The security chief was lounging in the upper bunk of the cramped cabin, almost asleep, when his room-mate came home. Al announced his presence with a large burp, then began to rummage around in his luggage.
"Are you awake, Garibaldi?" he asked.
"Yeah. How was the mitlop?"
"Actually not as good as they serve on Homeworld, but what can you expect from a galley cook? I didn't tell the captain that, of course."
"Of course," said Garibaldi. He leaned on his elbow and looked over the edge of his bunk. "What are you looking for?"
"We still have about thirty hours to travel, don't we? As a rule, Narns only eat twice a day, so we have to have something to pass the time. Ah, here it is!"
He produced a small cardboard box. "My deck of cards. What's your game? Gin rummy? Bridge? Naw, you look like a poker player to me. I'm afraid I haven't got enough money to do much gambling, but maybe the Narns have some matchsticks."
Garibaldi frowned at his colorful companion. "I'm not going to regret bringing you along on this joyride, am I?"
Al grew thoughtful for a moment. "I have to be true to myself, Mr. Garibaldi. The Narns have a saying: 'You can only run so far from yourself.' I've always thought that was a way of saying that we have to face up to the consequences of our actions."
"What consequences do you have to face?" asked Garibaldi.
The portly man smiled and held up the deck of cards. "Shall we start with gin rummy?"
CHAPTER 9
The Narn shuttlecraft plunged through the atmosphere of Homeworld, heating up the cabin only a bit but causing a glorious light show outside the small porthole windows. Garibaldi leaned forward to get a better look. Despite an entire career spent on hostile planets and space stations, he was still a tourist when it came to space travel. He still gawked while Al Vernon, for instance, snoozed noisily across the aisle from him.
The shuttlecraft sat eight passengers in two single rows of four seats with an aisle between them, so essentially everyone sat alone. There were only the four of them, and Ivanova and Na'Toth sat in the front row, conversing in low tones. They were probably discussing how they should behave at the memorial service when they knew perfectly well that the deceased wasn't deceased. He guessed they would spend a lot of time looking grim and nodding somberly.
True to G'Kar's word, they hadn't seen him since their first day on the Narn vessel. The chief hoped that G'Kar had enough sense to stay on the K'sha Na'vas and not to go looking for trouble on Homeworld, even with his disguise. Garibaldi rubbed his hands nervously. This was only a day trip, he reminded himself, to attend the service, answer questions, and head back to the K'sha Na'vas for the night. Still, it felt funny to be descending upon an alien planet unarmed.
Suddenly, the flames outside the porthole vanished, and the shuttlecraft banked toward the surface, affording Garibaldi his first view of the Narn Homeworld. There wasn't a cloud anywhere in sight, and the sky had a washed out color, not the vibrant blue of Earth's sky. He wondered whether that had anything to do with the giant red sun that anchored the solar system.
The terrain that he could see had a rose-copper color, like the Black Hills gold his mother used to collect. He could see mountains, giant canyons, landing strips, and occasional patches and circles of green that he assumed were crops. As they swooped lower, he could make out grids of rectangular buildings and covered domes; smoke spewed into the air from what might have been a power plant or a smelter. Numerous low-flying aircraft dotted the sky.
Homeworld wasn't quite as barren as Mars, but it was hardly a flowering paradise. This was only one part of the planet, he told himself, but he knew Homeworld had very few bodies of water. Polar icecaps and underground streams supplied what little water the Narns needed. It wasn't like flying down to Earth, when all you could see were shimmering horizons of blue liquid. Garibaldi also reminded himself that the land had been stripped bare by the Centauri. They had withdrawn only after a war of attrition, when the Narn resistance had begun to cost them more than they were getting from the depleted resources and slave labor.
The shuttlecraft banked again and took a dive that left his stomach in a flux. Al Vernon blinked away beside him. "Are we there yet?" he muttered.
"I don't know," answered Garibaldi. "I don't know where we're going."
"Hekba City is quite a lovely place," said the merchant. "I believe it was G'Kar's hometown, although it's also one of the most hospitable cities for humans. You know, the temperatures on Homeworld can fluctuate wildly in the course of a single day."
Garibaldi lifted the heavy coat from his lap. "I know. But why should Hekba City be better than anyplace else?"
Al smiled. "You'll see. By the way, since you owe me five hundred thousand matchsticks, I expect you to buy me lunch."
"I think those cards of yours were marked," grumbled Garibaldi. Nevertheless, he owed Al something for making the days aboard the K'sha Na'vas pass fairly swiftly.
He stared out the porthole and could see that they were circling an immense canyon, and he feared for a moment that they were going to try to land inside it. At the last moment, the pilot veered toward a landing strip that skirted the rim, and he made a perfect three-point landing in the tiny craft.
"Hekba City," came a flat voice over the ship's intercom, "on the rim of Hekba Canyon."
"Is this shuttlecraft going to wait for us?" asked Garibaldi of no one in particular.
"No," answered Na'Toth. She showed him a small handheld device. "I have the codes to summon another one."
The hatch opened with a clank and a blast of scorching air flooded the cabin. Within milliseconds, Garibaldi was bathed in sweat, and his lungs felt as if they were on fire. He groaned out loud.
Ivanova rose slowly to her feet and stretched her arms. "Time to change into your speedo," she told Garibaldi.
"No kidding," he muttered. "Feels like a Swedish sauna."
"On the contrary," said Al Vernon, "this is quite pleasant." The portly man was dripping in sweat, but then he was always dripping in sweat. "Make sure you drink fluids whenever you have the chance."
Na'Toth was the first out of the craft, followed by Al Vernon, who seemed to be in an exuberant mood. Ivanova and Garibaldi staggered out after them. If the heat didn't take their breath away, the sight that greeted their eyes certainly did. A vast canyon yawned before them, and its walls were lined with a honeycomb of dwellings carved directly into the cliff. Some were the copper color of the rock, but most were painted in muted shades of red and rust. Garibaldi inched toward the rim of the canyon, but he couldn't see either the bottom or the end of the buildings.
"They go all the way to the bottom," said Na'Toth, as if reading his mind. "Our reptillian ancestors clung to the rocks, and so do we. At the bottom of Hekba Canyon is some of the most fertile farmland on the planet, with numerous hot pools and geysers."
"I doubt if I'll be going all the way to the bottom," said Garibaldi with a gulp.
Al Vernon chuckled. "You will want to go down there, once the cooling starts on the surface."
Garibaldi splashed the sweat from his brow. "The cooling can start anytime as far as I'm concerned."
"Come," said Na'Toth, leading the way toward a rock staircase with a wrought-iron railing. Al waddled eagerly after her, leaving Garibaldi and Ivanova to bring up the rear. Behind them, the shuttlecraft roared away, giving the security chief an uneasy feeling of being deserted.