On the edge of the Shver she saw three others of their race, their aspect menacing. Two were armed with pellet projectile weapons.
"Welcome committee at ninety degrees," Jellico said. "Must have radioed ahead."
Rael nodded. At first she could barely get up when the restraints snapped away, but then she realized it wasn’t the weakening aftermath of an incredible adrenaline rush, but the 1.6 gees.
"Let’s be quick," she said as the three Shver moved toward them with elephantine grace.
Rael and Jellico toiled as fast as they could toward an exit, and Rael saw that Jellico was familiar with high gee, too: despite their haste he planted each foot deliberately, knees slightly bent to cushion vulnerable knee cartilage.
She was beginning to feel the strain in her thighs when the captain turned aside into a narrow corridor that debouched into a lift station.
There was no one there, and no one in the pod that answered their summons.
With deep, twinned sighs they stood and watched as the crowd of Shver, arriving too late, looked up at them. The pod accelerated, back toward the Spin Axis and the Queen.
For a moment neither said anything.
"The napuir fruit!" she gasped finally.
Jellico’s smile stretched into a grin, and suddenly he was laughing too. "The candy," he said huskily. "Those arms and legs." He motioned in a windmill shape, and Rael bent double.
"The Toa... th-the Toas-s-s..." She couldn’t get the words out.
They laughed harder, reviewing in gasped one-word exclamations their wild trip through the habitat. Each time Rael thought she was going to stop, she’d remember the howls, curses, gibbering wails of dismay, and gusted into new mirth.
They laughed together. They were alone, or she felt they were alone, walled off from the rest of the universe by the experience they had shared, by their hilarity, by the attraction that had never been so strong.
Still laughing, she chanced to look up, to find his gray eyes—alight with merriment—gazing back at her. And then his expression changed. It was nothing dramatic, like in the vids. A slight widening of the eyes, and a catch of the breath, but she felt his physical awareness ringing through muscle and bones, and watched him feel it in his turn, and before either of them could speak, he took a step, and she reached with a hand, and their lips met in a kiss.
It was an awkward first kiss, half awry, both of them still breathing fast, but the singing of her nerves promised much better. For a moment she leaned against his powerful body, and the kiss deepened—and suddenly he broke away. His eyes were now dark, with passion, with confusion, with wariness.
"We’re not safe." he started. His voice was hoarse; he stopped, and faint color ridged his cheekbones.
"Right," she said, striving for balance. "You know ’em?" she asked, when she had caught her breath.
He shook his head. "Not the one or two I saw. You?"
"Nothing from my past," she said. And, glad to have something to look at, she said, "Here we are—change point."
In silence they stepped out of the pod and moved a ways up the concourse toward the maglev that would take them to the docks. Rael had never felt so attuned to Jellico; she listened to the light sound of his breathing, watched the little frown between his eyes, and felt the swiftness of his thoughts.
"Damn," he said presently, indicating the maglev with his chin. "Unless this was random—which I doubt—they know who we are. Which means they know where we dock."
"Which means they might be waiting when we do debark," she said.
Jellico’s mouth was grim again. "We chased halfway up into the light zone and I never saw a Monitor. Convenient, isn’t it?"
"For whom?" she countered lightly. "We did enough damage to guarantee complaints against us."
He gave his head a shake. "At first I wanted to get their attention, but now. it’s hard not to see some kind of conspiracy against us, at least passively abetted by the authorities." He squinted up at the alien tangle of cylindrical buildings, all reflecting light in a way never seen on any planet. The weirdness of the place had never seemed so profound. "Well. You ready for another round?" he asked as they walked back onto the maglev concourse. "Or shall we take the long way back to the docks?"
She shook her head. "As you said, they seem to know who we are, so why bother? We can debark almost in sight of the Queen, certainly in earshot. If they are waiting for us, maybe we’ll learn something this way." She indicated the maglev.
A few seconds later another pod drew up with a hiss, and they went inside and dropped onto a bench. No one was in their immediate vicinity.
Jellico looked about him. He was back in control now, his emotions shut away as effectively as ever. "So you don’t think we’re in danger either?"
She sighed. "They’re either astoundingly rotten shots or else there’s something else going on."
"Most obvious reason is that they don’t want to risk a capital crime—like using blasters. Pellets are nasty, but they’re legal here, and they’re also not fatal. If they wanted to kill us, there are plenty of other illegal weapons that won’t punch holes in the habitat walls."
"If they really wanted us dead, they’d hire the Deathguard," Rael said.
"The Shver outcasts?" Jellico’s brows lifted. "I take it they are nonpartisan about their trade?"
"Whoever pays them the most," Rael said. "Those people after us weren’t trained in that kind of thing, or we wouldn’t have gotten as far as we did. And those pellets wouldn’t kill, just make us helpless."
"They might have wanted to get hold of us," Jellico said. "Though why grab us, I can’t guess. We don’t know anything that anyone would want, and as for the usual grab-and-ransom, we’ve got to be the most cash-strapped Traders in the entire habitat."
"Mmmm, just as well they didn’t succeed, no matter what they wanted," Rael said. "There are places on Exchange I’d just as soon not visit, not without weapons of my own and a crew of heavies to back me up."
Jellico nodded. "On the other hand, it could be they didn’t want to hit us at all, but scare us."
"Into leaving Exchange?" she said.
"And abandoning whatever it is someone doesn’t want us finding out."
Rael sighed. "You don’t want to go to the authorities?"
Jellico ran his hand through his short hair, and grimaced slightly. "As I said, I don’t ordinarily have much patience with those who see conspiracies everywhere. I suppose we can go see Ross again. but I think I want to try solving this ourselves. Or at least find out more data as ammunition when we do contact the authorities."
The pod stopped then, and a tall Shver stepped in, sitting on the opposite bench with the great care of heavy-grav beings in light grav.
Rael felt the tension in Jellico, and was not sorry to have the opportunity for talk taken away. She wanted very badly to get back to the Queen, to retire to her cabin and think things through. And, she reflected wryly, unless she missed her guess, the captain probably felt just the same.
When they finally reached their destination, Rael braced herself for anything—but no one at all was on the concourse, and no one appeared. Unmolested, they reached the docks and soon were on board the Queen.
She was about to go straight to her cabin when Mura called, "Captain?"
His voice was angry. Alarm flooded through Rael; she saw Jellico’s jaw harden.
They walked into the galley, to see half the crew gathered there. But they weren’t what drew her attention.
Gripped in Dane Thorson’s big hands was a small, greenish-blue, raggedly clad being with a webbed crest, now sadly fallen, and thin webbed fingers and toes.