morning.'
'What will you do with the cylinder?'
'I thought you were the one who wanted to give it back,' Jack reminded him.
'But we do not want to bring it with us to his room,' Draycos pointed out. 'That would leave no room for conversation.'
'Yeah, you're right,' Jack agreed, chewing his lip. 'No room for bargaining, either. He'd just whistle for the captain and have me thrown in the brig.'
'We also do not want the humans from the Advocatus Diaboli to find it,' Draycos added.
'Right,' Jack said. 'And we know they're aboard somewhere.'
'We must therefore find a hiding place,' Draycos concluded.
Ahead was a bank of elevators. 'No problem,' Jack assured him. 'Watch the master and learn.'
He touched the call button and the rightmost elevator door slid open. Jack stepped inside and pushed for the lowest deck. 'Lowest deck is vehicle storage,' he told Draycos as the doors slid closed. 'A thousand places to hide something this size. Especially if anyone watching me notices that I've gone down there.'
'You will hide it in a vehicle, then?'
'Like I said, watch the master,' Jack said, pulling the cylinder from his inside coat pocket. 'You know, we really ought to mark this thing somehow, in case it ever gets mixed up with the fake one. Let's see...'
With a bound, Draycos leaped out from his collar and landed beside him. 'Permit me,' he said, holding up one of his front paws. 'Hold it firmly with the end facing me, please.'
Frowning, Jack did so. The dragon extended a claw and scraped it briefly against the bottom of the cylinder. 'There,' he said.
Jack turned the cylinder around to look. Sure enough, there was a subtle but quite visible symbol scratched into the metal. 'It is kesh,' Draycos identified it. 'The first letter in the K'da word for genuine.'
Jack whistled softly. 'So those claws of yours cut right through metal, huh?'
'Certain metals, yes,' Draycos said, 'though the harder varieties require more effort than a soft metal like this one.' He cocked his head. 'Why? Does that disturb you?'
Jack shrugged uncomfortably. 'It doesn't exactly fill me with warm fuzzies, if that's what you mean,' he admitted, swinging open the elevator's trouble panel. Behind the panel was a recessed box containing an emergency phone. 'Here, hold this,' he added, handing the dragon the cylinder and pulling out his multitool. He set to work on the side panel of the phone box, unfastening two of the screws that held it in place.
'Does that mean it does disturb you?' Draycos asked again, gripping the cylinder between his front paws.
'A little, I guess,' Jack said. He had the side panel loose enough to swing inward, exposing the wires and soft foam sound insulation packed in between the side of the phone box and the elevator wall. 'I mean, let's face it. You K'da are superior to humans in about every way I can think of.'
He took the cylinder back and pressed it into the insulation. It fit, barely. 'You're faster, you're stronger, and you're probably smarter,' he went on, pushing the panel back into place and starting to fasten the screws again. 'You can turn two-dimensional and look through walls. And now I find out you can scratch metal, too. What can't you do?'
'We cannot live alone,' Draycos said softly. 'Not for longer than six hours.'
Jack paused, frowning over his shoulder. The dragon was standing motionless, with no emotion that Jack could read on his long face. But at the same time, he could somehow sense a deep sadness there. 'Yeah,' he said. 'There is that.'
The beeping of the elevator as it passed the next floor reminded him that time was short. Turning back, he finished fastening the plate and swung the trouble panel door shut again. He was on his feet, putting the multitool away, when the elevator settled onto the deck he'd punched for.
A flicker of weight on his neck, and Draycos was again safely hidden away. The elevator doors started to open; and Jack settled into the earnest young boy act that had worked so well in the purser's office. There would be a guard around here somewhere....
'Wow!' he said, stepping out of the elevator and looking around. Ahead, stretching as far as he could see, were rows and rows of cars and small aircraft.
There was a guard, all right: a man in white sitting in a booth just beside the elevators. 'May I help you?' he asked.
'Oh, no, I just came down to see the cars,' Jack said, trying to look friendly, startled, and harmless all at the same time. 'My dad told me there were Rolls Royce-Dymeis here and everything.'
'There sure are,' the guard said. 'But I'm afraid you can't just wander around. Do you have a vehicle of your own down here?'
'No,' Jack said, letting his face fall a little.
The guard smiled sympathetically. 'Sorry.'
'Yeah,' Jack said. 'Thanks anyway.'
He got back into the elevator and punched for his stateroom's level. 'And that's that,' he said as the elevator started up. 'Anyone following my movements will figure I stashed the cylinder somewhere down there.'
'You were not there long enough to do that,' Draycos pointed out.
'Of course not,' Jack said, smiling tightly. 'But don't forget, they think Uncle Virgil is here, too. They'll figure I passed it off to him.'
