all.
He shifted back to normal size when the holo showed Jazz walking away, straight to the two books. The door opened as Jazz pulled on something.
Arran hadn't told him a thing. Hop sat, numbed, as the loop went on; turned down the volume when it became annoying; flipped off the machine when it finally stopped. Jazz knew things that hadn't been told to him. The only place he could have found out about that door was from Arran's mind.
(Be reasonable. If Jazz really is a traitor, he'd have sources of information.)
But he knew other things. The poison in the glass. How could he have learned about that forty years ago, before he left? And Hop knew for a fact that Jazz found out nothing after he came back to the planet. Unless he found it out in the ship before he disembarked. He might have...
Jazz as a traitor or Jazz as a Swipe. If I can choose between them, Hop told himself, I'd rather he were a traitor.
Or would I? Hop remembered all his association with Jazz, from the beginning. The young starpilot, eager, enthusiastic, itching for battle. That couldn't have been an act. And what change had there been since then? A gradual maturing. There was no time that Jazz seemed to show any change at all. When did he turn traitor? When did he start to plot? Noyock couldn't believe it.
But Jason Worthing a Swipe? That was even harder to believe. But the glass, the door, the inside information he seemed to pluck from midair. Even the battle with Kapock, seeming to know every motion before he made it.
And Jazz had even told him he was a Swipe. Noyock had assumed he was joking. Wasn't he?
Back and forth, back and forth, like a tennis duel, Noyock thought, and eventually he slept.
He awakened to the sound of the door opening. His first thought: they've come for me. He stiffened on the bed, prepared to struggle, though he didn't know what he could hope to accomplish.
But the hands that touched him were gentle. Insistent, but gentle. And the voice saying, "Hop, wake up," was Arran's.
"Is it morning already?" he asked.
"Shut up. Come with me, fast. Don't talk."
She sounded frightened out of her wits. Hop got up and followed her as she led him out into the hall and through a large meeting - room. She stopped only long enough to say, in a barely audible whisper, "Do you know how to kill an armed man?"
"Sometimes," Hop answered, wondering if he still remembered how. It was one thing to take Fritz Kapock from behind and by surprise - quite another to face a man who was pointing a cockle at you.
"Now's the time," she said. She pushed a button and a door slid open. A guard was standing on the other side, already turning to see why the door behind him was opening. There was a laser in his hand. Hop didn't stop to wonder why Arran was having him kill one of the men on her side. He just let the reflexes from his boyhood take over.
He finished with the guard by breaking his neck. In retrospect, Hop had the sickening knowledge that he had won only by a hair. Oh well, he thought. Better close than not at all. Still, when this was over, he'd have to lose weight. Get back in shape. This could kill him.
"Come here!" Arran hissed at him, and he came.
"What's going on?" he asked.
"There's no time." He followed her down the corridor. They went into a bathroom and closed and locked the door.
"Who's chasing you?" Hop asked.
"We only have a couple of seconds," she said. "In the shower, the ceiling light. Can you reach it?"
He could reach it. She told him to push it up. It gave fairly easily, then swung back, out of the way. Arran immediately stepped into the shower and reached for the opening. Hop helped her up. When she was through the trap, she hissed down at him, "Come on up, quickly, they'll be here any minute, and I don't know how many people know about this way."
But Hop didn't go into the trap door. Instead he stepped to the bathroom door and unlocked it.
"Hop, don't!" she hissed, frightened. But he didn't leave. He just left the door unlocked and climbed back into the shower and, with a great deal of difficulty hoisted himself up into the opening in the ceiling. Once there, it was hard to find