“Say, that sounds great! I should have given myself that job. Taking a picnic lunch too?”
There was an awkward lag before Chandra replied. “Matt, we’re wasting our time here, and we’ve had our fill of it. How about pulling us out?”
“I don’t think we want to do anything like that, Chan.” There was a pause. “I’ll tell you what I do want to do though. We’re having a conference tomorrow of the whole exploration team, and I need you two to be in on it. Have the orcs bring you out to the landing spot at ten hundred local time tomorrow and we’ll pick you up. That’s the same spot we landed at before. At ten hundred hours. We’ll have you back there twenty-four hours later.”
“Sounds great, all but the last part. For all the good we’re doing here, you’d have done better to leave us back on New Home.”
“Okay, that’s enough of that.” Matthew sounded distinctly annoyed. “We all agreed that Constanta would be Contact Prime. You’ll just have to stay with it down there until they trust you. You’ll feel different about it then. So no more argument, okay?”
Anne Marie looked perplexedly at Chandra.
“Okay, Matt, you’re the boss,” he said. “Tomorrow at ten hundred hours local time and back the next day.”
“Good.” Matthew sounded mollified. “And Chan, no need to pack. Just leave your stuff there. But bring your radio with you so one of the technicians can go over it. It fades a bit now and then.”
“Sure. Leave our personal gear and just bring the radio. Anything else, or should I sign off?”
“That’s all for now. And no use checking in again unless you have something special to report. We’ll see you tomorrow at ten hundred hours. And sorry I blew my top. Have a good time on the beach today, both of you.”
“Sure thing. Chan over and out.”
“Accepted. Phaeacia out.”
Chandra stood up. “Huh! What did you think of that?”
“I don’t know what to think of it. It was Malt’s voice, but he certainly didn’t sound like himself. He sounded—out of character. Do you suppose something’s wrong up there and he doesn’t want to tell us?”
Chandra pursed his lips and looked thoughtfully at his nails. “I’ll tell you what, and I’ll bet ten credits I’m right. He doesn’t plan to bring us back here once he’s gotten us away, and he doesn’t want us to know it.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” she objected. “Why wouldn’t he want us to know? He knows we’d be overjoyed to hear it.”
Chandra shrugged. “I’ve played cards with him; he’s the world’s most transparent faker. Think about it: The big hearty opening; that told me right away that he was going to withhold something from us. Then the big emphasis on coming back. His reaction when I suggested we shouldn’t. You know what I think? I think he’s decided these people are dangerous to us and he wants us out of here. And he thinks if we don’t know it we’ll act normal so the orcs won’t suspect anything.”
Anne Marie looked doubtful. “Well, I guess we’ll find out for sure tomorrow. He did sound strange, there’s no doubt about that.”
Draco clapped his palms and the slave moved smoothly to refill his cup. reacting with neither expression nor thought to his ill humor. The consul had resented having to make a critical decision on nothing more than suspicion and supposition. The star man supposed they wouldn’t return.
Well, he should know his commander.
And apparently Ahmed believed him. He’d proposed they not take the couple back to the sky chariot, but hold them hostage. They would threaten to torture them if a sky chariot, with weapons, wasn’t given to them. They would promise to return the hostages as soon as they had delivery and had been shown how to drive it and use its weapons.
What particularly bothered Draco was that Ahmed wanted to meet the chariot when it landed tomorrow. That could prove dangerous and seemed totally unnecessary; they could use the hostage’s “radio” to make their demands. But Ahmed had said he’d go alone if need be. He’d had the gall to imply that Draco might be afraid, and insisted it was the only way to know the star men’s thoughts when they learned the situation. The reasoning was trivial—they didn’t need to know their thoughts—and the Sudanese knew damned well he’d see through it.