As the figure steadied himself with one hand against the bulkhead and reached towards 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 as 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."
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 of 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 Etrz. "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 kidnaped, 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.