Judit drew a deep breath. “Then … perhaps it’s for the best that things have turned out as they have. Don’t you think. Gill?”
“Could be,” Gill agreed. “After all, if even we can’t find her, what chance is there that these mysterious enemies will do so?”
“CAN’T FIND HER?” Rafik echoed in shock and outrage. “What-how-Shaitan-begotten spawn of a cretin, you can’t have lost the girl on a lunar base this size!”
“Rafik, you really must make an effort not to pick up your uncles habits of speech,” Judit reprimanded him.
At the same time Gill said heavily, “Not on the lunar base. Off it. She and Calum have done a bunk. With a little help from certain other people,” he added, giving Judit a dirty look. She flushed but made no attempt to defend herself.
And in chorus, the two of them explained to Rafik how a series of delays in the preparation of the AccSecki had so frustrated Calum and Acorna that they not only took off before the ship was ready but failed to follow the navigation plan Calum had filed, so that by the time their getaway was discovered, it was impossible to follow them.
“Impossible?” Rafik repeated, raising his straight dark brows a fraction of an inch.
Gill gestured helplessly. “You know Calum. He’s not only a brilliant mathematician, but a devious s.o.b. There are innumerable ways to navigate space from here to the Coma Berenices quadrant, and trust Calum not to take the most logical-the one in his filed nav plan-nor yet the least logical, because/ we checked that already. There’s absolutely no way to predict -what path he will have taken.”
Rafik would have disputed that, and had already asked for star maps on several scales to be displayed, but his study of the possible routes to Coma Berenices was interrupted by the announcement of a visitor for Acorna.
Not being privy to the shortcuts Rafik had used, nor anywhere near as quick on her feet as he was, Karina had taken quite a while longer than Rafik to reach Delszaki Li’s headquarters. That she was there at all was tribute not so much to her increasingly confident statement that Acorna had invited her as to the Linyaari ability to soothe and calm the minds of those physically close to them. Neeva and Melireenya had risked showing themselves to the guards on duty at the docking station just long enough to project calming thoughts of “I haven’t seen anything unusual” and “This is a friend of Acorna’s.”
Once she entered the interstices of the lunar base, though, Karina had to make her own way without the help of the Linyaari projections. She had done remarkably well already, ascertaining from “casual” conversations with the people she encountered that either Acorna was to be found with Delszaki Li, or that gentleman would be able to tell her where she was. No one saw any reason to question Karina’s statement that she was a friend of Acorna s and an expected guest; if she had not been able to show some valid reason for visiting Maganos, she would not have been allowed past the docking facility, would she? And her statement that she had impulsively come by private transport rather than by the regularly scheduled shuttle both explained why she hadn’t been met and gave her an aura of wealth and luxury that helped to smother any doubts. But here, in the anterooms to Delszaki Li’s private quarters, she met her match.
The secretary-receptionist who guarded Mr. Li’s privacy knew Rafik by sight and had passed him through without question. But Karina he did NOT know-and he was as disinclined to admit somebody who was not on the list of accepted visitors as Karina was to give up so close to her goal. The resulting altercation drew first Judit’s attention, then Rafik’s, and finally Gill’s. They opened the iris door in time to hear Karina “explaining” with some heat that she and Acorna had been in correspondence for some time, that they were closely linked on the spiritual plane, and that it was now their destiny and the will of the stars that they should also be together on the physical plane.