Piers Anthony
Bio of a Space Tyrant, Volume 1:
Refugee
 



CONTENTS
Editorial Preface
 
 1.  RAPE OF THE BUBBLE
 2.  FAITH AND SPIRIT
 3.  HARD CHOICE
 4.  FLIGHT INTO VACUUM
 5.  FIGHT FOR LIFE
 6.  BUBBLE, BUBBLE
 7.  BETRAYAL
 8.  ADJUSTMENT
 9.  MASSACRE
10. TO LOVE AND BE LOVED
11. SACRIFICE
12. FOOD
13. REFUGEES' WELCOME
14. HELL PLANET
15. WHEN WILL IT END?
16. VIOLATION OF TRUST
17. FEMALE MYSTIQUE
18. PIRATE TREASURE
19. THE FINAL RAID
20. SALVATION
 
Editorial Epilog
 



 
Editorial Preface
There have been many biographies of the so-called Tyrant of Jupiter, and 
countless analyses of the supposed virtues and vices of his character. He was, 
after all, the most remarkable figure of his generation, as even his enemies 
concede, and will no doubt be ranked with the other prime movers or disturbers 
of history, such as Alexander, Caesar, Attila, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler, 
and the like. But his personal model was Asoka, who was also called a tyrant in 
his day, though he may have been the finest ruler the subcontinent of India, 
Earth, ever had. It is virtually certain, however, that neither the inimical nor 
the sanitized references adequately describe the real man.
Now that the Tyrant of Jupiter is dead, his voluminous private papers have been 
released to researchers. These reveal some phenomenal secrets, confirming both 
the best and worst aspects of his reputation. It turns out to be true, for 
example, that this man was personally responsible for the deaths of between 
fifty and a hundred human beings before he was sixteen years old, and thousands 
more thereafter—but still, it is not fair to call him a cold-blooded mass 
murderer. It is also true that there were many women in his life, including 
several temporary wives or mistresses—the distinction becomes obscure in some 
cases—but not that he was promiscuous.
The legal name of the Tyrant was Hope Hubris, literally reflecting the hope his 
family had for him. He was of Hispanic origin, and the name Hope was at that 
time an unusual appellation for a male of his culture. It is perhaps a measure 
of his impact that it is so no more. He was, throughout his life, literate in 
two languages, and able to speak others. He was, in any language, always 
possessed of that particular genius of expression any leader needs.
Hope Hubris was charged with many terrible things, and his seeming unwillingness 
to deny or clarify many of these charges appeared to lend credence to them. It 
was said that he watched his father being murdered without lifting a hand; that 
he sold his sisters into sexual slavery; that he permitted his mother to 
practice prostitution in his sight; and that he killed his first girl friend in 
order to save himself. He was also accused of practicing incest and cannibalism, 
of trafficking in illegal drugs, and of being a coward about heights. There is 
an element of truth in all these charges, but appreciation of their full context 
goes far to exonerate him. As he himself wrote: "We did what we had to. How can 
that be wrong?"
Hope was fallible in the fashion of his kind, especially during his truncated 
youth, but he did possess a single and singular skill, and there was a certain 
greatness in him. His early and savage, if limited, experience in leadership was 
to serve him excellently later in life, as Tyrant. He seldom repeated his 
mistakes. Remember, too, that he suffered tribulations such as few survive. How 
pretty do we really expect the survivors of holocaust to be?
The Tyrant was not a bad man. This assessment is well documented by the series 
of autobiographical manuscripts he left, each written with disarmingly complete 
candor. It seems fitting that the final word on his nature be his own. The 
intelligence and literacy of young Hope Hubris, who wrote at age fifteen in a 
secondary language, is manifest, coupled with a quaint naïveté of experience. 
This is, however, no juvenile narration!
Herewith, edited only for clarification of occasional obscurities, and for 
separation and titling of episodes, but otherwise uncensored, is the earliest of 
these five major documents, editorially titled Refugee.
HMH
 
Chapter 1 — RAPE OF THE BUBBLE
Jupiter Orbit, 2-8-2615—The shell of the bubble was opaque, for it had to be 
thick and solid to contain the pressure of air and to insulate against the cold 
of empty space. But there were portholes, multiply glazed tunnels that offered 
views outside, and naturally I was interested.
The view really wasn't much. Jupiter, the colossus of the system, dominated as 
it always did, about the apparent size of my outstretched fist. Its turbulent 
cloud-currents and great red eye were looking right back at me. The planet was 
almost full-face right now, because the sun was behind us. Our progress toward 
the planet was so slow that the disk seemed hardly larger than it had been when 
we started three days before. But giant Jove was always impressive, however 
distant and whatever the phase.
"Ship ahoy!" our temporary navigator cried. I didn't know whether this was 
standard space procedure, but it was good enough for us, who were less 
experienced than the rankest of amateurs.
A ship! Excitement rippled through the refugees massed in the bubble. What could 
this mean?
Soon we all saw it through the portholes: a somewhat bloated barrel with 
attachments. Of course streamlining was not needed in space, and a tub like this 
one was never intended to land on any significant solid body. Still, I felt a 
certain disappointment. Perhaps I had been spoiled by all those dramatic 
holographs of the Jupiter Space Navy in action, with needle-sleek missileships 
homing in on decoy drones and exploding with instant fireballs. I had always 
known that real spacecraft were not like that, and yet my mental picture 
remained shaped by the Jupe publicity ads.
The ship overhauled us readily, for it had chemical jets to boost its gravity 
shields. It closed on us, and its blunt nose clanged against our access port 
with a jolt that shook us all. What was it up to?
I turned to discover my big sister, Faith, immediately behind me. She was 
absolutely beautiful in her excitement, though as always I pretended not to 
notice. I had the chore of staying near her during this voyage, to discourage 
mischief. Faith attracted men the way garbage draws flies in the incredible 
films of old Earth—perhaps it would be kinder to say the way flowers draw 
bees—partly because no man had touched her. We Latins place importance on that 
sort of thing; I understand there are other cultures that don't.
"Who are they?" Faith asked.
"Maybe traders," I answered, feeling a mild burgeoning of importance in the 
expressing of such an opinion. But I felt a slow clutch of apprehension. We were 
refugees; we had nothing to trade.
In any event, we were powerless to oppose their boarding. Our bubble had only 
one weak propulsive jet; we were virtually free-floating in space. Our main 
physical motivation was the selected gravity of Jupiter and the forces of 
inertia. We could not have performed an evasive maneuver had we known how. The 
entry ports could be operated from either side; this was to prevent anyone from 
being trapped outside. Our competence was such that this was a necessary safety 
feature, but it did leave us open to boarding by any craft that chose to do so.
The seal was made and the port opened, making an open window to the other craft. 
There were of course safety features to prevent the lock opening both doors 
simultaneously when the pressure was unequal, but the normal air pressure of the 
ship did equalize it. In space, safety had to be balanced by convenience; it 
would have been awkward to transfer any quantity of freight from one vessel to 
another if one panel of the air lock always had to be sealed.
A burly, bearded man appeared, garbed in soiled yellow pantaloons, a black 
shirt, and a bright red sash. He needed no space suit, of course; the merged air 
lock mechanism made exit into the vacuum of space unnecessary. Most striking was 
his headdress: a kind of broad, split hat like that of the classical buccaneers. 
There is a lot of conscious imitation of the past, so archaic costumes are not 
unusual.
Buccaneers. I had been uneasy before; now I was scared. I was aware that not all 
of those who emulated buccaneers in costume were playing innocent games. Some 
took the part more seriously, particularly in this region of the system. "We've 
got to hide, Faith," I said, in our natural Spanish. The translation of course 
is not perfect, and neither is my memory; allowance must be made.
Her clear brow furrowed. "Why, Hope?" she asked. "I want to meet the traders. 
Maybe they have soap." She had been unable to wash her luxuriant tresses, and so 
she fretted. It was the way of pretty girls.
"They're not traders," I snapped. "Come on!"
She frowned. She was three years older than I, and did not like taking orders 
from me. I could hardly blame her for that, but I really feared the trouble that 
could come if my suspicion was correct. I took her by the arm and drew her along 
with me.
"But you said—" she protested as she moved.
It was already too late, for several more brutish men had crowded through the 
open port, and they were armed with clubs and knives. "Line up here on the main 
floor!" their leader cried. I found it mildly anomalous that he did not use the 
proper term, "deck." Maybe he did not consider our little bubble to be a true 
spacecraft.
The refugees looked at our navigator, who seemed to be the most likely authority 
in a situation like this. He looked suddenly tired. "I think we must do as they 
say," he said. "They are armed and we are not."
"Stay back," I whispered to Faith. "Stand behind me. Try to—you know—make 
yourself inconspicuous."
"Oh, no!" she breathed. She had a very feminine way of expressing herself, even 
when under stress. She had the business of being pretty down virtually to a 
science. "You don't think—?"
"I think they're pirates," I said, trying to speak without moving my lips as I 
faced the intruders, so they wouldn't know I was talking. "They're going to rob 
us." I hoped that would be the limit of it.
We moved slowly to merge with the mass of people forming on the designated 
portion of the deck. Fortunately the bubble's spin was high at the moment, so 
there was enough centrifugal gravity to hold us firm. Our concentration at this 
spot did cause the bubble to wobble slightly, however.
"Now, I'm called the Horse, because of the way I smell," the red-sashed leader 
said. "I run this party. That's about all you need to know about me. Just do 
what I say, and no one will be hurt too much." He chuckled, but none of us saw 
any humor in this. We were frightened.
The pirates spread out around the bubble, around the curve of the deck, poking 
into things. The leader and several others attended to the refugees. "All right, 
come on up here, you," the Horse said, beckoning an older man.
"What?" the man asked in Spanish, startled.
The pirate leaped and grabbed him by the arm, hauling him roughly forward. 
"Move!" he shouted.
The man recovered his balance, nonplussed. "But, Señor Horse—"
Deliberately, yet almost carelessly, the pirate struck him on the head, 
backhanded. It was no token blow; the man cried out and fell to the deck. A 
trace of blood showed on his lip as he put one hand to his face.
"Check him," the Horse said brusquely. Two others stepped up, hauled the old man 
to his feet, and searched him roughly. They found his wallet and a small bag of 
golden coins, his fortune. They dumped these in a central box and threw him to 
the side. I think the violence upset him and us more than the actual robbery 
did. We were plainly unprepared for this.
"You," the Horse said, pointing to a middle-aged woman.
She screamed and shrank back into the crowd, but he was too quick for her. He 
caught her by the shoulder and dragged her into the open. "Strip!" he ordered.
Horrified, unmoving, she stared at him.
The Horse did not repeat his order. He gestured to the two assistant pirates. 
They grabbed the woman and literally ripped the clothing from her body, shaking 
it so that all objects in her pockets fell to the deck. These were mostly 
feminine articles: a comb, a mirror, a vial of perfume, and a small change 
purse. The pirates took the change and cast her aside, naked and sobbing.
Now the pirate's eye fell on Faith. My effort to conceal her had been 
unsuccessful; there were too many of the intruders scattered around the bubble. 
Also, the curve of the deck meant that those of us who stood behind the group 
actually were more visible than those near the center, because the curve had the 
effect of elevating us. "Here's something better than money!" he exclaimed, 
beckoning her.
Faith shrank away, of course. My father shoved his way out of the crowd. "She 
has nothing!" he cried.
One of the peripheral pirates strode forward to intercept my father. Another 
went after Faith. My father was not a man of violence, but he could not tolerate 
abuse of his children. He raised one fist in warning as he met the pirate. It 
was not that he wanted to fight, but that he had to give some signal that the 
limit of our tolerance had been approached. Even confused refugees could only be 
pushed so far.
The pirate drew his curved sword. "Get back!" another refugee cried, catching my 
father by his other arm and drawing him back into the throng. The pirate, 
satisfied by this act of retreat, scowled and did not pursue.
Meanwhile, the other pirate reached Faith, who now stood close beside me, no 
longer protesting my leadership. He caught her by the elbow. She screamed—and I 
launched myself at the man.
I caught him in a clumsy tackle about the legs, making him stumble. This brought 
a feeling of déjà vu to me, the sensation of having been here before. My mind is 
like that; I make odd connections at the least convenient times. A teacher once 
told me that it is a sign of creativity, that can be useful if properly 
harnessed. I had tackled a man before, rescuing my sister—
A fist like a block of ice-rock clubbed me on the ear. There is a peculiar agony 
to the injured ear; my very brain seemed to shake inside my skull.
The pirate had knocked me down with the same almost careless contempt the Horse 
had applied to the old man. It was as effective. I sat up, my ear seeing red 
stars. For a moment I was disorganized, not doing more than hurting and 
watching.
The pirate hauled Faith into the open. She screamed again and wrenched herself 
away. Her blouse tore, leaving a shred in the man's grip. He cursed in the 
manner of his kind and lunged for her again.
I scrambled up and launched myself at him a second time. This time I didn't 
tackle, I butted. The man was leaning toward me, reaching for Faith; I brushed 
past her and struck him dead center with the top of my head.
His arms were outstretched; he had no protection from my blow. His mouth was 
open, as he was about to say something. I was braced for the impact; even so, it 
was one spine-deadening collision.
The air whooshed out of the pirate like gas from a punctured bag, while I 
dropped half-stunned to the deck. Now my whole head saw stars, and they had 
heated from red to white! We were both lightweight in the fractional gravity of 
the bubble, but our inertial mass remained intact; there had been nothing light 
about the butt!
I lay prone, waiting for the shock to let go of my system. I was conscious, but 
somehow couldn't get my limbs to coordinate. I heard the pirates shouting, and 
Faith's voice as she turned about and returned to me. "Hope!" she cried. "Are 
you all right? Oh, they've hurt him!"
I presumed that "him" was me, news for a third party. I tried to tell her I 
would be all right in a moment, when the universe stopped gyrating quite so 
wildly and my head shrank back to manageable dimension, but only a grunt came 
out. Maybe that sound actually issued from the pirate next to me, who was surely 
hurting as much as I was. Maybe with luck, I had managed to separate his ribs.
But now other pirates charged in. "Hack that boy apart!" the Horse cried, and 
rough hands hauled me into the air. My dizziness abated rapidly; there is 
nothing like a specific threat to one's life to concentrate his attention!
Faith screamed again—that was one thing she was good at!—and flung her arms 
about me as my feet touched the deck. The scream was ill-timed; at that moment 
all the pirates were doing was standing me on my feet and supporting me as I 
wobbled woozily. Their intent was unlikely to be kind, but in that instant no 
one was actually doing me violence, despite their leader's order. Maybe it had 
been intended to cow the other refugees, rather than to be implemented 
literally. I make this point, with the advantage of retrospection, because of 
the importance of that particular scream.
Ill-timed it was, but that scream electrified the refugees in a manner no prior 
event had. Suddenly they were acting, all at once, as if choreographed by a 
larger power. Four of them grabbed the pirate beside me, stripping him from me. 
Others jumped on the one I had stunned with my butt. Still others went after the 
oncoming pirates.
The refugee throng had been transformed from an apathetic, frightened mass to a 
fighting force. Faith's third scream had done it. It remains unclear to me why 
her first or second screams had not had that effect. Perhaps the first ones had 
primed the group. I like to understand human motives, and sometimes they defy 
reasonable explanation.
At any rate, in moments all the pirates except their leader had been caught and 
disarmed, surprised by the suddenness and ferocity of the refugee reaction and 
overwhelmed by our much greater number.
The Horse stood, however, not with a drawn sword, but with a drawn laser pistol. 
This was another matter, for though a laser lacked the brute force of a sword, 
it could do its damage a great deal faster, particularly when played across the 
face.
"Turn loose my men," the Horse said sternly.
My father spoke up. I knew he did not like this sort of showdown, but he was, 
after all, our leader, and with Faith and me involved he was also personally 
responsible. "Get out of this bubble!" he said. "You're nothing but robbers!"
The Horse's weapon swung to cover my father. I tensed despite my continuing 
discomfort, knowing that little weapon could puncture a man's eyeballs and 
cruelly blind him before he could even blink.
"Who are you?" said the pirate.
"Major Hubris," my father responded.
"You're no military man!"
"It's my name, not a title. Fire that laser, and the rest of us will swamp you 
before I fall."
The Horse grinned humorlessly. "I can take out five or six of you first."
"Two or three of us," my father corrected him evenly, and I felt a surging pride 
at his courage. My father had always had the nerve to do what he had to do, even 
when he disliked it. This was an example. "And there are two hundred of us. 
We've already got your men. You stand to lose, regardless."
The pirate leader considered. "There is that. All right—you release my men, and 
we'll leave you alone."
My father turned to the crowd. "That seems fair enough." He noted the scattered 
nods of approval, then turned back to the pirate. "But you have to leave the 
things you stole from us. No robbery."
The Horse scowled. "Agreed."
By this time I had recovered most of my wits. "Don't trust him, Father!" I 
cried. "These are pirates!"
"I am a pirate," the Horse said. "But I keep my word. We will not rob you, and 
we will leave the bubble."
My father, like most men of honor, tended to believe the best of people. He 
nodded at the men who held the pirates, and the pirates were released. They 
quickly recovered their weapons and rejoined their leader, somewhat shamefaced.
The Horse stood for a moment, considering. Then he indicated me. "That's your 
boy who floored my man?"
My father nodded grimly. "And my daughter, whom he was defending."
As I mentioned, thoughts scurry through my head at all times, not always 
relevant to the issue of the moment. Right now I wondered where my little sister 
Spirit was, as I didn't see her. I don't know why I thought of her right then. 
Maybe it was because, the way my father spoke, it sounded as though he had only 
two children, when in fact he had three. Of course, he wasn't trying to deceive 
anyone; the pirate hadn't asked how many he had, just whether I was one. It was 
just that my meandering brain insisted on exploring surplus details.
"And when she screamed, the others rallied around," the Horse said. "We 
misjudged that, it seems."
"Yes."
"So we'll just have to try it again," the Horse concluded. He made a signal with 
his hand. "Take them."
Suddenly the nine other pirates advanced on us again, each with his sword or 
club ready.
"Hey!" my father protested. "You agreed—"
"Not to rob you," the Horse said. "And to leave the bubble. We'll honor that. 
But first we have some business that wasn't in the contract." He looked at Faith 
and me. "Don't hurt the boy or the girl or the man," he ordered. "Bring them 
here."
Pirates grabbed the three of us. In each case, two men menaced the refugees 
nearby while the third cornered the victim. They were much more careful than 
before. It was not possible to resist without immediate disaster, for the Horse 
backed them up with his laser. More than that, it was psychological: The 
remaining refugees, rendered leaderless again, did nothing. The dynamics had 
changed.
That's another phenomenon that has perplexed me. The mechanism by which a few 
uninhibited individuals can cow a much larger number, when both groups know the 
larger group has the power to prevail. It seems impossible, yet it happens all 
the time. Whole governments exist in opposition to the will of the people they 
govern, because of this. If I could just comprehend that dynamic—
"Bind father and son," the Horse said. "String them up to the baggage rack."
I struggled, but lacked the strength and mass of any one of the pirates. They 
tied my hands behind me, cruelly tight, and suspended me from the guyed baggage 
net in the center of the bubble. My father suffered a similar fate. We hung at a 
slight angle, overlooking the proceedings, helpless.
Now the Horse turned to Faith. He whistled. "She's a looker!" he exclaimed. His 
vernacular expression may have been cruder, but that was the essence. Faith, of 
course, blushed.
"Leave her alone!" I cried foolishly.
"No, we won't let this piece go to waste," the Horse said, running his tongue 
around his lips. "Prepare her."
The pirates held Faith and methodically tore the rest of her clothing from her 
struggling body, grinning salaciously. Oh, yes, they enjoyed doing this! In my 
mind they resembled burning demons from the depths of Hell. Someone among the 
refugees cried out, but the swords of the other pirates on guard prevented any 
action.
When Faith was naked, they hauled a box out of the baggage and held her supine, 
spread-eagled across it. The Horse ran his rough hands over her torso and 
squeezed her breasts, then dropped his pantaloons.
There was a gasp of incredulity from the refugees. This was not because of any 
special quality of the Horse's anatomy, which was unimpressive and unclean, but 
because of the open manner in which he exhibited himself before such a company 
of men, women, and children. The man was completely without shame.
I am striving to record this sequence objectively, for this is my personal 
biography: the description of the things that have made me what I am. I strive 
always to comprehend the true nature of people, myself most of all. There is a 
place for subjectivity—or so I believe. My feelings about a given event may 
change with time and mood and memory, but the facts of the event will never 
change. So I must first describe precisely what occurred, as though it were 
recorded by videotape, uncluttered by emotion, then proceed to the subjective 
analysis and interpretation. Perhaps there should be several interpretations, 
separated by years, so that the change in them becomes apparent and helps lead 
to the truest possible comprehension of the whole.
But in this case I find I cannot adequately perform the first requirement. My 
hand balks, my very mind veers away from the enormity of the outrage and hurt. I 
can only say that I loved my two sisters with a love that was perhaps more than 
brotherly, though never would I have thought that there was any incestuous 
element. Faith was beautiful, and nice, and I was charged with her protection, 
though she was a woman while I was a mere adolescent. I had in fact never before 
witnessed the sexual act, either in holo or in person, and had never imagined it 
to be so brutal.
It was as if that foul pirate shoved a blunt dagger into my sister's trembling, 
vulnerable body, again and again, and his face distorted in a grimace of urgency 
that in ironic fashion almost matched her grimace of agony, and his body 
shuddered as if in epileptic seizure, and when he stopped and stepped away there 
was blood on the weapon.
And I—I with my absolute horror of that ravishment, my hatred of every aspect of 
that cruelty—I found my own body reacting, as it were a thing apart from my 
mind, yet I knew it could not truly be separate. There was some part of me that 
identified with the fell pirate, though I knew it was wrong and more than wrong. 
My innocent, lovely sister Faith possessed certain attributes of Heaven, while 
now I knew that I possessed, at least in part, an attribute of Hell. I looked 
upon the foul lust of Satan, and felt an echo of that lust within myself.
I cannot write of this further. It is no pleasant thing to confess an affinity 
to that which one condemns. I can only say that I swore a private oath to kill 
the pirate Horse: some time, some way. And the pirates who followed him in the 
appalling act. I tried to note the details of each of them, so that I would not 
fail to recognize them if ever I encountered them again. I saw that several of 
the pirates, however, did not participate; they obeyed the Horse in all other 
things, but would not ravish a helpless woman. Even among pirates, there were 
some who were not as bad as others.
Apart from that effort of identification, my mind retreated from what was 
happening. My sister, I think, had fainted before the second pirate readied his 
infernal weapon, and that was a portion of mercy for her. She, at least, no 
longer knew what was being done to her body. I knew—but chose not to see.
I fled into memory, into that sequence that was the origin of my feeling of déjà 
vu, for it related directly to the present situation. Probably I should have 
commenced my bio there, instead of with the shock of Faith's violation, for I 
see now that the true beginning of my odyssey was then. This bio is more than a 
record of experience; it is therapy. Biography, biology, biopsy—all the ways to 
study a subject. Bio—life. My life. Not only do I seek to grasp the nature of 
myself, I seek to strengthen my character by reviewing my successes and my 
mistakes with an eye to improving the ratio between them, painful as this 
process can be at times.
Therefore I will now illumine that prior sequence, demarking it with a new 
dateline, and will try to keep my narrative more coherent hereafter. I would 
perhaps dispose of my "false start," but my paper and ink are precious, as is my 
evocative effort. After all, if once I begin the process of unwriting what I 
have written, where may it end? Every word is important, for it too is part of 
my being.
 
Chapter 2 — FAITH AND SPIRIT
Maraud, Callisto, 2-1-2615—My sisters and I walked home together after school, 
because there was a certain safety in numbers. Faith, eighteen years old, 
resented this; she claimed her social life was inhibited by the presence of a 
skinny fifteen-year-old little sibling. The vernacular term she was wont to 
employ was less kind, and I think not completely fair, and does not become her, 
so I shall not render it here. Yet she smiled as she said it, deleting much of 
the sting, and I think there was some merit to her complaint. It is true that a 
fifty-kilo sibling is not much company for a fifty-kilo girl. Our weights were 
similar, in full Earth gravity, but the distribution differed substantially. 
Faith was about as pretty a girl as one might imagine, with the rich ash-blond 
tresses and gray eyes that made her face stand out among the darker shades that 
predominated in our culture, and a generously symmetrical figure and small 
extremities. I was young and not versed in social relations between the sexes, 
and I was her brother; even so, I understood the impact such physical qualities 
had on men.
Faith was not really intelligent, as I define the concept, though she did well 
enough in scholastics. It was said that a single look at her was enough to raise 
her grade before any given class commenced, and that may not have been entirely 
in jest. She lacked that ornery attitude that passes for courage in others; 
these qualities of intelligence and courage were reserved in healthy measure for 
her sister. Spirit was as bold and cunning a gamin as could be found on the 
planet. Technically Callisto is merely the fourth Galilean satellite of Jupiter, 
a moon, but its diameter is almost 5,000 kilometers, the same as Mercury and 
greater than Pluto, so only the accident of its association with the Colossus of 
the System prevents it from being accorded the dignity of planetary status, and 
so I think of it as a planet, though the texts disagree. But I was describing my 
little sister, Spirit, who even at age twelve was a person to be reckoned with. 
I fought with her often, but I liked her too and envied her survivalist nature. 
Theoretically I was the guardian of our little group, for I was the male, but my 
appreciation of the complexities of people was too great for me to perform this 
duty as well as Spirit might, had she been me. Once she set her course, she 
pursued it with an almost appalling efficiency and dispatch.
On this day, precisely one month following my fifteenth birthday, we experienced 
what is termed an "incident." How I wish I could have foreseen the consequences 
of this seemingly minor event! We have on Callisto a society of classes arising 
somewhat haphazardly from the turbulent history of our satellite. The government 
has changed often, but the mass of the populace has sunk slowly into the 
stability of poverty and dependence. Interactions between the classes are 
fraught with complications.
My father had mortgaged his small property and gone into debt to insure a decent 
education for all his children. Thus the three of us, unlike the vast majority 
of those of our station, were literate and well informed. Faith and I could 
speak and read English as well as Spanish, and Spirit was learning. We had 
applied ourselves most diligently throughout, aware of the sacrifice that had 
been made for us; but for me the pursuit of knowledge of every kind had become 
an obsession that no longer required any other stimulus.
We hoped this good education would facilitate Faith's marriage into a more 
affluent class and my own chance to enter some more profitable trade than that 
of coffee technician. Then we could begin to abate the debts of our education, 
bettering the situation of our parents who had toiled so hard for our benefit. 
We could also achieve higher status and greater economic leverage to benefit our 
own children, when they came. It was a worthwhile ambition.
But such aspirations were fraught with mischief, as this episode was to 
demonstrate.
As we three walked a side street of the city of Maraud—named after the days when 
the Marauders of Space had made Callisto a base of operations, a quaint bit of 
historical lore that was not so quaint in its remaining influence—a mini-saucer 
floated up. It bore the scion of some wealthy family. He was handsome and wore 
jewelry on his quality coat, steel caps on his leather shoes, and the sneer of 
arrogance on his face that only one born to the manner could affect. I disliked 
him the moment I saw him, for he had all the ostentatious luxury of situation 
that I craved, yet he had been given it on the proverbial platter, while my 
family had to struggle constantly with no certainty of achieving it. He was 
about twenty years old, for he looked no older and could not have been younger; 
that was the minimum age at which a person could obtain the license to float a 
saucer.
"You're Hubris," he said to Faith, hovering obnoxiously near, so that the 
downdraft from the saucer's small propeller stirred the hem of her light dress 
and caused more of her legs to show. Here within the dome, the climate varied 
only marginally and was always controlled, so that heavy clothing was 
unnecessary. This was fortunate, for we could not afford anything more than we 
had. Still, the untoward breeze embarrassed Faith, who was of a genuinely demure 
nature in the presence of grown men.
"I've seen you in school," the scion continued, his eyes traveling rather too 
intimately along her torso. He must have meant that he had watched her at her 
school, for he would not have attended school at all; he would have had hired 
tutors throughout, and computerized educational programs and hypno-teaching for 
the dull material. "You look pretty good, for a peasant. How would you like a 
good kiss?" Only "kiss" was not precisely the term he employed. Our language of 
Spanish has nuances of obscenity that foreigners tend to overlook, and 
translation would be awkward. Something as simple as a roll of bread can become, 
with the improper inflection, a gutter imprecation. He surely had not learned 
such terms from his expensive tutors!
Faith blushed from her collar to her ears. She tried to walk away from the 
insulting man, but he coasted close and took hold of her arm. I saw the several 
rings on the fingers of his hand, set with diamonds and rubies, displaying his 
inordinate wealth. The hand was quite clean and uncallused; he had never 
performed physical labor. "Come on—you low-class girls do it all the time, don't 
you? I'll give you two dollars if you're good." The Jovian dollar—that was our 
currency too—had been revalued many times, and currently was worth about what it 
had been seven hundred years ago, back on Planet Earth. That was one of the 
things I had learned in the school it had cost my father so many of those same 
dollars to send us to. I also understood the ancient vernacular significance of 
the two-dollar figure. It was an allusion to the fee of prostitutes.
My anger was building up like pressure in the boiler of a steam machine, but I 
contained it. Slumming scions could have foul mouths and manners, but it was 
best to tolerate these and stay out of trouble. All men are not equal, in the 
domes of Callisto.
Faith tried to wrest her arm free, but the man hauled her roughly in to him. She 
screamed helplessly. I suppose it would have been better if she had kicked or 
scratched him, but she had practiced being the helpless type so long it was now 
second nature.
Then Spirit did what I had lacked the nerve to do: She put her foot against the 
rim of the saucer and tilted it up. Its gravity lens made it and the man aboard 
it very light, so it responded readily to her pressure. The shield was partial, 
so that the saucer would not float away when not in use. About 95 percent of the 
weight of vehicle and user was eliminated, enabling the propeller in the base to 
lift and move the mass readily. The null-gee effect was narrow and limited, so 
that the air above was not unduly disturbed. The first saucers, when gravity 
shielding was new, had borne their users along in perpetual clouds of 
turbulence, and minor tornadoes had been known to form above them, contributing 
to the awkwardness. But the refinement of the shield to make a curving and 
self-limiting null-gee zone had solved that problem, and the saucers were now 
quite common. (I use "shield" and "lens" interchangeably here; I should not, but 
the technical distinctions are beyond my expertise, so I go with the ignorant 
majority in this case. As I understand it, there is no shield, but the lens 
performs the office admirably.) The saucers use very little power, and, though 
they aren't generally fast, they are fun. Larger saucers can do considerably 
more, of course.
But I digress, as is my fault. The point is, it does require fair balance and 
skill to ride such a saucer, for the passenger's weight reduction is 
proportional to the amount of the body within the region of shielding and the 
angle of the shielding disk. It is a common misconception that a grav-shield 
angled sidewise abates gravity sidewise; of course that could never be true. 
Such an angle merely reduces the size of the null-gee region. Thus a person 
floating too high can always bring himself down by tilting the shield. Properly 
managed, the saucers provide precisely controlled individual flotation, with the 
rider drawing his body into the shielded region to increase lift, and extending 
it beyond that region to increase weight and make a gentle descent.
So when Spirit tilted the saucer, two things happened. Its cross section 
intercepting the planetary gravity diminished slightly—and the man aboard it 
found himself angled to a greater extent outside that field. Naturally the 
saucer sank under his increasing weight. It also threw him off balance, so that 
yet more of his body projected from the shielded zone.
Balancing on a gravity lens has been described as similar to balancing on a 
surfboard or skateboard—which provides modern folk a hint of the fun the 
ancients had—and a slight miscue could quickly become calamitous.
It was so in this case. Only the man's grip on Faith's arm steadied him, 
enabling him to jump off the saucer instead of being dumped on his face. Shaken 
and furious, he whirled about—just in time to spy the burgeoning smirk on my 
face.
I had not done the deed, but I was certainly guilty of appreciating it. "I'll 
teach you!" he cried angrily in that idiomatic expression that means the 
opposite. He released Faith and concentrated on me. Behind him the vacant saucer 
righted itself and hovered in place, as it was programmed to do. It had not 
failed him; he had failed it, with a little help from Spirit.
The scion was substantially older and larger than I, for five years can be a 
tremendous distinction in this period of life, and I was afraid of him. I did 
not want to fight him. I have never regarded myself as a creature of violence in 
the most propitious circumstances, and this one was least propitious. At the 
same time, I was aware that this development had distracted his malign attention 
from Faith, and that it would return to her the moment he settled with me. 
Therefore I could not seek to elude him. Not until my sister was safe. That was 
the onus attached to my privilege of being male.
"Get on home, girls," I snapped peremptorily.
Spirit started to go, knowing it was best, though she didn't like leaving me. By 
herself she would have stayed, but she was aware that the real threat was to 
Faith, who had to be moved out of danger.
But Faith, less perceptive of the realities of the situation, had the endearing 
loyalty of the Hubris family. She did not go. "You can't fight him, Hope," she 
protested, her voice quavering with reaction and fear.
"I won't fight the twerp," the scion snarled. Again I take a liberty with the 
translation, ameliorating the essential term. "I'll only jam his head into a 
wall to teach him his place. Then I'll deal with you." And he made a small 
gesture of universal and impolite significance.
Emboldened by my awareness of the peril of our situation, I never paused to see 
the horrified blush I knew was crossing Faith's face. I punched the scion in the 
stomach.
It was a foolish gesture. He was not only larger than I, he was in better 
physical condition. He looked clean and soft, but he had access to expensive 
complete-nutrition foods tailored to his specific chemistry, while my stature 
had been somewhat retarded by sometimes inadequate diet. He could go regularly 
to a private gymnasium for expertly supervised exercise crafted to be 
entertaining and efficient, while I got mine playing handball in the back 
alleys. Even if I had been his age and size, I could not have matched his 
training and endurance. This was a gross mismatch.
The scion smiled grimly, well aware of these aspects. He might not have 
completely enjoyed the various facets of his training, since he might have 
preferred at any given time to be out slumming in the city, as he was now, but 
he had nevertheless profited from them. He assumed a competent fighting stance, 
body balanced, fists elevated. I had hit him; I had not hurt him, but I was 
committed by the convention of our culture that transcended the difference in 
our stations. A person who hits another had better be ready to fight.
The scion stepped forward, leading with his left fist, his right cocked for the 
punishing follow-up. In that moment I saw Faith standing frozen to my right and 
Spirit to my left. My older sister was terrified, but my younger one, who now 
had a pretext to stay, was intrigued.
I ducked and dodged, of course. Fights are an integral part of youth, and though 
I never sought them—perhaps I should say because I never sought them—I had had 
my share. I am a quick study on most things, and pain is a most effective tutor. 
I had been hurt so many times that my response had become virtually instinctive. 
It was not that I had any special competence in fisticuffs or any delusion about 
winning, but I could at least put up a respectable defense, considering the 
disparity in our forces. Like the scion, I had been an unwilling student, but I 
had mastered the essentials.
The scion turned with a sneer, unsurprised at his miss. Only a complete fool 
stands still to take a direct hit. He retained his poise. He had only been 
testing, anyway. He stepped forward again, jabbing with his left, still saving 
his right for the opportunity to score. He was too smart to swing wildly; he 
knew he would catch me in due course unless I fled, in which case he would have 
undistracted access to Faith. This was, in its fashion, merely a preliminary to 
that access. He was, perversely, showing off for her, impressing her by beating 
up her little brother. He had no need of her pleasure or her acquiescence, just 
her respect, to feed his id. He was the dragonslayer who would get the fair 
maid—in his own perception.
Young as I was and inexperienced as I was, I still understood that the sexual 
drive is superficial compared to the human need for recognition and favor. This 
man could have bought willing sex elsewhere, or possibly even had it from Faith 
had he chosen to dazzle her with some costly gift or tour of the realm of the 
rich. But that would have lacked the cutting edge of this little drama. The 
thing a person works for has more value than the thing too easily obtained. 
Also, it seemed to be a requirement of his need that the girl he got be 
inferior, someone to be coerced in an alley rather than wooed like a lady. A 
certain kind of upbringing fosters that attitude. To that type of perception, 
sex could not be enjoyable unless it was dirty.
Meanwhile I dodged again, not allowing my thoughts to interfere with the 
immediate business of self-preservation. The scion shifted to face me again, 
satisfied to bide his time while Faith watched. Now I was fielding information 
about him: the way he moved, the standard procedure he employed, the glances he 
made at Faith to be sure he was sufficiently impressing her. He was larger and 
stronger and healthier than I, but not actually faster, and certainly not more 
versatile. He was using no imagination in his attack, relying solely on basic 
moves. He was in fact limited by his arrogant attitude and his certainty of 
success.
He came at me a third time, and I ducked a third time—but this time I did not 
dodge aside. I launched myself at his knees, tackling him, my shoulder striking 
his thigh in front and shoving him back. The force of my strike and the surprise 
of my attack gave me an advantage I lacked in conventional combat. But this was 
not convention; this was the street. The rules were not exactly what the scion 
might have been taught, here.
The scion stepped back, surprised, but did not fall. He had maintained good 
balance, as he had been trained to do, and it is in fact very hard to dump a 
balanced opponent. But he had lost his poise. As I had anticipated, he was 
unprepared to deal with atypical strategy. The odds remained uneven, but not as 
much so as before.
I scrambled away before he could adjust and club me. I had hoped to dump him on 
his back, but simply lacked the force. Still, my confidence grew, and I began to 
hope I could after all take him. I have always been an excellent judge of 
people, whether that judgment is positive or negative; it is my special talent. 
This was now my key to victory. An opponent understood is an opponent 
potentially nullified. Had this one simply gone after me with full force at the 
outset, he should have pulverized me; because he preferred to posture, he had 
given me opportunity to utilize my own strength.
The scion came at me another time, shaken and angry. He had intended on object 
lesson; now he was serious. I had heightened the stakes.
He feinted with his left hand as usual, expecting me to duck again. Instead I 
pulled back. His knee came up in a manner that would have cracked my chin, had I 
performed as before. As it was, it missed—and I stepped in to grab his leg.
I had learned this early: A person on one foot is largely helpless. This is a 
liability of such martial arts as karate or kick-boxing; blows with the feet are 
powerful, but if the other party gets hold of a foot, that's trouble. I hung on, 
preventing him from recovering his balance while staying out of the reach of his 
fists. He hopped about on his other foot, absolutely furious at his loss of 
dignity, especially with Faith watching, but unable to do much about it. His 
training evidently had not covered the handling of such an exigency. Spirit 
tittered, which didn't help.
I had him, but I didn't know what to do with him. I couldn't really hurt him in 
this position, and the moment I let go I would be in trouble. It was like riding 
the tiger: how does one safely get off?
Of course he could have broken my hold quickly by lying down and grappling for 
my own feet. But I knew he wouldn't do that; it was counter to his self-image. 
That was my advantage of understanding again.
But I had grown too confident myself and made an error. I had not judged what he 
would do if trapped in a position of indignity.
The scion reached into his shirt and brought out a miniature laser weapon. It 
flashed, and the beam seared into my left side, causing my shirt to smoke and 
burning a line across my flesh. I yelped and let go, for I had to get clear of 
that beam before it penetrated to an inner organ and cooked it. A laser can do a 
lot more damage than shows, because of the invisible heat-ray component. It 
doesn't have to vaporize the flesh to make it useless.
The man made an exclamation of victory and stalked me, aiming his laser. It 
scorched my buttock, making me leap out of the way. He laughed. I could not 
dodge that beam of light!
If I fled him, not only would I lose the fight, but Faith would be subject to 
his will. If only she had fled when I gave her the chance! If I did not depart, 
he would soon score on my face, perhaps destroying my vision. I was in real 
trouble!
Then the scion cried out and dropped the laser. I took immediate advantage of 
his distraction and charged in to the attack. Those burns had eradicated any 
faint reticence I might have had. I stiffened my fists and clubbed him on ear 
and neck as hard as I could.
He fell back, seeming hardly to notice my blows though I knew they stung. He 
bent to pick up his weapon with his left hand, and I kneed him in the nose, 
exactly the way he had intended to knee me before. In a moment blood was flowing 
across his face. The laser skittered away from his misdirected hand.
He turned, one hand to his face, cupping the blood, and jumped for his saucer. 
It lurched upward; it seemed he still had sufficient command of his body to 
control it. In a moment he was gone.
Now I looked at Spirit, realizing what she had done. "You used your 
finger-whip!" I cried as though accusing her.
She smiled smugly, whirling her finger to re-coil her weapon. The finger-whip 
was a spool of translucently thin line that hooked to her middle finger. When 
she flicked her digit just so—she had practiced this diligently in private—the 
weighted tip carried the line out rapidly to its full length of a meter. That, 
plus the reach of her arm, gave her a fair striking distance. Invisible the whip 
might be, but she could snap coins out of the air with it. That line could 
really sting, and sometimes cut into the skin. Spirit had savaged the scion's 
weapon hand, disarming him.
It had not been a fair tactic—but of course the laser itself had not been fair. 
She had rescued me from a nasty situation. This was not the first time, though 
it was the most significant.
I decided to drop the matter. Children were not supposed to have weapons, but 
Spirit had won the whip on a bet a year before and had made a point of mastering 
it. She had become the junior champion of the schoolyard, partly because of her 
finesse with her finger and partly because of her indomitable fighting spirit. 
Oh, yes, she lived up to her name! Once she had been tagged four times by an 
agile whip opponent, suffering scours on a leg, both arms, and one ear, but only 
came on more intensely, until her opponent, a boy of her own age, had lost his 
nerve and yielded the issue without being struck himself. He had realized that 
if he continued, Spirit would score, and her flicks had already come so near his 
eyes that it was obvious that discretion was the better part of valor. Pain 
could make her scream; it could not make her yield. Nerve, not skill, had won 
her that battle—but since then her skill had increased. Of course a finger-whip 
is a little thing, not capable of dealing death—but I knew from that time on 
that I never wanted to have my little sister truly angry with me. I had never 
betrayed her secret and neither had Faith, and we were not about to now.
"We had better not tell our folks about this incident," I said, picking up the 
scion's laser and pocketing it after noting that its charge gauge read about 
half. Several good burns remained in it. Now I had a secret weapon too, and the 
others would keep my secret.
Silently, Spirit nodded acquiescence. I put my arm around her small shoulders 
and hugged her, my thanks for her help. She melted against me, letting down now 
that it was over. However tough she was in combat, she did need emotional 
support, and this I could offer. We understood each other.
Faith came out of her stasis. "You shouldn't have done that, Hope," she reproved 
me shakily.
I exchanged another glance with Spirit. We both knew Faith's naïveté was a 
necessary aspect of her self-image. "I guess I got carried away."
"Did you see his nose splat!" Spirit said enthusiastically.
"I didn't really mean to do that," I admitted. "I was aiming for his chin, but 
he went down too fast."
"All that blood!" Faith said, horrified. She seemed oblivious of what could have 
happened to her had we not driven the scion off, and this was just as well.
Faith had some clothing-patching material that she kept for possible emergencies 
in connection with her dress. She used this to repair and conceal the damage the 
laser had done to my clothes. The burns on my flesh would simply have to heal.
We hurried on home, and by the time we got there Faith, too, had agreed that it 
was best that we not mention this incident to our parents.
 
Chapter 3 — HARD CHOICE
Maraud, 2-2-'15—They came resplendent in the military uniform of the Maraud 
police, delivering the foreclosure on our property. I mentioned the debt and 
mortgage our father took on to insure an education for his children. He was in 
arrears on the payments, of course, because all peasants were. That was the way 
of life on Callisto.
My father, Major Hubris, was an intelligent man with minimal formal education. 
He knew very well that the big landowners were systematically cheating the 
peasants, but didn't know how to stop it. I had progressed far enough in my 
education to have a fair notion of the situation, and was confident that by the 
time I reached maturity I would be able to set about reversing the downward 
trend for our family. But until that time, the Hubrises were vulnerable—and that 
vulnerability had abruptly been exploited.
Foreclosure—that finished us before we could begin to fight back.
We had three days to vacate, unless we could pay off the mortgage in its 
entirety before that deadline. Of course we could not. People do not get into 
debt if they have the wherewithal to escape it. That clause of the contract is 
an almost open mockery of the hopes of the peasants. If there had been any 
reasonable hope of paying on demand, you can be sure the landowners would have 
passed a law to eliminate that hope.
My father put in a call to our creditor, who had been reasonably tolerant 
before. This was Colonel Guillaume, of an ancient military family, now retired 
to his wealth and not really a bad person as creditors went. That is, he cheated 
the peasants less than some creditors did, treated them with reasonable 
courtesy, and did seem to have some concern for their welfare. The colonel did 
not speak to my father personally, of course; the secretary of one of his 
administrative functionaries handled that matter. That was all we had any right 
to expect.
"Why?" my father asked, and I perceived the baffled hurt in his voice. "Why 
foreclose with no warning? Have we not behaved well? Did I make some error in 
the tally? If I have given any offense, I shall proffer my most abject apology."
I did not like hearing my father speak this way. To me he had always been 
strong, the master of the household, a column of strength. Now his darkly 
handsome face showed lines and sags of confusion and defeat, as though the 
column were cracking and crumbling under a sudden, intolerable and inexplicable 
burden. His newly apparent weakness frightened and embarrassed me and made my 
knees feel spongy and my stomach knot. I saw little beads of sweat on his 
forehead and shades of gray in his short, curly hair. But his hands bothered me 
more, for now the strong fingers clenched and unclenched spasmodically behind 
his back, out of the view of the secretary in the phone-screen but in full view 
of my eyes, and the tendons flexed along the back of his hand as if suffering 
some special torture of their own. But most of all it was his voice that 
bothered me: that cowed, self-effacing, almost whining tone, as if he were a cur 
submitting to legitimate but painful discipline, sorry not so much for the 
strike of the rod on his flesh as for the infraction that caused this punishment 
to be necessary. I had never before seen him this way and wished I were not 
seeing it now. A bastion of my self-esteem, rooted ineluctably in my perceived 
strength of my father, was tumbling. This is an insidiously unpleasant thing for 
a child. It is as if he stands upon bedrock and then experiences the first 
tremor of the earthquake that will destroy his house.
The secretary was female, of low degree, not unsympathetic, but compelled by her 
own employment to deliver the cruel response. "The Hubris account is three 
months in arrears on payments—"
"Of course," my father cut in, showing at least this token of mettle. "We are 
all behind on payments. But I am due for a promotion to tallyman for my 
quadrant, and that will enable me to recover a month this year, perhaps two 
months if there is no sickness in the family—" He paused, disliking the sound of 
his own voice pleading. "The honored colonel must have some more specific 
reason—"
The girl looked at him sadly. "There is another message, but I don't think I 
should read it."
My father smiled grimly. "Read it, girl; you know I cannot." Actually, he was 
partly literate, having taught himself a little by looking at Faith's homework 
assignments, but he preferred not to have this generally known. Ninety percent 
of the peasant population was illiterate and most of the rest were not clever 
readers, and it seemed the big landowners and politicians preferred it that way. 
Literacy could lead to peasant unrest. In this, I was sure, the authorities of 
Callisto were quite correct. Illiteracy meant ignorance, and ignorance was more 
readily malleable.
How was it, then, that Faith and Spirit and I had been permitted to enroll in 
one of the few good schools, expensive as it was? There had to have been a 
bribe, making it more expensive yet. I had never inquired about that and never 
would; if we children had our secrets to preserve, so also did our parents have 
theirs. I knew that if my father had done it, there had been no other way.
The girl frowned. "If you insist, señor." She was being overly polite, for 
peasants were normally not dignified by the title "señor," or, as it is in 
English, "mister." Peasants were supposed merely to be things rather than 
people. "It seems to be a notification of a charge of truancy and abuse against 
your children," she said, looking at the document.
"My children!" he exclaimed, baffled. "Surely, señora, there is some mistake!"
"B. Sierra, scion of a leading family, has lodged a charge of unwarranted 
aggression against the children of Hubris," she said apologetically.
Suddenly it made awful sense. I looked at Spirit, who nodded. We were to blame! 
We should have told our father, instead of concealing the episode. I had never 
thought the boorish scion would report us. It should embarrass him too much to 
have it known that a fifteen-year-old peasant boy and twelve-year-old peasant 
girl had balked his attempted rape of their older sister.
"I cannot believe this," my father said. "My children are well behaved. I have 
sent them to school beyond the mandatory age—"
"The charge is that they made an unprovoked attack on him as he passed on his 
grav-disk. He took a fall, smashing his nose, but managed to recover his disk 
and get away. Because they are only children, he is not demanding criminal 
action, but they must vacate the city." I wondered, as I heard that, whether 
that could be all there was to it. If the scion had been angry enough to make a 
formal complaint, he must seek more revenge than our departure.
My father turned to look at me. He saw the guilt on my face. "Thank you, 
señora," he said to the screen. "I did not properly understand my situation."
"The colonel says he is sure it is a misunderstanding," the girl said quickly. 
"But it is better for you to leave. It is awkward to offend such a family as 
this. The colonel will make a domicile available for your family at the 
plantation—"
"The colonel is most kind. We shall consider." The call closed and the screen 
faded.
Spirit and I both started to speak as we returned to our house from the 
pay-phone station, while Faith blushed. My father silenced us all with a raised 
palm. "Let me see if I have this correctly," he said, with a calm that surprised 
me. Now that he had a better notion of the problem, it seemed, he had more 
confidence about dealing with it. "The young stud floated up and accosted Faith, 
and you two fought him off."
Silently, I nodded.
"The scion burned Hope with his laser," Spirit said. "We had to do something."
My father looked at me again, and I pulled out my shirt and showed the burn 
streak on my left side, now bright red and painful. It was a certain relief to 
have this known, for I had had to keep myself from flinching when I moved my 
arm.
He sighed. "I suppose it was bound to happen. Faith is too pretty."
Faith blushed more deeply, chagrined for her liability of beauty. She was the 
lightest-skinned among us, strongly showing that portion of our ancestry that 
was Caucasian, and which accounted in part for her pulchritude. I never 
understood why beauty should not be considered equal according to every race of 
man, and every admixture of races, but somehow fairness was the ideal. Spirit's 
developing features of face and body were almost as good as Faith's, but her 
darker skin and hair would prevent her from ever being called beautiful.
I was perversely glad to see the tension relieved. "You're not angry?"
"Certainly I'm angry!" my father exploded. "I am infuriated with the whole 
corrupt system! But we are victims, not perpetrators. I only wish you had found 
some more anonymous way to defend your sister. We are about to pay a hideous 
price for this mishap."
I felt the rebuke keenly. How could I have saved Faith without antagonizing the 
scion? I didn't know, and now it was too late to correct the matter, but I knew 
I would be pondering it until I came up with a satisfactory, or at least viable, 
answer. Actually, "hideous price" turned out to be an understatement, but none 
of us had any hint of that then.
"Now I must explain our situation," my father said. My mother had quietly joined 
us as we returned to our house, our forfeited house, and now she sat beside 
Faith and took her hand comfortingly.
My mother's given name was Charity, and it was an apt designation, though it did 
not match the normal run of names any more than the rest of ours did. We were a 
family somewhat set apart, being, I think, more intelligent and motivated than 
most, and it showed in our names. Our surname, Hubris, meant, literally, the 
arrogance of pride; it was a point of considerable curiosity to me how we had 
come by it, but I also had a certain arrogant pride in it, for it did lend us 
distinction.
My mother, Charity, was not, and had never been, as pretty as Faith was now, but 
she was a fine and generous and supportive mother who, though I should blush to 
say it, still possessed more than a modicum of sex appeal. She was not a 
creature any man would be ashamed to have at his elbow. We three children were 
as different from our parents and each other as it was feasible to be; yet 
Charity's charity encompassed all our needs. She had a very special quality of 
understanding, an aspect of which I believe I inherited; but her use of it was 
always positive, in contrast to mine. Seeing her now, her dark hair tied back 
under a conservative kerchief, her delicate hands folded sedately in her 
lap—Faith inherited those hands!—her rather plain features composed—yet should 
she ever take the trouble to enhance herself the way Faith did, that plainness 
would vanish—I felt an overflowing of love that lacked, at the moment, any 
proper avenue of expression. She was my mother, a great and good woman though a 
peasant, and I sorely regretted bringing this affliction to her. Had I only 
known—yet of course I should have known! How could I have thought we could 
humiliate a scion with impunity, here in a dome on class-ridden, stratified 
Callisto?
"Colonel Guillaume has offered us a place in the plantation dome," my father 
said. "We must consider this offer on its merits, which are mixed. We must move 
from the dome of Maraud; the charge against our family can only be abated that 
way." He held his hand aloft again, forestalling Spirit's impetuous 
interjection. "Yes, dear, I'm sure the incident was not as the scion states it, 
and theoretically in a court of law both sides should be heard. But our republic 
of Halfcal—" Callisto, I must clarify, is actually two nations, of which ours is 
the lesser. Thus the other is called the Dominant Republic of Callisto. But I 
interrupt my father's speech: "—is weighted toward the wealthy, and it would be 
your word against his. There would be no justice there! We have been given the 
chance to avoid such a legal confrontation, and indeed we must avoid it, for it 
would surely lead to penalties we can't pay, and therefore prison." Spirit 
subsided; she grasped the distinction between the ideal and the practical when 
it was explained to her. No peasant ever prevailed in an encounter with the 
elite class. The whole system was engineered to prevent that.
"The advantage of the plantation," my father continued, making a fair 
presentation, for he always tried to be fair and usually succeeded, "is that 
that is my place of employment. I would no longer have to make the daily trips 
between domes, and that would save time and money. I could be with my family 
more, and perhaps begin to gain on our mortgage arrears." He smiled tiredly. "I 
should clarify that even though we are being foreclosed and evicted, our debt 
remains as a lien against our family line, and must eventually be cleared if we 
are ever to achieve higher status. There will be a rental on the plantation 
domicile; the good colonel did not get rich by being foolish about such details. 
But it will be a convenient and pleasant accommodation." He paused, and we knew 
there would be another side to this. There was always another side to anything 
in Callisto that seemed too positive for a peasant family.
"The disadvantage is that the coffee plantation is maintained at half Earth 
gravity. I am not sure you children quite appreciate what that means. Half 
gravity may be fun for occasional play, and it is possible to spend several 
hours in it each day without harm, but permanent residence within it is 
deleterious to human health. The living bones decalcify and weaken, until it is 
no longer possible for a person to survive in normal Earth gravity, such as is 
maintained in the dome of Maraud. The process is gradual and painless, and 
harmless as long as residence in that gravity is maintained; it is the body's 
natural accommodation to the changed environment. It would be possible to return 
to full Earth gravity within a year, physically, though with some discomfort, 
but it becomes more difficult with time, and after two years no one returns."
"But—" Spirit burst out.
My father nodded. "It is, as my daughter points out, no temporary choice we are 
making today. If we go to live in the plantation dome, we shall have an easy and 
peaceful life, for we can be sure no scions reside there, but our branch of 
Hubris will never be anything but coffee handlers. It is not a bad employment; 
there is honor in doing any job well, and half our national export is coffee—but 
we should never again have any choice. Now, it would be possible to ferry you 
children to school in Maraud for the rest of the current term, but after that 
you would have to join us full time at the plantation, for your scholastic 
district will be there. Unless we arrange to have you legally separated from the 
family—"
"No!" my mother exclaimed. That ended that; she would tolerate almost anything 
for the sake of family unity except the dissolution of it. Family is important 
to us of Callisto; we are, as I explained, a Latin breed, reputed to be 
hot-blooded, and in this respect perhaps we are. Whatever we did we would do 
together, as a family. It was our weakness and our strength.
My father glanced at Faith, giving the eldest child leave to speak. But Faith 
wrung her hands without opinion. "Whatever you decide, Father."
He glanced next at me. I was naturally bursting with questions, but had to 
settle for one: "We have to get out of Maraud. The coffee dome isn't good. Where 
else can we go?" It was really half rhetorical, for the planet outside the domes 
was airless and trace-gravity. The only place to go was another dome city, in 
the other half of the planet, the Dominant Republic, where there would be no 
charge outstanding against the Hubris family. But I knew from my school studies 
that the Dominant Republic was just as hard on peasants as Halfcal was—and we 
had no connections there. No job, no friends, no residence. If they admitted us 
at all, which was doubtful, we might just be worse off than we were here.
There was a silence, as each of us turned the grim reality over individually.
"Jupiter!" Spirit exclaimed.
My father glanced questioningly at her.
"We can emigrate to Jupiter," she explained. "We can bubble off from Callisto 
and float to the big planet where everyone is welcome and everyone is rich, and 
be happy ever after."
My father did not suppress her foolish notion directly; that was not his way. 
Instead he asked her leading questions, letting her find her own way toward the 
truth. "What bubble did you have in mind?"
"Well—" she faltered. "There are tourist and trade bubbles, aren't there? And 
big freight bubbles." She turned to Faith. "You've taken Contemporary Economics 
in school, haven't you? Don't bubbles go through the whole Jupiter System all 
the time?"
"Yes," Faith said. "But the moons of Jupiter are mostly Latin, while most of the 
commerce is done by United Jupiter, which is mostly Saxon. We don't speak the 
same language—that is, our people speak Spanish and theirs speak English—and 
they don't like our governments, what with the Saturnian bias of Ganymede and 
the dictatorships of Europa and Callisto."
"We don't like our governments!" Spirit blurted. "That is why we want to leave!"
"And we, the Hubrises, do speak their language," I put in, warming to Spirit's 
notion as I got into it. "That's the big advantage of the schooling we had. 
Faith and I can write it, too."
"But Charity and I cannot," my father pointed out. "Still, the Colossus of North 
Jupiter does claim to accept freedom-seeking refugees, and there are many Latins 
settled there. We could probably find some bubbles there that conduct much of 
their business in Spanish, or at least are bilingual. But that's academic; the 
Halfcal government would never grant us leave to emigrate."
"Why not?" Spirit demanded, "They want to get rid of us, don't they? They should 
be happy to help us on our way."
My father shook his head. "Not so, child. They have assorted international 
agreements and covenants that restrict free emigration, and in any event Halfcal 
would hardly care to advertise that its own people are eager to leave. They may 
want us gone, but they won't let us go."
"I always knew our government was crazy," Spirit said, pouting.
"There's a way," I murmured hesitantly.
All eyes centered on me. "What, flap our arms and fly there?" Spirit inquired 
skeptically.
That angered me. I made a motion of sticking someone in the posterior with a 
pin, and Spirit jumped, and that diluted my anger, for she always did play our 
little games well. "A bootleg bubble," I explained. "There's one hiding in 
Kilroy Crater, in the Valhalla complex, right now, just waiting for a full 
load."
My father whistled. "You children have sources of information the government 
lacks?"
"Well, it's just gossip," I admitted. "But I believe it."
"The government knows about it," Faith said. "They just don't care. They 
consider it pirate business."
Pirate business. That suggested volumes. Callisto had first been settled by 
Spanish-speaking colonists five centuries ago, who brought in slave labor to 
work in the first plantation domes. Then French-speaking buccaneers raided 
Halfcal and used it as a base for their operations. The name of our great city, 
Maraud, is a legacy of that period. In due course the slaves revolted. There 
were massacres, and finally, two centuries ago, the buccaneers were expelled. 
But their influence remained in this area, barely covert, and it was said that 
modern pirates of space had influence in the Halfcal government. Certainly there 
was a lot of pirate money around from the illicit drug trade, and we all knew 
the corrupting power of money. So it was not surprising that officials winked at 
innocuous or even illegal activities. I doubted that pirates were actually 
involved in refugee bubbles, for there could not be much money in that, but 
certainly individual entrepreneurs could be.
"You would go on such a bubble, rather than to the coffee dome?" my father 
asked, and I grasped now that he had not really been surprised by the 
suggestion. Adults, too, had their private sources of information.
"Oh, sure," Spirit agreed immediately. "It would be fun!"
Oh, my Lord, how little she knew!
"There could be danger and discomfort," my father warned.
"But if the family stayed together—" my mother said.
That was, I believe, the turning point. After that we found ourselves committed 
to the exodus.
We would flee Callisto!
 
Chapter 4 — FLIGHT INTO VACUUM
I have only an inkling of what my father did to organize for our horrendous trek 
across the surface of Callisto. (I have not run a dateline for this entry 
because it follows the last without change of locale. A foolish consistency, as 
Señor Emerson said many centuries ago, is the hobgoblin of little minds.) 
Probably he did not want us to know, for it could hardly have been completely 
legal. Officially, we were preparing to vacate the premises; actually, we meant 
to vacate the planet.
All of our private holdings were liquidated on the gray market and the money 
used to buy third-hand surface suits for each of us, together with compact food 
packs and water filters. There was enough left over to cover the down payment on 
a junky low-gravity transporter.
That was all. We could not keep our toys and dolls and treasured books. Surface 
suits had very little room for extra things, even if we hadn't needed the 
pittances the sale of those things brought. Spirit tried hard to conceal her 
tears, no longer quite so thrilled about the journey, and I went bleakly about 
the business of cashing in. We knew what was at stake.
I kept the laser pistol, however, squeezing it into an exterior pocket, and I 
knew Spirit kept her finger-whip.
As far as I know, no final payment was made on the mortgage. It was not that we 
sought to cheat Colonel Guillaume, who had done the best he could for us within 
the limits of his philosophy, but that the foreclosure already represented a 
fair profit for him, since we had built up a fair equity over the years which he 
would not have to transfer to the coffee-plantation residence. Perhaps he knew 
what we intended and did not report us to the authorities for that reason. As 
long as his hands were technically clean and he made a fair profit, he did not 
mind our effort to seek a better life elsewhere. Certainly he could have stopped 
us, had he wished to.
We left at night, in order to avoid any police watch. Again, it would not have 
been possible to escape the dome of Maraud if the authorities had really cared 
to prevent us. But we were only peasants; they were hardly concerned if we took 
it upon ourselves to depart the good life we supposedly had here.
I should explain that leaving a dome is no simple matter. Callisto is an airless 
world, terraformed only in particular spots. It is the same with all the moons 
of Jupiter, and indeed throughout the Solar System other than Earth. The domes 
are made of huge bubbles grown in the massive atmosphere of Jupiter, floated to 
the local surface by means of standard antigravity shields, cut in half, and 
cemented to surface plates. The fit had to be strong and tight, or the pressure 
of the air inside would blow the dome apart and right off Callisto. So entrance 
and egress were only by air locks, and these were not carelessly supervised. The 
city-dome of Maraud is 1.3 kilometers in diameter, so that each of its 100,000 
(approximately) inhabitants can have a floor space of at least ten square 
meters. Of course family units like ours increased their effective floor space 
by living in two-story homes. Anyway, there were only two locks big enough for 
vehicles, and only one of these functioned at night, so that part of our course 
was set.
Mother and the girls bundled down in the cargo cage, while I got to sit up front 
with my father. I know this is teen-age foolishness, but it made me feel 
important, and I felt as if I were a real adventurer in the control cabin of a 
sleek Jupiter Navy spaceship, copiloting through the starry galaxy. Of course 
Navy ships do not cruise the galaxy; the relativistic limitation confines 
mankind largely to his own Solar System. Still, this was the way my imagination 
went. Imagination allows more leeway than does reality, which is perhaps why we 
come equipped with it. What a horror it would be to be forever restricted to 
reality!
"Special order of garbage," my father called out to the technician in charge of 
the lock. That damped my fantasy somewhat; garbage is not exactly the stuff of 
high adventure. Still, this too was a kind of fantasy. At least I prefer that 
description to the alternative of calling my father a liar.
My father proffered a folded paper. The technician took the paper and glanced at 
it. It was a standard twenty-dollar bill, an obvious bribe. "The authorization 
seems to be in order," the man agreed, pocketing it. "Get that garbage well away 
from here." He pressed the buttons and the air-lock panel slid clear.
The "garbage" of course was my mother and two sisters, hunched in the cage with 
our limited supplies. I wondered whether they appreciated the humor.
My father drove on. It was a pedal car, of course, as few motors operated 
conveniently in a vacuum and very little power was needed on the airless, 
low-gravity surface. Inside the dome the pollution of ordinary motors was 
unacceptable and distances were short, so the pedalers made sense there too. It 
occurred to me that the dome of Maraud was very like an ancient walled city, 
small and crowded but secure from the enemies without. In this case the enemies 
were vacuum and low gravity and terrible cold. This was also one reason that 
projectile weapons were not used inside the dome; the substance of the dome 
could reflect a laser beam fairly harmlessly, but a powerful enough projectile 
just might make a hole, and such a nightmare was not to be risked.
We secured our suits, which hung on us awkwardly, made sure the three in back 
were secure, and sealed our helmets. The lock panel slid closed behind us, the 
warning klaxon sounded, and the air pressure dropped. I had been outside the 
dome before, of course, on field trips in school, so I knew what to expect. But 
this time it was excitingly real, for we planned never to return. There was no 
hospital tank along to rescue us if we suffered a suit blowout, and no home for 
us to relax in if we turned back. They might not even open the lock for us. We 
were committed with an uncompromising finality that awed me in a somewhat 
squeamish manner.
Faith sat up suddenly in the cage, pointing to her left leg. That leg was not 
very shapely in the suit, but that was not the point. A thin plume of vapor 
jetted from a pinhole there. Hastily my mother slapped a seal patch on it, 
pressing it tightly in place. These were old, battered suits, which was why we 
had been able to afford them. Some problems were to be expected—but this served 
to remind me, as if I needed reminder, that the danger was real and immediate. 
If any of us suffered a full-scale blowout, that person would be lost.
Our suits inflated and grew taut as the last of the air went, without any other 
problem. Fortunately there is not much actual force behind a pinhole leak, and 
an external patch can readily contain it. I gave a silent sigh of relief.
The outer panel on the lock slide open and we pedaled out onto the barren 
surface of Callisto. We were truly on our way!
The distaff contingent of our spaceship (as I fancied it) sat up and more or 
less joined us once we were clear of the lock. We could not readily talk with 
each other, for these primitive suits lacked radios, and of course there was no 
atmosphere to conduct our sound. But there was sound; it was conducted through 
the vehicle and our suits. We heard, as it were, through the seats of our pants. 
It wasn't very clear, since there was also the rattling of the pedal car, but it 
was better than silence.
Spirit leaned forward over the top of the cage and touched her helmet to mine. 
"Isn't this fun?" she cried, so loud that I jerked my head away. Head-to-head 
conduction was much more efficient! "Valhalla, here we come!" That last was 
through the seat, much dimmer.
Valhalla is the monstrous system of concentric rings associated with a huge old 
crater, extending out about fifteen hundred kilometers from its center—a 
significant fraction of the planet's surface. Maraud is about one hundred 
kilometers outside that formation, and the bootleg bubble was hidden in an old 
crater hangar about two hundred kilometers within it, so we had a good three 
hundred kilometers to go. We could travel up to forty or fifty kilos per hour in 
this trace gravity, however, so that was all right.
The city domes, you see, use gravity lenses to concentrate gravity inside them, 
bringing it up to Earth norm, what we simply call gee. This is actually another 
aspect of the gravity shielding used to make saucers float above ground and 
bubbles float between planets. There is no such thing as blocking out gravity, 
but it can be diluted or intensified in limited regions by the lenslike shields, 
somewhat the way light itself can be affected by a properly curved lens. That's 
a considerable oversimplification; the actual science of gravity manipulation is 
far too complex for an amateur like me to comprehend. But I am sure that gravity 
variation is the key to the human colonization of the Solar System, because it 
makes both travel and residence feasible anywhere in space. Not easy, 
understand, but feasible, because of the enormous savings in energy required for 
these activities.
My mind reviewed what I had learned in school, for it was suddenly more relevant 
to my immediate existence. The human species had originated on the Planet Earth, 
but population had expanded voluminously until there really wasn't room for 
everyone. For reasons that weren't entirely clear to me, this caused people to 
react violently, and they were afraid there would be a bad nuclear war that 
would destroy everything. But then the discovery of gravity shielding, popularly 
and not too accurately called antigravity or null-gee, had enabled the extra 
people to emigrate to the other planets and moons of the Solar System, and the 
threat of internecine war had faded for a while.
For a while—that is a significant qualification. According to my history texts, 
the crush of overpopulation on Earth and diminution of resources had been set 
back by some five or six hundred years. As it happens, those years have passed, 
and we are now back to the point, population/resource-wise, where we were just 
before the discovery of the technique of gravity manipulation. So we face the 
problem again—only this time grav-shielding isn't enough to abate it. That makes 
me nervous, when I think about it.
The early colonization of the Solar System proceeded rapidly, for the shields 
enabled man to hoist huge masses into space. The problem of air and food and 
water remained, however, so there were limits. It was like man's discovery of 
the lever: It enabled him to multiply his force, but not indefinitely. One 
enterprising company had fitted a gravity lens to an ocean liner and sailed it 
through the air. But it was clumsy outside its natural element, subject to 
errant winds, and when it sailed too high, the passengers suffered from the 
thinning of the air. Airplanes had similar problems, actually, as they flew 
beyond the normal atmosphere. Efficient as an airplane may be in air, it becomes 
clumsy in vacuum, for its wings cannot plane through nothing. So in the end the 
compact, simple, tough bubble became king of space. From the outside a bubble 
most resembled a planetoid with portholes, or a little round meteor with 
craterlets on it, but inside it was a temporary world.
Bubbles floated out to all the other planets and moons and fragments, carrying 
gravity lenses and construction equipment that could operate in a vacuum. Bases 
were established throughout the Solar System in the course of the first century 
following the null-gee discovery. New nations sprang up in the likeness of old, 
as individual Earthly governments operated competitively to establish their 
domains in space. The American continents of Earth centered on the richest 
prize, the gross planet Jupiter and its moons, while the Asians settled for the 
next-greatest prize, beautiful Saturn, with its rings and many small moons. The 
smaller or more distant planets, considered less desirable, were left to the 
lesser powers of that day: the Africans, who got the hot inner worlds of Venus 
and Mercury; the Europeans, who got Uranus; the Moslem states, who got Neptune 
and its oil-rich satellite Triton, and the remainder somewhat haphazardly 
distributed among other special interests. A number of the other powers claimed 
shares of frigid Pluto and its satellite Charon, hoping eventually to discover 
and exploit rich resources there. There was no established population on Charon 
or Pluto, however; they were just too far out, and the sunlight there was too 
dim to be usable for power.
This was part of the education I had suffered in school, which I now parrot back 
as if it represented original thinking on my part. Would it were so! I happen to 
have a flair for geography, so I did well, but most of my fellow students 
professed to find it boring. I could make fairly precise matchings of each 
planet or moon with an equivalent political entity of six hundred years before 
on Earth; no one else saw any point in such a game, and I can't honestly claim 
it is more than idle entertainment.
Oops—did I write that the Moslems of Earth took Neptune? I would have flunked 
that question on an exam! Already my school learning fades and becomes confused. 
It was Mars the Moslems took; Neptune was—let me think now—that went to the 
Australians. Yes, now I have it straight!
I experienced queasiness that interrupted my chain of thought described above. I 
tend to think too much, as I may have confessed before. "Say, fun!" Spirit 
exclaimed brightly against my helmet. "We're passing out of the lens!"
True enough. The lens concentrated gravity in Maraud to Earth normal, but 
outside the dome gravity thinned out, since this was the depressed area three or 
four times as broad as the dome. Gravity doesn't come from nothing, after all. 
Now we were coming into the true natural surface attraction of Callisto, which 
was a little more than a quarter Earth norm. From one gee to one-tenth gee to 
one-quarter gee—it was vaguely like riding ocean waves. I have not had direct 
experience with any large body of water, but can imagine it. Maybe we were 
riding gravity waves.
The outer surface of Callisto is bleak, barren, and frankly, dull. Our world is 
the most heavily cratered significant body in the Solar System, for the past 
billion years of new meteoric strikes have only replaced old craters with new 
ones, not changing the total number. One might suppose this would make for a 
singularly variegated terrain, but that is not so. Right here on the surface it 
simply wasn't that interesting. On other planets there may be deep oceans and 
high, jagged peaks; not so Callisto and our sister planet Ganymede. These are 
two iceball worlds, of low overall density because of the ice, and, though the 
surface is crusted with rock and dust, the thick mantle of ice below prevents 
any really spectacular mountains from forming.
I'm not sure I'm getting this across. You see, ice is as hard and stable as any 
other rock at the local temperature of 100 degrees Kelvin—I'm not as good at 
figures as geography, but that's an easy one to remember, one hundred degrees 
Celsius above absolute zero—but at the local noon (which of course has no 
relation to the Earth time we use inside the domes), it can be fifty degrees 
warmer, and deep down below the pressure can heat it some too, so in the course 
of millions of years that ice does soften and flow a little. This planet has 
been around for four billion years or so, so the flow obliterates the extreme 
features. Result: shallow, rounded craters standing, as it were, shoulder to 
shoulder, rim to rim, and one inside another, and overlapping: This world is 
made of craters, and none of them are any effort to navigate. There are no 
cutting edges on Callisto. You might say the features of the surface have been 
eroded by water: not water coursing over from above, as on Earth, but slowly 
squeezing out from below. That's why we were moving along so well in our wheeled 
vehicle; there was very little natural obstruction.
The sky was more interesting. This was night, on the surface as well as inside 
the dome, but Jupiter was full, and his baleful light flooded the rolling rills 
of Valhalla. Jupiter was anything but dull, with his violently contrasting bands 
of atmosphere and the various gaseous eyes staring at us. Surely Jove was 
watching our puny efforts with disdain—but he was our destination. I was, of 
course, sorry to leave my home world, for all my experience was invested here on 
Callisto and all my prior hopes for success had been defined by the Halfcal 
culture and hierarchy. But I knew that in those bands of turbulent color on the 
Jovian Planet was opportunity as vast as Jupiter himself. We would certainly be 
better off there; we would no longer be peasants, there!
I looked directly up, trying to see the other gravity lens, the one above us, 
close. Such lenses don't just fix the gravity inside the domes, they govern the 
light we receive. This can be hard for people who don't reside on moons to 
understand, so I'll try to make it simple: Light is affected by gravity, 
technically the curvature of space that we call gravity, so a lens that bends 
gravity waves also bends light waves. Properly formed, a large gravity lens can 
be used to focus the light of the distant sun on a smaller area, making it 
proportionally more intense. There's a lot of energy in light, as a magnifying 
glass can demonstrate when used to set fire to things. Since the sun's light is 
much less intense out here at Jupiter's orbit than it is at Earth's orbit, we 
need to focus it to match what our bodies and our plants are used to. We are all 
transplants from Earth, really, though we may have been born or seeded here; a 
few centuries can't erase a few billion years of evolution.
So above each dome-city is a huge gravity lens that is twenty-seven times the 
area of the dome, and the lens focuses the wan sunlight to that amount, and it 
shines in through the dome's transparent roof to light and warm the city, 
exactly as would be the case on Earth. Well, not exactly; Earth's copious 
atmosphere filters out many deleterious aspects of the radiation, so our 
twenty-seven-times-concentrated sunlight would burn us if we took it straight. 
But the material of the dome is designed to filter out the harmful radiation, 
substituting for the missing depth of atmosphere, and so the net effect is 
similar.
The same is true for the agricultural domes; they are literally greenhouses. 
This is convenient to do on an airless planet, since nobody lives outside to 
complain about being deprived of sunlight. Naturally the focused brilliance at 
the dome is at the expense of the twenty-seven-times-as-large area around it, 
which receives very little light. We had not noticed any difference because we 
pedaled through this zone at night. But it would have been night by day also, 
near the dome, if you see what I mean.
It's really more complicated than that, because Callisto's day is the same as 
its period of revolution around Jupiter: sixteen and two-thirds Earth days. One 
face—Halfcal's—always faces Jupiter; the other always faces space. So we have 
eight and a third days of continuous light, and then a night just as long. We 
humans don't like that; it doesn't match our biological rhythm. So we exchange 
light with a sister city around the globe: San Pedro, in the Dominant Republic. 
San Pedro is always in darkness when Maraud has light, and vice versa, so 
there's always sunlight one place or the other. We never have clouds or bad 
weather, of course, the way Earth does; in fact, we have no weather at all. When 
Maraud is in sun, we use it for twelve hours, then refract it around the planet, 
in the form of a concentrated light beam, using a chain of vertical gravity 
lenses, to San Pedro.
In this manner we have our night in the middle of the Callistian day, while they 
have their day in the middle of their night. When they are light, they send us 
twelve-hour segments of daylight. This is the most fundamental and absolute 
system of cooperation between the two nations of our planet, and is inviolate. 
If Halfcal and the Dominant Republic went to war with each other—and sometimes, 
historically, it has come to that, for we are a bickering culture—neither would 
abrogate the light exchange. Without it, life as we know it would be virtually 
impossible on Callisto. We depend on the sun for almost all our energy, for we 
have no great deposits of oil or uranium and lack the technical and industrial 
base to establish a hydrogen-fusion power plant.
But my glancing was wasted, for the huge elevated gravity lens was not visible. 
Not only did it operate only in daylight, it was not physical at all. It was 
generated in space, forming between key points. There was nothing to see. Still, 
my eye sought it out, much as it sought the gaze of a person in a picture 
looking in another direction. This foolishness is inherent in my nature; I seek 
constantly to relate to people and things directly, even when I suspect it is 
unwise or impossible.
My attention wandered to the other large moons of Jupiter, all closer in than 
ours. Ganymede, off to the side of the Colossus, its brightness at three-quarter 
face; it was almost halfway in toward Jupiter, from our vantage. That is, its 
orbit is just over one million kilometers out, while Callisto's is just under 
two million. We would pass that inner orbit on our way to Jupiter, but would not 
pass close to Ganymede itself, because it revolved about the planet more than 
twice as fast as we did and would rush to the far side when our bubble passed, 
as if avoiding us. Just as well; the recent political revolution there seemed to 
have made things even worse for peasants than before. As the ancient poet 
Coleridge put it: "They burst their manacles and wear the name / Of Freedom, 
graven on a heavier chain!" But of course Europa was little better, while the 
innermost big moon, Io, zooming all the way around Jupiter in less than two 
Earth days, was hardly habitable, even with terraform domes. No, no hope for us 
on the other moons.
Down near the horizon behind us I spied a speck of light I didn't recognize. It 
wasn't a star, for it was moving, shifting somewhat erratically above the 
landscape, as if guided by some human hand.
"Saucer!" I exclaimed. "What's it doing out here at night?" For there was very 
little interdome travel by night, as Callisto is essentially a hinterworld with 
no major industry, other than agriculture. Unlike the hyperactive denizens of 
major worlds, we preferred to sleep at night.
"The Maraud authorities wouldn't chase us, would they?" Spirit asked. My parents 
were consulting with each other, helmet to helmet, but I couldn't hear their 
dialogue, to my annoyance.
"Shouldn't," I agreed tersely. "We're not breaking any law. We're just leaving 
the city, as ordered."
"And the planet," she added. "If they found out about that—and they might 
suspect, the way we snuck out."
"Maybe," I agreed uneasily. I would have disparaged the notion out of hand—since 
I knew the Maraud authorities did not care about us—except for the fact of the 
saucer. There had to be some reason for it to be out here, and we could not 
safely assume that reason had nothing to do with us.
The light zoomed toward us. In moments we recognized a private pick-up craft, 
used by explorers to collect samples of minerals from the planet's surface. 
Callisto was extremely shy of heavy minerals, which made them all the more 
valuable. Prospectors were constantly ranging out with metal detectors to search 
for what few nuggets there were. A lode of iron ore could make a man's fortune. 
Even mineral dust was far more valuable on Callisto than it was elsewhere, 
except on Ganymede. Most of our metals had to be imported from the inner planets 
of the Solar System, and even with the gravity shields, that was expensive.
This craft was typical. It had a nether power scoop and a fair-sized storage 
compartment and a sealed cockpit with windows looking forward, upward, and down. 
That meant the occupant did not have to suffer the inconvenience of wearing a 
space suit, the way we peasants did. Cheaper saucers were not sealed; they might 
be hardly more than flying platforms, and a miscue could dump the operator off. 
Not so this one. I envied whoever could afford this sort of vehicle: sealed 
afloat instead of suited and landbound like us.
The saucer came right up to us, evidently using a metal detector to spy us out. 
The metal was the main value in a pedal car; it could be melted down and lose 
only a fraction of its price, and it would be very easy to spy from the dome. 
However, there was not a great deal of metal here, for most of the transporter's 
mass was plastic; for a saucer to come out in the hope of salvaging a vehicle 
like this—no, that didn't make much sense.
It all came back to the original question: why would anyone be looking for us? 
Legal or illegal—I think our status was now hazy—we remained only refugees, 
nothing people, completely unimportant to anyone except ourselves.
The saucer paused to hover directly over us, putting us in shadow. That hardly 
mattered; we weren't trying to draw on Jupiter's pale radiance for power. Then a 
bright beam of light speared down at us from a unit by the cockpit, blinding to 
our Jovelight-acclimatized eyes. It found us and blinked off and on again, 
rapidly, several times.
The saucer was signaling us. It was, of course, impossible to communicate by 
sound through the vacuum when there was no direct physical contact. Saucers used 
radios to talk to each other and the city domes, but of course we didn't have a 
radio. We didn't have a flashlight either, and in any event didn't know the 
blinking communication code. We didn't have anything that wasn't essential to 
our progress across the surface or our journey through space, because everything 
cost precious money. We were unable to make any meaningful response. So my 
father just waved and pedaled on.
The nether hatch in the saucer opened. The scoop pincers descended slightly, 
holding something. They were going to drop us a message!
The pincers descended, in order to get below the grav-lens. It was possible for 
objects to pass right through it without interfering with its function; gravity 
does not obey ordinary rules. Once below, the pincers cranked open to release 
the message capsule. It was a bright-orange cylinder that seemed almost to glow, 
even in the shadow.
Suddenly our transporter swerved violently to the left. I was jammed into the 
right wall of the vehicle. We must have hit a craterlet. Craters aren't all 
landscape-sized; they graduate on down to pinhead size, and some of those can be 
almost as deep as they are broad. They have less mass to flatten them out—no, 
I'm wrong, how can a hole have mass?—or maybe it is that they are fresher, so 
have not yet melted down to gentleness. Geologically speaking, any crater less 
than a million years old is an infant, born yesterday. Yet my father surely 
would have seen it and avoided it. Anyway, it was a bad jolt. Spirit, perched 
high, had to grab my head to keep from being flung out of the vehicle.
I must recreate what followed partly from logic, as my entanglement with Spirit 
prevented me from paying full attention. The message capsule missed us and 
struck the rock to our right. It exploded on contact, gouging out a new little 
crater. That one really was fresh! The impact of the flying debris bounced off 
our vehicle and the expanding gas shoved the transporter across the sand. We 
were very lucky no sand holed our suits.
That capsule was no message—at least, not the kind we had anticipated. That was 
a bomb!
 
Chapter 5 — FIGHT FOR LIFE
Belatedly I remembered that capsules were color-coded in an obvious manner, as 
it could be exceedingly awkward to open them in a vacuum to check their 
contents. Glaring orange was the code for explosives.
Explosives are normally used for excavation work. It is not feasible to light 
fuses or whatever in a vacuum—oh, yes, they do have a fuse that burns in empty 
space, with its own oxygen built in—but it takes special equipment to start it 
going. So most small explosives are contact-detonated.
The effect of this one did not seem great, but of course this was a mini-charge, 
and the debris settled out almost instantly, because there was no air to buoy 
it. Had that bomb struck our transporter, those of us who were not directly 
injured would have died from suit destruction. Even a little bomb is devastating 
when it detonates in your face! My father had caught on and swerved just in 
time; we had struck no craterlet.
The saucer swerved to get above us again. I saw its pincers, holding another 
bomb. There was now no doubt about its hostile intent! But, though the immediacy 
of the threat somehow abated the fear I should naturally have felt, my curiosity 
remained undimmed. Who was trying to do this to us, and why?
My father swerved again and braked, and the second bomb missed us to the left 
front. This time all of us were hanging on firmly, so neither the swerving nor 
the jolt of the ground from the explosion dislodged us. The forward bumper took 
the brunt of the flying debris, and we all ducked low so the rest passed 
harmlessly overhead. This was nervous business, though. Sand is sharp, and while 
space suits are tough, they aren't that tough.
Still the saucer pursued. It was more maneuverable than we were, and faster; I 
knew we could not escape it long. I didn't know how many bombs it had, but all 
it needed was one score on our vehicle. Each cylinder was small, and the 
saucer's hold could contain hundreds of them. Weight wouldn't make much 
difference, with the gravity shielding; a full hold weighed about the same as an 
empty one.
The pincers carefully lowered each bomb below the shield before releasing it, as 
I mentioned; otherwise, instead of dropping, the cylinder would remain in the 
chamber until it banged, into something there, and—
That gave me a notion. If I could somehow jam a bomb back into the hold, or set 
it off before it dropped—
I got out my laser and took a shot, but the two vehicles were jogging about so 
violently relative to each other—I'm sure it was mostly us, but it seemed at the 
time like the saucer, which is a useful exercise in perspective—that I couldn't 
aim well, and I missed. I wasn't at all sure the laser beam would detonate the 
bomb anyway. Light and heat were one thing; abrupt collision was another. In any 
event, if the bomb did explode above us, shrapnel could rain down on us and wipe 
us out. Even if it also took out the saucer, what good would it do us then? 
Maybe it was best that I had failed. I had no business depleting the charge in 
the weapon uselessly.
The third bomb missed behind us as my father accelerated, once more outsmarting 
the saucer pilot. Actually, it is very hard to align with an erratic target; 
pure chance gave us the advantage, if you consider having a chance to survive 
such a threat an advantage. The saucer was in no danger; it was the aggressor. 
These misses were too close; I knew they couldn't go on much longer.
Then Spirit jammed her helmet against mine. "Look!" she yelled. "The ice caves!"
She meant the excavations made by the city of Maraud to mine clean ice. A 
community of a hundred thousand people needed a lot of water, and the recyclers 
were always breaking down and it was too expensive to replace them with new and 
reliable ones, so it was simpler just to quarry the water out of the ground. If 
there is one thing Callisto has in abundance, it is ice! The bedrock ice is very 
close to the surface in some places, and here there was a combination 
strip-and-tunnel mine. The top ice at this site was blended with minerals, but 
the deep ice was as clean as nature had formed it four billion years ago. Huge 
chunks of it were blasted free with bombs similar to those being used against us 
now, and gravity shields were used to float the icebergs to the dome, where 
smaller pieces were cut and taken inside for melting and using. There was always 
an iceberg perched near the dome, our guarantee that one thing we would never 
suffer was thirst.
I leaned over to touch helmets with my father, who was intent on his pedaling, 
steering, and the saucer. He was really working hard, but he kept his helmet 
still for me. "The ice caves!" I shouted. "We can hide in them!"
"Get rope!" he yelled back, and I realized he had been angling for this all 
along. I didn't know what good rope would do, but I scrambled out of my seat and 
across Faith in the back, delving for the flexible cable every outside vehicle 
had for towing and such.
In a moment I found it, as the vehicle swerved in crazy patterns, preventing the 
saucer from getting a good line on us. I realized the saucer was floating too 
high, so my father could see when the capsules were being released, and could 
dodge out of the way before they arrived. Things didn't fall very rapidly out 
here in quarter-gee. Faster than they would in atmosphere, of course, as the 
prompt settling of the dust showed; but any distance made the slower pattern of 
natural acceleration evident. Human reactions, geared for Earth-type 
acceleration, were quite ready to cope with Callisto acceleration.
The saucer, however, was catching on. First it angled toward the ice mine as if 
to block us off from it; then, realizing that this ploy was ineffective because 
we could zigzag toward the mine anyway, the saucer floated lower, so as to cut 
the fall time and prevent us from dodging effectively.
My father made a throw-gesture with a free arm, and I caught on. I could use the 
rope against the saucer! It had been floating too high for the rope to reach, 
before, but now it was coming down close enough. My father was still outthinking 
it.
I made a lasso noose as I eyed the saucer. If I could loop that extended 
pincers, I could put it and the saucer out of commission. The lower the saucer 
got, the more in reach it got.
I flung the loop, but missed. I wasn't experienced at this; I didn't know how to 
lasso a moving object in low-gee. The dynamics were all wrong. In addition, that 
hovering bomb made me excruciatingly nervous. If it dropped now, could I catch 
it—and do so gently enough to prevent it from detonating? I doubted it.
Spirit climbed back to join me, moving lithely. She always had been an active 
type, able to fling herself about like a little monkey. She put her helmet 
against mine. "Dad says jump!" she cried.
"And desert the family?" I retorted. "No."
"With the rope, dummy! Here, I'll do it." She reached for the lasso.
Then I understood. In low-gee we could jump much higher than normal. It wasn't 
as simple as jumping four times as high in one-quarter gee; it depended on 
technique and the center of body mass. I hadn't had much practice at this 
either, but I had a general notion.
As the saucer swooped low, lower and closer than before, I launched myself 
upward, carrying the loop of rope in both hands. I imagined myself a rocket, 
jetting from a planetary berth with an important payload. It felt like straight 
up, but of course it was at an angle, with the inertia of the vehicle's forward 
motion slanting me. There was no atmospheric drag to slow me; I shot straight 
for the saucer. I was amazed, though I shouldn't have been; the power of my leap 
should have taken me up a meter within the dome, which translated to somewhere 
in the vicinity of four meters here, allowing for the uncertainties of the 
situation. That was how high the saucer now floated.
I came right up under the bomb, and with my two hands looped the rope around the 
extended pincers. Then I fell away to the side, slowly—and saw to my horror that 
I had dislodged the bomb, or at least failed to prevent it from being released.
I grabbed for it, but that was futile. I was already out of reach, and it was 
falling at the same rate I was. It was traveling right toward the transporter.
I watched helplessly as that terrible cylinder descended. Time dilated for me; 
everything was in slow motion. My family faced destruction—and I could only 
watch.
Then Spirit jumped up and caught the bright capsule in her hands. Still aloft, 
she flung it from her, behind the vehicle. She had been alert, bless her, and 
had done what I could not. Once again she had backstopped me, and perhaps saved 
us all.
The bomb exploded as Spirit and I landed on either side of the transporter. Both 
of us managed to get turned to face forward and hit the ground running, for we 
still had that forward inertia. It was rough, but I managed to keep my balance, 
and so did she. We jogged to clumsy stops well behind the transporter.
The rope was tied to the saucer pincers at one end, and anchored to the land 
vehicle at the other. The two machines were tied together.
The three oldest Hubrises were in the transporter—and who was in the saucer?
Spirit rejoined me, touching helmets. "Sierra," she said.
"What?" My mind was distracted by more important things than her chance remarks.
"The scion on the saucer!"
Suddenly it came clear! The one we had humiliated! Naturally he was out to get 
revenge, and he had not been satisfied with our departure from the dome of 
Maraud. Out here at night he could destroy us and get away with it! We had fled 
the dome of our own volition, leaving the protection of its law, such as it was; 
we had become fair targets. There wouldn't even be any inquiries.
Sierra must have been keeping track of us, unsatisfied without the taste of 
blood. The arrogance of scions was almost beyond belief; a personal humiliation 
by a peasant was justification for murder, in this person's view. But not open 
murder, for then it would be known that he had acted in a cowardly manner, 
bombing a pedal-powered vehicle from a saucer. The nature of his humiliation 
might also become known. So his revenge had to be private and complete. Yes, it 
made sense at last.
The saucer wrenched upward as its pilot realized that something was wrong—and it 
skewed crazily as it snapped on the end of its tether. The rope provided with 
out-dome vehicles is tough, for it has to stand up to the abrasion of sharp 
rocks and the stress of hauling a vehicle out of a mine cave-in. That saucer 
could not break free!
With a gravity lens, a saucer can lift any amount that will fit in its hold, 
because the load has no weight—provided the lens is between the load and the 
planet. But the rope anchored the saucer to the transporter below the lens, with 
its full quarter-gee weight. This was too much to lift. The propulsive rockets 
(no propeller out here in vacuum, of course) weren't designed for significant 
lifting, only forward thrust. What a lovely trap!
With its pincers unit immobilized, the saucer couldn't drop any more bombs. We 
had muzzled it as well as tethering it. Because the pilot was sealed inside, he 
couldn't go to the airless cargo hold to untie or cut the rope. Not unless he 
had a space suit—which was unlikely. Trying to scramble into one of those bulky 
things in the confines of a cockpit was so awkward as to be something a scion 
would not consider, anyway.
On the other hand, we couldn't let the saucer go without being in trouble again. 
It was similar to the way I had grabbed the scion's foot, really incapacitating 
us both. Only then he'd drawn the laser—
Oops! If he had a laser now—
No, that seemed unlikely. No laser cannon was mounted on the saucer itself, as 
lasers weren't very useful for cutting this ice of the mine. It simply melted, 
flowed, and refroze in an instant, absorbing an enormous amount of energy in the 
process. It takes as much energy for a laser to do its work as it does to do the 
work any other way; there is no such thing as free power, other than what we 
draw from the sunlight. So the ice had to be cut physically, without wasteful 
heating.
Anyway, if the scion had had a laser, he would have used it instead of the 
clumsy blasting cylinders. So it seemed we really had evened the odds.
Then my mind, which never knows when to stop, brought up another thought: The 
scion could have a laser in the cockpit, but not have used it because that would 
have holed up our suits and killed us without destroying the evidence of the 
murder. A person or a family could run afoul of blasting cylinders by error, 
perhaps, but there had to be another party to fire a laser at five separate 
people. So I could not afford any complacency on that score.
The transporter reached the ice mine, hauling the saucer along on its tether. On 
the shallow-crater region of the planet the saucer had the advantage, when it 
was loose, for there was no place for a vehicle to hide or avoid it. But the 
mine was deep, convoluted, and jagged, not having had the necessary billion 
years or so to melt into anonymity. This terrain was no picnic for a ground 
vehicle, but it was downright dangerous for a low-flying saucer on a tether. If 
we let the scion go here, he would probably just have to float home.
But if we did that, and the saucer did not go home, we would be trapped in the 
mine, unable to proceed to our rendezvous with the bubble. Safety in the mine 
was no good when we had a time limit for crossing the landscape. The saucer 
could hover indefinitely, outwaiting us. We had no great supplies of food or 
water, and in any event had to reach the bootleg bubble before it departed 
without us. So we had to hang onto the saucer. But could we haul it all the way 
to the bubble? That was unlikely—and if we did, the operator of the bubble might 
decide to take off before we arrived, fearful that the saucer represented the 
authority of an official. Our predicament had changed its nature, but not its 
urgency.
My father was no expert driver, since few peasants ever got much practice with 
vehicles of any type, and his legs had to be tired from all that pedaling, but 
he was strongly motivated. Spirit and I came to the brink of the mine and 
watched the action. There were roads winding around and down past tiers of blank 
ice walls, and the whole cavity was like a giant inverted dome, with high ridges 
of ice-rock projecting between many of the levels and spires rising where there 
were turnarounds. Any of these could smash up the saucer pretty badly, if it 
happened to be unlucky enough to collide with them. The gravity lens made the 
saucer light, but it could not change its mass; a crack-up would be just as 
devastating as one in full gravity.
The winding roads were designed for exactly the kind of vehicle my father was 
driving, by no coincidence, so now he had the advantage of the terrain. He 
wheeled around the spires, dragging the saucer along, trying to snag it on a 
projection. He knew it was not safe to let the saucer go, and he was not a 
forgiving man. The scion had tried to kill him; he would now try to put away the 
scion. I felt a certain horrified elation of battle, and pride for my father. He 
was normally a reasonable man, but the time for reason had passed. Spirit and I 
had humiliated Sierra before; my father was out to finish him.
But the saucer followed, skillfully maneuvering around the obstructions, keeping 
the rope slack. Scions had plenty of leisure to learn to master their craft; 
this one floated with precision. I saw that this tactic wasn't going to be 
enough. There were too many open spaces in the mine, and the moment the saucer 
had the chance to get clear, as it might by snagging the rope on a sharp edge of 
ice-rock so that it would saw through the rope, or if there were any alternate 
way to drop a bomb—
My eye was distracted by Spirit's motion. There were whole piles of ice-rock 
fragments that had been bulldozed clear of the roads, and she was checking 
through one. She was always curious about things. How could I blame her? I had 
the same attitude.
She saw me watching and made a throwing motion, empty-handed. Then I caught on. 
These rocks were weapons!
We started in with a will, hurling head-sized rocks at the saucer. The 
quarter-gravity and irregular edges made it easier to grasp and throw large 
pieces, but they didn't go very fast and our aim wasn't very good. Again we 
faced the problem of mass: Weight is only one element of substance, one of its 
many dimensions, and it was as hard to accelerate a large chunk here as it would 
have been in full gee. Maybe harder, for the weight we did heft caused our 
muscles to assume that this was the amount of mass we had to throw, so we 
constantly misjudged it. Soon we shifted to smaller chunks and schooled 
ourselves to overthrow, and then we got the range and power and began scoring on 
the saucer as it trailed the transporter in a diminishing spiral down into the 
center of the mine. Those rocks might be light and slow, but they were as ornery 
in their stopping as in their starting, and solid enough to dent the saucer's 
metal hide and shake the whole mass of it as they struck.
A bomb exploded below the saucer, and we knew one of our rocks had jogged it out 
of the hold. Those capsules were only lightly anchored, so that the pincers 
could take them without risk of setting them off; now they were being shaken 
loose, and that could mean a whole lot of trouble for the pilot!
Still, it wasn't good enough. The saucer was getting too far away from us, so 
our rocks were losing accuracy and effect. We had to keep up the distraction, or 
it would get above the transporter and shake loose a bomb. This would be 
difficult and risky with its pincers incapacitated, but if any bombs were 
floating free in its hold the scion needed to get rid of them anyway. Certainly 
it was too much of a risk for us to tolerate. That wasn't just a transporter 
down there; that was our family!
We jumped down the slopes, bounding from level to level, as each was separated 
from the next by only two or three meters. Soon we were back in range, because 
we were going straight in, while the vehicles were traveling in spirals. A 
straight line really is the shortest distance between two points!
Then I saw that they were approaching a major staging area, where the various 
vehicles normally operating in the mine could load and turn around. Here the 
saucer would have plenty of maneuvering room. I'm sure my father would have 
avoided this region, but he lacked our vantage and probably could not see it 
coming, and in any event his road was curving right to it without any turnoff. 
We had to resume our barrage, keeping the saucer occupied.
But as they entered the clear area, while Spirit and I desperately hurled more 
ice-rocks, the saucer dropped almost to the floor of the mine. Had its gravity 
lens malfunctioned? I doubted it, because those units were very stable and 
reliable. They resembled, in a fashion, permanent magnets, and lasted almost 
indefinitely once activated, requiring no external source of power. That was 
part of what made them so useful. A gravity lens is like a sail on an ancient 
Earth ship, a tool to utilize the forces around it. A sail taps the immense 
power of moving air; a lens does the same with the ubiquitous gravity in the 
universe. Neither sail nor lens is likely to break down if properly used.
A beam speared out from the saucer. Oh, no! My mental reservation had been 
correct. The scion did have another hand laser, and now he was firing through 
the transparent forward port. This was not the most effective way to use a 
laser, because of the dispersion caused by the glass, but even a weakened beam 
could readily hole a suit. Presumably the exigency of the moment forced the 
scion to get out of this trap any way he could; maybe if he killed my father 
with the laser, he would then have leisure to shake loose a bomb and cover up 
the evidence. The threat was immediate.
Spirit touched her helmet to mine. "I'll foul the glass!" she cried.
"You can't go down there!" I protested.
I should have known better. She was already taking off, carrying an ice stone. 
Spirit seldom let the voice of reason stand in the way of direct action. I 
leaped after her, knowing this was folly; the scion's laser would spear her 
before she ever got close to the glass. But she had a lead on me, and she was an 
athletic elf and I couldn't catch her. We both Went tumble-running down almost 
on top of the saucer, carrying our rocks.
Spirit took a final leap and landed on the low saucer. She had excellent spacial 
judgment that way. I did not. I missed.
Naturally she was affected by the gravity lens when she touched the saucer's 
surface. The typical lens makes an onion-shaped distortion in the gravity-wave 
pattern, into which the saucer or other object using the lens nestles. Above, 
that distortion narrows and winks out as the gravity pattern reasserts itself. 
Gravity is powerful, ornery stuff, despite its reputation as the weakest of the 
four universal forces; it can never be actually abolished, it can only be 
channeled slightly. If this were not so, true gravity shields would disrupt the 
natural order horribly. Imagine the havoc that could be wrought in an 
atmosphere, for example; the gas above the shield would be literally blown out 
of its world by the pressure of the surrounding gas. Perhaps a monstrous 
whirlpool or tornado would form around that dreadful leak, funneling the 
atmosphere out into space until it all was gone, leaving the planet denuded and 
as naked as was Callisto. Lenses would be terrible weapons, with the potential 
to suffocate whole inhabited worlds. An enemy could simply drop a lens from 
space and let it wreak its havoc as it descended, since it itself would be 
subject to natural gravity and not be thrown clear of the planet. Well, maybe it 
would have to be tied down, to prevent being sucked up by the tornado it caused. 
A minor detail. And of course the first huge, crude lenses had caused 
considerable mischief, since their onion-tops had projected so high that there 
was some of that tornado effect. But fortunately the modern lenses were crafted 
to wink out at their tops fairly expeditiously, just a few meters from their 
lenses, and very little atmosphere was affected. Here on an airless world that 
didn't matter, of course, but it remained, to my mind, a significant matter. The 
Colossus Jupiter would hardly allow lenses to be used on the moons that had the 
potential to disrupt Jupiter's own atmosphere if dumped there accidentally or 
otherwise. There is obviously much politics in physics.
At any rate, Spirit lost her weight and had trouble staying on the saucer. Then 
she caught hold of the ladder-dents that were there for workers, and was secure. 
The dents actually curved inside the skin of the saucer, so that fingerholds 
were convenient. Sometimes it was necessary for a person in a suit to ride a 
saucer outside, as when helping to load it, so that was facilitated. A 
weightless person could normally support himself by one finger; even the 
slightest anchorage was all that was necessary.
I came to the foot of the slope and tried to be inconspicuous. I didn't know 
what to do at the moment, but had to be ready to do whatever offered, when it 
offered. I couldn't throw rocks for fear of hitting my sister, yet if I didn't, 
that laser might get her. I was terrified for Spirit, but was helpless.
I should clarify that the telling of this requires much more time than the 
action did. Obviously the saucer was not sitting there quiescently for ten 
minutes while we set up to smudge its window. It may have been as little as 
thirty seconds, while the scion was trying to get into better position for a 
killing shot at my father.
Spirit squirmed across the saucer roof, awkward in her suit. Then she reached 
down to the front vision port and smeared her ice-rock across it. The glass was 
super tough and scratch-resistant, but some of the dust in the ice smeared. 
Maybe enough heat from the cabin radiated through the glass to cause the surface 
of the ice to melt a little.
It took the scion inside a moment to realize what was happening. Maybe he had 
felt the impact of Spirit's landing and assumed it was another big rock. The 
saucer was now so low that I could see his shape behind the glass. Then, 
furious, he aimed his hand laser at Spirit.
I don't remember digging out my own laser again, the one I had, ironically, 
acquired from him after our first encounter and tried to use to detonate one of 
the bombs. I had had it fastened in a compartment in my suit belt; now it was in 
my hand, as if possessed of its own volition. I pointed it at the glass, 
steadied my hand, and squeezed off a ray.
I don't think my beam could have had any deadly effect. I had only a mini-laser, 
with a little power, and the angle wasn't good, and the glass was dirty thanks 
to Spirit's continuing effort. But the ray could have splayed as it passed 
through the glass and temporarily blinded the scion inside. At any rate, he 
didn't fire again, and Spirit was able to finish her smearing job without 
getting her suit holed, no thanks to her impetuosity.
I scrambled across and pulled her off the saucer at last, not wanting her to 
take any more such chances. "We have to get away from here before he radios for 
help!" I yelled as we touched helmets.
She nodded, understanding. We moved to the transporter, where my father was 
unloading. He knew we couldn't get that vehicle out of danger in time, uphill 
around and around the spiral roads of the mine. We had to abandon ship, as it 
were. We all got our belongings into our packs and strapped the packs on. Then 
my father started the transporter, fixing its steering wheel, and sent it 
rolling down a slope toward a dropoff. As the brink neared, he disengaged from 
the pedals and jumped free, letting the vehicle's inertia carry it and the 
trailing saucer over the edge, down the steep embankment beyond the staging 
area. With luck, both it and the saucer would wreck, and any pursuers would 
assume we all were dead—at least until it was too late to matter.
But the wrench did not drag the saucer down. The rope broke. Maybe it had been 
frayed in the course of the descent into the mine. The saucer drifted free at 
last, dangling a meter of rope, its pincers twisted crooked. It could not drop 
bombs, but once its occupant recovered, that saucer could be dangerous again. 
Too bad, I thought ungraciously.
My father led the way through the mine. He had been here before; in his youth he 
had worked here, before he got the more pleasant and safer job in the coffee 
dome. I realized that age could be an advantage; it provided time for broader 
experience. The particular configurations of the mine would have changed 
considerably in the intervening years, but not its basic nature.
We saw two lights coming over the mine's horizon. There were the scion's allies! 
Probably other spoiled, rich, arrogant youths like him. I jogged my father's arm 
and pointed.
He looked and broke into a run. We followed, though running is not fun in space 
suits; it's not the weight but the clumsiness, since they are not as flexible as 
human bodies and one must run spraddle-legged. But we had to get to cover in a 
hurry.
Soon we came to a sort of crevice in the ice wall, broad enough for a man to 
enter. We plunged in, getting out of view of the saucers, and worked our way 
along it until we were safe from any discovery from above. We were lost in the 
deep shadow of the crack in the ice.
This was just as well, for through the crack I could see one of the saucers 
casting about. They were looking for us, certainly!
The crevice closed in tighter, so that we had to squeeze along in single file. I 
began to get claustrophobic; I was somehow afraid the separation in the ice 
would close up again, crushing everything within it. Of course I knew better; 
Callisto is a dead world, as these things go, with no volcanism or plate 
tectonics; even a tiny crack could remain undisturbed for a billion years if man 
did not interfere. Such fears are not rational, but the perception of their 
irrationality does not necessarily make them depart. I willed myself to react 
sensibly; the planet presented no danger, but the saucers did.
That ice, as we slid along the walls, was extremely solid and cold; I felt its 
chill through my suit, psychologically. The space suits were insulated and 
heated, charged for forty-eight hours of continuous use—which was more than 
enough, since we had only twenty hours to reach the bubble, to be sure of 
catching it before takeoff.
And there, more than likely, was the real source of my chill: We had used up two 
hours—and lost our vehicle. Here we were, stuck in an ice crevice; how could we 
ever reach the escape bubble in time?
Then we squeezed into a regular tunnel. The workmen had reamed out this section 
of the crevice, preparatory to the next blast. It was much easier to break off 
an iceberg along natural lines of cleavage, cracking it away largely without 
heat, but the charges had to be correctly placed, or the whole thing would break 
up into clumsy fragments. I understand there is a whole science of ice blasting 
that it takes many years to master, as with any really specialized discipline. 
The acquisition of water is too important to be entrusted to amateurs.
The tunnel cut deep into the bedrock ice, then stair-stepped up to the surface. 
There was no sign of the saucers. They had evidently given up the unpromising 
pursuit, uncertain after all whether we survived the demise of our vehicle and 
satisfied to get the scion back to the city before he got into any more trouble. 
That was our good fortune.
We had precious little other fortune, though. We would have an awful time 
crossing the surface of the barren planet afoot within our time limit.
My father pointed the direction to the center of the Valhalla Crater. He had a 
good sense of direction, but it really wasn't difficult to fathom what we 
needed. All we had to do was proceed at right angles to the low rills that 
circled it. Of course, we weren't going all the way to the center—far from 
it!—but this direction would take us to the smaller crater where the bubble was. 
Kilroy Crater.
We started off, making great low-gee bounds. We had a long way to go, and not 
enough time. Maybe.
At first it was easy enough. We covered many meters between landings despite the 
clumsiness of our suits. We sailed over the rolling ridges and down through 
shallow troughs. There is a technique to moving rapidly in low gee, and we were 
necessarily acquiring it. There is also a certain exhilaration to such velocity, 
a sensation of power; I thought of myself as some alien creature who existed 
naturally in these barrens, leaping from site to site searching out some 
completely inexplicable-in-human-terms item.
But anything becomes tedious or tiring in time. My pack became heavier, my suit 
started chafing in awkward places, the burns I had received from the scion's 
laser in the dome chose this time to make themselves felt more insistently, and 
I wished I could stop, but of course I couldn't. The alien creature I had 
imagined had more freedom and fewer pains; it deserted me the moment it tired of 
this quest and went to some more interesting site. I think it used instantaneous 
matter transmission to jump to another galaxy, a technology mankind has not yet 
developed and probably never will. That's the problem with alien creatures; they 
make us look inadequate.
Our pace slowed, not because of me but because of my mother. She was not used to 
sustaining such high exertion. If I found this travel uncomfortable, how much 
worse it must be for her! I went to help her, but she shrugged me off. It wasn't 
foolish pride on her part—there has never been anything foolish about Charity 
Hubris—so much as awkwardness; two could not jump as freely as one. Then Spirit 
came and took her right elbow and I the left, and after a few stumbles we were 
able to move together and boost her along fairly expeditiously.
Still, we had 160 kilometers to go in less than a day. We were traveling a good 
ten kilometers per hour, so theoretically we had time—but we did need to rest, 
eat, and even sleep, some time, and that cut us down. It was foolish to reckon 
without the fatigue factor, I now realized. We had been busy all day, getting 
ready to travel, and would ordinarily have been sleeping now.
After three hours, we had indeed covered over thirty kilometers, by my 
reckoning—but that was the first flush of energy. I was no longer sure I could 
make the full distance at all, let alone in the time remaining. Certainly my 
mother could not.
That damned scion in the saucer had succeeded after all in wiping us out. That 
must have been why there was no further pursuit; he knew we could not make it 
afoot. My brain seethed with impotent rage. If we missed the bubble because of 
him, if the foul scion won after all—
Then what? We would have nowhere to go, and no way to get there. We could not 
return to Maraud? and no other dome was within our range. We would die in the 
barrens of Valhalla.
I smiled with my private gallows humor. Our Ragnarok was at Valhalla!
We sat on a rock, resting. Eating was complicated in the suits, and so was 
elimination. We knew how to do both, but the whole business did take attention 
and time, and wasn't much fun.
We started off again, at a slower pace because of my mother. I didn't know 
whether to be glad for the relief it gave me or sad, because it made it ever 
less likely that we would reach the bubble in time. We were locked into our 
situation; what would be would be.
It was doom that we contemplated, but I found myself too busy just keeping 
moving to suffer proper gloom. In literature I had learned that work was 
supposed to be an answer to doubt, and this seemed to be the case. It takes 
effort to doubt, and I did not have effort to spare for such a nonessential. 
Still, some of it did leak through to my consciousness.
We traveled another three hours. By this time it was obvious to us all that we 
would not make it. We stopped again, weary, and my father beckoned Spirit and me 
to him for a helmet conference while Faith and my mother helped each other.
"We'll camp here," my father said. "The two of you will stand watch while the 
women sleep."
"Watch?" Spirit demanded. "What for?"
"Other refugees," my father said succinctly.
Spirit and I exchanged glances through our helmets. I suffered another surge of 
admiration for the foresight of my father. Of course there would be other people 
traveling to the bubble, from Maraud and other domes; it would hardly fill its 
load with just the five of us, assuming it even knew we were coming! We were now 
far enough along so that those other families should be converging on our route. 
If any of them had good-sized vehicles, and certainly some should—
Spirit and I, abruptly recharged, got on it with a will. We were not dead yet!
We not only watched, we ranged out in an expanding circle, she going one way, I 
the other. We leaped as high as we could from the surrounding ridges, though 
these weren't really very high, trying to spot any moving thing.
I must say this about Spirit: She was twelve, a child, but she was always great 
to work with. She had enthusiasm and competence, and enough savvy to operate 
effectively. I liked doing things with her; such shared tasks always seemed to 
have more meaning than those I did with other people, or alone. Maybe she was 
just trying to live up to her name as she interpreted it; if so, she succeeded 
admirably. She was a child, but I hardly knew her like among children or adults. 
I fancied her dark hair flinging out as she bounded, though of course there 
could be no such effect out here in the vacuum or in the space suit; it was just 
the way I saw her in my mind. I realize it is not fashionable to remark about 
one's little sister in this manner, but I decline to let fashion interfere with 
truth.
We spied nothing. More hours went by, and the glare of Jupiter seemed to turn 
baleful, and our enthusiasm was slowly replaced by dread. We came in to 
report—and discovered that Faith's suit had sprung another leak. Actually, it 
was the same leak; the patch wasn't holding quite tight. It was intended for 
temporary use, to hold an hour or two until the suit could be brought in for 
permanent repair, and now it was giving out. She had her hand on it, holding it 
closed, but that only slowed the leakage, and it was obvious she would not be 
able to travel well. We couldn't even return safely to Maraud, now, even if it 
happened to be politically feasible, which it didn't; that patch simply would 
not make it that far. We did have other patches, but it is bad business trying 
to patch a leaky patch, and the effort tends to be wasted.
Spirit and I went out again. We had to find transportation to the bubble!
She spied it first, with her sharp eyes and intense juvenile attention for 
detail: a shape floating over a distant ridge. She waved frantically, attracting 
my attention, and then I saw it. At first I felt dread: was it the scion's 
saucer, coming to finish us off?
No, it was too large. Anyway, even if it had been the scion's saucer or that of 
one of his companions, we still would have had to approach it. We would perish 
out here alone, so we simply had to take the chance. We bounded after the shape.
We caught it, for it was traveling slantwise past us so that we were able to 
intercept its path without matching its velocity. It slowed and hovered in 
place, waiting for us. What a lovely sight!
I stood bathed in the light of its headlamp and pointed the direction of the 
rest of my family. The floater moved in that direction. It was a large vehicle, 
a supply transport, presumably bringing food and water and fuel to the bootleg 
bubble. In that case, we were really in luck!
My guess turned out to be correct, but our luck was imperfect. The pilot held up 
a sign with a figure printed on it: the payment they demanded for the service of 
transporting us to the bubble. Truly has it been said: There is no free lunch!
We had to pay; we had no choice. But it left us no margin, after allowing for 
the thousand-dollar entry fee to the bubble itself. We were now, essentially, 
all the way broke.
Yet the ride itself was fun, and not merely because it represented our salvation 
from death in the vacuum. They didn't let us inside; we clung to handholds atop 
the vehicle and floated in its onion-field of null-gee over the terrain. In 
three more hours we were there.
Could we have made it on our own? I like to think we could have—but I really am 
uncertain. What counts is that we did get there.
 
Chapter 6 — BUBBLE, BUBBLE
Callisto Orbit, 2-5-'15—We stood before the bubble at last. I was excruciatingly 
tired, but excitement fended off my fatigue for the moment. The bubble most 
resembled a cratered planetoid, only the craters were actually recessed ports 
sealed with tough space-glass.
The globe sat on the ground, but I knew its gravity lenses abated most of its 
weight so it was actually feather-light. It was about ten times my height; I'm 
less than two meters tall, but still growing. Call it a good sixteen meters for 
the diameter of the sphere; it's hard to judge with the naked eye, but that's a 
standard size for small space bubbles. They aren't uniform, actually, because 
their patterns of growth differ, but they do run pretty true to form.
The idea was that such a sphere would be halved, with one section reserved for 
equipment, supplies, baggage and such, and the other half providing eight cubic 
meters of living space to each of one hundred passengers. It all worked out 
mathematically; I had studied it in school. But it was different, seeing the 
great dull hulk of it looming before me, blotting out part of the horizon.
The air lock opened, and we scrambled in. The supply vehicle had a separate 
lock, designed for things that didn't need oxygen or air pressure for survival; 
my father had had to deposit our short-hop payment there before we got our ride. 
The bubble lock's outer panel slid closed behind us, and our weight decreased to 
about half its prior amount because of the effect of the shielding. The pressure 
came up, making our suits go slack. Faith was finally able to relax her hold on 
the leaky patch and straighten up. That must have been a tremendous burden off 
her mind!
"How many?" a voice demanded from a speaker. It was good to hear normal speech 
again!
"Five," my father said, lifting back his helmet. The rest of us did the same.
"Fifteen hundred dollars, cash in advance," the voice said.
My mother gasped. "We were told two hundred apiece," my father said evenly.
"The price has gone up. Pay or leave."
We knew we couldn't leave. But we didn't have the money. It had been all we 
could do to raise what we had. I saw the little lines of desperation form in my 
father's cheek, but his voice was admirably steady. "We haven't got it. You 
should have sent word."
"Then get out. No freeloaders here."
My father paused, signaling us to silence. Then he said: "Put your helmets back 
on, folks. They don't want our money. We'll have to take another bubble."
In shock, I fumbled at my helmet. Faith's face was as pale as death; she knew 
she would die if she had to go out again. But at the same time, I knew my father 
was bluffing; he would not let us all go out.
I looked at Spirit, and knew the same thought had come to her. If the fee was 
now three hundred dollars each, only three of us could go. Two would have to 
return to Maraud. My father and mother would sacrifice themselves to get the 
three children aboard. But that wasn't right!
Slowly, her little face set with unchildish intensity, Spirit nodded, answering 
my unasked question. We were the youngest, and most adaptable; we would 
volunteer to return, so that our parents could go. After all, we were the ones 
who had humiliated the scion and brought this trouble upon our family. We were 
the ones most deserving of punishment. We could conceal our identity, somehow, 
in Maraud, or maybe go to the coffee plantation. The notion was not pleasant, 
but it was viable.
"You really don't have the fee?" the voice asked, sounding disgusted.
"Only the fee we were told," my father replied. "One thousand dollars in gold. 
The supply vehicle took the rest, to carry us here."
"In gold?"
"In gold. We had to liquidate everything we had."
"That's enough for three, and some for extras."
I opened my mouth, but my father put his hand out to silence me without even 
looking. How well he knew me! "There will be other bubbles," he said. "We can 
wait for the next, and perhaps its fee will not have changed. Our family travels 
together."
There was a sigh. "Well, for good gold, it will have to do. Hand it over."
"Not without guarantee of passage for our whole family," my father said firmly. 
"We must stay together. Unity is more important than schedule." I knew my mother 
felt that way, but with Faith's suit leak, compromise seemed essential.
"We'll let you in. But you'll have to work, to make up the difference."
"Agreed," my father said, his face relaxing. I realized that the bubble pilot's 
lust for our money was greater than any principle he might have had. Gold was 
universal currency, unlike the chronically deteriorating scrip of the various 
moons. By threatening to leave, taking our gold with us, my father had bluffed 
him out. Even if we had perished on the surface of Callisto, that gold would not 
have gone to this bubble, so it was take it or lose it. The man had taken it. So 
we would have to work; why not? It was only a ten-day trip to Jupiter. How much 
better this was than the alternative Spirit and I had tried to offer!
"Shuck your suits," the voice said.
We were happy to oblige. We helped each other get out of our space suits and 
folded the bulky things and stacked them on the floor. We should have no further 
need for them, as the bubble would not again dock in vacuum, and the bubble 
personnel would have a storage room to store them. This, more than anything 
else, gave me a feeling of relief. A person could relax when he took off his 
space suit. We did, however, detach our packs and carry them in our arms.
My father produced our two bright gold coins. The inner panel slid aside. The 
panels were designed to move readily when the pressure was equal at either side, 
but to balk when it was not: an automatic safety factor to counter human error. 
Hard experience in space has taught our species many useful little things.
There stood a man in a grubby pilot's uniform, his hand out. "Cells 75 and 76," 
he said as he took the gold. "They're consecutively numbered; you can find them. 
Get in them and stay; keep the Commons clear." He brought first one coin and 
then the other to his mouth, bit each and tasted it, and smiled with 
satisfaction as he put them away. I had not realized it was possible to identify 
a metal that way; I would have tried an immersion test for density, as gold is 
the most dense of the common metals, and anything with greater density is bound 
to be more valuable. The fact is, you can tell pretty well whether gold is 
authentic merely by glancing at its size and hefting it in your hand. But I'm 
not a trader or space pilot.
The man did not introduce himself or offer any other advice, so we moved along 
the passage. It really didn't matter where we stayed, so long as we were aboard 
the bubble when it lifted for Jupiter.
The passage angled up at forty-five degrees, then debouched immediately into 
what appeared to be a torus-shaped chamber. That is, we stood within a giant 
doughnut, only it was hollow while the hole was solid. Its outer wall curved 
down on one side and up on the other. I should clarify that the outer wall of 
the torus was not the outer wall of the bubble.
We walked downward into this torus, since the upper side curved until it was 
vertical. The lower side curved level in just a few meters—and just at that 
point the floor converted to a latticework of squares, each square two meters on 
a side, with a sliding panel in the center. Some panels were open, showing cells 
below, about two meters cubed.
"Numbers!" Spirit exclaimed. "See—here's 28 and 29 next to it. Is this a prison 
ship?"
"These are the passenger rooms," my father said dryly. "Eight cubic meters 
apiece."
"But we're only assigned two numbers," I protested. "We should have five cells. 
Or at least three, for our entry fee."
A head poked out of one chamber, startling us. "They have doubled up," the man 
explained. "They make twice as much money that way."
"But that's wrong!" my mother said.
"What law does an illegal craft follow?" the man inquired sardonically.
"What law indeed," my father agreed. I realized that we—except for my father—had 
been naïve. Of course the refugee-smugglers would seek the greatest profit, by 
jamming as many people as possible into the bubble and overcharging those.
"We have cells 75 and 76," Spirit said. "Do you know where they are?"
"Opposite side of the bubble," the man said, pointing up. "You'll have to climb. 
It's not hard, in this one-eighth gee, and there are handholds. Better hurry, 
before the next load comes. There'll be people scrambling every which way, 
stepping on each other's faces."
So many refugees! I had supposed our situation was more or less unique, but 
apparently many others were as desperate to leave the planet as we were. It was 
a sad commentary on the nature of our society.
We thanked the man and hurried. We followed the numbers up and around the torus 
chamber. The handholds were really the ceiling lattice, which seemed to be 
formed of sturdy netting. The ceiling was close to four meters from the floor, 
but not hard to reach at eighth-gee. So we climbed it readily enough, and when 
it curved around toward the topside, we walked on that netting until we spied 
cells 75 and 76 in the new ceiling, which was really part of the same surface 
that had been the floor below, if that's clear.
It occurs to me that a verbal or written description isn't enough, so I will 
make a map of the complete bubble, as I came to know it. Turn to the next page 
for that map, and don't blame me if it does not match the standards of Space 
Navy specification blueprints!
 
"How ever are we to stay in those?" Faith demanded irritably.
"When we are in space, we'll rotate, and the cells will all be 'down,' " I 
explained, feeling very educated.
"Idiot!" she snapped. Fatigue and nervous tension had worn out her temper, 
understandably. "I know that. I mean now."
Faith is a very pretty girl, but she was not very pretty now. I was about to 
make some sarcastic retort, but before I could work out something cutting enough 
for this occasion, my father interceded. Adults seem to handle fatigue better 
than do juveniles; maybe they are more accustomed to it. "We'll manage," he said 
mildly. "As you can see, others are doing well enough."
I peered up. Dimly through the translucent sliding doors I saw people in cells 
74 and down, sitting comfortably on the floors; 77 and up remained empty.
"Now, if your mother and I take one, will you three children get along in the 
other?" my father asked, and the tone of his voice made the suggestion sound 
eminently reasonable. That's another adult talent. It was, of course, more than 
a suggestion.
"We should have two and a half cages," Spirit said belligerently. We were all 
very tired, and it was manifesting more openly as our certainty of survival 
increased. "Even doubled up, that's our share."
"If one of you can find a free space—" my father said, shrugging. He really 
didn't want to argue.
The hatch to cell 74 slid open. A boy about my own age poked his head down. 
"I'll take a roommate," he called. "Are you nice people?"
"Well..." Spirit began mischievously. She was never too tired for a flash of 
humor.
"I'll take it," I said. "It's no fun rooming with sisters anyway." Actually, it 
would have been okay with Spirit; but Faith was too conscious of her maturity, 
and would have made things difficult in various minor but cumulatively 
overwhelming ways.
Spirit frowned but did not protest. She knew she would get along with Faith 
better than I would. It was my position in life to protect Faith from 
molestation on the street, and Spirit's to preserve her privacy in the home. It 
is a fair-sized responsibility to have a pretty sibling.
"Spring up and catch the edge of the opening," the boy advised.
I touched Spirit's shoulder and gave it a squeeze. I would rather have roomed 
with her than with some stranger, and she knew it; this reminder was merely my 
gesture of thanks for her understanding. We could not put Faith in with a 
strange boy!
I tossed up my pack, then sprang up and hooked my fingers in the opening, then 
hauled myself on inside. Acrobatics are easy in eighth-gee! When I was clear of 
the entrance, the boy slid the panel closed, so we could relax without fear of 
falling through the floor. I didn't worry about my folks; I knew they'd manage.
I sat up and contemplated my companion. He seemed to be my height—it wasn't 
possible to be certain while sitting—but more slender of structure, with very 
thin arms. His hair was short and brown, like mine, and his eyes were brown too 
and seemed a bit too large for his face, but his features were well formed. I 
decided I liked him—but my sense-of-people signaled warning. There was something 
about him that didn't jibe.
"What's your name?" I asked forthrightly.
"What's yours?" he returned less forthrightly.
Still that slight wrongness. "Hope Hubris. My father's a tallyman of the coffee 
dome. Was, I mean. I got into trouble with a scion, and now we all have to get 
out."
He smiled. It was a fetching, compelling expression that transformed his face 
into something wholly likable. Some people have practiced smiles that are 
letter-perfect but that lack warmth; this was a natural one. "I'm Helse. My 
folks are servants—when they find work. They can't support me, so I'm 
emigrating."
"Helse?" I asked. "That's an unusual name, for this planet."
"And Hope isn't?"
I laughed. "I guess a person can be named anything his folks want."
"Helse is the plural of Hell, they tell me. I'm a hellion."
I was already sure he wasn't that. Violence was not his way. But what he was, I 
had not yet fathomed. Maybe he had more urgent reason to emigrate alone than 
economics.
The ice was broken. We chatted a little about inconsequentials, and my awareness 
of the oddness about him intensified. He wasn't bad or dangerous, just subtly 
wrong. I liked him, for he was at least as well educated as I, and he wasn't 
mean. My judgment of people in this respect is infallible.
After a time I checked on my folks. Faith and Spirit were next to me, in 75, and 
our parents in the next one over. They were already lying down for a nap.
"Go back and finish your conversation," Spirit told me. "It's interesting."
But I was too weary for that, or even to be embarrassed. Naturally there was no 
privacy of sound in a situation like this; one would have to whisper to keep any 
secret from those in adjacent cells. Helse and I had not said anything 
confidential, anyway.
I saw I had other neighbors in cells 73, 71, and the two corners, and when the 
remaining cells filled up we would have eight neighbors in all. I see this isn't 
clear, so I'll make a chart, as I like to keep things straight. The band of 
cells extended all the way around the bubble's equator, four abreast, numbered 
consecutively by rows. With a circumference of about fifty meters at the 
equator, but less to either side of it, there was just room for twenty-four such 
rows, or ninety-six cells, and four more squeezed in somewhere around the edges. 
Our particular section was numbered like this:
65 72 73 80 81
66 71 74 79 82



67 70 75 78 83
68 69 76 77 84
The line along the center is the bubble equator, the region of greatest 
centrifugal gravity when it is rotating. It wasn't really a line, any more than 
it is on any moon or planet, but it helps a person to align things. The cell 
numbers continued on either side, upward and downward, but it seems pointless to 
list all ninety-six. Anyway, I was sure that I would get to know the people in 
all eight bordering cells soon enough, once we were under way.
Right now the brief exhilaration of de-suiting and settling in and meeting my 
roommate was giving out, and I just had to rest. I returned to cell 74, handing 
myself along from panel to panel readily enough, said good night to Helse, 
though I suppose it was just about morning in Maraud time, and tuned out the 
universe.
Sleep came like a ton of sand, burying me, for all that a ton only weighed an 
eighth of a ton in this gravity. At one point I was dimly aware of other people 
entering the adjacent cells and of the clangs of the outer locks being secured. 
I didn't let any of it disturb me. Helse lay parallel to me, presumably sleeping 
too. I heard him speak once to someone outside, probably another person wanting 
to share the cell; there was a hassle, but it finally died down without the 
intrusion of any other person. So if my presence here in cell 74 had been an 
imposition, it was legitimate now. I had legitimized it by possession or 
squatter's rights. But Helse had been instrumental in that effort, for he could 
have had me booted. I owed him one.
I woke to a hand on my arm, steadying me. "I didn't want you banging into a wall 
when the bubble maneuvers," Helse explained.
I looked about blearily. I was floating in air!
I flailed wildly for a moment, then realized I was not really falling. I used 
Helse as leverage to get to a handhold and secured myself to a wall. My stomach 
felt light, and I had to swallow several times before convincing myself that I 
wasn't about to throw up, but otherwise I was all right.
"We're taking off," Helse explained. "Null-gee. You can see out the port."
I hadn't realized the cubic chambers had portholes of their own, and later I 
learned that many did not; we happened to be lucky. Actually, ours wasn't much; 
it was only ten centimeters in diameter, and the thickness of the outer shell of 
the bubble made it seem tubular. I set my nose against it, holding myself close 
by means of recessed handholds on either side, and peered out.
I really didn't see much. Our cube-cell was near the top of the bubble-sphere as 
it rested on the ground—but it wasn't on the ground anymore, so that was 
irrelevant. I knew the propulsion was from the vicinity of the axis, so here at 
the equator we would be looking straight out at right angles to our line of 
travel.
I see I have to explain about the drive. Like the little null-gee saucers, 
bubbles have to use some form of active propulsion. Gravity lenses are fine, but 
they do not move objects; they merely lessen or eliminate the pull of gravity. 
Now, you might think that all we had to do was cut off the gravity of Callisto, 
and Jupiter would pull us right in to itself. Well, Jupiter was trying, but we 
still weren't free to respond. We were, in fact, in orbit about Jupiter, as was 
Callisto. So we stayed right where we were. Releasing us from Callisto was only 
part of the job. We had not been released from the basic physics of our 
situation. So we needed a jet to make us move.
The jet was now boosting us up at an angle to the surface of Callisto; that much 
I could perceive. We no longer weighed anything, so didn't have to worry about 
falling back to Callisto, but our mass remained, and the jet wasn't strong, so 
it was slow. But gravity travel is slow, in practice; if you want to get 
anywhere in a hurry, you have to use a spaceship, not a bubble. The bubble is 
the rowboat of space; it is not exactly first-class travel. Which is why we 
refugee peasants could afford it, barely.
So all I saw, apart from Callisto, was Jupiter, and it didn't even seem to be 
getting closer. Perspective is like that; it seems you are getting nowhere. 
Jupiter was moving, of course, as our course wobbled somewhat uncertainly, but 
that was irrelevant. I pushed away from the port.
Now Helse looked out. "Shouldn't we be going right toward Jupiter?" he asked.
I saw that I knew something he didn't. That gratified me. "We can't go straight 
to Jupiter," I explained. "We're in orbit."
"I know that," he said, miffed. "We'll approach Jupiter in a big spiral. Because 
our orbital velocity joins our approach velocity in a compromise vector. But at 
least we can accelerate toward Jupiter, to help tighten the spiral."
"No good," I said. "The closer an orbiting object gets to its primary, the 
faster it orbits. We'd end up going so fast we'd bounce out again. What we have 
to do is slow our orbital velocity. Then we'll fall in naturally—though we'll 
still be orbiting faster."
He shook his head. "We slow—so we go faster? I don't understand that."
"Lots of people don't," I said somewhat smugly.
He let it drop. "I'll be glad when they spin the bubble, so we have weight 
again."
With that I agreed heartily. Free fall is fine for a moment, but it rapidly 
palls as the novelty wears off. I had spent all my life in gravity, mostly Earth 
norm; I could get along on less, but my stomach definitely didn't like null-gee. 
"I think it'll be some time, though," I said. "The jet drive doesn't have much 
thrust, only enough to nudge us into the wall. This is no space liner."
He laughed, with a surprisingly high pitch. "No, this is a little sailboat!"
It was a nice enough analogy, better than my prior thought about a rowboat. Back 
on the historical oceans of Earth, a thousand years ago, there were all kinds of 
ships. It was impossible to go to space in an open craft, but the contemporary 
bubbles were as close to it as was feasible, using mainly the ambient gravity 
fields of space for propulsion, much as the little sailboats used vagrant winds 
on the planetary surface. Winds could let a person down—and so could gravity.
We waited interminably. The pilot made a circuit of the Commons—that was the 
torus-shaped central hall—and advised us to remain in our cells until we got 
clear of the planet, except for use of the heads. The heads were the bathrooms; 
there were eight of them, which was supposed to be enough for one hundred 
people. But we had about two hundred people. So that meant twenty-five to a 
head. We organized it by the numbers—and cells 74 and 75 were at the line for 
head number 6. Suddenly my business there seemed overpoweringly urgent!
Helse seemed to be in even greater distress than I. "May I talk to you 
privately?" he asked.
I realized that he meant he didn't want the people in the neighboring cells 
overhearing. I moved close. "Sure."
"Will you keep a secret?" he whispered in my ear.
"Not if you plan to do anything illegal or unethical," I whispered back, not 
certain whether I was serious. We were all doing something quasi-illegal by 
sneaking away from the planet like this. The feeling of oddness about him 
returned, and I wasn't sure I wanted to hear his secret. The very knowledge 
could compromise my own situation, somehow.
"Nothing like that," he answered me. "But awkward—and I'll need your help. 
Please do not betray me."
I squinted at him. The urgency in his voice was manifest; he was not joking. I 
was becoming excruciatingly curious about his oddness. "I'll keep your secret, 
so long as it doesn't hurt me or anyone else," I said. "But if you have, for 
example, a contagious disease, common sense should indicate that secrecy is 
not—"
He smiled instantly. "No, nothing like that!"
"But I don't promise to help you," I finished. "The secret is one thing, 
inactive; help is another."
"All right." He took a breath, then leaned close to my ear again. "I'm a girl."
"So that's it!" I exclaimed in a whisper, as the oddness fell into focus.
His—her brow furrowed. "You knew? What gave me away?"
It was my turn to smile. "I didn't know, but—well, I have this sense about other 
people. I know what their strengths and weaknesses are, and what motivates them, 
and how far I can trust them. It's not psychic; it's just a judgment I have, 
after I interact with them a little. Maybe I pick up private signals from the 
body; I don't know. With you there is something wrong. Was something. I knew you 
were a nice person, but you didn't quite fall into place. Now I realize it's 
because I was trying to fit you into a masculine mode, and you were—are 
feminine. That's a relief."
"You don't mind?" she asked uncertainly.
"I like to solve mysteries. You aren't odd anymore. I mean, not to my special 
perception. Probably no one else would have felt it at all, but I—well, that's 
my one real talent, the thing that distinguishes me from other people. I'd 
really hate to have it be wrong."
"I deceived you, pretending to be a boy. You might have refused to room with me, 
otherwise."
"I don't care what sex you are, if you don't care," I reassured her. "I have two 
sisters; I was going to share a cell with them, but this is more fun and less 
crowded." I considered, looking at her with a changed perception. "How old are 
you? You're my size—"
"Sixteen," she said. "Girls don't get as big as boys."
"I know. My sister Faith is eighteen, and she's the same size as me, and I'm not 
big. But I fight for her, because—you know."
"I know," she said, smiling herself. Now, with my perception of her as feminine, 
the expression was cute. She wasn't as pretty as Faith—wouldn't be even if she 
were all garbed and coiffed like a girl—but of course no one was as pretty as 
Faith—but she was nice enough. There is something sort of special about any 
girl; they're a distinct and intriguing species. "I have no brother to fight for 
me, so I became a brother."
"Makes sense." It did indeed! "The way men go after Faith—that's really why 
we're here. I stopped a scion from getting at her."
"Scions are bad ones," she agreed. "Any man is potential trouble. I don't mean 
you; you're a boy. No offense."
"And you don't want to room with a man," I said, working it out. "He would make 
demands—I guess we should have had Faith join you. But we didn't know."
"No, I wanted you," Helse said quickly. We were still conversing in barely 
audible whispers, of course. "It would look funny, a mixed couple unrelated, 
even at our ages, and I still have to hide my nature. I don't know who may be 
aboard this bubble, or what may be expected when things get dull. Please don't 
tell anyone."
"I promised," I said a little stiffly. "It's your secret. I'll keep it."
"And I'll need your help, if you will give it. You see, the bathroom—"
The rest of her problem illuminated. "You'll have to use the male head! That'll 
be awkward, if—"
"If there's anyone else there," she finished. "Will you help me?"
"It's something no person can do for another," I pointed out, embarrassed.
She blushed. She would have to watch that, in public. "I need someone to cover 
for me, in case—"
"Oh, to stand by the door and make sure no man interrupts," I said. "I'll try."
"Oh, thank you! I'm most grateful."
"Actually, I'm glad to get a half share of a cell, instead of a third share. You 
don't have to be grateful to me." The truth was, sharing a cell with a young 
woman not my sister was a prospect that promised to be interesting. Like most 
adolescent boys, I had dreams of the opposite sex, but lacked the courage to 
implement them. It wasn't that I envied youths like the scion; he was obviously 
a heel from the outset, and should come to a bad end, if we had not succeeded in 
ending him. It also wasn't that I had any overwhelming procreational urge; as 
far as I can tell, mine is normal for my age. But there are few convenient 
avenues of general acquaintance with girls available to boys in my situation, 
and none for full sexual expression. I knew girls were not mere sex 
objects—after all, Spirit is a girl—but when society places a sexual emphasis on 
association, it is hard to relate to the opposite sex as regular people. Here 
was my chance to really get to know a girl who was not my sister.
Helse was looking at me as if trying to assess the nature of my agreement. I 
fathomed her concern. "Don't worry," I said. "I'm a boy, not a man. I won't be 
grabbing for you."
"Thank you," she said, smiling wryly.
Yet I was close enough to manhood to feel the desire to grab for her. I had told 
myself that I valued the opportunity to have a young woman for a friend, and I 
did—but there was an insidious and powerful undercurrent of sexual interest too. 
I would have to guard myself, because if she got the notion that I might 
appreciate her sexual qualities, she would surely seek some other roommate, and 
that would abolish all speculations, licit and illicit. I had a secret of my own 
to keep, now.
Our turn for the head came. We slid open the panel and floated down. Head number 
6 was alongside the quadruple row of cells; it was more triangular in cross 
section, because of the curve of the bubble shell. The Commons was a doughnut, 
but near the bubble's axis the chambers were lined up parallel to it. This left 
a wedge-shaped space between the cellblock and the axis, where storage sheds, 
fuse boxes, and bathrooms were squeezed in. The bubble didn't need space for 
bathtubs or shower stalls, as there was no spare water in space for this sort of 
nonsense. People were expected to wash their bodies with small sanitary sponges 
that could be rinsed with half a cup of water. We didn't even bother with that; 
no sponges were left. People were going to have to stink. Fortunately the air 
recycling removed odors as well.
I was going to let Helse go in alone, but she gestured me to join her. I saw 
that there were other people nearby, who might deem it odd if two boys our age 
showed such deference to each other. Feeling a trifle guilty, I crowded in with 
her.
Now the details of Helse's problem showed starkly. There were two apertures for 
body excretions, one for solids, the other for liquids. It was important that 
the functions be separated, because the recycling processes were different. 
Solids would clog the liquid system, and liquid would saturate the dry-compost 
mechanism of the other. I had known this intellectually without considering the 
practical side of it. Actually, on a ten-day hop the solid recycling would not 
be done within the bubble; the holding tanks would be emptied elsewhere, 
providing rich organic material for some agricultural dome. The water, however, 
would be cycled through many times while we traveled.
With the facilities already being overworked by the crowding of the bubble, any 
abuse could be disastrous. Helse would not urinate into the solids aperture; 
such wrongdoing would soon be apparent as the tank fouled up. She had to use the 
liquids aperture—and there was a problem. Either sex could use the 
solid-collector funnel, as that was set in a sort of potty chair with handholds 
to keep the floating body proximate. But the liquids funnel was set at waist 
height in the vertical wall. The wall that would be vertical when spin began, I 
mean. At the moment, in complete free fall—for they seemed to be using the 
propulsive jet intermittently, saving it for some later need, so there was not 
even the trace thrust of acceleration—all walls were of indeterminate 
orientation.
I had no trouble with the liquids funnel, of course. I merely hooked my toes in 
the toehold slots in the floor so that my body was fixed parallel to the wall, 
and directed the flow appropriately. There was a slight suction that brought the 
fluid in; otherwise it might have floated out into the chamber in disintegrating 
bubbles, an obvious liability. The presence of a young woman did not bother me 
unduly, for our family had never been squeamish about such things; we had had to 
share a single bathroom, and my sisters and I had long since passed the 
exploration stage. But Helse—
"You'll have to hold me against the wall," she said. Her face was somewhat 
ruddy, as mine would have been in a similar circumstance. Obviously she hadn't 
wanted male cooperation; she had had to have it.
That was the solution, of course. I hooked my toes, leaned back, and caught her 
as she floated close. She dropped her trousers, or rather drew them down about 
her legs in the absence of gravity, baring her bottom. Then she doubled up her 
legs and squatted against the funnel, while I held her by the shoulders and 
gently shoved her in to the wall. Otherwise she would simply have floated away 
from it, especially when—well, a rocket moves in space by jetting gas, and a 
person would move similarly by jetting liquid.
I closed my eyes, in deference to her modesty, after the first guilty glimpse 
that verified that she definitely was not male, but could still feel the slight 
motion of her body and hear the fluid striking the funnel. Then, abruptly, it 
became very exciting for me, though my reaction embarrassed me. I was lucky to 
have urinated first; had I done it last, I would have had more difficulty than 
she, albeit for a different reason. I chided myself; after all, she was only 
urinating. Why should this essentially pedestrian activity excite me so 
strongly, in that fashion? Yet there was no question that it did.
Then I opened my eyes and looked again, not to further titillate myself, though 
that was a consequence; I realized I had seen something odd. Yes, there it was—a 
small mark, or tattoo in the crease where her left leg connected to her body. 
Three letters: QYV.
She finished and drew her trousers back up. "Thank you," she said. "That was the 
help I needed."
"Sure," I mumbled, knowing I was blushing. I hoped my erection did not show. One 
advantage the female of the species has is the ability to conceal sexual 
awareness if she wishes.
"In the female section they have bidets," Helse said. "You'd have almost as much 
trouble using one of those."
"Umph," I agreed, preferring to change the subject, though I was curious about 
what a bidet was.
We returned to our cell, and two men headed for the head, passing us in the 
Commons. I could tell the men didn't suspect anything; we were just two teen-age 
boys. My blush must have faded, or maybe it just didn't show well in the partial 
light, against my naturally dusky complexion.
"A female roommate couldn't have helped this way," Helse murmured as we climbed 
back into our cell.
She had certainly figured it well, and played it correctly. She had of course 
been lucky I was available, but luck is a fickle mistress that is powerless 
unless intelligently exploited. Helse had gambled, to the extent she had to, and 
won, and I respected that.
Then a complementary notion occurred. "If I ever have to use the female head—" I 
began.
"Yes, of course I'll help you," she agreed quickly. "There could be an 
occasion."
We settled down for more rest, as there wasn't much else to do. But now that my 
roommate's femaleness had been so unequivocally brought home to me, I could not 
quite relax. That sexual barrier was up between us; I kept thinking of the 
private glimpse of her posterior vicinity I had had. Certainly I had seen it on 
my sisters—though not recently, on Faith—but this was not my sister. That made 
an enormous difference. I wondered what the rest of her looked like, when it 
showed. She had done an excellent job of masquerading as a boy; nothing showed. 
Her chest looked just like a masculine chest. Maybe she was flat-breasted. No, 
that was unlikely, because her buttocks were too rounded and her—she was at the 
age of nubility, and the upper part of her would certainly conform.
And my own reaction to her urination—I suppose it was because her act called 
more specific attention to that portion of her anatomy and the functioning of 
it. A person may be stimulated to hunger by seeing another person eat; why not a 
similar stimulation in genital matters? At any rate, I had learned something 
about my own organic responses. The first requirement in the understanding of 
other people is the understanding of oneself.
"Anyway, thanks," she said. I jumped—which didn't get me far, in free fall. I 
felt nervous, thinking about someone that way, when she was right there with me. 
I did not believe in telepathy, but my disbelief weakened at moments like that.
"Welcome," I said, and that at least was honest.
 
Chapter 7 — BETRAYAL
I must have snoozed—certainly I needed more rest!—because I was jolted awake 
when the warning klaxon went off. We had separated far enough from the planet 
and were about to go into spin. That meant gravity, or a reasonable facsimile, 
and we didn't want to be sleeping in midair when it started. I had, of course, 
been doing exactly that.
But it started gently enough. I heard noises from the hull and realized someone 
was out there in a space suit, doing something. "They're moving the drive unit 
around to the equator," I said, catching on. "If they angled it side-wise at the 
pole, it would start the bubble turning pole over pole, and it's not designed 
for that. So they have to fasten it where it belongs for proper spin."
Then the room began to drift to the side. "Now they're starting the spin," I 
said, working it out in my own mind. "But at the start it's spin acceleration, 
so we feel it mostly sidewise. Once it gets up to proper torque, we'll feel it 
outwards. But it's not much of a jet, so it's slow."
"You're good at physics," Helse said.
I wasn't good at physics. I'm not, if the truth must be told—and I suppose it 
must, here—much good at anything apart from my judgment of people. Oh, I'm smart 
enough in a general way; that runs in our family, except for Faith, who got 
beauty instead of brains. But I owed my comprehension of the present situation 
more to the fact that males tune in to these things more than females do, by 
training and inclination. I knew Helse was gratuitously complimenting me, and 
the words meant nothing in themselves. But I was flattered that she wanted to 
flatter me. After all, she was a year older than I, a real girl, a young woman. 
I was sure that in normal circumstances the likes of her would not even have 
noticed the likes of me. Of course, she needed my cooperation for the bathroom, 
so she could keep her secret; it figured that she would try to keep on my good 
side. Still, I was unreasonably pleased. I would have been pleased if a boy had 
complimented me similarly, but I knew it would not have had the same force. I 
wanted a genuine young woman to respect me; it made me feel almost like a young 
man instead of an awkward adolescent. So she was trying to manage me—and I was 
eager to be managed.
Slowly the spin increased until the outer wall became the new floor and the 
sliding door became a ceiling exit. The slight push of the jet sidewise was 
constant, not increasing, while the effect of centrifugal force was cumulative, 
so that it came to dominate. It was good to have weight and orientation again!
In due course there was a jolt. Helse looked up, startled. "Just the drive unit 
being disconnected," I explained. "They have to take it back to the pole and set 
it up again for normal forward thrust. Now that our spin is established, it will 
maintain itself; the rocket is needed to continue our acceleration toward 
Jupiter. We'll hardly feel it pushing at right angles to our new gravity, but 
the bubble will get up respectable velocity in due course."
She smiled, complimenting me again, and I felt unreasonably good again. Helse 
had done nothing, really, to turn me on like this, but I was thoroughly turned 
on. For the first time in my life, I was coming to appreciate the potency with 
which a woman could affect a man—just by being near him.
We had been sitting on the new floor, wary of standing while our orientation was 
shifting. Now we stood—and I felt abruptly dizzy and had to lean quickly against 
a wall for support. I saw Helse react similarly. Naturally I had to set my brain 
scrambling for a facile explanation, lest my newfound status as a knowledgeable 
person suffer erosion. "The spin!" I said. "This is a small bubble, so we feel 
the effect. When we stand upright, our feet are moving faster than our heads, 
and maybe they weigh more too. So we get dizzy, and we tend to fall sidewise, 
because of the physics of the situation."
"So it's not something I ate," Helse said. "I don't have to get sick."
I wish she hadn't said that word! We struggled with our equilibrium and our 
psychologies and managed to get ourselves less queasy and more balanced. But we 
could hear the sound of someone retching in a neighboring cell.
"Let me try something," I said, struck by a notion. I took my comb from my 
pocket, held it aloft near the ceiling just above head level, and dropped it.
The comb took about one second to reach the floor—but it didn't fall straight 
down. It drifted four feet to the side and banged into the wall.
Helse gasped. "How—?"
"It's the spin, again," I said, pleased. "The hull is evidently providing us 
about half Earth-gravity, which I think is standard for a bubble this size. It 
has a diameter of about sixteen meters, which means a circumference of just over 
fifty meters, and so if it spins in ten seconds—"
"Wait, wait!" Helse interrupted. "I want to understand, really I do, because I 
think comprehension makes me less queasy. But I've had most of my education in 
Jupiter measurements, you know, inches and feet, and—"
Oh. I wondered how she had picked up that education, since it was normally 
affected on Callisto only by the rich landholders and politicians who had 
dealings with the Colossus Planet. But I did have some conversance with that 
clumsy system, so I rose to the challenge. "The bubble's radius in feet would be 
perhaps twenty-five," I said. "And its circumference, here just inside the hull, 
maybe one hundred sixty feet, roughly. So if it completes a full turn every ten 
seconds, which seems reasonable, a point on the hull will travel sixteen feet 
every second. That gives us a velocity of sixteen feet per second—no, I guess it 
doesn't because the deviation is tangential, not straight—"
"That's all right," she said quickly. "Now I understand the principle. But why 
did your comb fall sidewise?"
"Well, the floor of the Commons, our ceiling, is a little over six feet farther 
in, so while the hull moves sixteen feet, the ceiling moved only, let me see, 
twelve feet. So that's the velocity of my comb at that level. When I drop it, it 
can't match the velocity of the hull, so it falls four feet behind."
"Oh, yes!" she exclaimed. "Yes, of course!" And yet again she was flattering me.
"So when we go up into the Commons," I concluded, "We had better lean a little 
to compensate for the effects, and watch out how we jump, because we may not 
land where we expect. And our weight will be less on the Commons—about 
three-quarters what it is here. If this is half-gee here—and I really can't 
tell, now, so maybe it's quarter-gee, like Callisto—the Commons will be 
three-eighths gee, or three-sixteenths, or whatever. Anyway, less."
"I feel better already," Helse said. "Maybe some time I'll have the chance to 
explain something as useful to you."
She was giving me too much credit, but I could live with it. It was time for us 
to go abroad and meet our neighbors.
I reached up, opened the panel, and hauled myself into the Commons. Spirit had 
done the same thing, and other passengers were popping out of their holes, some 
of them looking greenish. Yes, I understood their nausea! Soon a number of us 
were standing on the new concave floor of the doughnut, meeting each other. 
Camaraderie was easy, for we all shared some significant experiences: fleeing 
Callisto and adapting to spin-gravity.
I introduced Helse formally to my family. "He's traveling alone," I explained. 
"His family couldn't support him any longer." I made sure I made the "he" plain, 
so that Helse would know I was honoring her secret. I suppose technically this 
was lying, but I had given my word, and it would have been a greater wrong to 
betray her. Still, I felt a twinge and resolved to cogitate upon the ethics next 
time I had cogitation time on my hands. Is a lie ever justified by 
circumstances? That's one you cannot answer in an offhand way.
Our neighbors, as it turned out, were basically similar to ourselves. They had 
been ground into intolerable poverty by the system, or had incurred the wrath of 
some person of power, or had simply come to the conclusion that they were on a 
dead-end street on Callisto. They were not the very poorest, for those could not 
even have raised the fare; they were the descending middle class, like us, or 
the disillusioned specialists who could no longer tolerate the system.
There was a lot of demand for the heads at this point, as people tried to get 
their motion-sick stomachs in order. Helse and I had overcome our problem, so 
were all right in that respect. I saw that a number of people were remaining in 
their cells, probably too sick to emerge. Time would help cure that, I was sure.
The immense if cloud-shrouded lure of Jupiter summoned us all. There we would 
somehow find the reprieve life had so far denied us. It was a giant mutual 
dream, and if it was short on practical details, at least it was better than 
dwelling on the problems behind us. How much better to float toward a dream than 
to sink into potential nightmare!
Now at last it was time to eat. Those of us who were not sick were famished, 
after the ardors of our departure from our lifetime homes. A bubble crewman 
dispensed packages of food and drink from the storage space in the center of the 
vessel, dropping them down through a hole in the net. People watched, amazed, as 
those items angled to the side, traveling twice as far horizontally as 
vertically. I spread my explanation around, but found that quite a number of 
people had already figured it out for themselves. Spirit, always one to get into 
the spirit of these things, practiced jumping up to the net, which she could do 
with much less distortion by adjusting the angle and velocity of her take-off, 
then spreading her arms and flapping them as if flying, on the descent. Soon she 
had all the children doing it, and I suppose it was good experience. A person 
should always be properly conversant with his environment.
The food was staple stuff: all-purpose vitamin/mineral/protein cakes and globed 
water. No gourmet fare, but quite good enough to sustain us. This was, after 
all, not a pleasure excursion.
"We have to see to the orientation of the lenses," the pilot announced, as we 
squatted in groups on the Commons floor near our cells. "We need a volunteer to 
supervise the air lock while we're outside."
"I'll do it," an older man said. "I've floated a bubble before."
"Fair enough. I'll appoint you temporary captain for the interim. Your name is—"
"Diego," the man said. "Bernardo Diego."
"Take over, Captain Diego," the pilot said, making a mock salute. Then he 
entered the air lock with his two crewmen.
Diego settled down by the lock, and the rest of us returned to our repast. Helse 
ate with us, seeming almost to become part of our family, and I guess that was 
just as well. No one seemed to suspect her true nature, not even Spirit, who 
could be unconscionably perceptive when that was least convenient. But she was 
more interested in her flying and in the other people around us, learning their 
names; she was as good at that sort of thing as I was poor. My talent is 
judging, not remembering people. That's why I am not naming people freely here; 
I did know their names, but I have already forgotten them, and there is nothing 
to be gained by cudgeling my memory to recreate every last one.
We finished our meal, and Helse and I took our turn at the head again, lining up 
by the cell numbers as before. We, as a group in the bubble, were fortunate that 
the male-female ratio of the total was just about even, for there were four 
heads of each type, and an imbalance would have been awkward. I helped Helse 
again; no one found it remarkable that two teen-age boys entered the room 
together, for that was the nature of boys. My mother and sisters went to their 
head together, though three was crowding it, and my father shared his turn with 
another family man. It was really working out quite well, considering the 
crowding. One person could use the liquid collector while another used the solid 
collector, and then they switched; in this way no more time was taken than it 
would have for one person at a time. We seemed to have a good group here, for 
all that it had been randomly assembled. Maybe there just happened to be a large 
percentage of intelligent, motivated people who couldn't abide the repressive 
Halfcal system.
Time passed. "How long does lens adjustment take?" I asked. "They can't stay out 
there forever."
"Lens adjustment?" a neighbor asked. "Was that what they said? I was in the head 
when they went out, and didn't hear."
"Orientation of the lenses," I informed him. "They appointed a temporary captain 
from our number while they were out."
"But a gravity lens is not oriented from outside," the man protested. I remember 
his name now: it was García. "The lenses are not physical objects; they are 
fields, generated by a unit in the center of the bubble. It has to be that way; 
otherwise the spin would interfere with the gravity shielding, and we'd be 
jerking all over the cosmos. I used to be a technician. I'm not expert, but that 
much I do know."
"That's right!" I agreed, chastened for not realizing it myself. I excuse myself 
in retrospect by pointing out that we were then in a new situation, adjusting to 
the spin in various ways, eating our first bubble meal, and meeting our 
neighbors, so that the affairs of the crewmen were not uppermost in our minds. 
Probably that was the way the crewmen had intended it. "They had no reason to go 
out for that—and one of them would have had to stay inside to change the 
settings if they were wrong."
"We had better investigate," my father said.
He and I and García made our way to Diego to present our concern. Diego looked 
stricken. "You know, you're right! They don't need the lifeboat to check the 
lenses!"
"Lifeboat?" I asked, experiencing a sinking sensation that my trace weight could 
not account for—
"This lock opens to the lifeboat," Diego explained. "That's why they didn't need 
space suits this time. The boat's sealed, with its own supplies. I believe they 
stored the gold in there, for safekeeping—" Now his face was as aghast as mine 
had been.
It took us some time to verify and believe it, for our resources and information 
were limited and we didn't want to believe it. We had to get out the space suits 
and go outside the air lock to search for the lifeboat that wasn't there. But it 
was true: The three bubble crewmen had decamped with the gold. We were abruptly 
on our own, without even a lifeboat, in space.
We organized a meeting to discuss the situation and work out our options. Most 
of the refugees were in a state of disbelief; surely the crew would come back! 
They couldn't leave us stranded in space! Who would pilot the bubble? How would 
we get to Jupiter? But as time passed, more people believed. We realized that 
there was close to $50,000 in gold involved, and that this old bubble, converted 
from a retired pleasure craft, could not be worth more than $5,000. Perhaps a 
similar amount was invested in supplies. The crewmen had the money, so weren't 
bothering to carry through with their commitment. They were thieves or 
swindlers—and we had been taken.
Some women became hysterical. Some people retreated to their cells, refusing to 
face our situation. But a solid nucleus remained to tackle the problem. After 
all, if we ignored it, we would all perish. We could not simply float forever in 
space.
Diego argued in favor of reversing our thrust and descending to Callisto and 
taking our chances there. But too many people had cut their ties to the society 
below; return would mean harsh treatment by the government of Half-cal.
My father argued that if we could manage to operate the lenses and jet well 
enough to descend safely, we could use them as readily to proceed on our 
original mission. We could float the bubble to Jupiter ourselves!
There were arguments back and forth, but in the end we took a vote and my father 
was elected to be the new captain, since he had spoken for the majority. He 
immediately appointed Diego lieutenant captain. "If something prevents us from 
going forward, you will be the one to take us back," he explained to the man. 
"You will need experience in handling the bubble, just in case. We are still a 
long way from Jupiter! Meanwhile, you're in charge of bubbleboard operations."
Diego, who had been working up an irritation of temper when he saw the vote 
going against him, became mollified. My father had acted to preserve harmony in 
the bubble, and I noted this and learned from it. A person who opposes you does 
not have to be your enemy.
"Anyone who knows anything about navigation, come to me now," my father 
announced. "We need all the expertise we have, because I'm no space mechanic. 
We're a long way from the coffee plantation now!"
"And anyone who knows anything about supplies, atmosphere, recycling, sanitary 
facilities, or human motivation come to me," Diego announced. "We've got to keep 
this bubble healthy while it's going wherever it's going."
I hesitated, then went to join Diego. Helse tagged along with me.
As it turned out, we were fairly well off. Diego found people to monitor the 
pressure and oxygenation equipment and check the funnel toilets. He glanced at 
me, and I was about to explain that I was good at human motivation, but he spoke 
first. "You're Hubris's boy, aren't you? You'll be in charge of food supplies. 
First thing you'll want to do is get up there in the net and make a count, just 
to be sure we have enough."
"Uh—yes, señor," I said, realizing that he was doing the same thing my father 
was: appointing a potential malcontent to a responsible position. My father had 
made Diego second-in-command, so Diego was giving recognition to my father's 
son. It was a mutual backscratching operation, but I suppose it did alleviate 
tensions.
"And take your friend," Diego added.
Helse was glad to participate. She had been staying close to me so she wouldn't 
have to tell her secret to anyone else. How this suddenly critical situation 
would affect her personally I didn't know, but it was unlikely to facilitate her 
serenity.
We clambered into the webbed chamber. I profited from my reasoning about the 
distortion caused by our spin, but still it took me two jumps to catch the 
entrance aperture in the net. Our weight was much less here, for we were near 
the center of the bubble. In fact, some of the packages were floating, glancing 
off each other like molecules in motion. It was a good place for storage, since 
even the heaviest article could readily be moved here in free fall. This 
doughnut hole space was only four meters in diameter, so just by standing on the 
lattice net we had our heads just about banging the globe that enclosed the lens 
generator. It was a strange sensation: feet with trace gravity, head with none.
But we really could not conveniently stand, because the food packs and water 
bags and such mostly filled it. Some refugees had stored baggage up here, 
sensibly enough. So counting the food packs was a problem, because they didn't 
stay put very well. We could end up counting some several times and missing 
others completely. It might average out and lead to a correct count—but this was 
too important to leave to chance. Without food we would be in deep and early 
trouble.
I stuck my head down, out of the hole of the lattice. I spied Spirit, who was 
naturally curious about what I was doing, and tired of playing. "Tell Señor 
Diego we need a bag or something to count them into; a big bag," I called to 
her.
Soon she was back with a voluminously bulging armful of the kind of netting used 
to sweep rooms clean in free fall. She scrambled up with it, using this pretext 
to get in on the fun. It was all right; we were able to use her help. Spirit 
could be extremely helpful when she wanted to be.
We counted food packs into the net. There were quite a number, but in time we 
got a close enough figure: about 2,800.
"How many will we need for ten days' travel to Jupiter?" Helse asked.
I did some quick computations. "Three per person, per day, for two hundred 
people—that's six hundred. Times ten days—" I broke off. "Oops!"
"That's not enough!" Spirit said.
I worked it out another way. "We've already had one meal, so that's two hundred. 
We must have started with three thousand. That's enough for a normal load of one 
hundred people—but we're overloaded. So there's only half enough."
"Why didn't they pack more?" Helse asked.
Suddenly it all fitted together. "They must have planned for one hundred, but 
twice as many refugees showed up, so they took us all. Because of the money. 
Then they realized they couldn't feed us all, so they took the money and flew."
"Leaving us to starve in space!" Spirit exclaimed angrily.
"So it seems," I agreed wearily. "They planned a legitimate venture, but greed 
overwhelmed them, and we are left to pay the price. We'd better make a private 
report to Señor Diego, so the people won't panic."
We glided down, hitting the Commons deck running so as not to be swept off our 
feet by its higher velocity. I noticed this time that there was a constant 
movement of air, for it had the same problem we did: differing velocities at 
different elevations. It tended to drag at the floor and to rush at the net 
ceiling. Well, that helped circulate it, so the purifiers could operate 
effectively.
We approached Diego. "How many?" he asked.
"Twenty-eight hundred," I murmured.
He leaned against the curving wall. "You sure?"
All three of us nodded solemnly.
He led us to my father, who was at the control section of the bubble. "Tell 
him," Diego said to me.
"There're only half enough food packs," I said.
My father considered the implications. "I'll call another meeting," he said 
grimly.
Soon it was done. My father summarized the situation. "So it seems we don't have 
enough food to make our journey," he concluded.
"How do we know the count's correct?" a man demanded. "Diego doesn't want to 
make the trip, so he could have—"
"My son made the count," my father said. And I realized how neatly Diego had 
arranged it. He must have suspected that the supplies would be short, so made 
sure no suspicion would attach to him. Regardless, it was true; we didn't have 
enough food.
"What about oxygen?" the man asked.
"There's enough," Diego replied. "Another crew checked that. And most of the 
water is recycled. It's only food we're short." And I realized that, whatever 
his preferences, Diego was trying to do an honest job. Had I interacted with him 
longer and paid more attention, I would have perceived what I now did; he was an 
honest man, expressing honest judgments. He had not urged our return to Callisto 
because he wanted to be a leader, but because he truly believed that was the 
best course. Snap judgments are treacherous.
"We could travel on half rations," my father said. "We would be hungry, but we 
wouldn't starve, and for ten days it should be bearable. If it were longer, we 
could try to use our refuse to grow edible plants, but we really aren't set up 
for that, and in ten days that won't work. But we can do it on what we have—if 
we wish to make the sacrifice. I won't insist on that unless there's a clear 
consensus."
There was debate. The democratic process does take time! Then we took a vote. It 
was about four to one in favor of going on to Jupiter. Diego, amazingly, voted 
with the majority. "We have better leadership than we had before," he explained 
wryly to those who looked askance at him. "I think we can make it now, with Don 
Hubris."
My father smiled. "Thank you, Don Diego." And there was a minor ripple of 
appreciation, for there is this about that polite title of Don in our language: 
It is generally used with the given name, not the surname. They should have said 
Don Major and Don Bernardo—and indeed, thereafter they did so. I am not sure why 
they elected to misuse it this one time; there are aspects of adult humor and 
interaction I have not yet mastered. Perhaps Diego had simply not known my 
father's given name before.
The navigation crew had a fair notion what it was doing. Señor García explained 
it for those of us who were interested, and at this point most of the refugees 
were. All of us wanted reassurance that we were not traveling into doom. The 
details were somewhat technical for me, but here is the way I understand it.
Our bubble was now floating inside the orbit of Callisto—that is, closer to 
Jupiter—but moving ahead of Callisto because of the increased velocity of the 
inner orbit. We continued to jet in the reverse direction, with the paradoxical 
effect of increasing orbital velocity. In less than five days we would be a 
quarter of the way around Jupiter from our starting point. Then we would use the 
gravity of the sun to slow us, for we would be swinging away from the sun. That 
would slide us closer yet toward Jupiter. We would also try to use the gravities 
of Jupiter's inner moons, until we were close enough to orbit in the range of 
Jupiter's innermost rings. At that point the Jupiter Border Patrol would 
intercept us, and we would claim our status as refugees from the oppression of 
our homeland. They would take us in, of course. Jupiter had a standard policy of 
absorbing refugees in search of freedom.
Ah, but life is seldom as neat and simple as it appears! It was Hell we were so 
blithely floating into!
 
Chapter 8 — ADJUSTMENT
Jupiter Orbit, 2-10-'15—I need not repeat the sequence of the pirate raid that 
occurred two days before this dateline, and the horror that befell my sister 
Faith. It was a brutal awakening for all of us; we had not before believed in 
the reputed savagery of the outlaws of space. Yet for me especially it was a 
turning point; my belief in the fundamental goodwill of all men had been 
destroyed by the Horse.
The Horse! Damn that pirate for what he did to us all, to our minds as much as 
to Faith's body. It was necessary for me to reconstruct my philosophy of life, 
to cope with the ugly new reality. I did not agree with this reality, or even 
understand it, but I had to live with it. I am not sure I can successfully 
present the tides of my changed awareness, so this may be disjointed or 
fragmentary, but I will try.
On Callisto, in Maraud—ah, that name had a changed relevance now!—I had 
succeeded in defending my sister from the lust of a strange man. Here in space I 
had not. True, my entire family had paid a gross penalty for my prior defense, 
having to flee the planet—but what was the penalty for my failure this time? I 
simply could not grasp it. Would it have been better to let the scion have his 
way? Could anything he might have done to Faith have been worse than what the 
foul pirate had done? I had to ask myself whether my victory over the scion had 
been illusory, and I was uncertain of the answer. Of course I could not have let 
the scion have his way—yet how could I have reacted to truly preserve my 
innocent sister? I had a deep and terrible guilt to settle in my own mind, apart 
from the other present problems of existence.
I was jogged to awareness by friends—they had been only casual acquaintances, 
but suddenly now they were friends who were lowering me from my prison of 
suspension and untying my hands. Oh, it hurt as the circulation returned, for 
even my trace weight had caused the bindings to constrict—but it was in my mind 
that I deserved such pain, as part of my punishment for my failure.
The pirates were gone. The Horse had kept his word, such as it was, departing 
with his crew, leaving our valuables behind. He had not promised not to rape, 
merely not to rob or kill, and to leave us alone. There was, it seemed, a kind 
of honor among criminals, but it was subject to a savage interpretation. It 
galled me anew that I could not entirely condemn the Horse; he did have some 
spark of humanity in him, though he was a bad man. I would much rather have 
cursed him absolutely.
Faith lay as she had been left, not even trying to cover her shame. I think she 
was still unconscious. My mother rushed up to minister to her, and the other 
women closed in, as though whatever they might do was no fit matter for the eyes 
of males. Perhaps they were correct. The men, in turn, clustered around my 
father and me, as we stood chafing our hands and wrists and wincing from the 
pain. "We didn't know," they murmured. "We couldn't know!" "The pirate gave his 
word!"
"He kept his word," my father said, his voice oddly calm. "The agreement wasn't 
tight. Maybe he did us a favor—teaching us the reality of space without killing 
us." He turned to me, and there was something blank about his countenance. I had 
been concerned with my own horror—what, then, of his? He had watched his 
daughter ravaged! "My son was right. We should not have given up our advantage."
"But that laser—" another man protested, then halted. The deal with the pirates 
had, in fact, traded the lives of several men, including my father, for the 
violation of my sister.
An aspect of reality laid siege to my awareness at that point. Which was worse: 
the death of my father or the rape of my sister? If I had had the power to 
choose between the two, knowing...
Helse came up and took me by the hand and led me to our cell, and no one 
objected. They knew I needed to be out of it for a while.
She put me on the floor as a nurse might place a non-resisting patient on a bed, 
then jumped up to close the panel in the ceiling, separating us from the rest of 
the bubble. Then she kneeled beside me. "I understand," she murmured. "I can 
help you, Hope."
"What do you know of rape?" I flared.
She took my unresisting hand and squeezed my fingers gently. It was foolish, I 
told myself, but I was reassured. The cell was deeply shadowed, since only a 
little light filtered through the translucent panel from the Commons, and that 
was just as well, for admixed with my horror was the shame of unmanly tears. "I 
know a lot about it," she said.
"Oh, sure!" My pain was turning on her, the nearest object. I knew this was 
unfair, but I had little control. The savagery to which my awareness had been 
subjected was too much for me to control; I could not react in an intelligent 
manner.
She leaned down, wrapped her arms around me, and lifted me in the partial 
gravity and drew me close to her, my head against her chest. She wore a tight 
band to flatten her breasts, to make her torso look masculine; now she paused to 
release this, and cradled my face to her abruptly feminine bosom, and it was 
marvelously compelling. She was indeed a woman, and soft in the way only a woman 
could be, and I felt her measured breathing and heard her steady heartbeat, and 
I was pacified.
"I'll tell you about me," she said, speaking in a low and even tone so that 
others would not overhear. I think she was talking in order to distract me from 
the raw shock of what I had just seen, to give my soul a small time to heal, but 
before long the nature of what she was saying penetrated, and I really was 
distracted. Of course her monologue was not as succinct as I render it here from 
memory, but it was as important. I listened, and was slowly amazed.
Helse came from a family larger and poorer than ours, living in one of the 
smaller city-domes. She had been a pretty child, and in order to gain money on 
which to survive, they had rented her at the age of six to a middle-aged 
bachelor landowner as concubine. This was legitimate, socially, in that dome, 
though it has no legal status. There was merely an understanding that permeated 
that limited society from the poorest to the wealthiest; it had existed thus 
covertly for centuries, and it seemed no one really wanted to change it.
This landowner had never married, because he was unable to relate to adult 
women; he liked children, and had the wealth and power to indulge his 
propensities. His appetite was generally known but never openly bruited about, 
and he was generous to those who indulged him. Thus Helse's family, possessed of 
a pretty female child, had not been directly coerced to put their daughter into 
his hands; they had seized upon the opportunity to alleviate their poverty for 
the few years during which they had something worth selling.
Helse had called him "Uncle" and he had called her "Niece." This was to 
facilitate a nonexistent relationship that would satisfy any question that might 
arise among occasional visitors or business acquaintances. Uncle was not a bad 
man, and he did not brutalize her. Far from it! He fed her well and gave her 
nice clothing and toys and presents. If she expressed an interest in something, 
she would have it the next day. He also provided her with a series of excellent 
tutors who set about giving her a proper upper-class education. Yet this was not 
an adult-child relationship; it was a courtship.
He courted her, and she was delighted. She regarded her position in his mansion 
as the privilege of being desirable; other girls her age had vied for it, but 
she had been chosen. But she knew she had to submit to whatever he chose to do 
with her body, and not all of that was fun. This was the price of her gifts and 
good life. If she ever once said no, or intimated that she objected, it would be 
over. She had the constant option of returning to her family—and this was not a 
promise, it was an unspoken threat. It was not that she didn't want to go home, 
but that it would be disaster to be sent home. She had to succeed. The kissing 
and fondling was easy enough, but the culmination was painful. He was a mature 
man and she was a child; no amount of gentleness could completely alleviate 
that.
Yet there were physical and mental devices, and she knew he did not mean or want 
to hurt her. He was driven by adult urges she did not understand, but he wanted 
to believe that she liked what he did. She learned to take relaxant medication 
and to dissemble her real reaction, for Uncle was most generous when most 
pleased. Experience made it easier, and in time she developed a certain pride in 
her competence. She became proficient in pleasing this man.
She was no prisoner. She was able to visit her family, sometimes for an hour, 
sometimes for a night. She brought them nice gifts that made all of their lives 
better. This was done with the approval and cooperation of Uncle, who wanted her 
to be happy. It seemed she pleased him more than others had, and now reaped 
commensurate rewards. But no direct word was ever spoken of her real place in 
Uncle's household; she was his niece, with certain poor relatives she liked to 
help.
In fact, she was now the principal provider for her family. Her father found 
work only intermittently, but Helse's work was steady. She became important in 
her own eyes, and perhaps she became arrogant, but this was her right.
For four years Helse was a little princess in Uncle's mansion, her every wish 
catered to by his other servants. He had an excellent staff, and they too 
understood their situations perfectly; there was no covert unkindness to her or 
embarrassing leaks of information. They were, in a fairly real sense, an 
extended family, each concerned with the welfare of the group. When a high 
official of the city visited, expressed a certain curiosity about rumors he had 
heard, and spread some money privately to confirm them, the staff members 
accepted the money and assured him with absolute sincerity that there was 
nothing to the rumors. When he questioned the naïve child Helse, she gave him 
similar assurance with marvelous innocence. Yet he knew, for he had other 
sources of information. "I'd like to know your secret," he confessed ruefully. 
"How do you compel their loyalty?" And Uncle had smiled and not answered. This 
official was known to beat his own servants. The fact was that, apart from his 
sexual aberration, Uncle was a good and kind man, and his staff protected him 
because all its members genuinely cared for him. Wealth alone could not purchase 
that.
But at age ten Helse was getting too old, past her prime, as it were, and had to 
make way for a younger girl. She stifled her savage jealousy, knowing there was 
no percentage in it. She had known this would happen from the start; the staff 
had made it clear. She had to master adult grace in the face of the inevitable, 
and if she was unable to stifle a genuine tear in parting, this was not 
objectionable. Uncle gave her a generous separation bonus, and it was over. She 
was retired.
"You liked it!" I exclaimed, appalled. "You wanted to stay with the child 
molester!" For, though I have rendered her narration as politely as I can, I 
have no sympathy with it. My family upbringing simply does not provide me with 
much tolerance for this sort of abuse of children.
"I liked the life, and I respected the man," she qualified. "I wish I could have 
been his real niece. He was not a molester, merely a person with a specialized 
taste. Some men like young, nubile women; some like fat women; some like other 
men, or boys; this one liked children. Uncle never raped anyone."
That shut me up. Obviously her "uncle" was a better man than the pirate Horse. I 
had to broaden my definitions.
There were, however, openings for experienced intermediate-aged children, Helse 
continued, and her family always needed money. So she went to work for a new 
employer. But this one had more violent tastes. For him there had to be 
humiliation and pain. It was not exactly rape, for he had paid for what he 
wanted and obtained prior acquiescence; it was more like submitting to necessary 
surgery with inadequate anesthetic. The money was good, however, and she learned 
to endure this too. The one thing she insisted on was that no injury be done 
that would leave a mark or scar on her face or any portion of her body that 
normally showed.
I expressed curiosity, so she showed me some of the scars she did have, on her 
abdomen and back. I shuddered; the origin of those must have been painful 
indeed. She certainly had had experience being tormented by men.
"But finally I got too old for any of that stuff," she concluded. "I could no 
longer earn enough to support my family. Not without risking my health or life. 
I had no better prospect than a life of formal prostitution. So I squandered my 
nest egg on this voyage and concealed my nature, so there wouldn't be any more 
trouble. I've had enough sex, especially painful sex, to last me a lifetime."
That I could appreciate. I knew she was telling me the truth. Her ploy had been 
effective; the pirates had never even thought of raping Helse.
"But my point is, a girl can survive it," she said. "What happened to your 
sister is terrible, because she wasn't prepared for it, but there are worse 
things. I have survived worse."
Again I believed her. Obviously she had prettied up her story for me. Helse was 
a nice girl—but she had had experiences I had never dreamed of. She maintained 
her emotional equilibrium; her mind had not been devastated. I realized that if 
Faith could adjust her thinking similarly, she would suffer far less. "I wish 
you could talk to Faith," I said.
"I will—if you want me to."
I reconsidered. "No, that would give away your secret, and I don't know that it 
would help her. I'll talk to her myself."
"She could learn to pass for male," she suggested. "That could save her a lot of 
trouble."
"Faith just isn't the type," I said. "But Spirit—"
"Your little sister is in danger too," Helse said. "This time the pirates went 
after the obvious, and were satisfied. Your sister Faith stands out in a crowd; 
every man's eye was on her from the start. You tried to shield her, but it was 
impossible. Next time they could go after the rest. There are men like that. I 
know."
She certainly did! I thought of my little sister getting raped in the manner of 
my big sister, and a kind of blackness clouded my mind's eye. "Spirit's a good 
kid. She can fight, and she can keep a secret. Will you teach her how to pass?"
"If you ask me to."
There was something about the way she said that. I realized that I did not yet 
completely understand her. "What do you want in return?" I asked.
"I like you."
"I don't understand."
"That's why I like you."
"I like you too. But this is business! If there is something you—"
"What I want can't be bought. Just ask me to teach your sister."
"All right," I said, slightly nettled. "I'm asking you."
"Then I'll do it."
My sense about people, as I've mentioned, is infallible. But that's a matter of 
comprehending motive, not of understanding every nuance. It is possible, for 
example, to know that a man is honest without knowing how to operate his 
business. Helse was not deceiving me. Yet she did want something from me—and she 
would not tell me what. That was a paradox of a type I had not encountered 
before, and it baffled me.
Then I remembered something else. "Would you answer a question—if I asked you?"
"Yes, Hope," she said.
"When you—when we were in the head, the first time—I didn't mean to look but I 
saw—what is that tattoo on your thigh?"
She sighed. "I promised to answer. But you must promise not to tell."
"All right," I said.
"I told you I used my nest-egg money to pay for my passage on the bubble, but I 
didn't tell you how I got the money. My family had used up all that I had from 
Uncle and the other employers, and they don't pay that amount for—you know. But 
I was still friends with Uncle, and I phoned him privately—" She paused a 
moment, frowning. "His current niece answered the vid. She was the second one 
since me. A cute little girl. I couldn't tell her I knew, of course. It jolted 
me, though." She shrugged, then returned to her explanation. "I asked Uncle how 
I could get to Jupiter. I wasn't asking for money, just advice, and he knew 
that. I think he was flattered that I should think of him in that connection. He 
sent me to a man, and the man didn't want sex. He asked me why I wanted to go to 
Jupiter, and I told him it was to find a better kind of work. He said he 
couldn't guarantee the work, but that he could facilitate my trip there. All I 
had to do was carry a message to a certain person, whose name was Kife, or so it 
sounded. For that service I would be given the money to get passage and would be 
protected on the way. The tattoo is my protection."
"That tattoo—three letters where no one can see them? How do they protect you?"
"They spell Kife," she said. "Hard Q, vowel Y, hard V. All I have to do is say 
the word to any criminal who threatens me, and he will stop. If he doesn't I can 
show him my tattoo—he's bound to see that anyway, if he means to rape me—and 
that will prove I'm authentic. But the mere spoken word is supposed to be 
enough. So I will not be molested by criminals, and of course law-abiding men 
will not bother me."
I shook my head. "You believe that?"
"No," she confessed. "Not completely. That's why I conceal my sex. But if I 
really am threatened, I'll try the word. Maybe criminals really are scared of 
Kife. After all, if he can afford that kind of money just to deliver one 
message, he must have a lot of power."
"What's the message?" I asked.
She shrugged. "That's the funniest part. I wasn't given any."
"You were paid a thousand dollars to deliver no message?"
"Three hundred, for an individual. The man said Kife would understand when he 
saw me."
I was having trouble with this. "Just the sight of you would tell him something? 
Are you sure you aren't—I mean, that it is you he—"
Helse laughed. "For sex? Hope, I'm hardly that special! I'm third-hand goods. No 
one would pay three hundred dollars for my body! For your sister's maybe; for 
mine, no."
She was probably right. The going rate was less than a hundredth of that—as it 
had been for Faith. Pirates didn't pay for what they could take by force. "Did 
the tattoo hurt?"
"No. The man gave me a sniff of gas, and when I recovered consciousness it was 
over. It didn't even sting."
"Gas! Then he could have—"
She put her hand on my arm. "No, Hope. There was no sex. I can tell. I was 
surprised, because that is usually a matter of course with such men. If he had 
wanted sex, I would have done it, and he knew that. I just wanted to get to 
Jupiter, the land of hope—no play on your name, Hope—whatever the price. I was 
put under so the tattoo wouldn't hurt; that was all."
I sighed. "I was curious about the tattoo. Now I'm twice as curious! There's 
something we don't know."
"That's what you get, for curiosity," she said, smiling in the shadow. She was 
very pretty, that way. "But please don't tell anyone. Just in case it is 
important."
"I won't tell." At this point I almost wished I hadn't asked. I hate unsolved 
riddles.
However unconnected all this may seem in retrospect, I have to say that Helse 
had succeeded in what she set out to do: She had broken my mood of shock, 
enabling me to function more or less normally, for the time being.
 
My father plunged into the task of navigation; evidently he had come to his own 
terms with the situations of the bubble and of Faith. Adults seem to have 
greater resources in that respect than people my age do. Diego got to work on 
bubble defense. All of us who weren't otherwise occupied went to classes on 
combat. There was a retired martial artist among the refugees, an old man whose 
days of competition were decades past, but he possessed a lifetime of 
devastating knowledge. Had we had any warning about the raid of the pirates, he 
could have prepared us for them, but he too had been caught unawares.
He explained at the outset that there was little we could master in one or two 
days that would balk armed pirates, so it was best that we concentrate on fairly 
simple, crude defenses. He showed us how to fashion weapons of incidental 
objects, even wads of paper, and how to protect ourselves when disarmed. "A girl 
does not have to submit to rape by a lone man," he said, getting right down to 
the point. "The one we saw—there she was helpless. But usually it is just one 
man at a time. She has teeth, she has knees, she has fingers. The rapist has a 
nose, and testicles, and eyes."
We listened doubtfully. "I will demonstrate," the instructor said. He dug in a 
bag he had and produced a rubber mask with bulging Ping-Pong-ball eyes and a 
huge beak of a nose. "A young woman for a volunteer, please."
Spirit jumped forward, naturally. I suppose she had not understood what had 
happened to Faith, so was not devastated. "No, not a child!" a woman protested.
I glanced at Helse, understanding something she had said. "Pirates don't worry 
much about age," I said.
The instructor agreed. "Unfortunately true. Children need protection most of 
all—male and female." That startled me and I wasn't alone. Male?
He took Spirit aside and talked to her, explaining something in a voice too low 
for us to hear. She grinned, enjoying it. I noticed she wasn't wearing her 
finger-whip; she didn't want people to know about that, any more than I wanted 
them to know about my laser pistol.
Then they faced the class. "I am a pirate rapist," the instructor said, donning 
the grotesque mask. "This child is the victim. Watch what she does."
He turned on Spirit and clapped his hands on her shoulders, hauling her off her 
feet in the partial gravity of the Commons. "Ha, my pretty!" he cried. "I, fell 
pirate that I am, shall rape you to pieces!" He drew her in.
Spirit's knee came up suddenly. There was a solid contact. The man grunted and 
collapsed into a ball.
"Hey!" I cried, horrified. "You weren't really supposed to knee him!"
But the instructor uncurled and got up, unharmed, and Spirit was laughing 
joyfully. "I only kneed the outside of his hip, on the side away from you, 
silly," she explained. "In a real situation I would have aimed better."
The class relaxed. The point had been made. Girls had knees.
The instructor came at Spirit again, quickly drawing her in so close she could 
not bring her knee up effectively. His hands closed about her throat, choking 
her. Close as he was, this was not completely effective, but it looked bad 
enough.
But Spirit's own hands were free. Quickly she reached up to his face. Her 
fingers dug into his eye—and an eyeball popped out of its socket and flew 
through the air.
There was a scream from the class—followed by nervous laughter. It was not a 
real eyeball; it was a painted Ping-Pong ball from the mask he wore. But again 
the point had been made: Girls had fingers, and rapists had eyes.
A third time the instructor grabbed her. Now he pinned her arms under his own 
and held her close against him as they fell to the deck. No knees, no fingers 
were free. His leering one-eyed mask face thrust down against hers, as for a 
brutal kiss.
Spirit opened her mouth, jerked her head up, and bit into the huge plastic nose. 
The instructor roared in simulated pain, but she ripped the nose from the mask. 
Third point made: Girls had teeth.
The instructor let her go and got up. "So who is going to rape this child?" he 
asked rhetorically. "If not the nose, the tongue, or the ear. Chew hard, taste 
the blood, and rape will be forgotten. But when he lets go of you, flee for your 
life!" He paused, then added a sober qualification. "But if you are one and they 
are many, or the rapist is very strong, you cannot prevail. Hurt one and the 
others will kill you. In that case, it is better to submit. There are worse 
things than rape."
Which, again, was what Helse had said. The entire complement of the bubble was 
conscious of rape now, and trying to defuse it, to make it seem less evil. But 
the memory of Faith's ordeal remained fresh in my mind, and I wondered.
We practiced other techniques of self-defense, but they were less dramatic. Both 
throws and strikes were less effective in partial gravity than they would have 
been in full gravity, and we were more conscious than ever of our vulnerability 
to the superior weapons of the pirates. We were now much better prepared for the 
next pirate raid, assuming one came, but not very confident about our ability to 
fend them off.
Meanwhile, my father's crew kept tinkering with the gravity-lens projectors, 
shielding us against Callisto gravity and leaving us open to the backward pull 
of the sun. It took constant adjustment, but we seemed to be on schedule, and 
that was important, because our half rations would not last longer than we had 
budgeted. My description of our ongoing activities may make it seem as if we 
were lighthearted, but this was not the case; we were distracting ourselves from 
the fundamental grimness of our situation.
I brought Spirit in for a quiet conference with Helse. "You're a girl?" Spirit 
exclaimed, round-eyed. "I don't believe it!"
Helse opened enough of her shirt to show her strapped breasts. This was the 
first time I had actually seen them, and I felt guilty, and slightly irritated 
for that feeling.
"Hope has asked me to teach you how to be a boy," Helse said.
"I don't want to be a boy!" Spirit protested. "I'm just barely getting ready to 
start being a girl!"
"If the pirates come again, you be a boy," I said firmly. "After what happened 
to Faith, and what Helse has told me of the appetites of some men—"
Spirit nodded soberly, not continuing the argument the way I had expected. "I'll 
do it. I saw those pirates too, you know. Poor Faith! Why don't you go talk to 
her now, Hope? She needs you."
Surprised, I went, leaving Helse to teach Spirit whatever was needed privately. 
I knew Spirit would pick it up rapidly, for she had hardly begun to develop and 
was boyishly lanky. She also had that spirit of adventure that made her good at 
new things.
Faith was alone in cell 75, and cell 76 was empty for the moment, as my parents 
were busy elsewhere. None of our other neighbors were in their cells. We could 
talk in fair privacy.
Seeing her was a shock. My older sister had always been beautiful, but now she 
was not. The past two days had made an unkempt wretch of her. Her fair tresses 
were tangled, her clothing was creased and dirty, and her eyes were hollowed and 
staring. I had stayed away from her, knowing I had nothing to offer except guilt 
for my neglect, knowing that only my mother could do what little might be done.
"Faith..." I said tentatively, afraid she would screech at me to be gone, as 
perhaps I deserved. I had heard her crying, faintly, on and off, through the 
cell walls, and so had known she was not resting easy. That had intensified my 
guilt but not my courage. What could I say to her, really?
She looked up at me. She was not catatonic, as I had half feared. "Hope!" she 
said, her face brightening as she reached for my hands. "I missed you."
"I failed you," I said. "I'm sorry." That was grossly inadequate, and suddenly I 
was hopelessly choked, the despicable tears pushing through my eyes, and I tried 
to pull my hands away from her. In some times past it has been socially 
acceptable for a man to cry, but not in this century.
"No, no!" she protested. "You tried, Hope, you tried! No one could help me. I 
brought it on myself."
"The pirates did it!" I ground out bitterly. "I'll kill—"
"Am I still your sister?" she asked, not loudly.
Startled, I paused for reflection. What did she mean? I am a good judge of 
character, but this was a matter beyond my compass.
She was looking at me, and I realized that I had to answer. She placed great 
importance on this matter, confusing as the implication might be. "Of course 
you're my sister," I said. "How could it be otherwise?"
"I'm not what I was," she said.
She thought the rape had degraded her! "The fault is not yours!" I exclaimed. 
"No fault is yours! You were the victim of—"
Again I paused, suffering an ugly realization. "Of a male," I concluded. My 
sister had been shamefully abused—and I was a member of the species that had 
done it. I had a penis, the weapon of the male; I was culpable. I had 
experienced an infernal excitement as I watched the horror of her humiliation; I 
could not pretend otherwise. It had been the same when I helped Helse in the 
head; my member was eager to follow the course of the pirate's.
We talked more, and I think I helped her feel better. It was the least I could 
do. She was still my sister, but I was not sure I was still her brother. The 
seed of self-aversion had been planted in me, and it grew with a smoldering 
persistence. I hoped God would smite me if I ever had another erection, or even 
thought of touching a woman sexually. Male lust had destroyed my lovely sister, 
and I could not afford to share any part of that evil.
 
Chapter 9 — MASSACRE
Jupiter Orbit, 2-12-'15—We were hungry, but we were closing on the Jupiter ring 
system. In three more days we should be there.
Another ship overhauled us. My father looked worried. "Friend or enemy?" he 
asked.
"We can't take the chance," Diego said. "We must assume we have few friends in 
space. We'll have to set an ambush."
"But if they're friendly—we do need food."
"I didn't mean we'd attack them unprovoked, señor. We just need to be armed and 
ready—and if they manifest as pirates, we'll jump them, and this time we won't 
let them go. If they're not pirates, we'll never show what we're ready for."
My father nodded. "Sounds good to me. That means we'll have to act normal, with 
the women and children in evidence."
"Yes. But at the same time we must be armed and ready. We know the penalty for 
failure!"
"We know," my father agreed grimly. He hardly showed his reaction to the rape of 
his daughter, but I knew he had been deeply wounded. I think he maintained a 
firm presence because he was afraid my mother would collapse if he did not. I 
would have considered this mutual bracing in crisis to be a good object lesson 
in human nature had it not been my own family concerned. So my father carried on 
in a nearly normal manner, while my mother stayed mostly out of sight, and I 
think I understood them both and respected them for the way they handled it. 
Naturally I had to carry on too, so as not to weaken the family effort.
The ship closed and locked onto our main air lock. I wished there were some way 
to prevent this, but the designers of bubbles had not anticipated the problem of 
piracy in deep space. Any ship could attach to and board a bubble; all locks 
were interconnectable. Thus the best of intentions led to the worst of errors—as 
far as we were concerned.
The lock opened, being worked from the other side, and gaudily garbed, bearded 
men trooped in. They certainly looked like pirates!
My father went up to them. "We're glad you have come! We're trying to get to 
Jupiter, but we're short of food—"
The man hardly looked at him. "Bind the men. Line up the women—the young ones. 
We'll loot after we're sated—"
Diego needed no more. These pirates weren't even making any pretence at honest 
dealing! He drew a penknife and slashed at the nearest pirate, cutting his sword 
arm. The pirate screamed.
Our other men pounced, two to a pirate. In moments, almost bloodlessly, our 
forces had made the pirates captive. Our preparation had paid off handsomely!
Then something strange happened. There was a thin, keening sound, not exactly 
painful—but somehow I lost volition. I had been sitting with Spirit, who was now 
garbed as a boy, where we could keep an eye on both the pirates and cell 75, 
where Helse and Faith were. We were keeping both of them out of the action, just 
in case, though the rest of the bubble thought Helse was male. Now I watched the 
pirates turn on Diego and my father and throw them against the wall near the air 
lock—and somehow I didn't react.
García was near us. "Oh, no," he muttered. "They've got a pacifier."
A pacifier. I knew what that was, though I had never before experienced its 
effect personally. It was an electronic gadget that broadcast a semi-sonic wave 
that interfered with the human nervous system. It did not damage people or knock 
them out; it merely diluted their concentration or their will to action. It was 
like a soporific drug. Some rich men used these devices as sleeping medication, 
and they were supposed to be useful in prisons and mental institutions. And yes, 
I had heard of them being used illicitly to make women unresistive to rape. They 
were far too expensive for peasants to own; the pirates must have stolen one in 
the course of their routine marauding and kept it in reserve for just such an 
occasion as this. Probably someone in their ship had orders to watch and turn it 
on when things went wrong for them—as had been the case here.
I cursed that instrument—but not vehemently, for vehemence was not possible 
while it functioned. I damned myself for my failure to overcome the ennui, but 
could do no more than that. I just sat there and watched my father get knocked 
about and bounced into the wall.
But Spirit had more resistance than I did. She had always been a spirited girl, 
true to her name, though she had been named long before the trait manifested. 
Somehow her neural chemistry differed; she was able to assert partial free will. 
She began to move toward the pirates.
"They will hurt you," I warned without particular emphasis. I knew 
intellectually that we faced disaster, but I just couldn't get emotional about 
it. I was intellectually furious, but not emotionally. It was like watching a 
person in a drama do something stupid and identifying with that person, while 
being unable to influence his action.
"They won't notice me," she replied. She didn't sound excited; the pacifier was 
working on her, but not quite as effectively as on me.
"Why doesn't it affect the pirates?" García asked, as though this were a matter 
of idle curiosity. Then he answered his own question: "The field can be 
disrupted by certain countercurrents. The pirates can have little generators on 
their bodies, giving them protection." It was strange to be discussing this so 
calmly, while doing nothing about it.
Then a pirate messenger came through the lock and whispered to the leader. The 
leader looked alarmed. Then he set himself and started giving orders.
The pirates who were rounding up our unresisting men paused, then turned them 
loose. The leader raised his voice and addressed us all. "There is a Jupiter 
Ringuard patrol boat approaching. Now, we don't want any trouble with them. If 
they send an officer aboard, we want you all to convince him that we are 
traders, making a business deal with you. We're selling you food, and we're 
haggling over the price, but it's friendly."
He paused, looking around. "Fetch me some children," he ordered his henchmen.
The pirates ranged out in search of children. They took Spirit and me, and we 
went unresisting, though I saw Spirit grimace. It was uncertainty that 
restrained her rather than inability to act; she wasn't sure what would happen 
to the rest of us if she resisted.
They took Helse out of the cell, thinking her to be a boy my age, but left 
Faith, who looked disreputable at this time. One tiny silver lining for her, 
perhaps! They rousted out several smaller children. Soon eight of us were 
standing together before the air lock.
The pirate leader drew a great long dagger of a knife. He caught a six-year-old 
girl by the hair and yanked her head back, exposing her neck. He set the blade 
against her throat. "Now hear this!" he cried to us all. "I'll slit this throat 
myself, the moment anyone squawks. And my men will do the same to the others." 
At his gesture, the other pirates drew their blades and menaced the rest of us.
"So you'd better convince that officer, folks," the pirate leader concluded. 
"Unless you figure I'm bluffing. Then you do what you want, and we'll do what we 
want, because there's a price on all our heads if they recognize us, and we 
won't have anything to lose. If that officer catches on, he'll be dead too. So 
you can just take your choice between the robbery we have in mind—and your 
children."
The worst of it was, he wasn't bluffing. It did not require my talent to fathom 
that. These men really were killers, worse than the first bunch; they had made 
no pretence of being anything other than pirates from the outset.
"Now we'll turn off the box," the pirate leader concluded. "You will have 
volition—but we have your children."
The pirate by the air lock turned off the box. Suddenly I had strength of will 
again. But there was a blade at my back, and I knew it would be worse than 
futile to bolt. We had no way to coordinate, to run together, and nowhere to go 
if we did run. We had all been disarmed—and half of us really were children. 
Despite all our preparations, we were helpless.
That bothered me, I think, almost as much as our predicament. The fact that we 
had been caught unprepared, after thinking we were ready. Now an officer of the 
law—Jupiter law—the very type of person we most wanted to meet—was coming, and 
we could do nothing.
Three pirates took the two smallest girls and a baby boy through the lock into 
their ship. The boy whimpered and his mother moved nervously, but he went along. 
These were the ultimate hostages: the most vulnerable of our number. I could 
have identified all their parents by their reactions, had I not already known. 
Until we had these children safely back, we were completely nullified.
I glanced at our martial-arts instructor and saw him standing with a grim 
expression. He knew better than anyone that the pirates' device of protection 
was too effective. All we could do was cooperate and hope for a favorable break.
The space officer arrived. He was wearing a conventional space suit emblazoned 
with the great red ball of the Jupiter Service. He was the representative of the 
foremost power in the Solar System—but in person he was a small, somewhat pudgy 
man, seemingly uncertain. He would have been nothing, if it weren't for the 
devastating guns of the Navy ship trained on both our vessels. How easy it would 
be to alert that ship, and maybe get us all blasted to pieces! But that would 
hardly be to our advantage. We had to gamble on the lesser evil of the pirates' 
mercy.
Lesser evil! There would be more than one woman raped this time, I was sure, and 
anything we had of value would be taken, and some of our men would be beaten. 
God, I hated this!
"What are you up to here?" the officer asked in English, the language of the 
dominant power on Jupiter. There are, of course, four major languages used on 
Jupiter, but the speakers of the other three—French, Spanish, and Portuguese—did 
not maintain space patrols. That made English the most truly interplanetary one 
in Jupiter-space. Thus did economics translate into culture.
The pirate chief smiled ingratiatingly. "We are only traders, sir, peddling 
staples to these travelers."
The officer turned to face our group. "True?"
"We are doing business," my father said in halting English. This hurt me too. My 
father was lying, at the behest of our enemies, and I hated to see him thus 
demeaned. I have never liked lying, and I felt unclean for him. At the some 
time, I knew we had no choice. Even if Spirit and Helse and I were to bolt and 
escape our captors, as we might reasonably do if we acted in unison, we could 
not save the three smaller children, and their deaths would be on our hands. It 
was like a finger-bending hold that a bully puts on another child, to force him 
to tell the teacher the two are only playing. I hate that sort of thing, but the 
only practical answer I ever found to it was to avoid the situation. Once your 
finger is caught, it's too late for sensible solutions; you have to go along. So 
I understood the situation exactly—but a special kind of rage seethed in me. 
Pirates like this should be extirpated from the face of the universe!
The officer's brow wrinkled. I realized he did not understand my father's 
strongly accented English. Quickly I spoke up, in better English. "My father 
says we are doing business," I explained. And realized that now I shared the lie 
directly. Damn! How I hated every aspect of this!
"Drug business?" the Jupe officer demanded.
"No drugs," my father assured him, honestly enough, in Spanish, and that 
negation needed no translation.
"See that you don't. We'll be watching you." The officer turned abruptly and 
departed. It seemed his shuttle craft had latched on to the other port of the 
pirate ship, so he had to pass through that ship to leave us.
In a moment we felt the tremor of the shuttle craft disengaging and jetting 
away, back to its mother ship. That test was over, but I did not feel much 
relieved.
"Now release our children," my father said.
The pirate leader considered, and in that moment he reminded me uncomfortably of 
the way the Horse had pondered, after we had turned his men loose. "Ah yes, the 
children." He turned his head and yelled into the ship. "You through with the 
brats?"
"Just about," a voice called back.
Just about? I experienced a new chill. What were they doing with these children?
Then they brought the children back. The two little girls were naked and crying. 
A pirate carried the baby boy, who was also naked, but silent. The man stepped 
out and threw the boy to the floor.
A paroxysm of horror passed through our group. The boy's eyes were open and 
staring, and his chest was still. He was dead!
Now it was apparent that the little girls had been raped.
It seemed every man in our group launched himself at the pirates. But then the 
pacifier box came on again, and the charge became a shambles, its impetus gone. 
The broadcast interference was not psychological, it was physical; no amount of 
determination could overcome this paralysis of the voluntary functions.
The pirate leader drew his sword, smiling grimly. He seemed to be enjoying this. 
He had wanted us to see the children, and to react as we did, and to be cut down 
to helplessness again. "You made trouble for us. We don't like that."
My father was closest to him. The pirate raised his sword in a two-handed grip 
and swung it savagely. I saw, as if it were in slow motion, the blade cut into 
my father's side. It sliced through clothing and rib cage and into the lung, and 
the blood poured out like the living thing it was.
I knew in that moment that we should have blown the whistle on the pirates when 
the Jupe officer was here. We had been held passive by a threat to hostages who 
were even then being savaged. We had had nothing to lose, had we but known it. 
We had been too trusting—and now were paying the hideous price.
Would the pirates really have dared to kill the Jupe officer? Now I doubted it, 
for it would have meant the end of the pirate ship, possible complete 
destruction by a military missile.
Now it was carnage. Ruthlessly the pirates hacked apart our men, who were unable 
to resist. They left none alive. Such was the enervation spawned by the 
devil-box that all we could do was moan in soft horror. We couldn't act!
They hurled the bleeding bodies into a pile, then sheathed the swords and came 
after the women. Some, unsatisfied with what they saw, started rechecking the 
cells. I saw someone open the panel of number 75, where Faith still hid. I 
remembered that Helse had taken the opportunity provided by the presence of the 
Jupe officer to return to that cell; no one had been paying attention to her, 
among the pirates, so she had gotten away with it. But that minor escape had 
accomplished nothing, for there was the pirate at the cell.
The man looked down, then paused as if struck. Then he closed the panel and went 
on. What had happened? The pacifier box prevented any attack against any pirate.
Meanwhile, another pirate took hold of my mother, bringing my attention back to 
closer events. The cell, well around the curve of the Commons, was difficult to 
see anyway. I had positioned myself to have it in view without being close 
enough to attract attention to it.
The pirate literally tore the clothing from my mother, while she tried feebly to 
pull away, crying. I felt a truly terrible rage—but still it did not translate 
to my body. My nerves might as well have been cut, so that my limbs would not 
respond. It was hard enough just to turn my head.
There was a crash. My head jumped around. Spirit, possessing more volition than 
the rest of us, and perhaps more common sense, had reached the unguarded box, 
picked it up, and smashed it. Suddenly we all were free.
I ran to help my mother, who was on her back, the pirate tearing at the shreds 
of her underclothing as he came down on top of her. Neither he nor she realized 
that we refugees had been freed to fight. I leaped to land on his back, my hands 
reaching around to his head, trying to pull him back though my weight bore down 
on him. I was so crazy with grief and rage and horror that I remembered none of 
the precepts we had been drilled in; I just put his head in a bear-hug and 
shoved with my feet.
Angrily he shook me off, half rising and reaching for his sword. He was so 
powerful I couldn't possibly hold him. I realized belatedly I should have 
grabbed a hammer or something and smashed him on the head. Now I was in trouble.
But the pirate grunted and collapsed. My mother had remembered one of the 
lessons and jerked up her knee the moment she had leverage, and scored on his 
crotch. The fight was mostly out of him.
There followed an amazingly savage conflict, as the other women and children 
recovered their volition and sought revenge for the brutality of the pirates. 
They clawed at faces and bit at hands and kicked at anything in reach. The 
pirates were burly men, accustomed to violence and bloodshed, but they had not 
before been betrayed by their pacifier box. They weren't used to having the 
victims fight back.
There were a dozen pirates in the bubble; five times that many women pounced on 
them, like vicious harpies. I saw one woman kneel on the head of a pirate while 
another drove an iron knitting needle into his ear as deep as it would go. It 
took only a moment for the man to stop jerking and screaming. I saw another 
trying to castrate a pirate with a sharp letter opener, an antique that had 
surely been saved as an heirloom, since letters had not needed such service for 
centuries. An immense and truly horrifying well of violence had been tapped, and 
I saw that we were in our deepest essence no better than our enemies.
Injured and bleeding, the surviving pirates beat a disorganized retreat and 
slammed the air lock closed. In moments their ship disengaged and fled.
We were left with our victory—and our grief. We had had sixty grown men in our 
complement; all had been slain in the pirates' orgy of killing, while we were 
helpless. Three pirates also lay dead in their blood, and the baby boy. The two 
raped little girls stood staring, not grasping any of this.
I went to my father, hoping somehow to discover him alive, but knowing better. I 
looked down through burning eyes at his corpse. How terrible his fall, how 
ignoble the deed! Nothing in my father's life or philosophy justified this 
dreadful termination. And I, by getting my family into the trouble that forced 
our exodus, had been the cause.
In a moment I felt someone at my side. It was Spirit. I clutched her to me, 
sharing my agony with her. We had never dreamed of desolation like this.
Now the women were scattered across the Commons, suffering their separate 
reactions. No trace of their violence of a moment ago remained. The departure of 
the pirates had excised the savagery in us. Some had found their husbands and 
were keening their grief, kneeling and bending their torsos forward and back, 
letting out part of their pain. Others were standing absolutely still and 
silent, just looking down. I realized that there is no set formula for the 
abatement of intolerable loss.
"We must do something," Spirit said.
I wrenched myself away from my horror, realizing she was correct. We had 
suffered an appalling disaster—but disorganization would only exacerbate our 
situation. We had to have a new leader who would see to whatever had to be done. 
But who, with no men remaining among us?
"Use your talent, Hope," Spirit told me.
She sounded so practical that I looked at her. Her eyes were staring out of her 
head like those of a little automaton, but she was right again. Her shock simply 
had not yet progressed to her vocal cords. How she would react when the full 
impact affected her I did not know. Some horrors, like some joys, seem to be too 
massive to grasp all at once.
I thought a moment, then recalled a woman of grandmotherly age, huge and ugly 
and competent. She was Concha Ortega, a dark-skinned widow who was traveling 
with her three grandchildren. Not one of those children ever misbehaved. None of 
them had been among those taken hostage by the pirates, which perhaps would 
enable her to be more objective than she might otherwise have been.
I saw my mother making her way toward us. She was an awful sight. Her hair was 
ragged, her clothing shredded, and there was a glazed look about her. "Take care 
of Mother," I murmured to Spirit, and departed. I knew my little sister would do 
what little could be done.
I made my way to Señora Ortega, who was hauling the body of a pirate toward the 
air lock. "Excuse me, Doña Concha," I said to her. "I am Hope Hubris, Major 
Hubris's son. You must be our new leader."
She viewed me contemplatively. "By what authority, Don Hope, do you appoint me 
to such office?" She was extremely imposing, with half-cropped gray hair, 
line-encased eyes, and much mass of body, and I felt like the stripling I was as 
that gaze fell on me.
"It's just that I know," I said. "All our men are gone, and you are the best 
woman. You understand discipline, you know what to do. You must lead, or we 
shall be leaderless, and perish in space."
She pondered briefly. "You are right, little man," she said. "It must be done. I 
have suffered no recent losses; I can put my mind to this problem."
"Thank you, Doña," I said, retreating.
Señora Ortega raised her voice, addressing the entire bubble. "We must provide 
proper burial for our dead," she announced. "We must show proper respect."
Proper respect—she had hit a note that resonated. Grief was piercing, but 
respect was vital. It was the dues paid the dead.
Under Señora Ortega's direction the bodies were moved to the vicinity of the 
rear air lock and laid out there in such style as was possible, considering the 
absence of facilities and the scantness of gravity in that region. The survivors 
closed the eyes of the men, washed the bodies with sponges from the heads, and 
reclothed them for burial. The signs of devastation were removed as much as 
possible, so that the men appeared to be sleeping.
There was a problem with the bodies of the three pirates. No one wished to do 
them honor! We hauled them to the front air lock and dumped them 
unceremoniously. We closed the lock and made ready to use the override control 
to open the outer port without first decompressing the lock. That would hurl the 
bodies into space unburied, unlamented.
"No," my mother said, looking up from my father's body.
"Speak, Charity Hubris," Señora Ortega said. "What would you do with this 
rubbish?"
"I would use it to greet the next pirates who come," my mother said, and there 
was a note in her voice that sent a chill through me.
There was a murmur of surprised agreement among the women. How confidently would 
a pirate enter if he discovered three of his kind, mutilated and dead, in the 
air lock of the bubble supposedly waiting to be fleeced?
"Excellent notion, Doña Charity," Señora Ortega agreed. I noticed how careful 
she was to employ the ceremonial address, providing respect to the living as 
well as to the dead. She was indeed the proper leader. "We shall save those 
bodies for such use. We shall post the warning of the skull on the stake." For 
in Earth's past, savage tribes had demarked their ranges by such means, plain 
warning to intruders.
Then she paused in thought. "Should we evacuate the air from that lock?"
Even the children knew the consequence of leaving bodies in air and warmth. 
There would come a horrendous stench.
Grimly, the women decided to leave the air in the lock.
That ugly business done, we returned to the rites for our gallant men. Normally 
death is a family affair in our culture—but not all the men had adult kin here 
in the bubble, while some families had made this trip without men, so everything 
was awkward, and it seemed best to handle it as a community effort. We arranged 
to have all the men suitably prepared, and we tore up one black gown donated for 
the purpose into strips for black armbands of mourning for all. Even though we 
were all Hispanic, there were differences in the details of our customs, so 
again we compromised on the single uniform service. There were suggestions of 
the Roman rite and the Gothic rite, with our scant and precious incense burned 
and the lips of some men anointed with oil. Dena Concha led us in singing the 
psalm De profundis: "Out of the depths have I cried to Thee, O Lord... I trust 
in the Lord, my soul waits for His word..." Oh, it moved me; I had to believe 
that the Lord would accept my father and treat him kindly. Then a few 
complimentary words were spoken for each dead man, and there was general praise 
for the group of them. Doña Concha did a good job; she had been through it with 
her own husband, who had died some years before, so understood the needs of the 
families though she had not herself been touched this time.
I fancy myself as being not superstitious or overly emotional, but that quiet, 
sincere service helped me tremendously. When she praised my father, calling him 
Don Major and describing in a few words his integrity and bravery in leading our 
group toward Jupiter, tears of sheer joy mixed with those of grief in my eyes, 
and the terrible burden of his loss eased significantly. It is truly bad to lose 
one's father, but it is best that he suffer a hero's demise. I'm sure the others 
felt the same as she spoke of their own men.
It was of course impossible to bury them in a sanctified cemetery or to place 
them in crypts with flowers or to kiss the earth as it was thrown into the 
coffins, and we elected not to use the few simple candles we possessed, not 
wishing to tax the air-recycling system with so much open flame. We decided to 
do the best we could: to bury them temporarily outside on the bubble. A select 
crew donned space suits and took the bodies one by one out the rear lock. We 
were not relegating them to space, but securing them to the outside of the 
bubble in plastic wraps and whatever else could be made to serve, so that they 
would be preserved by the cold and vacuum until the time they could be properly 
interred on planetary ground. We could not keep them inside the bubble, of 
course, and outside was as perfect a deep-freeze as exists. They would be 
preserved intact for Eternity, out there.
So it was done, and we sang the canticle Benedictus with the antiphon Ego sum 
resurrectio et vita, I am the resurrection and the life. The earth had, 
figuratively, been thrown into the graves, and the necessary formalities were 
over.
Señora Ortega explained gently that though we all should normally be permitted 
to retire to our justified grief, it was nonetheless necessary for us to keep 
the bubble functioning and on course; we would never be able to give our men 
proper burial if we did not survive ourselves. So she declared an end to formal 
grief, leaving only the armbands, as if a year had suddenly passed. She asked 
those of us who were able to function to join her in operating the bubble. This 
would not, she assured us, signify any lack of feeling or any affront to the 
dead, but rather our recognition of what had to be done in a most difficult 
situation. The way she expressed it, it was easy to agree. We had chosen well in 
this leader.
When a small crew of those women who had some grasp of the principles of 
gravity-shield navigation had been assembled, Señora Ortega dismissed the rest 
of us to our cells. "The best thing you can do right now is mourn your dead in 
privacy," she said. "Send them to heaven with your prayers. I know what you are 
feeling; my own grief is long behind me, and it occurred in better times than 
these you suffer now, but I remember." In this way she returned informally what 
she had denied formally: the timely expression of grief.
We went to our cells, but it was not a simple retirement. I realized abruptly 
that my mother should not be alone in her cell. I spoke to Faith, who had 
remained in her own cell throughout, thus missing much of the horror of the 
pirate encounter. It was not that she lacked feeling for our father, but that 
the full appreciation of his death added at this time to her existing state 
could have destroyed her. Yet I feared for the welfare of our mother too. 
"Please join her," I asked Faith. "You can understand and comfort her better 
than I could, for you are a woman."
Faith looked at me with a head-tilt of startlement, then swept back her hair and 
climbed to the next cell. She knew her own dismay had been preempted by a 
greater one.
But now Spirit was alone. I hesitated, knowing this was not right for her 
either.
Helse arrived. "Go with your sister, Hope," she said. "I am not bereaved, except 
to the extent I knew and respected those members of other families who died. I 
will try to help someone who needs it."
I felt a warm surge of gratitude toward her. "Thanks." I joined Spirit in her 
cell.
Spirit abruptly flung her arms about me, buried her face in my shoulder, and 
bawled. It was at that moment of letdown that the enormity of our tragedy struck 
me. Until then the continuing exigencies of our situation had caused me to hold 
much of the horror at bay, except when I thought specifically of my father.
Now it overwhelmed me too. I clung to my crying little sister and sobbed as 
vehemently as she.
 
Chapter 10 — TO LOVE AND BE LOVED
Jupiter Orbit, 2-14-'15—But a person cannot cry forever. Spirit bounced back 
first, somewhat wasted, having washed much of the first rush of grief out of her 
system. I knew she still suffered, but already she was coming to terms with it. 
I had to follow her in that recovery, for I was now the oldest (and only) male 
in our family, and that is a thing of special significance. I would not presume, 
of course, to order my mother around, but it would be my position to formulate 
family initiatives and make suggestions that I knew my mother and older sister 
would take seriously. So I forced my own continuing agony of soul into a 
compartment, like the cell I slept in, closed the panel on it as well as I 
could, and required myself to function. My mother and sisters could grieve; I 
would have to endure.
There were meals to be fetched and distributed, though our shortage was now, 
ironically, less acute because of our diminished number. Señora Ortega asked me 
to resume my prior capacity as food distributor, and to expand my activities as 
necessary, since I was now the oldest male in the bubble. Oh yes, that woman 
knew how to make a young person do her bidding! I agreed and got to work, and 
found that there was indeed reprieve from grief in work.
We had to reorganize the heads, for it was senseless to reserve half the 
bathrooms for males who no longer lived. I asked Spirit to explain to women how 
they might be able to use the male facilities by assisting each other as I had 
assisted Helse—but cautioned her that she should present this as her own idea, 
and to leave Helse out of it, as Helse was still considered a boy. If Señora 
Ortega suspected that Helse was older than I, or that she was female, Señora 
Ortega did not say. I think she did suspect, and did us both the quiet favor of 
assuming that Helse was a boy a few months younger than I. Women of 
grandmotherly age can be discreet; they have had a great deal of time to learn 
that art.
There was further cleaning to be done, removing bloodstains from the floor and 
walls of the Commons. Helse and Spirit and I helped with it all, keeping 
ourselves constantly busy.
It may seem that my grief for my father was shallow, since I was soon 
functioning in virtually normal fashion, and am not referring to it in every 
paragraph of this narrative. I protest that this was not the case. My father was 
much in my mind, but I knew I could not bring him back, no matter how much pain 
I felt, and it is pointless to grow repetitive here. I worked to help alleviate 
the suffering of the living, including especially the members of my own family, 
and I hope I succeeded in this. I discovered that in this effort was the most 
effective reduction of my own pain. So do not slight me for my seeming neglect; 
I have written as much of this aspect as I care to, though it hardly does 
justice to the reality.
Spirit had found another girl her age who, of course, had suffered similar loss, 
and they spent the next night together. That freed me to return to Helse—and I 
needed to do that, because she maintained her masculine masquerade, and only I 
could help her in the head. How she managed that one night by herself I do not 
know; perhaps she borrowed a mop handle to push against the far wall and hold 
herself in place. It cannot have been comfortable.
The first night I was back with her, after the slaughter, I found it difficult 
to relax, let alone sleep. I tossed about in the partial gravity, but it was not 
my own discomfort that haunted me so much as my father's. He was outside in the 
cold, now; was he shivering? Did he gasp for air in the cruel vacuum? Of course 
not—yet as I drifted off to sleep, I phased into a dream awareness of Major 
Hubris, alive and well, to my gratified surprise. But I knew, even in the dream, 
that it was not so, and that if I embraced him I would feel the absolute chill 
of space in his flesh. I felt it my duty to advise him of the truth that he was 
evidently not yet aware of, for my father always preferred to be in touch with 
reality even when it was not pleasant. Whereupon, surprised, he turned slowly to 
a staring corpse with a great red wound in his side. He looked in that instant 
like Jesus Christ, and I could not scream in horror lest I defile an image I was 
not worthy to approach.
I shuddered awake, finding Helse holding me. Oh, death is no thing of joy! "I 
would help you if I could," Helse murmured. "But this is not like the other, not 
like the case with Faith. I have had no direct experience with death."
"Leave me alone!" I snapped. I shouldn't have done that, and don't know why I 
did it, and was sorry immediately, but unable to apologize. Grief is like that, 
too. Grief is not necessarily any prettier than death, and the grief-stricken do 
not wander like lambs grateful for the shepherd's guidance. They can be more 
like wounded wolves, snapping at those who would help them.
She did leave me alone, and I slept intermittently again. But I had not escaped 
my nightmare. It came at me again and again, like a ravening monster, its moist 
teeth seeking to rend my flesh. It was guilt, the personification of my neglect. 
Could I have done something to avert the tragedy? Why had I had such ennui when 
the pirates were slaughtering our men? Why had I stood silent when the pirates 
hoodwinked the officer from the Jupiter patrol? Certainly the pirates had held 
three children hostage—but those children had been doomed anyway, and by my 
neglect our entire group had become vulnerable. Why hadn't I screamed the truth 
to the officer? It seemed so simple in retrospect. I had known the pirates were 
not to be trusted. I banged my fist against the wall in frustration.
I woke again, feeling Helse's restraint on my arm. "Hope, you'll hurt yourself!" 
she protested.
"I ought to kill myself!" I flared. "I let my father die!"
"But there was the pacifier. You tried to—"
"Shut up!" I shouted, and spun through the same cycle of self-reproach and 
inaction as before.
She shut up, and again I tried to sleep. If I did, I got no satisfaction of it, 
for the horror and guilt stalked me relentlessly. Gradually I realized that the 
truths I cached away in emotional compartments during the day only gained 
strength to conquer me at night when my resistance was down. And the most 
fundamental truth was the one I had glimpsed before, when Faith was raped: A man 
was a creature of murderous lusts, and I was a man. I might as well have raped 
my sister and murdered my father myself. Only circumstance had put me in the 
camp of the victims rather than that of the perpetrators. I was a damned 
creature, because of my anatomy and nature.
I contemplated my erect member and cursed it. "You are the cause of all this!" I 
ranted. "You don't care who you hurt!" For I knew that a sword is but a symbol 
of the phallus, and when it plunges into a living body and causes blood to 
spurt, that is a symbolic sexual act. That is why women are not much for 
violence; they lack the weapon. "I ought to rip you out by the root!"
Again I woke to find Helse's hands on me, preventing me from attempting what I 
had threatened in the dream. My rage was swiftly replaced by chagrin, for of 
course she had seen me handling my aroused private.
But she said nothing, and I remembered that the male member was no stranger to 
her. She knew better than anyone else the nature of the lusts of the male. I 
turned my back on her and struggled back to a semblance of sleep once more. This 
time I made it fairly well through the arbitrary night of the bubble.
 
The following day was grueling. My intermittent night's sleep left me 
ill-prepared to fend off the emotional horrors. I went about my business in grim 
silence. Spirit tried to speak to me, but I repulsed her, then cursed myself for 
it when I saw her silent, hurt tears, but I did not try to make amends. It was 
as though my emotions were under the type of interdict the pacifier box had 
instilled, so that I could lash out verbally but not apologize.
I saw that there were others as morose as I, and some refused to come out of 
their cells to eat. One woman went into the head and did not emerge; when 
someone finally checked, they discovered her dead. She had cut open an artery in 
her thigh and bled to death on the bidet. Suicide.
I knew exactly how she felt.
Helse guided me to our cell early. "Hope, you are dying on your feet," she told 
me. "I think I can help you, now."
"Nothing can help me," I muttered, but I was so tired and dazed that I offered 
no resistance.
Then, perhaps as much to hurt her as from curiosity, I asked: "That pirate who 
started to go after you and Faith—why did he quit?"
"I spoke the word," she said.
That was what I had suspected. But had the pirate left them alone because he 
feared QYV—or because he thought they were two teen-age boys? I resented the 
fact that my parents had had no such magic word to protect them. What grief we 
all might be spared if we could deter malice with a single spoken syllable!
When Helse had secured the cell and had me alone, she used some cloth to block 
the faint light spilling in around the panel, putting us in darkness. Then she 
dropped to the floor and moved about, away from me. Two meters cubed is not a 
lot of space for two people, but I was in the corner and she was in the opposite 
corner. I could hear her without seeing her.
In a moment she was back. "Please remove your clothes," she said.
"What?" I asked dully.
"I am nude. I want you to be too."
"I don't understand."
"I know. I can help you sleep well." She came to me and took hold of my shirt 
and started to remove it for me.
I resisted. "Helse, if anyone should look in here—"
"I told them I would talk to you and straighten you out. You have been bristling 
at everyone. No one will look, or listen—and anyway, I've blocked the cracks. 
They can't see in from the Commons."
"They could wrench open the panel, idiot! If you don't have your clothes on—they 
will know—"
"Spirit already knows."
"She's a child."
"Yes." Again she worked at my shirt.
This time I let her do it. I didn't know what she was up to, but it was better 
than the nightmares I faced when I slept.
After she got the shirt off, she worked on the trousers. Now I was afraid to 
stop her, for she seemed to know what she was doing, while I was a mass of 
confusion. She bid me stand, and I stood, and she undid my belt and took my 
clothing down. I simply let her continue until she had me naked.
She ran her hands lightly over my body in the darkness, not excluding the 
genital. I was aroused, of course; it could hardly have been otherwise. There 
was something about being undressed by a woman this way. She evinced no shock or 
surprise, and I was reminded again that she had done things with men I had never 
imagined. But such would not be the case with me; I was no pirate or seducer of 
children.
She made me lie on the floor, using some wadded clothing for cushioning, then 
lay down on her side beside me. Her warm bare thigh touched mine, and her cool 
soft breast rested against my left arm. I hardly dared breath.
"Hope, I want to tell you about sex," she said. "I've been listening to you 
talking in your sleep, and I think I understand your problem. You saw the 
pirates rape your sister, and you think it's your fault. You think all men are 
like that. You're afraid one day you'll rape someone."
She was right on target. I said nothing.
"Well, you won't," she said. "I'm not as sharp as you are about judging people, 
but I do know something about this. All men are not alike, in any way. Some are 
terrible, like the pirates—but some are so gentle and nice they would never hurt 
anyone. Most are in between, like your father—and you. They all like sex. That 
has nothing to do with the way they are. But the bad ones use sex to hurt 
people, and the good ones use it to make people happy. The pirates were not 
getting pleasure of Faith, they were punishing the people of the bubble. That's 
different. Just because you have this"—at this point she put her hand firmly on 
my rigid genital—"it doesn't mean you're bad. I know you, Hope; I know you as 
well as I possibly can, in a week. I know you are good. You get angry, you make 
mistakes, you suffer—but you are good. You have nothing to hurt me—or anyone."
Still the vision of the pirates raping my sister haunted me, and of the one 
trying to rape my mother. Between those two was the murder of my father, 
inextricably linked. I never wanted to share any part of the life or lust of 
those pirates! I remembered how my member had swelled when I saw Faith raped, 
and it damned me at this very moment similarly. It had a will of its own, and I 
could not trust it.
"It's the difference between a theft and a gift," she continued. "When you steal 
something, or take it by force, you hurt someone. But when you accept a gift, 
you hurt no one, and both the giver and the receiver profit. The gracious 
acceptance of a gift is a gift in itself. All you have to do is decide never to 
steal, never to cheat or deceive or force, and always to accept a proper gift. 
Then you will know you are not like those pirates, and never will be. You will 
know that you have tamed the fires in you, and turned it to proper advantage."
I pondered that. It seemed to make sense. "All right."
She waited, but I did not move. I was holding my fire tame. "I don't think I've 
quite convinced you yet," she said. "You will still have nightmares. You still 
think you can hurt me if you let yourself go."
"Yes." I was afraid that if I moved at all, I would do something terrible.
"I'm going to make you know it's not true," she said. "This is the one thing I 
can do for you, to repay you for helping me, for keeping my secret."
I thought she was going to talk to me again, explaining how I was normal and it 
was all right to be normal. But she didn't speak. She shifted herself about, 
climbing on top of me. I refused to move a muscle, not from any antagonism to 
her—it was impossible to feel that now, for her sleek woman's body electrified 
me wherever it touched my flesh—but because any motion at all would represent a 
commitment, one way or the other.
She held herself above me, then lay full length on me, her breasts resting on my 
chest, her thighs falling outside mine. She brought her head down and touched my 
lips with hers, and it was as though I was being propelled through space without 
moving at all. I had never known that mere touch could have such an effect. 
Still I did not move.
She shifted herself again, getting her balance, then used one hand to catch and 
guide my member, pointing it the way she wanted. She raised her hips, then 
slowly settled on me again. So gently and easily that I could hardly believe it 
was real, I found myself inside her.
"Now tell me this is evil," she murmured, letting her thighs settle all the way 
against me, and bringing the rest of her body down so that she lay as she had 
before, her breasts pressing me down. Only one detail had changed, a small 
detail, yet with an overwhelming significance.
Still I would not move or speak. It was fear as much as stubbornness. I really 
did not know what to do, and was afraid that anything would be wrong, and would 
make her angry or hurt her.
"Tell me you are raping me," she said, putting her hand behind my head as her 
whole body pressed more tightly against mine. Her weight was light, less than 
half-gee; it might have been uncomfortable in full Earth gravity, but even so, 
her body was the most wonderful thing I could possibly know.
"Tell me you love me," she whispered, and now her tone of challenge had become 
one of urgent pleading. When I still was silent, she dipped her head and kissed 
me again, but this differed, as the other position differed from before, from 
the prior kiss. This time her mouth was open, and her tongue came through to 
touch mine.
I was at last overwhelmed. "I love you!" I breathed around our tongues, and was 
transported by a paroxysm of amazing sensation.
I woke, it seemed, an eon later. Helse lay beside me, her hand holding mine. She 
squeezed my fingers, and I knew she was awake.
"What is it that you want, that cannot be bought?" I asked, remembering what she 
had said before.
"You know it now."
I knew it now, I discovered. "To love and be loved," I said. "But why me?"
"You're a decent person, and you need me," she said simply.
"I need you," I agreed. And slept again, my hand in hers, without ill-dream.
In the morning, bubble time, I found her still beside me, sleeping. Still I 
could not see her, except as the vaguest outline, and I discovered I did not 
dare touch her body, for fear that everything would turn out to be illusion. I 
realized that she had been kind to me, and more than kind; she had shown me in 
an absolutely believable manner that sex itself was not evil. In the time 
following, that realization was to expand and deepen, becoming a fundamental 
aspect of my philosophy. This was Helse's invaluable gift to me: my honest 
acceptance of my male nature.
But right then I did not perceive that essence so clearly. I was only aware of 
Helse herself, and of my need for her. Had she given me her body for a night, to 
tide me through the storm of my guilt and grief, or was there more to it than 
that? I had said I loved her, and indeed I did, in that overwhelming flush of 
feeling that a person my age and temperament is capable of; it was sudden but 
profound. But she, she had not said she loved me, and she was a year older than 
I...
In my desperation to know, I reached out and found her shoulder. She woke 
immediately, and caught my hand in hers.
"Helse," I said, but then could not find the phrasing for the question.
"Yes, Hope," she murmured.
"Is—will there be another time?"
She brought my hand to her lips and kissed it, sending a sweet tingle through 
me. "If you ask me."
"Ask you?" I repeated, perplexed.
"I won't do it for you, next time, Hope," she explained. "You will have to ask 
me. Then I will do it."
That wasn't enough of an answer. I struggled to formulate my objection. "I don't 
want your acquiescence. That could be for any reason. I want your love."
She frowned against my palm. "I never said I loved you, Hope."
"I know. But I love you!"
She sighed. "You are less experienced than I am, Hope. You mistake rapture for 
love. Your emotion is shaken by tragedy. It is right for me to ease your 
confusion in my fashion, but not to ask too high a price. When you are able to 
put it in perspective, you will know that love is not made in a single night."
I jerked my hand away from her, hurt.
She apologized immediately. "Hope, I did not mean to imply your emotion is not 
real or strong. Only that it is too soon to distinguish passion from love. I 
have been loved for a night by many men. By day they have other interests. Had I 
loved any of them, I would have been hurt, for my love is not just for a night. 
Give me leave to protect myself from heartbreak, as I protect my body from abuse 
by concealing it from strangers."
I began to understand a little better. "But you could love me, if you were sure 
of me?"
"It is my dream, to love and be loved."
Still that gentle evasion. She was being honest with me, and I appreciated that, 
but still it was hard to accept. I sat up, disgruntled, wanting more than I had 
any right to ask.
"May I kiss you?" she asked.
"I would like that," I said, somewhat stiffly.
She got to her knees, leaned across, found my face, and kissed me. Her lips were 
warm and moist, and her body where it touched mine was wonderfully soft. "When 
you ask, and it is granted, it is good," she said.
"I wish I could ask for your love."
She smiled, a faint gleam of teeth in the dark, and separated. We dressed, then 
went out in the guise of two boys to visit the head. Helse had opened a door to 
a new dimension to me, the dimension of love, but some things had not changed.
 
Chapter 11 — SACRIFICE
Jupiter Orbit, 2-15-'15—Bubble life was routine, as far as possible. I still 
felt the terrible loss of my father, and knew it was worse for my mother and 
sisters. Helse had taken a huge segment of my aroused emotion and turned it 
positive, so that I had a kind of internal counterbalance. But my mother and 
sisters lacked that. I realized that, thanks to Helse's gift, I was now stronger 
than they, like a shipwrecked sailor who has found a barrel to cling to while 
others had nothing. I could not share my support with them, and could not even 
confess its nature, for they believed Helse was a boy like me.
Except Spirit. She caught me alone in the course of the day, and had to needle 
me. "How was it, brother?" she asked snidely.
A host of flip answers escaped before I could formulate any of them verbally. "I 
love her," I said simply.
She glanced at me a long moment, having the grace to be embarrassed. "I'm 
sorry."
I put my arm about her shoulders, forgiving her. "I know how it is," I said, 
remembering how snappish I had been before, when my internal problem radiated 
sparks at other people. I had no need of that anymore. "You're still my sister. 
You're the only one who shares that secret."
"Still, I'm jealous," she admitted.
"You have no need to be. You aren't competing with her."
"Yes, I am! If you had to throw one of us into space, which one would it be?"
The way to counter a question like that is to reverse it. "If you had to throw 
Faith or me into space, which would it be?"
"That depends who I'm mad at at the moment." But Spirit turned sober, 
considering the implication.
"When you grow up and love a man, I'll try not to be too jealous," I said.
"Oh, go ahead and be jealous!" she muttered. But she smiled. Then, in the 
treacherous way she had, she returned to her opening question. "Tell me what 
it's like," she begged. "Please, Hope—I really want to know."
Spirit was twelve. Did I have the right to tell her about sex? I had just 
learned about it myself! Of course we both knew the sterile mechanics as taught 
in school, and the applicable terms; we also both knew that such things had 
almost nothing to do with real sex or love.
I remembered the way older children, both male and female, had teased me in past 
years about my curiosity and ignorance. It seemed to be a conspiracy of silence, 
and I had never believed it was justified. I resolved not to do that to my 
sister. "I was inside her," I said carefully. "And heaven was inside me. I wish 
it could have lasted forever."
"What about all the pain and blood?" she asked, and I saw that she was really 
worried. She, too, had seen the rape of Faith. I should have been aware of her 
natural reaction before. I had to reassure her about the other side of sex, as 
Helse had reassured me, so she would not fear it.
"There was no pain or blood. Nothing but joy."
"But—"
"Give me your hand." I took her small hand in mine and squeezed it cruelly.
"Ouch!" she shrieked.
"That's rape," I said. Then I took her hand again, smoothed it out caressingly, 
and kissed it. "That's love."
She looked at her extremity. "But that's only my hand!"
"Just one part of you—and me," I agreed. "Another part was used to hurt Faith 
terribly—but last night I used it to love Helse. The difference is in how you 
use it. That's what she taught me."
Spirit smiled quirkily. "I thought you used it to pee." She was being humorous, 
resisting the notion, as I had resisted it during the night. Too simple a 
telling does not necessarily get the point across, because the listener isn't 
ready to believe. So I took stock again, pretty much as Helse had.
"That too," I agreed. "But not last night. Just about every part of the body has 
more than one use, like the mouth that is used to eat and to talk or the nose 
used to breathe and smell. You just have to keep in mind which use you want."
"Yes, it's hard to talk with your mouth full," she agreed. She still didn't 
accept it.
I caught her shoulder, making her face me, suddenly finding it vitally important 
to spread the new message. "When you grow older, Spirit, and you love a boy, and 
he loves you, don't be afraid of his body. What he has for you is not cruel and 
not dirty; it's a form of love. The great crime of the pirates is that they take 
something perfect and abuse it, making it terrible. Don't judge all men by 
them!"
"Oh, I don't judge our father by—"
"And how do you think you and I came to exist?"
"There is that," she agreed, with a wan smile. But her brow furrowed again. 
"Still, I don't know."
"Ask Helse," I said. "She will tell you."
"I will." Spirit left me. I hoped I had not wished something on Helse she would 
have preferred to avoid.
I talked with Señora Ortega, to learn how we were doing on our voyage. She 
squinted at me. "You're the lad who appointed me captain," she said with the 
trace of a grim smile. "Yesterday you looked ready to die; today you are alive."
"You're the right person," I agreed. "That funeral service really made me feel 
better. And I had a good night. I'll be all right now. Are we on course?"
"A good night," she repeated. "If I didn't know better, lad, I'd think you had 
discovered love." Maybe she was teasing me; it was impossible to know how much 
she had guessed.
She got down to serious business quickly. "No, we're not on course," she said 
frankly. "Our girls aren't as apt as the men were; we haven't had the training. 
The mechanism is simple, but the application takes practice. So we're handling 
the vectors clumsily. Oh, we're getting there, but it won't be on the original 
schedule. We'll have to stay on half rations."
Well, it could have been worse. I moved on to talk with children. I did not 
consider myself a child anymore, and certainly it had been a man's duty I did 
with Helse, but my talent related well to the young folk. I tried to cheer them, 
for they had the least resources to comprehend or deal with the calamity that 
had befallen us all. We set up games in the Commons, even organizing a soccer 
match, using a tightly wrapped bundle of paper refuse for the ball. It really 
wasn't much, in this confined and curvaceous space and with the trace gravity, 
but it did bring a few smiles to some faces and kept the kids occupied. I felt 
this was the most useful thing I could do, for now, spreading some of the balm 
Helse had provided me, as it were.
Helse joined me in the afternoon. She still looked just like another boy, but 
now I fancied I could perceive feminine contours and mannerisms in her, hidden 
from other eyes. I still had not seen her body clearly in its natural state, and 
now I wanted to, knowing the rapture it offered me. "I have been talking with 
your sisters," she said with a wry smile.
"I don't like keeping secrets from Spirit," I said, knowing my little sister had 
wasted no time on her fact-finding mission.
"She said you said you love me, and had great joy last night."
"It's true," I admitted. "She asked me and I told her. I wouldn't lie to my 
little sister. I didn't think you would mind. Spirit's curious about everything, 
but she never betrays a confidence."
"Then you don't mind if I tell her—" She shrugged. "—Anything?"
"No, of course I don't mind! I sent her to you. I don't want her to be afraid."
She shook her head. "You are remarkably open."
I frowned. "No, I'm not open with everyone. Spirit is special. We don't deceive 
each other. We fight sometimes, but we always understand. If she had a similar 
experience, she would tell me. Now that she's seen her sister raped, she needs 
to understand that it doesn't have to be that way."
"Yes, of course. I was surprised, that's all. Men usually talk about such things 
to other men, not to their sisters."
"Spirit is different," I repeated firmly.
"Not Faith?"
"Faith is more like an ordinary sister."
"She braced me," Helse said. "I had to tell her my secret."
"I don't see why," I said, annoyed. "I try to protect Faith, but I don't share 
secrets with her."
"She really cares for you, Hope. She appreciates what you've done for her. The 
siblings are much closer in your family than they were in mine; I envy you that. 
Faith saw the change in you today, and she worried."
"But I didn't talk with her today!"
"Still, she noticed. She's not totally out of it, Hope; she's recovering. Your 
support really helped her."
"Oh." I was pleased. "She must have figured it would take more than a talking-to 
to put me back on track."
"Yes. She guessed there was a liaison. And she thought I was male."
I felt myself abruptly blushing. "She thought—?"
"She hoped it wasn't so. But she feared for your orientation, right now, under 
this terrible stress. So I had to tell her."
"I guess you did!" I agreed, still embarrassed. "I'd better talk to her."
"No need. She was relieved. I think she thought she could be responsible for you 
turning away from the opposite sex, because of the rape."
"She was concerned for my reaction to what happened to her?" I asked, amazed. 
"Rather than for her own horror?"
"She's got that basic Hubris spirit of unity. It's a precious quality. She would 
do anything to spare the others in her family the humiliation she suffered."
"I guess I didn't give her enough credit," I said ruefully. "She, worried about 
me!"
"I was concerned too, maybe in a slightly different way. That's why I acted."
"You sure did!" I agreed. "In one hour you changed my life forever."
"I think Faith and I are going to be friends."
"Yes, I think so." I was both embarrassed and gratified: embarrassed for the way 
I had evidently seemed to those who were close to me, and gratified for the way 
they had tried to help.
After that I talked with Faith myself, explaining what Helse had done for me. 
"I'm not ashamed to be a man," I told her. "I don't for a moment condone what 
happened to you, but—"
"It's all right, Hope," she said. She looked better now; she had washed herself 
and brushed out her hair. She was indeed recovering, having more inner strength 
than I had credited. "We have all had a terrible education in the past few days. 
I'm glad you found her. I should have known better than to worry."
"How is Mother?" I asked cautiously. I was glad to see Faith regaining her 
equilibrium, but I wasn't certain how far it went.
"Hope, we have to take care of her! I thought I was badly off, until—it's so 
much worse for her!"
"What can we do for her?" I asked, surprised by my sister's animation. Faith had 
always been relatively sedate and retiring; Spirit was the wild one in our 
family, and I was in between. Now Faith was turning more decisive. Could her 
awful experience have changed her outlook?
"Helse told me a pirate tried to rape Mother, and you fought him off."
"More or less," I agreed. "Spirit smashed the pacifier box, so the rest of us 
could fight. I wasn't very effective. Spirit really saved us all."
"I don't want—that—to happen to Charity Hubris," Faith said firmly. "She's our 
mother, Hope! So if the pirates come again, and we can't stop them—" She broke 
off, evidently not finding it easy to speak her thought.
"We'll stop them somehow!" I said with a certain bravado.
"If they have that awful pacifier box, or something—" She took a breath and 
swallowed. "If it comes to that, Hope, I want you to send them my way, not 
Mother's way."
I stared at her, horrified. "Faith! You know what they do!"
She smiled wanly. "I think I know as well as any woman can. But what have I to 
lose, now? Hope, we can't let our mother be defiled."
"I hate even to think of this!" I exclaimed. "We should kill every pirate who 
comes into this bubble!"
"Yes. We should. But if we can't—then we must handle them another way. Promise 
me you will do it, if it needs to be done."
I resisted, but she kept at me, somewhat the way Helse had—and in the end I had 
to yield and give my promise. There is something about the way a woman can 
importune a man, even if she is his sister. But I felt unclean.
Perhaps it was prophetic, for within an hour after that the pirates did come 
again. Not the same ones—but already the term "pirate" was generic.
We did not know at first that they were pirates. Their ship was in good repair 
and bore the emblem of the Mars Merchant Marine. That did not signify much, 
because for reasons of interplanetary commerce many non-Martian vessels elected 
to register with Mars. Martian taxes were less than those of Jupiter, Uranus, or 
Earth, and fuel was cheap there, as the so-called Red Planet had much of the 
fuel of the Solar System. But mainly, as I understood it from my school studies, 
Mars had extremely lax laws governing the wages and treatment of spacemen. The 
large trading companies could operate more profitably by economizing on safety 
measures and payrolls and retirement benefits, so they enlisted with the planet 
that permitted this. The maritime powers of Jupiter professed to deplore such 
shoddy mechanisms—yet quite a number of their ships operated under the emblem of 
Mars. So a Martian trader ship could be anything. Except, we naïvely supposed, a 
pirate.
They locked onto us and opened the air lock. There was a pause before the inner 
door opened, and we knew they had discovered the dead and spoiling pirates. But 
soon the inner panel slid aside, and a man in a white uniform stood before us.
We had an innocent-seeming group of women near the lock to greet the intruders. 
Hidden around the curve of the Commons we had armed women, ready to fight 
viciously if that proved to be necessary. Normally women were not warriors, but 
the brutal experience of rape and murder had forged a new temperament in many. 
Before we allowed more of the same, we would fight and kill. We all understood 
that. Twice we had overcome intruders, and twice had our situation reversed—and 
twice suffered grievously. Experience is a cruel but effective teacher.
Spirit, garbed as a boy, was one of the display children. They were innocently 
playing—but she was armed with her finger-whip, and the others had small knives. 
If the others turned out to be pirates, she and the children were supposed to 
scream in simulated or genuine panic and flee, clearing the way for our fighting 
forces. If anything resembling a pacifier box made an appearance, Spirit would 
go for it. But if the children were caught, they would fight. We had to give the 
outsiders a chance to prove they were legitimate, just in case they were, for we 
were in desperate need of food and help. We dared not alienate legitimate 
visitors.
"You folk must have had a bad time," the Martian officer said in Spanish, 
looking about as his men followed him through the air lock. All were clean-cut 
and wore side-arms, not swords. "We discovered quite a mess in your air lock. 
It's all right now; we dumped the stuff in space and fumigated the lock."
My mother was in the "innocent" group of women. She had roused herself from her 
grief to participate in this, for she knew she was only one of many who had been 
abruptly widowed, and that someone had to carry on. Even as we children had to 
protect her, she tried to protect us. That was part of what it meant to be a 
family; I was coming to appreciate the full significance of it in this 
adversity. Major Hubris had been lost, but his family carried on, as if his 
strength had been bequeathed to each of the survivors. "We were raided by 
pirates," she said. "All our men were killed."
"Well, that's over now," the officer said. "We shall carry you on in to Jupiter, 
where you will be granted refugee status. Collect your things; we're on a 
schedule and haven't much time. Don't bother with extra clothing; we'll issue 
you uniforms from our stores."
Slowly I relaxed. This was almost too good to be true! If they towed us the rest 
of the way in to Jupiter, our hunger and fear was over!
I turned to meet Helse's eyes. The two of us had been relegated to the center 
chamber of the bubble, the doughnut hole. We were deemed too old to be innocent 
children and too young to fight. But we would fight, if it came to that, to 
protect the precious remaining food stores. As it was, we were out of the action 
but could see everything plainly.
Helse did not seem to share my relief. Her eyes were squinting, her mouth grim. 
That renovated my alarm; did she know something I didn't?
Uncertain, the women in the Commons below looked at each other. "Leave the 
bubble?" my mother asked, and I realized the officer had not actually spoken of 
towing, but of carrying.
"Obviously you can't remain here," the officer said reasonably. "Drifting in 
space, your supplies diminishing, vulnerable to the vagaries of fate. You are 
fortunate we spotted you. Fetch your valuables; you don't want to be classed as 
paupers when you arrive."
The women seemed almost reluctant to believe their good fortune. Slowly they 
dispersed while the merchantmen smiled at the children. One man produced a box 
of bright candy balls and proffered it. He was promptly the center of juvenile 
attention, as the youngest flocked to accept the goodies. We had not seen candy 
since leaving Callisto! Even Spirit, suspicious at first, in due course sidled 
close to the friendly man and accepted a treat.
My mouth watered. I was not yet so old that candy didn't appeal. "Look what 
we're missing!" I muttered.
"Never accept candy from a stranger," Helse said grimly. I thought at first she 
was joking, then was doubtful.
The smallest child abruptly sat down. She had been greedily consuming the candy. 
She did not seem sick, but she did not get up.
Another child joined her, then a third. Soon all of them were sprawled on the 
deck. Spirit was one of the last to go, and I could see she was fighting it, but 
her knees buckled and betrayed her.
Señora Ortega marched up. "What is the matter?" she demanded, alarmed.
The officer faced her. "The candy is drugged. But don't worry; we have the 
antidote. The children will not die if it is administered within an hour."
"Drugged!" Señora Ortega gazed on him with wild surmise. "Then you are—"
"Merely men who labor hard on short wages, and who have been too long in space," 
the officer said. "You are the leader here? Have your women deposit their 
valuables with us." His eyes traveled across the others, who were now frozen in 
horror. They had actually fetched their most precious things at the behest of 
this man! "We are not bad fellows, if you treat us right. We are not interested 
in killing anyone, or even hurting anyone. We believe in honest quid-pro-quo. 
Any woman who desires a unit of antidote may purchase it from one of us."
My mother was one of the first to understand. "My child is among those drugged. 
How may I purchase her reprieve?"
"You have money?" the officer inquired. "Gold? Gems?"
"None," my mother replied.
"Then you must earn it." The officer glanced meaningfully at his men.
After a pause, a burly older crewman stepped forward and gazed at her. For a 
moment I saw her through his eyes: a woman in her forties, no young thing but 
still a fairly handsome figure of her sex. The kind a middle-aged man would find 
comfortable. I began, inwardly, to curse the condition of masculinity, then felt 
Helse move slightly beside me and remembered her lesson. The evil was not the 
use, but the abuse!
"I'll give you my little vial of fluid, woman," the crewman said. He held a 
small bottle, but his entendre was obvious. These were more sophisticated 
rapists; they compelled the women's cooperation without overt violence. But for 
all its nonviolence, it remained rape. My muscles clenched.
"Don't do it!" Señora Ortega cried to my mother. "They're bluffing."
The officer shrugged, glancing at the collapsed children. "We are not killers, 
certainly; that decision is yours. We can only remain with you for an hour—after 
which time it will hardly matter. Any woman who prefers to take a chance with 
her child is free to do so. As I said, we do not wish to coerce anyone."
The hypocrite! I started to move, but Helse put her hand on my shoulder and 
though her touch was light, it held me back. Helse had known better than I about 
the candy; her judgment probably remained better. I sank back, my teeth 
clenched.
My mother looked at Spirit, who was now unconscious. She wavered, afraid to 
gamble with her child's life. Probably the men were bluffing and had only put 
knockout medicine in the candy. They seemed more like unscrupulous opportunists 
than hardened killers. Surely men who spent much time in space did get hungry 
for women, though why they didn't bring women along with them in their ship was 
a mystery. But they were also pirates, and we knew how careless of life pirates 
could be. If they were not bluffing—I felt the same stress my mother did. That 
was Spirit, my little sister! If I let her die when any action of mine could 
save her, how could I even endure myself?
I tried to use my talent to determine the intentions of the men, but I simply 
had not interacted with them enough to judge. I could not tell to what extent 
they were bluffing.
"I will buy her life," my mother decided.
The crewman smiled. I started climbing down into the Commons, going through the 
hole in the netting and using one of the guy ropes that held the netting in 
place so that I would not sail down sidewise and attract unwanted attention.
"No!" Helse hissed. "Don't do it, Hope! You can do nothing except make it 
worse!"
I paused, knowing she was right. Yet how could I remain idle while my mother 
prostituted herself to save my little sister?
While I debated this, hanging on to the guy rope, my other sister, Faith, 
approached me. She had put on makeup and arranged her luxuriant hair, and looked 
like a goddess. She wore a rather tight skirt and blouse. The half rations 
seemed not to have diminished her at all; probably she accepted them as just 
another diet. "I can't let this happen," she said.
A new horror gripped me. "Faith, stay out of it!"
She met my gaze. "You understand, Hope."
The terrible thing was that I did understand. Faith felt she had nothing to 
lose; now she could redeem her lost honor in some measure by saving her mother 
and sister from this awful dilemma.
"You promised, Hope," she reminded me.
I could not say her nay, though I hated every aspect of this. Slowly, 
unwillingly, I nodded.
Faith made a tiny quirk of a smile. I had, in my fashion, given permission, and 
this was a thing she required. I had implicated myself in the decision, and 
would have to defend it. I was sending her in to be raped—again.
Faith took a breath and walked up to the men. She was slender and full and 
lovely and young, standing out like a beacon amidst gloom, and in a moment all 
their eyes were locked on her. It was obvious that none of these men would 
choose any older woman if he had a chance at this young one. I could appreciate 
the feeling myself, shamed as I was by the thought; I would choose a girl like 
Faith instead of a woman like my mother. God! What abominations infested my 
thoughts!
"How many children can I buy?" Faith asked them softly.
"Faith!" my mother exclaimed, shocked.
"Better me than you, Mother," Faith replied. "I am already lost; you must care 
for the family." And Charity Hubris could not deny her, any more than I could.
Faith turned back to the men, breathing deeply—and when she did that, she was 
spectacular. "How many?"
"All of them," the officer said, impressed. "Given time." His gaze flicked to a 
lieutenant beside him. "See to the valuables."
"No," Faith said. "You shall not rob us also."
"No?" The officer seemed amused.
"Take me—on your ship. Nothing else."
"Faith!" my mother repeated.
The officer glanced again at the other men, whose mouths were virtually 
drooling. Yet again I could appreciate their thoughts, though I resented my very 
ability to do so. To have a creature like this with them all the time, no 
one-hour stand—
"You drive an interesting bargain, young woman."
Faith half turned, and her body accented itself. Somewhere along the way she had 
learned a lot about sex appeal! "What pittance does anyone here have, compared 
to what I offer?"
My mother put her hands to her face, but did not speak again. She knew what the 
rest of us knew; it did make sense.
Once more the men considered. "It's the same deal I made as a child," Helse 
murmured in my ear. I had not seen her climb down to join me, since I had been 
distracted by the uncomfortable drama of the Commons. "I think these really are 
merchantmen, pirating on the side. It's not necessarily a bad life, if they like 
the girl. These aren't really violent men; they just don't think it is wrong to 
coerce a woman into sex."
"But she's not doing it because she wants to!" I protested somewhat 
irrelevantly.
"Yes and no. Few decisions in life are completely voluntary. She's doing it for 
her family. She is making a sacrifice for your benefit—and for every other 
person in the bubble."
I had to file this away for later digestion.
"Take this young woman aboard the ship," the officer said. "Give her decent 
accommodation." He reached inside his jacket and brought out a packet of vials, 
passing it to my mother, who stood in seeming shock.
The men left the bubble and Faith went with them. I feared I would never see her 
again.
The ship disengaged and jetted toward Jupiter. Faith had bought our reprieve 
with her body. I could only hope it was a fair deal.
My mother's eyes were glazing with the reaction, but she took a vial and opened 
it and tilted its liquid into Spirit's mouth, carefully, so the child would not 
choke. Other women did the same with their children.
I shook myself and went to the group. Several vials were left over. I opened one 
and put a drop on my tongue.
The fluid was completely colorless and tasteless. It could have been pure water.
I thought about that, then left without speaking. If it was only water, it meant 
one of two things. Either the children would die—or the drug in the candy was 
not truly toxic. Either way, the merchant-pirates had deceived us. But what else 
had I expected?
Helse rejoined me. "What is it, Hope?"
"Water," I said in disgust.
"I'm not surprised."
"You suspected? Why didn't you say something before?"
"All men are pirates at heart." She caught herself. "I mean figuratively. Some 
are violent, like the outright pirates. Some are disciplined and honorable, like 
your father. Most are in between, as I told you before. They take what they can 
get, but they prefer not to have too much of a fuss. They don't mind lying to 
get their way. If they can get a woman to submit without violence, without any 
real danger of hurting the children, such men consider this to be smart 
management. That's just the way they see it."
"But then Faith sacrificed herself for nothing!"
Helse caught my hands in hers. "No, Hope. She did it to protect her mother and 
sister from risk or shame. She refused to gamble with their lives."
I knew this, yet felt constrained to argue. "But if—"
"If we had called that bluff, those men could have turned savage and raped the 
women violently. They were armed; they could have killed anyone who tried to 
stop them. The danger was not just in the candy; it was in the men. Honorable 
men would never have used coercion. Faith understood that. So she offered them 
something better. Because she was beautiful and willing to deal, they accepted. 
They weren't all-the-way bad, they just wanted sex. She made it easy for them to 
be generous."
"They're still pirates!" I hissed.
"They're fallible men. There's a difference."
"But my sister condemned to horror—"
"Your sister is so lovely, I think some ranking officer will soon claim her for 
his own. I have told her some of the arts of pleasing men. In time—"
I turned on her ferociously. "You told her!"
Helse stepped back. "Hope, she asked me. She wanted to know. I think she 
suspected something like this could happen, and she felt guilty for hiding when 
your father was killed. She had to redeem herself. She had to make the sacrifice 
the others were making."
I clenched my fists, not answering.
"In time she may command an officer's love and be well treated," Helse 
continued. "Her future may be more secure than ours is."
"By practicing the arts of prostitution!" I gritted. "As you practiced them on 
me!"
I was sorry the moment I said it, but Helse only smiled. She had learned to 
accommodate my moods. She must have done the same as a child, with Uncle. "We do 
what we must to survive, Hope. Women don't have the brute power of men. 
Compromise is forced on us all our lives. I practiced my skills on you to help 
you, not because you forced me. Do not be angry with me, my lover."
I was angry, but mostly with myself. "If you taught my sister well enough, she 
will have the captain of that merchant ship in thrall."
"I hope so." She drew on my arm, turning me to face her as we stood above our 
cell. "Please understand, Hope. Faith was publicly raped. She believed she had 
been rendered forever unclean, worthless for marriage. This was a psychological 
thing, not a logical one; it was part of her self-image."
I remembered how Faith had asked me whether she was still my sister. Yes, I 
understood about self-image; I had been going through a similar mill myself. 
Logic alone is not enough to change such deep perceptions.
"All that was left to her was to do some good thing for her family," Helse 
continued. "She really cared for the rest of you, though she thought herself 
unworthy. She found the thing she could do, and she did it—and that key 
sacrifice may ironically bring her as much good as what she did for the rest of 
us. She would never have married a man she considered to be good, for fear she 
was unworthy of him. But a bad man is all right—and if he turns out later to be 
a good man, she will be able to accept that too. Because she did make her act of 
expiation. It was her dishonor she was sacrificing, for the best possible 
cause."
I was not sure I followed her logic or agreed with it, but I hoped she was 
right. How much better it would be for Faith to be happy than miserable, by 
whatever rationalization. But still I hated the way it had worked out. Helse was 
educating me in the real ways of men and women, and it was not an education I 
liked. Yet I knew, deep down, that I did have to come to terms with the 
realities of the human condition.
Worse was to come. Hardly six hours passed before we were raided again. We saw 
the ship bearing down on us, and it was no merchant vessel. This time we hid all 
the children in the cells with orders to remain there until the pirates had 
gone, no matter what. Helse and I were included, but we were sent back to the 
doughnut hole with the remaining food packs. Perhaps the women did not realize 
how well we could see what was going on from that vantage. Spirit, still groggy, 
went with us, as it didn't seem wise to confine her alone.
The pirates burst in with drawn daggers, and it was obvious from the outset that 
resistance would be futile. Evidently news had spread that this was a helpless 
bubble, and they were flocking in to take advantage of it. That, too, caused me 
to seethe with suppressed outrage. Why couldn't they have flocked in to help, or 
at least signaled the Jupe authorities where we were so they could fetch us? I 
was ashamed for my species—the male species.
The women fell back, cowed by the blades. They had no equivalent weapons, and 
there were too many men to overwhelm by force of numbers.
"It's submit—or die," Helse murmured. "And if the women die, the children are 
alone, and maybe dead too. They know that."
"That's my mother down there! My sister just sacrificed herself to prevent—"
"Yes. It is ironic. Don't blame your mother for what she does."
A week before, I never would have understood. Now I did. Whether I would have 
without Faith's recent sacrifice or Helse's present help I don't know. But now I 
understood that the women had to do what they had to do, to stay alive and 
protect their families.
I understood, but my revulsion overcame me as I saw a hairy, dirty, pirate strip 
the clothing from my unresisting mother. I launched myself toward them, 
determined to kill the foul rapist.
Helse caught me around the shoulders, her inertia shoving me into the containing 
net. I tried to fight her off, but she clung with a strength in that moment 
equal to my own, and even in my desperation I could not bring myself to apply 
real force on her. Still, I managed to achieve a partial disengagement, and soon 
would get away from her.
"Spirit!" she whispered. "Help me hold him!"
My sister snapped out of her remaining stupor, throwing off the lingering effect 
of the drug. She bounced across and caught me about the legs. In this trace 
gravity I could move her about by flexing my body, but I could not dislodge her. 
"But our mother's getting raped!" I hissed. None of us dared talk loudly, for 
fear we would only bring the knives of the pirates to bear against ourselves.
"I know it," Spirit said, and did not yield.
I continued to struggle, and Helse was tiring. She was as big as I, and weighed 
as much, but the distribution differed. I had more muscle and better leverage, 
because I was male, and now my advantage was telling.
But Helse managed to get hold of my head. Her shirt had torn open, and her 
chestband had slid askew in the struggle. Now she hugged my head to her 
half-bared breast. "If you go, I will follow!" she rasped.
There is something uniquely compelling about the breast of a woman. My will to 
fight was sapped. I lay with my face half against the net, half against her 
breast, and did not move.
But in that position I could see a woman below. Probably she was not my mother; 
I could not tell, for most of her naked body was obscured by that of the pirate 
on her. Even if her whole body had been clear except for her face, I might not 
have been sure, for I had never seen my mother naked. Only by the face could I 
recognize her, and that I could not see. Yet if she was not my mother, she was 
someone else's mother, and she was getting raped. It did not matter that she was 
not resisting, for to resist was to die. I struggled again, determined to do 
something to stop it. But Spirit took a tighter hold on my legs, and Helse 
nearly smothered my face. In retrospect, I think that might be the nicest 
possible way to die, smothered by a breast, but at the time I was almost tempted 
to free myself by biting her. Thank God I did not!
"Let it be," Helse whispered. "Let it be, Hope. Those women are trying to save 
our lives!"
"At the expense of their honor!"
"Their honor is not of the body! It is of the spirit!"
That coincidental use of the word that was also my sister's name had a strange 
effect on me. Suddenly I knew that if there was one person I had to protect more 
than my mother, it was my sister.
Helse took my silence for negation. "Please, Hope! Give over! It must be!"
It was a woman getting raped, and here were two girls urging me to let it 
proceed. They should have protested more vehemently than I did—but they were 
more realistic than I was. A man fights, a woman compromises: It was true in 
this microcosm as in the macrocosm.
The pirate thrust, and the woman's body jumped. I tried again to launch myself.
Helse clung to me with her divine death-hug. "I'll tell you I love you!" she 
breathed pleadingly.
She didn't love me; I knew that. She was older than I, and more mature in more 
than the physical sense; I was beneath her. But she cared enough to pretend she 
loved me, in order to protect me from myself. That small share of love seemed 
inordinately precious. Why should I struggle, here, as if indulging in my own 
rape, when I could please her by relenting?
I relaxed and turned my face in to her. Helse squirmed about, sliding her breast 
down, and met me with a kiss. It was savagely sweet. I wanted to believe that 
she loved me, at least a little, for I surely loved her.
But at the same time I knew that I was forcing Helse to do something untrue, to 
sell a profession of love as another woman would sell her body. That wasn't 
right. And this acquiescence of ours was permitting my mother to get raped. Now 
my other thought, comparing our situation to that of my mother, returned more 
strongly. In an ugly transmogrification, my love for Helse seemed to identify 
with my mother's horror. It was as though the flesh so tightly against me was my 
mother's. As though I was participating in that rape. I knew it wasn't literally 
so, but it was figuratively so, and the stigma was there, emotionally.
I'm sure the time was not long, but it seemed an eternity. Then the pirates were 
gone, and the air lock was closed, and we children were free to return to the 
Commons.
Helse restored herself to her boyish state, resetting the band about her chest 
and pinning her shirt together. "You sure are pretty when you show," Spirit 
remarked to her. I had to agree, silently; this was the first time I had 
actually seen Helse's breast.
"You will be too, very soon," Helse told her, patting her strapped bosom as if 
it were a thing to be allocated impartially among females. "Thanks for helping 
me."
"I had to. My crazy brother would have gotten us all killed."
I was silent. They were probably correct.
We climbed down. I expected to find the women disheveled and sobbing and hiding 
their faces, and I was afraid to face my mother, but it had to be done.
I was completely surprised. All the women were in good order, clothing intact, 
hair brushed out, eyes clear. No one was crying or hiding. It was as though 
nothing had happened.
Helse caught on before I did. "Say nothing!" she whispered in my ear. "Nothing 
about—you know."
We found my mother. "Oh, I'm so glad you're safe," she said, smiling at us.
"We were sleeping in the loft," Helse said.
My mother glanced at her with the merest suggestion of irony, knowing it was a 
lie and thankful for that lie. "Of course, young man," she agreed.
Was my mother really still ignorant of Helse's sex? Or was she competent at 
keeping secrets? Perhaps she had seen more of our struggle in the loft than we 
realized. If we honored her privacy, she honored ours.
Later, in our cell, Helse explained it to me in more detail. "Degradation is 
mainly in the mind. She doesn't want you to share her humiliation, because that 
could further hurt the family. The kindest thing you can do is to forever refuse 
to acknowledge that any man but your father ever touched your mother. There must 
be no stain on the honor of Hubris."
"Is the whole universe made of hypocrisy?" I demanded, hurting anew.
"Sometimes it seems so," she agreed. "But it is a good thing your family does 
for itself. I wish I had belonged to a family like that."
"So soon after Faith sacrificed herself to prevent this very thing!" I 
exclaimed.
"What Faith sacrificed herself for has been preserved," Helse reminded me. 
"Never say otherwise."
I was blind at that moment to the significance. "And you—you told me you loved 
me, just to keep me quiet! You're a woman too!"
"I'm a woman too," she agreed.
I was perversely furious at her, but I loved her too, and maybe for much of the 
same reason. "And will you do what you did before, just to keep me quiet? Will 
you give me your body, and pretend to like it?"
"Yes."
"Oh, damn!" I cried, and then it was literally crying, the tears flooding from 
my eyes. Helse held me and comforted me, and in time we did make love, and she 
had the grace not to profess love, only caring, and it was wonderful. I couldn't 
accept what she was doing, in one part of my conscience, but in another part I 
knew it had to be and that I couldn't live without her. So I accepted what had 
to be accepted: her sacrifice, and mine.
 
Chapter 12 — FOOD
Jupiter Rings, 2-24-'15—I wish I could skip over this period, but it would not 
be honest to do so. It had seemed our situation could not get worse, but we had 
a cruel reeducation coming.
Our problem was composed of two things: food and travel. We were still short of 
food, but might have managed if we had floated to Jupiter on time. But the women 
didn't know how to operate the gravity lens efficiently, so we were making 
little progress. That meant our food was less than adequate. We had assumed we 
could get by on half rations, but as the days passed and Jupiter loomed larger 
with appalling slowness, we knew we could not. All of us were losing mass, 
though we were not starving. We conserved bodily energy by sleeping much of the 
time, but still our food dwindled.
We cut to quarter rations, trying to stretch it out a few more days, but our 
progress past the rings of Jupiter seemed maddeningly slow. It was gradually 
apparent to even the most unwilling eye that we were not making it.
I spent a lot of time in the cell with Helse, sleeping in her arms. But hunger 
vitiated sex, if not love. It was enough for a time just to be with her, talking 
and resting and enduring—but inevitably the need for food intruded. I dreamed of 
discovering some hidden cache of food packs that would allow us all to glut 
ourselves. But it never was true.
Spirit took it worse than I did. She was a growing child, and she needed proper 
sustenance. She spoke of big rock-candy mountains and oceans of chocolate syrup 
and gingerbread houses. When she started longing for potatoes and spinach I knew 
it was serious. She had never liked spinach. We had to do something—but what? We 
could not conjure food from vacuum.
I took to staring morosely out of the portholes. The Jupiter ring system is not 
nearly as spectacular as Saturn's, but it is extensive enough. It reaches out 
almost as far as Saturn's rings do, but it is so diffuse it is hardly worth 
noticing. In fact, for many centuries the astronomers of Earth were not able to 
see the ring systems of Jupiter or Uranus or Neptune, so assumed there were 
none, with the typical logic of our species.
The primary ring is fifty thousand kilometers inside the orbit of Amalthea, and 
that's where the Jupiter Border Patrol operates. Amalthea is just a rocky ball, 
24 kilometers across; its gravity is so slight that no one has bothered to put a 
residential dome on it—there's not enough gravity there to focus effectively, 
you see, since next to nothing concentrated tenfold is still next to nothing—but 
there is a space depot. Amalthea is just beyond Jupiter's political territorial 
limit, so we had to get inside its orbit.
The rings really weren't obvious even from up close; most of the particles were 
the size of large grains of dust. A ship traveling at high relative velocity 
through the rings might suffer abrasion, but our gravity-sailing bubble just 
nudged through the diffuse field harmlessly. Some particles were large enough to 
spot from some distance, just hanging there in their orbit blithely minding 
their own business, and I would trace them with my eye as long as I could.
Was this an analogy of the human condition, I wondered? Every individual 
traveling alone, going his own way—yet caught in the gravity well of some huge 
primary. Each person thought he was unique, and perhaps he was, differing as 
much from his neighbors as each particle differed in outline from other 
particles. Yet in the aggregate we were indistinguishable. Did it really matter 
which of us survived and which did not? No single particle made a perceptible 
difference to the ring.
Helse came up beside me and touched my shoulder. She never did more than that 
when in her boy disguise, but it was enough. It carried the implication of all 
she was when we were alone.
"We can't go on this way," she said.
I looked at her, startled. "We can't?"
She smiled. "Not we you/me. We the-whole-bubble. The food is almost gone."
I was foolishly relieved. I had come to depend on Helse's love, whether real or 
feigned. It was like a beneficial drug to which I was addicted. But of course 
the problem of the food was critical. We had all known a crisis was coming—but 
none of us had any solution except to hope that we would be spotted by some 
random swing of the Jove Patrol and rescued. Woe betide the pirate ship that got 
in our way this time! We would not again allow our rescue to be balked that way. 
But we knew we weren't far enough in yet. Space is huge, and Jupiter is huge, 
and we were a mote among motes, lost. We still had to clear the outer ring, pass 
the orbit of Amalthea, and reach the primary ring, the territorial limit. At the 
rate we were proceeding that would be at least another week—and we had food, at 
quarter rations, for two more days.
Spirit arrived. "Another head's clogged," she announced brightly. She looked 
drawn, as we all did, from slow undernourishment, but her spirits remained 
reasonably high. She had always been that way, venting her angers and griefs 
rapidly and stabilizing at an optimistic level, and I had always liked her for 
it. She was generally good company. Most brothers and sisters fight a lot, but 
we fought less than most, and now not at all.
"That cuts us down to three heads," I said. "The tanks are full, probably. If 
we'd had full rations, there'd be no heads left working now."
"Why not change the tanks?" she asked.
"We have no replacements. It's usually done planetside. The full tank gets 
traded for an empty one, and the contents go to the organic soil bank. Valuable 
stuff, you know; you don't find fertilizer like that floating around in space."
She wrinkled her nose. "I should hope not! But we ought to do something about—"
She broke off as if realizing something, then elevated a finger. "Floating in 
space! Why not?"
"What are you talking about?" I demanded. Spirit's foolish notions were likely 
to have some sense to them.
"Why not just dump the stuff into space? Then the tanks'd be empty, and the 
head'd work again, and we wouldn't have to double up."
"Sure," I said. "Why don't you just volunteer to suit up and do that?"
"Okay, I will!" she said defiantly, and pushed off.
"She will, too," Helse said.
"Don't I know it!" I headed off after my impetuous sister. Sarcasm can be 
dangerous with Spirit.
In this manner all three of us ended up volunteering for the tank-evacuation 
detail. We suited up, and Helse handled the safety ropes while Spirit and I went 
out onto the hull. You see, the bubble was spinning, one revolution every ten 
seconds or so, so what was partial gravity inside was like partial repulsion 
outside, as the same centrifugal force tried to hurl us away at a tangent. So we 
had to be guyed, and that meant someone had to pay out the rope, or take in the 
slack when necessary, so we could operate without snagging or tangling. It was 
the sort of job the regular crewmen would have been good at—but of course there 
were no experienced people among our remaining number.
We used the front lock, since the merchant-pirates had cleared it out. I carried 
a bag of tools from the bubble toolshed, while Spirit clambered out with 
juvenile agility to catch the first rope in the question-mark-shaped eyelet 
provided for it. Bubbles have sets of such projections for just such 
emergencies; now I appreciated the foresight of the design. Even a child could 
figure out these things—and that was a good thing for us! We were actually 
better fitted to come out here than the women were, because of our size and 
alertness, which was part of why we were permitted to do it. My mother's natural 
protectiveness had to yield to expedience, as it had in other cases.
Once the line was secure, Spirit waved me on, and I handed myself along to join 
her. It was a bit like mountain climbing in my fancy—naturally, I have never 
climbed a mountain, there being none on Callisto—for the moment I left the 
null-gee region of the lock the outward pull began. The farther I progressed 
toward the bubble's equator the stronger it got, tugging me at an angle. Of 
course it was slight, even at its worst, but I was not at peak strength because 
of the reduced food, and the psychological effect was considerable. The whole 
universe was down and turning; that made my perch seem precarious indeed.
I paused at the first eyelet, hanging on and looking out. First I saw the bright 
distant sun, really a super-brilliant star I could readily block out with my 
smallest finger at arm's length. Still, it emitted enough light to make it day 
in space. That light might be only one twenty-seventh as intense here as it was 
at Earth, but we were used to it the way we saw it, and it was quite enough for 
all normal purposes.
Then there was Jupiter, so vast my whole spread hand could not block it out. Yet 
I knew that the enormous planet was subservient to the little star. I could 
hardly blame my primitive ancestors, thousands of years ago on Earth, for 
believing otherwise. I understood that from Earth, Earth's nameless moon looked 
the same size as the sun. That meant that each looked, very roughly, half again 
as big in diameter as Ganymede looked from Callisto. The moon I could 
understand, but I had no mental picture of the sun seeming that size. What a 
brilliantly blazing ball it must be!
Spirit nudged me out of my reverie. I get that way sometimes, thinking too much 
at a time, and have to be corrected. I nodded, and she scampered on around to 
the next eyelet, while I made sure the rope did not snag. Now the curve of the 
bubble concealed Spirit from Helse, though I could see both. I waved to Helse, 
who waved back; then I followed the rope to Spirit.
The location of the refuse tanks was clear enough, as they were intended to be 
serviced from the outside. There was an effective airlock-type mechanism in each 
that prevented any direct aperture through the hull from being opened. All I had 
to do was release the pressure of the tank-enclosure chamber, then unbar the 
tank itself and slide it out. It seemed simple enough. Yet I knew that things 
were seldom as simple in practice as they were represented to be in the 
instruction manuals.
I hooked my toes—that reminded me, for no obscure reason, of the manner I used 
the head inside—and got to work on the first one. It didn't matter whether it 
was one of the working ones or one of the clogged ones; they all would need 
cleaning out soon enough. I brought out the big wrench, hooked its safety line 
around my wrist—everything had its own safety line out here!—and adjusted it to 
the pressure-release valve. You see, the matter in the tanks is deposited at 
close to the same pressure as the interior atmosphere; the suction of the tubes 
is mainly forced ventilation. That pressure can't be released from inside; even 
if the bubble were opened to space and all its air puffed out, the toilet-locks 
would prevent the tanks from exploding into the interior. That's a necessary 
safeguard, for an obvious reason. These bubbles are pretty sophisticated 
devices, when you think about it, safety-rigged in so many ways that it is, 
literally, possible for a crew of ignorant refugees to sail in space for some 
time with little to fear from error. Of course their ineffective piloting could 
lead to an extended trip and starvation, and they could be at the mercy of 
merciless pirates, but the bubble itself was pretty safe.
Suddenly the valve let go. These things were corrosion-proof, of course, and 
reliable; they worked as they were supposed to work, even on an ancient bubble 
like this. A jet of vapor shot out, catching me in the chest and shoving me away 
from the hull. Even a small shove is effective when you're not braced for it! I 
sailed out, turning end over end until my safety rope brought me up short.
Helse reeled me in; that was what she was there for. But though I had been in no 
actual danger, I was shaken. Had I not had the rope, I would have been flung 
into deep space and no one could have recovered me. Outside space was dangerous, 
in its completely passive way, and now I experienced the fear of it. This did 
not incapacitate me; I shoved it into that corner of my mind required for 
unpleasant refuse, my emotional toilet tank, and proceeded with my job. But the 
new, enhanced awareness of space remained with me, and now I felt vulnerable. I 
think, in retrospect, that this was more significant than I was aware of at the 
time.
Helse brought me to her, reeling me in hand over hand, put her helmet against 
mine, and made a kissing expression. Then she hugged me clumsily in the suits, 
spanked me, and sent me back to finish the job.
I got back to my location. The pressure had been depleted; now the tank was 
conveniently loose in its socket. I slid aside the retaining bars and drew it 
out. Spirit helped, for the thing was large and awkward. I held it pointed at 
space, while she took the wrench and loosened the emptying lid. This was a 
matter of turning a nut, then swinging out a bar; nothing came all the way free, 
because of the danger of losing it in space. The tank itself had a tether chain, 
long enough to give us sufficient freedom to operate. Perhaps the designers had 
anticipated this need to dump in space also.
When we had the lid off, we had tp get the refuse out. This was a dense brown 
mass. There are chemicals or enzymes in the tanks that commence the processing 
of the matter the moment it enters, so this was already part of the way 
composted, but it remained fecal matter. I saw Spirit wrinkling her nose inside 
her helmet, though of course there was no smell here in the vacuum. Odor, like 
sound, requires atmosphere or some other direct conduit.
Now, how were we to get it out of the tank? We had no tool for this, and neither 
of us was inclined to reach in with our hands.
But the problem solved itself. As I clung to the tank by its base, the far end 
of it swung out centrifugally, and the matter in it was drawn by that same force 
into space. I almost thought I heard a sucking sound as it escaped the tank, but 
of course that was illusion. Such a sound could have been transmitted to me via 
metal and suit, but no sound existed. Vacuum does not have to move about the way 
air does; vacuum is—or perhaps it is more correct to say vacuum is not. I can 
picture someone reading this and protesting, "But how did the vacuum squeeze in 
from space?" That person is a fool.
As soon as the mass emerged, it fragmented. Tiny bubbles of gas shoved it apart. 
The large chunks sundered into small ones, which in turn broke into smaller 
ones. In moments it became a cloud of particles, drifting slowly away from us. 
Even if there had not been some remaining internal pressure, it would have 
fragmented because of the tidal force of this orbit, causing that portion of it 
closer to Jupiter to move marginally faster than the portion more distant. The 
tide—it was the same thing we experienced within the bubble, I think, in 
reverse, our feet being carried around faster than our heads.
Spirit put her helmet against mine. "Jupiter rings!" she exclaimed.
And of course it was so. We had initiated a new ring system—of base material. 
Very base. That might be a real surprise for some party scavenging for ice or 
minerals in space! Just let him bring it into warmth and atmosphere...
We reloaded the empty tank and bolted it tight, then went on to the next one. 
The job was easier and faster, now that we were familiar with it.
The eight tanks made a double circle beside the equator, four to the north 
(whichever pole that was), four to the south. As we worked on the ones farthest 
from our air lock, we could see the bags containing the bodies of our men. 
Nothing showed, for the bags were tied, but even that much instilled in me a 
certain quality of dread. We were alone with our dead!
We kept on working, for there was nothing else to do. We dumped a second tank, 
and a third and a fourth. But the awareness of those bagged bodies was on me. I 
wondered which one was my father. Sadness welled up in me, the realization that 
Major Hubris was gone, that I would never see him again. He had been my bastion 
against the uncertainties of life, the backbone of our family; without him we 
were largely formless. There was now a void in my life, an emptiness in the 
physical and spiritual form of my father, and out here it seemed as intense as 
the void of space around me. Major Hubris would have known what to do about the 
squeeze between travel and food.
I saw Spirit clinging to the hull, and knew by the attitude of her body that she 
felt it too, and that she was crying. She might have bounced back readily, but 
the onus of loss had not forsaken her. I climbed across and put my suited arm 
around her suited shoulders, squeezing her comfortingly. We had lost our father 
and our sister, but we still had each other. And our mother.
Then we went back to work, doing tanks 5 and 6, watching their contents merge 
with the ring system of Jupiter. Some of those particles we had sown might 
remain in orbit for a billion years! It was slightly awesome to realize that my 
frozen refuse might outlive me by that length of time. It reminded me of a 
facsimile exhibit I had seen in the Maraud Museum, of the fecal deposit of a 
dinosaur that had been ossified or petrified or whatever and preserved intact 
for eternity while the reptile that made it was gone. A fecal fossil. Maybe 
eventually some creature from galaxy Andromeda would come and take a soil sample 
from this ring, run it through his alien laboratory, and draw conclusions about 
my nature. Would he assume I was nothing but a big chunk of fecal matter?
My gaze came to rest again on the bagged bodies, as if drawn by some spiritual 
gravity. The women had strapped the bags to the hull irregularly, using the same 
eyelets we were using. We had to reset our ropes for each pair of tanks, and for 
the last set we had to route the ropes past the field of bags. I did it, leaving 
Spirit clinging to the equator.
As I brushed by one of the bags, my equilibrium suffered. Maybe it was the 
vertigo of shifting weight and torque as I rounded the hull toward the pole, the 
air lock where Helse waited. Most of the bags were near the rear air lock, but 
some were here. I paused to let the sensation pass—but it did not pass.
The feeling intensified until the whole universe seemed to spin crazily about 
me, and I was spinning too, opposite it and opposite myself. My head and feet 
were curving through each other, moving without motion. I realize that doesn't 
seem to make much sense, but that's the way it was. My head seemed to be 
orbiting one way and my feet another, and the separate portions of my body each 
traveled different and mutually incompatible ways. In retrospect I conjecture 
that my days on half and quarter rations were taking their toll, as well as the 
shifting forces of rotation I was being subjected to. I was nearer breakdown 
than I thought at the time. But maybe it was other than that.
For a moment this disorientation was pleasant, but then it frightened me, for I 
was afraid I would fling loose of the bubble with such force the rope would snap 
and I would be forever lost. I was losing what little control I had over my 
destiny, and that was frightening. A person can bear up under a lot more stress 
if he believes he has reasonable control than he can if he feels completely 
subject to the uncaring whim of fate. I screamed in my helmet and clung to the 
nearest solid thing.
It was the body in the bag. I felt its human contour. I reacted with horror, but 
my clutching fingers would not let go. I felt the tears of grief and terror on 
my face, and was ashamed for them, but it was as if none of my body was subject 
to my mind anymore.
Then the bag moved. I was so far gone I did not even scream again. I clung to 
it, wrestling it, perhaps trying to put it back flat against the hull where it 
belonged. If there is one thing more appalling than death, it is undeath—the 
revival of a corpse.
But the thing pushed back against me, and got me clear, and sat up—except that 
up was down, here, or at least sort of sideways—and shed the bag. The frozen 
head turned to face me—and it was my father, Major Hubris.
"Son, you are starving," he reproved me. "You must not go on this way."
I had to answer him. "We are out of food," I explained. His remark was so 
reasonable, as my father's remarks had always been, in life.
He shook his head. "No, Hope. You have food, if only you will use it. Shed the 
scales from your eyes and eat."
"What food?" I asked, bewildered, much as I had been as a child when he was 
instructing me in some new thing. "We have searched the whole bubble! There is 
nothing!"
"I will not permit your mother and sister to starve because of your ignorance," 
he said firmly. "You are now the man of the family, and so it is your 
responsibility to see to their welfare. You will provide food for your mother 
and your sister and that lovely girl of yours—and yourself. You must all eat 
well, to restore your strength for the ordeal to come. The worst has not yet 
passed. You will do what is necessary."
"But there is no food!" I wailed.
"Son, you know better than that," he reproved me, becoming mildly annoyed at my 
obtuseness. He had always encouraged me to be intelligent, not in the sense of 
remembering long series of numbers, but in the sense of perceiving the obvious. 
"There is plenty of food. You must make a fire, of course, to cook it. You can 
handle that."
"Cook it?" I asked, bewildered. "What food? Where?"
"Here," he said, and extended his hand to me. But the hand was empty.
I thought about that for a long time, but could make no sense of it. Surely my 
father would not suggest we feed on vacuum! Then I heard a screaming in the 
background; it went on and on. Then slowly the whole scene faded out, and I was 
blank.
When I recovered awareness I was back inside the bubble. My mother was tending 
me. "Thank God!" she breathed when she saw my eyelids flicker. "He wakes!"
I dislike sounding stupid, but this seemed to be the occasion for it. "What 
happened?" I asked, discovering as I spoke that my voice was hoarse.
"You were wrestling with a frozen corpse," my mother said. "And screaming." I 
watched her face as she spoke, and saw how lean it had become; the fractional 
rations were costing her her health. She had been gradually becoming plump as 
years passed; she was losing that mass now, and, though it lent her an ethereal 
beauty, I knew it was not good.
Then I picked up on the other thing. That screaming I had heard—of course it had 
been mine! I had really strained my vocal cords, by the feel of my throat now. 
But why had I been doing it?
I spoke again. "How—?"
"Helse and Spirit brought you in unconscious," she explained. "They thought you 
had overextended yourself and had a breakdown. We got you out of the suit and 
wiped the blood from your mouth."
No wonder she had worried! Then I remembered another thing. "We didn't finish 
emptying the tanks!"
"Spirit says you did six. That's enough, for..."
My mind was not yet clear. "For what, Mother?"
"For the time we have," she finished reluctantly.
Then I remembered my father's message. "We have food," I said. "Only I don't 
know where."
She asked me what I meant, and I recounted my experience outside. "It was a 
hallucination, I know," I concluded. "But it certainly seemed real. He was so 
sure—but I couldn't understand."
"Not a hallucination," she corrected me. "A vision."
"But what was he showing me?" I demanded. "His hand was empty!"
"It was never your father's way to tease," she said seriously. "He always spoke 
his mind. You still do not understand?"
I shook my head. "It makes no sense to me. If there had been something—but there 
wasn't."
"Then it was a true vision. Your father did not mean you to understand 
directly."
"But then why should he—"
"Major Hubris spoke through you—to me. He knew I would understand."
"I don't see how that can conjure food where there is none!"
My mother only smiled sadly. "Your father has spoken. I thank you, Hope, for 
conveying his message." She stroked my forehead. "Now rest, my son. You have 
done well. There will be food." She got up and went to consult with Señora 
Ortega.
I slept again, for I was weak. Exertion and hunger had debilitated me more than 
I had supposed.
When I woke, Helse and Spirit were with me in the cell. Helse was dressed in a 
dark blouse and skirt, so that now her full figure showed, and her hair hung 
down about her shoulders. She had always kept it pegged up somehow, before, so 
that it looked boyishly short. She had been losing weight like the rest of us, 
but her youth was better able to accommodate the loss, and she was now almost as 
pretty as my sister Faith had been, in a different way.
The two girls had evidently been talking, but they stopped when I started 
hearing. I almost wished I had feigned sleep a little longer, to listen; but I 
rebuked myself immediately. I had no need to spy on my friends! "What's up?" I 
asked. "You look serious."
"We have food now," Spirit said gravely. "You can smell it."
I sniffed, and caught the odor of roasting meat. "That's great!" I said. "Why 
aren't you eating it instead of sitting here with me?"
Spirit looked meaningfully at Helse. "We're not sure we should use it."
My mind came fully clear. "Where is it from?"
Helse laughed somewhat abruptly. "From your vision, Hope!"
I scowled. Hunger had not improved my sanguinity. "You think I made that up?"
"No," Spirit said. "I saw our father sit up and talk to you."
"I hauled him up," I said. "He couldn't have moved or talked in the freezing 
vacuum of space, even if he had been alive. I must have gone crazy. I can't even 
say for certain it was Major Hubris; it could have been any of them."
"But I do believe you," Spirit said. "Father gave you a message, and Mother 
understood it. We're a family; that's the way we work together."
"He showed me an empty hand!"
"He showed you his hand," she agreed, her eyes now fixed as if she were going 
into a trance herself.
I turned to Helse. "What does she mean?"
Helse gazed at me with a kind of translucent horror. "Your father offered 
himself—for food."
Something awfully cold closed in on me then, as if I were still in space and the 
heating element in my suit had quit. I felt the screaming working up again, like 
a rising gorge. "His hand?"
"That was your vision."
"To eat his—but I never—that's cannibalism!"
"Your father expressed to you his will. He told you to feed your mother and your 
sister and that lovely girl of yours and yourself. Are you going to go against 
your father's expressed will?"
Something else jarred. "Lovely girl?" I asked. Then I realized. "Oh, no! I told 
my mother the whole vision! I gave away your secret!" I hung my head in chagrin. 
"I'm sorry, Helse! I never intended to—my word is sacred—I was so overwhelmed by 
the vision that I never thought—"
"I know," Helse said. "You kept my secret, Hope, and so did Spirit. It was your 
father who told on me. He never gave his word."
"But he didn't know! He died before he—"
"His ghost knew," she said. "You can't hide truth from a ghost."
"But—"
"Your mother asked me," Helse said. "So I changed my clothing. I would not try 
to make a liar of your father. He was a good man."
"That's how Charity Hubris knew it was really Major Hubris speaking," Spirit 
said. "He knew something the rest of us did not."
"You knew!" I said.
"But I never told. Anyway, Mother consulted with Señora Ortega, who suggested 
this was a test of the vision, and when they saw that Helse really was a girl, 
they agreed it was a true vision, and we would have to do as Father said. So now 
we have food, as Father intended. He probably mentioned Helse deliberately, so 
everyone would believe."
I thought about the way Concha Ortega, that too-knowledgeable grandmother, had 
remarked on my improved attitude; surely she had suspected, and she was clever 
enough to play her hunches competently. I thought about the way my mother had 
submitted to rape to preserve her children from the threat of rampaging pirates, 
and then pretended that rape had never happened. Now she was taking my vision at 
face value, though it was logically suspect. We had gone along with her before, 
because family pride was better than the reality. Now Helse and Spirit were 
going along with her again—because we needed the food. It was, after all, 
pointless for us all to die when there was food available. So there was sense 
behind my vision, and sense behind their endorsement of it. Yet it seemed to me 
that more than sense was operating here.
"Are you ready?" Helse asked.
"You sacrificed your secret—for this," I said to Helse.
"How could I seek to refute your vision, Hope?" she asked innocently.
"You stand by me the way my mother stands by my father."
"Women do what they must. You know that."
"And you too," I told Spirit, taking her hand.
"I saw him sit up, out there," Spirit said. "I saw him hold out his hand to 
you." And perhaps she had, or believed she had. Spirit was always my staunchest 
supporter when it counted.
"Then I must be ready," I said. How any of us were going to choke down what the 
brave women were serving I didn't know, but it had to be done. Too many 
sacrifices had already been made for it to be otherwise.
 
Chapter 13 — REFUGEES' WELCOME
Jupiter Rings, 3-2-'15—I choose not to dwell unduly on the following days. I did 
get sick, and so did Spirit, but we both came back and tried again, and again, 
until we were able to retain what we consumed. The meat was perfectly fresh, of 
course, and clean, for no spoilage occurs in space. The women served it 
well-cooked in very small portions, so that it was impossible to tell from what 
part of what animal it might have come. The women ate too, with the same 
affected unconcern they had evinced after the mass rape. I had always suspected 
the female sex of being weaker than the male, but I did not think so anymore. 
Strength is so much more than muscle!
After the first few meals, it was not so bad. I even started helping with the 
cooking, by foraging for fuel for the fire. First they had used the precious 
candles saved from the funeral service, but soon these were gone and other 
combustibles were required. There was wood in the bubble for furnishings, and 
the packaging for the original food packs was flammable. It was a very small, 
controlled fire, for we could not afford to overload the air-recirculation 
system with a lot of pollutants, so we did have enough fuel.
But it was always a grown woman who donned a suit and went outside for more 
meat; to that extent we children were preserved in our innocence.
Señora Ortega and the other women chose to accept my vision as they had 
interpreted it. Not one of them broke ranks on this, though I was sure not all 
of them really believed in supernatural visitations or messages. They knew what 
had to be done, and they did it without fuss or fanfare, exactly as they had 
throughout their married lives. What a fundament of strength was thus subtly 
revealed!
So we survived and even began to regain weight, thanks to the gift of our men. 
We all knew, I think, that had any of those men been alive to speak their wills, 
they would have told us to do exactly what we were doing. The bubble had been 
forged by necessity into one large family, as close as any other, united by a 
complex of vital compromises and secrets.
We navigated and studied and slept and played games of all sorts, for morale was 
as important as physical condition. Slowly we drew nigh the primary ring of 
Jupiter. Now that we knew we would make it, our attitudes improved.
We spent more time staring at Jupiter, swelling to giant size, its cloud bands 
more prominent than ever, violently coursing past each other with bubble-storms 
at the interfaces, the details constantly changing in an overall pattern that 
was unchanging. As we watched, the great red spot came on the horizon, like a 
monster eye trying to orient on us. Ah, Jove, the ruler of gods! Our hopes 
expanded in direct proportion to this image in our sky. All would be well once 
we achieved Jupiter, the kindly colossus of space! Jupiter, within whose bands 
of clouds floated so many enormous bubbles, each one a great city spinning like 
our little bubble for internal gravity, since they could not stay afloat if they 
used normal gravity. The city-bubbles did not have to worry about vacuum 
outside, instead they faced the phenomenal pressures of Jupiter's atmosphere. 
Yet they were the most highly civilized cities in the Solar System, and the life 
style of ordinary people within them was reputed to be fantastic. We dreamed, a 
little afraid, and longed for what we hoped would be.
This is not to suggest that everything was smooth now. Conditions of enduring 
stress and confinement tend to accentuate and at times exacerbate interpersonal 
relations, and we of the bubble were not exceptional in this respect. All of us 
shared an unspoken guilt that tended to sublimate itself in those ways that were 
permitted expression. I have heard sublimation spoken of as a useful alternative 
to unsocial behavior, but I don't believe that. When an emotion is suppressed, 
it tends to manifest in something very similar to the forbidden thing, and 
perhaps sometimes it would be best simply to accept the forbidden instead. Thus 
we had the smaller children saving their feces and sometimes eating them, 
mocking the food that could not be identified. That sort of thing. I need not 
explicate further.
I spent time with Helse openly now, for my father had seemingly blessed our 
association. No one objected overtly to our sharing a cell, though perhaps there 
were private qualms. But she and I did fight on occasion, if only because I 
wanted her to love me, and she would not let herself go that far. To her, the 
body was a thing to be used as expedient, but the heart was special—which was 
one reason I wanted her heart. I suppose I was greedy, but that is the way of 
love.
Spirit, especially, got difficult. She had always been close to me, and remained 
so, but now she came to resent the time I spent with Helse. It seemed that when 
Helse had masqueraded as a boy and Spirit had shared the secret, that was all 
right. She was part of it. But now that Helse was openly female and there was no 
secret, Spirit felt excluded. I should have been alert to the symptoms, but, as 
is so often the case, I wasn't paying attention until too late. I was caught up 
in my own concerns, which were more immediate but less important than the 
psychological welfare of my sister, until too late. I hope not to make that 
error again.
Spirit burst in upon us once, when Helse and I were sleeping in our cell in 
dishabille, though not actually making love. I had discovered that the 
adolescent fantasy of continuous sexual activity was exactly that: fantasy. 
Helse would make love any time I asked her to, and, knowing that, I found that 
usually it was enough just to be near her. Sex is less than love, but more than 
the act; often mere closeness suffices.
"There you go again!" Spirit cried as we sat up groggily. "Father's gone, 
Faith's gone, Mother's alone—and you're busy fooling with her!" There was a 
vicious freighting on the word "fooling"; it was intended as an obscenity, and 
in that context it became so.
There wasn't much I could say. Of course I was guilty, at other times if not 
this particular time, and as I just explained, the technical act was only a 
fraction of it and not worth arguing. I did not want to get angry, because that 
would proclaim my guilt, but I didn't know how else to react.
Helse handled it with better grace. Her age and experience enabled her to 
navigate certain difficult passages more readily than I could. "I do not take 
your brother from you, Spirit," she said. "I can never do that. You are of his 
blood and I am not. I do not love him as you do."
Spirit faced her defiantly. "That's space-crock! You love him more than I do!"
I started to chuckle at her miscue; obviously Spirit had not meant to say that. 
Prompted by Helse's statement, Spirit had reversed the emphasis, inadvertently 
arguing against her own interest, as can happen when a person's emotion 
overrides her tongue.
But Helse reacted as if she had been stabbed. "Oh!" she cried, and scrambled to 
her feet and up out of the cell, not even pausing for her clothing.
I stared after her. So did Spirit, her anger forgotten. "I vanquished her!" she 
exclaimed, amazed.
"But you misspoke yourself!" I protested.
Now it was Spirit who reacted oddly. "Oh, I shouldn't have said that! I blabbed 
her secret!"
"What secret? She doesn't love—"
I stopped, looking at her with a dawning surmise.
Spirit, flustered, reached for the exit panel. "I'd better go try to apologize. 
I lost my stupid head."
I caught her, preventing her from going. "You mean she does love me? She always 
told me she didn't, and my talent enables me to know—"
"Oh, you don't know half what you think you do!" Spirit snapped. "When your 
emotion is tied in, your talent cuts out!"
She had stabbed me as deeply as she had Helse. I knew immediately that she was 
correct. I had no basis to judge Helse's state of emotion, because my own was 
suspect. It was as if I was trying to move a heavy suitcase in free fall: my 
effort moved me back as much as it moved it forward. I had to be firmly anchored 
before I could be sure of the effect of my effort. I think the laws of the mind 
are similar in this respect to the laws of matter.
"She's older than I am," I said falteringly. "It makes sense that I am less to 
her than she is to me. If she felt otherwise, why should she deny it?"
"She had to deny it, dummy!" Spirit said. "She thinks men don't love women who 
love them back. She's always been used by men who only wanted her body, no 
matter what they said at the time, and when her body changed they didn't want 
her anymore. So she knew if she really liked someone, she shouldn't ever, ever 
let on, because—" She wrenched, trying to break free of my hold on her. "Let me 
go, Hope! I could kill myself! Helse's an awfully nice girl, and I've got to 
tell her—I don't know what, but I've got to!"
I let her go. I sat against the wall, meditating on what my sister had said. It 
explained a lot. I should have caught on to it myself, with my vaunted talent 
for understanding people. But, ironically, this failure was a valuable lesson 
for me, for it revealed the glaring weakness in my talent. I had to be 
objective. I resolved never again to make that error.
But I realized that I couldn't patch it up with Helse by trying to reassure her 
of my undying love; she was constitutionally incapable of believing me. Her past 
experience could not be left behind. The same thing that made her so well able 
to please a man made her unable to trust him. Oh, I knew the power of an 
emotional fixation! I had been ready to swear off sex forever after the rape of 
Faith, and only Helse's timely and forceful action had turned me about. But I 
could not reassure her about her own fixation; all I had were words, and she 
would not believe them. The men who had used her body during her childhood had 
not harmed her body; they had poisoned her mind. I was way too late to reeducate 
her subjectivity. What, then, could I do?
I mulled it over, and finally worked it out. My mother, actually, had shown me 
the way. The reality of our inner belief does not have to match that of our 
external professions.
In due course Helse returned. She remained unclothed; probably no one in the 
bubble had noticed or cared, since I was the oldest male in this limited 
community. If anyone realized that we were having a difference, that person knew 
enough not to interfere. She looked resigned.
Evidently Spirit had caught up with her—it could hardly be otherwise, in such 
limited space—and apologized for blabbing. Spirit could be exceedingly winsome 
when she was contrite, and surely her apology had been accepted. But Helse 
believed the damage could not really be undone. She had returned bravely to 
confirm the disaster.
I gave her no chance. "I must apologize for what my sister did," I said before 
Helse could speak. "She said she loved me more than you do, and of course that's 
true, but it was extremely unkind."
Helse paused, taken aback. "That isn't what she—"
"Oh, maybe she garbled it," I said blithely. "But I know you don't love me, and 
I'm learning to live with that. I'm sorry Spirit misinterpreted—well, she is my 
sister, and she has a hot little temper, and—"
"But I'm trying to tell you—"
"Please, Helse," I said, holding out my arms to her. "I need you so much—don't 
tease me anymore! Let me hope that one day you'll feel about me the way I feel 
about you. Don't deprive me of that one illusion."
"Illusion!" she exclaimed. "Hope, I—"
I continued to extend my arms to her. She hesitated, then came to me. I kissed 
her passionately, and after a moment she responded in kind. We proceeded 
naturally to the act of love.
Yet there was a certain difference, perhaps I should say diffidence about it, on 
her part and on mine, because we each knew we were deceiving the other. It may 
even be that that reservation made the experience sweeter. Certainly, for me, 
the term "love" was no euphemism for any other thing; love was exactly what it 
was.
When the desperation of our merging eased, she drew apart a little, her face 
showing concern. "Hope, this isn't honest. I—"
"Don't say it!" I cut in again. "Leave me with at least the dream that some day 
you'll change your mind!" I was perhaps overplaying it, and she knew it, but 
this was a unique situation for me. The message I had for her was other than the 
one I professed, and she knew it.
She smiled, defeated. "That one illusion," she agreed, and kissed me softly, and 
in that single gesture there was more joy than in all our prior congress. We 
chose to share the illusion of illusion.
 
Jupiter was now so big that it was no longer an object in space; it was becoming 
our primary, in perception as well as physics. So close, so close—our ordeal was 
almost over!
And yet—and yet! If we reached Jupiter and were saved, and found places in that 
great society—what then of the relation I had with Helse? She would have to 
report to Kife, or QYV, and who could say what would become of her thereafter? 
Or the new situation might simply change her attitude. She was a pretty girl and 
I a mere stripling; she could do better than me, in that society. The illusion 
of her nonlove for me might turn out to be no illusion there. So I viewed our 
potential rescue with a certain undercurrent of apprehension, for the love of 
Helse had become more important to me than life itself. Right now, while we 
sailed the waves of gravity in space, she was mine.
A day later the Jupiter Patrol found us. At first we feared it was another 
pirate ship or an opportunist merchanter, but soon we saw the big round Jove 
circle with the red spot in it, and recognized the lines of a ship of the Space 
Navy, and knew this was authentic. Contact at last!
They locked on and boarded us. The officer who spoke to us was a sleek, neat, 
brisk, correct woman. There would be no sexual solicitation here! "Please 
identify your origin," she said in English.
Naturally the representative of the mighty Colossus did not bother to learn the 
language of mere refugees! But we were in no position to complain. I spoke up, 
since my English was as facile as any. "We are refugees from Callisto, fleeing 
the oppression of our government. We seek sanctuary at Jupiter."
The woman frowned. "Perhaps you people are not aware that there has been an 
election on Jupiter, and extra-planetary policy has shifted. Political and/or 
economic refugees are no longer being accepted. You will have to go elsewhere."
I was stunned. "But there is nowhere else! We used our last reserves to get 
here! We are out of food, our batteries for running the life-support systems are 
low. Our men were killed by pirates, our women raped—" I broke off, realizing 
that I shouldn't say that. Maybe I could qualify it. "Some of—"
"Yes, we are familiar with the standard refugee story," she snapped. "You people 
expect us to believe that all of space is infested with ancient buccaneers in 
pirate hats and pantaloons, holding you up at sword-point for gold. This is the 
twenty-seventh century, and we are not so credulous. We will give you supplies 
to take you to Europa or Ganymede, and we shall tow you out beyond our 
territorial limit. That is all. It is high time you moon folk started taking 
care of your own problems, instead of foisting them off on us."
Appalled, I translated her words for the others. I could hardly believe it 
myself. Here we had finally arrived at the political sanctuary of mighty 
Jupiter, the planet of all our dreams—and were not welcome. What had happened to 
the great melting pot of the Solar System!
It is a terrible thing to have one's hopes so brutally dashed. I think we were 
all in something like a group trance. We stood there unprotesting as the Jupiter 
work crew swarmed over the bubble, emptying our refuse (muttering in English 
they thought we could not understand that now they knew we were liars, because 
we could not have come all the way from Callisto, because the refuse wasn't 
enough for such a trip), restocking our supply of food packs, replacing our 
oxygenation units and the batteries for our general environment-maintenance 
equipment, tuning the gravity-lens generator, and replacing the water-recycling 
filters. They were so competent it was small wonder that they did not believe we 
could have made the trip we claimed; we were, after all, only incompetent 
refugees. They evidently assumed that some ship had towed us here and rehearsed 
us in the story to tell, in an attempt to play upon sympathy. They were also so 
efficient they hardly checked the bags tied to the outside of the bubble, 
assuming them to be junk storage: another evidence of our sloppiness.
Yet we needed all of their help, for only luck had prevented something crucial 
from failing. But we needed help less than we needed the enormous gift of 
sanctuary on Jupiter. They were generously giving us trifles instead of the 
essence. Now they could write up a report about all the good they had done for 
thankless refugees.
Oh, yes, they were as good as the female officer's word. (I refrain from 
applying the vernacular description for a female of questionable ethics, 
tempting as it is.) They towed us out beyond the orbit of Amalthea, to the outer 
ring, and turned us loose with the admonition not to return to Jupiter 
territorial space, on pain of being blasted out of it. Poverty-stricken foreign 
freeloaders, they let us know politely, were not wanted in the decent 
God-fearing territory of mighty Jupiter. After all, we didn't even speak the 
language.
Maybe they were bluffing about the blasting-out-of-space. We were unlikely to 
risk it. Certainly they had the physical capacity to do such a thing. The 
Jupiter States possessed the mightiest military force in the Solar System, 
excepting possibly that of the Saturnine Republic.
My mother shook her head as she absorbed my translation, looking abruptly 
haggard. She had been prepared for anything except this! "And we thought we had 
known rape!" she said.
I pondered that, and concluded she was right. I may have overstated the phrasing 
of the Jupiter rejection, for the female officer's speech was always politely 
delivered, but the essence is accurate. They definitely did not want us. So what 
could have been more cruel than the abrupt destruction of our aspirations? 
Physical rape came and went; it was possible to cover it up, to pretend it never 
happened; but this rejection could never be undone. Now we had, almost 
literally, nowhere to go. We knew that none of the major moons of Jupiter would 
give us safe haven. They were all overpopulated, poverty-ridden and oppressed by 
the autocratic governments that seem to sprout like weeds in the wilderness of 
the so-called Third System.
Jupiter, in fact if not in theory, hoped that we would simply disappear in space 
and never appear again. We were not Jupiter's problem, and we could be ignored.
For this my father had died and my mother had submitted to degradation. For 
nothing!
I found Helse looking out a port, watching magnificent Jupiter whirl by, 
shrinking visibly as we were towed from it, like the shrinking of our dream. 
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," 
she murmured, quoting from memory the historical sonnet, "The New Colossus," 
whose tradition the United States of Jupiter supposedly carried on. "The 
wretched refuse of your teeming shore..." She was crying, of course, and so was 
I.
 
Chapter 14 — HELL PLANET
Space, 3-5-'15—We held a group meeting in due course to discuss our situation. 
We were the wretched refugee refuse, yearning to breathe free, who had learned 
the hard way not to believe all that was quoted in the geography texts, but we 
still had to decide on some course. Where were we to go?
Well, we would not go hungry. We had a full supply of food packs now, courtesy 
of the surplus stores of rich Jove, and the bodies of our men remained anchored 
to our hull. I wondered whether the Jupiter Patrol workmen might actually have 
spotted the nature of those bags and played stupid so as to avoid the 
awkwardness of having to dispose of them, perhaps even giving them decent 
burial. It might be politically inexpedient to accept bodies while rejecting 
living people. Had they inspected those bodies, they would have discovered how 
they had died, and it would have been more difficult for the Jupiter Patrol to 
maintain its official ignorance of the pirate problem. Jupiter, like our women, 
preferred to ignore certain unpleasant realities. Probably they had the physical 
capacity to deal with the pirates, but lacked the political motivation. It was 
all understandable—in its sickening fashion.
We knew we could not return to Callisto. Starvation in space would probably be 
preferable to what the authorities there would do to us to cover their own 
embarrassment at our very existence. We were, after all, tangible evidence of 
the failure of their system. They might not care to correct that failure, but 
they would certainly labor diligently to cover it up. Everywhere, concealment 
seemed preferable to correction!
Ganymede and Europa were little better. Io was largely uninhabitable, and its 
few residential domes were reputed to be horribly overcrowded. No salvation 
there!
That left the outer moonlets—who would hardly be likely to welcome our motley 
assemblage of women and children. Yet we did have to go somewhere, for we could 
not live indefinitely in space.
"Hidalgo!" Spirit exclaimed.
Señora Ortega's head turned toward her, and we all paused for consideration. Out 
of the mouths of babes...
We discussed it. Hidalgo is a planetoid no bigger than Amalthea, in a 
stretched-out orbit between Mars and Saturn. But it was no ordinary fragment, 
for a couple of centuries ago Jupiter assumed sovereignty over it, and more 
recently Hidalgo had become an actual state of the United States of North 
Jupiter, the only nonplanetary body to be granted that status. It was now a 
major tourist region. Huge pleasure domes were set on it, spinning on their 
bases to provide the kind of gravity the tiny planetoid could not. The 
population there was not Hispanic, but was polyglot and multiracial. Our kind 
could surely merge with their kind. There was always work for domestics, and 
that was one thing our women could handle. Our children could get superior 
schooling there and grow up as free citizens. Hidalgo, we reasoned, was so far 
out from Jupiter proper that the ban against refugees might not apply. Spirit, 
in her intuitive fashion, had come up with a truly intriguing prospect.
But there were formidable problems. Hidalgo did swing out past Jupiter's orbit, 
which was the basis for Jupiter's claim in it, but that did not mean it was 
close to Jupiter physically. It was a tiny, tiny mote in space, virtually 
impossible to discover by random search with a clumsy bubble. We would need an 
ephemeris, a detailed listing of the locations of bodies in space and time. 
These locations were given as triple-coordinate sets, computer-calculated, so 
that it was possible to pick a precise date and time and get the exact spacial 
coordinates of the desired object, relative to the sun and its position in the 
galaxy. Without the ephemeris, we could look until we died of old age for that 
grain of sand in the immensity of solar space.
We also did not have a drive system capable of getting us there. The jet we had 
was barely enough to move us around the Jupiter ecliptic—that is, the plane of 
the equator and inner moons—and Hidalgo is far outside that. The efficient Jupe 
workers had recharged our jet, for it, like everything else associated with this 
bubble, was near exhaustion, but no matter how fresh the jet was, it was grossly 
insufficient. We needed a powerful ion drive that would accelerate us at a 
significant fraction of gee, to aid our gravity lenses. To put it in simplest 
terms: We needed to add a more powerful motor to our sailboat. We could not 
simply center on a distant speck like Hidalgo and fall in to it; there was not 
enough gravity there to bring us in within a century or so.
And we needed more supplies: food, oxygen, electricity, all for a much longer 
journey. Lots of things like that, if we wanted to get there alive.
That was why we decided to raid an outpost on Io. That planet might not be 
worthwhile to settle on, but it would do just fine for a supply raid. The 
badlands sections had all sorts of technical facilities for monitoring the 
volcanoes and radiation intensity and such, and there were many study 
foundations there performing obscure research. They were well funded and surely 
had plenty of supplies to spare. Io is the most active planetary body in the 
Solar System, bar none, and that sort of thing is a magnet for scientists. We 
knew they had huge supplies of food and medicine and surplus equipment for every 
type of bubble and ship. Most important, they had complete libraries of 
ephemeridae.
I think it did not occur to any of us consciously at that time that what we 
contemplated was, in fact, piracy. All we knew was that we would die in high 
space if we did not float to a haven somewhere, and that the Jupe authorities 
had rejected us. It becomes much easier to justify strong measures, even illegal 
ones, when your life depends on them.
We also could not afford to doubt that everything we required for our extended 
journey through space would be available on Io. For if we made our play and did 
not achieve our needs, we were doomed. We were, in fact, making a gamble whose 
boldness would have appalled us a month before. Experience had altered our 
horizons drastically.
The period of revolution for Io is one and three-quarters days. You might think 
that would make it easy to intercept; just park for a day and wait for it to 
swing around. But it doesn't work that way. We were in orbit ourselves, and as 
we knew, orbits are not lightly shifted. So we had to use our precious jet to 
jockey around, letting Io catch up to us, using its gravity to wrestle us back 
in line. An expert navigator could have done it in a few hours; it took us two 
days, but we did get there.
Io was formidable as it loomed close. One volcano was bright shades of yellow, 
orange, brown, and red. The whole planet looked as if it had been recently 
scrambled—and, geologically speaking, it had.
You see, Io is not like other worlds. That may be the understatement of this 
narrative. It resembles them as a maddened sabre-tooth tiger on ancient Earth 
resembles a sleeping denatured pussycat. Other worlds, such as our own Callisto, 
may seem almost dead; Io is screamingly alive. The closer we got the more I 
remembered about it, and the less I liked what we planned. It wasn't the human 
opposition I feared; it was Io herself.
There's really too much to tell here; I'll try to touch on the essence only. Io, 
just over four hundred thousand kilometers from Jupiter, should have one face 
locked on Jupiter, the same way it is with Callisto and the others. But Europa, 
the next moon out, interferes, forcing Io into an eccentric orbit. That means 
her circuit isn't round and her velocity isn't constant. She moves at different 
speeds, and turns her face back and forth as though bothered by someone hovering 
just behind her shoulder. This has to do with the fundamental physics of the 
situation. Tidal forces develop, and these are not mere little tugs; it is more 
like a giant hand squishing an overripe orange, making the juices squirt and the 
peel buckle. That tidal action generates heat, keeping much of the interior of 
the planet molten. This in turn means constant change. New volcanoes keep 
popping up and spewing out their stuff and dying down, and the ground shifts 
restlessly. So maps are soon outdated, and no one can really say ahead of time 
what the details of the landscape will be—especially on the active face facing 
Jupiter. That's the bad face, the Gorgon-face, the uninhabitable one that spits 
sulfur in your eye and pollutes that whole region of space with radioactive 
debris. The one we were headed for.
But what choice did we have?
We glided in. It was night locally, with the inside face away from the sun, but 
glowing with its own savage vents. Truly, this was Hell we were coming to! Io is 
one terrible lady.
We floated along at a reasonably safe elevation, looking for our target. We had 
to select it by night, then hide the bubble and make a foray afoot, so there 
would be no hint of our intent. We agreed there should be no violence. We were 
raiding for what we had to have, but we were not criminals. We would pretend to 
be a scientific party that got isolated by a vagary of volcanic activity—a 
completely credible story on wild Io!—and once inside the dome, we would hijack 
the crew, using a mock bomb, and make them provide the supplies we needed. 
Peaceful hijacking had for centuries been a staple tool for the impoverished 
desperate.
It was indeed a desperate strategy. But if we won, it would give us our fair 
chance for refuge. If we lost, at least it would be quick. We had to do it.
We spotted a dome, but it was too small; it wouldn't have enough supplies. We 
moved on, and spotted another—too large. We didn't want to tackle any more than 
we had to; even our minimum requirement might prove to be more than we could 
handle. Finally, near a massive rocky escarpment, we discovered a medium-sized 
observation dome with several transport bubbles docked beside it. This was our 
target.
We floated down behind the escarpment, which resembled a wrinkle in that orange 
I mentioned before and seemed to be an ideal place to hide our bubble. But as we 
closed on it, we discovered that perspective and darkness had deceived us; this 
was a far more massive outcropping than thought. It was a mountain range, with 
the highest peak some eight or nine kilometers tall. Back on Callisto we had 
seen no hills beyond a few hundred meters high, so this was awesome. None of us 
had had experience with this exaggerated type of terrain. That is probably why 
we erred so disastrously.
We landed in a comfortably small niche in the mountain, tucked down well out of 
sight of the dome we stalked. Even an observation dome with the most powerful 
telescopes could not see through a mountain of sulfur. We weren't sure we could 
complete our mission before dawn, so we wanted the bubble to be properly 
concealed.
Helse and I were in the raiding party, because we spoke English, the common 
tongue of scientists in this region of space. My mother and Spirit stayed behind 
with thirty-four women, while twenty-five women formed the raiding party, in 
addition to the two of us. Señora Ortega led us. I think we all felt the 
excitement of adventure—but also knew it was grim business. I had heard it said 
that a person is most truly alive when death is near, and I think there is some 
truth in it.
Our first problem was getting down to the dome. We had parked near the base of 
the mountain—but that little ledge of a kilometer or so became abruptly 
gargantuan when we approached it afoot. Again, we had perceived it as it would 
have been on Callisto, a very gradual decline, much broader than it was tall. It 
was not so. It was the other way around.
The cliff was of sulfur dioxide ice, yellow underfoot. Maybe there was other 
rock beneath, but that was the surface. It wasn't slippery, fortunately, but it 
was unfamiliar, and we didn't trust it. There were small cracks and pocks and 
crevices in its layout, visible in the generous light of Jupiter, but we feared 
these could mask more dangerous nether flaws in the structure. But we traversed 
the more or less level portion without untoward event, headed toward the 
drop-off.
The descent was horrendous. We took one look over that awesome cliff and hastily 
roped ourselves together like ancient mountain climbers. I think we all suffered 
from acrophobia in that moment. But we had to get down to the base, where we 
could proceed on the level to the target dome. We let ourselves down the cliff 
on the rope, paying it out one person at a time, watching the party leaders 
step-slide down the steepening slope.
Helse and I were in the middle of the party. Even so, it was one frightening 
descent. The projecting edges of the mountain were like the blade of a pitted 
cleaver. We had to chip away the sharp corner and form a niche for the rope, so 
that it would neither slide nor fray. We wanted it to feed through exactly where 
and when we wanted it to.
Gravity here seemed to be more than on Callisto, though it is possible our time 
in low-gee had distorted our perception. Though Io is a smaller moon, it is far 
more dense. One might suppose that surface gravity would be the same for two 
worlds of equal mass even if their diameters differed, but that is not so; the 
smaller one has greater surface gravity, because that surface is closer to the 
center. So, though Io actually is slightly less massive than Callisto, it is 
almost twice as dense, and that makes the difference. Io is sized like Earth's 
lonely moon, but is a little more so in diameter, density, and mass, and a lot 
more so in activity.
Apart from this, the suits made us clumsy. A suit in vacuum, in a familiar 
region, is manageable; but in atmosphere and on an awkward surface it becomes 
more clumsy. There is environmental resistance. There was very little planetary 
atmosphere here, but we felt it nonetheless.
But mainly, our problem was the sheer height of our start. I hesitate to repeat 
myself, but it is difficult even to rationalize the impact this elevation had on 
us. From space a niche in the foothill of a mountain may seem minor, especially 
when it is down near the larger plain. But one kilometer is, after all, a 
thousand meters, and that is awesome up close. It seemed that if we fell, we 
would fall forever—and somehow, perversely, my apprehension made me almost want 
to fall, to get it over with. A fall at quarter-gee would not be nearly as 
ferocious as one at full-gee, but my nervous system had evolved on Earth, and it 
reacted as it would have on Earth. I was almost paralyzed with the fear of that 
height.
"Close your eyes," Helse told me, helmet to helmet. "Pretend it's only a few 
yards. Meters."
Coward that I was, I did, and it helped. But soon I was looking again, reminding 
myself that I hadn't been acrophobic while in the bubble. On the bubble had been 
another matter—but I believe that was understandable. Out here it was the feel 
of weight and the uncertainty of the rope that jittered me, rather than the 
actual elevation. Had I, for example, been using a reliable flying suit, this 
same elevation and slope would hardly have bothered me. At least, this is what I 
now prefer to believe.
So I scrambled over the dread ridge in my turn, just as if I felt no fear, and 
Helse followed me, and with that conquest of my hesitancy, my apprehension 
abated without actually disappearing. Commitment does seem to help. The women 
before and after us seemed to have no problems, though I was sure each 
experienced similar qualms.
The vista below was dramatic. The surface of Io was a tapestry of orange even in 
the reflected light from Jupiter. Dark runnels showed where some recent flow of 
sulfur had passed, and bright flame—or whatever it should be called, since no 
fire as we know it can burn in near-vacuum—showed at a roughly circular vent to 
the right. The observation dome was near this vent, partly sheltered by a lesser 
escarpment. It looked precarious to me, but I suppose there's no way to gather 
significant data on a sulfur volcano except by sitting beside it for a while and 
making on-the-spot notes. I wondered what the life expectancy of such 
researchers was. Probably that was a super-strong, super-insulated dome, able to 
withstand what it had to. But probably, too, the researchers possessed a certain 
quality of courage. A person did not have to be a muscular warrior to be brave, 
as the women of our bubble were showing.
We were step-sliding down the steep slope at about five kilometers per hour, so 
we had a half-hour descent to do. That was all right. But what, I wondered, 
about the return trip? And how much rope did we have? Not any kilometer length, 
for certain!
Sure enough, the rest of us had to set ourselves against the slope, clinging to 
sulfur-ice, while our end-person separated herself and us from the anchor at the 
top. She left a trailing length, so that we could use it to haul ourselves up 
the vertical portion of the slope and over the lip, but that was all. On our 
return trip we would have to climb unaided to that point. I didn't like it.
Now that we were no longer anchored, we proceeded more swiftly. Too swiftly—I 
tried to brake, for safety, but the onrush of sliding women hauled me along. In 
moments we were out of control. Inexperience was telling.
I think someone screamed. As I mentioned, it is not a complete vacuum on Io; the 
sulfur dioxide gas is around, especially near the hot vents where it can't 
freeze out, so sound is theoretically possible. Maybe it was conducted along the 
ground, or the rope. Anyway, there was reason to scream. We were sliding toward 
a sharper drop-off—and, judging from our present angle, this one had to be 
virtually vertical.
I dug in my feet with renewed desperation, chewing up a mass of chips and dust. 
So did Helse and the women. But the drag of those in front, who were completely 
out of control, was too great. We were all being hauled to that dread brink.
Then a woman toward the front drew a knife. She sawed at the rope, and in a 
moment it parted. Then she dug in her heels, and the rest of us did likewise, 
and this concerted effort was effective at last, and slowly we slowed.
But as we crunched to a nervous halt, we watched the first five women tumble 
over the brink, led by Señora Ortega.
Maybe it was just an irregularity, leading to a gentler slope below. In that 
case they would be all right, just bruised and perhaps angry at the rest of us 
for cutting them loose. It was an anger we could accept.
We worked our way sidewise, finding a better slope, avoiding the ledge. We each 
jammed our heels in at each step, making sure we would not get out of control 
again, though this slowed us enormously. Then we moved down. When we got below 
the level of the ledge we looked across anxiously, to see what had become of our 
leading segment.
There was nothing. The ledge overhung a developing crevice that widened into a 
channel for an avalanche, almost vertical. Those women might as well have fallen 
straight down.
What could we do but go on? We could not even see the lost women, let alone 
reach them, let alone help them, in the highly unlikely chance they survived. 
Even the time it took to make the effort would prejudice the success of our 
mission.
All of us had known this trek would be dangerous; now we had the proof. A 
similar fate would befall the rest of us if we didn't complete our mission.
So we paused, helmets bowed in silent mourning for Doña Concha and the others. 
That was the best we could do.
Io had taken her first victims. I was very much afraid they would not be her 
last ones.
We continued down. There were other ledges and other crevices, none of them 
having been evident during our approach in the bubble. We proceeded slowly and 
avoided them. Once bitten, thrice shy! This mountain had a great deal more 
character than we had anticipated, and now every trace irregularity loomed 
monstrously. Had we had any inkling of the enormity of the challenge the descent 
would represent, we would have landed elsewhere and avoided such a hazard. But 
that was most of our problem: ignorance and inexperience. Both were being 
rapidly abated, and we did at last make it to the base. But it took us almost an 
hour, twice as long as budgeted.
We untied ourselves and marched across the orange surface. The woman who had cut 
the rope was now our leader. I didn't know who she was, and suspect most of the 
others shared my ignorance, but it didn't matter. She had tried to decline the 
title, but the rest of us insisted, by gestures. She had saved herself and the 
rest of us by her quick action. Her snap judgments promised to be most reliable. 
There is indeed a place for hasty decisions, and that place is the surface of 
Io, for there simply is not time to consider all aspects of many alternatives at 
comfortable leisure.
Our new leader sought the ridges, not trusting the snow-filled recesses. But 
these ridges, though only a few meters high, were irregular and fragmented, so 
our firm footing exacted a price of devious routing. We had to jump over 
crevices, and some of them were pretty wide and deep. Even with low gravity, 
this was nervous business.
Sure enough, one of our women slipped as she jumped over an especially bad one 
and fell down into it. The crack was about thirty meters deep, closing into a 
dark crease. She was wedged down there unmoving.
We started to lower a rope to her, to pull her out. Then we saw her suit: It was 
deflating. The fall had punctured it; perhaps it had snagged on a sharp 
projection. Her air was gone. Further effort on our part was pointless. We could 
not reach her in time to do any good.
As it happened, I recognized the suit of this woman. She was the mother of one 
of the smaller children. Her loss became more poignant in that moment, as I 
thought of what we would have to tell that child.
Señora Ortega's grandchildren, too, would have to be told. There was a grim 
business coming after we returned to the bubble, even if we completed our 
mission without further casualties. These were real people, not strangers, who 
were dying.
After that we avoided the worst cracks, though this meant risking the yellow 
snow. From some of the low areas fumes sprayed up, making little domes of frozen 
gas and particles like decorative waterfalls. These were really miniature 
volcanoes, I realized, harmless as long as we didn't step in them. This was the 
land of volcanoes.
We tramped on for hours, sacrificing time in favor of safety. Dawn came, as the 
moon's rapid orbit brought it a quarter circle around Jupiter in ten hours—which 
hours we had used up in our pre-landing survey and then in our suiting-up and 
organization and slow descent and march. We had grossly underestimated the time 
such routine required.
On Callisto, dawn outside the dome is pretty but unremarkable since we have our 
own day-night schedule inside the domes. Here dawn was immediate and forceful—in 
fact, more savage than we had imagined.
Sulfur dioxide sublimates to gas in the ambience of day on Io. It is frozen only 
during the night. With the first touch of sunlight, the snow around us began to 
heat and convert. As that light slowly intensified, this conversion became 
explosive. The gas expanded upward and outward, filling the vacuum, swirling 
past the irregular features of the landscape. We were soon amidst an 
upward-flinging storm.
In addition, the ground quaked. Io was now in the close, swift phase of its 
orbit about Jupiter, and the tidal force was manifesting. The entire body of 
this world was being squished—and her molten interior was squirting out of every 
available pore. This was not a volcano, it was an entire planetary face of 
eruptions. We were caught in an awakening hell.
And this surely was the physical location of Hell, I realized. Hell did have to 
be somewhere, if it had any reality at all, and this was conveniently located. 
Satan could ship the newly damned souls out here at light-speed by the busload, 
less than an hour's trip from Earth, and dump them out amidst the burning sulfur 
and leave them to their own miserable devices. Where could they go? And we, like 
the unlikely fools we were, had come here voluntarily. Our souls would not have 
far to travel when they departed our bodies.
We had to rope ourselves together again, lest the rising winds of the filling 
vacuum blow us away. New crevices were yawning, and the constant shaking of the 
ground was as deeply unsettling to our attitude as to our bodies. We were 
accustomed to a stable planet. Where could we hide—from this?
We plowed on toward the target dome, huddling against the titanic forces of 
nature being unleashed about us. When a person fell, two more picked her up. 
When a segment of our line of people was blown toward a crevice, the rest of the 
line dug in instantly and pulled them back. We were learning to react correctly.
But vicious Io would not permit us to continue so readily. She opened a battery 
of jets almost beneath us. The ground cracked open, and a line of ejecta spewed 
out immediately behind Helse. The sulfur sand and gas rose like the cutting edge 
of a knife—and what it cut was our rope. Suddenly the last eight women in our 
line were separated from us; we perceived their suited outlines dimly through 
the haze.
We tried to rejoin them—but now the vent widened, as if seizing on its 
advantage, and the wash of gas and sand expanded. The ground beneath the eight 
of them broke up; fragments of it were blasted out, raining down in a larger 
pattern. A central plume of eruption formed, surrounded by an envelope of 
swirling gas. We could no longer see our friends—and I suspected that was just 
as well. They could not have survived that blast.
It may seem that I lacked emotion as I watched my companions perish. I think 
this was not the case; my emotion was stifled, suppressed, voided, because I 
knew there was nothing to be gained by it, for me or the others. I had concerns 
of survival too pressing to be dissipated by the energy of emotion. So I watched 
with a kind of numbness, unable to comprehend the larger significance of what I 
saw, and plodded on.
The woman before me doubled over. I saw her suit deflating; a particle from the 
eruption had holed it. I tried to clap my hands over the puncture, but it was 
useless; her remaining pressure leaked out around my clumsy gloves and she was 
dead before I knew it. I saw her face inside the helmet, bloating out, the 
eyes—oh, God, depressurization is a terrible thing!
My numbness suffered another jolt. I realized that there was absolutely no merit 
in my survival. That particle could have holed my suit as readily as this 
woman's; only pure chance had dictated that she had occupied that spot in its 
trajectory instead of I. Had we been moving ahead a trifle faster, I would have 
been there; slower, and the woman ahead of her would have been there. Similarly, 
it had been luck that cut off the eight women behind us; it could as readily 
have been nine. That would have taken out Helse. At that point my speculation 
balked.
There was nothing to do but salvage the dead woman's oxygen tank. Fumblingly I 
moved it to my suit as a potential spare for whoever might need it. My suit had 
had about twenty-four hours of service remaining at the start of the Io venture, 
but some of the other suits might have less. I disconnected her body from the 
chain and we went on. Already I wished ardently that we had never landed on 
terrible Io; but it was far, far too late for any change of mind.
The angry planet was not through with us. She would not be satisfied, I 
realized, until every one of us was dead. A new gas vent opened, this one at a 
slant, and its blast shoved the twelve of us who remained rapidly forward toward 
the dome we were headed for. This might have seemed fortuitous—but we already 
knew the danger of too-swift progress and didn't like this. We tried to slow 
down, to control our route and our destiny—but the vent only increased its 
exhalation, while the ground shook violently, impeding our footing, and we had 
to move at Io's will, not our own.
The consequence of this loss of control was not long in coming. We found 
ourselves charging a vent overflowing with sulfur lava, the viscous 
bright-yellow material flowing slowly across out path. It would have been easy 
enough to avoid—if the wind behind us had not been shoving us directly into it.
We saw it coming and tried to veer left to get around it. But the lead women 
were already too close; they were carried right into the glowing mass. Their 
suits inflated like bubbles and burst with the sudden heat overload.
One woman, just at the edge of the flow, managed to brace her feet and turn and 
point left. Helse and I and the woman now in front of us scrambled desperately 
left—and the braced woman pulled on the rope, helping us crack the whip, so that 
we could gain impetus to avoid the lava.
It worked, and we scrambled to relative safety—but the woman who helped us could 
not maintain her footing and was carried on into the lava. She fell headlong, 
her suit immersed for a moment before the rapid heat expansion lifted it to the 
surface and popped it. She died helping us to live and so did several of the 
women closest to her. The rope burned through, setting our end free.
More sacrifice for us—and we didn't even know their names. They had surely known 
ours, though, for the sacrifice had been too deliberate; they were preserving us 
so we could speak English to the scientists of the dome and complete our 
mission.
I don't care if Io is literal Hell. I am sure those gallant women went to 
Heaven.
Helse and I and three women cleared the lava. We survived—we five, of the 
twenty-seven who had started this trek. And we still weren't at the dome.
The lava flow was following a great U-shaped channel. We were now in that 
channel, ahead of the flow, and knew we had to get out of it quickly. The lava 
was moving slowly, but that could change quickly—or a reverse gust of a gale 
could drive us back into it. All low ground was treacherous while lava was 
spewing!
We spotted the edge of the escarpment that sheltered the observation dome. This 
rose into a mountain not more than two kilometers high, but it was as jagged as 
the other. There should be shelter from wind and lava in its lee, as this was 
not a volcanic structure. It seemed that solid rock floated on the half-molten 
crust of the planet, much as continents were supposed to do on planets like 
Earth. We were very glad to have this solidity amidst this horribly living 
surface. Security was hard to come by, here in Hell!
It was effective. The wind cut off as we passed into the mountain shelter, and 
the ground was more stable here. We stayed at the base, close in, knowing better 
than to try to climb the impossibly steep slope looming beside us. Therein was 
the final error in our judgment of Io.
The foot of the mountain was not a straight line; it wound in and out in a 
series of sculptured bays. It was really quite pretty in its fashion, with the 
sulfur changing shades of orange depending on the angle of the sunlight and 
shadow and the direction from which we viewed it. Massive and somber, an island 
of stability in this ocean of violence, it seemed almost to lean over us 
protectively. The sun rose slowly higher as we walked, further warming the 
region. The yellowish atmosphere was thickening.
Then the avalanche started. I think a volcanic tremor actually set it off, but 
it was the softening sulfur snow that made it ready to happen. Too late, we 
realized what we had been flirting with when we cozied up to this mountain.
The entire face of it seemed to slide. Snow flew up in a yellow cloud, obscuring 
the more solid motion, but we could tell by the rumble that shook our bodies 
through ground and vapor that there were massive boulders within it. This 
probably happened every morning as the mountain warmed, while at night the 
sulfur dioxide solidified and coated it again. The mountain was more or less 
eternal, as this region went; not so its clothing of snow.
I knew that avalanches tended to flow in channels, as the material took the 
easiest route down. Thus it would concentrate mostly in one bay or another, by 
the time it struck the bottom. But which bay? Our survival depended on our 
choice of locale.
By common consensus we drew into one bay. We would ride it out together. But 
Helse, at the end, suddenly unlinked herself and bolted, terrified. She had 
panicked and done the worst possible thing.
I set out after her—and was brought short by the rope that linked me to the 
three women. With anger and desperation I untied myself, while the rumble 
swelled around us. Then I launched after Helse. I didn't know whether I could 
catch her and fetch her back in time, but I had to try. I suppose that was brave 
of me; I really didn't think about that at the time. I just knew I had to save 
Helse.
I sprinted after her, making better time than she in the clumsy suits because I 
had more power. But by the time I caught her, it was too late. The avalanche was 
upon us.
I wrapped my arms about her and threw her down, seeking to protect her with my 
body, though knowing it was useless. The mass of the falling material would 
crush us both to death in an instant. My last thought was that this was as good 
a way to die as any: embracing the woman I loved.
But—it didn't happen. A few chunks of discolored snow fell beside us; that was 
all. The noise was all about us, however, swelling to a crescendo—which then 
stifled out. The horrendous fall of sulfur had come—and we were alive.
We climbed back to our feet, somewhat dazed. I wondered how I had been able to 
hear so much, and realized that the atmosphere had filled out considerably as 
the snow sublimated; sound was indeed possible in the normal fashion, now.
The avalanche had settled in the other bay, where the three women waited. Now 
that bay was filled with the rubble of the mountain.
We examined the monstrous orange pile, cogitated a moment, and went on. As 
usual, Io had given us no other course.
We trudged on, burdened more by the horror of twenty-five women dead than by the 
fatigue of the trek. But now we walked some distance out from the base of the 
mountain, though that put us at the fringe of the wind and belching ground. We 
knew how far out we had to be to avoid the main mass of an avalanche, because we 
had just seen an avalanche. We could walk within that range, but had to be ready 
to bolt out of it at the first sound of a slide.
Sure enough, before long we felt the rumble of another avalanche, and saw the 
clouds of yellow snow. We were clear of it, but I was developing a profound 
dislike for that color. I think for the rest of my life I will associate yellow 
with Hell.
We were beyond the threat of the snowslide, but sympathetic vibrations in the 
ground opened new crevices at our feet, and we hastened right back toward the 
mountain snow. Scylla and Charybdis, the perils of the left and right—we had to 
be alert and quick to avoid them both!
Then we rounded an outcropping and spied the station dome. Never had a structure 
looked more beautiful to me! We bounded up to it, to the tiny-seeming lock at 
its base—and were met by a suited man.
He didn't even try to question us. He conducted us right inside, and soon we 
were in a blessedly warm chamber, breathing fresh air, feeling full Earth 
gravity. The gravity around the dome must have been reduced, as it was wherever 
a gravity lens focused the waves, but we hadn't noticed. That shows how far gone 
we were.
Best of all was the feeling of security. There were no storms in here, no 
jetting vents, no lava flows, and no avalanches. We could relax without risking 
prompt extinction. It was like a crushing burden evaporating from our bodies.
The head scientist showed up immediately to question us. He was an older man, 
obviously from Jupiter. He had short gray hair, large spectacles that would have 
been fashionable half a millennium ago, and of course he spoke nothing but 
English.
Our original plan was no good, despite our ability to speak the language. The 
fake bomb had been lost with our companions and we had no way to hijack this 
station, even if we had wanted to carry through. Too much had happened; we did 
not care to honor the memory of the women who had sacrificed themselves by the 
commission of a crime. Perhaps this was illogical, but it was the way I felt, 
and I believe Helse agreed. So we simply told the scientist the truth.
The man shook his head in polite amazement. "They actually towed you back out to 
space?" he asked, referring to an earlier part of our story. "I find that 
awkward to believe!" That was the word he used: awkward. He was trying to avoid 
implying that we were not telling the truth.
"Believe it, Mason," an associate told him. "The new administration has 
instituted a get-tough policy on immigration. No more Hispanics."
"But the governments of the moons are notoriously repressive!" the scientist 
said. "What other recourse do these people have?"
"Evidently to die in space," the other returned wryly. It was obvious that the 
scientists were humanitarians, unacquainted with the specifics of political 
policy.
The scientist, Mason—I was not certain whether that was his given or his 
surname—returned his attention to us. "So you plotted to hijack this station to 
obtain supplies—to go where?"
"Hidalgo," I repeated.
"But that's impossible! Hidalgo is on the far side of the Solar System at the 
moment!"
"We had planned to get an ephemeris to locate it exactly," I said. Such details 
hardly mattered, now that we had failed.
Mason went to a computer terminal. "Here is our ephemeris," he said, punching 
buttons. The screen illuminated, showing three-dimensional coordinates. 
"See—Hidalgo is just about as far away now as it is possible to be. You could 
travel more readily to Mars or Earth at the moment."
My weight seemed to increase. "We didn't know. We thought it could be close to 
Jupiter."
"It is close—in season. You happen to seek it at an inopportune time."
"Then we have nowhere to go," I said, thinking again of the twenty-five women 
who had given their lives for this hopeless mission. We had never had a chance, 
from the outset. Perhaps some other year I would be better able to appreciate 
the irony.
Mason pondered. "Politics is not my specialty. But I think you would be well 
advised to seek asylum on Leda. There is a Jupiter military station there whose 
commandant is of Hispanic descent. I suspect he would interpret the law more 
liberally than did those you encountered before."
"You're not arresting us?" Helse put in.
The scientist refocused on her. "Arrest you? For what you have told me? That 
would be self-incrimination! As I explained, I am not a political man, and if I 
were, I suspect I would not endorse this particular brand of politics." He shook 
his head, smiling. "Besides, you remind me too much of my niece."
Helse's face froze. I realized she was thinking of the supposed uncle-niece 
relationship she had had as a child prostitute. For all the apologies she had 
made for that system, it was evident that she wanted no more of it.
"Leda," I said quickly. "The next moon out from Callisto, but too small to house 
a population..."
"Indeed," Mason agreed, returning his attention to me. Helse relaxed, realizing 
that the scientist's remark had been innocent. "Its diameter is hardly ten 
kilometers. That would be about six miles in your measurement."
"No, kilometers is fine," I said. He really didn't know our culture. I realized 
that scientists, while certainly intelligent people, were not educated in things 
beyond their fields. Miles was his culture's unit of measurement, outside the 
scientific and technical arena, not mine.
He smiled. "Leda would fit within the shadow of one of our sulfur mountains 
here! But if you can reach it, I think it would be worth your while."
"We can reach it," I said, optimism returning. "If we can get the supplies we 
need, and an exact course. It's pretty far out."
"Eleven million kilometers from Jupiter," he agreed, checking his figures on the 
terminal, though he surely knew them in his head. "About twenty-five times as 
far out from Jupiter as is Io. But I think we can let you have a good drive jet 
and sufficient supplies."
Helse came alive again. "You can?"
The scientist smiled. "We suffer frequent losses here, owing to the violence of 
the geography we study. This is one loss I shall be glad to sustain."
"But we were going to hijack you!" she cried, chagrined.
He looked at her pretty face. "You did, my dear, you did." Then, perceiving her 
reaction, he asked: "Did I say something wrong?"
I realized we would have to tackle this head-on. "Do you have a picture of your 
niece?" I asked.
Perplexed, Mason gestured to a desk. There was a picture of a family of three. 
"My brother and his charming wife, and their daughter Megan, a charming girl."
I stared at the picture. There was an uncanny resemblance between Helse and the 
pictured Megan. The scientist had not been joking about being reminded of his 
niece. "How old is she?" I asked.
Mason considered. "I do lose track of time, in a place like this. I can tell you 
quickly about the past five eruptions of Vent 37C here, but mundane details like 
the party of my brother's politics or the age of his child—let me see."
"You have it on file," his associate reminded him.
"Oh, yes. Thank you." Mason punched more buttons, and got the information. "She 
was born in '95; that would make her twenty now, if I have not lost track of the 
date this year. I fear my picture is becoming dated, too."
So the resemblance was illusory, or at least misplaced; Megan was four years 
older than Helse, instead of the same age as the picture showed. Still, they 
might resemble each other in the manner of sisters. But I saw that Megan was 
full Caucasian, not mixed Latin as Helse was.
Nevertheless, this was enough to reassure Helse. Mason really did have a niece, 
and obviously adored her, but she had never lived with him, and if she had, he 
would not have abused her. He reacted to Helse the way he would to a true niece; 
there was no untoward aspect. My talent told me this now. Sometimes experience 
makes us overly suspicious.
Helse was blushing now, evidently pursuing a similar series of thoughts. The 
scientist set about providing us with what we needed, drawing on the expertise 
of his staff to do a far better job of it than we could have done. Our mission, 
it seemed, had, after all, been successful.
 
Chapter 15 — WHEN WILL IT END?
We had to wait till evening for the atmosphere to freeze out so that a bubble 
could safely float across the dangerous landscape of Io. By day, a chance 
volcano could sweep it right out of space.
Helse and I ate and slept comfortably, reveling in the civilized facilities of 
the dome and the kindness of the scientists, who seemed rather pleased to be 
entertaining young folk like us. I think, in retrospect, that this was the 
happiest period of our odyssey, despite the recent deaths of the women, for now 
we had genuine hope. Not all men were pirates or callous officials. I think if I 
ever have occasion to do any scientist, anywhere, a favor, I will do it 
unstintingly.
At last, refreshed, we set off. A technician transported us along with the 
supplies in a small bubble. In minutes we traversed the distance it had taken us 
dreadful hours to cover afoot. We came in sight of the nestled home bubble.
Helse touched my arm. We were not in our space suits now; they were unnecessary. 
"Hope—how are we going to tell them?"
Somehow, that aspect had been suspended from my awareness for several hours. 
Twenty-five women were dead, the mothers and only surviving parents of so many 
of the children. What could anyone say to soften that tragedy.
"I'll have to explain," I said. The idyll of the day ended like the illusion it 
had been, and cruel reality returned.
We watched our small bubble close on the larger one. "When I spooked and ran, 
there at the avalanche," Helse murmured, "why did you come after me, Hope?"
Preoccupied by the grimness I was about to have to convey, I answered her 
absently. "I had to try to save you, idiot. Without you, I might as well be 
dead."
"You thought we were both dead when the slide struck."
"Yes. Shows how much I know about avalanches. You turned out to be right."
"Blind luck," she said. "I panicked. You were ready to die for me."
"And instead, the sensible women died," I agreed. "Pure chance. Neither of us 
knew what we were doing." That bothered me even in my distraction—the reminder 
that no merit of mine accounted for my survival. It had bothered me briefly when 
the woman in front of me had her suit holed; now it hit me harder, because I had 
no immediate distraction of survival. I was no better than any of those women 
who had died; only a freak of fate had preserved me. It was as though a man's 
boot landed on the ground where live ants walked, and three were squashed and 
two were spared, without the man even noticing. At times like this I wondered 
whether I believed in God. Surely God was not like the booted man, heedless of 
human welfare or merit. But if He were not, then what was He like? If He had 
decreed, after due consideration, that sixty men and twenty-five women should 
die while trying to do the right thing, while brute pirates prospered, what kind 
of a Deity was He?
"I think I love you," Helse said.
The bubble nudged into contact with the other, and the air locks kissed and 
held. We had arrived.
Something penetrated my distraction. "What?"
Helse smiled. "Never mind."
"Did you say—?"
She shrugged, and now the air locks opened, and my onerous duty was upon me. I 
could not question Helse further. But perhaps I did not need to.
We were met at the lock by a small group of women. "Oh, they found you, Hope 
Hubris!" one said. I had to concentrate to remember that her name was Señora 
Martínez. "We were so. worried, when neither party returned—"
Neither party? "I—we have bad news and good news," I said.
Señora Martínez peered past me. "Where are the others?"
"That's the bad news," I said. "Only Helse and I made it. All the others—"
"Your mother did not find you?" Señora Martínez asked, her face drawn.
The cold of the outside closed in on me. "My mother—went out?"
"She led another party of twenty-five. She had a premonition you were in 
trouble. That there would be deaths in your party if someone didn't come to 
help."
Helse turned a staring face to me. "Oh, no, Hope..."
"There were deaths," I said dully. "My mother and her party—did not return?"
Señora Martínez shook her head. "We thought—she would be with you."
"When did she leave?"
"At dawn."
That meant the second party had been out on the surface of Io all day, following 
our route. All day in Hell.
"We could look for them in the bubble," Helse suggested.
The station technician who had piloted us here spoke up. "Anyone traveling afoot 
on the surface leaves a trail. The eruptions and evaporation of the day 
obliterate it, but if they are still alive and moving, that new trail will show 
up now."
I knew with a sick certainty that nothing would be found. The odds were against 
any human party surviving a full day on Io's inner face. How well we knew that! 
Yet we had to look.
Quickly we transferred the supplies and installed the new drive-jet. This one 
was much larger and heavier than the old one, and was fashioned in a circle. It 
would blast a ring of fire, or more properly a tube of fire, surrounding the 
rear air lock. It was securely fastened in place; we would not be able to move 
it to the bubble equator to institute spin in space. But for that we still had 
the old, little, single-jet drive, which we could store near the lock inside 
when not in use. "Be careful not to short the lead wires when it's inside!" the 
technician warned us. "It will jet in air as readily in space, and you wouldn't 
want that to happen." Yes, we were sure we wouldn't!
The technician finished and bade us farewell. The locks sealed and the two 
bubbles separated. Then both took off and floated low across the hellish surface 
of the planet, looking for a trail.
There was nothing. Our own trail of the morning had been obliterated, of course, 
and no other evidence of life showed. Sulfur was condensing on the mountain 
slopes and settling like snow on the plains below, leaving clear spaces around 
the active volcanoes. New tracks should have been evident in that fresh snow. 
The second party of women was gone with no more trace than the first. Killer Io 
had had another feast.
"We did not know how bad it was!" Señora Martínez said tearfully.
None of us had known.
At length the second bubble parted company with us, having done what it could.
My memory of this period becomes hazy. Spirit and I sat in the cell our mother 
had used, trying vainly to comfort each other, to ease our common loss. Helse 
brought us food from time to time, but left us mostly alone. It had been 
terrible when our father died, and numbing when Faith sacrificed herself, but 
this was the worst—because our mother, Charity Hubris, was all that we had left 
of our family, except each other. There was an amorphous, intangible ambience of 
emotion that had to coalesce somewhere, like sulfur dioxide precipitating at 
night, and now, for each of us, it had no object except the other. That settling 
out had to be accomplished, but it took time.
When we came out of it a few days later, like two survivors of holocaust, we 
went about the bubble and took stock. It was a disaster area. We had hardly been 
alone in our mourning; the children of those other forty-nine women had been 
coining to similar terms.
Some of them hadn't made it. I had never thought of children as suicidal types, 
but I could not condemn them for it. Spirit and I had had each other; some of 
the others had had no siblings. To be entirely alone—I had come near enough to 
that abyss to comprehend its nature, and I understood. The bodies of those 
children joined their fathers in cold storage on the hull of the bubble.
So we were spiraling out toward Leda, our only remaining hope, using our strong 
new jet to accelerate our orbital velocity, which in the normal paradox of such 
travel caused us to proceed outward at reduced velocity. We knew where we were 
going, thanks to the spot ephemeris the kindly scientist Mason had printed out 
for us, and had only to follow instructions to take advantage of the gravity 
wells of Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto to boost us to much better outward 
progress. So, even though Leda was a tiny mote, far out from Jupiter, we 
expected to reach it in a month of floating. This would have been impossible for 
us before, for Leda's sidereal period is 24 days, and we could have taken that 
long just to catch it once we reached its orbit. But a good drive unit makes a 
tremendous difference. When one adds a powerful outboard motor to a sailboat, 
one ceases to worry as much about the wind. We had really become a crude 
spaceship. In fact, the trip might have been impossible, regardless of schedule, 
without that new drive. This was because the gravity lenses kept us within the 
Jupiter ecliptic, the disk of space extending outward from its equator, where 
the rings lie. But Leda, like all the outer moons, has an inclined orbit, 
twenty-seven degrees tilted instead of falling within one degree of that plane 
like the inner moons. So we had to go that far out of the ecliptic or we would 
never have a chance to align. The scientists had plotted it out for us; 
otherwise we should have been lost.
Our bubble complement was now ten grown women and seventy-two children, counting 
Helse and me as children. The women had done an excellent job, but they had been 
under strain, piloting the bubble and caring for the majority of us who had sunk 
into the depression of new orphanism. I would have grieved longer, but I saw how 
selfish that would be. It was time for me to pull my weight.
Helse had been helping all along. Now Spirit and I moved in, taking instruction 
from Helse, and helping her teach the other children. We learned to take 
sightings on Jupiter and Ganymede and Callisto, three-dimensionally 
triangulating our relative position by using the little hand computer the 
scientists had provided for this purpose, then modifying the gravity lenses to 
correct our erring course. For our course was never precisely on target by 
itself; it always had to be adjusted. Naturally we could not simply orient on 
Leda and jet toward her; Leda not only was not visible from here, she wasn't 
there. She would be there only at the precise date and moment the ephemeris 
indicated. So we had to take triple sightings on familiar objects in space, get 
our angles precisely, check the time to the second, use the ephemeris to 
pinpoint exactly where those three objects were, so we could calculate exactly 
where we were, then calculate how far that deviated from where we should be. 
Fortunately the scientists had also provided idiot sheets that spelled out the 
steps in very simple bite-sized statements, complete with blanks for the new 
figures. We learned to set the degree of thrust of the drive unit, again 
according to computations. It was a challenge, and in its fashion it was fun; we 
felt like little spacemen, and we were. Soon the grown women were able to 
retreat into purely nominal supervision and get some needed rest.
But now we were passing through the mid-reaches, and pirates still clogged the 
ecliptic. We spied a ship overhauling us and knew it was trouble. We held a 
quick council of war, and decided to offer no resistance. Normally sex was all 
the pirates really wanted, and it no longer seemed like a prohibitive price to 
pay. We would have been glad to have any of the lost women back from Io, if sex 
was the price of her rescue. What is one act, compared to life?
But Helse took the precaution of changing to her boy costume, and she set up 
half a dozen of our oldest girl-children, including Spirit, similarly. Then most 
of us retreated to our cells and left the ten women to do what they had to do. 
With luck, no one would be hurt, and each women would not have to service more 
than two or three or four men.
It came to me then how far our attitudes had progressed, or regressed, in the 
course of our savage experience. We no longer even expected anything other than 
piracy and forced sex from strangers, and hardly considered any course of action 
other than that which would get us through with the smallest loss. The children 
of the surviving mothers took it for granted that prostitution was the proper 
course, just as they accepted the cannibalistic consumption of their fathers to 
abate their hunger. We had suffered more than physical degradation! Yet at the 
time it seemed right—and in retrospect it still seems right. We did what we had 
to do. How can that be wrong?
"I should be out there," Helse muttered as we heard the lock open. "I'm old 
enough, and God knows I've had experience."
I reacted with horror. "Never you!" I breathed. "I love you!"
"And did you love your mother?" she asked.
I swung my arm up, hitting her. The action was unpremeditated and the position 
awkward, so my arm only grazed her head in passing, but I was immediately 
chagrined. Of course I knew what she meant, as my second thought caught up with 
my first. I had loved my mother, and let her prostitute herself; why should it 
be otherwise with Helse? There was an inconsistency in my philosophy.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
She smiled wanly and put her arm around me. "I understand, Hope, I understand. 
But you must accept that it is not only your family that can make sacrifices for 
you. That woman at the lava flow threw away her life for us. Those women meeting 
the pirates now are not our relatives, but they are doing it for us. You must 
permit me to do for you what I can, and for the others of this bubble."
She was right, but I could not say it. The thought of some foul pirate embracing 
her, treating her as the Horse had treated my sister Faith, filled me with a 
blinding horror. "I love you!" I repeated, as if that had any logic.
"I know you do, Hope. And I love you. There need be no pretense between us 
anymore. I know you are the one man who would never hurt me."
Her words filled me with a blaze of emotion that I felt physically in my chest, 
radiating through my body. I know the biologists say the heart is not the true 
font of love, that it is all in the mind; I sometimes think biologists doubt 
that love exists at all. But what I felt was in my breast and brain. I leaned 
over and kissed her, and fire seemed to play about our touching lips.
Then we had to break, for we heard the tramp of pirate feet along the Commons, 
and if anyone saw us kissing, Helse's masculine ruse would quickly enough be 
discovered. "I will never hurt you," I agreed passionately. And I believed it.
What terrible ironies fate inflicts on us!
They were pirates, all right. We heard their guttural exclamations as they 
examined our women, who had gone so far as to make themselves as reasonably 
attractive as possible, donning dresses and loosening their hair. I hated all of 
this, but knew it was necessary. It was better than the violence and bloodshed 
that otherwise would come.
These were real brutes. It seemed they weren't interested in acquiescence. They 
wanted violence. I heard them hitting the women; I heard the screams. I started 
to get up, to go out there in a fury—but Helse held me back. She was correct, of 
course, as she had been before, when my mother had been out there. My headstrong 
reaction was sheer mischief. I settled back, shivering with rage. And I realized 
that Helse was doing service with the older women: it was her chore to keep me 
out of the action. To save my life, if nothing else, from the consequence of my 
adolescent folly.
One woman was thrown on the deck immediately above our cell. We heard the thump 
of her body and that of the pirate who bestrode her, and saw their fuzzy 
outlines through our ceiling panel. I wished I could slide open the panel and 
stab a blade upward into the pirate's body.
Then the woman screamed, and it was an ugly sound. She had been terribly hurt! 
Still Helse held me back, and of course I could not even get out of the cell 
while the bodies lay astride it. Once more I waited in silent shivering fury, 
while Helse clung to me and stroked my hair as she might the fur of an 
aggressive but imperfectly disciplined guard dog.
The pirate finally got up and moved away. We heard screams elsewhere; it sounded 
as if cells were being opened, children hauled out. Our program of 
accommodation, of pacifism, was not working!
Helse issued a stifled scream. I looked at her, startled. There was blood on her 
shirt.
As I watched in the dim light, I froze for the moment, and watched it dripping 
down from our access panel. Helse happened to be under it, so had caught the 
first drops. How bright red that blood was!
We exchanged a horrified glance. The blood had to be coming from the woman who 
still lay above us, and it could not be the result of any minor scratch. The 
pirate had stabbed her!
A new scream rent the air, close and loud. "Spirit!" I cried with instant 
recognition. The pirates were hauling her out!
This time my rage could not be constrained. I jumped for the panel, shoving it 
violently aside. Blood dripped down on my head as part of the woman's body 
sagged into our cell. I had to push her out of the way. I saw her staring eyes 
and the terrible wound in her side; she had been cut so deeply she had already 
bled to death, or perhaps her heart had been pierced.
I hauled myself up, my vision tunneling to only one thing: the pirate. His 
bloodstained blade was jammed in his waistband, and he was half-lying on the 
deck, reaching down into Spirit's cell.
He cursed, suddenly slapping his face, and I knew Spirit had used her 
finger-whip on him. That reminded me of my laser pistol, which I had not thought 
to have about me, idiot that I was. Now I needed it! Then the pirate scrambled 
forward, dropping into the cell as I cleared mine.
I dived after him. I caught him about the head, trying to draw it back, trying 
to choke him, but my strength and weight were too slight. He roared and brought 
a hairy hand back, catching me by the hair, yanking me forward.
"Spirit!" I gasped.
She reacted as if she were a part of my own body. She pounced on the knife at 
his sash and snatched it out while he was preoccupied with me. This was like our 
fight with the scion, so long ago—one month ago, an, eternity!—but this was more 
serious. This man would kill us!
I brought up my knees as the pirate pulled me over his head. I clamped my legs 
against his ears, resisting him. Upside down, I saw Spirit take the knife and 
survey her prospects. I felt a kind of chill, right through the heat of the 
combat, at the calculating way she considered. I have said before that I would 
not care to oppose my little sister when she was really angry; it remains true.
Then she gripped the knife in both hands and stabbed the pirate in the belly.
He grunted and let go of me. He grabbed at Spirit, but she drew back as far as 
she could in the cell, jerking out the knife so as to let him bleed. The pirate 
roared, stalking her, evidently not seriously damaged, or at least not 
sufficiently aware of it. What brutes these men were!
I knew the noise could summon his companions. They would ignore the screams of 
women and children, knowing they were merely victims, but the pirates might come 
to the aid of one of their own in trouble. We had to shut this one up until we 
got him safely dead!
I tried to circle his bull neck again, but he threw me against the wall. That 
distraction, however, laid him open to attack again. Spirit launched herself, 
her feet pushing off violently from the walls of the corner, her two-handed 
knife spearing toward the pirate's face. He saw it coming and reared back, 
trying to protect his eyes—but there really is little room to maneuver in a 
cubed cell, and he banged into the wall, and though the knife missed, I grabbed 
him once more by the head.
Spirit thrust again—this time for the throat. She scored, for there was nothing 
weak or halting about her fighting nature, once aroused. The blade slashed into 
the exposed neck, cutting it open from front to side, digging deeply.
Blood spurted out in a horrendous red jet. She had severed not only the jugular 
vein, but one of the deeply buried carotid arteries.
The pirate collapsed. There was not much else he could do, in the circumstance. 
I extricated myself from his body and took the knife from Spirit's lax hand and 
shoved her up and out of the panel exit. There was blood on her, of course—but 
there was blood everywhere.
It was chaos on the Commons; no one noticed us. I got us both out and slid the 
panel closed. Then I hauled the woman's body over, laying it across the panel, 
sealing off that cell. Then I shoved Spirit down with Helse and jumped in 
myself, and slid the panel closed. "If anyone looks, play dead!" I snapped.
We played dead anyway, the three of us. It wasn't hard to do, for we were 
smeared with the gore of the woman and the pirate. Spirit was sobbing, for she 
was not yet so hardened to the new reality that she could slaughter a man 
without reaction, but she was fairly quiet about it and I knew she could stifle 
it the rest of the way if the panel opened. She could do what she had to do; she 
had always been the best at that, in our family. I held one of her hands and 
Helse held the other, lending her what little emotional support we could. We all 
knew the pirate had deserved it; that he was a murderer who had raped and 
killed, virtually simultaneously, one of our women who had offered him no 
resistance; that he had then tried to get at Spirit for similar atrocity; and 
that she had slain him in self-defense. Still, she had killed him, and she was 
only a twelve-year-old female child. Justification did not make it easy for her.
Time passed and the bedlam above diminished. No one looked in, though we cringed 
in fear as footsteps passed close. Eventually the pirates departed and 
disconnected their ship. It was over.
Apparently that cutthroat crew was so disorganized that the pirates didn't even 
make a count of their departing number. Or maybe they were used to taking losses 
and simply didn't care.
I climbed out. It was even worse than I had feared. All ten women were dead. The 
pirates had callously raped and murdered them, apparently as a matter of course, 
leaving no adult witnesses. Nonresistance had been disaster this time; we might 
as well have fought them from the outset, at least taking more of them with us. 
As it was, they had made a literal wreckage of our bubble, and of our hopes for 
sanctuary. Panels were broken, walls were dented, and food packs were ripped 
open and strewn about the Commons, the crumbs soaking up some of the blood that 
puddled around the equatorial region.
Helse joined me. Spirit, overcome by the horror of the killing she had done, 
remained in the cell. I would return for her as soon as I could; right now I had 
to determine the extent of our losses. I didn't know whether anyone survived, 
besides the three of us, or whether we had any supplies remaining, or whether 
our equipment still functioned. In short, whether we had any reasonable prospect 
for continued survival.
More of us had survived than I had thought at first. Other children had been 
overlooked in their cells, and others had thought to play dead. Even so, 
twenty-seven children had died. Our total number was down to forty-five, all 
children, some of them in the almost-suicidal reaction to being newly orphaned. 
Only one pirate was dead, the one Spirit and I had killed.
I knew Spirit would be missing or dead now, if we had not dealt with that brute; 
I was shaken but had no honest regret for what we had done. As it was, we had 
been lucky. Lucky we had managed to kill him, and lucky we had been able to 
conceal his body and ourselves. It had been a narrow and ugly thing, amidst the 
battlefield carnage that was our bubble.
We held an impromptu, crude service of mourning, then "buried" the bodies on the 
hull, bagged with the men. Helse and I did most of it; we were now the two 
oldest survivors. In addition, we were relatively unscathed by this latest 
slaughter, odd as it may seem to say it. My parents and older sister had been 
lost before, so I had a head start on adjusting, while Helse had always been 
alone in the bubble. The children who had just lost their last parent had a more 
immediate shock to bear. How well I understood!
There is no need to dwell on what followed. When the necessary cleaning up was 
done and our supplies were surveyed, I assumed the leadership of the bubble. It 
wasn't that I was any natural leader; it was that there was no one else. Helse 
was the oldest, but she was no leader, and the children somehow expected the 
commands to issue from a man or a grandmother. They would follow me.
I assigned the most competent surviving children to navigation duty; they did 
know how to do it, once their shock of emotion backed off. I assigned others to 
mess duty, handing out the food packs. There were enough of these; though a 
number had been destroyed in wanton vandalism by the pirates, our diminished 
number more than made up the difference. But this was no casual assignment, 
because I knew and they knew that if the rations ran short again, these would be 
the ones to select and haul and thaw and carve and cook the meat. They had to be 
tough, realistic kids, and they needed time to prepare themselves.
The most important thing I was doing was unspoken. I was trying to establish a 
viable social order. These orphans had to have something tangible and social to 
relate to, to replace their lost families. Now we had a group family, much 
tighter than before, because the need was greater than before, with discipline 
and caring and stability, and that helped them to survive emotionally as well as 
physically. It was my talent, coming into its own at last, exerted as a 
life-promoting force. I tried to come to understand the specific needs of each 
member of our family, and to accommodate that need as well as was possible. When 
a child cried, someone was always there to hold his hand or hug him or talk to 
him; when a child stumbled, someone always came ta help him up. When he laughed, 
someone laughed with him; when he mourned, someone mourned with him. When he 
went to the head, someone accompanied him, for the accommodations were sized for 
adults, so a child alone could have trouble. Helse and I took turns telling 
stories, inventing whatever fantasies seemed most to appeal, for there is 
immense comfort in group story-telling, as our prehistoric ancestors knew. Many 
of us took to sleeping on the Commons floor, for it got lonely at night in the 
individual cells. Sometimes we formed big circles, and slept holding hands in a 
sort of daisy chain. Even for me, that helped; my dreams were less nightmarish 
when I felt the touch of other hands in mine.
It worked amazingly well. In hours, it seemed, we had become fused into a 
desperately close community. We knew this was all that lay between us and the 
physical and social void beyond.
We survived. But what would we do when the next pirates came? When would it end?
 
Chapter 16 — VIOLATION OF TRUST
3-17-'15, Jupiter Ecliptic—We planned cynically for the next pirates. We knew, 
now, that pirates were as random and savage and uncaring as sulfur volcanoes and 
should be treated with similar dispassionate respect. If we wanted to live and 
to reach sanctuary at Leda, we would have to accommodate that reality. We had a 
gauntlet to run, and we could not avoid it, so we had to prepare for it.
We were children—but we had lost our parents and siblings to pirates. The 
realities of space had forced themselves upon us in most brutal fashion. We were 
children who had been bloodied. I repeat this point, perhaps, in a kind of 
explanation or apology for the cynicism of the things we contemplated, which may 
disturb people who have not experienced what we had. We had, I believe it is 
fair to say, as fair a notion of necessity as any space crew of any age could.
We concocted plans, discussed them, and acted them out in little playlets, 
searching for flaws, for we knew any error or oversight could be fatal. This 
became, really, part of our therapy; instead of telling stories, now we were 
developing scenarios. The important thing is that we did this together, giving 
respect to all views, making even the smallest child feel important—for, indeed, 
the smallest was important.
We considered attacking pirates with knives, but realized that only a few men 
would get cut before the others destroyed us. We were, after all, children, and 
could not fight adults on any even basis, and any delusion that we could would 
be fatal. We thought of poisoning their food and/or water—but had no poison, and 
anyway, pirates didn't come to eat and drink, they came to rape and kill.
In retrospect, I marvel at the psychology of the pirates. Apparently, civilized 
restraints break down the moment civilized enforcement ends, at least for 
certain types of men. They raid and destroy simply because they enjoy pillaging 
and hurting, and in space the refugees are easy targets. I find it very 
difficult to sympathize with such an attitude, but at least I think I understand 
it now. The pirates are that dreg of society that is least civilized, and that 
mankind as a whole would be best off without. Mighty Jupiter preferred to treat 
the refugees as if they were such dregs, but that was because the refugees were 
easy targets—helpless—while the pirates would have been more difficult to deal 
with.
I was to spend long hours considering mechanisms to rid our species of the 
pirate trash, and if ever I have the means to implement any such notions, I 
shall do so, to whatever extent I am able. This is my promise to myself.
We went over every kind of defense, both likely and unlikely. We finally settled 
on a three-stage program.
Stage one: We would present ourselves as sweet, innocent orphan children and beg 
the pirates not to hurt us. If they were nice, or at least not homicidal, all 
would be well. After all, the scientists on Io had been nice; we could not 
assume with absolute conviction that every man in space was evil. Many of the 
children did not really believe that, but they grudgingly accepted the 
hypothesis because Helse argued the case so feelingly, and Helse in her female 
dress was very pretty. I had thought appreciation of prettiness was an adult 
trait, but revised my thinking when I saw how she swayed even the smallest 
children. In fantasy tales the pretty girl is always good, and children do seem 
to take that on faith though it is of course suspect.
Stage two: If they were not nice (as seemed the overwhelming likelihood) and 
sought to kidnap, rape, or kill any of us, or got angry when we rejected their 
candy (we had learned that lesson well!), Spirit would give a signal. She would 
blow a whistle provided her, at which point every child would instantly draw a 
knife or nail or other sharp instrument and plunge it at the eyes or nearest 
other vulnerable region of the nearest pirate. If that succeeded, every pirate 
would be blind or castrated and presumably helpless; then we could consider what 
to do next. Maybe we would have to kill them, but we didn't have to make that 
decision right now. We drilled on this, stabbing at pirate-shaped-and-sized 
dummies; even our smallest children could run a mean spike into a crotch. This 
was not the same as fighting pirates, which we knew to be hopeless; this was to 
be a surprise maneuver, occurring explosively. Two seconds after that whistle 
blew, a dozen or more pirates would be hurting, and normally no more than that 
came aboard at one time.
Stage three: If for some reason we failed to incapacitate the pirates—and, 
realistically, we deemed our chances to be no better than fifty percent—and the 
situation was critical, we would back off and Helse would say to me "Do it!" and 
I would go out the second air lock, with Spirit, or whoever else was handy, 
standing by to cut off the drive for the few seconds I'd need to get past the 
ring of fire. I would make my way around the outside hull to a particular 
refuse-tank release bolt that had been weakened, and knock it off. That would 
not only release the refuse, it would empty the bubble of air—because we would 
have jammed the automatic safety valve open.
That would finish the pirates. It would also finish any of us who weren't in 
suits. So at Helse's signal, all others would have to go to their cells and get 
suited in a hurry. Since the pirates wouldn't have their suits in the bubble (we 
laughed uproariously at the joke we adapted about the pirate trying to rape a 
girl while in a space suit; what kind of attachment would that suit have to 
have?—juvenile humor gets quite fundamental), even if they caught on, they 
wouldn't have time to stop it. Their only recourse would be to flee immediately 
back to their ship and slam the air lock closed. We would try to block the lock 
open—just a few seconds delay in closure would be all we would need—but if we 
failed in that, we still would have saved ourselves from a larger disaster.
We liked this plan so well we almost hoped for an early chance to test it. We 
spent hours perfecting the details. Spirit had to be suited from the outset, 
because, though she could cut off the drive from the inside—there was a simple 
make/break switch—to let me put, she would not be able to do it again to let me 
in unless she herself survived the vacuum inside. I had to use the rear lock, 
because the front one might be encumbered by the pirate ship. I really didn't 
want anyone else performing this particular office, because if there were any 
error of timing and the drive came on again while I was crossing its deadly 
ring, I would be cleanly sliced into pieces. I trusted Spirit to make no error; 
I wasn't quite sure of anyone else. Spirit had always been my most reliable 
support, even before we started this terrible voyage.
We rehearsed all three stages until we had them down pat. We timed the last 
stage, so we knew exactly how long people would have to get into their suits 
once I used the air lock. We all got very quick about suiting up. Those suits 
now hung on hooks in each cell, perpetually available, and nobody touched 
another person's suit. We had to play it close enough to take out the pirates, 
and that was close indeed. A thirty-second delay in suiting could prove fatal.
There were fairly sophisticated wrinkles that we worked out. Chief among these 
was my physical position. I had to have my suit on and stand by the lock, so 
that Helse could give me the signal from the Commons. To conceal my presence, we 
made a baffle before the rear lock and decorated it with colored tassels 
lovingly fashioned of waste paper, so it looked as if we were playing a childish 
game. My suit, too, was decorated so that it looked fake. Some of the littlest 
kids showed surprising ingenuity in the details.
So we were ready—while those of us with most sense ardently hoped that we would 
never come to stages two or three. If the pirates missed us, and we made it 
unscathed to Leda—but few of us really believed that would happen.
For a time, however, it seemed we would indeed be lucky. We floated on for 
several days, passing the orbit of Callisto, and no pirates came. Our rehearsals 
became precise, then perfunctory. We were now departing the Jupiter ecliptic, 
following the schedule set up by the Io scientists. Almost, I resented the time 
we had spent, planning and rehearsing, instead of finishing our mourning. But it 
would certainly be best if we never saw another pirate.
We relaxed by gradual stages. Helse, as the oldest surviving female, became a 
den mother, seeing to the needs of the smaller children within the framework of 
the community family and counseling some of the larger ones. And I, as the 
oldest male, found myself becoming a father figure. I resisted this aspect at 
first, until Helse explained to me the need of these children for someone to 
play this role. We could not have a group family without a father; the thing did 
not set right. "Do it," she told me. "It must be done, and you are the one. You 
set up the community family, you labored to make it work; you are indeed the 
father of it."
"How can I be a father, when I'm not even married?" I temporized, half in humor. 
But as I said it, I felt a catch in my being. Marriage...
Things were going smoothly—almost too smoothly, since the distractions of our 
serious preparations tended to abate our horror of recent losses—and there was 
no present need for us to be on duty. The crew of kids was performing well 
enough, and it was important that they be permitted to exercise this 
responsibility. None of us could know who might be eliminated in the next pirate 
raid, so the skills had to be distributed throughout our group.
We were not needed, at the moment, on duty. Helse guided me to our cell. "You 
could be," she said when we were private.
"Could be what?" I knew she had something in mind, but I wanted her to express 
it.
"A father."
I smiled. "A father? I'm only fifteen!"
"You have proved you are old enough. I could be pregnant."
"Pregnant!" That particular aspect had never occurred to me. I shared the 
ordinary adolescent's self-imposed unawareness of the natural consequence of 
sex. Nature does not require awareness, merely performance.
She laughed. "I didn't say I was, Hope. Just that I could be. That it is 
possible. You could be a father."
She was right. "I'm not ready," I said. "But for you—oh, Helse, I want you 
forever!"
"And I want you," she said. "Hope, I've never dared to love before, but now I 
do. Now I do! I don't care that you're younger than I am, or that we were thrown 
together randomly. We've been through more together than any regular couple, and 
when you risked your life for me on Io I knew, really knew, that I could trust 
you, and—"
I realized that she was leading up to something, and I had a notion what, and I 
wanted very much to have it, but still I wanted her to say it. "What do you 
mean?"
"Hope, I want to get married."
That was what I had waited for but still I reacted carefully. "You mean an ad 
hoc marriage, like the ones in the military service?"
"If you want."
That was her way of suggesting I try another tack. "This isn't the military 
service."
"True."
"I'd prefer a civilian marriage."
"Yes." That was her way of agreeing.
"We could arrange a suitable term—"
"If you wish."
I cut it short, unable to hold back any longer. "What do you want, Helse? I want 
anything you want."
"Till death do us part."
When Helse loved, I realized, she loved completely. Now she was testing my love. 
I hardly, felt worthy, but I was willing. I knew I loved her absolutely, and 
would never love another like this. "Till death do us part," I agreed, and 
suffered a momentary spell of dizziness, awed by the profundity of the 
commitment. There were all kinds and lengths of marriages, and this was the most 
binding.
"Oh, let's do it now!" she exclaimed.
"Well, it wouldn't be official without a priest," I said.
She kissed me, and my head spun again. "We'll do it by common law," she said. 
"We can have a wedding. It will be like a party for the children. They can 
rehearse it and take parts—and it will entertain the group while we travel, 
and—" Here she stopped and kissed me again, passionately. I had never before 
seen her so turned on, and I liked it. Her love had been well worth waiting for. 
"Maybe I had to love a younger man," she said. "I've always been used by older 
men, so I can't relate to them the same way. But you—you're a virgin boy, and 
you're all mine."
"I'm yours," I agreed, overflowing with love for her. I suppose her description 
of me as a virgin boy might have been taken as uncomplimentary, yet I knew she 
didn't mean it to be so, and it was true. She had introduced me to love, in all 
its forms outside the family love I had grown up with. I don't know whether the 
harshness of our situation in the bubble had the effect of intensifying my 
emotion or whether I would have loved her as ardently anyway, but certainly this 
was the most positive emotion of which my being was capable. Helse was older and 
far more experienced—but I was the first man she had loved this way, and that 
was enough.
"And I'm yours," she said. "I will be Helse Hubris." The cumbersome double 
surnaming of our culture had gradually faded out in favor of the Jupiter custom 
of using the masculine surname only.
"Helse Hubris," I agreed, liking the alliteration, liking the meaning, liking 
every aspect of it.
You might think we would have made love then, but we did not. It could only have 
distracted us from the greater excitement of our engagement. Sex had always had 
a different meaning for us; this was more vital.
We fetched Spirit and put her in charge of operations. She was delighted to 
participate. She had, it seemed, gotten over her earlier jealousy of Helse, 
realizing that Helse was no threat to our brother-sister relationship. Indeed 
Helse was not; she had stabilized me during each crisis, so that I was better 
able to help others, including Spirit. Yet I suspect I misjudged the nuances of 
Spirit's acceptance, though I doubt I will ever be certain in what way. The same 
emotional involvement that prevented me from using my talent to judge Helse 
properly also interfered with my judgments of Spirit. Of course I knew Spirit; 
she was my sister and closest companion, and would never betray me in any way; 
that was never in question. Still, there may have been something.
The kids set it up with gusto. They assembled stray bits of cloth into a wedding 
gown for Helse, and they made plans for a big cake. These seemingly simple 
things were not simple in the bubble! A choir formed and practiced singing the 
wedding march. The problem of the lack of a priest was solved by working out a 
ceremony in which the two of us would exchange vows ourselves, in the manner of 
the old Quaker religion, each speaking his or her piece, and sealing the vow 
with a kiss. That public kiss was very important; the children planned to 
applaud it. I found myself getting genuinely nervous; they were making it too 
real!
Too real? That isn't what I meant to convey. This was ultimately real. This was 
the most solemn commitment of our lives. Maybe what I meant was that I did not 
want it to become too much of a show, as if it were not genuine. But weddings, 
as I learned, are not just for the nuptial couple; the crowd must have its 
satisfaction too.
It took several days to put it all together, and several major rehearsals. 
Spirit insisted that every single detail be right. We worked up to full dress 
rehearsals, orchestrating it right through to the kiss. That kiss had to be 
right, too; the imps made us do it over and over, just so, not too long or too 
brief, too intimate or too distant. They even practiced their applause. Kids, I 
learned the hard way (though I really didn't mind this particular exercise, 
despite Helse's tendency to break up with mirth in the middle of it), are the 
worst sticklers in the universe for specific detail.
I wondered just what the difference was between a full dress rehearsal, with all 
the participants, and the official ceremony, but knew better than to raise that 
question. I suppose it was merely a matter of designation: This one is a 
rehearsal, that one is the production. Besides, this was an excellent 
distraction from the tedium and grief we all would otherwise have had time to 
dwell on. This was more than a wedding or a rehearsal for same; it was group 
therapy. So we didn't push the date; we let the kids extend the rehearsals as 
long as they had a mind to.
Helse looked wonderful in her home-fashioned patchwork wedding dress. She would 
have looked good to me in rags, though. I was in my space suit. You see, no one 
knew how to make a man's formal wedding outfit, so Spirit, in her authoritative 
office of manager, decreed that one suit was as good as another and insisted 
that I be garbed as a space captain on duty. I even had to have the helmet on; 
then, ceremoniously, I would tilt it back for the nuptial osculation. I felt 
like an ancient knight in armor, especially since the suit was decorated for 
camouflage. Embracing her was awkward, not nearly as pleasant as it had been in 
nondress rehearsal, where her body was all soft and feminine against mine. And 
the inordinate laughter, when one brat advised me to remove the suit on the 
wedding night because it didn't have the necessary attachment—that actually made 
me blush, which set the little fiends off anew. But anything to make the kids 
happy! And though I protested the unnecessary elaboration, it was therapy for me 
too. It made me really believe that Helse would be mine forever.
We were amidst the umpteenth such rehearsal, and I had just noticed that some 
mischief-maker had pinned a label saying HELSE HUBRIS to the gown so she would 
be able to remember her new name when the time came, when our lookout sounded 
the alarm. "Ship ahoy!"
I felt dread. "Suit up!" I told Spirit, and she scurried off to do it. I was 
already suited, coincidentally; that was the lone silver lining in this cloud. 
The other kids milled about, uncertain what frame of mind to be in: festive or 
frightened. But soon they decided on both: Each fetched his or her weapon, 
concealed it in the costume, then returned to the wedding rehearsal. This was 
stage one, innocent children playing.
Fine for them, but I wasn't satisfied. "Get suited!" I called to Helse.
But someone needed to keep the children organized while Spirit and I were busy 
with the air lock, so Helse elected to remain in her wedding dress. If a pirate 
attacked her, Spirit would blow the whistle. I didn't like this, as Helse in 
that gown was entirely too attractive, but understood the need. Even so, I would 
have argued, but there simply wasn't time. I was the nominal leader of the 
bubble, but already I had learned that leadership exists largely with the 
consent of the followers, and that compromise is essential, and that the true 
will of the majority must always be taken seriously. So I sealed up my suit, and 
made sure Spirit was ready to seal hers after blowing her whistle, if it came to 
that. We were ready for whatever might come.
The ship closed on us, matched velocities, and connected to our front portal. As 
I watched, it occurred to me that the mechanism of a ship and a bubble was very 
like that of a man and a woman. The ship was long and slender, resembling a 
phallus, while the bubble was round in the manner of aspects of a woman. And all 
too often the roles became ferociously literal.
The ship took hold and made an entry, I thought as I heard the clang of merging 
locks. The bubble had to receive. Sometimes this connection was pleasant for 
both parties, but sometimes disaster for the bubble. Perhaps there is a 
fundamental parallelism in all things, if we could but perceive it.
The air lock opened and the men came in—and they did look like pirates. I stood 
behind the baffle, watching, my hands sweating inside the gauntlets of the suit. 
Spirit had her hand on the whistle. How well we knew how serious this could be!
"What have we here?" the lead intruder demanded. He could have passed for 
Redbeard.
"We are children, seeking sanctuary," Helse informed him prettily. "Our parents 
were killed by horrible pirates. We are orphans in the void." I hoped she wasn't 
overdoing it, though her words were literally true for everyone except herself. 
I had my helmet on, but in the ambience of air could hear reasonably well. I 
could also see them, by peering though the partially filled netting of the 
doughnut hole that was between us.
The man eyed her appraisingly. This was the first time Helse had stood before a 
stranger to the bubble in her female guise. Oh, I worried! "No women except 
you?"
"None," she assured him innocently.
The man consulted the one beside him, who could have passed for Bluebeard. "Slim 
pickings here. What's the current market for children?"
"There's connections for small ones," Bluebeard said. "And girls of any age are 
in demand. I'd say, take all the girls and dump the boys."
"Good enough." Redbeard strode toward Helse. "But this one we'll use ourselves, 
here and now."
They were pirates, all right. I had a momentary vision of my sister Faith, 
spread out by the Horse. Spirit blew the whistle; she had probably seen the same 
vision. We would not let Helse suffer that fate!
Pandemonium erupted. The children drew their weapons and swarmed over the 
pirates. Their reactions were amazingly swift and sure. Maybe the smaller bodies 
of children permit faster interplay of the nervous systems. Never, in all the 
entertainment projections I have viewed in Maraud, including historical 
recreations of ancient wars, have I seen such a savage turn of events. Those 
children were absolutely vicious. It was as if all the pain and horror of the 
past month was being released in fifteen seconds.
They scored. Oh, they scored! In a moment the men were screaming, and blood was 
flowing. Blinded, some men staggered around, hands at their faces, the blood 
leaking through their fingers. Others dropped to the deck, clasping their 
crotches. Redbeard reeled back, blood cascading from the side of his head where 
his ear had been; he had suffered a near miss. Three children stalked him like 
rabid puppies, their knives raised, their teeth gleaming. It was nightmare, but 
it seemed that we had won. I had underestimated the effectiveness of our ploy.
But we had reckoned without the resources of the pirate ship. A new man appeared 
in the lock, carrying a solid, squat device. "Take him out!" Spirit screamed. 
"Now!"
Half a dozen children turned, well understanding the threat of an unknown 
weapon. We needed ho pacifier here! They charged the new pirate like little 
kamikazes.
But he was ready. He pulled the trigger, and the thing burped.
Something splatted against the body of the nearest charging child. It looked 
like brown taffy, but it spread out tentacles as it struck, wrapping around the 
body, pinning the limbs. The child fell, bound by strong elastic bands.
Three other children were close. The taffy gun burped again, catching each, and 
the elastic enfolded each. One child tried to cut the strands that enclosed him, 
but there were too many; though he severed two, his arm remained bound by those 
he couldn't reach. In time he might have worked his way loose, but everything 
was happening in seconds. This was a personnel control device, incapacitating 
without hurting, and it was effective.
The pirate swung the taffy gun around, and the children everywhere paused, 
realizing that they were overmatched.
More men appeared from the pirate ship. "Take your pick," the one with the gun 
said to them. "No sense wasting taffy on brats we're going to kill anyway."
The other men drew knives and advanced on the children. None of them seemed to 
care about the wounded pirates of the first wave, who were moaning and, in some 
cases, dying. Helse turned to face me. "Do it, Hope!" she cried, and bolted for 
our cell, where her suit was.
The pirate at the air lock aimed his gun and fired. Helse fell, wrapped in 
taffy. Naturally they intended to salvage her!
I started back from the rear lock, appalled. But Helse screamed from the floor: 
"Do it! Don't wait for me! Do it, or we'll all die!"
I knew she was right. The other children were scurrying for their suits, and the 
new pirates were starting after them, wary about ambush-traps. I had to do my 
part, and do it immediately, or everything would be lost. I could not fight off 
the pirates here, or even rescue Helse. I didn't even have my laser pistol, with 
which I might have taken out the pirate with the taffy gun; then we could have 
turned it against the other pirates and—but this was foolish dreaming. Already 
the brutes were methodically stabbing the children they had caught. We were at 
war.
I entered the lock, glancing at Spirit. Grimly she nodded, standing beside the 
old drive unit, her hand near the switch for the new one. She was ready.
Practice had made perfect. Quickly I worked the lock and moved out onto the 
hull, anchored by my safety line. I was afraid of the void, but I had rehearsed 
this and knew exactly what I was doing. I braced myself and the drive cut off on 
schedule, and I dived across and anchored my rope on the nearest eyelet. The 
drive came on again, a wall of flame as seen from this vantage; Spirit's timing 
was perfect. Now no one could follow me or stop me. The tricky part was past.
I clambered around the hull, carrying my massive wrench. Then I was at the key 
tank, exactly as rehearsed. I lifted the wrench, ready to bash off the one nut 
holding it.
I froze. The realization hit me now with full force: Helse was not in her suit. 
Caught by the taffy, she could not get to it. If I let the air out of the 
bubble, she would die.
But if I didn't do this, we would be subject to the will of the pirates. Last 
time they had raped and killed.
I visualized a pirate raping Helse, as the Horse had raped my sister Faith. Then 
my mind's eye saw Bluebeard slitting Helse's throat. I knew this was not only 
possible, but likely.
"Helse, forgive me!" I cried in my helmet. Then I swung with all my clumsy 
force, half hoping it wouldn't work.
The wrench caught the nut squarely and bashed it off. The tank, released without 
first having its pressure abated, crashed out of its slot like a missile being 
fired. I was thrown back and flew out into space myself. This I hadn't 
rehearsed, of course; I had always stopped short of the final bash.
The last thing I saw before I lost consciousness was the plume of freezing vapor 
and debris from the bubble. I fancied some of it was red. Red from the blood of 
my beloved, whom I had sworn never to hurt.
 
Chapter 17 — FEMALE MYSTIQUE
3-22-'15, Space—Spirit was tending me when I woke. I clutched at her arm. "Was 
it all a dream?" I demanded desperately.
"I wish I could lie to you, to give you ease, my brother," Spirit said. I saw 
the marks of tears on her face, and on her soul. "It was no dream."
"Helse—"
"Dead."
The confirmation was no longer a shock; I had known my love was dead. I had 
killed her.
"Hope, you must seal it off, the way you did for the others. We need you to pull 
us through. Otherwise Helse's sacrifice is for nothing. Remember, she told you 
to do it. She knew."
There was only one thing worse than losing Helse, and that was losing what she 
had fought for. She had died as bravely as any of the other women had. She had 
indeed known, and had not faltered.
I cast about for something to lean on that would support my failing equilibrium, 
and found it in an oath:
"I shall extirpate piracy from humanity," I swore.
I had not honored my oath never to hurt Helse, but if I lived, I would somehow 
honor this one. I had no notion how or when, but I would do it.
From that point I strengthened. Helse had been my support before; now it was 
Spirit. Spirit was stronger than I. I do not pretend this was steady or 
sensible; I gyrated wildly. But when I screamed with grief, Spirit understood, 
and when I was lucid she talked with me, and when I could function, she 
encouraged me. My oath and Spirit; these were the pillars of stability during my 
nightmare sequence. The wildest tempests of my confusion and grief beat about 
these pillars and did not topple them, and in time I was able to function again.
I may be presenting this as more coherent than it was. I am human; I seek to 
flatter myself and tend to avoid what damages my self-image, however much I try 
to be objective. So if this narrative is a construct of favorable distortions, 
it is as it must be in order to exist at all. This narrative is itself therapy, 
clarifying the elements of my existence and thereby enabling me to accept them 
with lesser abrasion than otherwise. My talent is judgment of others; to this 
degree I try to judge myself, however suspect my result may be. So I may record 
a somewhat enhanced version of my nadir, and wish it had been so. Without a 
certain amount of beneficial illusion, very few people would survive.
I put away my grief for necessary periods and did what had to be done, and 
gradually these portions of equilibrium lengthened. I helped the survivors bury 
the dead on the hull, all except Helse; others did that, for I could not look 
upon her ravaged face. They buried her in her wedding gown, saving only the 
little cloth tag with the name HELSE HUBRIS; that they gave to me as the final 
physical memento. Helse had loved me at the last; this tag was the evidence of 
that, and its value magnified accordingly. O my Love, my Love! It was not to 
save yourself you died, it was to save me, for you were not afraid of rape but 
of my wild reaction to it. And so I killed you, indirectly as well as directly, 
because you knew me too well, too well. I thought I loved you with the ultimate 
devotion possible, but your capacity was greater than mine, and your love was 
better than mine.
We cleaned up the blood and excrements of explosive decompression. Very little 
of it had escaped the bubble, for the aperture of loss had been narrow, not 
permitting the egress of substantial solid bodies. Little items like pencils and 
combs were lost; bodies and food packs remained. This was messy but just as 
well, for we needed our supplies.
Spirit, of course, had unjammed the valve in the head, and allowed the air tanks 
to repressure the bubble before she went out to haul me in on my line from where 
I dangled in space. She had cut the drive for that duration, so that she could 
work alone. I marvel still at her courage and competence in that adversity; I 
owe my life as well as my equilibrium to her. She was, in this instance, a 
twelve-year-old adult.
Only eight of us survived: Spirit and me and those six children who had reached 
their suits in time. I remember their names but prefer to leave them anonymous; 
I do not care to put a name to each individual aspect of my pain.
Our rehearsed plan had gone astray because of the interference of the pirates; I 
don't know how we could have prevented that, since we had no knowledge of the 
taffy gun. Perhaps I should have anticipated the unexpected and kept my laser 
pistol ready. But it had very little charge left, and the crisis occurred so 
suddenly, interrupting our wedding rehearsal—I don't even know whether such 
excuses are valid. Certainly I could have done more, had I thought it through 
better. Still, our final stage had been effective.
That was another part of the guilt I bore: I had killed more children than the 
pirates had. As nearly as we could figure it, they had slaughtered fifteen; the 
vacuum had strangled twenty-two.
But we had taken the pirate ship with us. Their air lock had been locked to 
ours, fixed open; our vacuum had become theirs. All forty-five pirates were 
dead. Their losses were greater than ours. Oh, yes, we had struck back—but it 
had been a Pyrrhic victory. We could not afford another such battle.
After we cleaned out our dead and said what perfunctory services for them we 
could, we did the same for the pirate dead—with less honor. We dumped them in a 
chamber of their ship. Then we searched that ship throughout.
Much of it was ordinary stuff, clothing, food, knick-knacks. But some of it was 
booty from other vessels: gold, precious stones, spices, fine watches, and small 
sealed containers marked with letters of the alphabet: C, H, L, A.
I considered the last, trying to figure out what the letters might stand for. 
But Spirit solved it. "Drugs!" she exclaimed. "Of course pirates are into the 
illegal drug trade! These letters stand for English abbreviations: Cocaine, 
Heroin, LSD, Angel Dust."
Now I saw it. "Their real business would be shipping this stuff. They only raid 
bubbles like ours for entertainment."
She was uncertain. "Why mess with poor refugees, when they can buy anything they 
want? They obviously are rich."
Excellent question! It put me in mind of Helse's QYV mystery.
O, Helse! I reeled.
Spirit steadied me, and I fought back to sanity. Helse had been used to convey a 
message of some kind, perhaps to a pirate—and here were pirates shipping drugs 
and seeking children. Was there a connection?
"We can go back to the bubble," Spirit suggested, mindful of my fadeout.
"No, we'd better finish this job," I said. Only two of the other children were 
with us here; the remaining four were sleep-suffering in their cells. All of us 
understood that need! They had lost siblings and close friends and most of their 
peer group, and the pseudo-family structure we had so carefully nurtured had 
been shattered. Helse had become like a mother to them—Helse, Helse!—and so they 
had been orphaned again, when already vulnerable. Oh yes I knew that feeling! 
But I had to function, and I had in Spirit a support of amazing strength, a 
child/woman who perhaps at this stage was more truly our leader than was I. "We 
need to take what supplies we need and cast loose; we don't know how to operate 
this ship."
"Supplies? We don't need mind-zonking drugs!"
"Weapons," I said. "We are so few, now, we must have good weapons. And 
replacement oxygen tanks, for ours have been depleted by the decompression."
"Oh, yes," she agreed, seeing it.
We located weapons, including another taffy gun—the other had been swept into 
the head by the decompression and broken—and brought back to the bubble several 
good laser pistols and a whole pile, of good fighting knives. We found oxygen 
and nitrogen tanks, and plenty of fresh water. Then we spied food supplies, 
better and more varied than ours. This derelict ship was a real mine of useful 
things!
We were now well set—except that at this point we were just a few children, 
ranged against what seemed like a universe of pirates. The great majority of our 
refugee companions who had set out for a better world had found death instead. 
Even if we arrived at Leda and gained sanctuary without further difficulty, it 
would hardly be worth it for the survivors, let alone the nonsurvivors. True 
success was now beyond our reach—thanks to the pirates.
I remembered my oath: to extirpate all pirates. They surely deserved 
obliteration.
We also discovered a holo projector and a small library of cartridges. This was 
an excellent find; we could have entertainment to distract us from the horrors 
of our memories. We trundled the projector into the bubble.
Finally we found a lifeboat, fully stocked. We could certainly use this! We 
lacked the expertise to operate it, but we would have time to study and 
experiment. We couldn't move it by hand, so we used rope to tie it to the 
bubble, hoping to haul it clear of the pirate ship when we separated. We had to 
string our lines so that they did not intercept the blast of the drive unit; we 
used three, hooked all around our equator, each trailing back a hundred meters 
to intersect at the lifeboat. If that didn't work, then it didn't work.
At last we cut loose. The pirate ship was now adrift, its life-support 
facilities repressuring it automatically and warming it when the air lock 
sealed, but with no living men aboard. There would be a stink in there soon 
enough! Maybe it would drift forever in space—or maybe some other ship would 
discover it. Then they might ponder the mystery of an operative ship that had 
lost its entire crew to suffocation. We knew that such mystery ships had been 
found before, for we had seen stories about them; now we had an answer. In this 
one case, the rabbit had killed the wolf.
We moved on through space alone, trailing the lifecraft on its triple tether. I 
had to do more of the work of maintenance and navigation, for we had lost key 
personnel. I had a lot of learning to do, but that was good, for it kept me 
almost too busy to think.
The kids eagerly set up the holo projector and tried a cartridge marked Animal 
Fun, We thought it might be a juvenile fantasy about animals, or a documentary 
on the ways of wildlife as it once had been on unspoiled Earth. Either way, 
excellent distraction for children.
The scene formed, a three-dimensional image in air that could be viewed from any 
side. It was a comely young woman and a donkey. Good enough; the riding of 
animals was a popular subject with children; the few equine animals on Callisto 
were always in great demand for two-minute rides.
But in a moment the kids' delight turned to dismay. I left my position by the 
lens control to see what was the matter.
The woman in the image had stripped naked, and—well, no need to detail it 
further. It was a porn show. I should have realized that pirates would stock 
that sort. If our bubble had been filled with animals instead of people, the 
brutes would have been raping and killing the animals, hardly noticing the 
difference. "Turn it off," I said, disgusted. "Check all through the cartridges. 
Maybe there are some regular family shows in the pile."
But now that the children realized that this was supposed to be forbidden adult 
material, they got interested. They wanted to know exactly how a woman could do 
it with a donkey, and why she would bother. I gave up and returned to my 
station, not caring to admit that I was curious too.
Actually, I needed no hard-core holos for my forbidden entertainment. It came to 
me unbidden when I slept. Some dreams were inchoate, almost formless fragments 
of horror that seeped out of the locked chambers of my mind like oozing blood 
and invaded that lonely illuminated spot of consciousness where I huddled. It 
had been bad when my father died, and when my mother died, but Helse had braced 
my equilibrium. Now Helse herself was dead, and all the shock of loss she had 
shielded me against, by interposing her marvelous love, now swept down on me in 
an avalanche of sulfur.
I tossed about and scrambled and woke—and found the waking nightmare was as bad 
as the sleeping one. I had come to depend almost completely on Helse, on the 
love we shared, and she was there no more. I retreated from that reality into 
sleep—where the oozing blood and sulfur lava were assuming shapes more awful 
than the shapelessness had been. I screamed again.
I don't know how many times I cycled through it before Helse came. I must have 
been in an in-between state of consciousness, for I knew she was dead. But she 
was welcome any way she chose to appear. "What brings you back?" I inquired 
almost socially.
"Hope, I finally realized," she said.
"Realized what?" I asked, knowing this was crazy, that it was no more than a 
vision like the one involving my father, but so eager for her presence that I 
clung to whatever shred of interaction it offered.
"About the tattoo. Why it protected me. It identified me as a courier."
"A courier?" I didn't follow her line of thought.
"I was conveying something to Kife. Something very valuable and secret. So I had 
his name and the mark, so no one would interfere with me. It is death to mess 
with a courier, and every criminal knows it. Kife must be very high in the 
hierarchy of thieves. So I was safer than I thought; I probably didn't need to 
masquerade as a boy."
"I'm glad you did," I said. "That way, I got to room with you, and to love you."
"You are the first I loved," she said. "But about the tattoo—you can protect 
yourself too, Hope. Draw the letters on your thigh, and when a pirate attacks 
you—"
"But I'm no courier!" I protested.
"They won't know that. They won't dare take the chance. I think Kife would 
destroy anyone who bothered even a fake courier, just to make his point. Of 
course, then the fake would have to settle with Kife. That might not be fun."
"What were you carrying?" I asked. "The man gave you no message—"
"Now I remember something I heard once," she said, becoming more real and lovely 
moment by moment. She wore her patchwork wedding dress, and oh, I loved her with 
an agony of intensity. "They do not tell the couriers what they carry, so the 
couriers can't give away the secret. It is carried in little bags that they 
swallow, which adhere to the lining of the intestine and can only be detached by 
a certain formula in solution. So when the courier arrives, he or she is given a 
drink, and the bag is freed and passes on out harmlessly. The bags can hold 
anything—diamonds, secret code messages, concentrated drugs—but whatever it is, 
Kife wants it, and only he has the formula to collect it without hurting the 
courier."
Now my own memory confirmed what she was saying. I had heard about this long ago 
and forgotten it. "So you were engaged in criminal activity," I cried, appalled. 
"Perhaps drug-running!"
"Hope, I didn't know!" she protested.
"Of course you didn't," I agreed immediately, hating to hurt her even in death. 
"Kife used you, exactly as the pirates used the others."
"They must have fed me the bag while I was unconscious," she said. "And when I 
got to Jupiter, Kife would have collected—" She cut that off. "I'm glad he won't 
collect. Don't let him get my body, Hope."
"I won't let him get your body," I promised.
"Thank you." She began to fade.
"Wait!" I cried. "I must apologize! I promised never to hurt you—but I killed 
you!"
"I forgive you," she said, smiling. "I know you didn't want to kill me." She 
faded further.
"Don't go!" I cried, leaping to catch her. "Stay with me, Helse, to love and be 
loved!"
That got to her, of course. In life or in death, in reality or in vision, she 
lived to share love. She reversed her fade and intensified, and became 
preternaturally natural, and suffered herself to be drawn in to me. I kissed 
her, and she hesitated, as she often had, being afraid to confess love. But I 
kissed her more passionately, and then she melted, as was also her way, knowing 
she could trust me not to betray her.
Not to betray her? I had killed her!
But she caught my mood, and took me in her arms as I started to draw away, and 
comforted me. "I told you to do it, Hope, to let the air out," she said. "We had 
rehearsed it. It had to be done. I love you, Hope."
"And I love you," I said. We proceeded to the natural act of love, and she was a 
little unresponsive, as though it was harder to do this in death, but I took it 
slowly and it finished well enough. Her body did not even feel cold; it was warm 
and soft, and in the end she was moving with me, hugging me as if there had 
never been any gulf between us. Then I slept, and the turmoil of my dreams 
eased, as it always did when Helse comforted me.
I woke alone, of course. But I knew I had not been alone. My vision-dream had 
become too real, the culmination too complete. One of the distinctions between 
illusion and reality is the element of surprise, of things happening not 
precisely as expected, and I had had that experience. Helse had been with me.
I lay there and thought about it. Helse had been with me in spirit, of course, 
but not in body. Her body was frozen in a bag on the hull. Yet there had been a 
body; I was sure of that. A man may dream of love, and of sex, and his body may 
respond to the point of nocturnal emission—but the experience Helse had given me 
while she lived enabled me to know the distinction between fantasy love and 
reality. For one thing, there was no stain of emission in my clothing, as there 
should be in fantasy sex. There had been a physical girl with me. I thought.
Helse was dead, and I surely had not visited her on the hull. So if not Helse, 
who? Who had shared that physical expression of the longing of the spirit?
Spirit? That was my sister's name!
I recoiled, from the thought, disgusted. But it seeped back at me, refusing to 
be banished merely because it was detestable. Had Helse been with me—in Spirit?
My nightmares of darkness paled as the nightmare of day came forward more 
strongly. In my agony of loss I had suffered a vision, as it seems I was wont to 
do. I could have acted out that vision physically. I should have known there was 
something wrong about it while it was happening, but reason is not my strong 
point when I'm hallucinating. I had not understood the message from my father at 
the time, and I had not understood the significance of Helse's warmth and 
solidity and seeming unfamiliarity with the act. I could not entirely condemn 
myself for my ignorance of the moment.
Spirit, however—how well did I understand her motives? If she had been present, 
as she could have been, she would have been awake. She loved me as a sister, but 
she had been jealous of Helse. She had inquired about the nature of what Helse 
and I did together. I had explained to her the distinction between voluntary and 
involuntary sex—but did she appreciate the distinction between woman and girl, 
or between romantic love and family love? If she saw me hallucinating and heard 
me crying out for Helse, and she thought she saw a way to come to my rescue, as 
she had when I fought a man—what would she do?
I fought against it, but could not completely deny the conclusion that Spirit 
could have done it. I was not sure that she had done it, just that she could 
have, emotionally and physically. That perhaps she would have. I really could 
not judge her reaction in this respect; she was inscrutable, opaque to my 
talent. The only way to know was to ask her.
I sat up—and Spirit heard me and came to the cell. I opened my mouth to ask 
her—and could not speak. I was abruptly aware how preposterous my question was.
"Are you all right, Hope?" she asked solicitously. She was neatly dressed in 
blouse and pants, her fine dark hair brushed out, and she seemed well rested. I 
realized that she had not suffered the loss I had, once she had come to terms 
with the fact of our orphaning. My support had been Helse, who was now gone; 
Spirit's support was me.
Had she or hadn't she? I had to know, yet could not ask.
She landed lithely on the floor of the cell. Low gravity made such acrobatics 
easy, yet she seemed healthy enough. And she was maturing; her blouse did not 
conceal her nascent breasts, and her pants fit her tightly enough to reveal a 
developing posterior. She had a distance to go, yet she was definitely on the 
way. She would be a handsome girl in due course, perhaps not beautiful the way 
Faith had been, but certainly enough to please any man.
Had she already pleased a man? Damn it, I had to know!
"Spirit," I said. "Were you with me when I slept?"
"Hope, I will always be with you," she replied. "We are family."
"No, I mean—"
She looked at me with disconcerting directness. Was it a stare of challenge? 
"You mean what?"
"I mean with me. When—"
"When you screamed for Helse?"
Why did the way grow more difficult, the closer I got? "Yes."
"Hope, I tried to hold you down, so you wouldn't hurt yourself. I knew you were 
having a bad dream. You were banging on the wall, the way you did after Father 
died. Finally I got you quiet, and then I left you. I had to check the lenses."
How had she quieted me? I knew how Helse had done it. "Did I—hurt you?"
"You can't hurt me, Hope."
That was no comfort; it was what Helse had said, the first time we made love. "I 
mean—"
She took my hand, squeezing it gently, as I had squeezed hers when I explained 
the different types of sex. "Hope, I am your sister. I will do anything I have 
to, to keep you safe. I would die for you, as Helse did. Does anything else 
matter?"
She was not giving me any direct answer. She would die for me; I believed it. 
She would more readily do lesser things, by her definitions. Other things did 
matter—but did they matter to her the same way they did to me? "There are things 
you must not do for me, Spirit."
Her gaze was innocent. "Like what?"
"Like—" But I choked again.
"Like lying to you?" she asked. "Ask me anything, Hope; I won't lie."
Wouldn't she? I wasn't sure. To her, a lie was a lesser thing than death. If she 
believed a lie would safeguard my mental health, she would probably use it. 
Again I realized that Spirit was made of tougher fiber than I was. I found I 
could not pursue this matter further—for fear she would lie to me... or that she 
would not.
"You are my sister," I said, squeezing her hand.
"Always." She kissed my cheek.
Then she was off again, running the bubble. I knew I would never know the answer 
to my question. Perhaps I did not want to know.
Did it matter, really? Spirit was one terrific sister, who it seemed, understood 
how to do what was necessary and how to conceal what was necessary. She had 
learned such arts from her mother. She had just faced me and backed me down, and 
I could not fault her for it.
Could I afford to let my courage be less than hers? I climbed out of the cell 
and went to help her run the bubble.
 
Chapter 18 — PIRATE TREASURE
Space, 3-27-'15—We traveled another period, settling into routine. It wasn't 
that we mourned our lost ones less, but that there was nothing to do but go on 
and to keep ourselves busy, so as to keep the nightmares away. Even if we hadn't 
been out in blank space, away from the Jupiter ecliptic, in peril for our lives 
if we miscalculated the vectors of the enormous reaches of space, we would have 
had to keep ourselves active until the specters faded. There were few pirates 
out here, for this was off the travel lane; we almost missed them! But we had 
set up another refuse tank for quick-vacuum, just in case.
However, we were not left long to our own devices. Yet another ship overhauled 
us. Our luck had changed, and we wished it hadn't; this almost certainly meant 
more trouble.
We set up as before, except that we cut our crew of "innocents" to two, so the 
other six could have a better chance to survive the decompression. We didn't 
like taking losses, but had to play out our play, if only to lull the pirates so 
our trap could spring. We knew we had a defense that worked, and we didn't want 
to compromise it.
The ship docked, the lock opened, and the first pirate entered. I could not see 
around the curve of the Commons, since I was stationed right at the rear lock 
and our doughnut-hole chamber was well restocked with supplies, obscuring my 
line of sight, but I heard them. Spirit was halfway around, able to see both 
locks.
Spirit blew the whistle.
The two children attacked; I heard the scuffle.
"Hey, what—?" I demanded, amazed. There had not been time to ascertain the 
intentions of the intruders.
"It's the Horse!" Spirit hissed. "Move, Hope!"
The Horse! I stood frozen, remembering the rape of my sister Faith. I had sworn 
to kill that man!
The men caught the children before suffering more than scratches, and disarmed 
them. Two children could not attack five or six men with the same effect 
possible for thirty children attacking the same number. We should have realized 
that. The sounds penetrated my consciousness as if from a distance. The Horse, 
come to our bubble again!
"Do it!" Spirit snapped, and closed her helmet.
That finally jogged me out of my stasis. I closed my own helmet and jumped into 
the air lock. Already the pirates were coming around the Commons, and Spirit was 
backing toward the drive-control panel, almost tripping over the old, small 
drive unit parked beside it.
I closed the lock, decompressed it, opened the outer panel, and swung out, ready 
to cross when the drive cut off. We would lose two, this time; the innocents, 
who would not be able to get to their suits. They had known the risk, and it had 
to be done. I waited—but the drive did not cut off.
At last I realized that the pirates had caught Spirit before she could use the 
panel. I had no way to cross the ring of fire that was the drive. With the old, 
small columnar drive there would have been no problem. Or we could simply have 
cut off the new one when the pirates docked. So many little things we could have 
done—but it was now too late. We could not spring our trap.
Then I remembered something else, and that made me feel worse yet. We had 
weapons now—lasers and the taffy gun. Why hadn't we thought to use them? One kid 
behind that gun, shooting taffy at the pirates—we had never needed to go the 
vacuum route at all! What had possessed us to overlook that?
Grief and shock, that was what. We had had the sense to fetch the weapons, but 
then had lapsed into our suffering, and had never done the hard intellectual 
work of devising a new strategy of defense. What a colossal error! Even Spirit 
had missed it.
There was nothing to do but go back inside. Bad luck and poor planning had 
foiled our grand play. Maybe I could get to the taffy gun yet, however.
It galled me that it should be the Horse who had us at his mercy a second time. 
The one who had initiated our descent into horror. Objectively I knew he was not 
the worst of pirates; he was a rapist and robber and opportunist, but not a 
wanton killer. But he was a symbol in my mind, and he had to be destroyed. For 
the sake of my sister Faith.
Now, I realized, I might see him rape my sister Spirit. Unless I found a way to 
get at one of our power weapons so as to take him out.
I reentered the main bubble. The Horse was there, his laser pistol pointed at my 
midriff. He was garbed exactly as I remembered him: black shirt, yellow 
pantaloons, bright-red sash, and broad buccaneer hat—all of it worn and dirty. 
He stank the same too; no wonder they called him the Horse!
We were all captive, exactly as before. All our savage experience seemed to have 
changed nothing. They bound us and set us in a line against the wall of the 
Commons, near one of the operative heads. The two innocents were somewhat 
battered, but the others weren't hurt. Spirit and I had been removed from our 
space suits; no hope of escaping to the hull now! But maybe some chance would 
come to get to a weapon.
I shifted my wrists. Two pirates had bound us with lengths of rope about the 
crossed wrists and crossed ankles. They had a light touch, and had made the 
knots only tight enough to hold us effectively, not enough to interfere with the 
circulation in our extremities. They obviously knew what they were doing. I 
didn't recognize either of them—but of course we had seen so many pirates since 
our first encounter that they tended to fuzz in my memory. But for what it was 
worth, I didn't think these particular two had raped Faith, while I thought the 
two standing with the Horse had done so. That provided me with a set of 
priorities; whom to attack first, when I had the opportunity.
The interrogation began: Where were all our other people? How did we get the 
pirate weapons and supplies? Where were we going, since we were now spiraling 
away from Jupiter and out of the ecliptic? The Horse knew there was something 
strange about us, and he sought to turn it to his advantage. I realized that he 
was basically a scavenger, seeking whatever other pirates had missed.
We did not answer him. We all remembered his prior visit. We owed him nothing.
"Then we shall do it the harder way," the Horse said. "I'm not much for torture 
and killing, but I do like to turn a profit and I don't like being balked." He 
looked us over. "You," he said, pointing to me. "You're the oldest, and as I 
recall, you had a fine piece of a sister you've managed to hide somewhere. You 
will answer my questions."
I remained silent. It was the only way I could get back at him, at the moment.
He pointed at Spirit. "Strip her," he said.
The two pirates beside him went over and hauled my little sister out, untied 
her, and ripped off her clothing, though she struggled and tried to bite and 
scratch. Then they held her upright and naked before us.
The Horse studied her. "Not quite old enough," he said with evident regret. 
"Another year and she'll be fine, but I don't get my kicks from children. 
Anyway, that won't make this kid talk; it didn't before. We'll have to go the 
other way." He drew his knife.
I broke out in clammy sweat. I had somehow been braced for rape, much as I 
detested the notion, but this was worse. He was going to torture Spirit!
The Horse faced me. "This is your sister, by the look of her. Put her in your 
clothes and she could be your little brother. I don't want to have to hurt her, 
but I will if you don't talk. I ask you once: Will you tell me everything I want 
to know?"
"He won't!" Spirit exclaimed.
Guided by her, I remained silent. Maybe the pirate was bluffing, trying to scare 
me into talking.
The Horse sighed. "Okay, we'll start with a finger." He grabbed Spirit's left 
hand and wrestled with it until he had hold of her smallest finger, while the 
two other pirates held her legs and other arm, preventing her from struggling 
effectively. It struck me how similar this process was to rape.
Then, without ceremony, he brought the knife up and sliced into the base of her 
finger, near the knuckle.
Spirit screamed with ear-deadening intensity, and wrenched with all her 
strength, but the pirate hung on and kept carving. Blood spattered out. I rolled 
over, trying to break my bonds, and the children on either side of me started 
crying. They had been toughened to the wounds of combat, but this was different. 
I could not get free; I landed on my side, my head on the deck.
Something landed before my nose. I stared crosseyed at it. It was about five 
centimeters long and tattered at one end.
It was Spirit's little finger.
I looked up, my eyes hazed by tears of shock and fury. I saw and heard Spirit 
sobbing, her hand covered with her own blood.
"I ask you again," the Horse said, grinning. "Are you ready to talk?"
Now I knew he wasn't bluffing. He would keep cutting off parts of Spirit until 
she died. Then he would start on another child.
What did it matter, what he knew of the adventures of our bubble? We had no 
secrets worth dying for.
But I tried one more thing. "Kife," I said.
Suddenly I had the complete attention of all the pirates. "So you're into that, 
are you?" the Horse asked, licking his lips. "All right, show me the mark and 
I'll turn you loose."
"I have no mark," I said. I hadn't thought to mark myself, and probably that 
wouldn't have been convincing since it wouldn't have been a tattoo. A lie would 
get me nowhere, and I really didn't have much taste for lies anyway. Lies were 
for pirates and scions.
The Horse squinted at me cannily. "Not everyone knows this, but I do: There's 
always a mark. That's to stop impostors from making claims. If you can't show me 
the mark, you've got no claim. And even with the mark, you can't protect anyone 
else. You're the only one exempt. So show it, and I'll put you in that lifeboat 
you're towing and send you off, and I'll interrogate someone else here."
The trouble with the Horse was that he was canny. My bluff had failed. I 
couldn't save Spirit anyway. "Let my sister go, and I'll tell you everything." I 
said, capitulating.
"I won't let her go, but I'll let her be," the Horse said. He gestured to the 
pirates holding Spirit, and they let go her arms and stooped to bind her ankles. 
Crying brokenly, preoccupied with her mutilated hand, she did not try to escape, 
and of course it wouldn't have done any good if she had. She tried to put her 
fist in her mouth, but the blood was still flowing, and she only smeared it on 
her cheek.
Oh, Spirit! Better had they raped you!
One of the pirates who had tied us went over and gave her a bandanna, and she 
wadded it against the stump. All the fight had gone from her. They put a blanket 
over her and let her sit down, and she huddled in it. The pain was evidently 
diminishing—but never again would she have that finger.
I swore again, to myself, to kill the Horse, who had savaged both my sisters—but 
until I had the chance to do that, I would have to cooperate. I could not watch 
Spirit be tortured any more.
I talked. I told the pirates everything, summarizing our entire misadventure in 
the bubble. The Horse was especially interested in the QYV aspect. "And the body 
of the courier is frozen on the hull?" he asked.
"Yes," I agreed shortly.
"So you were the one who killed her, not a pirate."
"Yes."
"Which means you will have to settle with Kife."
I hadn't thought of that. "I suppose so," I said, resenting the very fact of 
agreement with him. If I ever encountered Kife, however, I knew it would not be 
amicable.
The Horse smiled. "I will make sure you go free, then. I wouldn't care to be the 
one to deprive Kife of his vengeance. He's an ugly one." He pondered. "Still, I 
understand those couriers carry some really good stuff. We'd better take a look 
at it."
"No!" one of the other pirates exclaimed. "It's death to mess with—"
"With a dead courier?" the Horse asked. "Whose body will be lost in space, tied 
to a drifting bubble? I think even Kife knows where to cut his losses. He'll 
deal with her killer and let it go at that."
"I don't know," the other pirate said.
"That's why I'm the leader here," the Horse said. "I'll take the responsibility. 
I'll never have another chance to see exactly what a courier carries."
It occurred to me that if the Horse let me go and Kife caught up with me, Kife 
would learn from me of the Horse's part in this. Then the Horse would be marked 
for vengeance too. I had killed Helse to save the bubble; the Horse would be 
interfering with the privileged material itself. Surely the Horse realized this. 
Therefore he probably intended to kill me and the other children, once he had 
all the information we could provide, so we couldn't implicate him. If Kife 
tracked the bubble, without any living witnesses, he would discover that the 
great majority of the refugees, including Helse, had died in prior encounters 
with pirates; there would be no evidence that the Horse had ever intercepted the 
bubble a second time. He could probably get away with it.
It all depended on our being dead. I had to kill him—to save us all. But still I 
had no way.
Under the Horse's direction, two pirates suited up and scrounged on the hull for 
Helse's body. It took them some time, for there were many bodies there and they 
had to inspect each one naked for the mark. I had told them Helse was female, 
but evidently they weren't sure of me, so checked males too, just in case. 
Actually, it was probably hard to tell until the corpses were pretty well 
stripped, anyway.
They found her and brought her inside the bubble. I had never looked at Helse 
after her death; now I had to. This, I think, is the most visceral grievance I 
have against the Horse: I had known Helse was dead, intellectually, but some 
part of my romantic mind had remained hopeful that she might live. Now no part 
of my mind could doubt any longer. My last faintly fond illusion had been 
banished. The utter bleakness of reality took its chill hold on my soul, I 
looked, terribly compelled. It was appalling. They had cut away her wedding 
dress and brought her in naked. She was not pretty at all in this state; she was 
frozen like a statue, her eyeballs and tongue protruding grotesquely, her body 
bloated by the decompression that had occurred before it froze. I would not have 
recognized her at all, if I had not known it was her. But it was; the aspects of 
familiarity loomed larger as I slowly perceived them. Her brown hair, her 
breasts, the QYV mark at her thigh—oh, Helse, the woman I had loved!
They tried to cut her open, but she was like rock. They had to thaw her—and that 
was the worst thing of all. We had thawed the bodies of our men for food—but the 
adult women had handled that, concealing it from the children as much as 
possible, and I had not cared to watch. But I understood that they had 
selectively heated only those portions they intended to carve, leaving the main 
part of each body intact. A leg, for example, could be heated and even cooked to 
a certain extent while on the bone, and when it was soft enough to carve, the 
edible flesh was stripped and the still-frozen remainder of the body was taken 
back out to the hull. Helse, in contrast, was being thawed entire. This was a 
much slower and uglier process, for they did not use fire for fear of destroying 
what it was they sought: the container anchored to her intestine.
In fact, it took several days, as I reckon it, for the body to thaw to their 
satisfaction, for the ice in the central body cavity melted very slowly. For all 
that time we had to wait and watch, tied and guarded by the pirates. They 
released us periodically to eat and drink, one at a time, and to use the head, 
but watched us so closely that we never had a chance to escape.
Even poor Spirit, a shadow of her former vitality, was permitted to rummage for 
bandaging material and replacement clothing only under the eye of a pirate. She 
searched inefficiently, unlike her normal manner, and found nothing suitable, 
and finally had to settle for soft underclothing from her own belongings. She 
fastened these garments clumsily against the stump of her finger and anchored 
them to her hand with elastic so that it looked as if her whole hand had been 
amputated. She refused to take any pirate pain-killer, for that was marked H. My 
heart went out to her in her misery and agony, but I was helpless. She was so 
pale I knew the loss of blood had hurt her. I couldn't even talk to her, 
couldn't comfort her. My little sister, was dying, in her sad way, before my 
eyes. The strength I had perceived in her was gone; defeat and pain had robbed 
her of it. Even the two halfway decent pirates seemed sorry for her.
We slept at irregular intervals while the ice melted, though we felt the chill 
of it as the air in the vicinity lost its heat in the contact with the deep, 
deep freeze of space. There was nothing else for us to do. My mind ran over 
every possible plan to escape, but all foundered in the face of the reality of 
being both bound and watched. I wondered why they were taking the trouble to 
keep us alive for this period, and could only conclude it was for further 
questioning in case some new mystery arose in connection with the courier's 
body. The Horse was a thinker, in his fashion; he did not discard things before 
he was quite finished with them, including lives. That made him more dangerous 
than the more directly brutal pirates. Once the capsule was recovered and 
opened, our lives would be surplus. So the thawing of Helse was in fact a 
countdown on our own lives, and when the chill, of her body had dissipated, the 
chill of our bodies would commence.
When I slept, I dreamed, and it was not fun. I seemed to march through an 
inchoate crowd of faceless people, all walking toward the brink of a yellow 
sulfur cliff, all stepping over it and falling to their doom. Only I could 
perceive the oncoming disaster, and I tried to talk to them, to urge them to 
stop and turn about, but they did not seem to hear me. I discovered that they 
were roped together and I was roped with them, my hands bound together; I was 
being carried over the cliff too.
I woke sweating in the cold. I was indeed roped, along with the others, and we 
faced the slowly warming body, and smelled its faint but growing aroma. We were 
approaching that cliff of doom, and the dream was no fantasy, but a rendering of 
reality. My dreams or visions had a disturbing propensity that way. I looked 
covertly at the pirate guarding us, but he was alert; no chance there.
I slept again, huddling into myself, and thought I woke to find the guard 
sleeping, and nudged myself over to him and managed to get my fingers on his 
knife. He woke then, and opened his mouth to scream, but I had the knife, and my 
bonds unraveled before its blade, and I brought it up and stabbed him in the 
face and saw the blood geysering out of his nose, splashing across my hands, 
which looked oddly like Spirit's hands, and I woke, and it was only sweat on my 
hands, and the guard remained alert.
Next time I dreamed I slipped my bonds and made a noose of the rope, flung it 
about the head and neck of the guard, and garroted him mercilessly, watching his 
eyes and tongue bulge out of his head, and it felt good, it gave me a feeling of 
power to do that to him—but I woke, and it was the head of my beloved Helse my 
gaze was fixed on, not the garroted pirate. Still she thawed...
I dwelt on that for a while, compulsively. Helse was dead and my heart with her, 
and now her body was becoming more of a horror to me than her death itself had 
been. She had at least died quickly, and probably not suffered much; 
decompression in space, horrible as it may look, is about as clean a demise as a 
person could seek. I understand consciousness is lost in the first second, so 
the rest is never felt. Now she was being restored in a fashion, and her 
restoration would destroy us all. I felt anger, frustration, guilt and grief for 
her death, but had to some extent confined these emotions before they ravaged me 
beyond recovery. I knew that any breakdown on my part could lead to death for 
all of us, so had not had the luxury of prolonged grieving. But as I watched her 
body slowly soften, it all came back with appalling and gruesome force.
All that we had suffered in the bubble—was it worth it? Could it ever be worth 
it? Or would it have been better if we all had died? In that case, the Horse 
would be doing us a favor when he killed us, ironically.
I drifted to sleep again and dreamed of my family alive, as they were at the 
beginning of this travail, and I was explaining to my father how I wanted to 
marry Helse, but he was perplexed because he thought she was a boy. "No, she is 
a girl," I said, not even wondering how it was he did not know, when he had 
known before and had told my mother, and I drew off her clothing so he could 
see. But what was revealed was not the sweet soft shapely flesh of the living 
woman, but the cold hard horror of the corpse, and I stared in shock—and was 
awake again, my eyes fixed on the reality. Waking was no escape from nightmare!
Where had it all gone wrong? How could I have avoided the unmitigated horror of 
this outcome? I knew the answer: I should have avoided contact with the scion in 
Maraud. That had been the start of the whole terrible chain of events. Had I 
only drawn my sister Faith aside, hidden her from view—yet this scion had come 
looking for us, having seen Faith before. How could I have prevented that? I 
simply was not competent to deal with the problem I had faced.
Incompetence. There was the root of it. Had I had competence, I would have found 
a way to alleviate the situation. Had I had more experience, or had a more 
knowledgeable person been there to guide me—
But now I realized that if I had somehow dissuaded the scion without offending 
him, so that the crisis had never occurred, it would have solved only part of 
the problem. We, the Hubris family, would have survived, never having to take 
the bubble off-planet—but all the other refugees would have proceeded as before. 
Helse would have been aboard, and had to seek another roommate, and perhaps had 
trouble from the outset, and the pirates still would have raided and raped and 
murdered, and the Jupiter Patrol still would have rejected the refugees. The end 
would have been the same: death for all on the bubble, including Helse, one way 
or another. And I would never have met her and loved her, and she never would 
have loved me. A fantasy that saved my family without saving Helse was no good. 
It was not the scion I had to settle with, it was the pirates.
I slept again, and dreamed of the end of this dread sequence; the thawing was 
complete, and the fell pirate Horse reached his gross dirty hairy hand up 
between Helse's spread thighs into her soft body, raping her with his hand, for 
raping was his business, and rammed his gross fist around and around inside 
there while she struggled against the pirates holding her arms and legs, and at 
last with a gloating gasp of satisfaction pulled out what was inside her. It was 
large and green and shaped like a baby, the baby I had planted in her, but no, 
it was not mine, it was Kife's, he had raped her first, putting in her the seed 
of her destruction, putting his brand on her tender body. I had a vengeance to 
make against QYV, could I but survive to pursue it. This whole pirate trade, 
using and abusing innocent people—
Now the capsule, as the Horse held it up to the light in lustful victory, was 
small, its proper size; in my dream I was not concerned about such superficial 
changes of reality. The pirate's small eyes gleamed as he viewed the prize, the 
ultimate pirate treasure, the burden of the courier. What did that container 
contain? And I was curious too, and guilty for that curiosity, for by 
experiencing it I seemed to be supporting the death of my beloved, even as my 
bodily reaction at the time of the rape of Faith had seemed to support that act. 
Even in my private mind, where I could conjecture freely, I could not find an 
answer to my guilt. How much better to have Helse alive and leave the mystery 
intact! I had no right to want to see the content of that capsule! Yet I did.
The Horse broke it open and an object fell out, a blob of something, soft like 
mud, green mud. It fell on the body and spread out across the flesh like taffy. 
The Horse, fearing to lose it, tried to pick it up, but it broke apart and part 
of it adhered to his fingers.
He stared at his hand, watching his fingers dissolve, and I realized that the 
green blob was a living thing, some kind of alien being that fed on human flesh 
and now was consuming both the corpse and the pirate. It had been quiescent 
until freed from the confining capsule; now there would be no stopping it. It 
would gorge until they were both gone, the dead woman and the living man, and 
then it would start on the rest of us. Already a pseudopod of it was extending 
across the deck toward me.
I woke in a new sweat, and nothing had changed. The body still thawed, the odor 
of it slowly intensifying, the dread cold still reaching out to touch me, and 
the pirate guard still watched. The Horse and one of the other pirates had 
returned to their ship, no doubt preferring to rest well away from the grim 
scene there. Spirit slept fitfully to one side, sometimes moaning faintly, the 
bloodstained undergarment enclosing her hand. She looked so wasted and frail! 
Would this slow horror never end?
The sequence was interminable, but in two, perhaps three days, perhaps more—I 
really don't know how long it took that body to thaw completely, everything is 
conjecture—it ended. As we watched dully, knowing the end was coming in more 
than one sense, that the reprieve Helse had provided us by taking as much time 
as she could to thaw was over, the Horse returned from the spaceship. He 
inspected the now limp and discoloring corpse, nodded approvingly, and took out 
his knife. He cut carefully into Helse's abdomen, as if performing surgery. The 
cutting was largely bloodless, and I could not see all of it—indeed, I did not 
want to see any of it, but couldn't control my eyes—but I saw enough. They had 
set her on a table, raised a meter or so, so the Horse wouldn't have to squat 
down awkwardly. The curve of the floor of the Commons lifted me somewhat, but 
still I had no clear line of sight to the incision.
He laid her open like the carcass of an animal, severing skin and muscle and 
linings to get at the intestines. This was just as bad as my dream! Then he drew 
out the guts of her in dark lengths, intact, squeezing and peering until he 
found the position of the capsule. He made an incision in the intestine at that 
point and cut free the prize. It was not as messy an operation as my horrified 
imagination had hinted, but was more horrible in other respects. Maybe this was 
because my dream had portrayed it as a kind of rape, while this was surgical. My 
abhorrence of rape had been muted somewhat by the education Helse herself had 
provided me, but my reaction against the onslaught of the knife remained 
unabated, for I had seen my father killed by the sword and the finger of my 
sister cut off. But mainly it was the actual cutting of the flesh of my beloved. 
Had she been alive it might have been an operation. We tolerate much more 
profound violations of our bodies in the name of medicine than we do in the name 
of pleasure.
The pirates crowded close, intent on the capsule as the Horse proudly held it 
up. It was about two centimeters long and half a centimeter in diameter. Not 
impressive, physically—but its content could be invaluable.
The child next to me nudged me. Slowly I turned my head, interrupting my own 
morbid fascination with the proceedings. Spirit was looking at me, seeming much 
more alert and alive than before, and when my gaze met hers, her eyes flicked 
down to her bandaged hand. I looked there—and saw she had a tiny blade, hardly 
more than a sliver from some razor blade the women used to remove hair from 
their legs when they were allergic to depilatories.
When she saw that I had seen, she hid the knifelet. I realized that she had cut 
her bonds during the recent distraction of the pirates. She must have picked up 
the blade while foraging for bandaging material and hidden it in the gore from 
her finger. No wonder she had had so much trouble finding what she needed in the 
way of bandaging—it had been this she was really looking for. The pirates, 
thinking her completely broken, had not considered her any real threat, so had 
not watched her as closely as they had the rest of us. Even in her shock and 
pain right after the loss of her finger, my cunning little sister had been alert 
for some way to free herself and us. No wonder she had fooled the pirates; she 
had even fooled me! Now Spirit was ready for action, and she knew it had to be 
soon.
The children between us fidgeted as if uncomfortable. Then the one beside me 
presented the tiny blade, shoving it toward me with his bound hands. The 
children between Spirit and me had not taken time to free themselves; they knew 
I needed to be freed first. They had the discipline of desperation. We would 
have only one chance, and we had to make it good.
I moved slowly, using the blade to saw through the rope about my feet. Then I 
realized this was foolish; the hands had to be first. I nudged my companion, and 
he moved his bound hands to mine, and I sawed at his rope. The blade was sharp, 
for these items are fashioned in the factory bubbles of Jupiter to last almost 
forever, and my leverage was good. The strands parted, and in a moment his hands 
were free. Then he took the blade and severed my rope. My hands, too, were free. 
While I had dreamed vainly of such an escape, Spirit had taken practical action 
to make it possible. But I could not move my hands freely, lest the pirates see. 
I arranged the rope so it looked tied, and moved as slowly as before.
Meanwhile the pirate awe of the QYV treasure abated enough to get practical. "We 
have it, but we have a problem," the Horse said. "We don't know what's in it. 
Could be a diamond—or could be an ampoule of Quintessent H, worth two million—or 
could be a deadly virus Kife means to use to wipe out a major bubble. Do we 
gamble, or don't we?"
"Where'd she come from?" a pirate asked, glancing at Helse's body. "Do they have 
virus labs there?"
"Callisto, the boy says," the Horse replied. "No advanced technology there. No 
precious minerals either."
"But she could have been a second-stage courier. It could have started anywhere. 
Maraud is a center for bootleg re-transfer. The Jupiter Patrol is watching for 
drugs on the regular ships from the inner worlds, but pays no attention to 
refugees. So it figures Kife would use one of them for something really 
important."
"But Jupe's bouncing refugees now," the Horse pointed out. "Why use a courier 
who can't get through?"
The other pirate shrugged. "I don't know. He must've figured she would get 
through, for some reason, and it fouled up. She would have been pretty enough, 
alive."
Pretty enough. Yes, that figured. Faith might have gotten through, and Helse 
too, if some male Jupe officer spotted them. Regulations could be bent or 
ignored for that sort of thing. Yet I wasn't sure. I had seen no evidence of 
corruption in the Jupiter Patrol, and it had been a woman who turned us away. So 
the mystery of Kife's strategy remained.
I freed the hands of the girl on my other side and passed the blade on. 
Covertly, we all worked on our foot-ropes, though the pirates were now so 
engrossed in their debate over the capsule that they were paying no attention at 
all to us.
But I knew it would take more than our bare hands and one tiny blade to overcome 
these rough pirates. We had no real weapons, and the men were so much larger and 
stronger than we were they could have overcome us barehanded. There were weapons 
farther around the Commons, but we would be caught long before we could reach 
them, assuming the pirates had left them in place. What could we do to save 
ourselves?
I worked it out as my feet came free: Someone would have to distract the pirates 
while someone else reached the weapons. We had no chance to plan this out before 
we would have to act, so I had to hope our minds ran in similar channels. I 
could make the best use of the weapons, but I was farthest from them; Spirit was 
closest.
I looked again at Spirit, making a little signal with a finger. She should go 
for the weapons. She nodded.
"To hell with that," the Horse exclaimed, settling the pirates' dispute. "We 
could debate it for years and never decide. I'm going to open it." And, while 
the other pirates shrank back apprehensively, he twisted the two halves of the 
capsule.
It burst apart and an object fell out, giving me a shock of déjà vu relating to 
my recent dream. The pirates shied away as if afraid the thing would explode, 
but it bounced harmlessly on the deck. The Horse stooped to pick it up.
When should we make our move? Now, while the pirates were distracted? Or should 
we wait till we had no choice. I decided that sooner was best. But we did have 
to give the remaining children time to get free. The more of us who burst loose 
at once, the better.
"A key!" the Horse said, disappointed. "A stupid little plastic key!"
"A key to what?" one of the others asked, edging back toward it.
"How should I know? Maybe to a safe that got shipped by some other route and has 
a booby trap to blow it up if any key but this is used on it. Probably a 
magnetic pattern imprinted in it, no way to fake it. But we don't have that 
safe!"
"Then what good is this to us?"
"No good at all!" The Horse threw down the key in a fury. "We sure ain't going 
to Kife with it! Three damn days gone—for this! For nothing!"
Spirit got up and started walking toward the weapons.
For a moment the pirates did not even notice. Spirit walked exactly as if she 
were going to the head. She had marvelous composure. All the time I had thought 
she was broken, she had been planning this!
Then the Horse spied her and caught on. "She's loose!" He started for her. "Who 
forgot to tie—"
I launched myself toward him.
We didn't have a chance, of course. There were eight of us and five pirates in 
the bubble at the moment—but each of them was a match for two of us unarmed, and 
there were more in the pirate ship that would come at the sound of the 
commotion. But we were desperate; we had nothing left to lose.
I plowed into the Horse, who wasn't looking at me. My impact spun him around. In 
a moment he recovered, grabbed me, and threw me aside. Scowling, he drew his 
laser pistol.
Why hadn't I grabbed for that pistol first? I might have gotten it, if I had 
concentrated on that alone! I had bungled my only chance! Now, as if it were in 
slow motion, I saw the ongoing panorama of the action. The Horse, drawing his 
weapon. The other pirates, turning to face the rushing children. One of the bad 
ones reaching for Spirit at the fringe of the group. But no, he wasn't catching 
her, he was clapping his hands to his face! She had flicked him in the eye with 
her finger-whip!
Then the Horse realized what was happening and brought his pistol around to bear 
on Spirit instead of me. I tried to roll into his feet, to jar his aim, but was 
too slow. But Spirit fooled him by leaping up into the storage compartment, 
neatly curving through the hole in the net and disappearing among the packages 
of food up there. His shot burned a package but missed her. It was that 
curvature of the jump that had thrown him off; we were used to it, but he 
wasn't.
Unfortunately, we had no weapons stored up there. Spirit was safe for the 
moment, but we had lost the war because the Horse was striding toward the cache 
of weapons.
I scrambled to my feet. Maybe I could still get to a weapon first, if I dived 
for it. But I knew this was unlikely.
I was passing Helse's body on the table. I reacted almost without thinking. I 
picked up the corpse, entrails and all, lifting it readily in the partial 
gravity, and heaved it at the Horse. It was strange, touching Helse's dead 
flesh, which was not soft but rather stiff, but I knew she would approve of 
being allowed to participate in the fight this way.
The body struck the Horse. He spun around, firing his laser into it, not at 
first realizing what it was. Then he realized, and his face snarled with 
disgust. A length of intestine had strewn itself across his arm, and he brushed 
if away and backed off.
Meanwhile I was making progress toward the weapons, thanks to Helse's 
intercession. My dead love had given me a better chance.
"Down!" Spirit cried from the far side of the Commons. She had sailed right 
through the center compartment and out the other side! "Flat!"
I didn't know what she had in mind, since there were no weapons over there, but 
knew better than to ignore the warning. I spread myself flat against the deck, 
hoping this was not all a bluff.
"Someone shoot that brat," the Horse cried. Then he turned and aimed his laser 
at me. I could hardly move to avoid it, since I was lying down.
There was a horrendous roar, an ear-hurting sound, and a blast of hot air. Fire 
exploded in the baggage-storage section and the netting disintegrated. Burning 
packages rained down, curving in their fashion as they fell. The pirates, 
amazed, tried to dodge them.
Had Spirit detonated a bomb among the packages? But there was no bomb!
A pirate near the air lock screamed. I looked—and saw him bathed in fire. His 
hair and clothing were puffing into bright ash, and his body was blackening. He 
spun to the side, his skin flayed from his body.
A jet of flame shot through the center of the bubble and down through the air 
lock, directly into the pirate space ship. There were screams as it fried unseen 
pirates there.
A laser? That would have to be a laser cannon, the kind mounted on a Jupiter 
Navy battleship. We had nothing like that on board!
Then it cut off, after only a few seconds, leaving us bathed in heat and gasping 
for air. The metal of the air lock glowed red where the jet had touched it, and 
the odor of burnt flesh was strong. The pirates were standing motionless, 
staring, and I think some were temporarily blind. Those of us on the deck were 
better off, being farther from the flame.
Now I realized what it was. Spirit had ignited the small rocket drive! She must 
have braced it against the rear lock and aimed it down toward the front lock, 
searing through everything between. It was a little, weak jet when used to move 
the mass of the full bubble, externally—but here inside it seemed devastatingly 
powerful. She probably had it set on the lowest level of thrust; otherwise she 
would not have been able to hold it at all. But even that level, which from 
outside might seem to be a pallid jet of half a dozen meters, was enough to 
incinerate what remained in the storage compartment and to char what did not. 
The ferocity of its passage heated the air explosively, and the jet showed in 
air to extend the full sixteen-meter breadth of the bubble and beyond. It had 
been perhaps a five-second burst—and the bubble was in a shambles.
"Get their weapons!" Spirit called. I scrambled up—but the Horse reacted as 
quickly, swinging his pistol about again. "Spirit!" I cried, throwing myself 
flat again and trusting the other children to follow my lead.
The jet of fire came again. It wobbled, and part of it struck the side of the 
air lock near the pirate. Fire refracted, forming a curving sheet of flame and 
sparks that caught the standing pirates glancingly.
It cut off a second time. "I'll burn you all, if you don't get those pirates!" 
Spirit called.
But this time the pirates had been harder hit. The Horse was staggering, having 
been brushed in the face by the flame, and I got his pistol without resistance. 
It took a third blast from the rocket before we had complete control, but we did 
have it.
When I reached Spirit, I discovered the price she had paid for her valiant move. 
She had been very close to the rocket, and the thing was no toy. She had held it 
in place by hand, her extremities shielded by bandage-clothing, but her hands 
were burned and her hair singed. She had closed her eyes tightly, protecting 
them, but her cheeks were blistered. When she saw me coming and knew we had won, 
she fainted.
Poor, heroic little girl! I scavenged for balm for her skin and tried to get her 
comfortable, then tended to the other pressing business.
We didn't push our luck. We sent the two least obnoxious pirates—the ones who 
had tied our bonds loose rather than cut off the circulation of our hands and 
feet, and who had let us use the head with reasonable frequency—out the cooling 
lock with instructions to close it behind them and separate the pirate ship from 
the bubble. Then we dealt with the Horse and the two remaining pirates.
I had sworn to kill the Horse, and now was my chance, but I found I was unable 
to do it directly. I was not, when it came to the test, a calculating murderer; 
I killed only in the throes of desperation. Yet when I looked at Spirit's stump 
of a finger and at Helse's mutilated body, and remembered Faith, I suffered a 
helpless secondary rage. We could not simply let these criminals go!
Spirit had recovered consciousness by this time. She was in pain from her new 
injuries and unsteady on her feet, but her eyes bore on the Horse with singular 
malignancy. Faith was her sister too, and Spirit had suffered even more directly 
and recently from the villainy of the Horse. Spirit was no forgiving cherub. 
Wordlessly she held out one burned hand for the laser pistol.
I gave it to her, not knowing what she would do, but aware that she had more 
guts to do it than I did. I saw that it hurt her just to hold the weapon, but 
she gritted her teeth and took it in her left hand, the one with the lost 
finger, though she was right-handed, and she aimed it and steadied it and 
fired—into the crotch of the Horse.
He screamed and jumped, but the damage was done. Spirit had castrated him with 
the laser.
Then we forced the three into the trailing lifeboat, after hauling it up to mate 
with the freed front lock. We had not killed the Horse—but blind and burned, he 
might not live long anyway, jammed into the lifeboat with his two cutthroat 
companions and set adrift in space. Certainly he would suffer to a certain 
extent the way we had. Certainly he would never rape another refugee girl. Maybe 
his pirate ship would search out the boat and pick him up; maybe it wouldn't 
bother. His fate was now in the hands of his associates, as perhaps it deserved 
to be. His blood was not, technically, on my hands. That perhaps is my ultimate 
confession of weakness.
We had not actually lost any children this time, but half our supplies had been 
destroyed and we all had emotional and physical scars. Several children had bad 
burns from the rocket, and I feared Spirit's face would never be pretty, for 
there would be blister scars on it when it healed. But we survived, and we had a 
little portion of our vengeance!
We bagged Helse's remains and returned her to the hull. I saved the mysterious 
plastic key, hiding it on my person, my last memento of Helse. That and the 
HELSE HUBRIS tag.
We cleaned up the rest in the usual manner; it did give us something to do. We 
settled down to traveling our route and tending our injuries. Spirit, tough 
little creature that she was, started recovering right away, but I refused to 
let her do any real work until her skin scabbed over and started healing. She 
was, I still believe, the toughest one among us, and she had earned her rest.
 
Chapter 19 — THE FINAL RAID
Spirit eyed me speculatively one day. "Hope, you're getting too old."
"Old?" What was she up to now?
"You're thinking about starting a beard."
Oh. "Men do, you know." I ran my finger along my chin, but there really wasn't 
anything there.
"What if the pirates come again, to slay the men?"
She had a point. If women were subject to rape, men were subject to murder. It 
was best to remain young. I fetched some depilatory from the diverse supplies 
that remained and went over my face, rendering it fully boyish again.
"That's not enough," she said. "All they want is girls."
"To rape!" I exclaimed.
"You should be safe from that," she pointed out.
Startled, and not entirely pleased for a reason I could not define, I had to 
agree. It might indeed be smart for me to learn to masquerade as a girl, just as 
it had been useful for Helse to masquerade as a boy. If pirates came and blazed 
away at males and spared the girls, this could give me my only chance to survive 
long enough to blaze back at them. We would all have lasers ready next time, of 
course; still, we had so often been betrayed by circumstance that we had to 
consider any possible advantage that might be available.
Spirit got to work happily. She had a marvelous ability to invest her whole 
attention in immediacies, bypassing the horrors that tormented my more 
reflective mind. She found a dress my size and made me change into it, while the 
other children offered enthusiastic suggestions. I even had to put on pantyhose 
to cover my hairy legs, and girlish slippers. Naturally the brats fitted me with 
a padded brassiere to make my front look right, giggling fiendishly.
I had become the entertainment of the hour. They brushed out my hair, which had 
grown longer in the past month, and they tied a pretty red ribbon in it, and 
instructed me in girlish nuances of expression and stance. I was surprised by 
the amount the little girls knew about this sort of thing; evidently they took 
their sex roles seriously from an early age. I was not really enjoying any of 
this, but they found it hilarious. Still, it would be pointless for me ever to 
attempt such a masquerade before pirates unless I had it down pat, so I did work 
at it, trying to satisfy the piercing cynosure of the children. When they began 
to nod approval, I knew I was getting better.
Spirit insisted on making it more of an ordeal. She donned male clothing and 
postured before me in a gross parody of masculinity. Her ravaged face did help, 
here. "I am your brother!" she declaimed. "I am here to stop you from getting 
raped, unless you really want to be. Say 'sir' to me, sister!" The other kids 
laughed as if that were the humor of the century. Was this really the way the 
typical male came across to the opposite sex?
"Ship ahoy!" the lookout cried.
That would have to happen at the time I was ludicrously garbed! Just when we 
thought we were free of pirates, well off the ecliptic, another came!
I rushed for my space suit, not sparing time to change; every moment might 
count. Spirit did likewise—but of course she didn't mind her garb the way I did 
mine. It was awful for me, cramming the damned dress into the legs of the suit. 
Spirit had it easy; male clothes are designed for space suits, or vice versa. In 
this respect it really is a male universe.
The other kids hesitated, then decided to go for their suits too. They were 
alive now only because they had been lucky enough to avoid the pirates and get 
their suits on in time; they didn't want to gamble that way again. But that left 
us without any innocents to test the intruders. We all had laser pistols now, so 
the innocents could attack with much better effect, but still we all lacked 
confidence in that. So it was to be suits for all. A few children in a 
bubble—the suits would not be too surprising. Bubbles didn't leak, but some 
people worried that they did. Then the innocents could simply slam their helmets 
on, if we had to go the vacuum route.
I stationed myself near the rear air lock, and Spirit joined me, while the 
others scrambled. We two were the fastest, because we had drilled specifically 
for this, many times; our suits were hung right by the air lock, supported so 
that we could almost literally dive into them feet first. We had everything 
tight except our helmets. My slippered feet tended to slip around in the big 
suit-feet, though, and I hated the way my skirt wadded up around my middle.
"You sure look cute, sister, in your suit and ribbon," Spirit teased me.
I put my hand to my head to remove the damned thing, but my suit gauntlets were 
clumsy.
There was a crash. The entire bubble shook, almost knocking us off our feet. 
"They crashed into us!" I exclaimed, shaken in two senses.
There was another crash, worse than the first. "No—they're shooting at us!" 
Spirit screamed. Then she jammed her helmet over her head.
I followed her example. The automatic seal operated and the suit's air puffed 
on.
The third shot punctured the hull on the side of the bubble opposite us. The air 
sucked out with gale force. I couldn't see the puncture, but knew its nature 
from the direction of the rush of air.
Spirit and I were drawn along with it—but we were farthest from the leak and 
were affected least. I grabbed the netting above the Commons as I flew by, and 
Spirit did the same. She had had prior experience with explosive decompression; 
I had not, since I had been out on the hull before.
The opening was small, for bubble-hulls are tough, designed to withstand 
pebble-meteorites and to self-seal to some extent. But of course space artillery 
is designed to penetrate exactly such hulls. The shell had formed a tube that 
let the air out; it took about thirty seconds, with diminishing intensity as the 
pressure dropped.
Spirit and I survived it—but I realized that the other children probably had 
not. They had required more time to suit up, and their reactions were less 
certain. They might have paused in surprise, listening to the collisions of the 
shells against our hull—and that would have been fatal. Once again we had been 
betrayed by the unexpected.
I looked at Spirit through our helmets. Why had the pirates done it? To hole a 
bubble—that was the deliberate murder of all within. No rape of women or 
kidnapping of children was possible.
Now the pirate ship docked against our air lock and the men used it, keeping 
their ship sealed. Suited men appeared and began checking around inside our 
wasted hulk. It seemed that all they wanted was salvage.
What should we do now? If the pirates saw us, they would surely kill us. But we 
couldn't remain in the holed bubble long; it was now useless. We had no way to 
repair such a leak, assuming the pirates left us any food or life support 
equipment when they finished. We seemed to have a choice between a fast death 
and a slow one.
Spirit had the answer. She handed herself to a rent in the net and took hold of 
an armful of food containers. She meant to pretend to be a looter!
Would it work? It might. Our suits were standard, similar to those of the 
pirates; in the confusion of looting, we might manage to get aboard the ship. 
After that—well, first things first.
I took an armful of food packs, enough to cover my face panel somewhat, and 
followed Spirit down to the air lock. I really didn't know whether this would 
work, but didn't see any alternative.
We came to the lock, and the pirate there waved us on in. He closed the lock 
behind us, and we stepped into the pirate ship.
It took me a moment to realize what was strange. This was very like the bubble, 
here: just a chamber for access. We had explored a ship before, when we cleaned 
out the pirates with our vacuum, so this was reasonably familiar, but this 
present one was a larger and probably better ship. We floated through the 
chamber and down a short hall, toting our burdens. Then we came to something 
different.
The vacuumed ship had docked nose-on, so that its spin matched the bubble's spin 
and the whole thing had been like one extended passage from our lock. Indeed, in 
the case of the Horse's ship, our drive jet had fired right down its throat, the 
length of the ship. But this present ship had docked at the center, so its nose 
and tail sections were projecting to either side, and it was spinning around 
endwise to match the bubble's rotation. It was always easier for a ship to match 
rotations, since it would have taken energy to stop the bubble's spin, not worth 
it for a temporary connection. Here, it is best to make a set of diagrams:
 
I have drawn a center line to show the axis of rotation in each case. As should 
be clear, the two modes of docking lead to quite different dynamics within the 
ship. Actually, the rate of rotations does not have to match, as the airlocks 
have a built-in slip mechanism that allows opposite rotations of bubble and 
ship. But what would be the point? Certainly it was impossible for the ship to 
maintain a long-axis spin while connected to the bubble, so it had either to go 
to no spin, meaning null-gee, or to rotate end over end, as it was doing.
This seemed unnecessarily clumsy. My mind cast about for the rationale. Could it 
be that these particular pirates were accustomed to difficult maneuvers in 
space, and performed them routinely? That would imply a really professional 
crew, more like a military unit than a motley collection of malcontents. Their 
completely callous holing of our bubble implied the same. We were up against 
no-nonsense raiders this time—probably a ship that deserted from a planetary 
navy.
And there was the explanation for the maneuver: This ship had not docked at the 
nose because it couldn't! It had a projectile cannon mounted in the nose instead 
of an air lock. No other pirate ship had fired at us, because such military 
hardware could not be mounted on ordinary space vessels; they had to be designed 
for it. A projectile cannon attached to the side of the hull of a spinning ship 
would be virtually useless, and would severely shake the ship when it fired; it 
had to be on the axis line, so it could be fired without affecting either the 
spin or the balance of the ship. Since boarding became so awkward, no chances 
were taken; the victim was rendered completely helpless before the approach was 
made. This was like a pirate with one arm, afraid the girl might resist and hurt 
him, so he shoots her just before he rapes her.
Why was it that each pirate vessel we encountered seemed worse than the last? 
Even the Horse had been worse the second time!
Now we were at an intersection. On either side a long passage extended down. 
That's right; we were floating at the null-gee axis, and the opposite directions 
were both down, because of that endwise rotation. We had to pick one or the 
other without delay, for a pirate was coming through the lock behind us. I saw 
an arrow pointing, decided that would be toward the residential section (for no 
good reason; male intuition is suspect), and jumped. Spirit followed.
Of course, we did not sail blithely down the center of the passage. That is not 
the nature of free fall, as our experience in the bubble had amply shown. We 
slid down one wall, and as the pressure of that wall increased our angular 
momentum—that is, the speed of our revolution around the axis—our centrifugal 
force increased, and we slid faster. The process fed on itself. So it was a bit 
like being on a giant slide, whose slant increased as it progressed, so that not 
only one's velocity but one's rate of increase of velocity quickened. Soon we 
were bumping along at an uncomfortable rate, and had to catch the inset rungs to 
break our falls. The packages sprang from our arms and went tumbling on down 
ahead.
A pirate emerged from a side hall—just in time to be pelted by the onrushing 
packages. He did not take it well. A laser pistol appeared in his hand, pointing 
with excellent accuracy at me as I clung to the descent ladder.
So we were caught. But that had been inevitable. So far, we survived.
I lifted back my helmet, surrendering for the moment. There was no point in 
getting shot, or in getting Spirit shot. Perhaps we could talk our way into 
something less unpromising.
"A woman!" he exclaimed in English.
I still had the red ribbon in my hair! I started to protest, but Spirit nudged 
me. "So what'd you expect my sister to be—a frog?" she demanded.
The pirate's lips quirked. It seemed he had some minor sense of humor. "You 
escaped from the derelict bubble?"
"Derelict?" Spirit demanded. "It wasn't a derelict! Not until you blasted a hole 
in it!"
"So it would seem." The pistol still covered us. "Come in here and get out of 
those suits."
We entered his chamber and climbed out of our suits. I had a problem with 
modesty, as my dress tended to snag above my waist; how did girls stand it? Of 
course my bloomer-panties protected the essentials. I lost a slipper in the suit 
and had to fish for it. I realized now why girls often seemed so inefficient; 
their costumes did it to them. But at length I stood, somewhat bedraggled, 
before the pirate. Spirit, in masculine attire, was better off. I knew that only 
the seriousness of our situation prevented her from teasing me about my feminine 
ineptitude.
"How old are you?" the pirate asked. He was evidently an officer, as he wore 
some sort of insignia and seemed better spoken than the usual brutes. Probably 
he originated from Uranus, whose moon Titania was the home of the 
English-speaking people, and which moon had a longstanding Navy tradition. 
Mainly, he was calmly self-assured.
"Fifteen," I said. No point in concealing that fact.
"Twelve," Spirit said.
He gazed at me appreciatively and appraisingly, and I became aware of one reason 
women can cringe under the cynosure of men. I wished I could be anywhere but 
here.
"You are young," the pirate officer said. "But that perhaps makes you cleaner. 
You will serve one man per night, commencing this night. You will cooperate 
gladly—"
"No!" I cried, horrified with better reason than he could know.
"Otherwise your little brother will be flogged—by the man you do not please—and 
you will go without food or water till the next. I believe in time you will 
cooperate willingly enough."
I was silent. These pirates certainly knew how to make a girl perform! All we 
could do now was stall for time.
The officer raised his voice to address the other pirates that were arriving 
now. "Take these two to the guest room. You will draw straws for order of 
satisfaction."
Stunned, we went to the indicated chamber. It was near the end of the ship, 
where gravity approached one gee. It occurred to me that this end-over-end 
rotation could be the normal mode for this ship, as a slower turning rate led to 
greater effective gravity at the extremes, compared to the other mode. We had 
enough trouble establishing half or quarter gee in the bubble; the ship's 
smaller diameter would force a very high rate of spin to get similar effect, and 
the difference in effect as a person moved inward from the hull would be 
formidable. Just standing could be uncomfortable. But the present way, there was 
relatively little differentiation; it was almost like standing on a planet. When 
not accelerating or shooting at a helpless bubble, this ship needed no specific 
orientation in space. And when it was accelerating, that would provide temporary 
gee. So this odd mode wasn't nearly as odd as it looked. I had never seen it in 
holo shows depicting navy vessels, but probably those were censored to avoid the 
undramatic aspects.
The guest room was set up in the fashion of an antique boudoir of the salacious 
version, with mirrors on walls and ceiling and virtually the entire floor 
covered by the mattress. Evidently these pirates had entertained women before. 
This was intended for only one type of guest. I realized that this was the type 
of situation my sister Faith had walked into.
For a moment we were alone, while the pirates drew their straws. I looked at 
Spirit. "We're in trouble," I said in a gross understatement.
"You're in trouble, paleface!" she quipped. But she turned serious immediately. 
"I can take your place. We can change clothes—"
I tried to conceal the extent of my horror at the notion. "No good," I said. 
"They won't fit."
"We could make it dark—"
"I won't stand by and watch you be raped!" I said.
She sighed like an adult. "That too, of course."
"Maybe we can overpower the first pirate—"
"I could ram a knitting needle in his ear," she said. "That works pretty well. 
If I had a needle."
"Still no good. They'd be on us when he didn't come out." We no longer had our 
laser pistols; the officer had competently deprived us of them at the outset.
"We need to get to the captain and hold him up and hijack the ship," she said.
"If we could get to the captain, and if we could make him do our will," I said. 
"Spirit, these are pirates! They'd as soon kill us as rape us! We just don't 
have the—"
The panel opened. A gross, burly, bearded pirate came in. "Girl, get on the bed 
and spread 'em!" he said to me. "Boy, get to the side and watch. When you get 
old enough, you'll get to do it too; meanwhile you can learn." He started to 
strip.
Spirit's gaze darted about the room, seeking some possible weapon, but I knew 
there was none. Her finger-whip had also been taken from her; pirates knew about 
such things. Her finger-stump had been sprayed with plastic bandage; they knew 
about that sort of thing too. These were English-speaking pirates, but they 
differed from the Spanish-speaking ones we had encountered only in their 
language and efficiency. Maybe we had floated from the Hispanic territory to the 
British; elsewhere in Jupiter-space there might be French-speaking pirates too. 
Certainly there had been in the past, in Callisto's history.
I hesitated. I really wasn't taking time to think all these things out as 
lucidly as I present them here; our fleeting thoughts may be more suggestive 
than complete. I could use the anti-rape measures against this man, poking his 
eyes out—but that would surely mean a most unpleasant death for Spirit and me. 
There had to be a better way.
"Move, girl!" the pirate cried, grabbing my arm and yanking me onto the bed. I 
fell, and he jumped on top of me, his clothing only partly undone. His 
liquor-sodden breath seared my face as his foul hand grasped at my padded front. 
Yet again I appreciated the position young women may be placed in; no person in 
her right mind would enjoy this approach! Helse had been very smart to conceal 
her gender.
"Kife," I said. I hadn't known I was going to do it, but the chain of thought 
leading to Helse had lead naturally to her identity as courier, so brutally 
fresh in my mind. This did seem worth a try.
The man froze in mid grasp. "Oh, no!" he muttered.
"You think a girl survives in space because of her muscle?" I asked, following 
up my advantage. I could tell the man was really shaken. Evidently QYV's 
notoriety extended throughout piratedom.
He backed off. "Why didn't you say something before?"
"Kife wants it private," I explained. "I'll probably get in trouble just for 
giving away my status." And, really, I had become Kife's courier, for I retained 
the key in the capsule. "Take me to your captain."
"Damn!" he swore. "I'm tempted to—"
"Yes, I heard about someone who did that once," I said blithely. "Thought he was 
real smart, thought Kife wouldn't know. But Kife always knows. You know how long 
it took that man to die, once Kife caught him?"
The pirate was uncertain again. "Look, girl, I just drew straws! I didn't know—"
I saw Spirit smirking. "At the end, he couldn't even scream," I said. "Though he 
sure was trying to! Because of the blood, you know, in his throat. They ran a 
hose into him, up his nose and down his windpipe, so he wouldn't choke to death 
on the gore before they were ready. Kife doesn't like it when someone dies 
before he's ready. They hadn't done the eyes yet, or the liver—"
The pirate retreated farther. "What do you want, girl?" He had evidently 
forgotten my demand to see the captain, or hadn't taken it seriously. I decided 
to play with this some more. I was hurt and angry about the holing of our bubble 
and the callous murder of the other six children. This might be a small 
vengeance, but it helped.
"I just thought you'd like to know what you're missing. They gave me one of his 
gonads for a souvenir, pickled in brine. 'Course it was sort of ragged, because 
he kicked some while they were pulling it off—"
I don't think I ever saw so rugged a man look so sick so suddenly. "I never 
touched you, girl! I didn't know—"
"Take me to your captain," I repeated, tiring of this sport. But mixed with my 
fiendish glee at the nature of this reprieve was my sense of irony. Had Helse 
employed her weapon of the name more freely, she need never have died. She 
hadn't really known what she had.
Thus we found ourselves in the presence of the captain, called Brinker. He was 
not one of the bushy-bearded types; he was clean-shaven and his jacket fitted 
well. He was small, but looked very much like a Nordic officer, with pale blond 
hair and sharp, almost chiseled facial features. I became more certain than ever 
that he had deserted from the Titanian navy, taking his ship and crew with him. 
I understood such things happened. Space around Uranus wouldn't have been safe 
for him, so he had crossed to Jupiter and taken up the trade of piracy. He 
seemed completely self-assured and carried a needle-laser sidearm in a holster 
visible in his left armpit, its butt forward. I wondered how this physically 
unprepossessing person maintained discipline over rough pirates, now that he was 
not supported by the weight of military law and custom. This was obviously a 
fairly taut ship.
"Say the word," Captain Brinker said to me.
"Not in public," I said, aware that I was being tested.
I did not see Brinker's hand move, but abruptly the pistol was in it and there 
was the tingle of heated air beside my left ear. Suddenly I saw how Brinker kept 
discipline. He must be the fastest gun in space! He could have burned me instead 
of firing past my head, and I would not have had time to blink. The pistol was 
already back in the holster.
But I sensed that it would be wrong to back down in the face of such a threat. 
Captain Brinker did not respect those he could readily cow. That much my talent 
of human understanding indicated, though we had not interacted long enough for 
me to gain a clearer comprehension of the captain's nature. So though I was 
frightened, I bluffed. "Shoot me. You know whom you will answer to."
The pistol appeared in his hand again, its lens-muzzle bearing on my right eye. 
But I had never been daunted by such threats. Afterwards, when I had time to 
consider, I might shudder with reaction, but at the time of crisis I always 
stiffened my opposition when threatened. This wasn't courage, just the way I am. 
Some circuit in my brain cuts out under pressure. So I stared into that lens and 
waited, unspeaking.
Again the weapon snapped back to its holster. "Very well," Brinker said. "You 
shall have your private interview."
The pirate guards left, the panel sealing behind them. My sense was continuing 
to operate; there was something amiss about the captain. I had felt a similar 
unease when first meeting Helse in her guise as a boy.
That was the key. "Spirit," I said in a normal voice. "Do you remember Helse's 
secret?"
She looked puzzled. "I remember."
"Another shares it."
Her brow furrowed, then straightened. She was catching on. "Are you sure?"
"Almost. In a moment I'll tell."
Captain Brinker frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"You asked me to say the word," I said while Spirit unobtrusively moved away 
from me. "I can do better than that. I can write it out for you." I glanced 
about the chamber, the Captain's small office. "Do you have something to write 
with?"
"Just spell it," Brinker snapped.
That, of course, was the test. If I spelled Kife the way it sounded, I would 
show up as an imposter. But I had another ploy now. I saw that Spirit had gotten 
herself close to an anchored metal cabinet, so might have a baffle. I took the 
plunge. "F-E-M-A-L-E," I spelled aloud.
The pistol was back in the Captain's hand, aiming at my eye. "Explain yourself, 
girl."
"I suggest you not fire until you consider the consequence," I said evenly, 
though the cold clutch of fear almost brought me down. I dread the thought of 
blindness! "If you are not concerned with the vengeance of Kife, you should 
think of the more immediate result of action against us." I had slipped in the 
other key word deliberately, so that it would seem like no bluff, with the 
spelling held in reserve. "The secret you value most will be exposed if you kill 
us. This chamber is not completely soundproofed; one of us will scream the word 
while you kill the other." I glanced toward Spirit, who now stood behind the 
cabinet, out of the line of fire. "Your men will hear, and wonder—and when they 
discover the nature of our bodies, they will understand the potential."
"You are speaking gibberish," the Captain said.
"No," I said. "Here is the secret: None of the three of us here are the sex we 
seem."
The captain did not seem to react. "Be more specific."
"I am male," I said. "Spirit is my sister. And you—"
"Show me," the Captain snapped, the laser still zeroed on my eye.
I lifted my skirt and dropped my bloomers, displaying my masculine parts. This 
was hardly the occasion for modesty! I signaled to Spirit, who stepped out and 
started to drop her trousers.
"Enough," the captain said. "You have made your point. How did you know?"
I covered my private region, straightening out my dress. "I have had experience 
with transvestism, as you can see. I have learned to recognize it. In my 
profession, such abilities are often necessary. My employer does not like to 
have his name bandied about, so I avoid the use of it when possible by using 
other means to conceal my nature." Again I was implying that my position as 
courier was to be taken for granted.
"In a dozen years, no one has realized I am a woman," Captain Brinker said, 
putting away the pistol. "I killed any who suspected. If my crew knew, I would 
lose my command—and more."
"Much more," I agreed. "It is not to the advantage of any of us to have our 
natures revealed. Shall we deal on that basis, and leave Q-Y-V out of it?" Now 
at last I spelled it, to remove the last trace of doubt about my connection.
"What do you want?"
"I want my freedom," I said. "To pursue my mission. If I fail my mission, I will 
have to seek a very fast, very sure extinction. I also want the freedom of my 
sister."
"She is a courier too?"
I was aware that she was testing me again, so I steered clear of unnecessary 
elaboration. "No. Couriers don't travel in pairs. She is only my sister—but I 
will not make any agreement unless she is free."
"If I set you free, I have no guarantee of your silence," Brinker pointed out. 
"Rather than risk that, I will destroy the whole ship."
But first she would try to eliminate us cleanly, hoping somehow to conceal our 
natures and hers from her crew. I saw that she could not be moved on this 
aspect. "That would certainly protect you from my employer's vengeance," I 
agreed. "I trust you have no blood relatives he can trace. Yet I would rather 
live, and you would too. Is there no compromise?"
"Yes. I will give you the lifeboat. Your sister remains with me."
As hostage! It did make sense, as I would never betray the captain's secret 
while my sister was subject to her will, and the captain would not kill Spirit 
as long as Spirit's life guaranteed my discretion. Yet I could not do it. Spirit 
was all I had left, the only remaining barrier between me and total desolation. 
"Make another offer," I said curtly.
"No other offer," the captain said, now assured that Spirit was important to me. 
"I may neither kill you nor let you go entirely free without imperiling myself. 
It must be all or nothing—or this. Take the compromise—or the consequence."
"Hope, she means it," Spirit said. "Do it. She will not harm me, for I have the 
same secret. I can be the cabin boy, and I will not be molested. You must go 
free—to complete your mission."
My nonexistent courier mission! "My father, my mother, my fiancée—all sacrificed 
themselves for me!" I exclaimed in anguish. "You are all I have left, Spirit! I 
cannot let you go!"
"Hope, I said I would die for you," Spirit replied. "This is not nearly as bad. 
We may someday meet again." And I saw the tears on her face, and knew she was 
determined to make this final sacrifice for me. I had to do it.
"Agreed," I said to the captain, almost choking over the word. Spirit—I did not 
know whether I could survive without her, or whether I wanted to. Yet it seemed 
it had to be done. "We are children and you are pirates—but we have seen as much 
of death as you have. Do not test us unduly. I refuse to use my courier status 
to win free; find another pretext to put me on the lifeboat." I was serious; I 
was on the verge of throwing it all in, screaming out the captain's secret, and 
letting things follow as they would.
"We understand each other," the captain said. "I will send you back to the bed. 
You will hijack the ship instead, using our detonation-control panel. Your 
sister will have to do it." She glanced at Spirit. "You have the nerve, girl?"
"I have the nerve—girl," Spirit replied.
"No more of this!" I said immediately, knowing that mayhem was in the near 
offing. Either of those two would destroy the ship if pressed, herself with it. 
"You are both male, henceforth. And I will exit as I am."
"Then listen, lad," Captain Brinker said to Spirit, and my sense informed me 
that she was not entirely displeased about this development. I realized that it 
must be a lonely thing, being the only woman in a crew of cutthroat men, 
anonymously, unable ever to let down her guard lest she be relegated to 
perpetual slave duty in the guest room. She surely had to sleep in a locked 
chamber. She might wish for the company of her own kind, while preserving her 
secret—and we had handed that opportunity to her.
Brinker was letting it be understood that she was compromising in the face of 
necessity—but in reality she was arranging exactly what she wanted: to be rid of 
me and to keep my sister. This insight did not dismay me; it reassured me. The 
captain had no reason to betray us.
The captain tersely explained how to arm the detonator panel, so that the pirate 
ship would be blown up if anything happened to the one in control. Then we were 
ready; I would not need my space suit in the lifeboat, and I already had a fair 
notion how to pilot it, and where I was going. Except—
"The ephemeris!" I exclaimed. "I must have that!"
"You know how to get it," the Captain said.
I nodded. I looked at Spirit.
"One thing," Spirit said to the captain. "If my brother doesn't make it safely 
away—"
"You will do what I would do in the circumstance," Brinker finished.
"Yes."
"Spirit isn't bluffing," I said.
The captain smiled grimly. "I think we shall get along."
I thought they would, too. There was an underlying similarity between them.
I embraced Spirit. "Beloved brother—farewell," I said, not caring that a 
feminine tear showed on my face.
She looked so small, trying to be brave, her face scarred, one finger missing. 
But I knew she would blow up the ship if she had to.
"Beloved sister," she responded. "I love you." She kissed me with a passion that 
disconcerted me.
I turned to the captain. "You will see that my brother is well treated," I said, 
and was surprised at the coldness in my voice. I had the fake weapon of QYV and 
the real one of the captain's secret, but in fact I believed I would find a way 
to come for Brinker and kill her in the most humiliating and painful way if she 
harmed Spirit, and this was manifest in my tone. I would somehow in due course 
destroy all pirates; this I had already vowed. But Spirit was special.
"You can be sure of it." Captain Brinker was no gentle creature, but she 
understood. There was no bluffing in any of this; we were all killers.
The captain activated her buzzer, summoning the guard pirates. "Take the girl 
back to the guest room; her protection is fake, and she will have to cooperate. 
Leave the boy with her for now; we'll lock them up together until we tire of 
her."
The arriving pirates smiled broadly. "Yes, sir!" one said, crunching my elbow 
with his huge hand. I must have made a very fetching image of a girl! The other 
grabbed for Spirit, who looked so cowed it was obviously not necessary to hold 
her securely.
I had seen that cowed look before. That was when Spirit was most deadly 
dangerous.
We accompanied the men docilely enough. I noted how other pirates nodded; their 
captain had come through again, penetrating the difficult matter of the Kife 
ploy. It was not just Brinker's ready laser that compelled respect; it was her 
ability to solve the tricky problems, protecting the ship when some other person 
might have blundered. Brinker was a good captain, setting aside the issue of 
legality. Even the way the bubble had been holed—that had defused our trap 
before we had a chance. Brinker took no unnecessary chances.
We entered the longitudinal hall—and Spirit exploded. She kicked her guard 
pirate in the leg, punched him in the gut, and used him as a brace to shove off 
violently. In a moment she was plunging down the passage toward the control room 
at the end.
"Hey!" the man cried stupidly, going after her. My own guard kept his hand on 
me, and I, being supposedly female and helpless, made no move.
He hauled me toward the control room. We passed through the door and stood on 
the floor, which could serve as a wall when the ship was accelerating. Our heads 
were pointed toward the center of the ship, far up the center passage.
Spirit had made it to the Destruct Control panel and stood with her small hands 
locked on a lever. "Let my sister go!" she cried, spying us.
The pirate on duty gaped. "That's the detonator!" he said. "One tug on that 
lever and all our ammo blows!"
Spirit smiled and tugged the lever down. Every pirate in sight blanched. "Tried 
to fool me, huh?" she demanded. "I've seen these things before. Now I've armed 
it; if I let go, it'll snap back, and that'd blow a hole in your ship, wouldn't 
it! See how you bastards like breathing vacuum, same's you did for our people. 
Turn my sister loose!"
Hastily, my guard did so. I rubbed my elbow. "Brother," I asked, "do you know 
what you're doing? We'll die, if—"
"But we'll take all these apes with us," she said zestfully. "That's the way I 
like to go!"
I spoke to the pirates. "I know my brother. He's a power-crazy brat. He thinks 
killing people is a game. He used to smash all his toys for the fun of it. He's 
not afraid of death. If you don't do what he says—"
Captain Brinker appeared. "What?"
"We're hijacking your ship, sir," Spirit called. "You pilot it where we say, or 
I'll blow it right out of Jupiter orbit!"
"You ungrateful brat!" Brinker exclaimed. The laser pistol appeared in her hand. 
"I spare your life, and you pull this. Get away from that panel!"
"Go ahead, kill me!" Spirit gibed. "When I let go of this handle, we'll all go! 
Boom!"
"Sir!" a sweating pirate cried. "It's true! We can't take the chance!"
The captain's weapon swung to cover him. "Don't tell me what to do!" Brinker 
snapped. "Who let that brat go?"
The pirate closest to Spirit turned, his face turning waxy. "It was so quick—"
The beam of the laser speared him through the right eye. Steam and fluid puffed 
out as the eyeball was burned and punctured. The man staggered back, clapping 
one hand to his face.
"When I give an order, I expect it to be carried out competently," the Captain 
said. "I had this matter settled, and you have bungled us into a problem. She 
turned back to Spirit. "What do you want, boy?"
"Pilot this ship to Leda," Spirit said.
"The Jupe military base? They'd blow us out of space! You might as well turn 
that handle loose now and get it done with."
Spirit looked at the handle. "Oh. Well—" She made as if to let it go, and again 
the pirates blanched.
I stepped in. "The captain's not bluffing, kid. We can't hijack this ship 
there."
Spirit scowled. "I know. But I sort of like explosions anyway." She let go the 
handle—and caught it halfway back.
A pirate grunted in horror, but the captain didn't flinch. It was evident whose 
nerves were steadiest. "We'll give you safe-conduct to our lifeboat," Brinker 
said. "It's fueled and stocked; it can easily reach Leda."
"No good," I said. "We can't even find Leda without our ephemeris, and we don't 
know how to pilot a spacecraft."
The captain spoke to a pirate. "Suit up, go to the bubble and fetch its 
ephemeris." Then, to me: "There are instructions on the boat. It is designed to 
be operated by any fool who may survive disaster in space, even a teen-age girl. 
You can operate it, if you can read English."
"I can read English," I said. "Spirit, maybe we should—"
"Okay, take my sister there," Spirit said. Then she did a dismayed double-take, 
fine little actress that she was. "Oops—how can I go? I have to keep my hand on 
this handle!"
"I will hold the lever for you," the captain said.
Spirit laughed so hard she seemed almost to lose control of the handle. Even I, 
who knew her propensity for such seeming mischief, was alarmed. "Oh, no, you 
don't, sir! The moment I quit this handle, you'll shoot me and plant my sister 
in that bed!"
Captain Brinker smiled, and the pirates smiled with her. This was rough humor 
they understood. The captain, too, was playing to an audience. Obviously I ran 
the danger of the bed. "Then it seems you must remain here, guarding your 
handle, while your sister departs. Is that good enough?"
"But I can't stay here forever," Spirit said, playing it out with uncomfortably 
accurate intuition. "Once my sister's gone, the moment I quit, my life'll be out 
the air lock!" She shook her head. "I guess I just better blow it up now, and be 
done with it."
Again the pirates froze nervously. No one liked being subject to the whim of 
this vacillating child. Again the captain interceded with a skillful compromise. 
"I could use a nervy lad like you for my cabin boy. Spare the ship, and I'll see 
that you're protected."
Spirit considered with childlike solemnity. "Will you make a Pirate's Oath on 
that?"
"Pirate's Oath," the Captain agreed. "Now just let me have that lever—"
"Oh, no, you don't, sir!" Spirit repeated, grasping the lever more tightly and 
lifting it part of the way back. "Not till my sister's safe! You're probably 
lying, but at least I can save her!"
"Accuse me of lying again and I will burn you where you stand," the captain said 
evenly.
"The captain's right, kid," a pirate called. "He never breaks a real promise."
So now the pirate crew knew that the Captain had to keep her word, or stand 
diminished. Cleverly played, indeed! There would be no backtalk or grumbling 
when Spirit was spared. And of course it was true: Spirit was a nervy kid, and 
would make a good cabin boy.
The pirate returned with the ephemeris. I took it. "Thanks, brother," I said to 
Spirit. "Don't blow up the ship until I get clear." I reveled in the expression 
of the nearest pirate. We had them scared, all right.
I took one last look at Spirit. She met my gaze squarely, and somehow it 
reminded me of the time I had tried to question her about the events of the 
night. It wrenched my heart to part from her.
Then I turned and moved toward the passage to the lifeboat.
 
Chapter 20 — SALVATION
After that it was routine. I found myself in the lifeboat, and the instructions 
were there, and the controls were simple. Those instructions made all the 
difference; had we had them for the last lifeboat, we could have mastered it as 
readily. The captain had kept her word.
I activated the drive and jetted off. "Farewell, Spirit!" I cried as I saw the 
pirate ship and attached bubble receding behind me. I did not yet know how to 
work the radio, so could not broadcast any message, but it wasn't necessary. 
Anyway, such a broadcast might have alerted other pirates to my presence, and I 
didn't want that.
I watched the pirate ship for some time, making sure it didn't explode, as if my 
concentration could affect it. As time passed, I was reassured that the rest of 
the bargain had been honored. Spirit was now becoming the captain's cabin boy.
Now I let the tears flow. It hardly mattered; I was dressed for it. It was all 
right for a girl to cry.
I have no heart to detail my journey to Leda alone. The mechanics of it were 
absolutely boring, and the mental and emotional aspect was horrendous. Now I had 
time to realize that I had in fact sold my little sister into more than a 
masquerade. Captain Brinker evidently had no use for men in the emotional 
sense—which meant she might have use for women. Cabin boys, historically, had 
been notoriously employed as homosexual objects. Now the captain had a cabin 
girl. Why hadn't I thought of that before?
Because I could not afford to jeopardize my escape? Had I forced my sister into 
that bed after all, to benefit myself? I could not be sure, but there was no joy 
in the contemplation.
I was the sole survivor of the original bubble-trek to the better life. All the 
others had sacrificed themselves, many of them directly for me. At this stage I 
hardly seemed worth it. Over and over I rehearsed this in my mind, trying to 
come to terms with my fundamental unworthiness. On Io I had known that no merit 
of mine justified my survival; now, as I neared Leda, I had no better assurance.
Slowly I concluded that though I was unworthy, I might be able to redeem myself 
in part. I resolved to dedicate my life to the justification of the sacrifices 
that had been made for me. I did not know exactly how I would do it, but somehow 
I would. I would make the universe know that the lives of all the gallant 
refugees had not been in vain.
With the powerful jet of the lifeboat, I made it much faster than would have 
been possible in the bubble. I radioed ahead, having mastered the radio by this 
time, and they gave me landing instructions and took me into custody when I 
turned off the jet and emerged. They took me in at the station, listened to part 
of my statement, and told me there was no proof for it, because I was a minor 
and there were no corroborative witnesses. What irony! There were no witnesses 
because they all had been captured or killed! No wonder the pirates had free 
rein in space!
They shipped me to a refugee-detention-camp bubble orbiting Jupiter not far 
above the roiling atmosphere, and dumped me in with a thousand other refugees 
gleaned from all around the Jupiter system. I had had no idea there were so 
many! We had never seen another bubble during our odyssey, but they must have 
been there. If each of these people represented the lone survivor of an 
expedition like mine, bounced back from Jupiter on the pretext of a changed 
policy when in fact they had merely come to the wrong station for admission—it 
was appalling. What monsters ran the government of mighty Jupiter?
We were strangers to each other, yet not strangers in experience. The others had 
indeed suffered grievously, and learned in the harshest possible way the 
realities of space. They were not necessarily nice people, these survivors. Like 
me, they had learned to steal and lie and kill, just to get by. They had eaten 
human flesh. They understood full well the horror of our situation. I did not 
like being among them; I would have felt more comfortable in the company of the 
nicer people who had made the sacrifices, such as my own parents and sisters and 
fiancée. Part of the horror of my situation was the knowledge that if I had been 
a better person, I would long since have died.
The commandant of the detention center summoned us all to an assembly to 
announce that current United States of Jupiter policy, which was relevant for 
us, would admit only those refugees who possessed viable commercial or artistic 
skills, and therefore would not be a burden on society. The rest would be 
returned to their planets of origin.
Returned to Callisto! Or, for the others, to Ganymede or Europa or some lesser 
moon. Horror overwhelmed us, and the assembly became a riot. They had to flood 
the bubble with sleep gas to break it up. We well knew the fate most of us would 
face on our home moons. Few of us would be kindly treated—and those who were 
would still be locked into the very situation they had risked everything to 
escape. I, personally, would face a charge of attempted murder, because of the 
scion. The verdict was sure.
Callisto meant death for me. I was not concerned so much for myself, as death 
had brushed past me too many times to be any specter of the unknown. I was 
concerned for my mission: to vindicate the effort of the refugees who had 
already died. I was the only one of our original party who remained to make that 
attempt.
Yet I seemed to possess no skills or arts the authorities considered worthwhile. 
They weren't interested in information about Halfcal history or culture. They 
had passed out assorted tests in Spanish, and many forms, and I had duly filled 
them all out—but they were coded by numbers, not names, and the authorities 
weren't paying much attention. I wasn't sure they were even reading the 
completed forms, or whether the number designated for me actually matched the 
one on the forms I had been given. Probably my answers had been credited to 
somebody else, and vice versa. This sort of thing happens when men are treated 
like cattle.
My name was duly posted on the list of scheduled returnees. I would have perhaps 
a month longer here, while the remaining refugees were processed and the 
bureaucracy ground its inefficient wheels to produce the necessary 
transportation. Then a Jupiter ship, in the name of the Home of the Brave and 
the World of the Free, would deliver me to my doom.
So I am whiling away my time by writing this private history, as it may become 
the only record of the travails of my family. I have all day, every day, to 
rehearse my memories and piece it out to the best of my ability. Probably these 
poor sheets, written in English to prevent comprehension by other 
refugees—somehow I value this immediate aspect of my privacy, for all that I do 
want my story to be known after I am gone—will be destroyed with the other 
refuse of our camp, once we are excised from the detention globe. That will be a 
secret tragedy. But even so, this writing is a necessary therapy, a coming to 
terms with my situation. I am about to be eliminated, and my dreams and vows 
with me. I must tell someone of my pain, even if only a sheaf of papers. At 
least, for a little while, this enables my family and friends to live again, if 
only in my appreciation.
Perhaps I can arrange to mail this manuscript anonymously to the scientist of Io 
who helped us, Mason. Anonymously, because I do not want him to be implicated in 
my crimes. There must be no direct connection between him and me. I believe he 
would understand. Maybe he would show the manuscript to his pretty niece, Megan.
I am dreaming foolishly. But I will try to send the manuscript. In a situation 
as fouled up as this one, my package might get through, especially since they 
will not suspect a document written in English of originating in a Hispanic 
refugee camp. Major and Charity Hubris, my honored parents—I love you and grieve 
for you! Faith, my lovely older sister whom I was unable to protect—how I wish I 
could have served you better than I did! Helse, my love—O Helse, Helse! I dream 
of you yet, my woman, my bride, my all! I clip your name tag, HELSE HUBRIS, to 
this manuscript, hoping you would have approved. And Spirit—
 
Editorial Epilog
Here the manuscript ends. The final page is discolored, surely by tears, and a 
full paragraph of text has been obliterated. It is a point of curiosity what the 
washed-out text contained, but the words are largely beyond restoration. Only a 
few are decipherable; among them, twice, "Spirit." The HELSE HUBRIS name tag is 
absent, long since lost.
Hope Hubris, at the age of fifteen, had seen all his family lost or dead, and he 
believed he was also slated for death. It is not surprising that he was 
depressed, and that the poignancy of his accumulated memories overcame him.
The official records for this period in the life of the Tyrant are scant, as the 
affairs of refugees were not at that time deemed important. There is no listing 
of his presence in the detention bubble. Yet other details of his narrative have 
been corroborated, such as the appearance of two Hispanic refugees at a 
scientific observatory on the hellface of Io and the four-year residence of a 
pretty child in the mansion of a prominent politician of Callisto, so there 
seems to be little reason to question the general authenticity of the document.
We take editorial license to recreate the following sequence, as the narrative 
seems incomplete without it.
An official discovered Hope Hubris at his cramped table formed from a surplus 
crate, his head on the last sheet of his holographic manuscript. (Clarification: 
Holographic is used in its sense of "wholly hand written" rather than in the 
more common contemporary sense of three-dimensional projection of images, though 
perhaps that also in a sense applies.) "Hey, kid, are you sick?" he asked in 
clumsy Spanish.
Hope raised his dark head to stare dully at the man.
"No, sir."
"You can go to the dispensary for a pill."
"No, thank you, sir. I am merely tired."
"What's that you have there?"
"Nothing, sir. Just some papers." Hope tried to put them away.
"Say, that's English! Where did you get that?"
"Sir, it's unimportant. I was just writing—a letter."
"In English?"
"Yes, sir. I studied your language in school."
"Let me have that." The official moved to pick up the papers, thinking they were 
stolen.
"Sir, please—it is mine!"
The official paused, then tested the bedraggled young refugee. "You are fluent 
in English?" he asked in that language.
"Yes, sir," Hope answered in kind.
"Let me see you write something in English."
Hope took a separate sheet, and wrote: This is my statement that I am literate 
in the language of the Colossus Jupiter, from whose fair and promising clouds I 
am barred.
"I'll be damned!" the official exclaimed. "Don't you know that English-language 
literacy is grounds for status as an alien resident in Jupiter?"
The eyes in the dusky face widened. "No one informed me of that, sir."
The official shook his head. "Maybe that form got lost in the shuffle. Happens 
all the time. Anyway, it's true. Come with me; you are about to have your status 
changed."
And so this manuscript, Refugee, written in the depth of despair, saved the 
young life of Hope Hubris, and thereby altered most significantly the history of 
mankind. It is not possible to say whether it happened precisely this way, but 
certainly it was the chance discovery of his literacy in English that qualified 
him for alien residency; a subsequent reference by the Tyrant himself confirmed 
this aspect. The existence of this particular manuscript was not then known, and 
it is very tempting now to suppose that this was indeed the document that did 
it. There would be poetic irony in having the narrative of his failure convert 
that failure to success.
This aspect, of course, also resolves the mystery of Helse's use as a courier: 
She too was literate in English, having had an excellent private education, so 
she also would have been granted sanctuary if she had survived. Her employer 
surely knew that.
We trust this clarifies the early nature of the later Tyrant of Jupiter. He was 
not at all the monster his political and cultural enemies have claimed. He was 
very much a victim of violent circumstance. The marvel is not that he emerged 
emotionally scarred, but that he retained his sanity and power of character.
Conjecture is precarious, but some further speculation on the concluding, 
unreadable paragraph of his manuscript may be in order, as this relates to a 
further mystery of his character. Obviously this paragraph concerned Hope's 
little sister Spirit, and great emotion attaches thereto. One must wonder why, 
when one short paragraph is devoted to the memory of parents, older sister, and 
fiancée, all dead or degraded, there should be a much longer passage devoted to 
the younger sister, who perhaps survived best. Objectively it would seem that 
Spirit was the least important figure of this number, and suffered least (though 
still considerably); why then should she apparently be mourned more than all the 
rest? It does not seem to make perfect sense.
The motives of the Tyrant, however, have always made sense, when properly 
understood. He was a most intelligent, forthright, and practical person, not 
given to emotional foolishness. He was never known for extreme subtlety or 
deviousness. He related with rare precision to the needs and feelings of the 
average man; that is one secret of his inordinate success. What he felt, 
everyone felt. Few, for example, failed to applaud his savage campaign against 
the space pirates—and this manuscript makes clear his underlying motivation 
there. He was fulfilling his vow. One must therefore conclude that if he wrote 
most feelingly about his little sister, the state of his awareness warranted it.
It would be easy to take this as proof of the incest with which he has been 
charged—but again, this may be unwarranted. Direct evidence for such incest has 
never been presented—and there have been those who certainly would have 
presented it had they been able. Every investigation has foundered on 
uncertainty. Yet it does seem likely that Hope's greatest emotional concern was 
with his sister.
Probably the truth is this: Though Hope Hubris loved his parents and older 
sister in a family way, and loved his fiancée Helse romantically, his closest 
actual companion was Spirit. She understood him, she fought for him (sometimes 
with devastating effectiveness: he literally owed his life to her), she may have 
slept with him one time to ease his agony of bereavement, and she deliberately 
sacrificed herself to free him from the last pirate. She was the embodiment of 
blood relative, friend, and perhaps lover. She was his strength—and when he lost 
her, his competence as an individual suffered severely. One can be sure he would 
not passively have awaited shipment back to Callisto, had Spirit been with him 
at the end! The two of them would have found a way to compel sanctuary. Note how 
rapidly the manuscript concludes once Spirit departs from it; it was as though 
Hope's normally acute interest in detail and personality left him at that point. 
Helse could have been his support—but he knew her only a month or so, while he 
had known Spirit all her life. This Spirit was in fact the most significant 
figure in Hope's life, and it was her loss that affected him most profoundly.
This insight may be critical to proper comprehension of the subsequent career of 
the Tyrant, though no other biography has remarked upon it. Others treat her 
presence as incidental to his career; this was, as the following manuscripts 
will demonstrate, grossly in error. Hope Hubris loved, honored, and needed his 
sister Spirit—all of his life.
This document is presented with compassion and pride by Hopie Megan Hubris, 
daughter of the Tyrant, June 6, 2670.
 
Copyright © 1983 by Piers Anthony
ISBN: 0-380-84194-0