There was no way out of the room except the door to the lock. In the wall opposite the lock was a circular hole large enough for Lilo to put her head through. Not that she was about to do that. She sat in one of the chairs, making that wall her temporary "floor," and looked up at the other chair on the "ceiling." She didn't care for the effect.
She had not recognized the square pane of glass in the wall opposite her chair for what it was: a scanning, electron-gun, flat black-and-white television screen. Javelin must have blown the tube herself; Lilo was sure none existed outside of museums. Now it lit up with the life-sized face of a woman. She was attractive, though more mature than was fashionable. Lilo seldom saw anyone who kept her apparent age above twenty-five. Javelin looked more like the middle thirties. The picture was head only, and Lilo felt vaguely disappointed.
"So you want to charter a spaceship," Javelin said. "It's a novel request, I'll grant you that. I'm probably the only holehunter who might be intrigued by it. But I'm not intrigued enough, at this moment, to do business with you. Let's hear it, and it's going to have to be awfully good."
Lilo had been prepared for a long, circuitous discussion. The holehunters she had met seemed to operate that way. Javelin caught her a little off balance.
"Uh, could I ask one question? I thought you wanted me to come here so you could see me face-to-face. But it looks like I can't even get into your ship."
"This is face-to-face," Javelin said. "I've never bothered to install video transmission equipment. For me to see you, you had to come to this room. Now, where were you planning to go? And I'll give you another hint. Lay it on the line. Don't back into it; tell me exactly what you want."
"All right. I... that is, me, my wife, and... let me start over." Lilo was sweating. She had the uneasy feeling Javelin knew something about her, and it was obvious she wanted the truth. Maybe Quince had called and told her something.
"Me and two other people need to get out to the Hotline."
"Where on the Hotline? Are you talking about the transmitter at... 70 Ophiuchi? That would be quite a trip. But I suspect you mean you want to get to a point on the line that marks the area of strongest signal strength as it passes the Solar System."
"Exactly. Could you get us there?"
"Certainly. Why do you want to go?"
"I can't tell you that. I'm sorry. I just can't."
"That's all right. You're entitled to your little secrets." She looked thoughtful, and Lilo was worried. She sensed she was up against a shrewd person, possibly a very old one. There was no way to tell for sure; but she always got a strange feeling when she was around someone who was over three hundred.
"Where are you from? And what are the names of the other two who would be going?"
"Luna. Vaffa and Cathay. How old are you?" She had not meant to ask it.
"If I don't mind your asking?" She made a small smile. "Old enough to be the missing link in your family chain, Lilo. I was born in 1979, Old Style. My name at that time was Mary Lisa Bailey. I was the first woman on Mars, if you're interested. It was my only footnote in the history books."
Lilo was not sure if she was being lied to. She had run into extravagant claims of age before, and generally discounted them.
As far as she knew, there were no Earth-born people still alive. The Invasion had been five and a half centuries ago, after all, and biological science had been in its infancy. Still...
"That would make you—"
"The oldest living human. Don't spread it around. The last thing I need is to be discovered again as a human interest story on the news. By the way, I've decided to take you and your friends. When can you be ready to go?"
"You've... uh, let me see. This is going a little too fast for me." She never thought she'd say that to a hunter.
"Well, get thinking, woman. You don't need any shots or passports where we're going. I'll allow each of you thirty kilos of luggage. When can you be packed?"
"How about tomorrow? Don't you have to—"
"We burn in eighty-four-thousand standard seconds, then. Have your boarding passes ready. You do your own cooking and cleaning. I'm signing off now. There's some structural changes I'll have to make if you people are going to move around inside the ship. Walls to knock out, that sort of thing. You bring the champagne, okay?"
The screen went dark.
"I don't know why she caved in so fast," Lilo said. "Will you quit bothering me about it? Maybe she'll tell us." The three were approaching the vast bulk of the Cavorite in a scooter, a larger model that allowed them to carry their helmets. Each had a suit and a small suitcase.
Lilo had been replaying her conversation with Javelin all day long. She had told Vaffa that she was not worried about anything, that Javelin was just eccentric and probably didn't have a reason for taking them other than her own amusement.
But privately, Lilo was disturbed by several things, all of them so ephemeral she could barely define them. Of course there was the large question of why Javelin had agreed in the first place. The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced the deciding factor had been the mention of being from Luna, and the name of Vaffa. Something had happened just behind Javelin's impassive face when Lilo had said that.
Then there was the talk about the Hotline itself. Had there been a reason for Javelin being so specific about the destination? It had to be just her peculiar sense of humor, suggesting they might be considering a trip to 70 Ophiuchi. The deepest penetration by a human into interstellar space was no more than half a light-year; 70 Ophiuchi was seventeen lights away. But she had paused—hadn't she?—before mentioning the star.
The reception room was changed from her earlier visit. The wall opposite the lock had been knocked out, and the chairs were no longer bolted to the walls. The room was crowded now with odds and ends of antique furniture, so much that they could not see how to get to the other end.
Javelin appeared on the other side of the jumble. It was the first time any of them had seen her, but their view was impeded.
"Hello there," she called, peering at them through the furniture. "You'll have to help me load this stuff into the scooter before you get settled in. I won't be able to boost it with the three of you along." Then, quicker than the eye could follow, she was beside them.
"Holy Mother Earth, don't do that!" Vaffa seemed genuinely shaken. Lilo was a little dizzy herself. It was uncanny, beyond belief, how Javelin had threaded herself through the seemingly impassable maze.
Lilo looked at Javelin and saw a two-meter cylinder, swelling gently from the extremities to a fatter part in the middle, with a hand at each end. The cylinder was flexible at four points, which were her knee, hip, shoulder, and elbow. Growing from her "shoulder" at a slight angle from the rest of the cylinder was her head, with brown hair cut efficiently short. She wore a simple blue tube of cloth that left her arm and leg bare.
That was Javelin, with her arm held straight up. When she put her arm at her side, she looked like a jackknife.
What she had done was not a simple matter of getting rid of her right arm and left leg. Dispensing with two limbs—usually the legs—was common among spacers. But rib cage, right shoulder, and left hip had been redesigned with plastic structures replacing the bones. She had got rid of her left kidney, right lung, and a lot of intestine. Her elbow and knee had been reengineered with ball and socket joints.