Seconds passed while she inched closer to the inner hatch. The empty interior darkness of the hold was cold and black, what she could see of it, except for the dull red glow of the places he had touched.
Their pattern made plain what he was after—the space where the book’s Styrene case had rested was a cold, empty pit.
“I’m going to make the assumption that you’re willing to listen,” he said.
She had him located now, but still not as precisely as she wanted. He was lurking just inside the airlock. That sound—that was probably his hand, maybe his hip, rubbing lightly against the shell of the hold, no more than a foot or two from her head. Keep him talking, talking and moving in the way that talking entrains unconsciously, keep him talking a half a minute more and she would know where to grab. . . .
“I needed to look at this book before you let it off the ship,” he said. “You said it was here, but I needed to know if the book you saw was the real book. You’re not an expert. I am.”
She inched closer, breathing in and breathing out in long, slow, controlled inhalations and exhalations that no ear but her own could hear. His breath, because she was so close to him, was a visible cloud of warmth, pulsing slowly in the dark air beyond the lock.
A foot away in the darkness he was explaining himself to her. “Someone with time and a lot of money to spend could, just conceivably, have counterfeited a book from the early 20th century. They would have had to find craftsmen who could set metal type, to begin with—printers who were willing to print a book in the old way, line by line, from a text a third of a million words long. They would have had to cast the type—it would take months, if the person had the skills—unless the original type was still in existence and they could get hold of it. They would have had to find old paper of the right sort—or reproduce it, watermarks and all, and make it look old. Then the bindings, the marbled slipcase, the leather covers . . . think of the craftsmanship, the incredible skill!”
In his passion for the thing he was describing, that peculiar old book, he seemed momentarily to have forgotten about Sparta.
She hesitated, then spoke in a whisper that would carry only to him. “I’m listening.” No answer. Perhaps he was startled by her closeness. “Why so important to look at it now? Why not wait?” she whispered.
“Because the real book may still be aboard.”
Had he hoped to find the real book first? Or was all this an elaborate alibi because she’d already caught him with the real book in his hands?
“Sondra Sylvester flew to Washington, then back to London three weeks before she boarded Helios,” she said.
“She made other trips from France to England. What was she doing there?”
“She was in Oxford. She had a book made.” His voice was bolder now, darker, like old hardwood. “I have it in my hand.”
A shutter clicked in her mind, a wall descended, a decision was made. She slipped her hands over the rim of the hatch and pulled hard, darting into the hold. She brought herself up against the steel racks opposite the hatch and turned to face him. He was a glowing blob of red in the darkness, beside the open hatch. The thing in his hand was . . . a book— —only a book.
“Can we have some light now?” he asked.
“Go ahead.”
He reached up and hit the switch beside the hatch.
Green worklights illuminated the hold and her vision shifted into the visible spectrum. For a moment Blake’s eyes held hers. He looked a bit sheepish, as if regretting all the fuss.
She had an odd thought, then—she thought he looked rather charming with his reddish hair awry and his thoroughly rumpled suit.
He held up the book. “A beautiful counterfeit. The typeface is perfect. The paper is perfect—the kind they still print Bibles on. The binding is extraordinarily good.
Chemical analysis will prove the book is new, but if you’d never seen the original, you would have to read a lot of it even to become suspicious.”
She was watching him, listening to him. He was different indeed. “What gives it away?” she asked.
“There must have been a gang of them at different print shops, whacking the linotype keyboards. Three hundred thousand words. Some of the typesetters weren’t as careful as others.”
“Errors?”
“A few typos. Only a few, remarkably.” He smiled.
“There really wasn’t time for a thorough proofreading.”
She saw what he was driving at. “But Darlington probably wouldn’t have read it anyway.”
“From what I know of the man he would never have opened it.” He smiled. “Well, maybe to the title page.”
“What makes you think the original is still on board?”
“Because I personally brought the book up by shuttle and saw it secured in that rack only a few hours before Star Queen left Earth. Unless it went back off the ship immediately, it’s got to be here.”
“Is that the case it came in?” The gray Styrene case floated beside him.
“I’m pretty sure. I wasn’t that worried about the lock.
A determined thief with plenty of time and access to the ship’s computer . . . I thought I knew what Sylvester was up to, you see, but it hadn’t occurred to me that she would move so quickly. News of the meteoroid strike started me thinking about how anxious she’d been for Star Queen to leave on schedule. Then I learned Inspector Ellen Troy had been assigned. . . .”
How had he learned that? She’d worry about it later— she was going to have plenty of time to interview Blake Redfield. “All right, Mr. Redfield. Let me have this exquisite counterfeit. Exhibit A.” Ruefully she added, “Thanks for your help—I’ll put in a good word at your trial. If you’re lucky you can get a change of venue.”
“Sorry I had to blow a hole in the station. But the fuss I made wasn’t just for the book’s sake—not that it isn’t worth it.” He made no move to hand it to her. “A wise salesman once told me that anything for sale is worth exactly what the buyer and seller agree it’s worth. By that standard the real Seven Pillars is worth a million and a half pounds. This fake could have cost Sondra Sylvester a half a million pounds. Labor and materials. Bribes and She liked his voice, but he was talking too much. “The book, please.”
His eyes never left hers. “You see, I knew if anyone came before I left Star Queen, it would be you. In fact, I counted on it.”
Again something had escaped her. Again her heart was suddenly racing. Once she’d known Blade Redfield well, as well as one child could know another. Why was he a mystery to her now?
“SPARTA,” he said, quietly. “I never believed what they told us about what happened to you, what happened to your folks, why they closed the program. I recognized you the second I saw you on that street in Manhattan. But you didn’t want me to know you even existed. So I . . .”
A great rending and tearing of metal cut him off in midsentence, its obscene screech crushing the warmth of his voice.
Creeping up on him, before she knew who he was, she’d seen that other hold open, but she’d ignored it. “Follow me,” she shouted, diving past him into the airlock.
In the corridor a blast of heat seared her face. The open Hold C airlock was the mouth of a furnace. She slammed the hatch shut and spun its wheel. “Blake, move!”
He scrambled out of the hold, still clutching the counterfeit book. “Get up there,” she urged him. “We’ve got to get off the ship, fast!”
Blake pulled himself out of the access lock—just as the hatchcover bulged from a massive impact, slamming him sideways off the ladder. Sparta boosted him and leaped after him, an instant before the diamond-edged proboscis ripped through the hatch’s steel plate like a chainsaw through plywood, spraying weightless shrapnel. The Rolls- Royce robot was rapidly carving a hole for itself through the sealed lock.
The mining robot, which had been loaded through an outer pressure hatch, was not only too big for the airlock but too big for the corridor; that it had to tear the ship to pieces to make progress did not deter it.
Blake sailed up past the cabins, through the flight deck, through the stores deck, toward the main airlock, pulling and steering himself with one hand in the darkness, holding his book in the other. Sparta followed closely, pausing only to slam the lower corridor hatch after herself.