Rite of Passage

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 their surroundings lively and personal. Consequently the Ship is quite a colorful place to live in. A black door like this with neither design nor decoration was obviously meant to say “Stay Out” to anybody who came by.

“The air lock to the outside is in the room behind the door there,” Jimmy said.

The door had no obvious button, knob, slide, latch or handle, only a single hole for an electronic key — this sort of key when inserted would emit an irregular signal of an established frequency and the door would open.

Attila and Jimmy were the two of us that knew something about electronics and they looked the door over carefully together.

After a moment Attila said, “It’s just a token lock.”

“What’s that?” I asked. We were standing in a halfcircle around the two boys and the door.

He said, “This lock is just to keep the door closed and to let people know the door is supposed to be closed, and that’s about all. I’ll have to work on it a couple of times and I can get through.”

Jimmy said, “Can you be through by next Saturday — a week from tomorrow?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Let’s plan to go then. Helen? You work with Attila. You be his lookout and make sure he doesn’t get caught fooling around here and ruin everything.”

Then he turned to the other three of us. “All right, let’s go see about getting the suits.”

Helen said, “But can’t I go? I don’t want to miss out.”

It was interesting — of the six of us, Jimmy was the next-to-smallest and yet he dominated the group when he wanted to. There is something to the idea of natural leadership ability.

Jimmy said, “We have to have somebody be lookout. Besides, you’ll be here when we go outside. The only thing you’re going to miss is swiping the suits.”

To get to Salvage, our next stop, we cut through Engineers. That saved us a long trip around. The four of us must have made considerable noise because as we were passing down the main hall of offices, an elderly woman popped out of one of them behind us.

“Hold on there!” she said.

We turned around. She was elderly — short, squarelybuilt, white-haired and obviously well over a hundred, perhaps even as old as Mr. Mbele. She also looked thoroughly sour.

“Well, what is it you’re doing here, making all this noise? Perhaps you don’t realize it, but there is important work being done here.”

Uneasily Jimmy said that we were just passing through on our way to Salvage and that we meant no harm.

“This is not a public highway,” she said. “If you have no business in Engineers, you shouldn’t be here. You children have no sense of fitness. Why are you going to Salvage?”

Jimmy and I were standing just behind Venie and Riggy, and her question was addressed to Jimmy.

“It’s a school assignment,” Jimmy said.

“That’s right,” I chimed in.

Her glance shifted to the other two of us. “What about you?”

Instead of saying the obvious thing, Riggy said, “We’re with them.”

“All right,” the old lady snapped. “You first two go on, but don’t come through here again. The other two of you go on home.”

Venie and Riggy looked helplessly at us, but then they turned and went reluctantly the other way. The old lady really had no right to chase them out, but she was so fierce and unarguable-with that we just couldn’t say a thing. Jimmy and I scooted on our way before she could add anything more, and she watched until both sets of us had definitely done as she said. Some people get a feeling of power from being unpleasant.

Most of all, Salvage smelled interesting. Salvage and Repair are really little enclaves almost surrounded by the much larger Engineers. There are offices and large machines and large projects a-building in Engineers. Salvage and Repair are just the tail end of the dog, without the personnel, resources or neatness of Engineers. Salvage was a crowded room, full of aisles and racks and benches and tables all in a pleasing state of disarray. It looked like the sort of place that you could poke around in for weeks or even months and always turn up something new and interesting. And hanging over it all was the most intriguing and unidentifiable odor I’d come upon. The smell alone was enough to make you want to spend your spare time here.

We peeked cautiously in. There were a couple of technicians working and moving around.

“Come on,” Jimmy said. “I know they have suits here somewhere, probably locked away. We’ll have to poke around.”

We looked around as inconspicuously as possible, Jimmy taking one aisle and me taking the next. I was lost in a pile of broken toys when Jimmy grabbed at my elbow. I jumped.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve found them. They’re two rows over and they’re not locked away or anything. They’re just in a rack.”

“How do you know they’re safe to use?” I said. I nudged a broken doll with my toe. “If they’re like that, we might as well forget it.”