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.“Check for secret panels,” Yakkai suggested.“In the walls, the floor, the ceiling.Twist the seats.”“I’m with you, Shalom ben Yakkai,” the Greek Hetox said.“Well find a way, if there is a way.”McMurtrey thought about Yakkai, wondered how an atheist got aboard ship.It occurred to him that Yakkai might be a Bureau of Loyalty spy, made to look the buffoon to place him above suspicion.That might explain how he got past Appy, if Bureau influence extended beyond the solar system.“Maybe the door opens with a secret password,” someone suggested.No one paid much attention to the comment.Yakkai, the Greek Hetox, two of the Hoddhists in white, the nuns and the KothoLu archbishop were looking for secret panels.They horsed with the seats, trying to tilt them or twist them, and they pressed their hands against wall and floor surfaces, trying to trip an unseen mechanism.The men even stood atop one another’s shoulders to reach high points on the walls and the ceiling.It was a high ceiling, which required that the Hoddhists stand side by side on adjacent seats, with Yakkai on their shoulders.The three of them moved from seat to seat quite agilely and in formation, like circus performers.While they were interlocked in this fashion, a clatter of unseen machinery arose, and several of the seats disappeared into the deck, as if it were quicksand.Fortunately this did not include the seats upon which the three acrobats were supported, or any other occupied seats, and no one fell over.But it happened so quickly, in such a micro-portion of a blink, that neither McMurtrey nor anyone else had time to call out a warning.In the next instant this happened: The floor, walls and ceiling became as clear as the finest glass, so that assembly rooms above and below could be seen.Every room was full of pilgrims, and in each they appeared to be in similar states of disarray.McMurtrey saw Jin just below him, in the assembly room there.Jin, crouched over in his seat and naked, had what looked like a sheet of folded plazymer in his hand.Jin’s head moved right, then left, as if he were glancing in those directions.Jin drew his hand toward his belly, out of McMurtrey’s view.When the hand returned to view it was empty.Jin looked up, straight at McMurtrey, and Jin’s eyes were afire.McMurtrey’s heart skipped.He looked away, then back.Jin wasn’t looking up anymore.He stared straight ahead, and not a muscle twitched.What did he do with that plazymer? McMurtrey wondered.This guy is one of the strangestYakkai found himself peering into the face of a wild, bearded holy man on the level above, a man who was writhing on the floor in apparent religious ecstasy when the fishbowl effect occurred.This so unnerved Yakkai, who must have thought for an instant that he was looking directly into the face of Jehovah, that he toppled from his perch and had to be saved from disaster by the quick, strong hands of Archbishop Perrier.“Not the first time a Krassian has saved an atheist,” Perrier quipped.Yakkai thanked his benefactor graciously and profusely as Perrier helped right him upon his feet.McMurtrey began to wonder how the chairs could have disappeared into the glass floor.His thoughts traveled to temperature change and various known means of metamorphosing matter.As he pondered, chubby little Sister Mary and a number of other women in Room B-2 noticed pilgrims in rooms below looking up their skirts.This caused considerable flurrying about and squealing, with many of the women tucking their dresses under them and sitting upon them on the deck.While this was happening, McMurtrey found himself intermittently staring up the skirt of a comely young woman on the level above.He saw pink underpants that were tight and frilly against her crotch and buttocks, and he felt an essential urging.Then he noticed a fellow near her who wore no underpants beneath his robe.This disgusted McMurtrey, and quickly he gazed back toward the young woman, who wore a white dress cut just below the knees.She had North-sornian features, was soft and pale of skin, with shoulder-length golden hair.She was like a dream, and he longed to be on the other side of the barrier.“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Corona said.McMurtrey blushed, lowered his gaze.Yakkai was looking up too, in awe of the splendorous woman before him.Appy’s voice crackled into the room, filling McMurtrey’s ears with sound: “Don’t look up those dresses and robes, or God will strike you blind!”“I think I’ll risk one eye,” Yakkai said.He covered an eye with one hand.Finally the young woman noticed the attention she was receiving.She tightened her skirt about her and scurried to the comparative safety of a chair.When no bolt of blindness descended upon Yakkai from the heavens, riplets of nervous laughter began in the room.Soon McMurtrey, Corona and others were sharing in the glee and laughing uproariously
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