Orphans of the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein Page A

knife-maker. He walked in. "Boss—" he began.
           "Shut up," said Joe. Jim did not look around but continued his argument with the Mother of Blades. "You'll make knives," he said, "and none of your lip."  
           She faced him, her four calloused hands set firmly on her broad hips. Her eyes were reddened from staring into the furnace in which she heated her metal; sweat ran down her wrinkled face into the sparse gray mustache which disfigured her upper lip, and dripped onto her bare chest. "Sure I make knives," she snapped. "Honest knives. Not pig-stickers like you want me to make. Knives as long as your arm —ptui!" She spat at the cherry-red lip of the furnace.  
           "Listen, you old Crew bait," Jim replied evenly, "you'll make knives the way I tell you to, or I'll toast your feet in your own furnace. Hear me?"  
           Forty-one was struck speechless. No one ever talked back to the Mother of Blades; the Boss was certainly a man of power!  
           The knife-maker suddenly cracked. "But that's not the right way to make knives," she complained shrilly. "They wouldn't balance right. I'll show you—" She snatched up two braces of knives from her workbench and let fly at a cross-shaped target across the room—not in succession, but all four arms swinging together, all four blades in the air at once. They spunged into the target, a blade at the extreme end of each arm of the cross. "See? You couldn't do that with a long knife. It would fight with itself and not go straight."
           "Boss—" Forty-one tried again. Joe-Jim handed him a mouthful of knuckles without looking around. "I see your point," Jim told the knife-maker, "but we don't want these knives for throwing. We want them for cutting and stabbing up close. Get on with it—I want to see the first one before you eat again."
           The old woman bit her lip. "Do I get my usuals?" she said sharply.
           "Certainly you get your usuals," he assured her. "A tithe on every kill till the blades are paid for—and good eating all the time you work."
           She shrugged her misshapen shoulders. "O.K." She turned, tonged up a long flat fragment of steel with her two left hands and clanged the stock into the furnace. Joe-Jim turned to Forty-one.
     
           'What is it?" Joe asked.  
           "Boss, Ertz sent me to get Hugh."  
           "Well, why didn't you do it?"  
           "I don't find him. Bobo says he's gone up to no-weight."  
           "Well, go get him. No, that won't do—you wouldn't know where to find him. I'll have to do it myself. Go back to Ertz and tell him to wait."
           Forty-one hurried off. The Boss was all right, but it was not good to tarry in his presence.
           "Now you've got us running errands," Jim commented sourly. "How do you like being a blood brother, Joe?"
           "You got us into this."  
           "So? The blood-swearing was your idea."  
           "Damn it, you know why I did that. They took it seriously. And we are going to need all the help we can get, if we are to get out of this with a skin that will hold water."
           "Oh? So you didn't take it seriously?"  
           "Did you?"  
           Jim smiled cynically. "Just about as seriously as you do, my dear, deceitful brother. As matters stand now, it is much, much healthier for you and me to keep to the bargain right up to the hilt. 'All for one and one for all.' "
           "You've been reading Dumas again."  
           "And why not?"  
           "That's O.K. But don't be a damn fool about it."  
           "I won't be. I know which side of the blade is edged."  
           Joe-Jim found Squatty and Pig sleeping outside the door which led to the Control Room. He knew then that Hugh must be inside, for he had assigned the two as personal bodyguards to Hugh. It was a foregone conclusion anyhow; if Hugh had gone up to