in the morning. Come on, kids.”
“Thanks, Tom. If that is the word. I’ll have the cheek over before you get there. Uh, just one thing.”
“What, Doe?”
“Senator, you were here long before I was born, so I don’t know too much about your early life. Just the traditional stories and what it says about you in Who’s Who on Mars. Just what were you transported for?
You were transported? Weren’t you?”
Mister Poon looked horror-stricken, and I was. But Uncle Tom didn’t seem offended. He laughed heartily and answered, “I was accused of freezing babies for profit. But it was a frame up-I never did no such thing no how. Come on, kids. Let’s get out of this ghouls’ nest before they smuggle us down into the subbasement.”
Later that night in bed I was dreamily thinking over the trip. There hadn’t even been the least argument with Mother and Daddy; Uncle Tom had settled it all by phone before we got home.
I heard a sound from the nursery, got up and paddled in. It was Duncan, the little darling, not even wet but lonely. So I picked him up and cuddled him and he cooed and then he was wet, so I changed him.
I decided that he was just as pretty, or prettier than all those other babies, even though he was five months younger and his eyes didn’t track. When I put him down again, he was sound asleep; I started back to bed.
And stopped. The Triangle Line gets its name from serving the three leading planets, of course, but which direction a ship makes the Mars-Venus-Earth route depends on just where we all are in our orbits.
But just where were we?
I hurried into the living room and searched for the Daily War Whoop-found it, thank goodness, and fed it into the viewer, flipped to the shipping news, found the predicted arrivals and departures.
Yes, yes, yes! I am going not only to Earth-but to Venus as well!
Venus! Do you suppose Mother would let me. No, best just say nothing now. Uncle Tom will be more tractable, after we get there.
I’m going to miss Duncan-he’s such a little doll.

Chapter Four.
I haven’t had time to write in this journal for days. Just getting ready to leave was almost impossible-and would have been truly impossible had it not been that most preparations-all the special Terra inoculations and photographs and passports and such-were mostly done before Everything Came Unstuck. But Mother came out of her atavistic daze and was very helpful.
She would even let one of the triplets cry for a few moments rather than leave me half pinned up.
I don’t know how Clark got ready or whether he had any preparations to make. He continued to creep around silently, answering in grunts if he answered at all. Nor did Uncle Tom seem to find it difficult. I saw him only twice during those frantic ten days (once to borrow baggage mass from his allowance, which he let me have, the dear!) and both times I had to dig him out of the card room at the Elks Club. I asked him how he managed to get ready for so important a trip and still have time to play cards?
“Nothing to it,” he answered. “I bought a new toothbrush. Is there something else I should have done?”
So I hugged him and told him he was an utterly utter beast and he chuckled and mussed my hair.
Query: Will I ever become that blase about space travel? I suppose I must if I am to be an astronaut. But Daddy says that getting ready for a trip is half the fun, so perhaps I don’t want to become that sophisticated.
Somehow Mother delivered me, complete with baggage and all the myriad pieces of paper-tickets and medical records and passport and universal identification complex and guardians’ assignment-and-guarantee and three kinds of money and travelers’ cheques and birth record and police certification and security clearance and I don’t remember-all checked off, to the city shuttle port. I was juggling one package of things that simply wouldn’t go into my luggage, and I had one hat on my head and one in my hand; otherwise everything came out even.
I don’t know where that second hat went. Somehow it never got aboard with me. But I haven’t missed it.
Good-bye at the shuttle port was most teary and exciting. Not just with Mother and Daddy, which was to be expected (when Daddy put his arm around me tight, I threw both mine around him and for a dreadful second I didn’t want to leave at all), but also because about thirty of my classmates showed up (which I hadn’t in the least expected), complete with a banner that two of them were carrying reading:
BON VOYAGE-PODKAYNE.
I got kissed enough times to start a fair-sized epidemic if any one of them had had anything, which apparently they didn’t. I got kissed by boys who had never even tried to, in the past-and I assure you that it is not utterly impossible to kiss me, if the project is approached with confidence and finesse, as I believe that one’s instincts should be allowed to develop as well as one’s overt cortical behavior.
The corsage Daddy had given me for going away got crushed and I didn’t even notice it until we were aboard the shuttle. I suppose it was somewhere about then that I lost that hat, but I’ll never know-I would have lost the last-minute package, too, if Uncle Tom had not rescued it. There were photographers, too, but not for me-for Uncle Tom. Then suddenly we had to scoot aboard the shuttle right now because a shuttle can’t wait; it has to boost on the split second even though Deimos moves so much more slowly than Phobos. A reporter from the War Whoop was still trying to get a statement out of Uncle Tom about the forthcoming Three-Planets conference but he just pointed at his throat and whispered, “Laryngitis”, then we were aboard just before they sealed the airlock.
It must have been the shortest case of laryngitis on record; Uncle Tom’s voice had been all right until we got to the shuttle port and it was okay again once we were in the shuttle.
One shuttle trip is exactly like another, whether to Phobos or Deimos. Still, that first tremendous whoosh! of acceleration is exciting as it pins you down into your couch with so much weight that you can’t breathe, much less move-and free fall is always strange and eerie and rather stomach fluttering even if one doesn’t tend to be nauseated by it, which, thank you, I don’t.
Being on Deimos is just like being in free fall, since neither Deimos nor Phobos has enough surface gravitation for one to feel it. They put suction sandals on us before they unstrapped us so that we could walk, just as they do on Phobos. Nevertheless Deimos is different from Phobos for reasons having nothing to do with natural phenomena. Phobos is, of course, legally a part of Mars; there are no formalities of any sort about visiting it. All that is required is the fare, a free day, and a yen for a picnic in space.
But Deimos is a free port, leased in perpetuity to Three-Planets Treaty Authority. A known criminal, with a price on his head in Marsopolis, could change ships there right under the eyes of our own police, and we couldn’t touch him. Instead, we would have to start most complicated legal doings at the Interplanetary High Court on Luna, practically win the case ahead of time and, besides that, prove that the crime was a crime under Three-Planet rules and not just under our own laws, and then all that we could do would be to ask the Authority’s proctors to arrest the man if he was still around-which doesn’t seem likely.
I knew about this, theoretically, because there had been about a half page on it in our school course Essentials of Martian Government in the section on “Extraterritoriality.” But now I had plenty of time to think about it because, as soon as we left the shuttle, we found ourselves locked up in a room misleadingly called the “Hospitality Room” while we waited until they were ready to “process” us. One wall of the room was glass and I could see lots and lots of people hurrying around in the concourse beyond, doing all manner of interesting and mysterious things. But all we had to do was to wait beside our baggage and grow bored.
I found that I was growing furious by the minute, not at all like my normally sweet and lovable nature. Why, this place had been built by my own mother! And here I was, caged up in it like white mice in a bio lab.
Well, I admit that Mother didn’t exactly build Deimos; the Martians did that, starting with a spare asteroid that they happened to have handy. But some millions of years back they grew tired of space travel and devoted all their time to the which ness of what and how to unscrew the inscrutable, so when Mother took over the job, Deimos was pretty run down; she had to start in from the ground up and rebuild it completely.
In any case, it was certain that everything that I could see through that transparent wall was a product of Mother’s creative, imaginative and hardheaded engineering ability. I began to fume. Clark was off in a corner, talking privately to some stranger, “stranger” to me, at least; Clark, for all his antisocial disposition, always seems to know somebody, or to know somebody who knows somebody, anywhere we go. I sometimes wonder if he is a member of some vast underground secret society; he has such unsavory acquaintances and never brings any of them home.
Clark is, however, a very satisfactory person to fume with, because, if he isn’t busy, he is always willing to help a person hate anything that needs hating; he can even dig up reasons why a situation is even more vilely unfair than you thought it was. But he was busy, so that left Uncle Tom. So I explained to him bitterly how outrageous I thought it was that we should be penned up like animals-free Mars citizens on one of Mars’ own moons!-simply because a sign read: Passengers must wait until called-by order of Three Planets Treaty Authority.
“Politics!” I said bitterly. “I could run it better myself.”
“I’m sure you could,” he agreed gravely, “but, Flicka, you don’t understand.”
“I understand all too well!”
“No, honey bun. You understand that there is no good reason why you should not walk straight through that door and enjoy yourself by shopping until it is time to go inboard the Tricorn.
And you are right about that, for there is no need at all for you to be locked up in here when you could be out there making some freeport shopkeeper happy by paying him a high price which seems to you a low price. So you say Politics! as if it were a nasty word-and you think that settles it.”
He sighed. “But you don’t understand. Politics is not evil; politics is the human race’s most magnificent achievement. When politics is good, it’s wonderful and when politics is bad-well, it’s still pretty good.”
“I guess I don’t understand,” I said slowly.
“Think about it. Politics is just a name for the way we get things done, without fighting. We dicker and compromise and everybody thinks he has received a raw deal, but somehow after a tedious amount of talk we come up with some jury-rigged way to do it without getting anybody’s head bashed in. That’s politics. The only other way to settle a dispute is by bashing a few heads in, and that is what happens when one or both sides is no longer willing to dicker. That’s why I say politics is good even when it is bad because the only alternative is force-and somebody gets hurt.”
“Uh, it seems to me that’s a funny way for a revolutionary veteran to talk. From what I’ve heard, Uncle Tom, you were one of the bloodthirsty ones who started the shooting. Or so Daddy says.”
He grinned. “Mostly I ducked. If dickering won’t work, then you have to fight. But I think maybe it takes a man who has been shot at to appreciate how much better it is to fumble your way through a political compromise rather than have the top of your head blown off.” He frowned and suddenly looked very old. “When to talk and when to fight. That is the most difficult decision to make wisely of all the decisions in life.” Then suddenly he smiled and the years dropped away. “Mankind didn’t invent fighting; it was here long before we were. But we invented politics. Just think of it, hon, Homo sapiens is the most cruel, the most vicious, the most predatory, and certainly the most deadly of all the animals in this solar system. Yet he invented politics! He figured out a way to let most of us, most of the time, get along well enough so that we usually don’t kill each other. So don’t let me hear you using politics as a swear word again.”
“I’m sorry, Uncle Tom,” I said humbly.
“Like fun you are. But if you let that idea soak for twenty or thirty years, you may, Oh, oh! There’s your villain, baby girl-the politically appointed bureaucrat who has most unjustly held you in durance vile. So scratch his eyes out. Show him how little you think of his silly rules.”
I answered this with dignified silence. It is hard to tell when Uncle Tom is serious because he loves to pull my leg, always hoping that it will come off in his hand. The Three-Planets proctor of whom he was speaking had opened the door to our bullpen and was looking around exactly like a zookeeper inspecting a cage for cleanliness. “Passports!” he called out.
“Diplomatic passports first.” He looked us over, spotted Uncle Tom. “Senator?”
Uncle Tom shook his head. “I’m a tourist, thanks.”
“As you say, sir. Line up, please-reverse alphabetical order”, which put us near the tail of the line instead of near the head. There followed maddening delays for fully two hours passports, health clearance, outgoing baggage inspection-Mars Republic does not levy duties on exports but just the same there is a whole long list of things you can’t export without a license, such as ancient Martian artifacts (the first explorers did their best to gut the place and some of the most priceless are in the British Museum or the Kremlin; I’ve heard Daddy fume about it), some things you can’t export under any circumstances, such as certain narcotics, and some things you can take aboard ship only by surrendering them for safekeeping by the purser, such as guns and other weapons.
Clark picked outgoing inspection for some typical abnormal behavior. They had passed down the line copies of a long list of things we must not have in our baggage-a fascinating list; I hadn’t known that there were so many things either illegal, immoral, or deadly. When the Fries contingent wearily reached the inspection counter, the inspector said, all in one word:
“Nything-t’-d’clare?” He was a Marsman and as he looked up he recognized Uncle Tom. “Oh. Howdy, Senator. Honored to have you with us. Well, I guess we needn’t waste time on your baggage. These two young people with you?”
“Better search my kit,” Uncle Tom advised. “I’m smuggling guns to an out-planet branch of the Legion. As for the kids, they’re my niece and nephew. But I don’t vouch for them; they’re both subversive characters. Especially the girl. She was soap-boxing revolution just now while we waited.”
The inspector smiled and said, “I guess we can allow you a few guns, Senator-you know how to use them. Well, how about it, kids? Anything to declare?”
I said, “Nothing to declare,” with icy dignity-when suddenly Clark spoke up.
“Sure!” he piped, his voice cracking. “Two kilos of happy dust! And whose business is it? I paid for it. I’m not going to let it be stolen by a bunch of clerks.” His voice was surly as only he can manage and the expression on his face simply ached for a slap.
That did it. The inspector had been just about to glance into one of my bags, a purely formal inspection, I think-when my brattish brother deliberately stirred things up. At the very word “happy dust” four other inspectors closed in. Two were Venus men, to judge by their accents, and the other two might have been from Earth.
Of course, happy dust doesn’t matter to us Mars men. The Martians use it, have always used it, and it is about as important to them as tobacco is to humans, but apparently without any ill effects. What they get out of it I don’t know. Some of the old sand rats among us have picked up the habit from the Martians-but my entire botany class experimented with it under our teacher’s supervision and nobody got any thrill out of it and all I got was blocked sinuses that wore off before the day was out. Strictly zero squared.
But with the native Venerians it is another matter, when they can get it. It turns them into murderous maniacs and they’ll do anything to get it. The (black market) price on it there is very high indeed, and possession of it by a human on Venus is at least an automatic life sentence to Saturn’s moons.
They buzzed around Clark like angry jetta wasps.
But they did not find what they were looking for. Shortly Uncle Tom spoke up and said, “Inspector? May I make a suggestion?”
“Eh? Certainly, Senator.”
“My nephew, I am sorry to say, has caused a disturbance. Why don’t you put him aside-chain him up, I would-and let all these other good people go through?”
The inspector blinked. “I think that is an excellent idea.”
“And I would appreciate it if you would inspect myself and my niece now. Then we won’t hold up the others.”
“Oh, that’s not necessary.” The inspector slapped seals on all of Uncle’s bags, closed the one of mine he had started to open, and said, “I don’t need to paw through the young lady’s pretties. But I think we’ll take this smart boy and search him to the skin and X-ray him.”
“Do that.”
So Uncle and I went on and checked at four or five other desks-fiscal control and migration and reservations and other nonsense-and finally wound up with our baggage at the centrifuge for weighing in. I never did get a chance to shop.
To my chagrin, when I stepped off the merry-go-round the record showed that my baggage and myself were nearly three kilos over my allowance, which didn’t seem possible. I hadn’t eaten more breakfast than usual-less actually-and I hadn’t drunk any water because, while I do not become ill in free fall, drinking in free fall is very tricky; you are likely to get water up your nose or something and set off an embarrassing chain reaction.
So I was about to protest bitterly that the weight master had spun the centrifuge too fast and produced a false mass reading. But it occurred to me that I did not know for surely certain that the scales Mother and I had used were perfectly accurate. So I kept quiet.
Uncle Tom just reached for his purse and said, “How much?”
The weight master said, “Hum, let’s spin you first, Senator.”
Uncle Tom was almost two kilos under his allowance. The weight master shrugged and said, “Forget it, Senator. I’m minus on a couple of other things; I think I can swallow it. If not, I’ll leave a memo with the purser. But I’m fairly sure I can.”
“Thank you. What did you say your name was?”
“Mio. Miles M. Milo-Aasvogel Lodge number seventy-four. Maybe you saw our crack drill team at the Legion convention two years ago, I was left pivot.”
“I certainly did, I certainly did!” They exchanged that secret grip that they think other people don’t know and Uncle Tom said, “Well, thanks, Miles. Be seeing you.”
“Not at all-Tom. No, don’t bother with your baggage.” Mister Mio touched a button and called out, “In the Tricorn! Get somebody out here fast for the Senator’s baggage.”
It occurred to me, as we stopped at the passenger tube sealed to the transfer station to swap our suction sandals for little magnet pads that clipped to our shoes, that we need not have waited for anything at anytime, if only Uncle Tom had been willing to use the special favors he so plainly could demand.
But, even so, it pays to travel with an important person-even though it’s just your Uncle Tom whose stomach you used to jump up and down on when you were small enough for such things. Our tickets simply read FIRST CLASS-Im sure, for I saw all three of them-but where we were placed was in what they call the “Owner’s Cabin,” which is actually a suite with three bedrooms and a living room. I was dazzled!
But I didn’t have time to admire it just then. First they strapped our baggage down, then they strapped us down-to seat couches which were against one wall of the living room. That wall plainly should have been the floor, but it slanted up almost vertically with respect to the tiny, not-quite-nothing weight that we had. The warning sirens were already sounding when someone dragged Clark in and strapped him to one of the couches. He was looking mussed up but cocky.
“Hi, smuggler,” Uncle Tom greeted him amiably. “They find it on you?”
“Nothing to find.”
“That’s what I thought. I trust they gave you a rough time.”
“Naah!”
I wasn’t sure I believed Clark’s answer; I’ve heard that a skin and person search can be made quite annoying indeed, without doing anything the least bit illegal, if the proctors are feeling unfriendly. A “rough time” would be good for Clark’s soul, I am sure-but he certainly did not act as if the experience had caused him any discomfort. I said, “Clark, that was a very foolish remark you made to the inspector. And it was a lie, as well-a silly, useless lie.”
“Sign off,” he said curtly. “If I’m smuggling anything, it’s up to them to find it; that’s what they’re paid for. Any-thing-t’-d’clare?”, he added in a mimicking voice. “What nonsense! As if anybody would declare something he was trying to smuggle.”
“Just the same,” I went on, “if Daddy had heard you say.”
“Podkayne.”
“Yes, Uncle Tom?”
“Table it. We’re about to start. Let’s enjoy it.”
“But. Yes, Uncle.”
There was a slight drop in pressure, then a sudden surge that would have slid us out of our couches if we had not been strapped-but not a strong one, not at all like that giant whoosh! With which we had left the surface. It did not last long, then we were truly in free fall for a few moments, then there started a soft, gentle push in the same direction, which kept on.
Then the room started very slowly to turn around almost unnoticeable except for a slight dizziness it gave one.
Gradually, gradually (it took almost twenty minutes) our weight increased, until at last we were back to our proper weight, at which time the floor, which had been all wrong when we came in, was where it belonged, under us, and almost level. But not quite. Here is what had happened. The first short boost was made by the rocket tugs of Deimos Port picking up the Tricorn and hurling her out into a free orbit of her own. This doesn’t take much, because the attraction between even a big ship like the Tricorn and a tiny, tiny satellite such as Deimos isn’t enough to matter; all that matters is getting the very considerable mass of the ship shoved free.
The second gentle shove, the one that kept up and never went away, was the ship’s own main drive-one tenth of a standard gee. The Tricorn is a constant boost ship; she doesn’t dillydally around with economical orbits and weeks and months in free fall.
Heinlein Audiobooks:
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