The Alien Explorer's Love

by Leslie Chase

  Passing by the door quickly, she kept her head down and turned to the door of the next suite. Fortunately, there was no 'do not disturb' sign up, and her borrowed master key let her into the room without any trouble at all. Heart pounding, she leaned back against the door. Why are there guards outside the door? She shook her head. They hadn't been there yesterday.

  There was only one way to find out what was going on, and that was to keep going. Quickly crossing the room to the balcony, she looked down. The street below looked all too far away, but the jump to the balcony of Jaranak's room was easy. At least, she thought it was.

  It had better be, because I haven't borrowed this uniform just to give it back, she told herself. Swinging one leg over the railing, then the other, she hung on tight, her knuckles whitening under the strain.

  Looking down was a mistake. The world seemed to spin around Lilly as she shut her eyes and tried to count to ten. Making sure to keep her eyes high, she opened them to looked across the gap at the balcony she was aiming for.

  It was almost close enough to reach out and touch. Almost, but not quite. With a lurch, Lilly threw herself across, hoping that no one below chose this moment to look up.

  The railing hit her in the stomach and she clung on for a moment before pulling herself over it and resting. It seemed to take forever to get her breath back, but finally Lilly felt able to get to her feet and make her way to the door.

  She swallowed, gripping the handle, only now realizing how badly this could go wrong. Leaving aside the chance of falling to her death, if there was anyone in the room she'd have no explanation for her presence. If she'd come in through the main door, well, a maid missing the 'do not disturb' sign wasn't too suspicious. But coming in from the balcony?

  Too late to worry about that now, she told herself. I've not risked this much just to turn back here.

  The door opened easily, and then she was inside. The room was empty, and she couldn't hear any signs of life from anywhere in the suite. Sighing with relief, she started to look around.

  There were times that Lilly wished her education, already unconventional, had included a few more practical skills. Like searching for evidence in a hotel room without alerting thugs waiting outside, for example. She would just have to make do.

  The rooms were as well appointed as one could expect from a second-rate hotel. The furniture was adequate, and nothing looked too badly frayed or worn. Reasonable reproduction artwork watched her as she looked around, and the guests' luggage was piled up against one wall. There was a lot of it, and nowhere better to put it presented itself. That was a good sign, Lilly thought: it implied that there weren't many hiding places.

  Fortunately, no one was home. A quick check of the rooms told her that she was alone in the suite, and that whoever the people staying here really were, they kept their house in order. Everything was put away just so.

  I guess when you aren't letting in the maid, someone has to do the tidying up. She smiled a little. At least that's something to say for them. They aren't wrecking the place.

  It did make it hard to know where she should start searching, but she'd have to put up with that. The wardrobes didn't hold any normal street clothes, which was a disappointment. Just more of the strange robes they were wearing, and examining them didn't give Lilly any sure proof that they were fakes. Curiously, though, they seemed crudely put together. Now that she could see them close up, Lilly could see that they weren't well made at all. The seams were stitched poorly and the cloth looked like it had been cut by a maniac with a knife rather than someone who knew what they were doing.

  Some might have seen that as authentic, she supposed, if they thought that the islanders were barbarians. Lilly knew better: every culture knew how to make its own clothes well, which made the poor manufacturing of the robes suspicious. But it was hardly proof, and she knew that most people she told about it would just assume that the 'primitives' were bad tailors. She sighed and moved on.

  But there was nothing to find. The bathroom held nothing of interest, all the toiletries being bought in New York. The beds hid nothing, at least nothing that she could find looking under the mattresses. The desk held a lot of correspondence, all of it addressed to Prince Jaranak and none of it, at a first glance, incriminating. There were some business proposals, a few people offering their public relations expertise, and quite a few from ladies. Lilly blushed as she read the first one; the young woman in question had gone into scandalous detail in her missive. From a quick flick through the rest, she wasn't the only one. Reading these letters felt like an intrusion.

  Which was a ridiculous when she'd broken into a hotel room to spy on someone, of course. But Lilly still found herself reluctant to read the romantic overtures to Jaranak. She stuffed the pile of letters back where she'd found them with a little more force than necessary.

  It was one reason for this scam that didn't depend on money, she supposed. It seemed that there were more than a few young women in the city who would happily chase these supposedly exotic men just for the thrill of it. Lilly couldn't help wondering how far their dedication to their deception went — would Jaranak be blue all over?

  Feeling her cheeks burn bright red, she put that thought out of her head with a savage effort. I am not here to speculate about his love life. I'm here to prove that he's a fraud.

  Aside from the letters, the desk held a pad of paper, a pile of envelopes, and a half-finished book of stamps. Someone here had been replying to the correspondence, clearly, but none of the finished letters remained. Those might have been useful clues. Lilly frowned to herself, trying to remember how this was supposed to work. Unfortunately, her education in the skills of a detective had come from Sherlock Holmes novels, and she was bright enough to know that they weren't to be trusted as a source of information.

  Still, there was one trick that might be worth trying. Finding a pencil, she rubbed its lead softly over the top sheet of the remaining paper. The indentations left by the previous letters showed up faintly. Lilly frowned at them, surprised at how crude they looked. Almost as though they'd been written by a man who had only recently learned the alphabet.

  It is very strange, she thought as she tore off the paper and tucked it away. Some of this fraud is amateurish, like the costumes. But some details they've paid a great deal of attention to — I'm not certain I'd have thought to disguise my handwriting like that.

  Whatever was on the paper could wait, though. That was something she could take with her and examine at leisure, but her time in the suite was limited. Tearing the top sheet off the pad, she turned to examine the luggage.

  That presented a problem to search. First of all, the pile was too big for her to look through quietly — if some vital clue was hidden in the bottom case, it might as well have been in Indonesia.

  The second problem was that the luggage, at least those pieces Lilly could see, were all locked. That, at least, she could do something about — but she'd hoped that she wouldn't have to. Pulling out a hairpin, she knelt by the big steamer trunk at the front of the pile and contemplated the locks.

  She'd done this before. Her parents had left her several similar locked trunks, and while others had suggested just cutting them open, that wasn't Lilly's way. Some reading on the subject and a few visits to a locksmith later, she'd understood enough to pick the locks. The downside was that she ruined one lock in three that she opened. She was likely to leave a solid clue that someone had been here if the fraudsters were paying attention.

  Nothing else for it, she told herself as she set to work. I've not found anything else worth the risk of coming here, and I will have answers.

  The lock wasn't sophisticated, and disarming the first one was the work of less than a minute. The second gave her more trouble, though. Old and rusty, it stuck and Lilly needed to force it. With a musical ping, the hairpin snapped, and she swallowed a curse. Freezing in place she listened, but the guards outside hadn't heard anything. Her heart pounding, Lilly turned her atten
tion back to the lock.

  There was good news and bad. The good was that the lock was open, the bad that the remains of the hairpin were wedged in tight. She wasn't going to get it back or hide the fact that she'd been there.

  Well, that's fine if I find what I'm looking for, she thought, carefully opening the trunk. The lid lifted easily enough, and she found herself staring, eyes wide, at something incomprehensible.

  Packed in straw was a machine of some kind, bright metal with glass panels set into it. As she peered at it one of the panels lit from within, a bright light playing over her eyes and making her wince away.

  "Chavad kho?" the machine asked in a stern woman's voice. Blinking away the afterimages that bright light had left floating in front of her eyes, Lilly gasped at it. This was not what she'd been expecting, and she had no idea what it might be.

  "Hello?" she said tentatively. Whoever was speaking to her through the device, there was no point in pretending that she wasn't here. But the machine simply repeated its question. The voice sounded emotionless, no way to read the intent of whoever was asking her the question.

  The panels lit up, covered in glyphs that she couldn't even recognize. No language that she knew was written that way, and she couldn't even start to understand what they meant.

  This is impossible. Staring at the box, Lilly tried to make sense of this. There were plenty of scripts she didn't know how to read, but she rarely encountered one she didn't even recognize. It could be a fake, of course, but why? Who would go to this much effort? And how would they, at that?

  Tentatively, she reached out to touch one of the screens. The symbols swam and changed, and the bright light flashed again. Lilly threw a hand up in front of her eyes and swore again as the question repeated.

  If only I had a camera or something, she thought. There was no way she was going to get the trunk out of the room, and no time to study it here. Even now she was worried that the voice would carry to the guards outside. I'll just have to do my best.

  Pulling out her notepad, she sketched the lettering on the screens as best she could. She knew a lot of academics who would be interested, and someone had to know what the symbols meant.

  She'd almost finished when she heard footsteps outside, and a muffled greeting from the men guarding the door. Damn.

  There was no time to get away. The key was already in the lock, and the door looked right at the balcony she'd come in by. Quickly shutting the trunk, she looked around for a place to hide. But nowhere presented itself.

  Should have thought of this first, she told herself as she dove under the bed in a panic. If I'm going to have adventures, I ought to be preparing myself for daring escapes!

  The dust lay thick on the floor there. No wonder she hadn't bumped into a real maid on her way up if this was the standard of cleaning here! There was just enough space under the bed frame for her to huddle, trying to control her breathing and keep quiet. Her heart beat so loud that she was sure that whoever was entering the room would hear it, but the heavy footsteps didn't come near the bed.

  Instead, they crossed to the luggage she'd been inspecting. There were three men, she saw, and though she could only see their feet they made a curious group. One wore elegant shoes and his pants were sharply creased, but the other two had workmen's boots on, and their suits were cheap, creased, and frayed.

  The more elegant man stopped at the pile of luggage and swore.

  "Someone's been here already," he said in a dark, menacing tone. Lilly recognized instantly. Ambrose Cooper's voice was distinctive.

  "No one came in since we were at the door, boss," one of the others answered nervously. "Not even housekeeping."

  "Balcony's unlocked, they must have come in through there," the other put in. "No sign of 'em now, though. Probably long gone."

  Cooper cursed again. It was odd to hear such foul language from such a wealthy man, but he had a reputation for it. Part of his early life of poverty that he'd never been able to quite erase, no matter how much money he made or how high he rose in society.

  "Fucking goddamn it," he said, "What the hell do I pay you for if you're not even keeping out the burglars?"

  The two men stayed silent, which sounded like the wisest course of action. A moment later, Cooper sighed and gripped the trunk's lid. "You'd better hope it's still here. Now look away!"

  The bright flash illuminated the room again as he hauled it open

  "Chavad kho?" the device inside said, exactly as it had before. A recording, clearly, but why? Would the machine record the answer?

  "Kho Htach veder," Cooper answered confidently. Lilly frowned, only barely managing to contain a gasp of shock. How did he know how to answer it? He didn't sound fluent in whatever language that was, not even nearly. But the machine seemed to find his answer acceptable, or at least he'd managed to shut it up.

  "Alright. Bring that damned camera over here, quickly. I don't know how long we have left."

  The men came closer, and Lilly wished she could see more clearly. From under the bed she couldn't see much more than their legs, and nothing of what they were looking at on the device. Something worth taking multiple photographs of, apparently — they set up a tripod and worked furiously. Cooper would make some adjustment in the trunk, they'd snap a photo, and then repeat.

  It made little sense to Lilly. Not only could she not work out what he was up to, but why would these blue-skinned frauds have anything that would interest a millionaire industrialist? That didn't fit the story they were telling, but it didn't fit anything else either. What on earth would be worth Ambrose Cooper's time to steal personally, and if that machine was so precious, why didn't he just take it?

  She wished she could just get up and ask them, but that was out of the question. If they found her here, there was no telling what they'd do. But she couldn't stay under the bed forever. The dust was aggravating her throat, and she didn't know how long she'd last before she gave herself away.

  Her miserable certainty that she was about to be caught was interrupted by a shrill whistle from the street outside. The three men tensed at the sound, and then it came again. A definite pattern, one long and two short.

  "Fuck," Cooper said with feeling. "Goddamn fucking whoresons, we were meant to have more time than this. Michael couldn't even keep them busy, the idiot."

  "I could try and—"

  "You will try nothing, idiot. Grab the camera, close the balcony door, let's get out of here. Make sure we don't leave a trace. There'll be other chances."

  The men were quick about their work and in no time at all they'd put everything back as it had been. Cooper closed the trunk carefully, trying to pull the remains of the hairpin out of the lock to no success. Swearing again under his breath he abandoned that as futile and made his way to the door.

  As it clicked shut behind them, Lilly breathed again. The cough she'd been holding back escaped, and she muffled it as best she could. Time to leave, she told herself, struggling out and pulling herself to her feet. She considered the door, but she had no way of knowing if there was still someone in the hall outside. No, she'd have to leave the way she came, as little as she liked that idea.

  Before she had the chance to get to the balcony, though, she heard another key in the lock. Great. Back under the bed with me.

  9

  Jaranak

  "Ah," the metallurgist said, beaming at Jaranak from across the table. "That's called uranium. Not a common request, but I'm sure that I can manage."

  Describing the metal he needed hadn't been easy, and in the end Jaranak had to resort to breaking his cover a little bit. There was no easy way to explain how he knew what an atomic number was, after all. The man Cooper had sent him to meet seemed to think nothing of it, though, and now they knew what the humans called the metal they needed.

  That was the good news. The bad news was that getting hold of any quantity was going to be difficult. The humans didn't have much use for it yet, so not much was being refined. On the other hand,
Jaranak suspected that might have made things worse. Most species who worked out what uranium was good for weren't keen to sell it to strangers...

  The really bad news was that the metallurgist telling them about uranium couldn't shut up. He'd gone from giving them a little useful information into a digression on the known uses of uranium (not many) and the history of its discovery. Jaranak almost wished they'd walked into an ambush instead. Michael Cooper had bored of the conversation immediately, finding his way to the bar. Jaranak would have preferred to join him rather than listen to this bore.

  When his alarm vibrated he nearly smiled, despite the fact that it had to be bad news.

  "Excuse me," he said, rising from his seat and abandoning his half-eaten lunch. "I will be back in a moment."

  "Eh? Oh, certainly," the man said, nodding and lifting his own fork. He (and Jaranak had already forgotten his name) hadn't touched his food, so in love with the sound of his own voice that he didn't want to stop to eat. That, and he seemed to relish the idea of being seen in public with exotic, rich foreigners.

  Perhaps being abandoned by one at lunch will give him a story to dine out on, Jaranak thought as he made his way to the restroom. His guards followed him and as soon as they were alone, he pulled out the alarm.

  "What's wrong?" Karnan asked, and he shook his head, looking at the screen and trying to make sense of the alert. The palm-sized communicator couldn't tell him much, but the gist of it was clear. Someone had tried to access the scanner without authorization. Which meant that someone was in their hotel room.

  "Intruders in our luggage," he said quickly. "It's not moving, at least — no one's trying to steal it."

  Karnan pulled a face, looking as though he didn't know what to feel. Jaranak sympathized: on the one hand, the scanner was at risk. On the other, Karnan's precautions were working, and that was something to be pleased about.