No Place Like Home (3 page)

I agreed, hiding a grin. Jerry, an aerospace engineer at Daedalus Flight Service, had been on Ellfive for all of eighteen months and was returning from his first R&R downstairs. He’d been quarantined at LEO Base for ten days for displaying cold symptoms at transfer, and the food at LEO Base had never been anything more than edible. Jerry, whose nature and mass were normally Dionysian in character, was today looking lean, hungry, and definitely unhappy. “Who is he, Jerry, do you know?”

“New rent-a-cop, somebody said,” Jerry replied.

“Oh, no,” I said.

“What?”

“It couldn’t be,” I said to myself.

“Probably not,” Jerry said. “It couldn’t be what?”

The zerogee cheechako being towed briskly into the hangar at the end of a boathook couldn’t possibly be the new security supervisor. Helen hadn’t found a replacement yet or she would have notified me, I assured myself, and then the lead longshoreman gave the all-clear. I forgot the cheechako and Jerry and grabbed handholds straight across the floor to the barrel lock. I pulled myself in one side and rolled out the other into the waiting arms of Simon and Charlie. Simon grabbed me by the nape of the neck, brought me right side up, and said deliberately in his basso profundo voice, “Good to see you again, Star.” We shook hands in formal greeting. It was about as formal as he got, but Simon always shook hands. “How was the trip?”

“The usual.”

Simon examined me closely. “You are not quite your usual bubbling and effervescent Valkyrie self, Star.”

“Who is?” I said, annoyed.

“Too much welcome?” Charlie asked, regarding me with a sapient eye.

“Nine Rotary Club luncheons, twelve Chamber of Commerce dinners, fourteen pep rallies, and, so help me, a parade. With fireworks,” I added when Charlie snickered. “But that should be the last of them. Helen promised me no more goodwill tours before commissioning. Please God, let’s get down to where I can swallow.”

Dana Stabenow was born in Anchorage and raised on 75-foot fish tender in the Gulf of Alaska. She knew there was a warmer, drier job out there somewhere and after having a grand old time working in the Prudhoe Bay oilfields on the North Slope of Alaska, making an obscene amount of money and going to Hawaii a lot, found it in writing.

Her first crime fiction novel,
A Cold Day for Murder
, won an Edgar award, her first thriller,
Blindfold Game
, hit the
New York Times
bestseller list, and her twenty-eighth novel and nineteenth Kate Shugak novel,
Restless in the Grave
, will be released in February 2012.

Find her on the web at
stabenow.com
.

A Cold Day for Murder
A Fatal Thaw
Dead in the Water
A Cold-Blooded Business
Play with Fire
Blood Will Tell
Breakup
Killing Grounds
Hunter’s Moon
Midnight Come Again
The Singing of the Dead
A Fine and Bitter Snow
A Grave Denied
A Taint in the Blood
A Deeper Sleep
Whisper to the Blood
A Night Too Dark
Though Not Dead
Restless in the Grave (2012)

Fire and Ice
So Sure of Death
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Better to Rest

Second Star
A Handful of Stars
Red Planet Run

Blindfold Game
Prepared for Rage

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