“We’ve got to keep going!” she hissed. “I think I just heard someone plotting to blow up the station!”
A man’s head popped out from between two shops, looking both ways.
“That’s him!” Gina said.
“Hey!” the man shouted. “Wait!”
The two of them ran, bounding like long-legged gazelles in the low gravity and holding their hands over their heads to keep from hitting them on the conduits.
Ms. Tosca sat down at Lereesa’s table with a heartfelt sigh. “First day and I’m exhausted,” she said.
“I’m not surprised,” Lereesa said sympathetically. “Have a cup of coffee. I take it Russell is okay.”
Ms. Tosca nodded as she tapped in her order on the table’s keypad; it was one of a dozen on a flying cantilevered platform overlooking the concourse. The view of the teeming, brightly-dressed crowd was excellent, but if you moved your head quickly, it blurred a little, the sign of a privacy screen. The palm-sized crimson-black-orange genegineered butterflies avoided the field as well.
“I got him bunked down in one of the cubbies at the hospital, with a sleepyfield on him. He looked like he might sleep until it’s time for us to go home, even without it.”
“Hah! He’ll be up and raring to go by the time you get back,” the guide said. “Kids are amazingly resilient.”
“You said it.” Ms. Tosca looked around. “And he’ll be ready to use the suppressor net this time—no more Mr. Macho. Where are the others?”
“I saw Greg playing some game about twenty minutes ago. But I haven’t seen the girls since we got here. Which, given the kind of clothing shops around here, doesn’t surprise me.”
Ms. Tosca checked her watch. “I’m just feeling anxious. Field trips are always insane, but we’re not even on Earth. It adds a certain something. You know?” Her cup of coffee slid out of the table’s surface and she drew it toward her, blowing on the hot frothy surface; it gave off a faint pleasantly bitter odor, slightly touched with cinnamon.
“I can imagine.” Lereesa pointed. “Here they come now.”
The two girls approached the table at a near run, looking sweaty and gasping for breath; to Lereesa’s surprise they actually bumped into a few people on the way.
They were graceful enough before, she thought. Twenty-five wasn’t so far from fifteen that she couldn’t remember the horror of public embarrassment. Then she saw what swirled on the auburn-haired girl’s face.
“Omighod!” Gina managed to say between huge gulps of air. “Omighod!”
Omighod is right, Lereesa thought faintly, hearing a slight choked sound from the teacher beside her. Omighod!
Christine frowned at her friend and cast a nervous glance at their teacher.
Ms. Tosca stared at the blazing mandala tattoo as though hypnotized. Meanwhile, Gina poured out her story as best she could being so out of breath. Then she demanded, “What are we gonna do?”
Christine took in the fascinated horror in the two women’s expressions and slapped Gina on the top of the head; Laz had demonstrated how that would make it disappear.
“Ow!” Gina glared at her.
The tattoo was still visible, if no longer moving; Christine raised her hand again.
“I’ll do it,” Gina said and tapped her head lightly, dismissing the design.
The spell was broken; Ms. Tosca and the guide blinked and looked at one another.
“Explain,” the teacher demanded.
“I just did!” Gina half-whined. “Weren’t you paying attention? We’ve got to do something!”
“About the tattoo?” Ms. Tosea asked, frowning.
Christine rolled her eyes. “Gina thinks she heard someone planning to blow up the station.”
Lereesa sat up straighter. “That isn’t something to joke about,” she warned, her voice stern. It wasn’t. That sort of joke was a criminal offense. “A false alarm could get you heavily fined, possibly jailed, and banned from the station for life.”
“I’m not making this up!” Gina insisted. “One guy said this will blow the station wide open and the other guy was talking about how they’d all regret making fun of him!”
“Maybe we’d better report this,” Lereesa said. She activated her telephone implant with a twitch of her ear-cocking muscle.
“Security,” she said. Machines read her voiceprint and routed the call. “Possible 7-4. Repeat, possible 7-4.”
7-4 was breach of hull integrity, and it was about the dirtiest word on a station. Only fire on one of the ancient wooden ships of Earth had quite the same ring of horror.
“Do you think she heard?” Ray Cowper asked his friend Bob Masud, wiping sweat from his face with a palm.
“Ye-ah,” Bob said with doleful certainty, his voice oddly young. “That wall is paper-thin. The only way she couldn’t have heard is if she’s deaf.”
Ray could see that Bob didn’t understand. “She’ll tell!”
With a sigh Bob pushed himself away from the counter of his shop, a big-shouldered troll-like bronze figure that seemed to go with the racked machine parts in their cubbyholes.
“Okay, let’s go next door and find out who she was from Laz. Then, when you find her, you can ask her not to spread the word.” He smiled, showing thick yellow teeth he’d never bothered to have cosmeticized. “If you ask the right way, she’ll be real quiet. How’s that?”
Ray brushed his sleek black hair back and took a couple of anxious steps back and forth, a thin man who moved like a whippet. That showed the degree of his agitation; usually he had the distinctive stillness of a spaceman used to single-handing utility craft, the habit of those who spent much time in confined spaces crammed with delicate controls.
“Yeah,” he said after a moment. “Good idea. Let’s go.”
“Coupla high school kids on a field trip,” Laz said. “Why do ya wanna know?”
“Ray was telling me something confidential and he wants to ask the kid to keep it quiet, if she heard.”
“Yeah?” Laz’s face turned toward Ray. “What was it?”
“He finally got a positive reading,” Bob said.
Ray punched him in the arm. “What are you doing?”
“Look,” Bob said, rubbing his arm, “with Laz you’ve got to give to get. Okay?”
Ray scowled at Laz. The thickset man’s eyes had opened wide enough that they could easily be seen among the myriad flashing, rolling patterns, a trace of cold blue that did not waver.
“Are you serious?” Laz asked.
“As explosive decompression,” Bob said airily.
Ray cast him a nasty look.
Laz said, “So what exactly did you get?”
Looking trapped, Ray demanded, “You gotta swear not to tell anyone.”
Laz shrugged. “Sure, whatever.”
It wasn’t the firm commitment that Ray had been hoping for. But I figure it’s the best I’m going to get. He reached inside his coverall and withdrew a file; he bit his lips, then handed it over.
“Hard copy?” Laz said.
“You can’t take a disk in or out of that section,” Ray explained. “Nobody pays much attention to printout—you’d need a dolly and a lifter to get out hard copy of any really valuable data.”
“Hunh.” Then there was silence as the tattoo artist read the file. “My God,” he said when he was finished. He shook his head. “Bozhemoi.”
“Proof positive of intelligent alien life,” Bob said proudly. “I had pretty much the same reaction.”
“You can’t tell anybody,” Ray insisted.
“Why not? This is the biggest news since… ever!” Laz said.
“Yeah, and everybody is gonna know. But there’s somebody I’ve gotta tell first.”