Ten minutes after they departed, a Shiban city police van pulled up on the same spot and disgorged a squad of troopers, who ran clattering in through the apartment-block doors.
The flier landed in a parking area at the rear of some buildings by a traffic highway, where a number of other flying vehicles and ground vehicles were standing. With few words being said, the party disembarked and crossed the lot to a larger craft, which looked like a kind of flying van: windowless, except for the nose compartment, and painted pink and white with garish signs on the sides in Jevlenese.
They boarded through a center door to find half the interior fitted with seats, and in less than a minute they were airborne once again.
Nixie said something to Murray, who gawked in surprise, and they went into a succession of questions and answers.
“What’s it all about?” Hunt asked. –
“These guys must believe in going equipped for the job,” Murray replied. “This thing we’re in is a funeral truck.”
“You’re joking! It looks more like a tour bus for a rock band.”
“It belongs to one of the weirdo sects. It seems they do all their mourning when somebody gets born—on account of all the hassles and shit that the guy’s gonna have to put up with in life. But when he croaks at the end of it all, that’s something to celebrate. So they make this a party wagon. I guess it takes all kinds, eh?”
They landed again after about the same total flight time as the journey out, suggesting that they were back in Shiban. Sure enough, when they climbed out Hunt saw that they were on a wide platform projecting out from the rounded end of a structure high over the city, facing one of the wide traffic corridors receding away between cliffs of buildings. Above, the structure that they were on met what could be seen to be a solid canopy of artificial sky, probably penetrating through it to form one of the towers visible outside. Far below, the buildings and terraces merged together into the structures of the lower city.
They entered a set of doors and crossed a drab, bare hall of crumbling floor and scratched gray walls. It felt like the kind of place that had gotten tired of existing a long time earlier, and was waiting only to fall apart. A slow, creaking elevator carried them down for what seemed an interminable descent, and they came out in a dark, carpeted hallway that smelled old and musty. From there they went down a flight of stairs to a gallery with corridors and halls going off in several directions. One of the corridors brought them to a doorway. Scirio spoke briefly via a microphone to someone, and the door opened. Inside was a narrow passage that opened into another lined by doors on both sides. The surroundings seemed familiar, but the party moved through without slackening pace, and they were entering the lounge with the bar before Hunt realized that they were back in the Gondola Club, where they had come in search of Baumer.
But this time the bar stools and tables were empty and the place was cleared of people, except for a tall, gangly-limbed man with gray hair and beard, wearing a brown checked suit, who was sitting at one of the tables with two others who looked like khena. He stood up as the newcomers entered, and Scirio launched into a dialogue while he was still crossing the room. The man in the suit seemed agitated, and spoke in a nervous voice, confining himself to answering Scirio’s questions.
“He sounds like their technical guy,” Murray muttered to Hunt. “They’re talking about i-space links and Thurien transmission codes—something like that, anyhow.” Hunt nodded but said nothing, realizing with a jolt that they could be much closer to their goal than he had dared hope.
The engineer’s name was Keshen. When he had finished talking to Scirio, he led the way over to another door and around a corner at the rear of the lounge. Hunt, Murray, and Nixie hesitated. Scirio turned and waved for them to follow.