“Try them.”
Nodon hunched slightly before the keypad and began tapping numbers. Fuchs watched with gathering impatience. One of those numbers should override the security code, he told himself. Humphries has to allow Selene emergency crews inside his private preserve, he’s got to. Not even he can refuse to allow emergency workers to enter his area. That’s written into Selene’s basic safety regulations.
The hatch suddenly gave off a metallic click. In the stillness of the empty corridor it sounded like a gunshot.
“That’s it!” Fuchs hissed. He set a meaty hand against the cold steel of the hatch and pushed. It opened slowly, silently. A gust of soft, warm air brushed past him as the hatch swung all the way open.
Fuchs gaped at what he saw. A huge expanse filled with brilliant flowers, warm artificial sunlight glowing from the lamps high overhead, the very air heavy with scents he hadn’t smelled since he’d left Earth. And trees! Tall, stately, spreading their leafy branches like arms open to embrace him.
“It’s a paradise,” Amarjagal whispered, her eyes wide with awe. Nodon and Sanja stood beside her, mouths agape. Fuchs felt tears welling up.
With an angry shake of his head he growled, “Come on. Their security alarms must be going off. Their cameras are watching us.”
He started up the brick path that wound through beds of bright colorful flowers, heading for the mansion they could see through the trees.
Paradise, Fuchs thought. But this paradise has armed men guarding it, and they’ll be coming out to stop us in a few minutes.
Nobuhiko pushed up the sleeve of his green surgical gown and looked at his watch. Turning to the chief of the interrogation team, he demanded, “Well, where is she? I’ve been waiting for more than half an hour.”
The man’s mask was slightly askew. He pushed back his shower-cap hat, revealing a line pressed into his high forehead by the cap’s elastic band.
“Tsavo was to bring her here,” he said.
“They should be here by now,” said Nobuhiko.
The man hesitated. “Perhaps they are…”
“They are what?”
With a shrug, the man said, “They spent a night together back at Selene, when they first met. Perhaps they are in bed together now.”
One of the gowned and masked women tittered softly.
Nobuhiko was not amused. “Send someone to find them. At once.”
Her travel bag clutched under one arm, Pancho walked briskly along the corridor, trying to remember the route she had followed when Tsavo brought her down to this level. Cripes, she thought, it was only an hour or two ago but I’m not sure of which way we came. My memory’s shot to hell.
She thought about the stealth suit she had used so many years ago to sneak into Humphries’s mansion unseen. I could use a cloak of invisibility right about now, she told herself as she glanced up at the corridor’s ceiling, searching for surveillance cameras. She couldn’t see any, but she knew that didn’t mean there weren’t any watching.
She spotted a pair of metal doors at the end of the corridor. The elevator! Pancho sprinted to it and leaned on the button set into the wall.
Now we’ll find out if they’re watching me. If the elevator’s working, it means they don’t know I’m on the loose.
The elevator doors slid smoothly open and Pancho stepped into the cab. It wasn’t until the doors shut again and the elevator started accelerating upwards that she thought it might be a trap. Jeeps! They could have an army of guards waiting for me up at the top level.
TORCH SHIP ELSINORE
An ordinary passenger riding out to the rock rats’ habitat at Ceres would have been quickly bored in the cramped confines of the torch ship. Elsinore was accelerating at one-sixth g, so that its sole passenger would feel comfortable at the familiar lunar level of gravity. But like all the ships that plied between the Moon and the Belt, Elsinore was built for fast, efficient travel, not for tourist luxuries. There was no entertainment aboard except the videos broadcast from Selene or Earth. Meals were served in the neatly appointed but decidedly small galley.