Floating Worlds by Cecelia Holland

behind her shoes. The name Tanuojin, like all Styth names, was made up of word particles; it meant “the ninth boy” or “the new boy,” she was unsure. She went down to the lobby.
    The headline on the current hourly read: BARSOOM SUPERS REACH CUP PLAY-OFFS. She went across the lobby. In a side room, the small Styth with the nose wire was shooting pool. Two Martian men played dik-dakko at the opposite end of the room, three other game tables between them and the Styth. There was a tiltball machine against the wall. She put her paper down, got out ten cents, and started the machine. The lights came on in the multicolored cube. She pushed the trigger and a ball fell into the top. She used the handles to shake the ball down through the maze.
    “Hello,” the Styth said, beside her.
    “Hello.”
    “I am supposed to watch you. It will make it that much easier if you help.”
    She pushed the trigger button. “What’s your name?”
    He leaned against the wall. At her eye-level, a chain hung around his throat, inside the wide collarless neck of his shirt: an order medal. He said, “My name is Sril. What is this engine?”
    She turned back to the tiltball machine. This time she had drawn two balls. They careened off in opposite directions. She kept the cube moving. The balls reeled through the levels of colored plastic. With two it was easy: she held one in a cul-de-sac while slipping the other past the traps. When the two balls rolled through the gate, lights flashed, a bell jangled: FREE BALL.
    “I will try.” Sril pushed her out of the way.
    “I’m in the middle of—”
    “What do I do? This?” He pushed the button. He was lucky: the machine was random-loaded, and only one ball fell into the maze. He touched the handles. The ball dropped like a stone down the center trap. The machine went dark.
    “What happened?” he cried.
    “You lost. Try it again. You see the holes, there, you’re supposed to avoid them.”
    “No—you do. I watch.”
    She fed the machine another dime and pushed the trigger. Five balls rolled into the chute at the top of the maze. She teased them to the last level, hardly moving the cube at all, and then turned one handle too far and lost the middle and the last down a side trap.
    Sril groaned in disappointment. Paula said, “That’s good, for me. You play it.”
    Another Styth was coming across the room toward them, a big man with a scar on his cheek. In Styth, he said, “You’re supposed to be on watch. Where is the Man?”
    “I am on watch,” Sril said. “I’m on squaw-duty.” He turned back to the tiltball machine. “Saba is upstairs.” He reached for the trigger.
    Paula stepped back. A ball fell with a ping into the maze. Sril fought it, cursed it, and pleaded it down to the third level, where it dropped through.
    “Let me try.” The big man shoved at him. Sril thrust him off. They crowded into each other, swearing and laughing. The steady patter of the dik-dakko ball across the room stopped; a man said, “What’s that stink?” This time, getting three balls, Sril managed to take one successfully through the maze. When he lost the next ball down the central chute, he let out a yell, grabbed the tiltball machine, and tore it off the wall.
    A dik-dakko player shouted. Paula dodged a flying tiltball. The machine sagged over onto its side. Steel balls cascaded out of the bin across the floor.
    Sril backed off, looking apprehensively around. The other Styth grabbed his arm. “Let’s get out of here.”
    “Too late,” Paula said.
    A tall white man was moving toward them at top speed, his body at an attacking angle. She wondered nervously if she had broken any Martian law. He walked straight up to her. His gaze raked the Styths.
    “Are you all right, Miss Mendoza?”
    “I’m fine,” she said, relieved.
    The two black men were standing on the far side of the wreckage of the machine. Tiltballs rolled around on the floor, clicking into each other. The Martian turned on the