“Sure, Ox. Sure,” came a muted chorus.
Arranged in a fetal sleeping position, face down, the dummies astonished even their creators. It would take a lucky look in a fair light to note that the heads were earless, fibrous globes.
“They’ll do,” Ross snapped. “Come on, Bernie.”
They walked quietly from the dormitory in their singlet underwear toward the dormitory latrine—and past it. Into the corridor. Through a doorless opening into a storeroom piled with crates of rations. “This’ll do,” Ross said quietly. They ducked into a small cavern formed by sloppy issuing of stock and hunched down.
“The dummies will fool the bed check. It’s only a sweep with a hundred-line TV system. If the guards do raid the dormitory tonight we’ll have to count on them ignoring the dummies or thinking they’re a joke or being too busy with other things to care. They’ll be drunk, after all. Then in the morning things’ll be plenty disorganized. We’ll be able to sneak back into formation—and that’ll be that for a matter of years. They can’t often bribe the pilots with enough to guarantee a real ripsnorting drunk. Now try and get some sleep. There’s nothing more we can do.”
They actually did doze off for a couple of hours, and then were awakened by drunken war whoops.
“It’s them!” Bernie wailed.
“Shut up. They’re heading for the dormitory. We’re safe.”
“Safe!” Bernie echoed derisively. “Safe until when?”
Ross threatened him with the side of his hand and Bernie was quiet, though his lips were mumbling soundlessly. The guards lurched giggling past and Ross said: