PROOF OF THE PUDDING-3
596 Words
A GIRL WAS STANDING there. He blinked rapidly, and she was still there, a tall, dark-haired girl dressed in a torn, dirty one-piece coverall.
“Hi,” she said, and walked into the cave. “I heard your hammer from the valley.”
Automatically, he offered her his chair and created another for himself. She tested it gingerly before she sat down.
“I saw you do it,” she said, “but I still don’t believe it. Mirrors?”
“No,” he muttered uncertainly. “I create. That is, I have the power to—wait a minute! How did you get here?” While he was demanding to know, he was considering and rejecting possibilities. Hidden in a cave? On a mountain top? No, there would be only one possible way....
“I was in your ship, pal.” She leaned back in the chair and clasped her hands around one knee. “When you loaded up that cruiser, I figured you were going to beat it. I was getting tired of setting fuses eighteen hours a day, so I stowed away. Anybody else alive?”
“No. Why didn’t I see you, then?” He stared at the ragged, beautiful girl, and a vague thought crossed his mind. He reached out and touched her arm. She didn’t draw back, but her pretty face grew annoyed.
“I’m real,” she said bluntly. “You must have seen me at the base. Remember?”
He tried to think back to the time when there had been a base—centuries ago, it seemed. There had been a dark-haired girl there, one who had never given him a tumble.
“I think I froze to death,” she was saying. “Or into coma, anyhow, a few hours after your ship took off. Lousy heating system you have in that crate!” She shivered reminiscently.
“Would have used up too much oxygen,” he explained. “Just kept the pilot’s compartment heated and aired. Used a suit to drag supplies forward when I needed them.”
“I’m glad you didn’t see me,” she laughed. “I must have looked like the devil, all covered with frost and killed, I bet. Some sleeping beauty I probably made! Well, I froze. When you opened all the compartments, I revived. That’s the whole story. Guess it took a few days. How come you didn’t see me?”
“I suppose I never looked back there,” he admitted. “Quick enough, I found I didn’t need supplies. Funny, I thought I opened all the compartments, but I don’t really remember—”
She looked at the inscription on the wall. “What’s that?”
“I thought I’d leave a sort of monument—”
“Who’s going to read it?” she asked practically.
“No one, probably. It was just a foolish idea.” He concentrated on it. In a few moments the granite wall was bare. “I still don’t understand how you could be alive now,” he said puzzled.
“But I am. I don’t see how you do that—” she gestured at the chair and wall—“But I’ll accept the fact that you can. Why don’t you accept the fact that I’m alive?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” the man said. “I want company very much, especially female company. It’s just—Turn your back.”
She complied, with a questioning look. Quickly he destroyed the stubble on his face and created a clean pair of pressed pants and a shirt. Stepping out of his tattered uniform, he put on the new clothes, destroyed the rags, and, on an afterthought, created a comb and straightened his tangled brown hair.
“All right,” he said. “You can turn back now.”
“Not bad,” she smiled, looking him over. “Let me use that comb—and would you please make me a dress? Size twelve, but see that the weight goes in the right places.”
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- Writer
