Ethan of Athos

He had to take a tube-car to the docking bay, which was in a freight section on the opposite side of the Station from Transients' Lounge. This time he had a map ready to hand, and made no wrong turns.

The docking bay was extremely quiet. A single flex tube was activated, indicating a small ship on the other side, perhaps a fast courier hired especially for the occasion. In any case, not a commercial run lading other cargo. Qui

Terrence Cee, dressed in his green Stationer coveralls, sat wanly on a packing case, alone in the middle of the bay. He looked up as Ethan stepped out of a ramp corridor. "You came quickly, Dr. Urquhart."

Ethan glanced at the flex tube. "I figured you were catching a scheduled run of some sort. I didn't realize you'd be travelling in this much style."

"I thought perhaps you wouldn't come at all."

"Because—why? Because I'd found out the whole truth about that shipment?" Ethan shrugged. "I can't say I approve of what you tried to do. But given the obvious problems your—your race, I guess—would suffer as a minority anywhere else, I think I can understand why."

A melancholy smile lit Cee's face, then was gone. "You do? But of course. You would." He shook his head. "I should have said, I hoped you would not come."

Ethan followed the direction of his nod.

Qui

She moved because she was prodded by a man in the orange and black uniform of Kline Station Security. So they'd caught up with her at last. Ethan nearly chuckled. Watching her wriggle out of this one ought to be just fascinating….

His humor drained away as he caught a better look at the weapon with which the compact, bland-faced man was poking her spine. A lethal nerve disruptor. Altogether non-regulation for Security.

At the ring of footsteps Ethan turned his head the other way, to find Millisor and Rau walking toward them.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Ethan and Qui

Qui

"What happened?" Ethan whispered to Qui

"I forgot the damned beeper," she hissed back through clenched teeth. "Should've shoved it down the first trash vent we passed. I knew it was compromised! But Cee was arguing with me, and I was in a hurry, and—oh, hell, what's the use…" She bit her lip in frustration, winced, and licked it tenderly. Her eyes returned again and again to their opponents, adding up the unfavorable odds, rejecting the sum and trying again with no better luck.

Millisor walked around them, smooth and smug. "So glad you could make it, Dr. Urquhart. We could have arranged accidents for you and the commander separately, but having you both together allows us a rather exquisite opportunity for—efficiency."

"Vengeance?" quavered Ethan. "But we never tried to kill you."

"Oh, no," Millisor protested. "Vengeance has nothing to do with it. You both simply know too much to live."

Rau gri

"Ah, yes. With your sense of humor, Commander, you will particularly like this one. Observe, if you will, all those unused flex tubes on the outer wall. Sealed at both ends, they make a very private little compartment. Just the spot for a couple with rather odd tastes in adventure to arrange a tryst. How unfortunate that, in the sound sleep following their exertions—"

Rau waved his stu

"—the flex tube is vented into space in preparation for locking in the auto-conveyer from a freighter hold. Said freighter being due in this docking bay immediately after my courier departs. Shall we leave you two entirely nude, I wonder?" he mused, "or merely naked from the waist down, suggesting fumbling passionate hurry?"

"God the Father," Ethan moaned in horror, "the Population Council will think I was depraved enough to make love to a woman in a flex tube!"

"Gods forbid," Qui

Terrence Cee's eyes roved over the docking bay, as if seeking death as desperately as Qui

"Dream on, mutant," Rau growled. "We aren't giving you a chance. One wrong move and you'll be carried aboard stu

Cee's hands clenched and unclenched, despair and rage struggling for ascendancy in him, both equally impotent. "I'm sorry, Doctor," he whispered. "They held a nerve disruptor to the commander's head, and I knew they weren't bluffing. I thought maybe you wouldn't come, just for a call from me. I should have let them shoot her then. Sorry. Sorry…"

Qui

"You don't have to apologize at all," said Ethan firmly. "I'd have done the same myself, in all probability."

The man with the nerve disruptor waved them apart, and drove Ethan and Qui

"Who is that guy, anyway?" Ethan asked Qui

"You guessed it. I should have shot him in the back when I had the chance, and collected the other half of my bounty from House Bharaputra," Qui

It was fifty meters or more across the cavernous chamber. "No," said Ethan frankly.

"How about a dash for the cover of that flex-tube?"

"Then what? Make faces at them till they walked over and shot me?"

"All right," she snarled impatiently, "you come up with a better idea."

Ethan's hands twitched in his pockets, and encountered a little oblong. "Maybe we could buy some more time with this?" he said, pulling out the message capsule.

"What the hell's that?"

"It was the weirdest thing. On my way here this man came up to me in the mall and pushed it on me—he said it was a message for Millisor. It's activated by Millisor's military service number, and I should give it to him if I saw him—"

Qui

"Huh?"

"The man, the man!"

"Pink. That is, he had this pink suit."

"Not the suit, the man!"

"Interesting—sort of a coffee-color. Extremely elegant. I wish I could've got some of those skin genes for Athos—"

"Hey," Setti began, moving toward them with a frown.

"Giveittome, giveittome," Qui