James was outside the lifeboat when the hatch had closed, by which time Eliot Ness was already inside. James was gone, dead and gone, dead and gone and forgotten.
“You should put something on,” said Eliot Ness.
“I haven’t got any clothes,” Kiru told him. “I haven’t got anything. I was a prisoner on a convict ship. That was a convict ship we left, wasn’t it?”
“Depends on your perspective.”
“From where I was, there wasn’t much of a perspective. Were you locked up?”
“Depends on your definition of ‘locked up.’ ”
“If you weren’t a prisoner, you must have been working on the ship.”
“Working? Me! You think I do manual labour?”
“How should I know? Are you going to tell me what you were doing on board?”
“You wouldn’t believe me.”
She wondered how he knew.
“As I told you, Kiru, we’re in this together. We’ve got to be friends.”
She looked around again for a weapon.
“Or at least not enemies,” Eliot Ness added. He stepped back, reached up to the bulkhead, and part of the wall slid away. Leaning inside, he took something out, threw it to her. “Not very flattering, but they’ll fit almost every known race in the galaxy.”
Kiru unfolded what he’d given her. It felt warm to the touch but looked like a huge plastal bag.
“Aren’t you going to put it on?” he asked.
“Not with you watching.”
“But you’re already naked.”
“So?”
Eliot Ness shrugged, then turned his back.
Kiru couldn’t work out where to begin. There didn’t seem to be any sleeves or legs or neck. The garment clung to her as she examined it. When she tried to pull away, it moulded itself to her skin. She twisted to free herself but instead became more entangled. The thing slid up, around, over, and suddenly she was no longer naked.
It was looser than a bodysuit, but even more comfortable, supporting her where she felt weak, warming her where she was cool. She was completely covered from toe to head, with only her face and hands exposed.
“Um,” she said. “Um, um, um, um, ummmmmm.”
“It’s called a symsuit,” said Eliot Ness, as he took out another and unbuttoned his jacket.
“You’re already dressed. Why do you need one?”
“Because I prefer survival to annihilation. The suits will slow our metabolism and allow us to live longer.”
Kiru didn’t want to turn her back on him, but neither did she want to watch him undress. As he took off his clothes, she looked away.
“What are they made of?” she asked, running her fingers across the strange material. It had felt cold and hard at first; now it was warm and soft.
“That’s like asking what are we made of.”
“You mean they’re… alive?”
“It’s better than wearing something dead. People used to do that, did you know? They wore dead animals. Leather and fur.”
“This is some kind of animal ? Some kind of alien animal? Is it dangerous? Could it eat me?”
“More like a plant than an animal. It won’t eat you, but you could eat it. They’re dormant until they come into contact with a living creature, then they start to interact, working symbiotically with your body.”
Kiru glanced around. Eliot Ness was dressed in his own colourless symsuit. Only his face remained visible, his long white hair covered by the fabric. His hair wasn’t that colour because of his age. He was old, of course. Everyone was old to Kiru. But he wasn’t old old, really old, not the way the boss had pretended to be.
“Shall we celebrate our survival by having something to eat?” he said. “With only two of us on board, we don’t have to ration ourselves. For a while.”
“Now my chores begin, you mean?” said Kiru.
“I’ll do it,” said Eliot Ness.
In a very brief time, his whole manner toward her had changed. He must have been as surprised as Kiru was to find that there were two of them in the escape capsule, and the way he’d first spoken to her showed he had been as wary of her as she was of him.
He found the food, flasheated two meals, made two seats and a table appear out of the walls, and they ate.
“Don’t think of this as food,” he said. “It’s fuel to ensure our survival.”
“Tastes fine to me.” The meal was far better than most of what she’d eaten during her life. “How do you know where everything is? How come you can pilot this ship? Where are we going?”
“The eternal questions. Where are we going? Where do we come from? What’s the purpose of life?”
“I’ll settle for the first two. Where did we come from? No, where did you come from? Why were you on that ship? Were you being taken to Clink?”
“Clink is for common criminals. I am neither.”
Kiru was about to tell him that she’d been on Clink, but decided it was best not to say anything about herself yet.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Escape pods are designed to head for the nearest inhabited world. That isn’t necessarily where I want to go, so I reprogrammed the controls.”
“What if I want to go there?”
“Hideaway? That’s nearest. You want to go back?”
“No, not there.”
“Where do you want to go?”
It made no difference, and Kiru shrugged. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“You won’t have heard of it.”
“Where?”
He told her, and she hadn’t heard of it. Not that it made any difference because she didn’t believe him. They were probably heading somewhere else, to some other planet she’d also never heard of.
“If you weren’t being taken to Clink,” Kiru asked, “what were you doing on that ship?”
“What makes you think it was heading for Clink?”
“That’s where we came from.”
“We?”
“Ah…” said Kiru.
“You mean the convicts who broke free from Arazon and then attacked Hideaway?”
Kiru nodded. “I was with the space pirates, but not with them. If you know what I mean.”
“You thought you were on an excursion trip for jailbirds? A relaxing holiday on Hideaway, then back to the prison planet?”
“Okay, I was guessing.” Kiru shrugged. “I was captured, locked up, I’d no idea where I was or where I was going. But you seem to know.”
Eliot Ness nodded. “I thought I knew. Then I discovered what was really happening.” He paused, shaking his head in disbelief. “So I made my excuses and left. How did you work out what was going on?”
Kiru hadn’t worked out what was going on. And she still didn’t know. She shrugged again because it could mean anything.
“You’re a clever girl, Kiru.”
No one had ever called her that before. In fact, very few people had called her anything. She’d spent most of her life being ignored. When she was a kid no one took any notice of her, and as she’d grown up, no one ever listened to what she had to say. Eliot Ness, however, had no alternative. As well as not talking about herself, she should say as little as possible about anything, or else he’d soon discover she wasn’t as clever as he thought.
“Lucky for us the ship had escape pods. Even luckier, this one is still functional.” Eliot Ness glanced around. “So far.”
“Don’t all ships have lifeboats?”
“No. And probably not ships with a suicide circuit.”
Kiru stared at him. “It was no accident? The ship was deliberately destroyed?”
“Yes. We were on board a time bomb.”
Despite her symsuit, Kiru shivered, and her voice was a whisper as she said, “We were meant to die?”
“Most people are meant to die,” said Eliot Ness. “But I have other plans.”