Lenny looked at me with bloodshot eyes. One drop of blood had run down his left cheek and dried there, looking rust-red.
“Not exactly.”
Then, as I watched, he reached for the console on the x-ray machine, and he pressed a button. There was a flash and a snapping sound.
At first, I frowned at everything. Nothing looked different—but then, I noticed something inside the container was missing.
“What was that? What did you just zap with that gizmo?”
“I’m not sure. It wasn’t on the pay-list, that’s for sure.”
“The pay-list?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking at the deck again. “They give us a list of goods, see. Tools. Containers of raw elements. Tech gear—whatever. We find the right container, bring it down here, and we zap the item out of the box. Then we send it back up to the hold.”
“Is that right?” I gawked, fascinated. “So you’re stealing stuff? That’s how this works? And no one can figure it out, because the containers are still sealed when they get to their destinations?”
“Yes. They have smart-locks on them. Every container knows what has gone in and out of its doors. They keep tight track. No one can blame the shipping company when something doesn’t make it to the right destination.”
“All right, Lenny. I have just two questions for you.”
He looked at me. He was sweating, bleeding and staring. He didn’t say anything.
“First off, I’d like to know what happened to the other inspectors—the ones who’ve gone missing.”
Lenny shrugged. “I don’t know. I never saw one of them make it down here.”
“What about the guy who vanished on this very ship?”
Lenny licked his lips. “I… I wasn’t down here then.”
“Of course you weren’t. I’d swear to that on a stack of bibles.”
“You would?”
I held my hand a meter and a half off the deck. “A stack of bibles that high.”
“Well… let’s just say that a man… a nosy man, a man who didn’t know his place… he might have come down here and… well…”
“Out with it, Lenny.”
“He might have gotten in between the container and the beam—you know—and been transported away.”
“To where?”
Lenny shrugged again. “To wherever all this stuff goes. Somewhere bad, I suspect.”
I nodded. “You’re a deep thinker, Lenny. Now, that second question: why are you telling me all this?”
Lenny’s left cheek twitched. It was the lamest excuse for a smile I’d ever seen. “So you won’t kill me. I know who you are, McGill. I used to serve in the legions.”
I stared at him. “Varus?”
He nodded, and I smiled. Lenny was a few beers short of a six-pack, sure, but in that instant I believed him. He had that washed-out look that some legion men got. He’d seen the stars, maybe died a dozen times, and then he’d come back to Earth, broken. It was an old story. Not everyone was cut out for the kind of life I led.
After Lenny’s surprising revelations, I was in a pretty good mood. After all, I’d figured out a mystery and solved the whole case in record time. Surely, Dross would praise me and send me back home to Central, pronto. Maybe I’d even get to go home to Georgia for a while.
Accordingly, I lifted my tapper. I took some photos, even demonstrating how the device worked. Then I made an attempt to mail the whole incriminating mess not just to Station Chief Dross, but to Galina herself.
The signal, however, was blocked.
About then I noticed that the door about a hundred meters behind us came flying open. It clanged, steel-on-steel, and the sound bounced around the hold like the voice of doom.
Flashlights with armed men holding them up began to flood into the hold. I took out my pistol, and I aimed it—but then more men came down, and more still. There had to be twenty of them, and they were still coming, spreading out and creeping into the hold, fanning out.
I looked at Lenny, and he stared back at me.
“You sold me out?”
He shrugged.
I aimed my pistol at him. “Tell me why I shouldn’t burn you down first.”
“Because I showed you what you wanted to see. And because we’re both Varus men—at least, I used to be.”
“Huh… yeah well, all right. I’ll tell you what. Aim that camera-thing at me.”
Lenny blinked in surprise. “But… that’s not safe. There has to be some radiation, some—”
I laughed at him. “There are thirty men behind us, and more coming. Come on, one Varus man should help out another.”
Lenny blinked, but he nodded. He aimed the camera-head thing at me, and he activated it.
A ball of plasma lit up the hold. It was blindingly bright, not being hidden by the walls of a container this time.
Men shouted and shots rang out. One struck Lenny, then two. I tried to reach for the controls, to activate the transmission button—but I couldn’t move. Something about the field had me in stasis, or at least slow motion.
But then Lenny struggled to his knees and slapped the button for me.
A dozen men ran up, shouting and angry. They shot Lenny, again and again.
They shot me too, but I’d already begun phasing out. I was halfway between this dirty ship’s bowels here on Earth and wherever it was I was going to.
In my long life, I’ve been teleported around in various ways to quite a number of exotic locations. That process was happening now, I could feel it.
I hoped my destination would be a pleasant place, but it wasn’t a strong hope.
-5-
When I arrived at my destination, I tried not to gag and cough and suck wind—but I failed.
The trip through hyperspace had been a long one. I’d spent several minutes in limbo, without much
