hardly what you’d call concise.
I’d been working on the same name myself. I came up with a fair-to-middling troglodyte.
“What’s that?” Attila asked.
“It’s Morlock again.”
Venie didn’t look pleased, and Riggy immediately challenged, “How do you get Morlock out of that thing?”
“It’s from an old novel called The Time Machine. There’s a group of underground monsters in it called Morlocks.”
“You’re making that up,” Venie said.
“I’m not either,” I said. “You can look the book up for yourself. I read it when I was in Alfing, so all you have to do is call for the facsimile.”
Venie looked at the drawing again. Then she said, “All right, I’ll look it up. I may even use it.”
I almost liked her for saying that, since I hadn’t been very kind in bringing the subject up. If my name had been Morlock, I might have used the troglodyte idea myself, but I hadn’t really expected Venie to stomach the idea. It took more . . . not quite objectivity—but detachment from herself—than I thought she had.
Just then Attila said, “Here comes Jim.”
Jimmy Dentremont came between the tables, snaked up a free chair from the next table over, and plunked it down beside me.
“Hi,” he said.
“Where have you been?” Helen asked for all of us. Helen is a very striking girl. She has blonde hair and oriental eyes—eyes with an epicanthic fold—and it’s a wild combination.
Jimmy just shrugged and pointed at our various little doodles. “What’s all this?”
We explained it to him.
“Oh,” he said. “That’s easy. I can get one for me with no trouble.” He picked up a pencil and sketched two mountains, and then put a little stick figure man between them.
I looked blankly at him and so did the others.
“My name means ‘between mountains,’ ” he explained.
“It does?” Riggy asked.
“In French.”
“I didn’t know you knew French,” I said.
“I don’t. I just looked my name up because I knew it was originally French.”
“How about that?” Attila said. “I wonder if my name means something in Hungarian.”
Jimmy cleared his throat, looked around at us, and then said to me, “Mia, do you remember our bet about my finding an adventure?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ve found one. That’s what I’ve been working on the past few days.”
Helen immediately asked for an explanation of what we were talking about, and I had to wait to ask Jimmy just what it was that I was in for until he had finished explaining.
“If this was a bet, what were the stakes involved?” Riggy asked.
Jimmy looked at me questioningly. Then he said, “I don’t think we settled that. I assumed it was that if I found an adventure, Mia would have to go along.”
Everybody looked at me, and I said, “All right. I guess so.”
“Okay,” Jimmy said. “This is it: We’re going to go outside the Ship. On the outside of the Ship.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” Helen asked.
“It’s an adventure,” Jimmy said. “Adventures are supposed to have an element of danger, be fraught with peril, and all that.”
“Is it dangerous outside the Ship?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Jimmy admitted. “I don’t know what it’s like out there. I couldn’t find out. I did try. Finding out should be part of the fun. Besides, even if that’s easy, there are some hard parts. We’ve got to have suits to go outside, and we’ve got to get ourselves outside. Neither of those will be easy.”
“I want to go, too,” Riggy said.
Jimmy shook his head. “This is just Mia and me. We are going to need help, though, and if you want to help us you’re welcome.”
The kids looked at each other around the table, and then they all nodded. We were a group, after all, and this was just too good to miss.
The six of us walked in a body through a corridor on the First Level. Jimmy walked a step or two ahead of us, leading the way. There is something to being a part of a group, busy on purposes of its own, something exciting. Even if it is melodramatic, even if it is ninety percent hokum, it is fun. I was enjoying myself, and so were the others. I could hardly restrain myself from practicing surreptitious glances behind us, simply because they seemed in keeping with the part we were playing.
Jimmy turned half around and pointed ahead and to the left. “It’s around here.”
There was a little foyer there a couple of feet deep, and then a blank black door, completely featureless. In our world that is unusual—people ordinarily lavish considerable care in making