The Third Lynx

forward.

He took his own sweet time in ungluing himself from the deck, and wasn't any faster in working his way over to me. By the time he pulled one of the other chairs around to face me and sat down, he seemed to have cooled down a bit. 'We'll pass over for the moment the utter inappropriateness of your behavior,' he began in a growl. 'For the moment.'

I nodded, returning the favor by passing over for the moment the fact that he had no authority over me and that I wasn't subject to any bureaucratic rules of behavior anyway. 'Fair enough.'

'What we cannot pass over any longer is what exactly is going on here,' he went on, glancing at the Fibibibi and lowering his voice. 'We make planetfall tomorrow, and you obviously know more about this situation than you're letting on.'

'Not so much as you think,' I said. 'There's a group of people who want Kunstler's Lynx—'

'What people?' he cut me off. 'That's the real question, isn't it? Who are they, and who are they affiliated with? Are they a criminal gang, an insurgent group, a government—what?'

'As near as I can tell, they have ties and links to all three categories,' I said, angling the truth only a little. 'I know they've infiltrated several galactic governments, some of them at the highest levels.'

His face hardened. 'Including Earth's?'

'They've got a few people scattered around the UN and probably elsewhere,' I acknowledged, frowning. Clearly, some unknown puzzle pieces had just fallen into place behind those pale blue eyes. 'Fortunately for us, they've mostly been concentrating on other governments.'

'I see,' he murmured, darkly thoughtful. 'That would explain a great deal. I suppose our four Halkan friends will be continuing with us the whole way?'

I'd only tagged the three Halkas who'd been on Ian-apof as the Modhri's local walker contingent. Apparently, there was one more I'd missed. 'Until we decide to lose them, yes,' I told him.

Morse's forehead wrinkled a little at that, but he let it go without comment. 'Well, then, if you have nothing else for me, I'll be off.' He stood up. 'I trust you'll be spending the night in your own stateroom?'

My first impulse was to tell him it was none of his business. He could hardly dislike me more than he already did.

But I was counting on him to protect Penny if and when the shooting started. I couldn't afford for his disgust with me to bleed over onto her. 'Absolutely,' I assured him.

'I would hope so,' he said. 'Good evening, Mr. Compton.' He gave me a stiffly polite nod of the head and moved off.

I watched as he made his way back to the door, quiet alarm bells going off in the back of my head. I had long experience in reading faces, and I was pretty sure that some significant threshold had just been crossed in Morse's mind. Problem was, I had no idea what that threshold was.

But I was very sure I wasn't going to like it.

I thought about dropping in on Penny before retiring to my own stateroom, just to make sure she'd gotten there safely. But I decided against it. She might invite me in, and then I would have to say no, and then there'd be more confrontation of the sort I'd just gone through with Morse.

So I headed instead back to my own stateroom. I was finished with confrontation for the night.

Unfortunately, confrontation wasn't finished with me.

I'd been in the stateroom no more than ten minutes when there was a tap on the door. Wondering whether it was Penny or Morse or one of the Modhran walkers, I opened it.

It was none of the above. It was Bayta.

'We need to talk,' she said without preamble as she strode into the room.

'Come in,' I murmured, closing the door behind her. 'What exactly do we need to talk about?'

She turned to face me, a determined look on her face. 'Ms. Auslander,' she said.

My stomach rumbled with a stirring of anger. 'That was quick,' I growled. 'What did Morse do, come straight to your stateroom?'

Her forehead creased. 'I haven't seen Mr. Morse since dinner,' she said. 'Is there something he's supposed to tell me?'

'No, not really,' I said, cursing my carelessness. The first rule of subterfuge was to never, ever, offer information that hasn't been asked for. Especially information you didn't want anyone knowing. 'What specifically about Ms. Auslander did you want to talk about?'

'I want to talk about the way you've been behaving toward her,' Bayta said, still frowning.

'I'm just trying to be civil,' I said. 'Just because you don't like her—'

'You're trying to be civil?' she interrupted.

'Civil, friendly—whatever,' I tried again. If Morse hadn't blabbed, could she somehow have heard about the kiss from one of the Fibibibi who'd been in the lounge? 'We need to earn her trust if we're going to get to Stafford and the Lynx.'

'Frank, what are you talking about?' Bayta repeated. Her puzzlement, I noted uneasily, had edged into irritation. 'I'm talking about the way you've been ignoring her practically since we got on the torchliner.'

I swallowed. Uh-oh. 'Oh,' I said.

'Is that what you call being friendly?' Her eyes narrowed slightly. 'Or is there something I don't know about?'

'Nothing that's any of your business,' I said. Even to my own ears it sounded lame.

Apparently, it sounded exactly the same to her. 'Really,' she said, her tone dipping below the frost line. 'Shall I go ask Mr. Morse what he thinks of that?'

Silently, I cursed myself, Morse, Bayta, and the universe at large. But there was no way out. Letting Morse frame the details of Pyotr Gerashchenko's murder had turned Penny against us for days. I didn't dare let him frame the details of this one, too. 'Okay, fine,' I bit out 'I kissed her, okay? Is that a crime?'

I'd expected Bayta to stare at me in disbelief, or explode in anger, or at the very least launch into a lecture on proper decorum. Instead, she twitched backward, her breath catching in her throat, her expression that of someone who's just been slapped hard across the face.

Slapped across the face by a friend.

It was so unexpected that it took me a couple of seconds to find my brain and then my voice. But by then, it was too late. Bayta was already on the move, brushing past me and making for the door. 'Bayta!' I called, spinning around.

Again, I was too late. Bayta was out of the stateroom, the door sliding shut behind her.

My first impulse was to run after her, to try to explain that it wasn't as bad as it sounded. But she hadn't looked like someone who was ready to listen to explanations.

Besides, maybe from her point of view it was as bad as it sounded.

I spent the rest of the evening alone in my stateroom. Between Penny, Morse, and Bayta, suddenly the Modhri was starting to look like the least of my problems. I hoped that by the time we made planetfall tomorrow morning everyone would have calmed down.

But I wasn't really expecting it.

FOURTEEN :

We touched down at the main Ghonsilya spaceport outside Portline a little after six in the morning, torchliner time, which had been gradually adjusted during the past few days to match that of the local spaceport. We'd already gone through one set of customs formalities at the transfer station outside the Tube, but the local groundsiders wanted a crack at us, too, and we spent two hours running through their particular collection of bureaucratic hoops. Finally, we were released to make our individual ways to the other end of the terminal where