Sertian Princess (9 page)

"I wonder what that was all about."

"Maybe they're not interested in us any more, now that we're about to actually board the shuttle."

"Maybe."

They paid the cashier and left the restaurant.  To get to the departure lounge, they had to go down the moving stairs and right across the main reception hall.  The hall was crowded by this time with people meeting arriving passengers and others saying goodbye to the leavers, quite apart from the travellers themselves and the spaceport staff.

When it came, the feeling of danger struck suddenly, about a quarter of the way across the floor towards the departure lounge.

"Get down," he yelled at Marienna, shoving her off balance as he flung himself full length on the floor.  A split second later there was that familiar sizzling sound as a high power laser pulse hissed through the space he had just been occupying.  Then a number of things happened almost simultaneously.  There was a scream of agony from the man who had been walking immediately in front of him as he took the full power of the laser blast in his ankle, neatly severing his foot as though by amputation.

Then, as he started to roll over, he felt a thump in his back as Marienna twisting, catlike in the air, landed on top of him in an attempt to protect his body with hers.  The needle gun was already in her hand as she scanned the hall, searching for the hiding place of the sniper.  The security guards were starting to react to the situation and there appeared to be some commotion on the mezzanine level that they had just left.  She concentrated her attention on that area.

"Put that gun away," he ordered.  "Put your belt screen on but take no offensive action.  Not yet."

They both thumbed the micro switches on their belts and Marienna returned the needle gun to her sleeve.  A crowd had started to gather round both them and the injured man.  Cautiously they stood up, protected now both by their body screens and by the crowd of people pressing in. 

"Yes yes, we're fine.  It wasn't us he was firing at," he replied to a questioner.

The sound of more laser fire came from the mezzanine, followed by a yell as someone got burned.  He steered Marienna through the press of people and decided to start spreading some disinformation.

"I hear it was a terrorist group," he confidentially informed one elderly matron.  "The security guards got most of the group before they could open fire but one got through."

They moved further on round the crowd.

"Where's the man they were shooting at? No, not the poor soul they hit: the young chap with the jet black hair and the earring.  He was here a minute ago.  He's lucky to be alive."

Then again.  "I hear it was an underworld hit.  They say that the victim used to run one of the big operations on Andes before he retired.  Then he decided to make a comeback.  Looks as though somebody didn't want him back.  Funny though; you wouldn't think it to look at him."

Satisfied that he had started enough rumours to keep the investigating team busy for days, he edged Marienna towards the back of the crowd and then out of it.

"What happens now," she asked him.

"I don't know," he replied.  "It all depends on whether they hold the shuttle here while they take statements or whether they put an investigative officer on board.  One thing's for certain though.  Our cover's been well and truly blown."

"Do we go on?"

"Oh yes, we go on.  But our role will have to change slightly.  If we're already blown we might as well come right out into the open and try to draw some fire from Zara, Corin and the others. 

"Meanwhile, as there's bound to be a few minutes delay at least, we'd better organise a message for them at Andes, to warn them of what's happened here and tell them of the change of plan."

CHAPTER 9

Captain Justin F. Wainwright V was annoyed and it showed.  The officers and crew on the bridge of the Aldebaran, knew their captain well enough to give a wide berth to the area in front of the command position where he was pacing to and fro, and instead concentrated intently on whatever duties they were currently engaged.

The shuttle had been slightly over an hour late in lifting off from Floreat and, because of that he had been forced to alter the transit orbit in order to allow the shuttle to catch up.  This in turn meant that the jump co-ordinates which had been pre-calculated were now utterly useless, and the navigation computers were still working on the new co-ordinates.

He was two passengers short on the first class deck as one of them had been seriously wounded in some sort of terrorist attack at the spaceport and had been rushed to Floreat Military Hospital for emergency surgery.  The wife of the injured man, as far as could be determined in between the bouts of hysteria, had elected to stay with her husband and their luggage had to be unloaded from the shuttle and left behind at Floreat, thereby adding to the delay.

As if all that was not enough, he had been obliged to take a security man on board for the next stage to Andes in order to finish taking statements from any of the new passengers who may have witnessed the attack.  It was disrupting the routine of his ship, and he had an intense dislike of anything which disturbed the ship's routine.

Abruptly, he stopped pacing.  "Navigator, what the devil are you doing over there?  Where are those new co-ordinates?"

The Navigation Officer jumped as though stung.  "They're just coming through now, sir.  I was about to ask permission to launch the probe, sir, if that's all right."

"All right? Of course it's not all right.  It should have been done half an hour ago....  Well don't just stand there like a dummy.  Get on with it man."

As the Navigator hurried to give the necessary orders for launching the probe, Captain Wainwright turned on his Exec Officer.

"What have you done with that dammed detective fellow?  I trust you've hidden him away somewhere.  Can't have him disturbing the passengers with all those questions; the ship's routine has been upset enough as it is."

"The Security Investigator, sir.  I thought it would be best not to use one of the public rooms, so I've actually put him in your day cabin.  He's out of the way there and I left your steward and the purser to organise the people he wants to interview."

"Hmph.  My day cabin, you say.  Well I suppose you might consider that to be out of most people's way.  However...."

Before he could continue, the Duty Officer came across.  "Excuse me, sir.  The Purser says that the Welcome Party for the new passengers is about to start in the Forward Observation Lounge.  Shall I tell him that you're on your way?"

"Yes yes, very well.  Must try to keep things as normal as possible I suppose."

It was part of the Captain's routine that he always greeted the new passengers at the Welcome Party and an almost audible sigh of relief ran round the bridge as he left to perform the duty this time.

The Forward Observation Lounge of the Aldebaran was situated right in the bows of the ship.  It had its own gravity field generators to produce a field at right angles to that of the rest of the ship so that, to the passengers standing on the floor of the lounge, the direction of the ship's travel was straight above their heads.

In addition to the main field generators covering the lounge itself, each of the approach passageways had a contoured field generator to provide a smooth transition from the rest of the ship into the lounge.  To anybody walking down one of these passageways from the main ship into the observation lounge, the gravitational pull which they would feel would always be directly beneath their feet and unless they had been warned of the peculiar gravity fields, would be completely unaware of their reorientation.

The Forward Observation Lounge was one of the features of the Aldebaran of which Captain Wainwright was justifiably proud.  In his welcome address to the new passengers, he always took particular care to point out that they were, in fact, standing horizontally compared to the rest of the ship.  The tyros on board always rewarded him with a set of reactions to this announcement, ranging from blank stares of incomprehension, through various stages of amazed disbelief, to anxious grabs at the nearest solid support to prevent themselves from falling flat on their faces.

So accustomed was he to receiving a reaction of some sort, that he always felt a faint surge of irritation against those passengers who had either travelled on a liner of the Aldebaran's class before or who had been warned what to expect, and so did not react markedly to his announcement.  One such couple now stood slightly to one side of the main group and watched with apparent mild amusement, the reactions of their fellow embarkees.  He was obviously a businessman of some description, judging by the cut of his clothes, and she could be either his wife or his mistress.  Certainly they did not seem at all nonplussed by the concept of horizontal gravity and Captain Wainwright made a mental note to ask the purser about them.

David and Marienna were indeed watching the reactions of the other new passengers but the expression of mild amusement was somewhat contrived.  They were, in fact, observing with a much more serious intent.  On the reasonable hypothesis that the opposition had nobody of any significance already on board, then their team must also be joining at Floreat or Andes or both.  But in this case, with the exception only of themselves, the reactions of the passengers indicated that either they were all novice space travellers or their man had some passing ability as an actor.

"We're one short," Marienna suddenly whispered to him.  "There were 24 of us on the shuttle and there's only 23 here."

"You're right," he said, doing a quick count himself.  "Go over there and see if you can charm the name of the missing passenger out of the purser."

Marienna was back within five minutes.  "His name's Jorgensen.  Morten M. Jorgensen.  He's a commercial traveller en route to Quental.  Purser says he's about 50, tall, blond hair, powerfully built.  Staying in his cabin because of an upset stomach.  Purser thinks it's an ulcer."

"You came back too soon," he laughed.  "Another couple of minutes and the purser would have given you his social security number and the colour of his socks."

""He did: well the social security number anyway.  The purser took it off Jorgensen's travel documents.  I'm sorry, I'm afraid I forgot to ask about his socks."

He aimed a smack in the direction of her backside but Marienna dodged nimbly aside.

"What are we going to do about Jorgensen?" she asked him.

"First off, let's look on Khan's list and see what details he's given us.  Then we can send a message via Sam to run a double check on his ID."

***

Behind the Forward Observation Lounge the Aldebaran was organised in a more traditional style with 8 horizontal decks.  Only the top 3 decks were occupied by passengers with the rest being used for the crew, the main drive, the galleys and other service facilities.  The top two decks had viewing galleries running their entire length and on the top deck, the first class deck, the viewing gallery also had a transparent roof.

Each of the three main passenger decks had its own complex of shops, bars and restaurants, gymnasia and pools.  Roughly amidships and linking all three decks, was the Astrodome. 200 metres across and with a transparent viewing roof, the Astrodome was maintained at a gravity of 0.05g, making it ideal for all forms of low gravity sport.  Here it was possible to hire ultralite wings and glide up to the roof, where the most skilful could hang for several minutes, seeming to be floating in space with nothing between them and the stars.  Space tennis was another favourite pastime with the floor and walls of the court formed by force fields and with the whole court floating free and able to be tipped to any angle by the movements of the players.

The Aldebaran carried a crew of 1520 and had accommodation for 1086 passengers, over 99% of which was currently occupied.  To David and Marienna, sitting in the first class bar overlooking the Astrodome, it seemed as if most of those passengers were either in the Astrodome itself or in the surrounding bars.  They watched as two young women glided down to the landing area outside the bar and touched down neatly, folding their wings away.

"Is that them, David?  Which one is Princess Nerissa?"

"The one on the left, with the slightly lighter hair and the blue tunic."

"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.