Dragon and Thief

"Or what is in the one you are to switch it for," Draycos said.

"That, too," Jack agreed glumly, peering at the cylinder. "I don't know whether he's trying to plant this one on someone, or get the other one away from him. Either way, when the roof caves in, there's only going to be one fall guy."

"Pardon?"

"Fall guy," Jack repeated. "The guy who takes the fall, the blame for something someone else did. In this case, me."

Draycos uncoiled from the chair and padded over to Jack's side. "What then do you propose we do?"

For a moment Jack had the sudden urge to stroke the dragon's head, just like he might have petted a dog. He resisted the impulse. "I don't know," he confessed, turning the cylinder over in his hand instead. "Remember, I'm their guarantee of Uncle Virgil's good behavior. If they were willing to let me out of their sight, it's because I'm not going to be out of their sight."

Draycos twitched the tip of his tail. "They will have someone watching you."

"Watching me, and watching for Uncle Virgil," Jack said. "That means I can't run and I can't call the police. And I can't just sit around and do nothing. What's left?"

The dragon was silent a moment. "There is a style of warfare the K'da call koi shike," he said. "It speaks of a large stone thrown into quiet water to force a response from hiding fish."

"Yeah, we've got something like that, too," Jack growled. "We call it 'rocking the boat.' What's your point?"

Draycos ran a paw thoughtfully along the side of the cylinder. "Let us do as they demand," he said. "Let us steal the item and replace it with this duplicate. We will then follow the ripples from the stone and see where they lead."

Jack snorted. "You make it sound so easy."

"I am a warrior of the K'da," Draycos said. "You are skilled in the arts of theft and cu

Jack shook his head. "I wouldn't bet on that," he warned. "But I don't have anything better to offer."

He returned the cylinder to its hiding place under the bed and stood up. "I guess the least we can do is go take a look at the safe," he added, stepping to the closet and getting out the suit coat that went with his new shirt and slacks. "You coming?"

Draycos's response was to leap in through Jack's open-necked shirt. "And then?" the dragon asked from his shoulder.

Jack took a deep breath. "We'll come up with something. I hope."

Chapter 18

The purser's office was bigger than Jack had expected, probably four times as big as his own stateroom. It had a chest-high counter extending across the entire room near the door, where the purser stood dealing with passengers who wanted to store their valuables. Behind the counter, another man and woman dressed in white uniforms worked at computer desks, presumably keeping track of what was in the safe and doing other odd jobs.

The safe was bigger than Jack had expected, too. It was more like a small bank vault, easily big enough for three or four people to walk inside. Probably big enough for them to dance in, too. There was a flat metal plate over the spot where the keypad or combination dial would be on a normal safe door. There were also two emergency lights set into the upper walls, one pointed at the vault, the other pointed at the door.

All this he got from a single pass by the open door. The outer door itself, he noted, had a standard lock setup. "We are not going in?" Draycos asked as Jack continued down the corridor.

"In a minute," Jack said. A hundred feet down the corridor from the purser's office was one of the ship's bars, with a small lounge area across the hallway from it. On the far side of the lounge was a glass wall that looked down onto a casino one deck below. "I thought we might like to come up with a plan first," he added, stepping into the lounge.

"Would not our room be safer?" Draycos murmured as Jack selected a table by the glass wall, well away from the other half dozen people who were talking or sipping drinks.

"This is safe enough," Jack assured him, swiveling his chair around so that he could look down into the casino. With his back to the rest of the lounge, no one would see his lips moving as he and Draycos talked.

At the same time, the faint reflections in the glass would let him keep an eye on the people coming and going in the lounge and corridor behind him. If Snake Voice's agent aboard the Star of Wonder got careless, Jack might be able to spot him.

It took somewhat longer than the minute Jack had suggested. It took nearly an hour, in fact, plus three fizzy-sodas, for them to hammer out a workable plan.

At least, Jack hoped it was workable.

The purser was talking with an elderly woman when Jack returned to the office. He waited behind her as patiently as he could, casually looking around for anything he might have missed on his earlier stroll past the place. It was pretty much as he'd noted then, except that above the door were two more emergency lights. Taking several deep breaths, as Uncle Virgil had taught him to do, he tried to relax.

Finally, the woman left. "May I help you, young man?" the purser asked with a smile as Jack stepped up to the counter.

"Yes, sir, I hope so," Jack said, pitching his tone and ma

"Certainly," the purser said. "Do you have a deposit box?"

"No, not yet," Jack said. "How long will it take to get one?"

"No time at all," the purser assured him, stepping to one side and lifting a section of the countertop. His other hand, Jack noted, stayed out of sight beneath the edge of the counter as he did so. There must be either a release catch he needed to operate or an alarm he had to deactivate. The purser propped up the section of countertop and pulled open the swinging door beneath it. "If you'll come this way, please?"

He led the way back to the vault and swung the metal plate back to reveal a keypad set into the door. "If you'll just stand there, sir?" he said, indicating a spot where the plate would block Jack's view of the keypad.

Jack did as he was told, and the purser began punching in the code. The plate covering the keypad had seemed easy enough to move, with no secret switches the purser had to use first. But Jack had already noticed the heavy ring the purser was wearing on that hand. Probably a short-range radio transmitter that identified him and deactivated the plate's alarms.

It was like a bank, all right, with all the cute security tricks anyone could ever want. A terrible place to have to break into.

It was just as well, Jack thought, that he wasn't going to have to do that.

"There we go," the purser a

Jack had been wrong about one thing: there was not, in fact, enough room in there for anyone to dance. Both walls were lined with locked deposit boxes of various sizes, with only a narrow walkway down the middle. "Let me see, now," the purser said, studying a pocket computer he'd pulled from a belt pouch. "Box 48 is free. That one will have plenty of room for your data tube. Unless you think your uncle may want to add other items later in the voyage?"

"Oh," Jack said, frowning. "I hadn't thought of that."

He stepped into the vault, as if trying to get a closer look at the boxes. They were, he noted with a small bit of relief, standard coded-key types that he should be able to open with his multitool. That part, at least, should be easy.