Gray opened up his briefcase and took out a stack of transparencies, dossiers, and photographs. Garibaldi couldn’t help but watch the telepath arrange these materials in meticulous order. Then the telepath looked expectantly at Garibaldi and asked, “What have you found out?”
The security chief smiled smugly. “I haven’t got a stack of files, but I’ve got one name. And that should be enough.”
Gray pursed his lips. “The name is?”
The security chief smiled. “First, you tell me what you’ve got.”
“All of these files,” said Gray proudly, “are a record of the bombing at the Royal Tharsis Lodge on Mars.”
“Mars?” mused Garibaldi. “I thought we were trying to solve the bombing on B5?”
“But they are related. The Free Phobos group claimed responsibility for both bombings, and Mr. Bester and myself were present at both.”
“You saw the bombing on Mars?”
“Thankfully, at a distance,” answered Gray. “Although if it hadn’t have been for Mr. Bester’s quick reactions, both of us might have been casualties. Do you see why I think they’re related?”
“Yeah,” said Garibaldi thoughtfullly, “unless it’s some kind of conspiracy against the places themselves. What if somebody had a thing against this hotel on Mars, and they also had a thing against Babylon 5. So they picked the two places just to wreak havoc there. What I’m saying is, whoever the idiot was who picked B5 may have also had something to do with the bombing of the hotel.”
“No,” said Gray, chuckling. “That was me. I suggested Babylon 5.”
Garibaldi jerked up in his seat. “You brought them here!”
His hands were reaching for the telepath’s throat when a feminine computer voice made an announcement: “Welcome to Earth Transport Starfish, serving the routes between Babylon 5, Earth, and Centauri Prime. The first leg of our journey—Babylon 5 to Earth—will have a duration of forty-eight standard hours. Please settle back in your seats, and relax. A robotic cart with food and drink will appear in the center aisle after departure. You may signal for it by pushing the service button on your armrest. Credits are accepted. Enjoy your flight.”
Still seething, Garibaldi slumped back in his chair. Forty-eight hours was too long to sit next to a dead body, and that thought was the only thing that kept him from throttling Mr. Gray.
The little man looked embarrassed. “In retrospect, it was a mistake bringing the conference to B5. At the time, it seemed a logical choice. Removed from Mars, good security, a new place for most of them. I was very surprised when the violence followed us from Mars. This makes me believe even more strongly that the two bombings are related, and not just by the claims of a mystery group. I don’t see how we can solve the second bombing without starting with the first.”
Garibaldi muttered, “But Talia Winters was nowhere near Mars when the hotel bombing happened.”
“Precisely,” answered Gray, “which is an indication of her innocence, or the possibility that she was used as a dupe. Now tell me about that lead you have?”
Garibaldi smiled and closed his eyes. “When you show me something really good, I’ll show you mine.”
“Prepare for departure to Earth,” purred the synthesized voice.
Chapter 13
Talia screamed new nodules on her vocal cords as she felt the sudden sensation of weightlessness. At first she thought the ship had stopped until she heard the whistling of wind all around them. Deuce cut forth with a litany of swear words, and their voices were quickly drowned out by a rush of air against the Dumpster-like cargo container. They weren’t just weightless—they were plunging through planetary atmosphere! Massive gravity had its grip on them.
Then the naked bulb burst, showering them with glass fragments, and the air ventilators stopped working—and both of them were screaming! Talia hardly noticed the way the cargo boxes banged against her, threatening to crush her in the free-fall. She just spun around in the darkness, her body a rubber ball cascading from one wall into another, swiping Deuce and the boxes in the process.
When she realized she might as well die calmly, Talia wrapped her arms around her head, tucked her legs in, and tried to still her galloping heart. Then the floor of the container abruptly rose up and crashed into her! She lay sprawling, gasping for air, as the big crate righted itself and shifted around. Now she heard groanings and creakings of a weirder sort, and air roared around the exterior of their strange vehicle.
“Damn,” muttered Deuce in the darkness, “I wish they’d warn us before they cut us loose.”
Still gulping air, Talia wheezed, “You expected that?”
“Old smugglers’ trick. They plot their trajectory over the desert in North America and slow down just enough to push us out. With a parachute. It’s not very accurate, but the federales are none the wiser that they dropped something.”
Talia listened to the air whizzing past them, and she marveled at the fact that she was taking a parachute jump, albeit inside a box with bruises and welts all over her body. Blood was running through the hair on her scalp from a nasty cut.
“The chute is open?” she croaked.
“It had better be,” mused Deuce, “or we’ll be coyote dinner. But what if they would never find our bodies. We could be legends! Everyone would think we ran off together, you and me, and are living the good life on Betelgeuse 6.”
“Yeah,” said Talia with a gulp. “So where are we, anyway?” For all she knew, it could be Betelgeuse 6.
“You’ll see,” answered Deuce. “Brace yourself. I hear the wind changin’.”
She had a second or two to curl up in a ball before the giant crate hammered onto something solid. She caught her breath, thinking they were safe, when the Dumpster began to move again. This time it tilted radically to one side and slid down an incline like a house on skis. She tried to scream, but her voice was too raw; she could only stare into the darkness and feel the rattling bumps beneath her. They thudded to another abrupt stop, and this one held, at least until Talia could start breathing again.
“Are we alive?” she rasped.
“Yeah,” answered Deuce. “Cover your head—I’m gonna shoot my way out of here. Sometimes the metal starts to melt.”
She didn’t know Deuce very well, but she had learned to heed his warnings. Talia covered her head, but she kept one eye open to see what he was doing. She gasped when several plasm streaks shot through the darkness and punched holes in the lid of the container. Using the light from the discharge to aim, Deuce worked the smaller holes into a jagged hole about half a meter in diameter, or just big enough for a smallish person to climb out.
Talia squinted her eyes, expecting blinding sunlight to flood through the hole. Instead, soothing darkness greeted her eyes, plus the sight of nearly as many stars as a person saw in space. A city girl, she wasn’t sure what all this meant.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“I told you,” muttered Deuce, “you’re gonna die here real soon if you don’t stop asking me questions. If you’re going to be useful to me, you’ve just got to obey me, and that’s it.”
“Sorry,” she answered. Talia knew she had a secret weapon in her ability to scan him, but she had a feeling that Deuce had been scanned before and would know it. Behind the rough exterior was a cagey and cool intellect, and she had every reason to believe that Deuce was as ruthless as he claimed to be. He would kill her for a slight provocation. So she opted to lie low and pick the time and place to scan him, knowing she might only get one chance.
In the dim starlight, she could just see Deuce scrounging around in his crate, the one in which he had been smuggled aboard the methane-breathers’ ship. He finally pulled out a black briefcase and a dirty duffel bag. He opened the duffel bag and took out a crowbar, which he used to pound down the ragged edges of the hole he had shot open. His pounding turned the crate into a tin drum, and Talia had to cover her ears. Deuce finally stopped and took a flashlight out of his bag to study his handiwork.
“There,” he drawled, “at least we’ll have air. Want to go out and take a look around?”
Talia shook her head worriedly. She was beginning to feel that terrible panic she had felt upon waking up after the bombing—the shock, the disorientation, the feeling that she was stuck in a nightmare.
In fact, she told herself, she was stuck in a nightmare of the worst sort—reality. There was no waking up, so she might as well deal with it. She was in a shot-up Dumpster in the middle of the desert, chased by everyone, in the company of a murderer. No matter where they were, she was dependent upon this criminal for the time being, and it might get worse before it got better.