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“Titus?”
Inea peeked around the office door.
With an incredible effort, Titus rearranged his face into a welcoming smile. “Come in. What can I do for you?”
She ventured into the room. “What’s wrong?”
What could he say? That another vampire was coming to joust with him for possession of her? “Nothing new.”
“Titus,” she warned.
“Carol says we’re not getting our scheduled parts shipment. No appropriation.”
“Bad. But it’s more than that.”
“Shimon’s going to blow his Israeli stack when he discovers what Carol has done.”
She almost bit at that one, but instead of asking what Carol had done, she shook her head. “More.”
Titus wondered how he could be so transparent to a human. “All right,” he confessed, as if surrendering. “I’m worried. I can’t figure out how to tell you. something.”
“Just tell.”
“You may never speak to me again. I couldn’t stand that. It’s been bad enough the last few days, with you stalking off every night without a word.”
She frowned at him, studying him in that way that made him so nervous. “I’m not ready to talk yet,” she said. “Later. I promise.”
“Okay. Look, meanwhile could you do me a favor?”
“Like?”
He thought fast. “You’ve turned out to be very talented with circuitry. When the few components we can get finally do arrive, we won’t have time to fool with them. I’m going to send you over to Ernie Natches in Electronics for some quick training. That way you’ll be more help when we really need you.”
“What precisely do I have to learn?” she challenged.
“Let Ernie decide. He’s got benches full of our components he’s trying to repair. You can help.”
She studied him again, weighing. “You’re making this, up as you go along.”
Diabolical woman. He recalled thinking that in a monotonous undertone during the years he’d been going with her. “Inea, I’ve got a lot of problems. I have to create solutions on the spot.”
“What problem is getting rid of me a solution to?”
“Trying to get my computer repaired and keep my ass out of the fire. The worst part is that I spend all my time filling out forms, writing reports, and going to meetings rather than doing physics. I’m becoming a frustrated administrator.”
“You’re evading again.”
“Consider it a favor. I’ll owe you. Report to Ernie in the morning, okay?”
“It’s not okay, but I’ll do it. What do I tell him, that I’m still on your payroll?”
“Of course. He’s doing me a favor. Training you.”
She went to the door. “What you owe me in return is a complete explanation.”
“Okay. As soon as we get back to Earth.”
“Titus!”
He shrugged.
“You have the best woebegone look of anyone I know. All right, but I get my explanation on the Quito landing pad.”
“No deal. The ”port restaurant.“” He’d never forget that scorching sun.
“Don’t quibble!” She left.
Watching her, he noted that it was hard to flounce on the moon. It definitely crimped her style.
The moment she was out the door, he got Ernie on the vidcom. He had only met the man on his odyssey through the stockrooms, but he had been extraordinarily helpful. He owed Ernie several favors and here he was asking for another.
Worse yet, as soon as he finished with Ernie, he had to convince Shimon to rotate to the night shift. With Abbot being brought in as if Shimon couldn’t handle his job, there was no way the two would get along.
And still worse, Titus had to face Abbot after publicly expelling him from the lab.
Chapter six
The next morning, when his father showed up, Titus met him at the lab door, making sure he had an audience. “Thank you, Dr. Nandoha, for agreeing to help us. I hope you’ve forgiven my temperamental outburst on our first day here.”
“Think nothing of it, lad. I’m eager to help.”
The civilities over with, Titus retired to his office, leaving his adversary free run of his lab. Abbot would certainly place bugs to monitor not only all of Titus’s Project work, but also his Residents’ communications. Resolutely Titus bent his efforts to studying the schematics for his computer complex.
It wasn’t that the architecture had ever been beyond him, but that it tended to bore him to distraction. Now, however, he had a purpose that drove him. Each evening when Abbot left, Titus went over every unit the man had touched, tracing each component, striving to comprehend the purpose of every modification and looking for Abbot’s bugs.
Each day, he found hand-fabricated boards spliced to anonymous button co
Inea, when he saw her there, was distant and efficient. He couldn’t believe how much that hurt him. But when she asked, he replied, “I need you here more than in the lab.”
“You want my trust? You shouldn’t strain my credulity.”
“You’ll get your explanation.”
“In Quito! You’ll need the time to concoct such a prize tale!”
Yet she learned the customized circuitry of the system Abbot was building out of the shreds of the original. She became a parts co
But his vampire senses told him her vehemence originated in her frustrations, not the chip’s quality. And the texture of that frustration was definitely sexual.
Taking his life in his hands, he went to her where she bent over the parts-strewn workbench and whispered, “I love you, Inea, and I want you.”
She kept her head bent over her work, but her bright, brimming eyes moved to look up at him. Her hands shook as his hunger aroused her. Now that their physical need was finally wi
“It’s difficult to think when the physical tension is so great.” He cupped his hand over her shoulder, almost daring to touch, his hunger sharpened by her desire, her tears aching behind his own eyes. I can’t stand her suffering. “The way to solve a difficult and complex problem is to factor it and solve one term at a time.”
She tilted her head back to keep her tears from dripping on the electrical contacts. “Can’t you see that’s what I’m trying to do? Don’t-don’t offer me the easy way out, or I’ll give in and then I’ll hate myself forever.”
He forced his hand back to his side.
She turned to look squarely at him. “I can’t think when you’re this close because all I know is your suffering.”
Positive feedback. Shit. After that, he avoided her shift, spending that time out on the craft.
He couldn’t get past the new security on the corridor where he’d found the sleeper, but he did ascertain two things: from the configuration of furniture and hatchways, the Kylyd had a dependable internal gravity. If even full luren needed gravity for health, then he and Abbot were at more risk living on the moon than they’d figured. They couldn’t use the drugs the humans used to slow bone loss.
Secondly, he found that there were more anthropologists studying the puzzle of the orl than was publicly admitted. As with the engineers, independent groups were amassing their own data and developing divergent interpretations.
He witnessed dissections where luren and orl nerves were stimulated by electrical current, and he read the chemists’ reports of tracers used to map the DNA. He listened raptly to physical anthropologists spi
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