backward glance. Here across a crowded shop, there through a deserted construction zone—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY—twist, turn, double and dive. He crossed out of Transients' Lounge somewhere, for gadgets on the walls that had long lists of instructions and prohibitions beside them in the tourist ghetto here were nearly anonymous.
He went to ground at last in an equipment closet, and lay gasping for breath on the floor. He seemed to have lost his pursuers. He had certainly lost himself.
CHAPTER SEVEN
He sat in a sour huddle for an hour after he caught his breath and his heart stopped hammering. So, running away and hiding was no way to solve problems? Any action was better than rotting in Quinn's cell-like hostel room? He meditated glumly on just how fast one could re-evaluate one's moral position in the flash and crackle from the silvered bell-muzzle of a nerve disruptor. He stared into the closet's dimness. At least Quinn's prison had had a bathroom.
He would have to go to the Station authorities, now. There was no going back to Quinn, she'd made that clear, and no illusion left of his ability to negotiate a separate peace with the Cetagandan crazies. He beat his head gently on the wall a few times in token of his self-esteem, unfolded from his crouch, and began to search his hidey hole.
A locker full of Stationer work coveralls made him suddenly conscious of his own downsider apparel, followed by another and more horrid thought; had Quinn planted another bug on him? She'd certainly had plenty of opportunity. He stripped to the skin and traded his Athosian clothes for some red coveralls and boots that were only a little too large. The boots chafed his feet, but he dared not retain even his socks. He only needed the camouflage long enough to sneak to—make that, locate and sneak to—the nearest Station Security post. It wasn't stealing; he would give the coveralls back at the first opportunity.
He slipped out of the closet and took a left down the empty corridor, trying to imitate the rolling purposeful stride of a Stationer while fixing the closet's number in his memory so that he might retrieve his clothes later. He passed two women in blue coveralls floating a loaded pallet, but they were obviously in a hurry. Ethan couldn't nerve himself to stop them for directions. A Stationer such as his red suit proclaimed him to be would have known the way. It was bound to seem peculiar to them even without his accent.
He was just beginning to seriously question his original assumption that if he didn't know where he was, neither would his pursuers, when a scream, a thud, and a rattling crash snapped his attention to the cross-corridor just ahead. Two float pallets had collided. Crying and swearing mingled with a clatter of plastic boxes cascading from one pallet and an ear-splitting, screeching twitter. Balls of yellow feathers exploded from a spilled box into the air, darting, swerving, and ricocheting off the walls.
A woman was screaming—'The gravity! The gravity!' Ethan recognized the voice with a start. It was the bony green-and-blue uniformed ecotech, Helda, from the Assimilation Station. She was glaring at him, scarlet-faced. 'The gravity! Wake up, you twit, they're getting away!' She scrambled out from under the boxes and staggered toward him, panting.
As Ethan struggled with his conscience whether or not to blow his incognito by volunteering medical assistance—the other three people involved all seemed to be moving, sitting up, and complaining at healthy volume—Helda yanked open a cover on the wall beside Ethan's head and turned a rheostat. The frantically fluttering songbirds beat their wings in vain as they were sucked to the deck. Ethan's knees nearly buckled as his weight more than doubled. He found himself and the ecotech braced against each other.
'Oh, gods, you again,' snarled Helda. 'I might have known. Are you on duty?'
'No,' squeaked Ethan.
'Good. Then you can help me pick up these damned birds before they spread toxoplasmidosis all over the Station.'
Ethan recognized the disease, a mildly contagious, slow subviral life-form that attacked RNA, and fell willingly to hands and knees to crawl after her and pluck up the dozen or so hysterical birds pinned by their own weight. Only when the last bird was stuffed back into its box and the lid tied down with the ecotech's belt did she pay the least attention to the bitterly complaining human accident victims now lying flat on the deck and panting for breath. When she turned the gravity dial back to standard Ethan felt he might take off and fly himself, so great was the relief.
One of the victims sitting up shakily wore a pine-green and blue uniform like Helda's. Blood runneled down his face from a cut on his forehead. Ethan gauged it at a glance as spectacular but superficial. Clean pressure over the wound—not from his hands, he'd been handling the birds—would take care of it in a trice. The two white-faced teenagers from the other pallet, one male, one that Ethan's now-practiced eye identified immediately as female, clutched each other and stared at the blood in horror, obviously under the impression that they'd near-killed the man.
Ethan, holding his hands in loose fists to remind himself to touch nothing, put some gruff authority into his voice and directed the frightened boy to make a pad and stop the bleeding. The girl was crying that her wrist was broken, but Ethan would have bet Betan dollars it was merely sprained. Helda, holding her hands identically to Ethan's, elbowed open a comlink in the wall and called for help. Her first concern was for a decontamination team from her own department, her second for Station Security, and a distant third for a medtech for the injured.
Ethan blew out his breath in relief at his lucky break. Instead of his having to hunt for Station Security, it would be coming to him. He could fling himself upon Security's mercy and get unlost at the same time.
The decontamination team arrived first. Airseal doors cordoned off the area, and the team began going over walls, floors, ceilings and vents with sonic scrubbers, x-ray sterilizers, and potent disinfectants.
'You'll have to deal with Security, Teki,' Helda directed her assistant as she stepped into the sealed passenger pallet the decontamination team had produced. 'See that they throw the book at those two joyriders.'
The two teenagers paled still further, scarcely reassured by a secretive shake of his head directed at them by Teki.
'Well, come along,' Helda snapped at Ethan.
'Huh? Uh…' Monosyllabic grunts might conceal his accent, but were lousy for eliciting information. Ethan dared a, 'Where to?'
'Quarantine, of course.'
Quarantine? For how long? He must have mouthed the words aloud, for the decon man shooing him toward the float pallet said soothingly, 'We're just going to scrub you down and give you a shot. If you've got a heavy date, you can call her from there. We'll vouch for you.'
Ethan wanted to disabuse the decon man of this last dreadful misapprehension, but the ecotech's presence inhibited him. He allowed himself to be chivvied into the pallet. He seated himself across from the woman with a fixed smile.
The canopy was closed and sealed, shutting off all sound from the exterior. Ethan pressed his face longingly to the transparent surface as the pallet rose and drifted past the two arriving Security patrolmen in their orange and black uniforms. He doubted they could hear him if he screamed.
'Don't touch your face,' Helda reminded him absently, glancing back for one last look at the disaster scene. It seemed to be under control now, the decon team having taken charge of her float pallet of birds and reopened the airseal doors.
Ethan displayed his closed fists in token of his understanding.
'You do seem to have grasped sterile technique,' Helda admitted grudgingly, settling back and glowering at him. 'For a while there I thought Docks and Locks was now hiring the mentally handicapped.'
Ethan shrugged. Silence fell. Silence lengthened. He cleared his throat. 'What was that?' he asked gruffly, with a jerk of his chin back to indicate the recent accident.
'Couple of stupid kids playing starfighter with a float pallet. Their parents will hear from me. You want speed, take a tube car. Float pallets are for work. Or do you mean the birds?'
'Birds.'
