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sticking lightly and rolling
     quickly up his skinsuit. He felt a prickly heat, right through his suit.
    Quath made a furious buzz. Toby slashed at the fuzz balls with his knife. He got one off him but the other rolled onto his
     helmet. There it started spreading, like a pool of gray oil.
    “It’s eating through!” Toby batted at the stuff, but it wouldn’t come off.
    Quath grabbed his boots with one telescoping arm. Then she stuck a tube out of her side and aimed it directly at Toby’s face.
     A torrent of air blew over him. The gray oil rippled but clung, started to break up into drops—and suddenly was gone.
    
    Toby gasped in relief. “I’ll have to remember that.”
    
    “I’ll have to swear off the stuff.” He wriggled away from an approaching fuzz-ball. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
    Quath helped him get free.
    “Like a blood transfusion, sort of?”
    
    “It’s okay to take them?”
    The team assembling in the ship was going to search for plants, or even raid mechs if there were any here—but certainly not
     slaughter animals. Family Bishop had a deep moral code against using animal products, too, unless the animal cooperated, like
     dairy cows. To damage living things was to be no better than mechs.
    
    “Ummm. So you’re a moral philosopher.”
    
    They were halfway back to
Argo
when Cermo called over comm,—Hey! What in hell are you—
    “Got some juice you should look at,” Toby said.
    —You got that alien to take you out. That’s direct disobedience of an order.—
    “I was hauled along for the ride, Cermo.”
    Quath confirmed,
    Quath hardly ever intervened in a human conversation. Toby was surprised and pleased.
    Cermo sounded annoyed.—I know something else he’s full of. Anyway, get back here. We’ve got to find food supplies and then
     move on.—
    “How come? I’d like to explore this—”
    —Those big things orbiting closer to the Center? The Bridge just got a spectro-reading. They told me the nearest one’s not
     mech-made at all, like we thought.—
    “What is it, then?”
    —Human-made. An ancient Chandelier.—

THREE
The Rule of Number
    B esen came by Toby’s bunk to see if he wanted to go up to the viewing room. She was sweaty from her work—hand-cultivating the
     vegetable fields in the single lush growing dome they had left. Her overalls were grungy, light brown wisps of hair were escaping
     from a tight bun, and she beamed at him, still flush with energy to burn.
    “Sorry, can’t,” Toby said mournfully. He was propped up on his bunk, pushing a stylus around a writing slate, without much
     real progress.
    “Oh, come on! That’ll wait.”
    “Cermo’s got me under orders. I’ve got to get through five lessons before I can go off-ship again.”
    “That’s cruel.” She smiled sympathetically. Everybody wanted to get outside, after years of ship living, but Toby more so.
    “Well, I am kinda behind.”
    Besen tossed her head with pretty annoyance. “Let’s see what you’re—oh, numbers. Yuk!”
    “They have their charms—but not right now.”
    “I just don’t see the point of them, really. I mean, machines think in numbers—so why should we bother?”
    “Look, somebody who doesn’t use numbers has no advantage over somebody who
can’t
use them.”
    “But
mechs
think that way.” Plainly Besen felt that associating anything with mechs ruled it out.
    “And so does
Argo
—without its computers, we’d be