“Steady, boy,” Spaceboy said, patting his friend on the shoulder.
It was an act, he told himself again, there was no way Count Dracula was this genteel.
They approached two more of the guardsman barring their path to the bridge. There was no cheerful conversation this time, no playful banter, only the cold, stern expressions and the checking of credentials before the blast-door slowly, almost reluctantly, Spaceboy thought, slid open.
The bridge was crowded by the vast view-screen and the banks of stereovision terminals, around which numerous members of the crew busied themselves, Mx. Samuels’s Team B, directly assigned to the captain of High-Rise himself.
Spaceboy cast his eyes over them, recognizing them, though many of them he had not met personally; Cherub Rock, Today, Quiet, Disarm
