"Peewee," I said faintly, "don't you ever have an attack of nerves?"

"Sure I do. When I have leisure for it. Which isn't now. Do you know how to work it?"

"No. Do you?"

"I think so. I've seen them and the Mother Thing told me about them." She took it, handling it casually but not pointing it at either of us. "These holes on top-uncover one of them, it stuns. If you uncover them all, it kills. To make it work you push it here." She did and a bright blue light shot out, splashed against the wall. "The light doesn't do anything," she added. "It's for aiming. I hope there wasn't anybody on the other side of that wall. No, I hope there was. You know what I mean."

It looked like a cockeyed 35 mm. camera, with a lead lens-one built from an oral description. I took it, being very cautious where I pointed it, and looked at it. Then I tried it-full power, by mistake.

The blue light was a shaft in the air and the wall where it hit glowed and began to smoke. I shut it off.

"You wasted power," Peewee chided. "You may need it later."

"Well, I had to try it. Come on, let's go."

Peewee glanced at her Mickey Mouse watch-and I felt irked that it had apparently stood up when my fancy one had not. "There's very little time. Kip. Can't we assume that only this one escaped?"

"What? We certainly cannot! Until we're sure that all of them are dead, we can't do anything else. Come on."

"But- Well, I'll lead. I know my way around, you don't."

"No."

"Yes!"

So we did it her way; she led and carried the blue-light projector while I covered the rear and wished for a third eye, like a wormface. I couldn't argue that my reflexes were faster when they weren't, and she knew more than I did about our weapon.

But it's graveling, just the same.

The base was huge; half that mountain must have been honeycombed. We did it at a fast trot, ignoring things as complicated as museum exhibits and twice as interesting, simply making sure that no wormface was anywhere. Peewee ran with the weapon at the ready, talking twenty to the dozen and urging me on.

Besides an almost empty base, no ships in, and the wormfaces feeding, the Mother Thing's plan required that all this happen shortly before a particular hour of the Plutonian night.

"Why?" I panted.

"So she could signal her people, of course."

"But-" I shut up. I had wondered about the Mother Thing's people but didn't even know as much about her as I did about Wormface- except that she was everything that made her the Mother Thing. Now she was dead-Peewee said that she was outside without a space suit, so she was surely dead; that little soft warm thing wouldn't last two seconds in that ultra-arctic weather. Not to mention suffocation and lung hemorrhage. I choked up.

Of course, Peewee might be wrong. I had to admit that she rarely was- but this might be one of the times ... in which case we would find her. But if we didn't find her, she was outside and- "Peewee, do you know where my space suit is?"

"Huh? Of course. Right next to where I got this." She patted the nylon rope, which she had coiled around her waist and tied with a bow.

"Then the second we are sure that we've cleaned out the wormfaces I'm going outside and look for her!"

"Yes, yes! But we've got to find my suit, too. I'm going with you."

No doubt she would. Maybe I could persuade her to wait in the tunnel out of that bone-freezing wind. "Peewee, why did she have to send her message at night? To a ship in a rotation-period orbit? Or is there-"

My words were chopped off by a rumble. The floor shook in that loose-bearing vibration that frightens people and animals alike. We stopped dead. "What was that?" Peewee whispered.

I swallowed. "Unless it's part of this rumpus the Mother Thing planned-"

"It isn't. I think."

"It's a quake."

"An earthquake?"

"A Pluto quake. Peewee, we've got to get out of here!"

I wasn't thinking about where-you don't in a quake. Peewee gulped. "We can't bother with earthquakes; we haven't time. Hurry, Kip, hurry!" She started to run and I followed, gritting my teeth. If Peewee could ignore a quake, so could I-though it's like ignoring a rattlesnake in bed.

"Peewee... Mother Thing's people ... is their ship in orbit around Pluto?"

"What? Oh, no, no! They're not in a ship."

"Then why at night? Something about the Heavyside layers here? How far away is their base?" I was wondering how far a man could walk here. We had done almost forty miles on the Moon. Could we do forty blocks here? Or even forty yards? You could insulate your feet, probably. But that wind- "Peewee, they don't live here, do they?"

"What? Don't be silly! They have a nice planet of their own. Kip, if you keep asking foolish questions, we'll be too late. Shut up and listen."

I shut up. What follows I got in snatches as we ran, and some of it later. When the Mother Thing had been captured, she had lost ship, space clothing, communicator, everything; Wormface had destroyed it all. There had been treachery, capture through violation of truce while parleying. "He grabbed her when they were supposed to be under a King's ‘X' " was Peewee's indignant description, "and that's not fair! He had promised."

Treachery would be as natural in Wormface as venom in a Gila monster; I was surprised that the Mother Thing had risked a palaver with him. It left her a prisoner of ruthless monsters equipped with ships that made ours look like horseless carriages, weapons which started with a "death ray" and ended heaven knows where, plus bases, organization, supplies.

She had only her brain and her tiny soft hands.

Before she could use the rare combination of circumstances necessary to have any chance at all she had to replace her communicator (I think of it as her "radio" but it was more than that) and she had to have weapons. The only way she could get them was to build them.

She had nothing, not a bobby pin-only that triangular ornament with spirals engraved on it. To build anything she had to gain access to a series of rooms which I would describe as electronics labs-not that they looked like the bench where I jiggered with electronics, but electron-pushing has its built-in logic. If electrons are to do what you want them to, components have to look pretty much a certain way, whether built by humans, wormfaces, or the Mother Thing. A wave guide gets its shape from the laws of nature, an inductance has its necessary geometry, no matter who the technician is.

So it looked like an electronics lab-a very good one. It had gear I did not recognize, but which I felt I could understand if I had time. I got only a glimpse.

The Mother Thing spent many, many hours there. She would not have been permitted there, even though she was a prisoner-at-large with freedom in most ways and anything she wanted, including private quarters with Peewee. I think that Wormface was afraid of her, even though she was a prisoner-he did not want to offend her unnecessarily.

She got the run of their shops by baiting their cupidity. Her people had many things that wormfaces had not-gadgets, inventions, conveniences. She began by inquiring why they did a thing this way rather than another way which was so much more efficient? A tradition? Or religious reasons?

When asked what she meant she looked helpless and protested that she couldn't explain-which was a shame because it was simple and so easy to build, too.

Under close chaperonage she built something. The gadget worked. Then something else. Presently she was in the labs daily, making things for her captors, things that delighted them. She always delivered; the privilege depended on it.

But each gadget involved parts she needed herself.

"She sneaked bits and pieces into her pouch," Peewee told me. "They never knew exactly what she was doing. She would use five of a thing and the sixth would go into her pouch."