Investments (15 page)

He felt a little shiver of delight as he contemplated the perfection of the device. And, as he waited to see whether his plan for
Titan
would work, he thought about what Eggfont would do next.

*

There was a faint grey mist that swirled through the air, an insistent electric humming in his ears. His fingers and toes tingled as if he’d rubbed them with sandpaper. A furry animal seemed to have got lodged partway down his throat.

With a convulsive heave of his chest he tried to expel the object in his throat. He made several attempts before he realized that the animal was in fact his tongue. His mouth was absolutely dry and his tongue scraped painfully against the roof of his mouth.

He closed his mouth and tried to summon saliva. He worked his jaw and throat muscles for several long moments before he managed to produce a little moisture.

Having relieved some of his discomfort he then he tried to work out where he was. The grey mist had darkened, and the humming sound had largely faded. He could feel nothing, not even air moving against his skin. It was as if he’d been packed in cotton up to his neck.

He touched himself just to assure himself that he was still there. He felt the familiar uniform tunic, the medal of the Golden Orb at his neck, and he bent— knelt?— to feel his legs in their trousers, with the shoes still on his feet. There was something that bobbed and interfered with his right hand, and he took hold of it and realized it was his hand flash, attached to his wrist with an elastic lanyard.

At this point he came to the realization that he was in free fall. He was in darkness and in free fall and probably he had never left Chee Station, he was floating somewhere in one of its huge overdesigned open spaces.

A jolt of adrenaline hit Martinez then, a sudden hot burning along as his nerves as he remembered the pulsar. If he’d never left the station, then he was still vulnerable to the burning x-rays.

He raised his left forearm before his face and whispered, past his painfully dry tongue and through dry lips.

“Display: show time.”

Yellow numerals flashed onto Martinez’ sleeve, pulsing in time to the speeding of the seconds. Through the grey fog Martinez tried to fit to the numbers to the chronology of the last days, and with a chill of horror he realized that the pulsar’s beam should have struck nearly five minutes before.

Without willing it he began patting himself again, as if in search of a wound. Partway through the action he realized its absurdity, but he couldn’t make himself stop until he had assured himself, again, that his parts were all where they were supposed to be.

He didn’t feel as if he’d been blasted through with x-rays. He felt strange, with the grey fog drifting past his eyes and the deep electric hum a distant presence in his ears, but he didn’t feel ill.

He tried to remember what might have happened to put him in this situation. He recalled leaving Command with Lord Ehl and the last of the station crew. He couldn’t remember anything that happened after that.

Then, with a song of relief that chorused in his bones, he remembered Severin. Severin must have succeeded in his effort to switch off the pulsar.

Good old Severin! he thought wildly. Severin had come through! It made Martinez want to sing the “Congratulations” round from
Lord Fizz Takes a Holiday.

Instead he wiped his mouth and tried to summon saliva into his mouth. The yellow seconds ticked by in his sleeve display. He still couldn’t remember how he got here.

He wondered if there had been an accident, but he thought not. An accident would have resulted in more damage, not least to him.

Martinez remembered the hand flash hanging off his wrist, and he reached for it and switched it on, pointing it above his head. The beam vanished into the darkness without encountering anything. He panned the beam down, and at a downward angle the beam found a wall painted a dark grey. Martinez tracked the beam along the wall until he encountered a large sliding cargo door, on which were painted in white the numerals 7-03. Which meant Warehouse Three, Docking Bay Seven.

Bay Seven was where
Kayenta
had been docked. Apparently he’d got as far as
Kayenta
’s berth before . . . before what?

Perhaps the yacht had left early and stranded him on the station. But in that case, it seemed odd that Martinez had no memory of it.

The cargo door, Martinez saw, had handholds by it. There wasn’t a lot of point in hanging in midair and waiting for something to happen. Perhaps he ought to get to somewhere where he could
make
something happen.

He swam awkwardly in midair until he had his back to the cargo door, then he took off a shoe and hurled it as hard as he could in the opposite direction.

Equal and opposite reaction, though unfortunately the masses were unequal. Martinez began drifting very slowly toward the cargo door while pitching backwards in long, slow circles.

Several seconds later, he heard a clang as the shoe hit something on the other side of the cargo bay.

The act of throwing his shoe left him panting and out of breath. Something was clearly wrong with him physically. It was going to take him a while to reach the cargo door, and while he slowly drifted and tumbled he thought about how he had got here, and why he couldn’t remember.

He had been drugged, he thought. He had been drugged and only the fact of his veins being full of narcotics had prevented him from realizing it earlier.

As he tumbled, his hair flying in front of his eyes, he felt a sudden chill as he realized what had happened.

He’d been drugged and left to be killed by the pulsar, but the person who had left him to die hadn’t known that
Titan
was going to shut off the pulsar, and Martinez had survived.

Which meant that as soon as the person who had left him to die worked out that the x-ray beam hadn’t hit the station, he was going to have to come back and finish the job.

Martinez almost wrenched his neck as his head darted around, staring into the darkness for his attacker. Who could be lurking on the station, and loading his gun or his med injector even now.

The wall rotated closer and Martinez reached out to grab one of the handholds by door 7-03. The drug almost made him miss, but he touched it with his fingertips and that slowed his rotation slightly, so that when he hit the wall and bounced he was able to make another grab for a different handhold and brought himself to a stop.

It occurred to him that his hand flash was very possibly making a target of him, so he turned it off and tried to think where he needed to go next.

The person who had tried to kill him could have hidden easily on the nearly-deserted station, and then from hiding to strike as Martinez moved from the elevator to
Kayenta.
Wherever the assassin had hidden, though, there was only place the assassin would be
now,
and that was in shielded Ring Command, where he’d be safe from the pulsar. Martinez should definitely avoid Ring Command.

The problem was that Ring Command had all he’d need to establish contact with the outside world: control of all communications systems, the antennae, and the power supply to start everything up.

Martinez tried to think where else he might find communication gear, and then sudden light dazzled his eyes.

Across the docking bay, the floodlights at one of the ports had just lit. A ship had docked, and was powering up the airlock through its electrical connection.

Kayenta
! Martinez felt his heart give a leap.
Kayenta
had come to rescue him!

He gathered his legs under him, feet pressed against the wall, ready to spring to the airlock and greet his rescuers the second they came through the door.

And then he hesitated. There was something about the sight of the distant airlock, surrounded by its glowing lights, that caused him unease.

Why?
Why was someone trying to kill him?

He hadn’t stopped to think about that before.

He had found out that the Meridian Company had been committing massive fraud. That might be worth killing over, he supposed, though assassination seemed an immoderate response.

It was so uncivilized. They might at least have tried to bribe him first.

Kayenta,
in any case, wasn’t a Meridian Company ship; it belonged to the Chee Company, owned principally by the Martinez family. Lady Marcella Zykov, a Chee company executive and a near relation of the Martinez clan, was on board and in charge.

But there were Meridian Company personnel on board, to inspect and help restart the station. Some of them might have been given orders concerning Martinez and his health.

Perhaps, Martinez thought, he shouldn’t jump straight to
Kayenta.
Perhaps he should first hide, and then see who left the airlock, and if they had large firearms.

He glanced around the huge space and found no place to hide. To his left was a corridor, rather distant, that led to Ring Command— and he didn’t want to go that way, in case an assassin was heading in the other direction. To the right was a huge bulkhead door that led to another cargo bay, but that had been closed and it would require station power to open it.

That left one or another of the warehouse spaces. 7-03 was as good as any.

The cargo door would require a power assist, but each warehouse space also had a personnel hatch, and the hatches were extremely well balanced so that weightless people could use them. Martinez pushed toward it and snagged a handhold. The hatch opened in complete silence. Martinez slipped in feet-first, then drew the hatch partly shut, so that he still had a view of
Kayenta
’s airlock.

The air in the warehouse was close and has an aromatic scent, something like cardamom. Martinez looked over the interior with his hand flash and saw it was packed with standardized shipping containers, all in bright primary colors, stacked atop one another and strapped down to keep them from drifting. Because the weightless conditions permitted it, the containers were strapped to all six surfaces, including those he might arbitrarily designate as walls and ceiling. There was very little open space in the room, only a straight square tunnel that stretched to the back and that would permit a containers to be maneuvered in and out.

No real place to hide, he realized. He should have chosen another storage room.

Martinez was considering a jump to the next warehouse when he heard the airlock doors open and knew it was too late. He peered over the sill of the hatch and strained to see past the glare of the floodlights. There were at least three figures in the airlock, and from their barrel torsos and squat, powerful legs, Martinez knew the first two for Torminel.

An alarm rang in Martinez’ mind. He didn’t like the sight of those Torminel, and even though he couldn’t remember why, he knew very well that he didn’t want to show himself now.

“Lord Inspector?” one of the Torminel called, lisping the words past her fangs. “Lord Inspector, are you there?”

The sound echoed and died away in the vast empty dockyard.

The Torminel turned on bright flashlights and began shining them across the big room. Martinez remembered how well their huge eyes could see in the darkness and shrank from the hatch sill.

“Look!” the other Torminel called. “It’s his shoe!”

While the Torminel were inspecting the mystery of the shoe that was floating by itself in the vast room, Martinez drew the hatch shut and locked it down. Unfortunately the manual lock mechanism could be worked from the outside, but at least it when it began to move it would provide a bit of warning.

What Martinez really needed was a weapon.

He panned along the wall with his hand flash and saw a small locker on the wall. He drifted toward it and opened it.

In the locker were spare light globes, a pad of stick-on labels for shipping containers, a pair of fire extinguishers, pairs of work gloves adapted for different species, large reels of strapping for holding down crates and containers, and tough plastic clamps for tying down the strapping. But what chiefly attracted Martinez’ attention were the two shiny aluminum pry bars, each as long as his leg, that were used to wedge the containers into their proper places. They were octagonal in shape until the business end, where they narrowed into flat, slightly curved blades.

Martinez reached for one and drew it from the clips that held it in place. It was lighter than it looked. He held the bar under his arm and drew out a reel of strapping, thinking that perhaps he could use it to tie down the hatch mechanism and keep anyone from opening the door.

He closed the locker and drifted back to the hatch. He studied the closing mechanism and then the reel of tape.

Martinez did his best, tangling the mechanism in a web of tape. The work left him out of breath, and he panted for air while he gripped one of the handholds next to the door. Once he’d caught his breath he moved to one end of the door, so that he wouldn’t be caught like a fly in a bottle once the door opened. He tucked his feet into the handgrips at the top of the door— the metal chilled his stockinged foot— and he took a few experimental swipes with the pry bar. It cut the air with a particularly nasty hiss. With his feet planted firmly he could be confident in doing a heartening amount of damage if he needed to.