Downbelow Station

He pushed from the wall, felt of his pocket, making sure his papers were there. He walked into the hall and through it past the unma

“You!” he shouted, disturbing the vacant quiet of the hall. Police and trooper reacted, the trooper with leveled rifle and a sudde

The rifle motioned. He walked with hands still wide at his sides, toward the armored trooper and the dark muzzle. “Far enough,” the trooper said. “What is it?”

The insignia was Atlantic’s. “Mallory of Norway” he said. “We’re good friends. Tell her Josh Talley wants to talk with her. Now.”

The trooper had a disbelieving look, a scowl finally. But he balanced the rifle in the crook of his arm and reached for his com button. “I’ll relay to the Norway duty officer,” he said. “You’ll be going in, in either case — your way, if she does know you, and on general investigation if she doesn’t.”

“She’ll see me,” he said.

The trooper pushed the com button and queried. What came back came privately over his helmet com, but his eyes flickered. “Check it, then,” he said to Norway. And after a moment more: “Command central. Got it. Out.” He hooked the com unit to his belt again, and motioned with the rifle barrel. “Keep walking down that hall and go up the ramp. That trooper down there will take you in charge and see you talk to Mallory.”

He went, walking quickly, for he did not reckon it would take Damon and Elene long to reach the hospice.

They searched him. Of course they would do so. He endured it for the third time this day, and this time it did not bother him. He was cold inside, and outer things did not trouble him. He straightened his clothes and walked with them up the ramp, past sentries at every level. On green two they entered a lift and rode it the short rise and traverse into blue one. They had not even asked for his papers, had scarcely looked at them more than to be sure that the folder held nothing but papers.

They walked a short distance back along the matting-carpeted hall. There was a reek of chemicals in the air. Workmen were busy peeling all the location signs. The windowed section further, crammed with comp equipment and with a few techs moving about, was specially guarded. Norway troops. They opened the door and let him and his guards in, into station central, among the aisles of busy technicians.

Mallory, seated at the end of the counters, rose to meet him, smiled coldly at him, her face haggard. “Well?” she said.

He had thought the sight of her would not affect him. It did. His stomach wrenched. “I want to come back,” he said, “on Norway.”

“Do you?”

“I’m no stationer; I don’t belong here. Who else would take me?”

Mallory looked at him and said nothing. A tremor started in his left knee; he wished he might sit down. They would shoot him if he made a move; he thoroughly believed that they would. The tic threatened his composure, jerked at the side of his mouth when she turned away a moment and glanced back again. She laughed, a dry chuckle. “Konstantin put you up to this?”

“No.”

“You’ve been Adjusted. That so?”

The stammer tied his tongue. He nodded.

“And Konstantin makes himself responsibile for your good behavior.”

It was all going wrong. “No one’s responsible for me,” he said, stumbling on the words. “I want a ship. If Norway is all I’ve got, then I’ll take it.” He had to look at her directly, at eyes which flickered with imagined thoughts, things which were not going to be said here, before the troopers,

“You search him?” she asked the guards.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She stood thinking a long moment, and there was no smile, no laughter. “Where are you staying?”

“A room in the old hospice.”

“The Konstantins provide it?”

“I work. I pay for it.”

“What’s your job?”

“Small salvage.”

An expression of surprise, of derision.

“So I want out of it,” he said. “I figure you owe me that.”

There was interruption, movement behind him, which stopped. Mallory laughed, a bored, weary laugh, and beckoned to someone. “Konstantin. Come on in. Come get your friend.”

Josh turned. Damon and Elene were both there, flushed and upset and out of breath. They had followed him. “If he’s confused,” Damon said, “he belongs in the hospital.” He came and laid a hand on Josh’s shoulder. “Come on. Come on, Josh.”

“He’s not confused,” Mallory said. “He came here to kill me. Take your friend home, Mr. Konstantin. And keep a watch on him, or I’ll handle matters my way.” There was stark silence.

“I’ll see to it,” Damon said after a moment. His fingers bit into Josh’s shoulder. “Come on. Come on.”

Josh moved, walked with him and Elene, past the guards, out and down the long corridor with the work crews and the chemical smell; the doors of central closed behind them. Neither of them said anything. Damon’s grip shifted to his elbow and they took him into a lift, rode it down the short distance to five. There were more guards in this hall, and station police. They passed unchallenged into the residential halls, to Damon’s own door. They brought him inside and closed the door. He stood waiting, while Damon and Elene went through the routine of turning on lights, and taking off jackets.

“I’ll send for your clothes,” Damon said shortly. “Come on, make yourself at home.”

It was not the welcome he deserved. He picked a leather chair, mindful of his grease-stained work clothes. Elene brought him a cool drink and he sipped at it without tasting it.

Damon sat down on the arm of the chair next to his. Temper showed. Josh accepted that, found a place at his feet to stare at.

“You ran us a circular chase,” Damon said. “I don’t know how you got past us but you managed it.”

“I asked to go.”

Whatever Damon would have wanted to say, he swallowed. Elene came over and sat down on the couch opposite him.

“So what did you have in mind?” Damon asked evenly.

“You shouldn’t have gotten involved. I didn’t want you involved.”

“So you ran from us?”

He shrugged.

“Josh — did you mean to kill her?”

“Eventually. Somewhere. Sometime.”

They found nothing to say. Damon finally shook his head and looked away, and Elene came over behind Josh’s chair, laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“It didn’t work,” Josh said finally, tripping on the words. “It went everyway wrong. I’m afraid now she thinks you put me up to it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Elene’s hand brushed his hair, descended again to his shoulder. Damon simply stared at him as if he were looking at someone he had never seen before. “Don’t you ever,” Damon said, “think of doing that again.”

“I didn’t want you two hurt. I didn’t want you taking me in with you. Think how it looks to them — you, with me.”

“You think Mazian runs this station all of a sudden? And you think a captain in the Fleet is going to break relations with the Konstantins, whose cooperation Mazian needs… in a personal feud?”

He thought that over. It made sense in a way he wanted to believe, and therefore he suspected it.

“It’s not going to happen,” Damon said. “So forget about it. No trooper is about to walk into this apartment, you can depend on it. Just don’t give them excuses for wanting to. And you came close. You understand that? The worst thing you can do is give them a pretext. Josh, it was Mallory’s order that got you out of detention. I asked it. She did it a second time back there… as a favor. Don’t depend on a third.”

He nodded, shaken.

“Have you eaten today?”