by Peter Kenson
"She's not as pretty as you told me," Marienna observed critically.
"It's 15 years since I've seen her myself," he replied. "It's not easy to judge precisely how a 3 year old girl is going to turn out when she grows up.
"Hush now. Let's see if she recognises me."
The two girls had handed their wings in to the attendant and now pushed their way into the crowded bar, looking vainly for a table at which to sit. As they approached, he stood up.
"Would you like to sit here?" he asked them, to the intense and obvious annoyance of a middle-aged couple standing behind him, who had designs on the table themselves. "We were just leaving."
"Thank you very much. That's very kind."
It was Nerissa who answered and smiled directly at him as she did so, without any apparent sign of recognition. He nodded to her and to Lynda as they slid quickly into the seats to prevent any pre-emptive action by the middle-aged couple.
"Enjoy your drink," he told them, as he steered Marienna towards the exit.
"No reaction that I could detect, either facial or mental," he said when they were outside. "That leaves us with all our options open."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well, if she'd recognised me, I would probably have been forced into prematurely telling her why we're here. I would prefer to fight that little battle at a time and place of my own choosing, preferably just before we reach Andes."
"Do you think we can persuade her to come with us there?"
"I don't know. I don't know why she's on this liner in the first place. We'll have to contrive another meeting: talk to them, try to find out what they're up to.
"Go and see your friend the purser. Try your charm on him again and see if he'll rearrange the table placings for dinner tonight."
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to see if I can find out anything more about Jorgensen. I'll try to bug his cabin if possible; I'd like to find out what's going on in there."
He kissed her and watched her sway gracefully away through the crowds towards the purser's office. Then he made his own way along to the first class cabins.
In the corridor outside Jorgensen's cabin he bumped into the steward.
"Ah steward. I've just been talking to my friend Mr. Jorgensen in A5/2. He's not feeling too well at the moment."
"Yes, I know about that, sir."
"Well. Morten's a very mild person and doesn't want to cause any trouble but he can't get any proper rest at the moment because of the noise coming from the next cabin."
"That would be the Thomas family in A5/3, sir. They've got two young children. It can't be the other side because A5/1's empty."
"Really? An empty cabin? I thought the first class was completely full?"
"Oh it is, sir. But the gentleman who should have been in A5/1 got mixed up in a shooting incident at Floreat Spaceport. Perhaps you heard about that, sir?"
"Yes, I was there. It was terrible."
"Did you see what actually happened? They say he was a drugs baron."
"I couldn't see very much: I was over the other side of the hall. I just heard the screams and saw the security guards rushing about. I saw the chap who got hit though. He didn't look much like a drugs baron but then you can't tell by appearances, can you?"
"That's very true, sir."
"Well anyway," he went on, pressing a 10 credit note into the stewards hand. "The next time you see the Thomases, perhaps you could just ask them to hold the noise down a bit. I know it's difficult with young children but it would be appreciated. And don't tell Morten that I mentioned this to you: he'd only be embarrassed."
"Leave it to me, sir. You can rely on me."
"Thank you very much, steward."
He waited until the steward had gone round the corner and out of sight before trying the door to cabin A5/1. It was locked. He opened a small pouch on his belt and selected an appropriate picklock. Carefully, he inserted it into the lock and with only a couple of seconds fiddling, the door swung open.
He entered the room and quickly closed the door behind him. He was in the sitting room. There were two other doors leading from the room. The door to the bathroom was directly ahead while the door to the bedroom was off to his right. It was the far wall of the bedroom which would be the common partition with Jorgensen's cabin. He crossed the bedroom and from a different pouch on his belt, took out a miniature amplifier which he placed flush against the wall. No sound came out of it, even when he adjusted the controls across the full range.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and thought for a moment. If the cabins followed a standard layout then it would be Jorgensen's lounge on the far side of the partition. The listening device he was using, was sensitive enough to pick up even the slightest sounds of breathing, so wherever Jorgensen was, he was not in the lounge. He unstrapped the needle laser from his wrist and adjusted the setting to limit the range to barely more than the thickness of the dividing wall. Selecting a point high up on the partition, he burned a neat hole clear through and stood back to let the edges cool down. He listened again for any sounds coming through the amplifier but there was still nothing.
The bug which he was using for this operation was a combination camera and microphone with a built-in miniature transmitter powerful enough to send the pictures to a recording device in his own cabin. The camera had a fish-eye lens to cover as much of the room as possible and transmission was activated either by detected movement or noise. The whole device was no bigger than a slim pencil and just fitted inside the hole in the partition wall.
He inserted it carefully so that it did not protrude into Jorgensen's cabin and then checked around the room to ensure that he had left no traces of his visit. He let himself out cautiously into the corridor and locked the cabin door behind him.
Marienna was waiting for him when he got back to their cabin.
"Did you have any luck?" he asked her.
"Yes, but not for tonight. We're sitting at the Captain's table tonight at the Captain's personal request. As the purser had already sent tonight's guest list to the Captain for his approval, I thought it better not to make a big thing out of it. But tomorrow night the purser has promised to seat us together."
"Tomorrow night's fine. There's nearly three days before we reach Andes, so there's no particular rush. Did you say the Captain requested our presence tonight?"
"Yes. The purser didn't know why. Apparently it's quite a signal honour.
"How did you get on with Jorgensen?"
"I've got his cabin bugged as far as I can. It should come through to the monitor here. We can afford to wait and see what happens for the next 24 hours anyway."
***
Dinner the next evening was a very different affair from the night before. Then they had been seated in the centre of the dining room at the Captain's table along with 8 other of the first class passengers and had spent the entire meal fending off enquiries about themselves and their experience as space travellers. As they had decided that their cover was blown anyway, they had quite deliberately not been overly skilful in evading the questions and were satisfied that, by the end of the meal, they had done little to dispel the air of mystery which apparently surrounded them.
Tonight though, the Purser had done as he had promised and arranged for them to sit at one of the few tables for four in a quiet alcove on the edge of the main dining room. The two girls were travelling under the names of Neri Van Doren and Lynne Van Liederman from the old Dutch colony on Timet, and the cover story they had put about, as David and Marienna had discovered by discreet enquiry earlier in the day, was that they were the daughters of two of the leading families on Timet and that they had just finished College and were taking the Grand Tour in celebration of that fact.
The Grand Tour, of course, was not a pre-defined journey or set of places to visit, but was a generic term describing the almost infinite variety of such journeys which could be made. It was another of those mysterious rituals which had the
ir origins on Old Earth and which had now become adapted to the usage of a spacefaring race. The Grand Tour was now used to mean a circuitous journey to view the local Wonders of the Galaxy; that is, those existing within the current sector of space and its immediate neighbours. Of course, the more sights one managed to cram in, the Grander the Tour became.
In the local sectors of space, there were places of outstanding natural beauty such as the 17 moons of Ragen, which kept the oceans of that world in a state of constant tumult and which, once every 10386 years at the conjunction of all 17 moons, caused a wall of water over 1000 metres high to completely cover the main land mass; or the Crystal Mountains of Myrillion, the rising of either of whose suns caused a brilliant and ever changing display of lights which initially spread across the whole sky and then gradually withdrew towards the mountains as the suns continued to rise.
There were also places of great architectural beauty or historical significance. Some were man-made such as the Imperial Winter Palace on Petrograd, or the Spacefield Shrine on Roanoke where it is said that the first of the great Colony Ships from Old Earth, crash landed. Others like the tower of Ozymandias, were of alien origin. Nobody had yet divined its purpose or even managed to penetrate its outer wall but, unlike its mythical namesake on Old Earth, it stood unchanging and apparently completely indifferent to the passage of time.
David and Marienna found that conversation over dinner required very little effort to sustain and the meal progressed very pleasantly. The girls remembered them from the previous day in the Astrodome Bar and once they discovered that David, in particular, had travelled very widely in most sectors of the Galaxy, he was kept busy reciting anecdotes of his experiences. It was easy after that to suggest that they should adjourn to one of the quieter lounges nearby and continue the conversation.
"It's funny, you know," he remarked, once they were settled comfortably. "I once knew a little girl called Neri. She'd probably be about your age now. But she was a little princess; of a place called Serta."
He stopped and there was a long period during which nobody spoke. He kept his gaze levelled on Nerissa and watched as the surprise in her eyes was followed by recognition, then anger and then nothing. It was an impressive show of control, he conceded. When she spoke, however, there was a distinct lowering of the ambient temperature.
"I seem to remember that you weren't plain Mr. Held in those days," she said.
"Nor am I now: but who travels under their real name nowadays?" he replied.
"Touche." She turned to Lynda. "Lyn, allow me to present our friends here under their true colours; Lord David Held of the House of Held and.... is it Lady Held?"
"Let's just leave it as David and Marie for now, shall we?"
"No, let's not." The anger flared again. "I presume that, as you have sought me out, you must have something to say. So say it and let's have it over with. Why has my father sent you?"
"Your father did not send me. I have not spoken to him in over 15 years and he does not know I am here. Nor shall I be reporting back to him on your whereabouts, although it would be understandable if he was somewhat concerned."
"Then why are you here? Surely you're not going to tell me that it was pure chance."
"No, I wouldn't be so foolish as to try. But I'm afraid that it's a little more serious than just a father searching for his runaway daughter, even if she is a princess. Evidence is mounting that your father, and Serta itself, are in some considerable danger. The Federation of Vostov has been casting covetous eyes at Serta for some time now, seeking to control the trade routes in this Sector. You are, of course, aware that Wolfram, the former Duke of Gan and uncle to the Lady Lynda, has risen to the rank of Counsellor to the President of Vostov. He would dearly love to get back at your father and knows the strengths and weaknesses of Serta intimately.
"We have received reports of increased naval activity at the Vostovian bases nearest to Serta. It is feared that Vostov may make an attempt to kidnap you in order to limit your father's response when the Vostovian Navy moves in."
"That's ridiculous. They wouldn't dare," Lynda broke in. "Besides, how would they find us?"
"I found you," he replied simply. "If I can do it, so can they."
"How do we know that? How do we know that any of this is true?"
"Wait a minute," Nerissa came back into the conversation. "Let's stay calm. Lord David, you spoke just now of evidence. What evidence do you have?"
"None that would stand up in a Court of Law," he admitted ruefully. "But, before we go into that, can I just ask you how your journey has been so far. Have there been any little unexplained happenings or has it all been completely uneventful?"
The two girls looked at each other. "Well," Nerissa began, and for the first time, looked slightly doubtful. "There was this man on Timet who we were sure was following us. For two days, everywhere we went, he turned up too. He was a nasty, weedy little man: a bit creepy really. Anyway, we'd met a couple of boys who were going to ferry a yacht across to New Holland, so one day, we lost Daddy's pathetic little agent down in the flea market and hitched a ride out of there on this yacht."
"I assure you, Princess, that man was no agent of your father."
"We only have your word for that," Lynda cut in again.
Ignoring her, he continued to address Nerissa. "Have there been any other incidents?"
"There've been a couple of times on the Aldebaran when we were sure we were being watched. But that could have been you, of course."
"Was that before or after Floreat?"
"Both."
"We only boarded at Floreat. Anything before that was certainly not us."
"I don't quite see where all this getting us," Nerissa said coldly.
"Neither do I," Lynda threw in. "He'll have us jumping at our own shadows next."
"I tend to agree with you, Lyn, but let's look at this objectively." She turned back to David.
"You've spun a tale of power politics that sounds so incredible that I suppose it might just be true. But, although you've spoken of evidence, you actually have no evidence at all with which to back up your tale. Instead, the most you've been able to do, is to take some recent events, which may have been totally innocent, and attempt to put a sinister interpretation upon them.
"But all of this is just the preamble. You have not yet come to the point. What is it that you want of us?"
"I could dispute with you the objectivity with which you have summed up the situation," he replied. "But I will not. I do believe, however, from everything that I have learnt so far, that Serta is in some considerable danger and that the key to the situation, Princess, is yourself. What I want, is for you to leave the Aldebaran with us at Andes and I will provide you with a fast and secure trip back to Serta aboard my own ship, the Salamander."
"And if I refuse? Will you kidnap me also?"
"No, Princess, I will not kidnap you. That is not my way. What I will do is to stay in the background and try to thwart any kidnap attempt that is made on you."
The anger blazed forth from her eyes again although her voice remained frosty.
"Lord David, you presume too much. I do not believe this fairy tale you have been spinning here. We shall return to Serta in our own good time. We have escaped from the discipline of my father's court to have some time to ourselves. I will have to be a Princess again when I go back, but for now, I am just plain Neri Van Doren and you will not frighten me into going back early with all your tales of war.
"So I shall not be leaving the Aldebaran with you at Andes although, if you have your own ship there, it would be distinctly preferable if you would join it. If, however, you choose to remain on board the Aldebaran, then stay the hell out of my sight because if either of us see you or your girlfriend again, I shall tell the Captain that you are a talent scout for a white slave trader.
"Come along, Lyn."
With that both girls stood up and stormed out of the lounge. When they were gone, David turned to Marienna.
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"Well, that was quite an exit. Not totally unexpected, though. I liked that touch about the white slave trader."
"Hm, the Lady Lynda appeared surprisingly hostile," Marienna observed.
"So she did, Marie, so she did. I think we might benefit from a little more background on the Lady Lynda. Send a message to Sam. Ask for details of all contact between Lady Lynda and her uncle and an assessment of her vulnerability to manipulation. It may be that she is being used, either willingly or unwillingly, as his tool.
"Meanwhile, I guess we'd better stay out of the ladies' way for a day or so."
CHAPTER 10
At that precise moment, the Vostovian frigate Ragnar carrying the former Duke of Gan, was slowly easing into a parking orbit around the innermost planet of Parm. The Ragnar was the latest addition to the Vostovian fleet and was the equal, in speed and armament, of any frigate in the Imperial Navy. They had made the trip from Vostov at their top cruising speed and had comfortably beaten the previous record for the journey.
Now, as the Ragnar, under the direction of Parm Space Traffic Control, slid slowly past the outer defence screens of the planetary system, the Communications Centre on board was a hive of frantic activity as the multitude of communication links which Grey Wolf demanded, were hastily re-established.
"This is a frigate, a fast escort and attack craft," Captain Siccardes complained, not for the first time. "She's not designed to be a floating Command Post."
"My dear Captain." Wolfram spoke with infinite patience. "We have been all through this before. A Command Ship could not have got me here in time. Indeed, I doubt whether any other ship in the Fleet could have got here as fast as the Ragnar. Besides, all the Command Ships are in position, ready for the attack on Serta."
"Which we will miss, because we're stuck here at Parm."
Wolfram sighed. "No, my bloodthirsty friend, you will not miss out on the action. If all goes according to plan, then you will be released in time to join the attack on Serta. And if it doesn't go according to plan, then I will have need of your speed and power right here."