Night Train to Rigel

Abruptly, I realized I was still holding her pressed beside me. “We need to get aboard another train and get out of here,” I said, letting go of her arm. “Any chance of talking the Spiders into rigging a private train and bringing it out here to pick us up?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “There’s a certain amount of momentum needed to get up the slope and through the atmosphere barrier. It usually requires the entire distance from the platform for a train to make it.”

“Even if the train consists of just an engine and a single car?”

“Even then.” She hesitated. “And even if we could, I’m not sure it would do any good. The walkers would surely see the train stop, figure out what had happened, and send warning messages ahead. We’d just have to face the same trouble at the next station. Unless,” she added thoughtfully, “we don’t stop at any other stations.”

“No, that wouldn’t help,” I said, shaking my head. “We still have to go through those stations, even if we don’t stop there. The walkers would message ahead and have their buddies either destroy the rails or throw debris onto the tracks. Maybe even throw themselves.”

“That can’t be,” she insisted. “Surely he wouldn’t waste all those walkers just for revenge.” She gazed down the tracks toward the platform, at all those Halkan Peers still milling around. “Unless this isn’t about revenge.”

I sighed. “It was staring us in the face as far back as when we were melting the sub free,” I told her. “That was where the Modhri should have thrown everything he had to try and keep us from getting off Modhra II and within range of his homeland coral beds on Modhra I. But he didn’t.”

“Yes, you mentioned that at the time,” Bayta said, her voice dark.

“And then afterward, after we got away, we were locked into a Quadrail train for four days,” I went on. “If it was vengeance he was after, why didn’t the walkers get together to hit us then?”

“Not enough time to organize?”

“That was what I thought, too,” I said. “Right up until we got to Jurskala and saw the number of walkers he’d gathered here.”

I waved a hand toward the distant platform. “The fact of the matter, Bayta, is that he didn’t particularly care whether we destroyed the Modhra coral beds or not. Not until someone got into the harvesting complex and realized we’d taken their records.” I took a deep breath. “Their export records.”

She stared at me, her eyes suddenly gone dead. “Oh, no,” she breathed.

I nodded. “He was already gone from Modhra when we hit it Bayta. Not all of him, certainly, and I’m sure Fayr’s people hurt him terribly when they wiped out the coral that was left there. But he’s moved enough of it to establish himself a brand-new homeland.

“Only this time we don’t know where it is.”

It seemed like a long time that we lay there, each of us wrapped in our own thoughts. “What about the records?” Bayta asked at last. “He must think we can locate the new homeland that way or he wouldn’t be trying so hard to stop us.”

“Possible, but I doubt it,” I said. “Fayr couldn’t even track the stuff bound for the Estates-General, and the homeland data will be scrambled a lot more. My guess is that he simply doesn’t want to take the chance.”

“We can still try,” she said, a spark of renewed spirit sifting in through the despair in her voice. “And the first thing we have to do is get out of here.”

“Absolutely,” I agreed, an idea starting to work its way through my still-throbbing skull. “You think you can get the Spiders to bring a few items to that hangar over there?”

“If they can get hold of them, yes,” she said. “You have a plan?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Think back to The Lady Vanishes, that Hitchcock dit rec drama we watched with Rastra and JhanKla. Remember how they smuggled that other woman aboard the train?”

“They had her wrapped up as if she’d been in an accident,” Bayta said slowly. “But there isn’t supposed to be anyone except Spiders at this end of the station. If the Modhri sees someone coming from here, won’t he suspect something?”

“Right, which is why we won’t be coming from here.” I nodded toward the hangar. “First thing to do is crawl over to that hangar and get out of sight. Once we’re inside, whistle up a couple of drudges to retrieve our bags. After that, here’s what we’re going to need.…”

The trick, as always, would be in the timing.

There was every chance that the Modhran mind segment on the Bellis Loop train would quickly figure out that Bayta and I were no longer aboard, and probably be rather miffed about it. But by that time he would be well out of communication range of the Modhran mind segment still here in Jurskala Station. He would have to wait until the next stop, four hours away, before he could send a message back this direction.

At the moment, the rest of the walkers here were probably preparing to head home, believing whatever rationalizations they’d come up with to explain why they’d come here in the first place. Once the other mind segment alerted them, though, the hunt would be on again.

But an hour before that message could get here there would be a Quadrail leaving on a direct shot to Earth. If we could get aboard that train without anyone fingering us, we could be gone while the Modhran segment here was still trying to figure out where on Jurskala Station we might be hiding.

At first blush, that looked like a pretty serious if. We had limited time, limited resources, and the limited changes of clothing in our carrybags, plus whatever the Spiders could scrounge for us. And it was probable that any human male/female combination would automatically come under at least casual scrutiny.

But just as Halkas were difficult for humans to distinguish between, the reverse was also true. That would make the job much easier than if we were trying to slip past a group of other Humans.

As to the Modhran parasites inside them, I still remembered Falc Rastra’s own colony taking control of him long enough to shout don’t shoot it to the Jurian soldiers in the Kerfsis interrogation room.

Referring to me as it rather than him implied that the Modhri didn’t see us as much more than organic autocabs. A minimal bit of deception on our part ought to be adequate, provided we didn’t call attention to ourselves by strolling in from the Spider end of the station.

Fortunately, we wouldn’t have to.

The maintenance skiff they brought for us was small and cramped, designed mainly for transporting repair materials while drudges hung onto the outside. It normally wasn’t pressurized, but the Spiders had plenty of oxygen cylinders lying around to replenish the slow leakage through the atmosphere barriers at the ends of the stations. We had loaded a couple of them into the skiff with us, just in case, and the soft hissing added to the basic eeriness of the situation as the Spiders maneuvered us around the station. I’d specified that we use the hatchway closest to our departure platform; and with exactly fifteen minutes remaining until our Quadrail arrived, the skiff locked itself against the outside of the station.

I looked at Bayta, wrapped in a sterilizer gown and strapped to a self-powered medical stretcher. Her face was completely covered in white bandages, a false beak pressing up against them from the center of her face above the breather mask connected to the stretcher’s own medical oxygen tank. More makeshift prosthetics under the swathing disguised the shape of her forehead and chin, while others padded out her shoulders and created three- toed claws at her feet. “Ready?” I asked.

Her answer was a soft grunt around the oxygen mouthpiece, and I felt a pang of sympathetic edginess. To have to pass through a group of enemies was bad enough; to have to do so totally blind and strapped to a rolling table had to be a hundred times worse.

But we had no choice. The Modhri would be looking for a pair of humans, and only with her face and body completely covered could we transform her from a woman into a badly injured Juri.

I ran a hand carefully over my hair, darkened and slicked back with a few drops of motor oil, and smoothed out the slightly scraggly mustache I’d thrown together out of tack sealant and some bits of Bayta’s hair. That, plus the protective smock we’d taken from one of the emergency medical kits, would have to do for me. “Okay,” I said. “Here we go.”

I touched the hatch release. It slid open, the station’s hatch did likewise behind it, and I looked up to find a pair of drudges looming over us. “Quickly, now,” I said in my best dit rec medical professional’s weighty yet compassionate voice, standing upright and gesturing down into the skiff. Behind the Spiders, a small crowd had gathered, clearly curious as to what the two drudges were up to. “But carefully,” I added, stepping up out of their