She waited frantically for the sounds of sleep to arise. If only she knew whether he snored. At least she knew where the bunk was and she could recognize the rolling protest of one when she heard it. There was a long breath and then a yawn. She waited through a gathering silence, punctuated by the bunk’s soft protest against a changed position or a shifted leg.
The door of the luggage compartment opened easily at the pressure of her finger, and her craning neck–
There was a definite human sound that broke off sharply.
Arcadia solidified. Silence! Still silence!
She tried to poke her eyes outside the door without moving her head and failed. The head followed the eyes.
Homir Munn was awake, of course – reading in bed, bathed in the soft, unspreading bed light, staring into the darkness with wide eyes, and groping one hand stealthily under the pillow.
Arcadia’s head moved sharply back of itself. Then, the light went out entirely and Munn’s voice said with shaky sharpness, “I’ve got a blaster, and I’m shooting, by the Galaxy–”
And Arcadia wailed, “It’s only me. Don’t shoot.”
Remarkable what a fragile flower romance is. A gun with a nervous operator behind it can spoil the whole thing.
The light was back on – all over the ship – and Munn was sitting up in bed. The somewhat grizzled hair on his thin chest and the sparse one-day growth on his chin lent him an entirely fallacious appearance of disreputability.
Arcadia stepped out, yanking at her metallene jacket which was supposed to be guaranteed wrinkleproof.
After a wild moment in which he almost jumped out of bed, but remembered, and instead yanked the sheet up to his shoulders, Munn gargled, “W … wha … what–”
He was completely incomprehensible.
Arcadia said meekly, “Would you excuse me for a minute? I’ve got to wash my hands.” She knew the geography of the vessel, and slipped away quickly. When she returned, with her courage oozing back, Homir Munn was standing before her with a faded bathrobe on the outside and a brilliant fury on the inside.
“What the black holes of Space are you d … doing aboard this ship? H … how did you get on here? What do you th … think I’m supposed to do with you? What’s going on here?”
He might have asked questions indefinitely, but Arcadia interrupted sweetly, “I just wanted to come along, Uncle Homir.”
“Why? I’m not going anywhere?”
“You’re going to Kalgan for information about the Second Foundation.”
And Munn let out a wild howl and collapsed completely. For one horrified moment, Arcadia thought he would have hysterics or beat his head against the wall. He was still holding the blaster and her stomach grew ice-cold as she watched it.
“Watch out– Take it easy–” was all she could think of to say.
But he struggled back to relative normality and threw the blaster on to the bunk with a force that should have set it off and blown a hole through the ship’s hull.
“How did you get on?” he asked slowly, as though gripping each word with his teeth very carefully to prevent it from trembling before letting it out.
“It was easy. I just came into the hangar with my suitcase, and said, ‘Mr. Munn’s baggage!’ and the man in charge just waved his thumb without even looking up.”
“I’ll have to take you back, you know,” said Homir, and there was a sudden wild glee within him at the thought. By Space, this wasn’t his fault.
“You can’t,” said Arcadia, calmly, “it would attract attention.”
“What?”
“You know. The whole purpose of your going to Kalgan was because it was natural for you to go and ask for permission to look into the Mule’s records. And you’ve got to be so natural that you’re to attract no attention at all. If you go back with a girl stowaway, it might even get into the tele-news reports.”
“Where did you g … get those notions about Kalgan? These … uh … childish–” He was far too flippant for conviction, of course, even to one who knew less than did Arcadia.