Slowly, cautiously, with one eye on the bored woman sitting on the other side of the room, Pancho tapped out a set of instructions for the morning’s schedule. Then she got up, quietly left the control center, and returned the stealth suit to Ike Walton’s locker up in the storage area near the catacombs. She wondered if she’d ever need it again. Maybe I ought to keep it, she thought. But then Ike would discover it was gone, sooner or later, and that would raise a stink. Better to let it stay here and just hope Ike doesn’t change the combination on the lock.
Sudden panic hit Pancho. Elly was not in the locker, where she had left her. Pancho had thought that the krait would snooze away in the chilly air of the storage area; she had fed Elly a mouse only a day earlier, and that usually left the snake in a pleasantly drowsy state of digestion. But moving her to Walton’s locker must have disturbed Elly’s torpor. The snake had slithered through one of the air slits in the bottom of the locker door.
For several frantic minutes Pancho searched for the krait. She found her at last, curled on the floor in front of a heating vent. But when she tried to pick Elly up, the krait reared and hissed at her.
Pancho got down on both knees and frowned at the snake. “Don’t you go hissy on me,” she said sternly. “I know I disturbed your nap, but that’s no reason to get sore.”
The snake’s tongue flicked in and out, in and out.
“That’s right, take a good sniff. It’s me, and if you’ll just calm yourself down, I’ll wrap you around my nice warm ankle and we can get back home. Okay?”
Elly relaxed and sank back into a tight little coil of glittering blue. Pancho slowly extended her hand and when Elly didn’t react, she stroked the krait’s head gently with one finger.
“Come on, girl,” she crooned, “we’re gonna take you home where you can sleep nice and comfy.”
But not for long, Pancho added silently.
HUMPHRIES TRUST RESEARCH CENTER
Martin Humphries was awakened from a dream about Amanda by the insistent shrill of his personal phone.
It wasn’t a sexual dream. Strangely, when he dreamed of Amanda it was never sexual. They were on a yacht this time, sailing across a calm azure sea, standing up by the prow and watching dolphins leaping across the ship’s bow wave. He felt nervous on the water, unable to shake the fear of drowning even in this idyllic setting.
Amanda stood by the rail, wearing a lovely pale blue dress, the soft breeze tousling her hair. She gazed at him with sad eyes. “I’ll be leaving soon,” she said unhappily.
“You can’t leave me,” Humphries said to her. “I won’t let you leave.”
“I don’t want to, darling. But they’re forcing me to. I must go. I have no choice.”
“Who?” Humphries demanded. “Who’s forcing you?”
“You know who, dearest,” said Amanda. “You know. You’re even helping him.”
“It’s Randolph! He’s taking you away from me!”
“Yes,” Amanda said, her eyes pleading with him to help her. To save her.
And then the damned phone woke him up.
He sat up in his bed, blazingly angry. “Phone!” he called out. “On the art screen.”
A reproduction of a Picasso cubist nude disappeared to reveal the somber face of his security chief.
“Sorry to wake you, sir,” the man said, “but you said you wanted to be personally informed of Ms. Cunningham’s movements.”
With a glance at the digital clock on the nightstand, Humphries demanded, “Where’s she going at four in the fricking morning?”
“She’s apparently asleep in her room, sir, but—”
“Then what are you bothering me for?” Humphries bellowed.
The security man swallowed visibly. “Sir, her name has just appeared on a flight manifest.”
“Flight manifest?”
“Yessir. She and three other people are scheduled to go to the Star-power ship, up in orbit.”
“Now? Today?”
“Scheduled for eight this morning, sir.”
Four hours from now, Humphries realized. “And this flight manifest just came up on the launch schedule?”
“About an hour ago, sir.”