"I remember," I said slowly, "something. But it didn't make sense. I thought you said we were going to Vega."

"Well, I suppose the catalogs will list it as Vega Five. But they call it-" She threw back her head and vocalized; it recalled to me the cockcrow theme in Le Coq d'Or. "-but I couldn't say that. So I told you Vega, which is close enough."

I tried again to sit up, failed. "You mean to stand there and tell me we're on Vega? I mean, a ‘Vegan planet'?"

"Well, you haven't asked me to sit down."

I ignored the Peeweeism. I looked at "sunlight" pouring through the window. "That light is from Vega?"

"That stuff? That's artificial sunlight. If they had used real, bright, Vega light, it would look ghastly. Like a bare arc light. Vega is ‘way up the Russell diagram, you know."

"It is?" I didn't know the spectrum of Vega; I had never expected to need to know it.

"Oh, yes! You be careful, Kip-when you're up, I mean. In ten seconds you can get more burn than all winter in Key West-and ten minutes would kill you."

I seemed to have a gift for winding up in difficult climates. What star class was Vega? "A," maybe? Probably "B." All I knew was that it was big and bright, bigger than the Sun, and looked pretty set in Lyra.

But where was it? How in the name of Einstein did we get here? "Peewee? How far is Vega? No, I mean, ‘How far is the Sun?' You wouldn't happen to know?"

"Of course," she said scornfully. "Twenty-seven light-years."

Great Galloping Gorillas! "Peewee-get that slide rule. You know how to push one? I don't seem to have the use of my hands."

She looked uneasy. "Uh, what do you want it for?"

"I want to see what that comes to in miles."

"Oh. I'll figure it. No need for a slide rule."

"A slipstick is faster and more accurate. Look, if you don't know how to use one, don't be ashamed-I didn't, at your age. I'll show you."

"Of course I can use one!" she said indignantly. "You think I'm a stupe? But I'll work it out." Her lips moved silently. "One point five nine times ten to the fourteenth miles."

I had done that Proxima Centauri problem recently; I remembered the miles in a light-year and did a rough check in my head-uh, call it six times twenty-five makes a hundred and fifty-and where was the decimal point? "Your answer sounds about right." 159,000,000,000,000 weary miles! Too many zeroes for comfort.

"Of course I'm right!" she retorted. "I'm always right."

"Goodness me! The handy-dandy pocket encyclopedia."

She blushed. "I can't help being a genius."

Which left her wide open and I was about to rub her nose in it-when I saw how unhappy she looked.

I remembered hearing Dad say: "Some people insist that ‘mediocre' is better than ‘best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none. Pfah!"

"I'm sorry, Peewee," I said humbly. "I know you can't. And I can't help not being one... any more than you can help being little, or I can help being big."

She relaxed and looked solemn. "I guess I was being a show-off again." She twisted a button. "Or maybe I assumed that you understand me-like Daddy."

"I feel complimented. I doubt if I do-but from now on I'll try." She went on worrying the button. "You're pretty smart yourself, Kip. You know that, don't you?"

I grinned. "If I were smart, would I be here? All thumbs and my ears rub together. Look, honey, would you mind if we checked you on the slide rule? I'm really interested." Twenty-seven light-years-why, you wouldn't be able to see the Sun, It isn't any great shakes as a star.

But I had made her uneasy again. "Uh, Kip, that isn't much of a slide rule."

"What? Why, that's the best that money can-"

"Kip, please! It's part of the desk. It's not a slide rule."

"Huh?" I looked sheepish. "I forgot. Uh, I suppose that hall out there doesn't go very far?"

"Just what you can see. Kip, the slide rule would have been real-if we had had time enough. They understand logarithms. Oh, indeed they do!"

That was bothering me-"time enough" I mean. "Peewee, how long did it take us to get here?" Twenty-seven light-years! Even at speed-of-light-well, maybe the Einstein business would make it seem like a quick trip to me-but not to Centerville. Dad could be dead! Dad was older than Mother, old enough to be my grandfather, really. Another twenty-seven years back- Why, that would make him well over a hundred. Even Mother might be dead.

"Time to get here? Why, it didn't take any."

"No, no. I know it feels that way. You're not any older, I'm still laid up by frostbite. But it took at least twenty-seven years. Didn't it?"

"What are you talking about, Kip?"

"The relativity equations, of course. You've heard of them?"

"Oh, those! Certainly. But they don't apply. It didn't take time. Oh, fifteen minutes to get out of Pluto's atmosphere, about the same to cope with the atmosphere here. But otherwise, pht! Zero."

"At the speed of light you would think so."

"No, Kip." She frowned, then her face lighted up. "How long was it from the time you set the beacon till they rescued us?"

"Huh?" It hit me. Dad wasn't dead! Mother wouldn't even have gray hair. "Maybe an hour."

"A little over. It would have been less if they had had a ship ready... then they might have found you in the tunnel instead of me. No time for the message to reach here. Half an hour frittered away getting a ship ready-the Mother Thing was vexed. I hadn't known she could be. You see, a ship is supposed to be ready."

"Any time she wants one?"

"Any and all the time-the Mother Thing is important. Another half-hour in atmosphere maneuvering-and that's all. Real time. None of those funny contractions."

I tried to soak it up. They take an hour to go twenty-seven light-years and get bawled out for dallying. Dr. Einstein must be known as "Whirligig Albert" among his cemetery neighbors. "But how?"

"Kip, do you know any geometry? I don't mean Euclid-I mean geometry."

"Mmm... I've fiddled with open and closed curved spaces-and I've read Dr. Bell's popular books. But you couldn't say I know any geometry."

"At least you won't boggle at the idea that a straight line is not necessarily the shortest distance between two points." She made motions as if squeezing a grapefruit in both hands. "Because it's not. Kip-it all touches. You could put it in a bucket. In a thimble if you folded it so that spins matched."

I had a dizzying picture of a universe compressed into a teacup, nucleons and electrons packed solidly-really solid and not the thin mathematical ghost that even the uranium nucleus is said to be. Something like the "primal atom" that some cosmogonists use to explain the expanding universe. Well, maybe it's both packed and expanding. Like the "wavicle" paradox. A particle isn't a wave and a wave can't be a particle- yet everything is both. If you believe in wavicles, you can believe in anything-and if you don't, then don't bother to believe at all. Not even in yourself, because that's what you are-wavicles. "How many dimensions?" I said weakly.

"How many would you like?"

"Me? Uh, twenty, maybe. Four more for each of the first four, to give some looseness on the corners."

"Twenty isn't a starter. I don't know, Kip; I don't know geometry, either-I just thought I did. So I've pestered them."

"The Mother Thing?"

"Her? Oh, heavens, no! She doesn't know geometry. Just enough to pilot a ship in and out of the folds."

"Only that much?" I should have stuck to advanced finger-painting and never let Dad lure me into trying for an education. There isn't any end- the more you learn, the more you need to learn. "Peewee, you knew what that beacon was for, didn't you?"

"Me?" She looked innocent. "Well... yes."

"You knew we were going to Vega."