"Yeah, kid?"
"Be careful...."
* * * * *
Burt felt like a kangaroo. Only no earthly kangaroo had ever taken
leaps like this. He had flicked the switch of the gravity equalizer
over to the right, shutting off the power. Then he had taken off in
great leaps, looking for Johnny. His jumps carried him forty or fifty
feet in the air, and then he floated down, almost weightless.
With concentration, he could have avoided those high leaps. He could
have propelled himself forward, fifty and sixty feet at a jump, but he
did not want to. The horizon was too close, and the only way he could
find Johnny was like this. As he reached the apex of each leap, he
could see much further than he could on the ground, and he was looking
for the boy.
Once he thought he saw Johnny, a tiny blob way off in the distance,
but he came down from his jump too soon, and he could not be sure. He
called loudly, and everything else was quiet, and his voice was almost
frightening. Soon the ground felt spongy to him, but he shrugged it
off. As soon as he landed, he was off again, and it probably was his
imagination. Hard rock did not become spongy like this, not suddenly,
without warning, with no possible explanation.
But once he landed hard, and he rested a moment, panting. He moved
his feet and they slopped about, like on a muddy field. He reached
down carefully. One wrong move would upset his equilibrium and he'd go
shooting off into the air. He touched the ground, and it was wet. He
pushed, and he felt his hand sinking in, slowly. Fascinated, he pushed
again. His hand disappeared to the wrist.
Something was trying to suck him down further, and he tugged. He pulled
his hand out with a loud slopping sound, and instinctively he jumped
away. He soared into the air again, and when he came down, it was only
for a moment--just long enough to leap.
The ground was spongy. And when he was standing there, with his
hand immersed to the wrist, the soft spongy stuff had been pulsing,
throbbing.
Almost as if it were alive....
His mind did not tackle the problem further. Ahead he saw Johnny--now
it was more than his imagination; Johnny was there, leaping into the
air ahead of him.
Burt reached the apex of his flight, cupped his hands and yelled
through them:
"Johnny! Johnny!"
"Hi, pop!"
The voice came back faintly, playfully.
"Johnny, when you touch ground next time, turn that switch to the left."
"Naa--I'm having fun."
"When I get you, Johnny...."
"Aw, okay. Kill joy. What a worry wart."
Apparently, Johnny had turned on his equalizer. Burt saw him on the
ground, waiting, and three big leaps brought him there.
Now Johnny was crying.
"What the devil are you crying for? You've jumped around enough--"
"Pop, please. I'm sorry. Get me outa here!"
Johnny was stuck. He was in the spongy ground, up to his ankles. The
stuff sucked around his shins, drawing him down further every second,
like quicksand. Burt could feel it pulsing as he landed, but it did not
suck him in. With the equalizer off, he weighed much less than Johnny
did, and now he was tugging at the boy, pulling at his shoulders,
grabbing him under the armpits and tugging, tugging....
Johnny came loose suddenly, and Burt soared with him several feet into
the air. On the way up, he switched the boy's equalizer off again, and
Johnny said:
"You just told me not to, now you do it yourself. What a pop."
Johnny was spoiled and Johnny was precocious, but Burt thought of
neither now. Johnny was nothing more than a little bundle which he had
to get back to the spaceship. And then they had to leave, all four of
them.
The spaceship ... Marcia did not know how to pilot it, she couldn't
lift it off the ground. And the sucking, spongy stuff might engulf
the ship, take it down into some unknown womb of the world. They'd be
marooned. Marcia and Joan--
All of them.
The trip back was a wild one. Burt tucked his son under one arm and
leaped. He kept low to the ground this time, skimming its surface,
sometimes leaping as much as seventy feet with one bounding stride.
With each stride, the ground became more spongy, and Burt realized with
a sinking heart that the surface could never hold the spaceship up. It
would be the same as if it had plunged through the gaping maw in the
hard rock with the Havelock--either way it would be gone.
Johnny liked the ride. Every time they landed, he would say, "Again,
pop. Again!" And wordless, Burt would leap once more.
Once he jumped high and he thought he saw the spaceship gleaming in the
rays of the sun. But that was impossible. It would surely sink.
And then he came down and he did see it. It was there, on a hard
expanse of flat rock, where he had left it. Here the ground seemed
normal--
He heard Marcia's scream before he saw her. Then she came around the
hull of the spaceship, dragging Joan. Screaming again, she fell flat.
* * * * *
Something whizzed by her head, and even from this distance Burt could
see that it was a rock the size of a watermelon. She got up again,
and she ran forward, but then a whole shower of rocks came after her,
smaller this time, two handfuls of egg-sized rocks, thrown by an
invisible giant.
He had to be invisible--Burt could see no one. Yet the rocks were being
thrown, somehow. Or--the thought suddenly occurred to Burt--they were
throwing themselves. The rocks moved under their own power. It was a
wild thought and a crazy one, but it made sense. Every other part of
the planetoid was soft and spongy. But here--near the ship--the surface
was still hard. And rocks were being thrown. Burt could tell this
had been happening for a long time, because the hull of the ship was
scarred from the fusilade.
It was unreasonable to suppose that this tiny area, alone of the
entire sphere, could not become spongy. Then there was a reason why
it remained hard--and where there was reason there was sentience. And
further, why hadn't a big stone been thrown, one large enough to crush
their Pacemaker as the Havelock had been crushed? There certainly were
enough stones around--
Everything indicated a _game_. Something was playing with them. They
were easy prey, they were dead ducks--but something was having fun
with them first. They were goners, they didn't have a chance, and that
something needed the activity and the recreation. It was a sadistic
game. Back on earth, some of the kids had stripped the wings off flies,
made them hop about dizzily, helplessly, until they tired of the sport.
And then they had crushed them....
The planetoid was playing with them!