know, assuming this was going to go as smoothly as cutting butter would be in this heat. One night on Palan, max, while they sorted out customs and ownership, and she and Cole would be out amongst the stars in her very own spaceship.
Chaperoned, of course.
A man in a brown robe approached them. Large holes in the thick fabric were spanned by strips of colorful cloth, straining valiantly to hold everything together. The man’s hood was up, shading a face the color of stainless steel. Copper-colored hair hung from the shadows above his bright eyes. He looked right at Molly. “Cole Mendonca?”
“Does she look like a Cole to you?”
The man with the metal-colored face seemed reluctant, but finally pulled his gaze to Cole’s. “Jusst becausse I wass looking at
“Who in hyperspace
Molly looked away nervously. Several people were watching the exchange, but maybe they’d just never seen Humans before.
“Drummond ssent me. For my good Englissh. No? Come, I take you.” He stared at Molly over Cole’s shoulder. Cole glanced back at her, his eyes raised and looking for a consensus.
She shrugged. “Do we have a choice?”
“Fine,” Cole told the stranger. “Lead the way.”
“Ssoon Palan be a firsst classs world, eh?” Their guide walked ahead of them, his arms spread out to indicate the activity on either side of what really couldn’t be considered a terminal. Instead of organizing travelers into queues and providing them a place to rest, the building didn’t have lines
Their nameless guide kept his arms stretched out, splaying his brown canvas robe open like a giant wing. Molly couldn’t tell if it was a display of pride or sarcasm; the inflections were alien and accompanied with much hissing. She followed along, taking in the scene around her.
Being born on a frontier planet prepared her for much of what she saw. Various races clucked and hissed in an assortment of languages. Foods she’d never seen before, which meant they probably didn’t merit exporting, added pungent odors to the thick air. Everyone bartered with everyone else, all exhibiting the agitation and nervous energy that accompanied this universal pastime. The figures not engaged in this activity milled about, doing a poor job of hiding the bad thoughts rattling around in their dull heads. Overhead, tangles of wires knotted together in a grand display of unplanned infrastructure. Each line went as directly as it could to where it was going, no routing or compromise for the sake of simplicity or safety.
Molly wondered what Cole’s experiences were off-planet, and the question filled her with a shocking sense of how little they really knew about one another. In the Academy, you only concerned yourself with what had happened since you arrived and what you planned on doing once you graduated. Not that she hadn’t attempted to pry into his childhood, she’d just never been able to create a crack. How much did she even know about the boy she was absolutely, positively, one-hundred percent falling in love with?
She chewed on this and slipped a hand inside his arm, grasping his bicep. The casual flexing of it comforted her as they walked along under the pull of a little more than one Earth gravity. Also comforting was the occasional bump against something hard hidden beneath his jacket. The chances that this would go smoothly seemed to be lessening the more she took in their surroundings. And her esteem of the planet wilted while their guide’s question regarding its future hung in the nauseating air.
“Yeah, lovely planet here, guy,” Cole answered for her. “Now where’s Drummond?”
“Ssoon. Ssoon!” He waved them forward without looking back, as if they were lagging behind. “He iss in the Regal Hotel. We go there now. Jusst a few blockss. Come.”
Palan’s problem in general appeared to be a complete lack of planning. The guiding principle here was chaos divided by large gutters. Molly had yet to see any sign of law enforcement or security; this was a planet with no obvious rules to follow—social, legal, or commercial. The results were just what one would expect.
They exited the terminal to find the parts of the market that wouldn’t fit spilling out with them. Rutted and degrading roads radiated away at odd angles, a high crown in the center curving down into deep gutters. The sidewalks were lined with poles to prevent the cars from intruding, and traffic coordinated itself with an endless sequence of horn blasts and profanities. People seemed to move by bumping off one another, none of them willing to give, everyone resisting the barter.
They stayed in their guide’s wake as he cleared a path to the hotel. The throng gradually thinned as they moved away from the market. It was as if Palan’s population was densest around the hope of escape represented by the shuttle. They clustered around it in a mass of messy desperation.
Molly understood the urge to be near the exit. After walking two blocks through the bustle and feeling her damp clothes wrap themselves around her, she wanted out of there as well. At first, she’d been desperate to leave the terminal, getting out into fresh air and away from the crowds. But now she felt as if they were going the wrong direction. They should have arranged for
She felt relieved a block later when their guide signaled their arrival. “Here we are,” he said. “The Regal Hotel.” Their guide treated them to another flourish. Once again it was impossible to determine if this was sincere or a snide insult. He waved them into a structure that would leave a stain on the word “regal” for the rest of their lives.
The lobby, even more packed than the streets had been, contained almost no furniture. Loiterers leaned on the walls or squatted on the floor. Many were completely prone, resting on sheets of paper as if even the locals couldn’t stand direct contact with their world. Nobody seemed to be waiting on anyone or preparing to go out for the day. This was it. For all Molly could tell, these were patrons paying a lesser fee to live in one large room.
With no clear path through the maze of bodies, the trio cheated by stepping over the labyrinth’s walls where they were lowest. Molly quickly learned to pass over the sleepers so she didn’t have to bother with an apology. She fought the urge to cover her mouth and nose with her hand. The air in the lobby was pungent and thick.
Their guide was all smiles. “Come, come. Up to a room. Drummond hass a room.”
This confirmed Molly’s suspicions about the lobby’s renting arrangements. It also increased her fear that they were being led into a trap by a complete stranger.
“Why don’t you have Drummond come down here and meet us?” Cole asked their guide, seemingly in sync with Molly. “We’ve shown you quite a bit of trust by following this far. The least he can do is meet us halfway, shake hands, and then we’ll conduct our business. Yeah?”
The guide’s face said No, but he hissed a Yess. “Wait here,” he said. “Wait.”
So Molly and Cole both looked around for some place to get comfortable. And decided this was pretty much it.
Drummond came down the steps peering in every direction, back and forth, but never quite at Cole and Molly. He looked horrible. His clothes, rumpled and stained with sweat, matched the disarray of his matted hair, which was smeared against his forehead in wet clumps. He resembled the guy in the Navy photo, but as a long-lost cousin might. Drummond was either the Navy’s top special agent at going undercover, or his time on Palan had not been kind to him.
When he reached the bottom of the staircase, he seemed reluctant to descend down from the last step, choosing instead to lean against the shadowed wall of the tight stairwell. He finally made eye contact with his visitors and waved them over, the signal full of desperate frenzy.
Molly and Cole moved as quickly as they could without hurting anyone. With his longer legs, Cole reached the
