Jim turned back at the attackers. Shoving himself away from the bulkhead with legs which were curiously heavy, he plunged toward them, his great arm-long knife, more a bob than a sword, grasped with both hands. Knives sang toward him, clattered against his breastplate, bit into his legs. He swung a wide awkward two-handed stroke which gutted an opponent, nearly cutting him in two. “That’s for Joe!”
The blow stopped him. He turned in the air, steadied himself, and swung again. “That’s for Bobo!”
They closed on him; he swung widely caring not where he hit as long as his blade met resistance. “And that’s for me!” A knife planted itself in his thigh. It did not even slow him up; legs were dispensable in no-weight. “‘One for all!'”
A man was on his back now he could feel him. No matter; here was one before him, too, one who could feel steel. As be swung, he shouted, “All for o–” The words trailed off, but the stroke was finished.
Hugh tried to open the door which had been slammed in his face. He was unable to do so; if there were means provided to do so, he was unable to figure them out. He pressed an ear against the steel and listened, but the airtight door gave back no clue.
Ertz touched him on the shoulder. “Come on,” be said. “Where’s Joe-Jim?”
“He stayed behind.”
“Open up the door! Get him.”
“I can’t, it won’t open. He meant to stay, he closed it himself.”
“But we’ve got to get him; we’re blood-sworn.”
“I think,” said Hugh, with a sudden flash of insight, “that’s why he stayed behind.” He told Ertz what he had seen.
“Anyhow,” he concluded, “it’s the End of the Trip to him. Get on back and feed mass to that Converter. I want power.” They entered the Ship’s boat proper. Hugh closed the air-lock doors behind them. “Alan!” he called out. “We’re going to start. Keep those damned women out of the way.”
He settled himself in the pilot’s chair, and cut the lights.
In the darkness he covered a pattern of green lights. A transparency flashed on the lap desk: DRIVE READY. Ertz was on the job. Here goes! he thought, and actuated the launching combination. There was a short pause, a short and sickening lurch, a twist. It frightened him, since he had no way of knowing that the launching tracks were pitched to offset the normal spinning of the Ship.
The glass of the view port before him was speckled with stars; they were free — moving!
But the spread of jeweled lights was not unbroken, as it invariably had been when seen from the veranda, or seen mirrored on the Control Room walls; a great, gross, ungainly shape gleamed softly under the light of the star whose system they had entered. At first he could not account for it. Then with a rush of superstitious awe he realized that he was looking at the Ship itself, the true Ship, seen from the Outside. In spite of his long intellectual awareness of the true nature of the Ship; he had never visualized looking at it. The stars, yes; the surface of a planet, he had struggled with that concept; but the outer surface of the Ship, no.
When he did see it, it shocked him.
Alan touched him. “Hugh, what is it?”
Hoyland tried to explain to him. Alan shook his head, and blinked his eyes. “I don’t get it.”
“Never mind. Bring Ertz up here. Fetch the women, too; we’ll let them see it.”
“All right. But,” he added, with sound intuition, “it’s a mistake to show the women. You’ll scare ’em silly; they ain’t even seen the stars.”
Luck, sound engineering design, and a little knowledge. Good design, ten times that much luck, and a precious little knowledge. It was luck that had placed the Ship near a star with a planetary system, luck that the Ship arrived there with a speed low enough for Hugh to counteract it in a ship’s auxiliary craft, luck that he learned to handle it after a fashion before they starved or lost themselves in deep space.