World Of Ptavvs   ::   Нивен Ларри

Kzanol's pilot and copilot were worried about the fuel situation, so as soon as the sleeper's ship was close enough Kzanol Told him to transfer his fuel to the Golden Circle. He waited while various clanking and banging sounds rang through the ships. Fortunately the cards were magnetized, and there was webbing to hold him in his seat. He followed- the movements of his three personal slaves with the back of his mind: the sleeper near the tail, the pilot and copilot motionless in the cockpit. He didn't want to risk their lives by letting them help the sleeper.

Naturally he jumped like a terrified gazelle when his airlock door swung open and a slave walked in.

A slave with a mind shield.

"Hi!" it said, incomprehensibly in English. "I guess we'll need a translator." And it coolly walked forward to the control room. At the door it stopped and gestured with Kzanol's disintegrator.

A man of Leeman's talent and education should never have been given such a boring job. Leeman knew it could never have happened in the Belt. Someday soon he would migrate to the Belt, where he would be appreciated.

Meanwhile, Geoffrey Leeman was the foreman of the Lazy Eight III's skeleton maintenance crew.

Leeman envied the crew of the other section, the drive section at Hamburg. Busybodies with good intentions were constantly ordering minor changes in the starship's drive while they waited for politics to let them launch. The Lazy Eight III's life system hadn't been altered in two years.

Until today.

Now Leeman and his three subordinates watched a horde of technicians doing strange things to the number three "stateroom." A complete balloon of fine wire mesh was being strung over the walls, floor, and ceiling. Heavy machinery was being welded to what would be the ship's floor and was now the outer wall. Taps were let into the power system. Leeman and his men found themselves running errands through the ring-shaped corridor, bringing coffee and sandwiches and detail diagrams, tools and testing machinery and cigarettes. They had no idea what was going on. The newcomers were willing to answer questions, but the answers were gibberish. As:

"We'll be able to triple the number of passengers!" said the man with a head like a speckled brown egg. He shook an ammeter for emphasis. "Triple!"

How?

The man waved his ammeter to include the room. "We'll have them standing in here like rush-hour commuters in an elevator," he confided. When Leeman accused him of levity he became mortally offended and refused to say another word.

By the end of the day Leeman felt like a flatworm in a four-dimensional maze.