The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Cameron Eleanor

Author:Cameron, Eleanor [Cameron, Eleanor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci Fi, Childern's
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 1954-01-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13 - The Place of the Hidden Water

Ta rose.

“We shall go,” he said, “and as you speak of this place, it means that Mebe and Oru have at least had the good sense to tell you the story so that I shall not have to. Come! There is no time to lose.”

Now, with his kingly stride and using his great staff to speed him along over the ground, his necklace of marvelous many-colored stones swinging from side to side on his chest, Ta started away. He gestured to the boys to walk by his side, but little Mebe and Oru scuttled along behind.

“Great Ta,” began David with respect, “there is something I must ask you. You say all the time, when you’re speaking of the plant mystery, that you must think. And Mebe and Oru said it too.

But haven’t your Wise Men ever made experiments to solve puzzles?”

“Experiments! What is this word?”

“Why,” said David, having in mind those laboratories to which his father had taken him in hospitals, “you know – where they have things in glass jars and make mixtures and heat them to see what happens. Or they let things stand around to see if they change, or feed them to rats and mice to see what the results are.”

Ta looked utterly blank.

“I do not know what you mean,” he replied. “You speak of strange happenings and use strange words. We think and think. My Wise Men put down what they think in the Rolls of Wisdom, then read aloud what they have written. And we talk about these writings.”

Now David and Chuck stared at each other with the same blank expressions on their faces that had come over the face of Ta.

“But then -!” they both exploded at once.

“How do you get anywhere?” exclaimed Chuck.

“You’d just end up right where you started,” cried David.

“If you don’t work with the thing that’s causing the mystery,” said Chuck, “like these plants, for instance, what good does it do you and your Wise Men to just write what you already know, and then talk and talk about what you’ve written?”

“Sometimes it does good,” returned Ta in his calm way. Then he looked off into the distance to where, through the winding greenish mists, the outlines of a small city were coming into view. And as he gazed away with half-closed eyes, he seemed to be going over in his mind what the boys had just said. “But perhaps,” he went on, “you have a new thought which I and my Wise Men have not come to yet – the thought that we must work with the thing itself that is causing the trouble.”

Now Ta was silent, and because the boys knew that in that great head of his something wonderful might be going on for the future good of his people, they too were still.

In a few minutes more they arrived at the little city, where a few of the Mushroom People came out to stare at them as they passed.

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