Night Train to Rigel

SIX:

The traffic at Kerfsis Station, though light by Jurian standards, was still far more impressive than that of any of the human stations we’d passed through, including Terra. A good sixty of us filed off the various cars of our Quadrail, with an equal number on the platform waiting to board. Most were Juriani, but there were a handful of other species as well. Bayta and I were the only two humans in sight.

We were heading across the platform toward the first-class shuttle when I spotted a pair of Halkas emerging from one of the third-class cars at the far end of the train. They were too far away for me to see the subtleties of their faces, but their rolling gait definitely reminded me of my late-night visitors. Taking Bayta’s arm, I angled us through the crowd in their direction.

“Where are we going?” Bayta asked. “We’re supposed to take the first-class shuttle.”

“I know,” I said, picking up my pace a little.

But either the Halkas spotted me on their tail or else they were in a hurry of their own. Before we’d covered even half the distance, they reached the third-class shuttle and disappeared down the hatchway.

“We need to take the first-class shuttle,” Bayta repeated, more emphatically this time.

For a moment I toyed with the idea of ignoring protocol and staying with the Halkas instead. But the Juriani were sticklers for their particular rules of etiquette and protocol, and they looked very disconcertingly down those hawk beaks of theirs at anyone who dared to break those rules. Bayta and I were first-class passengers, and we belonged on the first-class shuttle, and there would be genteel hell to pay if we tried to hitch a ride elsewhere. It didn’t seem worth that kind of grief, especially since all the passengers would be regrouping a few minutes from now anyway in the transfer station’s customs area. “Right,” I said, and turned us back toward our shuttle.

Like everyone else in the galaxy who could afford them, the Juriani used Shorshic vectored force thrusters for their artificial gravity. That meant an actual stairway inside the shuttle, which meant I could hang on to my carrybags instead of handing them over to an automated system that would leave my hands free to maneuver down a ladder. Considering what had happened to my luggage the last time they’d been out of my sight, I was just as glad to be able to keep track of them this time.

I’d been looking for signs of the Spiders’ sensor array as I climbed into the Tube back at Terra Station. I looked just as closely now as I went down the stairs into our shuttle, with no better success. Wherever the Spiders were hiding it, they were hiding it well.

The Jurian sensor system, in contrast, was at the complete other end of the subtlety scale. As our three shuttles glided toward the transfer station, we passed beneath a pair of compact battle platforms, each with a massive sensor array and a matched set of docked starfighters standing ready in case of trouble.

Fortunately, there wasn’t any. Our shuttle docked with the station, and a few minutes later we filed into the entry-point lounge. “Are we going through?” Bayta asked, craning her neck to look over the crowd at the customs tables at the far end.

I studied the wide exit doorways in the wall behind the tables. There were almost certainly layered sets of fine-scan sensors up there, and I wondered briefly whether they would be good enough to pick up the Saarix hidden in my bags.

Fortunately, we weren’t going to have to find out just yet. “No need,” I told her. “We’re not staying, remember?”

“I thought you wanted to see the security procedures.”

“I’ve seen enough,” I said, scowling as I looked around. There was no sign of the two Halkas I’d been trying to chase down earlier. Had their shuttle been diverted someplace else on the station?

But no. Just after the Halkas had reached their shuttle, I’d seen a little goose-feathered Pirk disappear down the hatchway behind them, and he was visible halfway across the room, standing in the little bubble of open space that tended to form around the aromatic creatures. The Halkas must have slipped out somewhere between the shuttle and the lounge.

Problem was, the only such duck-out places in the corridor we’d passed through had been a handful of official-use-only doors. Unless security for the third-class passengers was considerably looser, that meant they must have somehow disappeared into the bowels of Jurian officialdom.

“So where are we going?” Bayta persisted.

I looked over at the archway that would allow us to bypass customs and go directly across the station to the departure lounge. The simplest thing to do would be to take that corridor, fly back to the Quadrail, and chalk this whole thing up to coincidence and an overheated imagination.

But it wasn’t coincidence, my imagination was strictly room temperature, and what had started as a minor mystery was starting to take on some ominous aspects. Given the Jurian temperament, if my Halkas were sitting around someone’s office down there, there had to be a meticulously defined reason for it. “We’re going to find those Halkas,” I told Bayta. “Come on.”

I led her to the information kiosk nestled against the side wall. “Good day. Human,” the Juri behind the counter said, nodding her head with the slight sideways tilt that was the proper mark of respect toward an alien of unknown social rank. “May I assist?”

“Yes,” I told her. “I’m looking for two acquaintances—Halkas—who were supposed to be aboard the third-class shuttle. They haven’t shown up, and I wondered if there was some problem.”

“I will inquire,” she said, dropping her eyes to her display and tapping briefly at the keyboard. “No, there is no word of any problems or broken protocol.”

“May I see a floor plan of that section?”

The scales at the bridge of her beak crinkled slightly, but she worked her keyboard again without comment. “Here,” she said, and a display set beneath the countertop came to life.

I leaned over, studying it. There were several offices along the corridor, some maintenance and electrical access areas, and a small machine shop.

And one of the entryways into the secure baggage area.

“How is this door sealed?” I asked the Juri, pointing at it.

“Is this information that you need to know?” she countered, still very politely.

“This is the luggage that isn’t accessible to passengers during the trip,” I reminded her. “Valuables, oversized bags… and weapons.”

The beak scales crinkled again. “There is no entry into that area for outsiders,” she said firmly.

“I’m relieved to hear that,” I said. “Would you mind checking with security anyway?”

Her expression clearly indicated she thought I was crazy. But part of her job was to deal with crazy offworlders, and she merely turned back to her keyboard. “If you would care to wait?” she suggested as a padded bench extruded itself from the wall to the left of the kiosk.

“Thank you.” Taking Bayta’s arm, I led her over to the bench.

“I don’t understand,” she murmured as we sat down. “You think the Halkas are up to something?”

“All I know is that they’ve disappeared,” I said, looking back at the crowd. Still no sign of the Halkas. “Things like that bother me.”

We’d been sitting there for about fifteen minutes when the Juri called us back. “May I ask your precise relationship to these Halkas?” she asked when we arrived at her counter.

“Casual acquaintance,” I said. “I met them on the Quadrail and hoped to talk to them again before we went our separate ways, that’s all.”

“I see.” She seemed to study my face a moment “If you’ll step through that yellow door at the rear of the lounge, the Resolver will see you.”

I felt my stomach tighten. A Resolver had been called in? “Thank you,” I said.

We threaded our way through our fellow travelers toward the indicated door. “Did you mean for them to call in a Resolver?” Bayta asked in a low voice.

“No, of course not,” I said. “I was hoping to keep this very unofficial. Too late now.”

“We don’t have to go see him.”

“If we don’t, we’ll be the ones they start looking for,” I pointed out “We’ll just have to play it through.”

The door opened to admit us, and we stepped into a short corridor with a single door on either side and one at