"Virella again, huh?" she said. Dairine was eleven years old, redheaded as her mother, gray- eyed as Nita, and precocious; she was taking tenth-grade English courses and breezing through them, and Nita was teaching her some algebra on the side. Dairine had her father's square-boned build and her mother's grace, and a perpetual, cocky grin. She was a great sister, as far as Nita was concerned, even if she was a little too smart for her own good. "Yeah, " Nita said. "Look out, kid, I've gotta go lie down. " "Don't call me kid. You want me to beat up Virella for you?"

"Be my guest, " Nita said. She went on through the house, back to her room. Bumping the door open, she fumbled for the light switch and flipped it on. The familiar maps and pictures looked down at her — the National Geographic map of the Moon and some enlarged Voyager photos of Jupiter and Saturn and their moons.

Nita eased herself down onto the bottom bunk bed, groaning softly — the deep bruises were beginning to bother her now. Lord, she thought, what did I say? If Dari does beat Joanne up, I'll never hear the end of it. Dairine had once been small and fragile and subject to being beaten up — mostly because she had never learned to curb her mouth either — and Nita's parents had sent her to jujitsu lessons at the same time they sent Nita. On Dari, though, the lessons took. One or two overconfident kids had gone after her, about a month and a half into her lessons, and had been thoroughly and painfully surprised. She was protective enough to take Joanne on and, horrors, throw her clear over the horizon. It would be all over school; Nita Callahan's little sister beat up the girl who beat Nita up. Oh, no! Nita thought.