This might have been a mistake on her part; it was at that moment that the supposed critic regretfully changed her plans regarding waiting till the last minute for certain things to happen.

Warball is played in zero gravity, with two balls; the object is to get one ball to one scoring hoop and the other to its counterpart. There are rules—one hoop cannot contain two goals in succession. But most of the game is free-form, and they took advantage of it, leaping, colliding, spinning.

Midway through the game, Niko realized they had yet another participant in the ship; there was no way to account for the triple leap Thorn had just executed if the wall he had bounced off had not helped him in his flight. Watching, she could see other manifestations of the ship’s participation. Reshaping all of this must have taken energy and time on the ship’s part; it must have started when Thorn and Talon had first mentioned the game.

The observation hindered her game, but she didn’t realize it till Dabry scored twice, his enormous hands cradling the ball and sending it to its home with devastating accuracy. Niko did her best, but Atlanta’s newness was another handicap. When the match came to an end, Thorn’s team had won by three. The antigravity shut off, gravity reasserting itself by making most of them realize they urgently needed to pee.

Afterward they all flung themselves down onto the pliable surface and discussed the high points of the game, and where their tactics had failed.

“Where did Lolola go?” Niko wondered. The critic had watched from one side during the first half of the game, but then had excused herself and never returned.

“Who knows?” Dabry said. He lay on his back, all four arms outstretched, still catching his breath. Moving such a massive form took energy. “We have plenty to think about without taking her on as a problem. What happened to trying to keep ourselves from acquiring new responsibilities?”

“It’s not that I want to be responsible for her,” she retorted. “But something’s off about her, Dabry. That shape…”

“You are being a snob and judging someone because you think they choose to advertise their wealth,” he said. “A body like that isn’t about showing off, it’s about enjoying life.”

Niko shook her head. “No, that’s not the most comfortable form. Look at her tits, they’re enormous. You don’t have tits like that unless you want them to be looked at.”

Dabry sat up, caught by the argument. The rest were listening.

“It could be an accident of genetics,” he said.