"Gawd! The hangovers tomorrow."
"We'll all have to watch our steps. I hope they don't do anything worse than getting quietly drunk in their quarters. Those foot-kissing orderlies'll get a workout, but who cares what happens to an orderly?"
"They haven't been on a real tear since I've been here."
"Lucky you. Let's hope they don't bust loose tonight. It's a break in the monotony, sure—but those girls play rough. Five prisoners died last time."
"They beat them up?"
"One of them."
"What about the others? Oh! Oh, Gawd—fifty liters, you said?"
Bernie began to whimper: "Not again! Not those plug-uglies! I swear I'll throw myself through the spacelock if they make a pass at me. Ross, isn't there anything we can do?"
"Seems not, Bernie. Maybe they won't come in. Or if they do, maybe they'll pass you by. There certainly isn't any place to hide."
A raucous female voice roared through the annunciator: "Bed check five minutes, boys. Anybody got any li'l thing to do down the hall, better do it now. See you lay-terrr!" Hiccup and drunken giggle.
For the first time in his life Ross suddenly and spontaneously acted like a tri-di hero, with the exception that he felt like a silly ass through it all.
"Got an idea," he muttered. "Get out of your bunk." He pulled the wad of cellosponge, old Whitker's present, from his pocket and yanked it in half, one for him and one for Bernie.
The Pullover said faintly: "Thanks, but I don't have Ross didn't bother to answer. He was carefully fluffing the stuff out to its maximum dimensions.
He unzipped his coveralls and began wadding them with cellosponge.
"I get it," Bernard said softly. He stepped out of his one-piece garment and followed suit. In less than a minute they had creditable dummies lying on their bunks.
The others watched their activity with emotions ranging between awe and envy. One giant of a man proclaimed grimly to whoever cared to listen: "These are a couple of smart guys. I wish them luck.
And I want you guys to know that I will personally break the back of any sneaking rat who tips off a guard about this."
"Sure, Ox. Sure," came a muted chorus.
Arranged in a fetal sleeping position, face down, the dummies astonished even their creators. It would take a lucky look in a f air light to note that the heads were earless, fibrous globes.
"They'll do," Ross snapped. "Come on, Bernie."
They walked quietly from the dormitory in their singlet underwear toward the dormitory latrine—and past it. Into the corridor. Through a doorless opening into a storeroom piled with crates of rations. "This'll do," Ross said quietly. They ducked into a small cavern formed by sloppy issuing of stock and hunched down.
"The dummies will fool the bed check. It's only a sweep with a hundred-line TV system. If the guards do raid the dormitory tonight we'll have to count on them ignoring the dummies or thinking they're a joke or being too busy with other things to care. They'll be drunk, after all. Then in the morning things'll be plenty disorganized. We'll be able to sneak back into formation—and that'll be that for a matter of years. They can't often bribe the pilots with enough to guarantee a real ripsnorting drunk. Now try and get some sleep. There's nothing more we can do."
They actually did doze off for a couple of hours, and then were awakened by drunken war whoops.
"It's them!" Bernie wailed.
"Shut up. They're heading for the dormitory. We're safe."
"Safe!" Bernie echoed derisively. "Safe until when?"
Ross threatened him with the side of his hand and Bernie was quiet, though his lips were mumbling soundlessly. The guards lurched giggling past and Ross said:
"We'll sneak into the lockroom. There won't be anybody there tonight; at least we'll get a night's sleep."
"Big deal," grumbled Bernie, but he followed, complaining inarticulately to himself. Ross thought tiredly: All this work for a night's sleep! And saw, half-formed, the dreadful procession of days and nights and years ahead. . . .
They reached the lockroom and stumbled in breathlessly.
"Dearie!" Two guards, playing a card game on the floor with a ring of empty bottles around them, looked up in drunken delight. "Dearie!" repeated the bigger of the two. "Angela, look what we've got!"
Ross said stupidly. "But you shouldn't be here——"
The guard made a clumsy pass at fluffing up her back hair and giggled. "Duty comes first, dearie.
Angela, just lock that door, will you?" The other guard scrambled unevenly to her feet and weaved over to the door. It was locked before Ross or Bernie could move.
The big guard stood up too, leering at Bernie. "Wow!" she said. "New merchandise. Just be patient, dearie. We've got a little something to attend to in a couple of minutes, but we'll have lots of time after that."
Then things began to happen rapidly. There was Angela the guard, inarticulate, falling-down drunk; she waved bonelessly at a brightly flickering light on the far side of the lockroom. There was the other guard, reaching out for Bernie with one hand, pawing at a bottle with the other. There was Ross, a paralyzed spectator.
And there was Bernie.
Bernie's eyes bulged wide as the guard came toward him. He babbled hysterically, "No! Nonononono!
I said I'd kill myself and I——"
He stiff-armed the big guard and leaped for the lock door. Ross suddenly came to life. "Bernie!"
he bellowed. "Hold it! Don't jump!"
But it was too late. The one guard sprawling, the other staggering helplessly across the floor, Bernie was clear. He scrabbled at the lockwheels, spun them open. Ross tensed himself for the sudden, awful rush of expanding air; he leaped after Bernie just as Bernie flung the lock door open and jumped.
Ross jumped after.
There was no rush of air. They were not in space. Around them was no ripping, sucking void, no flaming backdrop of stars; around them were six walls and a Wesley board, and Helena peering at them wide-eyed and delighted.
"Well!" she said. "That was fast!"
Ross said, "But——"
Helena, hanging from the acceleration loops, smiled maternally. "Oh, it was nothing," she said. "Ross don't you think we're far enough away yet?"
Ross said hopelessly, "All right," and cut the drive. The starship hung hi space hi the limbo between stars. Azor, "Minerva," and the rest were light-years behind, far out of range of challenge.
Helena wriggled free from the loops and rubbed her arms where the retaining straps had gripped them. "After all," she said demurely, "you told me how to run the ship, and really, Ross, I'm not quite stupid."
Ross said, "But——"
"But what, Ross? It isn't as it I were some sort of brainless little thing that had never run a machine hi her life. My goodness, Ross——" She wrinkled her nose. "You should remember. All those days hi the dye vats? Don't you think I had to learn a little something about machines there?"
Ross swore incredulously. To compare those clumsy constructs of wheels and rollers with the subtle subelectronic flows of the Wesley force—and to make it work! He said, unbelievingly, "And the 'Minerva' helped you vector hi? They gave you the co-ordinates and radared your course?"
"Certainly." Helena turned to Bernie, who was staring dazedly around him. "Are you all right, dear?" she asked.
Ross turned his back on them and faced the Wesley Christmas tree of controls. Don't question it, he told himself; take a miracle for what it is. God wanted you out of "Minerva"—and God moves hi most mysterious ways His wonders to perform.
Anyway, they had to get going. When the court had exiled Helena hi the starship they had gone through the customary rituals; not only was everything that looked like a weapon gone, along with all but a teacup of fuel for the auxiliary jets, but the food locker was stripped entirely. He put everything else out of his mind and began to calculate a setting.