The Third Lynx

I held my breath. But no soap. 'You will be returned to your Quadrail and your service will come to an end,' he said. 'As already stated.'

I grimaced. Apparently he wasn't authorized to reverse Elder decisions just because I'd just done them a major service. Again.

The Chahwyn looked at Bayta, and I wondered if we were about to get a rematch of their earlier staring contest. But he then shifted his eyes back to me. 'You have one week to return to Terra Station,' he continued. 'There you will surrender your travel document to the stationmaster.'

My handy little diamond-dust-edged first-class unlimited-use Quadrail pass. I'd been hoping he would forget about that. 'One week's not much time,' I said, stalling.

'It's more than enough,' he countered. 'One week.' With that he stood and walked back to the rear of the room. A door opened, and he disappeared.

'I'm sorry,' Bayta murmured.

'Don't be,' I assured her grimly. 'It's not over yet.'

We headed back to the baggage car in silence. One week, the time limit whispered through my mind. One week left of freedom among the Quadrail's interstellar travelers and the lurking and conspiring Modhri mind segments. One short week.

It might just be enough.

Five minutes later we were on the move. 'What did you mean that we need you and not someone else?' Bayta asked.

'Does it matter?' I countered. 'They've made up their minds.'

Bayta's eyes were steady on me. 'I don't want another partner, Frank,' she said quietly.

Unbidden, unwanted, a lump rose into my throat. Bayta had made it clear that she considered me her friend, though I still wasn't ready to make such a commitment myself. 'You've got at least one more week to be stuck with me,' I assured her. 'What do you think of this latest dollop of irony?'

'Which irony is that?'

'Hardin's little hate-mail campaign,' I said. 'Or had you forgotten Kunstler's dying words?'

Bayta's eyes widened. 'Is that what he meant by 'he hates you'?'

'What else?' I said. 'Given the circles a man like Kunstler traveled in, I should have thought of Hardin right from the start.'

'They must not have gotten along very well,' Bayta murmured.

'Hardin's an ambitious multi-trillionaire, Kunstler's a rabid collector, and neither type likes losing,' I said. 'Your basic cookbook recipe for making enemies. Maybe I wasn't so far off with that crack about getting stopped on the street for autographs.'

'I'm sure Mr. Hardin has friends, too,' Bayta said diplomatically.

'And we'll do our very best to avoid them,' I said. 'Anyway, the point is that Hardin's round-robin diatribe is at least partially responsible for getting us onto the trail of the Lynx in the first place. That's the kind of intangible asset the Chahwyn aren't taking into account.'

Bayta shrugged. Clearly, she didn't see much benefit in having a trillionaire for an enemy, either. 'What are we going to do?'

'I still have a week of free Quadrail travel,' I reminded her. 'That should be more than enough to get us to Ghonsilya and find Fayr. The next move will depend on what he has to tell us.'

'What about Mr. Stafford and the Lynx?'

I ran the question a couple of turns around my brain. Should I tell her, or not?

Not, I decided. 'If we're lucky, we'll be able to pick him up along the way,' I said instead. 'The line out of Ian- apof should take us to Ghonsilya with only one or two train changes.'

'I suppose we can do that,' Bayta said, and I could see in her face that she was wondering what I would do if I was on Ghonsilya when the time limit on my pass ran out. Quadrail traffic, even back in third class, didn't come cheap.

I didn't blame her for her unspoken concerns. I was wondering about it, too. 'In the meantime,' I went on, 'we'll see about taking a crack at the Hawk the walkers are sitting on.'

Bayta gave me that patented strained look of hers again. But she was apparently too drained by the encounter with the Chahwyn to argue the point. 'We'll see,' she said instead. Lowering herself to the floor, she put her back against a stack of crates and closed her eyes.

I sat down, too, and did likewise.

Because there was another reason the Chahwyn might want to reconsider firing me. A very important one.

But I wasn't ready to let Bayta in on that secret, either. Not yet.

Especially since I might be wrong.

An hour later we reconnected with our train. As far as I could tell as we worked our way forward, no one had missed us.

The server Spiders had, of course, long since cleared away our half-empty glasses from the table where we'd left them. I ordered us two more drinks, lemonade for Bayta. iced tea for me. 'Where were we?' I asked as we settled into our chairs. 'Right—I was asking about the separation wall's default settings.'

'And you were talking insanity,' she said. 'The Modhri would never have put the Hawk on board unless he had enough walkers here to protect it. If we try to steal it, we might trigger the same thing that happened on our trip back from the Sistarrko system.'

'I doubt it,' I said. 'Remember, there he had a source of Modhri coral to work with. I doubt he has anything like that here. Besides, who said anything about stealing the Hawk?'

She was still frowning at me when the server tapped up and delivered our drinks. 'You want to break into the compartment and not steal it?' she asked at last.

'Of course not,' I said, putting some dignity into my voice. 'Stealing's against the law. So if there's a power glitch do the wall locks stay on or go off?'

For a moment she continued to stare at me. Then, her eyes flattened as she consulted with the experts. 'They'd go off,' she said. 'But the wall would still stay closed.'

'Not a problem, provided the Modhri inside doesn't notice the power glitch,' I assured her. 'And provided we're already on the other side of the wall.'

'Which would mean breaking into the other half of that compartment.'

'Possibly,' I said. 'Let's find out first which compartment the Hawk's in, and who has the other half.'

Neither bit of information proved difficult to collect. As with every Quadrail, conductor Spiders were continuously roaming the aisles, and a few minutes of silent interrogation and cross-checking on Bayta's part did the trick.

'The Jurian in compartment seven is the one who hasn't been outside since we left Jurskala,' Bayta said. 'The connecting compartment is occupied by another Jurian, a diplomatic consul.'

'We can work with that,' I said. 'I don't suppose we're lucky enough for one of Penny's friends to have the compartment across the corridor from him.'

'No,' she said. 'But Giovan Toya, one of the group, is two down from it. Will that help?'

'Not really,' I said. 'But that's okay. We'll just have to do it on the fly.'

'How?' she asked.

'Just leave it to me,' I said, patting her hand. 'Order me another iced tea, will you? I need to go find Morse.'

Morse was not amused. Not even close.

'You have got to be joking,' he growled when I'd finished outlining my plan. 'You're talking about breaking and entering. That's a felony. Two felonies.'

'One: there won't be any breaking involved,' I corrected. 'You're going to get him to leave; I'm going to get inside before the door closes. So no breaking. Two: the Quadrail is under Spider jurisdiction. Human and Jurian laws don't apply.'

Morse snorted. 'Somehow, I don't think the consul will see it that way.'

'And three,' I added, 'this may be the key to nailing down this whole Nemuti sculpture mystery. Possibly including the key to Rafael Kunstler's murder.'