Podkayne of Mars Read Online Free PDF

Who on Mars. Just what were you transported for? You were transported? Weren’t you?”
    Mr. Poon looked horror-stricken, and I was. But Uncle Tom didn’t seem offended. He laughed heartily and answered, “I was accused of freezing babies for profit. But it: was a frameup—I never did no such thing nohow. Come on, kids. Let’s get out of this ghouls’ nest before they smuggle us down into the sub-basement.”
    Later that night in bed I was dreamily thinking over the trip. There hadn’t even been the least argument with Mother and Daddy; Uncle Tom had settled it all by phone before we got home. I heard a sound from the nursery, got up and paddled in. It was Duncan, the little darling, not even wet but lonely. So I picked him up and cuddled him and he cooed and then he was wet, so I changed him.
    I decided that he was just as pretty or prettier than all those other babies, even though he was five months younger and his eyes didn’t track. When I put him down again, he was sound asleep; I started back to bed.
    And stopped—The Triangle Line gets its name from serving the three leading planets, of course, but which direction a ship makes the Mars-Venus-Earth route depends on just where we all are in our orbits.
    But just where were we?
    I hurried into the living room and searched for the Daily War Whoop —found it, thank goodness and fed it into the viewer, flipped to the shipping news found the predicted arrivals and departures.
    Yes, yes, yes! I am going not only to Earth—but to Venus as well!
    Venus! Do you suppose Mother would let me—No, best just say nothing now. Uncle Tom will be more tractable, after we get there.
    I’m going to miss Duncan—he’s such a little doll.

FOUR
    I haven’thad time to write in this journalfor days. Just getting ready to leave was almost impossible—and would have been truly impossible had it not been that most preparations—all the special Terran inoculations and photographs and passports and such—were mostly done before Everything Came Unstuck. But Mother came out of her atavistic daze and was very helpful. She would even let one of the triplets cry for a few moments rather than leave me half pinned up.
    I don’t know how Clark got ready or whether he had any preparations to make. He continued to creep around silently, answering in grunts if he answered at all. Nor did Uncle Tom seem to find it difficult. I saw him only twice during those frantic ten days (once to borrow baggage mass from his allowance, which he let me have, the dear!) and both times I had to dig him out of the card room at the Elks Club. I asked him how he managed to get ready for so important a trip and still have time to play cards?
    “Nothing to it,” he answered. “I bought a new toothbrush. Is there something else I should have done?”
    So I hugged him and told him he was an utterly utter beast and he chuckled and mussed my hair, Query: Will I ever become that blasé about space travel? I suppose I must if I am to be an astronaut. But Daddy says that getting ready for a trip is half the fun . . . so perhaps I don’t want to become that sophisticated.
    Somehow Mother delivered me, complete with baggage and all the myriad pieces of paper—tickets and medical records and passport and universal identification complex and guardians’ assignment-and-guarantee and three kinds of money and travelers’ cheques and birth record and police certification and security clearance and I don’t remember—all checked off, to the city shuttle port. I was juggling one package of things that simply wouldn’t go into my luggage, and I had one hat on my head and one in my hand; otherwise everything came out even.
    (I don’t know where that second hat went. Somehow it never got aboard with me. But I haven’t missed it.)
    Good-bye at the shuttle port was most teary and exciting. Not just with Mother and Daddy, which was to be expected (when Daddy put his arm around me tight, I threw both mine around him and for