Robert Heinlein - The Cat Who Walked Through Walls

"Roger wilco." I added, "I'll bet you don't realize that you are talking to Captain Midnight, the Solar System's hottest pilot"-but I shut off the mike before I said it.

Or so I thought. I heard a reply, "And this is Captain Hem-orrhoid Hives, Luna's nastiest ground-control pilot. You're going to buy me a liter of Glenlivet after I bring you down. If I bring you down."

I checked that microphone switch-didn't seem to be anything wrong with it. I decided not to acknowledge. Everybody knows that telepathy works best in a vacuum... but there ought to be some way for an ordinary Joe to protect himself against supermen.

(Such as knowing when to keep his mouth shut.) I set the alarm for twenty-one hours, then processed to attitude straight down and, for the next hour, enjoyed the ride while holding hands with my bride. The incredible mountains of the Moon, taller and sharper than the Himalayas and tragically desolate, flowed by ahead of (under) us. The only sound was the soft murmur of the computer and the sighing of the air scavenger-and a regular, annoying sniff from Bill. I shut out all sound and invited my soul. Neither Gwen nor I felt like talking. It was a happy interlude, as peaceful as the Old Mill Stream.

"Richard! Wake up!"

"Huh? I wasn't asleep."

"Yes, dear. It's past twenty-one.**

Uh... so it was. Twenty-one oh-one and ticking. What happened to the alarm? Never mind that now-I had five minutes and zip seconds to make sure we entered descent program on time. I hit the control to process, from headstand to bel-lywhopper backwards-easiest for descent, although supine backwards will work just as well. Or even sideways backwards. Whichever, the jet nozzle must point against the direction of motion in order to reduce speed for insertion into landing program-i.e., "backwards" for the pilot, like me Fillyloo Bird. (But I'm happiest when the horizon looks "right" for the way I'm belted in; that's why I prefer to put the skycar into bel-lywhopper backwards.)

As soon as I felt the Volvo start to process I asked the computer if it was ready to start landing program, using standard code from the list etched on its shell.

No answer. Blank screen. No sound.

I spoke disparagingly of its ancestry. Gwen said, "Did you punch the execute button?"

"Certainly I did!" I answered and punched it again.

Its screen lit up and the sound came on at teeth-jarring level:

"How do you spell comfort? For the wise Luna citizen today, overworked, overstimulated, overstressed, it is spelled C, 0, M, F, I, E, S-that's Comfies, the comfort therapists recommend most for acid stomach, heartburn, gastric ulcers, bowel spasm, and simple tummy ache. Comfies! They Do More! Manufactured by Tiger Balm Pharmaceuticals, Hong Kong Luna, makers of medicines you can rely on. C, 0, M, F, I, E, S, Comfies! They Do More! Ask your therapist." Some screech owls started singing about the delights of Comfies.

"This damn thing won't turn off!"

"Hit it!"

"Huh?"

"Hit it, Richard."

I could not see any logic in that but it did meet my emotional needs; I slapped it, fairly hard. It continued to spout inanities about over-priced baking soda.

"Dear, you have to hit it harder than that. Electrons are timid little things but notional; you have to let them know who's boss. Here, let me." Gwen walloped it a good one-I thought she would crack the shell.

It promptly displayed:

Ready for descent-Zero Time = 21-06-17.0.

Its clock showed 21-05-42.7

-which gave me just time to glance at the altimeter radar (which showed 298 klicks above ground, steady) and at the doppler readout, which showed us oriented along our motion-over-ground line, close enough for government work... although what I could have done about it in ca. ten seconds I do not know. Instead of using fractional jets paired in couples to control attitude, a Volvo uses gyros and processes against them- cheaper than twelve small jets and a mess of plumbing. But slower.

Then, all at once, the clock matched the zero time, the jet cut in, shoving us into the cushions, and the screen displayed the program of bums-the topmost being: 21-06-17.0- -19 seconds 21-06-36.0

Sweet as could be, the jet cut off after nineteen seconds without even clearing its throat. "See?" said Gwen. "You just have to be firm with it."

"I don't believe in animism."

"You don't? How do you cope with- Sorry, dear. Never mind; Gwen will take care of such things."

Captain Midnight made no answer. You couldn't truthfully say that I sulked. But, damn it all, animism is sheer superstition. (Except about weapons.)

I had shifted to channel thirteen and we were just coming up on the fifth bum. I was getting ready to turn control over to HKL GCL (Captain Hives) when that dear little electronic idiot crashed its RAM-its Random Access Memory on which was written our descent program. The table of bums on the screen dimmed, quivered, shrank to a dot and disappeared. Frantically I punched the reset key-nothing happened.

Captain Midnight, undaunted as usual, knew just what to do. "Gwen! It lost the program!"

She reached over and clouted it. The bum schedule was not restored-a RAM, once crashed, is gone forever, like a burst soap bubble-but it did boot up again. A cursor appeared in the upper left comer of the screen and blinked inquiringly. Gwen said, "What time is your next bum, dear? And how long?"

'Twenty-one, forty-seven, seventeen, I think, for, uh, eleven seconds. I'm fairly sure it was eleven seconds."

"I check you on both figures. So do that one by hand, then ask it to recompute what it lost."

"Righto." I typed in the bum. "After this one I'm ready to accept control from Hong Kong."

"So we're out of the woods, dear-one bum by hand and then ground control takes over. But we'll recompute just for insurance."

She sounded more optimistic than I felt. I could not remember what vector and altitude I was supposed to achieve for take-over by ground control. But I had no time to worry about it; I had to set up this bum.

I typed it in: 21-47-17.0- -11.0 seconds 21-47-28.0

I watched the clock and counted with it. At exactly seventeen seconds past 2147 I jabbed the firing button, held it down. The jet fired. I don't know whether I fired it or the computer did. I held my finger down as the seconds ticked off and lifted it exactly on eleven seconds.

The jet kept on firing.

("-run in circles, scream and shout!") I wiggled the firing button. No, it was not stuck. I slapped the shell. The jet kept on roaring and shoving us into the cushions.

Gwen reached over and cut power to the computer. The jet stopped abruptly.

I tried to stop trembling. "Thank you, Copilot."

"Yessir."

I looked out, decided that the ground seemed closer than I liked, so I checked the altimeter radar. Ninety something-the third figure was changing. "Gwen, I don't think we're going to Hong Kong Luna."

"I don't think so, either."

"So now the problem is to get this junk out of the sky without cracking it."

"I agree, sir."

"So where are we? An educated guess, I mean. I don't expect miracles." The stuff ahead-behind, rather; we were still oriented for braking-looked as rough as the back side. Not a place for an emergency landing.

Gwen said, "Could we face around the other way? If we could see Golden Rule, that would tell us something."

"Okay. Let's see if it responds." I clutched the processing control, told the skycar to swing one-eighty degrees, passing through headstand again. The ground was noticeably closer. Our skycar settled down with the horizon running right and left-but with the sky on the "down" side. Annoying... but all we wanted was to look for our late home. Golden Rule habitat. "Do you see it?"

"No, I don't, Richard."

"It must be over the horizon, somewhere. Not surprising, it was pretty far away the last time we looked-and that last bum was a foul blast. A long one. So where are we?"