Star Song and Other Stories

"We do it all the time," Suze

"And now," she continued, looking around again, "if there are no other questions, please go ahead and find a seat inside. It's time for us to go." The Royal Palace was indeed not nearly as fancy as its name had implied.

Situated near the center of the city I'd seen from the balcony, it much more resembled an extra-nice government building than it did a medieval castle or even your basic Presidential mansion.

But it had a helipad on the roof, and the guest house Suze

The meal Suze

The remains of another buffet were on the side board where the evening meal had been laid out, with a short stack of used plates on a tray near the door.

Over at the window, sitting across from each other at the long dining table, were Rhonda and Suze

"About time," Rhonda commented as I stepped into the room. "The rest of us have been up for a couple of hours now."

"I had more sleep to catch up on than the rest of you," I reminded her as I snagged a clean plate and started stacking it with food. "I was the one who spent most of the past two nights sitting up with sick paperwork, remember?"

"Sick paperwork?" Suze

"We had some strange problems at the Angorki spaceport," Rhonda explained.

"Lost or fouled-up permits and such. It took a couple of days to get it all straightened out."

"Just as well it did, I suppose," I commented, picking up a set of flatware and taking my breakfast over to the table. "If we hadn't been delayed, Scholar Kulasawa would have had to find some other transport." I gestured out the window. "And then we'd have missed seeing all this."

"Yes," Suze

I nodded toward the beads. "Working on a new customer, I see."

"I beg your pardon," Rhonda said, mock-a

"We don't have these here," Suze

"I've never even seen anything like it, even in our archives."

"I'm sure it's there," Rhonda said. "It's a pretty ancient art form, but its popularity does rise and fall."

"Whatever its heritage, it's beautiful," Suze

"I doubt we'll be here long enough for that," I warned. "Where's everybody else, by the way?"

"They're all outside looking around," Rhonda said. "Jimmy went to find where the music was coming from—"

"Music?" I echoed, frowning.

She nodded. "You can't hear it very well in here, but it's quite audible if you step outside. Beautiful, but very alien."

"We write most of our own music here," Suze

"Bilko's out, too," Rhonda continued. "He said he was going to hunt down a card game."

I made a face. "Well, good luck to him," I said. "I'll bet the Sergei Rock to his lucky deck he won't find a game that'll take Expansion neumarks."

"No, we're still using the First Citizens' supply of Jovian dollars," Suze

I felt my jaw drop a few millimeters. "One of the credit slips for our cargo?" demanded, looking at Rhonda. "And you let him?"

She returned my glare evenly. "It was his share of the money," she pointed out.

"Besides, he usually makes a profit on these games of his."

"Usually antagonizing the local populace in the process," I pointed out darkly.

"And this is one place you do not want to get run out of town."

"I'm sure he'll be fine," Suze

"I see," I said, peering past her out the window. The room faced east, toward the end we'd come in from; and blamed if it didn't look like real mountains over there. "You know, this chamber looks pretty big, but if I remember the numbers you gave us there's still a lot of the asteroid unaccounted for. What do you do with the rest of it?"

"All around the main chamber, beneath our feet, is the bulk of our recycling equipment," Suze

She smiled. "And since we had to dig anyway, we went ahead and fashioned the resulting holes into a series of caves. It provides a little recreation for our resident spelunkers."

"You think of everything, don't you?" I said, shaking my head in admiration.

"I wish the leaders of the Expansion were this competent."

Suze

Government on this scale is nearly always more efficient."

"You haven't asked about Kulasawa," Rhonda spoke up.

I hadn't asked about Kulasawa because I frankly didn't care where she was.

But there was something in Rhonda's expression... "Okay, I'll bite," I said.

"What about Kulasawa?"

Rhonda gestured to Suze

"It's not all that mysterious," Suze

I frowned. "Recorders?"

"Those large flat panels," Suze

The equipment Kulasawa had told me was a set of sonic deep-probes. "Ah," I said.

"And what did you tell her?" "Actually, we thought it was a good idea," Suze

"They also lent her a driver and a couple of helpers," Rhonda put in. "She's been gone—how long?"