“We won’t land on Nevasa or Grantholm if the war breaks out,” Dewhurst said. “They’ll pick nearby neutrals and offload passengers there.”
He sounded calm enough, but what started as a sip drained most of the whiskey from his glass. “Anyway,” he added forcefully, “I think it’s all overblown. They’ll back off, you’ll see. Both sides.”
“I said,” Reed snapped, “that I didn’t want to talk about it!”
“I wonder,” Wade said, “if you gentlemen are familiar with the beach walkers of Ain al-Mahdi?”
The others looked at him. “The legend, you mean?” said Da Silva. “Beautiful women who, shall we say, make friends with men at night on the beach, but they drink them down to a hollow skin?”
“Ah, well,” Wade said. “I thought it was a legend too. Still, it’s a big universe, isn’t it? We shouldn’t be surprised when we learn that it’s a little stranger than we’d expected.”
“On Ain al-Mahdi?” Reed said. “Look, buddy, my company’s based me on Ain going on fifteen years now. Beach walkers and flats, they’re the sort of thing you hear about in sailors’ bars—period.”
“I should have thought that was where you’d expect to hear about them,” Belgeddes commented. “From transients. If there were such a thing as a beach walker, it wouldn’t prey on locals, surely?”
Wade pursed his lips in consideration. “Flats,” he said. “They look like a pool of shadow, but when you step on them—”
He brought his hands together with a clop of sound.
“—like that?”
“That’s the story, all right,” Reed said over his gin. “But it’s always the friend of a friend of a sailor who’s seen it, not anybody you meet.”
“Unless Mr. Wade has met one—as I rather think he may have done,” said Dewhurst.
“Hmm,” said Belgeddes. “You never mentioned that to me, Dickie.”
“That’s because I’ve never seen such a creature,” Wade said stiffly. He pursed his lips. “Unlike the beach walker, which I met—well, I can’t tell you how long ago it was.” He glanced at Reed. “Certainly before your time, dear fellow. They’ve probably gone the way of the dodo by now.”
“Of the unicorn, I would have said,” Dewhurst murmured into his drink, but he spoke in a low enough voice that Wade could pretend not to hear.
“Well, tell us about it, Wade,” said Da Silva. “Or—would you care for a refill?”
Wade clinked the ice in his glass. Scotch whiskey was only a hint of amber in the meltwater. “Thank you, friend,” he said as he slid the glass toward Da Silva. “Embarrassing situation, as you can imagine.”
“Could have happened to any of us, Dickie,” said Belgeddes.
“Tarek’s Bay wasn’t but a few fishing shacks and the warehouses, back then,” Wade said. “Ain orbited its primary, and the storage bladders from the gas-mining dipper ships orbited Ain, like moons of the moon. That was before the place became primarily a trans-shipment point. I don’t suppose any of the dipper ships still operate, eh?”
He cocked an eyebrow at Reed.
“There’s still gas mining,” the younger man said, “but now it’s geosynchronous siphons and the storage is in primary orbit, not Ain’s.” He looked uneasily aware that by validating the background of Wade’s story, he would seem to lend weight to the story itself—even in his own mind.
“Ah, that’s a pity,” Wade said. “On nights when the primary was illuminated, the gas bladders drifted across the face of her like soap bubbles, each of them reflecting a view of Ain itself down to the surface. I used to lie out on the beach at night, looking upward and imagining . . . well, I was young then. You know how young men are: romantics.”
“Not a lot of romance about Tarek’s Bay in the early days,” Dewhurst interjected. “Not from the old-timers I’ve talked to.”
“Also,” said Reed, “the beach is gravel.”
“No, not much romance at all,” Wade agreed without dropping a stitch. “That’s why I went out alone with nothing but an air mattress for company.”
He took a sip from the refilled glass Da Silva brought him from the autobar. “And you can imagine how surprised I was when one night a young lady spoke to me.”