Man Who Sold the Moon / Orphans of the Sky (39 page)
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Authors: Robert A Heinlein
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Science Fiction, #Space Opera, #Action & Adventure
“Don’t I know it!”
“Somebody have it in for you?”
“Well—our old pal Mort Tyler didn’t help any; I think I can say that much.”
Alan whistled and nodded his head slowly. “That explains a lot.”
“How come? You know something?”
“Maybe, maybe not. After you went away he married Edris Baxter.”
“So? Hm-m-m—yes, that clears up a lot.” He remained silent for a time.
Presently Alan spoke up. “Look, Hugh. You’re not going to sit here and take it, are you? Particularly with Tyler mixed in it. We gotta get you outa here.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Pull a raid, maybe. I guess I could get a few knives to rally round and help us—all good boys, spoiling for a fight.”
“Then, when it’s over, we’d all be for the Converter. You, me, and your pals. No, it won’t wash.”
“But we’ve
got
to do something. We can’t just sit here and wait for them to burn you.”
“I know that,” Hugh studied Alan’s face. Was it a fair thing to ask? He went on, reassured by what he had seen. “Listen. You would do anything you could to get me out of this, wouldn’t you?”
“You know that.” Alan’s tone showed hurt.
“Very well, then. There is a dwarf named Bobo. I’ll tell you how to find him.”
Alan climbed, up and up, higher than he had ever been since Hugh had led him, as a boy, into foolhardy peril. He was older now, more conservative; he had no stomach for it. To the very real danger of leaving the well-traveled lower levels was added his superstitious ignorance. But still he climbed.
This should be about the place—unless he had lost count. But he saw nothing of the dwarf.
Bobo saw him first. A slingshot load caught Alan in the pit of the stomach, even as he was shouting, “Bobo!”
Bobo backed into Joe-Jim’s compartment and dumped his load at the feet of the twins. “Fresh meat,” he said proudly.
“So it is,” agreed Jim indifferently. “Well, it’s yours; take it away.”
The dwarf dug a thumb into a twisted ear, “Funny,” he said, “he knows Bobo’s name.”
Joe looked up from the book he was reading—Browning’s
Collected Poems,
L-Press, New York, London, Luna City, cr. 35. “That’s interesting. Hold on a moment.”
Hugh had prepared Alan for the shock of Joe-Jim’s appearance. In reasonably short order he collected his wits sufficiently to be able to tell his tale. Joe-Jim listened to it without much comment, Bobo with interest but little comprehension.
When Alan concluded, Jim remarked, “Well, you win, Joe. He didn’t make it.” Then, turning to Alan, he added, “You can take Hoyland’s place. Can you play checkers?”
Alan looked from one head to the other. “But you don’t understand,” he said. “Aren’t you going to do anything about it?”
Joe looked puzzled. “Us? Why should we?”
“But you’ve
got
to. Don’t you see? He’s depending on you. There’s nobody else he can look to. That’s why I came. Don’t you see?”
“Wait a moment,” drawled Jim, “wait a moment. Keep your belt on. Supposing we did want to help him—which we don’t—how in Jordan’s Ship could we? Answer me that.”
“Why—why—” Alan stumbled in the face of such stupidity. “Why, get up a rescue party, of course, and go down and get him out!”
“Why should we get ourselves killed in a fight to rescue your friend?”
Bobo pricked his ears. “Fight?” he inquired eagerly.
“No, Bobo,” Joe denied. “No fight. Just talk.”
“Oh,” said Bobo and returned to passivity.
Alan looked at the dwarf. “If you’d even let Bobo and me—”
“No,” Joe said shortly. “It’s out of the question. Shut up about it.”
Alan sat in a corner, hugging his knees in despair. If only he could get out of there. He could still try to stir up some help down below. The dwarf seemed to be asleep, though it was difficult to be sure with him. If only Joe-Jim would sleep, too.
Joe-Jim showed no indication of sleepiness. Joe tried to continue reading, but Jim interrupted him from time to time. Alan could not hear what they were saying.
Presently Joe raised his voice. “Is that your idea of fun?” he demanded.
“Well,” said Jim, “it beats checkers.”
“It does, does it? Suppose you get a knife in your eye—where would I be then?”
“You’re getting old, Joe. No juice in you anymore.”
“You’re as old as I am.”
“Yeah, but I got young ideas.”
“Oh, you make me sick. Have it your own way—but don’t blame me. Bobo!”
The dwarf sprang up at once, alert. “Yeah, Boss.”
“Go out and dig up Squatty and Long Arm and Pig.” Joe-Jim got up, went to a locker, and started pulling knives out of their racks.
Hugh heard the commotion in the passageway outside his prison. It could be the guards coming to take him to the Converter, though they probably wouldn’t be so noisy. Or it could be just some excitement unrelated to him. On the other hand, it might be—
It was. The door burst open, and Alan was inside, shouting at him and thrusting a brace of knives into his hands. He was hurried out of the door, while stuffing the knives in his belt and accepting two more.
Outside he saw Joe-Jim, who did not see him at once, as he was methodically letting fly, as calmly as if he had been engaging in target practice in his own study. And Bobo, who ducked his head and grinned with a mouth widened by a bleeding cut, but continued the easy flow of the motion whereby he loaded and let fly. There were three others, two of whom Hugh recognized as belonging to Joe-Jim’s privately owned gang of bullies—muties by definition and birthplace; they were not deformed.
The count did not include still forms on the floor plates.
“Come on!” yelled Alan. “There’ll be more in no time.” He hurried down the passage to the right.
Joe-Jim desisted and followed him. Hugh let one blade go for luck at a figure running away to the left. The target was poor, and he had no time to see if he had drawn blood. They scrambled along the passage, Bobo bringing up the rear, as if reluctant to leave the fun, and came to a point where a side passage crossed the main one.
Alan led them to the right again. “Stairs ahead,” he shouted.
They did not reach them. An airtight door, rarely used, clanged in their faces ten yards short of the stairs. Joe-Jim’s bravoes checked their flight and they looked doubtfully at their master. Bobo broke his thickened nails trying to get a purchase on the door.
The sounds of pursuit were clear behind them.
“Boxed in,” said Joe softly. “I hope you like it, Jim.”
Hugh saw a head appear around the corner of the passage they had quitted. He threw overhand but the distance was too great; the knife clanged harmlessly against steel. The head disappeared. Long Arm kept his eye on the spot, his sling loaded and ready.
Hugh grabbed Bobo’s shoulder. “Listen! Do you see that light?”
The dwarf blinked stupidly. Hugh pointed to the intersection of the glowtubes where they crossed in the overhead directly above the junction of the passages. “That light. Can you hit them where they cross?”
Bobo measured the distance with his eye. It would be a hard shot under any conditions at that range. Here, constricted as he was by the low passageway, it called for a fast, flat trajectory, and allowance for higher weight then he was used to.
He did not answer. Hugh felt the wind of his swing but did not see the shot. There was a tinkling crash; the passage became dark.
“Now!” yelled Hugh, and led them away at a run. As they neared the intersection he shouted, “Hold your breaths! Mind the gas!” The radioactive vapor poured lazily out from the broken tube above and filled the crossing with a greenish mist.
Hugh ran to the right, thankful for his knowledge as an engineer of the lighting circuits. He had picked the right direction; the passage ahead was black, being serviced from beyond the break. He could hear footsteps around him; whether they were friend or enemy he did not know.
They burst into light. No one was in sight but a scared and harmless peasant who scurried away at an unlikely pace. They took a quick muster. All were present, but Bobo was making heavy going of it.
Joe looked at him. “He sniffed the gas, I think. Pound his back.”
Pig did so with a will. Bobo belched deeply, was suddenly sick, then grinned.
“He’ll do,” decided Joe.
The slight delay had enabled one at least to catch up with them. He came plunging out of the dark, unaware of, or careless of, the strength against him. Alan knocked Pig’s arm down, as he raised it to throw.
“Let me at ’im!” he demanded. “He’s mine!”
It was Tyler.
“Man-fight?” Alan challenged, thumb on his blade.
Tyler’s eyes darted from adversary to adversary and accepted the invitation to individual duel by lunging at Alan. The quarters were too cramped for throwing; they closed, each achieving his grab in parry, fist to wrist.
Alan was stockier, probably stronger; Tyler was slippery. He attempted to give Alan a knee to the crotch. Alan evaded it, stamped on Tyler’s planted foot. They went down. There was a crunching crack.
A moment later, Alan was wiping his knife against his thigh. “Let’s get goin,’” he complained. “I’m scared.”
They reached a stairway and raced up it, Long Arm and Pig ahead to fan out on each level and cover their flanks, and the third of the three choppers—Hugh heard him called Squatty—covering the rear. The others bunched in between.
Hugh thought they had won free, when he heard shouts and the clatter of a thrown knife just above him. He reached the level above in time to be cut not deeply but jaggedly by a ricocheted blade.
Three men were down. Long Arm had a blade sticking in the fleshy part of his upper arm, but it did not seem to bother him. His slingshot was still spinning. Pig was scrambling after a thrown knife, his own armament exhausted. But there were signs of his work; one man was down on one knee some twenty feet away. He was bleeding from a knife wound in the thigh.
As the figure steadied himself with one hand against the bulkhead and reached toward an empty belt with the other, Hugh recognized him.
Bill Ertz.
He had led a party up another way and flanked them, to his own ruin. Bobo crowded behind Hugh and got his mighty arm free for the cast. Hugh caught at it. “Easy, Bobo,” he directed. “In the stomach, and easy.”
The dwarf looked puzzled, but did as he was told. Ertz folded over at the middle and slid to the deck.
“Well placed,” said Jim.
“Bring him along, Bobo,” directed Hugh, “and stay in the middle.” He ran his eye over their party, now huddled at the top of that flight of stairs. “All right, gang—up we go again! Watch it.”
Long Arm and Pig swarmed up the next flight, the others disposing themselves as usual. Joe looked annoyed. In some fashion—a fashion by no means clear at the moment—he had been eased out as leader of this gang—
his
gang—and Hugh was giving orders. He reflected that there was no time now to make a fuss. It might get them all killed.
Jim did not appear to mind. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying himself.
They put ten more levels behind them with no organized opposition. Hugh directed them not to kill peasants unnecessarily. The three bravoes obeyed; Bobo was too loaded down with Ertz to constitute a problem in discipline. Hugh saw to it that they put thirty-odd more decks below them and were well into no man’s land before he let vigilance relax at all. Then he called a halt and they examined wounds.
The only deep ones were to Long Arm’s arm and Bobo’s face. Joe-Jim examined them and applied presses with which he had outfitted himself before starting. Hugh refused treatment for his flesh wound. “It’s stopped bleeding,” he insisted, “and I’ve got a lot to do.”
“You’ve got nothing to do but to get up home,” said Joe, “and that will be an end to this foolishness.”
“Not quite,” denied Hugh. “You may be going home, but Alan and I and Bobo are going up to no-weight—to the Captain’s veranda.”
“Nonsense,” said Joe. “What for?”
“Come along if you like, and see. All right, gang. Let’s go.”
Joe started to speak, stopped when Jim kept still. Joe-Jim followed along.
They floated gently through the door of the veranda, Hugh, Alan, Bobo with his still-passive burden—and Joe-Jim. “That’s it,” said Hugh to Alan, waving his hand at the splendid stars, “that’s what I’ve been telling you about.”
Alan looked and clutched at Hugh’s arm. “Jordan!” he moaned. “We’ll fall out!” He closed his eyes tightly.
Hugh shook him. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s grand. Open your eyes.”
Joe-Jim touched Hugh’s arm. “What’s it all about?” he demanded. “Why did you bring
him
up here?” He pointed to Ertz.
“Oh—him. Well, when he wakes up I’m going to show him the stars, prove to him that the Ship moves.”
“Well? What for?”
“Then I’ll send him back down to convince some others.”
“Hm-m-m—suppose he doesn’t have any better luck than you had?”
“Why, then”—Hugh shrugged his shoulders—“why, then we shall just have to do it all over, I suppose, till we do convince them.
“We’ve got to do it, you know.”
Part Two
Common
Sense
II
Common Sense
Joe, the right-hand head of Joe-Jim, addressed his words to Hugh Hoyland. “All right, smart boy, you’ve convinced the Chief Engineer—” He gestured toward Bill Ertz with the blade of his knife, then resumed picking Jim’s teeth with it. “So what? Where does it get you?”
“I’ve explained that,” Hugh Hoyland answered irritably. “We keep on, until every scientist in the Ship, from the Captain to the greenest probationer,
knows
that the Ship moves and believes that we can make it move. Then we’ll finish the Trip, as Jordan willed. How many knives can you muster?” he added.
“Well, for the love o’ Jordan! Listen—have you got some fool idea that we are going to
help
you with this crazy scheme?”
“Naturally. You’re necessary to it.”
“Then you had better think up another think. That’s out. Bobo! Get out the checkerboard.”
“O.K., Boss.” The microcephalic dwarf hunched himself up off the floor plates and trotted across Joe-Jim’s apartment.
“Hold it, Bobo.” Jim, the left-hand head, had spoken. The dwarf stopped dead, his narrow forehead wrinkled. The fact that his two-headed master occasionally failed to agree as to what Bobo should do was the only note of insecurity in his tranquil, bloodthirsty existence.
“Let’s hear what he has to say,” Jim continued. “There may be some fun in this.”
“Fun! The fun of getting a knife in your ribs. Let me point out that they are my ribs, too. I don’t agree to it.”
“I didn’t ask you to agree; I asked you to listen. Leaving fun out of it, it may be the only way to keep a knife out of our ribs.”
“What do you mean?” Joe demanded suspiciously.
“You heard what Ertz had to say.” Jim flicked a thumb toward the prisoner. “The Ship’s officers are planning to clean out the upper levels. How would you like to go into the Converter, Joe? You can’t play checkers after we’re broken down into hydrogen.”
“Bunk! The Crew can’t exterminate the muties—they’ve tried before.”
Jim turned to Ertz. “How about it?”
Ertz answered somewhat diffidently, being acutely aware of his own changed status from a senior Ship’s officer to prisoner of war. He felt befuddled anyhow; too much had happened and too fast. He had been kidnapped, hauled up to the Captain’s veranda, and had there gazed out at the stars—the
stars.
His hard-boiled rationalism included no such concept. If an Earth astronomer had had it physically demonstrated to him that the globe spun on its axis because someone turned a crank, the upset in evaluations could have been no greater. Besides that, he was acutely aware that his own continued existence hung in fine balance. Joe-Jim was the first upper-level mutie he had ever met other than in combat, knife to knife. A word from him to that great ugly dwarf sprawled on the deck—
He chose his words. “I think the Crew would be successful, this time. We . . . they have organized for it. Unless there are more of you than we think there are and better organized, I think it could be done. You see . . . well, uh, I organized it.”
“You?”
“Yes. A good many of the Council don’t like the policy of letting the muties alone. Maybe it’s sound religious doctrine and maybe it isn’t, but we lose a child here and a couple of pigs there. It’s annoying.”
“What do you expect muties to eat?” demanded Jim belligerently. “Thin air?”
“No, not exactly. Anyhow, the new policy was not entirely destructive. Any muties that surrendered and could be civilized we planned to give to masters and put them to work as part of the Crew. That is, any that weren’t, uh . . . that were—” He broke off in embarrassment, and shifted his eyes from the two-headed monstrosity before him.
“You mean any that weren’t physical mutations, like me,” Joe filled in nastily. “Don’t you?” he persisted. “For the likes of me it’s the Converter, isn’t it?” He slapped the blade of his knife nervously on the palm of his hand.
Ertz edged away, his own hand shifting to his belt. But no knife was slung there; he felt naked and helpless without it. “Just a minute,” he said defensively, “you asked me; that’s the situation. It’s out of my hands. I’m just telling you.”
“Let him alone, Joe. He’s just handing you the straight dope. It’s like I was telling you—either go along with Hugh’s plan, or wait to be hunted down. And don’t get any ideas about killing him—we’re going to need him.” As Jim spoke he attempted to return the knife to its sheath. There was a brief and silent struggle between the twins for control of the motor nerves to their right arm, a clash of will below the level of physical activity. Joe gave in.
“All right,” he agreed surlily, “but if I go to the Converter, I want to take this one with me for company.”
“Stow it,” said Jim. “You’ll have me for company.”
“Why do you believe him?”
“He has nothing to gain by lying. Ask Alan.”
Alan Mahoney, Hugh’s friend and boyhood chum, had listened to the argument round-eyed, without joining it. He, too, had suffered the nerve-shaking experience of viewing the outer stars, but his ignorant peasant mind had not the sharply formulated opinions of Ertz, the Chief Engineer. Ertz had been able to see almost at once that the very existence of a world outside the Ship changed all his plans and everything he had believed in; Alan was capable only of wonder.
“What about this plan to fight the muties, Alan?”
“Huh? Why, I don’t know anything about it. Shucks, I’m not a scientist. Say, wait a minute—there was a junior officer sent in to help our village scientist, Lieutenant Nelson—” He stopped and looked puzzled.
“What about it? Go ahead.”
“Well, he has been organizing the cadets in our village, and the married men, too, but not so much. Making ’em practice with their blades and slings. Never told us what for, though.”
Ertz spread his hands. “You see?”
Joe nodded. “I see,” he admitted grimly.
Hugh Hoyland looked at him eagerly. “Then you’re with me?”
“I suppose so,” Joe admitted. “Right!” added Jim.
Hoyland looked back to Ertz. “How about you, Bill Ertz?”
“What choice have I got?”
“Plenty. I want you with me wholeheartedly. Here’s the layout: The Crew doesn’t count; it’s the officers we have to convince. Any that aren’t too addlepated and stiff-necked to understand after they’ve seen the stars and the Control Room, we keep. The others”—he drew a thumb across his throat while making a harsh sibilance in his cheek—“the Converter.”
Bobo grinned happily and imitated the gesture and the sound.
Ertz nodded. “Then what?”
“Muties and Crew together, under a new Captain, we move the Ship to Far Centaurus! Jordan’s Will be done!”
Ertz stood up and faced Hoyland. It was a heady notion, too big to be grasped at once, but, by Jordan! he liked it. He spread his hands on the table and leaned across it. “I’m with you, Hugh Hoyland!”
A knife clattered on the table before him, one from the brace at Joe-Jim’s belt. Joe looked startled, seemed about to speak to his brother, then appeared to think better of it. Ertz looked his thanks and stuck the knife in his belt.
The twins whispered to each other for a moment, then Joe spoke up. “Might as well make it stick,” he said. He drew his remaining knife and, grasping the blade between thumb and forefinger so that only the point was exposed, he jabbed himself in the fleshly upper part of his left arm. “Blade for blade!”
Ertz’s eyebrows shot up. He whipped out his newly acquired blade and cut himself in the same location. The blood spurted and ran down to the crook of his arm. “Back to back!” He shoved the table aside and pressed his gory shoulder against the wound on Joe-Jim.
Alan Mahoney, Hugh Hoyland, Bobo—all had their blades out, all nicked their arms till the skin ran red and wet. They crowded in, bleeding shoulders pushed together so that the blood dripped united to the deck.
“Blade for blade!”
“Back to back!”
“Blood to blood!”
“Blood brothers—
to the end of the Trip!
”
An apostate scientist, a kidnapped scientist, a dull peasant, a two-headed monster, an apple-brained moron—five knives, counting Joe-Jim as one; five brains, counting Joe-Jim as two and Bobo as none—five brains and five knives to overthrow an entire culture.
“But I don’t want to go back, Hugh.” Alan shuffled his feet and looked dogged. “Why can’t I stay here with you? I’m a good blade.”
“Sure you are, old fellow. But right now you’ll be more useful as a spy.”
“But you’ve got Bill Ertz for that.”
“So we have, but we need you too. Bill is a public figure; he can’t duck out and climb to the upper levels without it being noticed and causing talk. That’s where you come in—you’re his go-between.”
“I’ll have a Huff of a time explaining where I’ve been.”
“Don’t explain any more than you have to. But stay away from the Witness.” Hugh had a sudden picture of Alan trying to deceive the old village historian, with his searching tongue and lust for details. “Keep clear of the Witness. The old boy would trip you up.”
“Him? You mean the old one—he’s dead. Made the Trip long since. The new one don’t amount to nothing.”
“Good. If you’re careful, you’ll be safe.” Hugh raised his voice. “Bill! Are you ready to go down?”
“I suppose so.” Ertz picked himself up and reluctantly put aside the book he had been reading—
The Three Musketeers,
illustrated, one of Joe-Jim’s carefully stolen library. “Say, that’s a wonderful book. Hugh, is
Earth
really like that?”
“Of course. Doesn’t it say so in the book?”
Ertz chewed his lip and thought about it. “What is a house?”
“A house? A house is a sort of a . . . a sort of a compartment.”
“That’s what I thought at first, but how can you ride on a compartment?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Why, all through the book they keep climbing on their houses and riding away.”
“Let me see that book,” Joe ordered. Ertz handed it to him. Joe-Jim thumbed through it rapidly. “I see what you mean. Idiot! They ride horses, not houses.”
“Well, what’s a horse?”
“A horse is an animal, like a big hog, or maybe like a cow. You squat up on top of it and let it carry you along.”
Ertz considered this. “It doesn’t seem practical. Look—when you ride in a litter, you tell the chief porter where you want to go. How can you tell a cow where you want to go?”
“That’s easy. You have a porter lead it.”
Ertz conceded the point. “Anyhow, you might fall off. It isn’t practical. I’d rather walk.”
“It’s quite a trick,” Joe explained. “Takes practice.”
“Can
you
do it?”
Jim sniggered. Joe looked annoyed. “There are no horses in the Ship.”
“O.K., O.K. But look—These guys, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, they had something—”
“We can discuss that later,” Hugh interrupted. “Bobo is back. Are you ready to go, Bill?”
“Don’t get in a hurry, Hugh. This is important. These chaps had knives—”
“Sure. Why not?”
“But they were better than our knives. They had knives as long as your arm—maybe longer. If we are going to fight the whole Crew, think what an advantage that would be.”
“Hm-m-m—” Hugh drew his knife and looked at it, cradling it in his palm. “Maybe. You couldn’t throw it as well.”
“We could have throwing knives, too.”
“Yes, I suppose we could.”
The twins had listened without comment. “He’s right,” put in Joe. “Hugh, you take care of placing the knives. Jim and I have some reading to do.” Both of Joe-Jim’s heads were busy thinking of other books they owned, books that discussed in sanguinary detail the infinitely varied methods used by mankind to shorten the lives of enemies. He was about to institute a War College Department of Historical Research, although he called his project by no such fancy term.
“O.K.,” Hugh agreed, “but you will have to say the word to them.”
“Right away.” Joe-Jim stepped out of his apartment into the passageway where Bobo had assembled a couple dozen of Joe-Jim’s henchmen among the muties. Save for Long Arm, Pig, and Squatty, who had taken part in the rescue of Hugh, they were all strangers to Hugh, Alan, and Bill—and they were all sudden death to strangers.
Joe-Jim motioned for the three from the lower decks to join him. He pointed them out to the muties, and ordered them to look closely and not to forget—these three were to have safe passage and protection wherever they went. Furthermore, in Joe-Jim’s absence his men were to take orders from any of them.
They stirred and looked at each other. Orders they were used to, but from Joe-Jim only.
A big-nosed individual rose up from his squat and addressed them. He looked at Joe-Jim, but his words were intended for all. “I am Jack-of-the-Nose. My blade is sharp and my eye is keen. Joe-Jim with the two wise heads is my Boss and my knife rights for him. But Joe-Jim is my Boss, not strangers from heavy decks. What do you say, knives? Is that not the Rule?”
He paused. The others had listened to him nervously, stealing glances at Joe-Jim. Joe muttered something out of the corner of his mouth to Bobo. Jack O’Nose opened his mouth to continue. There was a smash of breaking teeth, a crack from a broken neck; his mouth was stopped with a missile.
Bobo reloaded his slingshot. The body, not yet dead, settled slowly to the deck. Joe-Jim waved a hand toward it. “Good eating!” Joe announced. “He’s yours.” The muties converged on the body as if they had suddenly been unleashed. They concealed it completely in a busy, grunting pile-up. Knives out, they cuffed and crowded each other for a piece of the prize.
Joe-Jim waited patiently for the undoing to be finished, then, when the place where Jack O’Nose had been was no more than a stain on the deck and the several private arguments over the sharing had died down, he spoke again—Joe spoke. “Long Arm, you and Forty-One and the Ax go down with Bobo, Alan, and Bill. The rest wait here.”
Bobo trotted away in the long loping strides permitted by the low pseudogravity near the axis of rotation of the Ship. Three of the muties detached themselves from the pack and followed. Ertz and Alan Mahoney hurried to catch up.
When he reached the nearest staircase trunk, Bobo skipped out into space without breaking his stride and let centrifugal force carry him down to the next deck. Alan and the muties followed, but Ertz paused at the edge and looked back. “Jordan keep you, brothers!” he sang out.