ref: cde05f4187aed1c77b8efb57ee5dabe8d5d5106d
dir: /troff/006.ms/
\" This master file produces text suitable for a 6"x9" paperback. .ds CH \" turn off page numbering (top) .B .nr HM 1i \" header margin .nr FM 1i \" footer margin .nr LL 4.25i \" line length .pl 9i \" page length .po .87i \" page offset (from left) .nr PS 8 \" font point size \" .kern \" pairwise kerning (groff only) .hy 14 \" automatic hyphenation \" .nr VS 24 \" double space .fp 1 R GA \" URW Garamond .fp 2 I GI .fp 3 B GM .fp 4 BI GMI .fp 5 CW H \" Helvetica .LP \& .nr % 21 \ " start with this page number .ds CF [%] \" first numbered page (bottom) .ps 10 .ce .B INTO THE WHITE WORLD \& .ps 8 tags: 1961, mars2, spiro_mold, sue .R .PP .ps 10 10 August. .PP .ps 10 These colors don't run. The familiar red, white, and blue flag of the Russian Federation draped over the classic American slogan, a bumper sticker some smartass had stuck to the side of the school bus. Spiro waved his hand over the ingress sensor and climbed aboard. .PP .ps 10 Kids were packed in like too many comics in a short box. There were no empty seats. Instinctively Spiro turned to the bus driver but this was an optionally manned vehicle. Lacking other options, he sat down in the arbitrary driver's seat. .PP .ps 10 After a prolonged period of setbacks both fiscal and technical the new school buses had progressed from nighttime to daytime operations, migrating out of the black, ever so gradually into the white world. Students still needed to be translated from their apartments in the mancamp to their classrooms over in the next county, and someone up the chain had hit upon the idea of putting them (the school buses, not the students) to honest work. One thing had led to another, and after an extended litigation in which it looked like the primary contractor's preference for Ghost Gray might carry the day, the serpents were all painted School Bus Yellow and deployed to the south end of the range. .PP .ps 10 It seemed to be going well. .PP .ps 10 Spiro had not been apprised of any of this. He was likewise unaware that the school buses were only a single variant of a total of seventeen separate models derived from this same airframe during the past five years. All of which were referred to as "Sue," in honor of the Soviet\-era Sukhoi SU\-27, an air superiority fighter aircraft that had first flown in 1977, but was somehow still generating new model variants even after time had rolled over, and then, belatedly, righted itself back to 1961. This might also have explained the Russian flag, come to think of it. .PP .ps 10 Sue was Spiro's school bus. .PP .ps 10 "You're sitting on my outfit," Sue said, which prompted Spiro to migrate down the aisle in a vain effort to locate a vacant seat that did not, in fact, seem to exist.