connected the key to a thin wire leading to his pocket computer and started tapping buttons.
As he did so, Jack looked casually over at the inside of the vault door. It was there, right where he'd seen it on nearly all the walk-in vaults he'd watched Uncle Virgil crack. Most Orion Arm safety regulators considered it prudent, most safe-crackers considered it stupid, and most vault owners never considered it at all.
A small red lever labeled Emergency Door Release, and a set of glow-in-the-dark instructions on how to use it.
The purser finished his coding and stepped out of the vault. 'Here you go,' he said, pulling the wire off the key and handing it to Jack. 'You can go ahead and put in your data tube now.'
'Thank you.' Jack took the key and went back into the vault. The key hummed in the lock of Box 48 and popped it open, and he put the data tube inside. He closed it, the key hummed again, and the box was locked. 'When do you close tonight?' he asked as he left the vault.
'We're open until midnight,' the purser told him, pushing the vault door shut. 'We reopen at six in the morning.'
'I'll tell my uncle that,' Jack said, crossing to the counter and waiting for the purser to open up that section for him again. The purser did so; and from this side, Jack could see that there was a button down there that he had to push first. 'Thank you.'
'Good evening, young man.'
Jack left the office and headed back in the direction of the lounge. 'You found the cylinder?' he asked, just to make sure. 'Yes,' Draycos said. 'There were also several data tubes and a small box of jewelry inside.'
'Jewelry, huh?' Jack commented. Just ahead on the left was a door marked Authorized Personnel Only. 'I wonder if the cylinder belongs to a woman.'
'Could a woman be a likely target for Braxton Universis?' Draycos asked.
'Oh, sure,' Jack said, glancing both ways down the corridor as he reached the door. No one was looking. He tapped the plate, the door slid open, and he ducked through.
Behind the door was a narrow service hallway. Four or five doors led off it to the right, while the end was blocked by a heavy-looking door with a keypad.
Unlike the door he'd entered through, that one would be locked. Fortunately, he didn't need to go that far. What he was looking for should be right here in the corridor.
'Women control lots of corporations,' he went on, starting slowly down the hallway. As he walked he ran his fingers along the molded plastic wall on his left, the wall of the purser's office. 'Or I suppose the jewelry could be just a gift.'
'What do you search for?' Draycos asked, the top of his head rising slightly out of Jack's shoulder.
'Keep down, will you?' Jack growled. 'Did you happen to notice the emergency lights back in the purser's office? Small boxes on the walls near the ceiling with lights sticking out of them?'
'I did.'
'The boxes contain the lights' batteries,' Jack explained. 'Here, they almost certainly also contain hidden security cameras. We'll need to knock them out.'
His fingers paused, feeling the slight unevenness beneath the plastic wall that meant he'd found a vertical support. 'This should be it,' he said, turning around and pressing his back to the wall. 'There should be a junction box somewhere near here—a small square thing with five wires coming out one side and two out the other. See if you can find it.'
Obediently, Draycos shifted around again on his skin. 'Well?' Jack asked.
There was no answer. Jack moved slowly along the wall, feeling his heart starting to pound again. Any minute now one of the ship's crew could stumble across him here. The last thing he wanted was to have to come up with a story about why he was leaning against a wall in a place he wasn't supposed to be.
'I believe I have found it,' Draycos spoke up in that strange near-far voice that seemed to go with this particular K'da trick. 'Are the wires black with silver striping?'
'That's them,' Jack confirmed. 'Okay, get back aboard; I'm going to turn around.'
The dragon drew back from the wall and returned to his back. Jack turned around and held out a hand to the wall. 'Show me where it was.'
Some weight came onto his forearm. His jacket sleeve puffed out slightly as Draycos's foreleg appeared, sliding out the cuff along Jack's wrist. One of the claws extended and scratched a small curved mark into the wall.
'Great,' Jack said as the weight of the dragon's leg melted back onto his skin. Fortunately, this jacket material was more flexible than the leather of his normal coat. 'Next stop is the monitor room.'
'What is that?'
'The place where people watch the view from the security cameras,' Jack explained as he sneaked out of the service corridor and back into the passenger areas. 'Especially those in the purser's office.'
'You have not spoken of this part of your plan,' Draycos said, sounding suspicious.
'Don't worry, we're not going looking for a fight,' Jack assured him. 'I'm a thief, not a one-man army.'
'You are a former thief,' Draycos corrected. 'And there are two of us.'
'Yeah. Whatever.'
Not surprisingly, the monitor room hadn't been marked on the floor plans in Jack's stateroom. However, the main security office had been shown, and it seemed reasonable that the people staring at the monitor screens would be someplace nearby.
They were, hidden behind another locked door at the end of another dead-end service hallway. 'Okay,' Jack
