Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from _Analog_ August 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. Subscript characters are shown within {braces}. The Bramble Bush Usually, if a man's gotten into bad trouble by getting into something, he's a fool to go back. But there are times ... by Randall Garrett Illustrated by Schelling _There was a man in our town, And he was wond'rous wise; He jumped into a bramble bush, And scratch'd out both his eyes!_ --Old Nursery Rhyme Peter de Hooch was dreaming that the moon had blown up when he awakened. The room was dark except for the glowing night-light near the door, and he sat up trying to separate the dream from reality. He focused his eyes on the glow-plate. What had wakened him? Something had, he was sure, but there didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary now. The explosion in his dream had seemed extraordinarily realistic. He could still remember vividly the vibration and the _cr-r-r-ump!_ of the noise. But there was no sign of what might have caused the dream sequence. Maybe something fell, he thought. He swung his legs off his bed and padded barefoot over to the light switch. He was so used to walking under the light lunar gravity that he was no longer conscious of it. He pressed the switch, and the room was suddenly flooded with light. He looked around. Everything was in place, apparently. There was nothing on the floor that shouldn't be there. The books were all in their places in the bookshelf. The stuff on his desk seemed undisturbed. The only thing that wasn't as it should be was the picture on the wall. It was a reproduction of a painting by Pieter de Hooch, which he had always liked, aside from the fact that he had been named after the seventeenth-century Dutch artist. The picture was slightly askew on the wall. He was sleepily trying to figure out the significance of that when the phone sounded. He walked over and picked it up. "Yeah?" "Guz? Guz? Get over here quick!" Sam Willows' voice came excitedly from the instrument. "Whatsamatter, Puss?" he asked blearily. "Number Two just blew! We need help, Guz! Fast!" "I'm on my way!" de Hooch said. "Take C corridor," Willows warned. "A and B caved in, and the bulkheads have dropped. Make it snappy!" "I'm gone already," de Hooch said, dropping the phone back into place. He grabbed his vacuum suit from its hanger and got into it as though his own room had already sprung an air leak.