'I can hardly wait,' Jack muttered, standing up and heading back to the rear doors.
Drabs blocked his way. 'I just have one other thing to say to you,' he said, his eyes locking onto Jack's face like twin lasers. 'The boss told you you'd be in trouble with the cops if you mess this up. What I'm telling you is that if you duck out on us, odds are you won't have to worry about the cops. Odds are you'll be dead before they ever catch up with you. Get me?'
'Sure,' Jack said tiredly. 'Matter of fact, I've had about as much of you as I'd ever want. Can we go now?'
For another minute Drabs continued to glare. Then, he smiled. A very unpleasant smile. 'Sure,' he said. 'Let's go.'
Chapter 17
Drabs was as good as his word. The cabin he got for Jack was easily the nicest room the boy had ever been in, except for one ground-side hotel suite Uncle Virgil had rented them once during a high-stakes scam.
Of course, the fact that Drabs had kept his promise on the cabin probably meant he would keep other promises, too. Such as his threat to hunt Jack down and kill him if he tried to run.
The first job, after catching up on each other's stories, was to make up for the three days of missed meals. According to the map in his stateroom, the Star of Wonder had ten dining rooms and snack bars, four of which were open twenty-four hours a day. The room's status listing showed that Drabs had left a generous credit line for him to draw on, so eating and other incidentals wouldn't be a problem.
But having also lived in the same set of clothes for those same three days, he didn't think the high-paying customers of the liner would appreciate mingling with him over lunch.
Fortunately, his stateroom was fancy enough to have a small food synthesizer set off in one corner. The menu was limited to simple snacks, but there was enough of a selection for him to at least take the edge off his hunger.
Not surprisingly, the synthesizer balked at preparing Draycos's favorite hamburger-and-tuna-and-chocolate- sauce sandwich. Jack solved that problem by ordering a hamburger, a tuna fish sandwich, and a chocolate sundae, then putting them together himself. The dragon had to make do without the motor oil.
After that he took a trip to one of the shops for some changes of clothing, which Draycos insisted on. A shower was next, which Draycos insisted on even more firmly.
With all of what Uncle Virge would have called housekeeping duties out of the way, Jack could finally get down to business. Sprawling across one of the two beds in the shirt and slacks of a suit he'd bought, he began going through the Star of Wonders information booklets, reading about the ship's services and studying the layouts of the various decks. Draycos, for his part, curled himself up on the chair at the small writing desk across the room, singing softly to himself and doodling on a notepad.
'I don't know, Draycos,' Jack sighed, letting the map drop onto the bed and leaning back against the bulkhead. It was hard to believe that after sleeping for three days straight he could be tired, but he was. He was tired, frustrated, and very, very scared. 'I feel like I've been dropped into a deep hole, with the whole universe standing on top shoveling dirt in at me. What are we going to do?'
The dragon paused in his singing and looked up. 'About what?' he asked, readjusting the stylus he had gripped in one of his front paws.
'What do you mean, about what?' Jack demanded, a flash of annoyance cutting through the fear. 'About this whole stupid situation, that's what. Do you have any idea the kind of security they're going to have on the purser's safe?'
'I do not know,' Draycos said. 'What is a purser's safe?'
'The purser is the guy on a starliner in charge of money,' Jack told him. 'His safe is the vault where passengers can store their valuables during the trip.'
He waved his hand in a wide sweep around him. 'And on a ship like this, there are going to be some really serious valuables. Jewelry, data tubes, maybe even some one-of-a-kind art objects. It's going to be like breaking into a bank. Worse than a bank, really, because here there's no place to run after the job.'
'You cannot do it?'
Jack shook his head. 'Maybe Uncle Virgil could have done it, with the right tools and a week or two to get ready. He was good enough. But I'm not. Not alone.'
Draycos's green eyes glittered. 'But you are not alone, Jack,' he said quietly. 'I am here.'
Jack gazed at the dragon, a strange feeling stirring inside him. Here was this alien creature, willing to help him out of a tight spot. Not only willing to help, but willing to stick his own neck into danger doing it.
It was like the feeling of slowly starting to thaw out again in a warm room after standing around half frozen in the cold all afternoon. For a moment, despite the trouble he was still in, Jack felt a distant glimmer of hope.
Then the rest of the reality caught up with him. Draycos wasn't doing this out of the goodness of his heart, or whatever was in his chest pumping all that black blood around. He had a fleet full of his people to rescue, and at the moment Jack was the only tool he had. If Jack went down, Draycos went down with him.
The dragon was here, but only until he found someone else to help him carry on his mission. When he did, it would be good-bye.
The warmth faded away, and the cold quietly closed in again. 'I appreciate the offer,' he said. 'But unless you know a really good safecracker within a couple days' flight from here, I don't know how you can help.'
'Do not give up hope,' Draycos insisted. 'I am a poet-warrior of the K'da. I am not without resources.'
'Yeah, that must be some course of study,' Jack said with a sniff. 'Burglary-for-Warriors 102. Must first have taken Burglary-for-Warriors 101.'
Draycos flashed his teeth once but made no comment. Bending back over the desk, he resumed his doodling and quiet singing.
