by Timothy Zahn
“It’s going to the left,” Skoda confirmed, frowning.
“You are certaijn ijt’s not leadijng to the rijght?”
“I already said it wasn’t.”
“Ij see,” the Meerian murmured. “Very well. Contijnue.”
The stargull continued down the corridor. But now, Skoda could sense a sort of hesitation to its movements. It seemed to be traveling slower, as if unsure where it was going.
And then, a second stargull appeared through the side wall, this one glowing a little less brightly than the other one. It swept over the first stargull, and for a moment they melded together into a single object. They separated again, and continued together down the corridor.
“Ijs there a problem?” His Grace asked.
“No problem,” Skoda said, wondering what the hell that had been all about. Had the first stargull been going slowly because it was waiting for the second to catch up? Had something significant just happened? Or did the things just get lonely?
He was still wondering when they reached a sharp right-angle turn that had a convex warning mirror over the intersection. The stargull floated up near the mirror and paused a moment before continuing around the corner. Skoda looked up at the mirror as he followed and caught a glimpse of the Meerian behind him.
The Meerian, and the long knife gripped in the Meerian’s hand.
It was all Skoda could do to keep from spinning around for a better look. Surely he’d seen that wrong. Surely His Grace was holding something else.
Only he hadn’t been carrying anything when they left Skoda’s cell. It would have had to be something he’d picked up along the way, or pulled out of a pocket.
And it had damn well looked like a knife.
Skoda focused on the two stargulls in front of him, a sudden thought striking him. Had the movement and the pause by the mirror been coincidence? Or had they actually been trying to warn him?
Ahead, the two stargulls stopped beside an alcove leading off the side of the corridor. As Skoda neared it he saw the alcove was in fact a vertical access shaft, with a ladder fastened to the back running up and down. “Looks like they want us to take the ladder,” he said.
“Yes, thijs wijll work,” His Grace said softly. “You wijll enter fijrst.”
Skoda looked over his shoulder. The knife was no longer visible, but he could tell by the way the Meerian was holding his hand that the weapon was simply turned around and pressed out of sight against the underside of his forearm. He was looking back down the corridor, as if making sure they were alone.
So that was that. His Grace was indeed preparing to kill him.
A part of him really didn’t care. Knifed here, or finishing his indenture and dying a slower death, it still came to the same thing in the end. This way would be quicker, at least, plus it would cost the Meerians all the trips he would never navigate for them. That would serve them right.
He was preparing himself for death, hoping it wouldn’t hurt too much, when a sudden thought struck him.
What in the world was Nathan Skoda worth killing for?
He looked back. The two stargulls were still waiting by the ladder.
Watching? Waiting for him to make a move? Or just waiting to see how much he would bleed?
Skoda bared his teeth. Well, to hell with that.
He swiveled around. His Grace had turned back, satisfied they were alone, and was starting to bring the knife back into view. Skoda stiffened and jabbed a finger back over the alien’s shoulder. “Look out!”
Apparently, the Meerians didn’t know that one, either. His Grace spun back around to look, again pressing his knife out of sight against his forearm.
Grabbing the alien’s arm just above the elbow, Skoda pulled with all his weight and strength, swinging him around a hundred eighty degrees, propelling him into the alcove, and shoving his back hard against the ladder.
The knife went flying as the Meerian flailed for balance. But the ladder was behind him, and there was nothing in front of him to grab onto to keep from falling down the shaft.
Nothing except Skoda.
The Meerian’s right hand snapped out, catching Skoda’s upper left sleeve. Skoda twisted his arm away, trying unsuccessfully to break the grip. With His Grace’s dead weight threatening to pull both of them into the shaft, Skoda grabbed the alcove’s edge with his right hand.
His Grace’s flailing feet got a partial hold on one of the rungs, taking some of the weight off Skoda’s arm. Skoda took advantage of the breather to swing his right leg up and plant it on a rung beside the Meerian’s ribs. With his legs steadying him, he let go of the alcove edge with his right hand and grabbed the hand still clamped around his left arm.
An instant later he jerked the hand back as His Grace snatched the universal key from his pocket and stabbed at the back of Skoda’s hand. Skoda got out of the way in time, leaving the Meerian to nearly jab his own hand. With a snarling bark, His Grace shifted his aim toward Skoda’s side. Skoda managed to catch the wrist and bring the hand and makeshift weapon to a halt. Leaning on it, Skoda shoved the hand backward, slamming the Meerian’s wrist against the alcove edge beside Skoda’s left arm.
The Meerian howled with pain, and Skoda heard the faint clatter as the key flew onto the floor behind him.
And then, without warning, the Meerian lost his foothold. The suddenly renewed weight on Skoda’s left arm twisted him around at the waist, forcing him to bend his bracing leg. Once again he grabbed for His Grace’s right hand, and this time managed to dislodge it. With nothing else to hold onto, His Grace flung his left arm over Skoda’s right leg.
Unfortunately for him, throwing his full weight unexpectedly onto the leg broke Skoda’s own tentative foothold. His foot came off the rung and his body started tipping into the shaft. He managed to catch one of the ladder’s uprights with his right hand, breaking his fall. As Skoda’s right leg dropped back to vertical the Meerian’s arm slipped off. For a frozen second the alien seemed to hang in midair, scrabbling desperately for a grip.
But there was nothing left for him to grab onto. An instant later he was gone, falling out of sight down the shaft. A muffled thud drifted up the opening, and then silence.
For a long minute Skoda just stood there, his hands gripping the ladder, his feet pressed against the rim of the shaft opening, his body shaking with reaction and fear and nausea. Had he just killed the Meerian?
He didn’t know. The only way to be sure would be to go down the ladder and see, and there was no way in hell he was going to do that.
A flutter of white burst in front of his eyes.
He jerked back, shoving off the ladder and staggering backwards to slam shoulders-first into the conduits running along the other side of the corridor. One of the stargulls, he realized belatedly as he bit out a curse. “Yeah, he’s gone,” he snarled. “Happy?”
There was no response. Skoda hadn’t really expected one.
But the two stargulls were on the move again, floating rapidly back along the corridor in the direction from which Skoda and His Grace had come. “We were just down that way,” Skoda said.
Again, no answer. One of them paused and came back, passing Skoda and heading the other direction.
Skoda sighed. Terrific. Now follow-the-leader had turned into a guessing game? The stargull that had doubled back had stopped again and was floating close to the floor. Skoda frowned.
And then he understood. “Oh,” he muttered. “Right.” Walking over to the stargull, he stooped down and picked up His Grace’s universal key. It would probably be useful, and the Meerian wouldn’t be needing it any time soon. “Got it. Now where?”
#
The first stargull again took the lead, backtracking their earlier route until they reached the intersection where His Grace had thought Skoda would be turning right instead of left. This time, the stargull did indeed head off that direction. Another turn and corridor later, and they came to another hatch. His Grace’s universal key made quick work of the loc
k, and Skoda stepped through the opening.
He found himself in what appeared to be some kind of pump room. Squeezed up against a row of vertical pipes was a large lumpy object draped by a thick packing sheet.
The stargulls moved to the object and hovered over it. Wondering yet again what the hell this was all about, Skoda crossed the room and pulled off the sheet.
It was a Sue Ann chair. Not the kind usually carried aboard tunnelships, but a smaller and narrower version.
Seated in it, her eyes closed, her breathing all but nonexistent, was Chandra.
Skoda stared at her sagging face, feeling his eyes go wide. Impossible. Chandra was multiple light-years away, guiding a ship the Meerians couldn’t find anyone else to navigate for. Her body had to be out there with her. Didn’t it?
Of course it did. Without her disassociate twitching her body’s arms, the microswitches couldn’t control the ship.
Unless the Meerians had come up with something new? Could this be an experiment in a new navigation technique?
He snorted. Ridiculous. Experiments were done in labs, with white-coated scientists and techs milling around, not in pump rooms on obscure transfer stations.
So what was going on? What could Chandra do for the Meerians with her disassociate out there and her body in here?
A sudden chill ran up his back. No, he had that backwards. It wasn’t what Chandra could do for the Meerians. It was what the Meerians could do to her.
The same thing His Grace had tried to do to Skoda.
And suddenly, the whole thing made a horrible kind of sense.
He hissed out a curse. He’d been right the first time. The Meerians had gotten wind of the McDerrys’ new technique, knew it would threaten their monopoly on long-distance tunnelship travel, and were determined to stop it.
Only instead of just throwing the five of them into holding cells and letting them rot, His Grace had decided on a more permanent solution.
But getting away with five murders wasn’t a simple proposition, especially on a human-run station where the Meerians had only limited influence. That was why His Grace had pretended to get Chandra aboard a tunnelship, and had tried to do the same to Skoda. Once the paperwork indicated they were off Bashan Station, their deaths or disappearances could be explained or covered up in any number of ways.
Only Chandra had never left Bashan. Once she was aboard and her disassociate was floating out of the ship in the cup, His Grace had slipped her body into this mobile version and squirreled her away down here. Either someone else was actually guiding her ship or, more likely, it was on a ten light-year run that didn’t require a navigator.
So why hadn’t they already killed her?
Probably because His Grace had wanted to supervise her murder, just like he’d intended to deal personally with Skoda. Either he enjoyed that sort of thing, or he was hoping to minimize Meerian involvement and potential loose ends.
Fortunately for Chandra, Skoda dropping His Grace down a shaft had put a crimp in that plan.
But that breathing space wouldn’t last forever. There were undoubtedly at least a few other Meerians aboard the station, and Skoda had to get out of here before they found out what had happened to their boss. He had to find a ship, sneak aboard, and hope he could get off at the other end without getting caught.
Or instead of finding a ship…
He fingered the universal key. Access to the Pathfinder had supposedly been blocked, but there was a fair chance he could get to it anyway. The problem was that he didn’t know the first thing about flying a tunnelship.
The McDerrys knew. But there was no way he could get them out of their cells. Not alone. Certainly not against a bunch of trained cops.
But Chandra was right here, and she’d spent more time on the ship than Skoda had. Maybe she could figure out how to get it running. He flipped up the cover for the switch that would start the reanimation process.
And hesitated. That assumed, of course, that he could bring her back.
Earlier, he’d wondered how far apart a body and disassociate could be separated, and whether they would be able to find each other when the chair was shut off. If Chandra’s disassociate was out with the tunnelship, and she couldn’t find her way back over that much distance, flipping the switch would kill her.
And as far as the Meerians were concerned, getting him jailed for murder would be just as good a way of getting rid of him as knifing him in the back.
But he had no choice. He needed to get off Bashan Station, and Chandra was the only chance he had of doing that.
Holding his breath, he flipped the switch.
For a long moment nothing happened. Then the displays began to change, and he could see the first almost imperceptible signs of life coming back to Chandra’s limp body. He watched, tapping his fingertips impatiently on his thigh, realizing only then that he’d never seen the whole reassociation process from this end. Usually he was the one in the chair, and when it was time he just came back. The displays continued to change as her breathing, heartrate, and body temperature increased. One by one the lights changed from red to yellow to green—
With a sudden jerk, she was back.
“Oh, God,” she breathed. She opened her eyes to slits, closed them again. She swallowed a couple of times, then tried it again. Her eyes tracked across the ceiling, a frown creasing her forehead.
And then her gaze reached Skoda, and the eyes went wide. “Nathan?” she said, the word coming out barely above a whisper. “What are you doing here?”
“Trying to figure out what’s going on,” Skoda said. “I think the Meerians—”
“Wait a second,” she cut him off, taking a second look around the room. “Where am I? Where’s the ship?”
“You didn’t have a ship.”
“But I did,” she insisted. “I was right there, watching the star—”
“You may have been flying along, but you weren’t navigating it,” Skoda said. “I’ll tell you about it later, but right now we need to get off the station. Do you know how to get the Pathfinder up and running?”
For another couple of heartbeats she stared at him in confusion. Then, her eyes drifted away, again scanning the room. “Where are we?”
“I think it’s a pump room,” Skoda said. “Don’t worry, I can get us to the Pathfinder. The question is—”
“How did I get here?”
“His Grace probably got you in the chair, let you disassociate, then moved you to this thing,” Skoda said. “Where was your ship docked?”
“Bay Two,” she said, still looking and sounding confused.
“Bays One through Four should be about twenty meters right through there,” Skoda said, pointing at one of the pump room's walls. “The Pathfinder’s on the other side of the station, but I can get us there. The question is whether you can get it running.”
“Yes, I can do that,” Chandra said. “You really think we need to leave?”
“What, you think you’re here for your health?” he countered. “Fine—here’s the short version. I think the Meerians want you dead. I know they want me dead. So are you coming with me, or would you rather wait for them to come back?”
“I’m coming.” Bracing herself, she got her hands on the chair’s arms and pushed herself carefully to her feet. “Okay. Okay. How do we do this?”
“We follow our guides.” Skoda nodded at the two stargulls hovering in the corner. “We’re ready,” he added, gesturing toward the hatchway he’d come in through. “Take us to our ship.”
He had no idea whether or not they could hear him. But they’d brought him to Chandra, and it was clear they’d already figured out what he was likely to want next. One of the shapes disappeared through the wall while the other stayed behind until Skoda and a slightly wobbly Chandra reached the hatch. “So we’re following stargulls now?” Chandra asked.
“They brought me to you,” Skoda said. “I think we can assume they know what they’re doing.”
“Gre
at,” Chandra said with a grunt. “We’re following stargulls now.”
#
The whole way across the station Skoda had horrible premonitions of losing his way, running into a bunch of cops or murderous Meerians, or just missing a step and falling down a shaft where he would die in agony while Chandra escaped without him.
It was a new sensation, actually caring about—and fearing—what was going to happen to him. He hadn’t felt that way in a long time, and he wasn’t especially happy with the reawakened stress. The sooner he got out of here and found a place to hide, the better.
It was something of an anticlimax when they reached the Pathfinder without any encounters or problems at all.
No one was waiting for them in the entry area. His Grace’s universal key opened the extra lock that had been added to the boarding tube, and three minutes later they were inside with the hatch sealed behind them.
“Okay,” Skoda said as they reached the bridge. “What’s first?”
“We run start-up,” Chandra said, sitting down in the pilot’s chair. “Where are we going?”
“Some place a nice comfortable six or seven light-years away should do. That’ll give us time to figure out our next move.”
“What about Dr. McDerry and his family? Are they joining us?”
“No.” Skoda took a deep breath, trying to force calmness into his mind. It wasn’t a skill he’d needed in a long time, and it didn’t work very well. “We’ll talk about that later. Right now, we need to go.”
“But the McDerrys—”
“We need to go,“ Skoda cut her off. “As in, right now.”
She flinched back a little at the sudden fire in his voice. “Fine.” She pointed across the bridge. “That’s the nav computer. Turn it on, sort the listings by distance, and find something you like.”
Skoda expected trouble getting clearance to leave. Again, his fears played him false. A short conversation with the station’s traffic-control duty officer, and ten minutes later they were floating away from Bashan Station. Ten minutes after that, they were in the tunnel, heading for an unnamed star seven light-years away.
And then, as he’d promised, he told Chandra everything.