Robert Heinlein - The Cat Who Walked Through Walls

It swung open; someone inside called out, "Grandma!" as the corridor door crashed in and a man fell into the room. Hazel shot him. A second man was right behind him; she shot him, too.

I reached for my cane-beyond Xia, damn it! "Hand me my cane! Hurry!"

"Now, now! You lie back down."

"Give it to me!" Hazel had one round left, or maybe none. Either way, it was time I backed her up.

I heard more shots. With bitter certainty that nothing was left but to avenge her, I made a long arm, got my stick, and turned.

No more fighting- Those last shots had been fired by Rabbi Ezra. (Why was I surprised that a wheelchair cripple chose to go armed?) Hazel was shouting, "Everybody get aboard! Move it!"

And we did. I was confused again, as an endless crowd of young people, male and female and all of them redheaded, poured out of that vehicle and carried out Hazel's orders. Two of them carried Reb Ezra inside while a third folded his wheel-chair flat and handed it in to a fourth. Choy-Mu and Gretchen were hustled in, followed by Father Schultz. Xia was shoved after them when she tried to insist on handling me. Then two redheads, a man and a woman, carried me in; my blood-stained pants were chucked after me. I clung to my cane.

I saw only a little of the vehicle. Its door opened into a four-place pilot-and-passenger compartment of what might be a spaceplane. Or might not be; the controls were strange and I was in no position to judge how it worked. I was lugged between seats and shoved through a door behind them into a cargo space and wound up on top of the Rabbi's folded wheel-chair.

Was I going to be treated as cargo? No, I lay there only briefly, then was turned ninety degrees and passed through a larger door, turned another ninety degrees and placed on a floor.

And glad to stay there!

For the first time in years I was experiencing earth-normal weight.

Correction: I had felt a few moments of it yesterday in the ballistic tube, a few more in that U-Pushit clunker. Budget Jets Seventeen, and about an hour of it in Old MacDonald's Farm four days earlier. But this time sudden heaviness caught me by surprise and did not go away. I had lost blood and found it hard to breathe and was dizzy again.

I was feeling sorry for myself when I saw Gretchen's face;

she looked both scared and wretchedly ill. Xia was saying, "Get your head down, dear. Lie down by Richard; that's best. Richard, can you scrunch over a little? I would like to lie down, too; I don't feel well."

So I found myself with a cuddlesome wench on each side of me and I didn't feel a dum bit like cuddling. I'm supposed to be trained to fight in accelerations up to two full gravities, twelve times that of Luna. But that was years ago and I'd had over five years of soft, sedentary living at low gravity.

It seems certain that Xia and Gretchen were just as uninterested in bundling.

My beloved arrived carrying our miniature maple. She placed it on a stand, blew me a kiss, and started sprinkling it. "Xia, let me draw a lukewarm tub for you two born Loonies; you both can get into it."

Hazel's words caused me to look around. We were in a "bathroom." Not a refresher appropriate to a four-seater spaceplane, nothing at all like ours in the Raffles; this room was an antique. Have you ever seen wallpaper decorated with fairies and gnomes? Indeed, have you ever seen wallpaper? How about a giant iron tub on claw feet? Or a water closet with a wooden lid and an overhead tank? The whole room was straight out of a museum of cultural anthropology ... yet everything was bright and new and shiny.

I wondered just how much blood I had lost.

"Thanks, Gwen, but I don't think I need it. Gretchen, do you want to float in water?"

"I don't want to move!"

"It won't be long," Hazel assured them. "Gay shifted twice to avoid shrapnel, or we would be down now. Richard, how are you feeling?"

"I'll make it." "0f course you will, darling. I feel the weight myself from a year in Golden Rule. But not much as I exercised at one gee every day. Dear one, how badly are you wounded?" "I don't know."

"Xia?" "Lots of bleeding and some muscle damage. Twenty or twenty-five centimeters and fairly deep. I don't think bone was hit. We put a tight pressure pack on it. If this ship is equipped for it, I want to do a better job and give him a broad-spectrum shot, too."

"You've done a fine job. We'll be landing soon and then there will be professional help and equipment." "All right. I don't feel too lively, I admit." "So try to rest." Hazel picked up my blood-soiled trousers.

"I'm going to soak these before the stain sets."

"Use cold water!" Gretchen blurted, then turned pink and added shyly, "So Mama says."

"Ingrid is right, dear." Hazel ran water into the hand basin. "Richard, I'm forced to admit that I lost your new clothes during that fuss."

"Clothes we can buy. I thought I was going to lose you."

"Good Richard. Here's your wallet and some this and that. Pocket plunder."

"Better let me have it." I crowded it all into a breast pocket.

"Where's Choy-Mu? I did see him-or did I?"

"He's in the other 'fresher, with Father Schultz and Father Ezra."

"Uh? Are you telling me that a four-seater has two refreshers? It is a four-place job, isn't it?"

"It is and it does and wait till you see the rose gardens. And the swimming lounge."

I started to make a retort but chopped it off. I had not figured out any formula by which to tell when my bride was jesting, or was telling literal but unbelievable truth. I was saved from a silly discussion by one of the redheads coming in-female, young, muscled, freckled, catlike, wholesome, sultry. "Aunt Hazel, we're grounded."

'Thank you. Lor."

"I'm Laz. Cas wants to know who stays here, who comes along, and how long till lift? Gay wants to know whether or not we'll be bombed and can she park one shift over? Bombing makes her nervous."

"Something is wrong here. Gay should not be asking directly. Should she?"

"I don't think she trusts Cas's judgment."

"She may have reason. Who's commanding?"

"I am."

"Oh. I'll let you know who goes, who stays, after I talk to my papa and Uncle Jock. A few minutes, I think. You can let Gay park in a dead zone if you wish but please have her stay on my frequency triple; we may be in a hurry. Right now I want to move my husband... but first I must ask another of our passengers to lend me his wheelchair."

Hazel turned to leave. I called out, "I don't need a wheel-chair," but she didn't hear me. Apparently.

Two of the redheads lifted me out of the craft and placed me in Ezra's wheelchair, with its back support lowered and front support lifted; one of them spread a kingsize bath towel over my lap and legs. I said, "Thanks, Laz." .

"I'm Lor. Don't be surprised if this towel vanishes; we've never tried taking one outside before."

She got back aboard and Hazel wheeled me under the nose of the craft and around to its port side... which suited me, as I had seen at once that this was indeed a sort of spaceplane, with lifting body and retractable wings-and I was curious to see how the designer had managed to crowd two large refreshers into its port side. It did not seem aerodynamically possible.

And it wasn't. Portside was like the starboard side, sleek and slender. No cubic for bathrooms.

I had no time to ponder this. When we had turned into the Raffles' side tunnel a few minutes earlier, my Sonychron had just blinked seventeen, Greenwich or L-City time... which would make it eleven in the morning in zone six, dirtside.

And so it was because that's where we were, zone six, in the north pasture of my Uncle Jock's place outside Grinnell, Iowa. So it becomes obvious that I not only had lost much blood but also had been hit hard on the head-as even the hottest military courier needs at least two hours, Luna to Terra.