Have Space Suit-Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein

Author:Robert A. Heinlein
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Space Opera, Interplanetary voyages, Fiction, Literary, Science Fiction, Adventure, General
ISBN: 9781416505495
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2005-11-14T07:00:00+00:00

The next thing tossed down the hole was Fats.

Skinny landed on him seconds later. I backed off and held my dagger ready. Skinny ignored me, picked himself up, looked around, went to the water spout and got a drink. Fats was in no shape to do anything; his breath was knocked out.

I looked at him and thought what a nasty parcel he was. Then I thought, oh, what the deuce!—he had massaged me when I needed it. I heaved him onto his stomach and began artificial respiration. In four or five pushes his motor caught and he was able to breathe. He gasped, "That's enough!"

I backed off, got my knife out. Skinny was sitting against a wall, ignoring us. Fats looked at my feeble weapon and said, "Put that away, kid. We're bosom buddies now."

"We are?"

"Yeah. Us human types had better stick together." He sighed wretchedly. "After all we done for him! That's gratitude."

"What do you mean?" I demanded.

"Huh?" said Fats. "Just what I said. He decided he could do without us. So Annie doesn't live here any more."

"Shaddap," the skinny one said flatly.

Fats screwed his face into a pout. "You shaddap," he said peevishly. "I'm tired of that. It's shaddap here, shaddap there, all day long—and look where we are."

"Shaddap, I said."

Fats shut up. I never did find out what had happened, because Fats seldom gave the same explanation twice. The older man never spoke except for that tiresome order to shut up, or in monosyllables even less helpful. But one thing was clear: they had lost their jobs as assistant gangsters, or fifth columnists, or whatever you call a human being who would stooge against his own race. Once Fats said, "Matter of fact, it's your fault."

"Mine?" I dropped my hand to my tin-can knife.

"Yours. If you hadn't butted in, he wouldn't have got sore."

"I didn't do anything."

"Says you. You swiped his two best prizes, that's all, and held him up when he planned to high-tail it back here."

"Oh. But that wasn't your fault."

"So I told him. You try telling him. Take your hand away from that silly nail file." Fats shrugged. "Like I always say, let bygones be bygones."

I finally learned the thing I wanted most to know. About the fifth time I brought up the matter of Peewee, Fats said, "What d'you want to know about the brat for?"

"I just want to know whether she's alive or dead."

"Oh, she's alive. Leastwise she was last time I seen her."

"When was that?"

"You ask too many questions. Right here."

"She's here?" I said eagerly.

"That's what I said, wasn't it? Around everywhere and always underfoot. Living like a princess, if you ask me." Fats picked his teeth and frowned. "Why he should make a pet out of her and treat us the way he did, beats me. It ain't right."

I didn't think so, either, but for another reason. The idea that gallant little Peewee was the spoiled darling of Wormface I found impossible to believe. There was some explanation—or Fats was lying.

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