"Looks more like just a sprain," I said, gently touching the swelling skin. "We'll try to find someone to look at it in the next few hours."
Abruptly, she stiffened. "Frank, there are more first-class passengers coming this way," she said tightly.
"Interesting," I said, handing her wrist back into her care again. "I think that's the first time the Modhri's bothered to keep any of his walkers in reserve. I guess he can learn."
"Never mind whether or not he can learn," Bayta bit out. "What are we going to do?"
"Don't worry, we're covered," I assured her, hefting the kwi. "Speaking of which." I turned around. "Rebekah? You can come out now."
There was a pause, followed by a slight shuffling noise as Rebekah peered cautiously from around one of the stacks. "He's down?"
"Down and out, and going to stay that way for quite a while," I confirmed.
She breathed a sigh of relief as she came over to us. "Thank you," she murmured.
"Thank you," I countered. "How'd you find our kwi, anyway?"
"It was in his pocket," she said, pointing to the first Juri I'd clobbered in the Modhri's initial surge through the vestibule.
"How did you know he had it?" Bayta asked.
"I didn't," Rebekah said. "I'd already searched the ones you knocked out just before they caught you." She shivered. "I'm just glad it wasn't on one of the ones still standing."
"That would have been a little tricky," I agreed. "Meanwhile, Bayta says there are more walkers on the way, which means it's time to think about blowing this pop stand. Any word on when that might be?"
"Five minutes," Rebekah said. "There's a crosshatch just ahead."
"A crosshatch?" Bayta echoed, frowning.
"A section of spiral-laid tracks that allow a Quadrail to quickly switch from one track to another," I explained.
"Yes, I know what it is," Bayta said, a little tartly. "What do they have to do with anything?"
"Because we need the tender that's currently on Track Fifteen to come over to our track so it can pick us up," I told her. "The tender that's been paralleling us for the past two days, by the way."
Bayta's eyes flicked back toward the rear of the train with sudden understanding. "You put Rebekah's coral aboard a tender?"
"Specifically, the tender the Spiders had on tap when you got snatched at Jurskala," I said. "This way we could keep it close enough for the Modhri to sense it and think it was aboard the train, but at the same time keep it completely and permanently out of his reach."
"Yes," Bayta murmured, staring off into space. "Yes, I can sense the Spiders aboard now." She focused on me again. "There is still one problem, though."
"Actually, it's covered," I said. "Three stacks back from the front along the left-hand wall is a crate with three oxygen masks and tanks in it."
"That'll only solve the first part of the problem," Bayta cautioned.
"Trust me," I soothed. "You and Rebekah head to the rear door while I get the oxygen masks. As soon as I've done that—whoa," I interrupted myself. "What have we here?"
One of the Jurian walkers, the first one I'd stunned a few minutes ago, was moving. Not very much, more like a person shifting around in a dream than someone clearing the decks for action.
But with a six-hour kwi jolt in him, he shouldn't have been moving at all.
"Something's wrong," Bayta murmured.
"Agreed," I said. I double-checked the setting and shot the walker again, and the dream-like movements stopped.
But for how long? "Maybe it's losing its effectiveness," I said, peering at the kwi. "It is several hundred years old, after all."
"I sure hope that's not it," Bayta said, wincing. "Maybe you'd better give them all another shot, just to be on the safe side. Rebekah and I can get the oxygen masks."
"Okay, if you think your wrist can handle it."
"It can," Bayta assured me. "Three stacks back from the front?"
"Right," I said. "Top crate on the stack, green stripe pattern around the label. I've already loosened the lid."
Bayta nodded and headed off, Rebekah trailing along behind her. I fired another kwi bolt into the next walker in line, watching the two women out of the corner of my eye.
As soon as they were gone, I knelt down beside the one I'd just zapped and started going through his pockets.
He didn't have what I was looking for. Neither did the second walker I checked.
The third one did.
I was back on my feet, systematically zapping everything in sight, when Bayta and Rebekah returned with the oxygen masks. "They're here," Bayta announced as she handed me my mask. "As soon as we're ready, they'll open the roof to release the rear door's pressure lock."
I grimaced. Depressurizing the car would of course kill all the walkers lying asleep around us. By most of the galaxy's legal codes, not to mention most of the galaxy's ethical standards, that constituted murder.
But we had no choice. There was no other way for us to escape, and there wasn't nearly enough time for us to first drag all these sleeping bodies back into the other baggage car. Not with more walkers on the way.
Besides, even if we did, the Modhri probably wouldn't let them live anyway. By their very nature walkers had to be kept ignorant of their role, and there was no way in hell that even the most persuasive rationalization would explain away the blank spots or the broken bones. Either he would have their polyp colonies suicide, or he would permanently take them over and turn them into soldiers. The first was death. The second was worse.
But all the cold logic in the universe didn't make it any easier to take. Collateral damage, unavoidable or not, was still collateral damage.
We were waiting by the rear door, our oxygen masks in place, when there was a creaking from above us and the roof began to open.
For a moment we felt some buffeting as the car's air rushed out into the near-vacuum of the Tube. I felt my ears pop; from Rebekah's sudden twitch, I guessed hers had done the same. Then the mild windstorm dropped away, and the roof closed over us again, and Bayta touched the door release.
We were facing the gleaming silver nose of a Quadrail engine, holding position about half a meter back from the rear of our train. Straddling the gap, with two of his seven legs braced on each of the two vehicles, was a dot-marked stationmaster Spider. Behind him, stretched out in a line all the way back across the top of the engine, were four of the slightly smaller conductors.
Bayta didn't hesitate. She stepped forward, holding her arms slightly away from her sides. The stationmaster got two of his remaining three legs under her arms, holding the third ready in case of trouble, and lifted her across the gap. He passed her off to the next Spider in line, then swung his arms back to Rebekah and me.
I nudged Rebekah and gestured. What I could see of her expression through her mask wasn't very happy, and her grip on my hand as she stepped to the edge of the short baggage-car platform was anything but gentle. But at least she went without having to be pushed. The Spider lifted her up and over, and then it was my turn.
And as he lifted me up, I took a good look at his dot pattern.
The trip over the speed-blurred tracks below us was mercifully short. A few seconds later, the first Spider handed me off to the next in line, and I was bucket-brigaded across to the rear of the engine.
Two more Spiders were waiting there, hanging on to rings set into the side of the first of the tender's three passenger cars. They got their legs under my arms and lifted me over the coupling, maneuvering me through the open door on the side. Bayta and Rebekah were already inside, and as the Spider withdrew his legs the door irised shut and I heard the faint hiss as the car was repressurized.
I watched the gauge on the inside of my mask, wincing as my eardrums again struggled to adjust to the pressure change. The gauge reached Quadrail standard, and I closed the valve and took off the mask.