Cetaganda

faster anyway.

The Barrayaran ambassador would be waiting, to take his two high-ranking guests in hand, and show them, Miles hoped, how to go on. Miles mentally reviewed the correct greetings and salutations, and the carefully memorized personal message from his father. The pod lock cycled, and the hatch on the side of the fuselage to the right of Ivan's seat dilated.

A man hurtled through, swung himself to a sudden halt on the hatch's handlebar, and stared at them with wide eyes, breathing heavily. His lips moved, but whether in curses, prayers, or rehearsals Miles wasn't sure.

He was elderly but not frail, broad-shouldered and at least as tall as Ivan. He wore what Miles guessed was the uniform of a station employee, cool gray and mauve. Fine white hair wisped over his scalp, but he had no facial hair at all on his shiny skin, neither beard nor eyebrows nor even down. His hand flew to his left vest, over his heart.

'Weapon!' Miles yelled in warning. The startled pod pilot was still snaking his way clear of his seat straps, and Miles was physically ill-equipped to jump anyone, but Ivan's reflexes had been honed by plenty of training, if not actual combat. He was already moving, rotating around his own hand-hold point-of-contact and into the intruders path.

Hand-to-hand combat in free fall was always incredibly awkward, due in part to the necessity of having to hang on tightly to anybody one wanted to seriously hit. The two men quickly ended up wrestling. The intruder clutched wildly, not at his vest but at his right trouser pocket, but Ivan managed to knock the glittering nerve disrupter from his hand.

The nerve disruptor tumbled away and whanged off the other side of the cabin, now a random threat to everyone aboard.

Miles had always been terrified of nerve disrupters, but never before as a projectile weapon. It took two more cross-cabin ricochets for him to snatch it out of the air without accidentally shooting himself or Ivan. The weapon was undersized but charged and deadly.

Ivan had meanwhile worked around behind the old man, attempting to pinion his arms. Miles seized the moment to try to nail down the second weapon, dragging open the mauve vest and going for that lump in the inner pocket. His hand came away clutching a short rod that he first took for a shock-stick.

The man screamed and wrenched violently. Greatly startled and not at all sure what he'd just done, Miles launched himself away from the struggling pair and ducked prudently behind the pod pilot. Judging from that mortal yell Miles was afraid he'd just ripped out the power pack to the man's artificial heart or something, but he continued to fight on, so it couldn't have been as fatal as it sounded.

The intruder shook off Ivan's grip and recoiled to the hatchway. There came one of those odd pauses that sometimes occur in close combat, everyone gulping for breath in the rush of adrenaline. The old man stared at Miles with the rod in his fist; his expression altered from fright to—was that grimace a flash of triumph? Surely not. Demented inspiration?

Outnumbered now as the pilot joined the fray, the intruder retreated, tumbling back out the flex tube and thumping to whatever docking bay deck lay beyond. Miles scrambled after Ivan's hot pursuit just in time to see the intruder, now firmly on his feet in the stations artificial gravity field, land Ivan a blow to his chest with a booted foot that knocked the younger man backward into the portal again. By the time Miles and Ivan had disentangled themselves, and Ivan's gasping became less alarmingly disrupted, the old man had vanished at a run. His footsteps echoed confusingly in the bay. Which exit—? The pod pilot, after a quick look to ensure that his passengers were temporarily safe, hurried back inside to answer his comm alarm.

Ivan regained his feet, dusted himself off, and stared around. Miles did too. They were in a small, dingy, dimly lit freight bay.

'Y'know,' said Ivan, 'if that was the customs inspector, we're in trouble.'

'I thought he was about to draw on us,' said Miles. 'It looked like it.'

'You didn't see a weapon before you yelled.'

'It wasn't the weapon. It was his eyes. He looked like someone about to try something that scared him to death. And he did draw.'

'After we jumped him. Who knows what he was about to do?'

Miles turned slowly on his heel, taking in their surroundings in more detail. There wasn't a human being in sight, Cetagandan, Barrayaran, or other. 'There's something very wrong here. Either he wasn't in the right place, or we weren't. This musty dump can't be our docking port, can it? I mean, where's the Barrayaran ambassador? The honor guard?'

'The red carpet, the dancing girls?' Ivan sighed. 'You know, if he'd been trying to assassinate you, or hijack the pod, he should have come charging in with that nerve disrupter already in his hand.'

'That was no customs inspector. Look at the monitors.' Miles pointed. Two vid-pickups mounted strategically on nearby walls were ripped from their moorings, dangling sadly down. 'He disabled them before he tried to board. I don't understand. Station security should be swarming in here right now. . . . D'you think he wanted the pod, and not us?'

'You, boy. No one would be after me.'

'He seemed more scared of us than we were of him.' Miles concealed a deep breath, hoping his heart rate would slow.

'Speak for yourself,' said Ivan. 'He sure scared me.'

'Are you all right?' asked Miles belatedly. 'I mean, no broken ribs or anything?'

'Oh, yeah, I'll survive … you?'

'I'm all right.'

Ivan glanced down at the nerve disrupter in Miles's right hand, and the rod in his left, and wrinkled his nose. 'How'd you end up with all the weapons?'

'I … don't quite know.' Miles slipped the little nerve disrupter into his own trouser pocket, and held the mysterious rod up to the light. 'I thought at first this was some land of shock-stick, but it's not. It's something electronic, but I sure don't recognize the design.'

'A grenade,' Ivan suggested. 'A time-bomb. They can make them look like anything, y'know.'

'I don't think so—'

'My lords,' the pod pilot stuck his head through the hatch. 'Station flight control is ordering us not to dock here. They're telling us to stand off and wait clearance. Immediately.'

'I thought we must be in the wrong place,' said Ivan.

'It's the coordinates they gave me, my lord,' said the pod pilot a little stiffly.

'Not your error, Sergeant, I'm sure,' Miles soothed.

'Flight control sounds very forceful.' The sergeant's face was tense. 'Please, my lords.'

Obediently, Miles and Ivan shuffled back aboard the pod. Miles refastened his seat straps automatically, his mind running on overdrive, trying to construct an explanation for their bizarre welcome to Cetaganda.

'This section of the station must have been deliberately cleared of personnel,' he decided aloud. 'I'll bet you Betan dollars Cetagandan security is in process of conducting a sweep-search for that fellow. A fugitive, by God.' Thief, murderer, spy? The possibilities enticed.

'He was disguised, anyway,' said Ivan.

'How do you know?'

Ivan picked a few fine white strands from his green sleeve. 'This isn't real hair.'

'Really?' said Miles, charmed. He examined the clump of threads Ivan extended across the aisle to him. One end was sticky with adhesive. 'Huh.'

The pod pilot finished taking up his new assigned coordinates; the pod now floated in space a few hundred meters from the row of docking pockets. There were no other pods locked onto the station for a dozen pockets in either direction. 'I'll report this incident to the station authorities, shall I, my lords?' The sergeant reached for his comm controls.

'Wait,' said Miles.

'My lord?' The pod pilot regarded him dubiously, over his shoulder. 'I think we should—'

'Wait till they ask us. After all, we're not in the business of cleaning up Cetagandan security's lapses after them, are we? It's their problem.'