“I’m busy here,” Yu snapped. “Why are you bothering me?”
“Because she listed at least five of the cargos that we carried in the last six months.” Nafti looked scared.
“So? She found a manifest.”
“You said we don’t keep a manifest.”
They didn’t. Yu frowned. “How would she know?”
“She says that there’s contaminants in the hold.”
“Nonsense,” Yu said. “We have a service that cleans everything.”
It wasn’t really a service. It was a bunch of cleaner bots he’d liberated from a previous owner. They were supposed to glow red when they reached their limit of hazardous materials.
“Well, the service ain’t working,” Nafti said.
The timer was blinking. His ship on the holoimage in front of him had turned a pale lime as the yellow blended into the green.
“I don’t have time for this,” Yu said and deleted Nafti’s image.
Then Yu ran his hand above the board, feeling how easily the ship rose upward. Silent, maneuverable— empty.
His sensors told him that the port had indeed opened its roof for him, there were no shields, and he was clear to take off.
Which he did.
Then he flicked an edge of the board.
“Your wish?” The ship asked in its sexy voice.
His cheeks flushed. He needed to change the voice to something more appropriate. “Scan cargo hold five for contaminants harmful to humans. And I don’t want the chemical names. I want the street names.”
“Such a scan would be harmful to the life form inside the cargo hold.”
“Then do a scan that won’t hurt her,” Yu snapped.
“I have a list of the contaminants,” the ship said. “Some do not have street names. I am confused as to how you would like this information. Would you care for the chemical names in the absence of street names? Or would you like symptoms and cause of death?”
“Just scroll through it,” he said.
The ship created its own holoscreen and presented a list that scrolled so fast Yu had trouble reading it.
But what he did see chilled him.
He cursed. “Ship, how good are our medical facilities?”
“Adequate to most needs.”
“How about someone exposed to all that crap you’re scrolling at me?”
“Ah,” the ship said as if it were human. “We have adequate equipment, but no guiding medical persona. I can download something from the nearest human settlement, but I can’t guarantee its ability to solve any problems that might arise—”
“How soon before someone trapped in that cargo hold starts showing symptoms?”
“From which contaminant?” the ship asked.
“Any of them,” Yu said, wishing the damn computer wasn’t so literal.
“Well, the first compound—”
“No,” he said. “When will the first symptom from anything in that hold show up?”
“Mr. Yu,” the ship said in that rich voice, which at the moment seemed more sulky than sexy, “symptoms should have started appearing within the first hour of contamination.”
“Scan the life form. Is it healthy?”
“I do not have a baseline for my scan. I do not know what condition the life form was in before it got on the ship.”
“Just scan her, would you?” He clenched a fist, then opened it slowly. He didn’t dare hit a ship that ran on touch.
“The scans are inconclusive. If the life form was in perfect health, then it is showing symptoms,” the ship said.
Yu cursed again. “How long do we have before the illnesses caused by this stuff become irreversible?”
“Impossible to say without a baseline,” the ship said.
“Assume she was healthy,” Yu snapped.
“Then two to twenty-four Earth hours. I would suggest a treatment facility, since you do not want to download a medical persona. Would you like a list of the nearest venues?”
Yu rolled his eyes. Any treatment facility in this sector of the solar system would be an Earth Alliance Base. He didn’t dare go near those places.
“Download the best persona you can find,” he said. “Better yet, download two or three of them. Pay the fees if you have to. I want cutting-edge stuff. Modern technology. Nothing older than last year.”
“Yes, sir,” the ship said. “This will take fifteen Earth minutes for the various scans and downloads. May I suggest you remove the life form from the cargo hold and put it in quarantine?”
“You may suggest any damn thing you want,” he muttered. But he opened his links and sent a message to Nafti.
Yu hoped he was right too. Because this job was a lot more trouble than he had bargained for.
Yu monitored the decontamination from the bridge. He wanted to avoid the woman as much as possible—not because she was contaminated, but because he didn’t want her face burned into his memory any more than it already was. He wanted to be done with this job—and quickly.
Unlike some of his equipment, the decontamination machine was state of the art. He needed the best for his own use. Often he went into areas that weren’t Alliance supervised or Alliance approved. He didn’t want to wear an environmental suit all the time, and he didn’t want to bring back any exotic diseases.
Shindo’s decontamination went well. The machine caught and eliminated more than 95 percent of the contaminants. The remaining 5 percent would be tough to get, however, and that was why he needed the medical personas.
He had them installed in the medical lab, which he had never used. He kept the lab well stocked, however, since he traveled alone so often.
Nafti had supervised Shindo’s trip from the cargo hold to the decontamination unit to the medical lab. Then Nafti had locked her in there, and had gone exploring the rest of the ship himself.
Yu didn’t know what Nafti was about, but he could guess. The man was a horrible hypochondriac, and he was probably trying to see if those contaminants had spread from the cargo holds to the rest of the ship.
A bell sounded. It was an audio alert that he had set up so that he would notice any unusual behavior.
“Yes?” he said to the ship.
“The medical lab has sealed itself off,” the ship said.
“What does that mean?” Yu asked.
“I can no longer access information from the medical lab,” the ship said.
“How is that possible?” Yu asked. But he knew. The ship had several systems grafted one on top of the other. If a knowledgeable person managed to tap one system, that person could lock out the remaining systems.
