“There it is,” Sasha replied, pointing upwards. “Flight 124, Gate 426.”

“Good.”

I caught a flash of green from the corner of my eye, turned, and saw a man back into the crowd: the same man who had followed me to the checkpoint and tried to speak with me through the mesh. Who the hell was he, anyway? What did he want? And how had he found us with such ease? I took Sasha’s elbow. “Come on. We’ve got company.”

“Who? Where?”

“Over towards the right. The little guy. In the green sports coat.”

“What about him?”

“He’s a greenie, or I think he is. He was part of the crowd that chased pretty boy into the Trans-Solar checkpoint.”

“A greenie in a green sports coat?”

The connection had escaped me. I pretended it hadn’t.

“Yeah. Weird, huh?”

“It sure is. Let’s shoot him and stash the body.”

I frowned. “Getting a little bloodthirsty, aren’t we?”

She shook her head impatiently. “I didn’t say kill him, I said shoot him, as in trank him.”

“Oh,” I said stupidly. “That’s different. Let’s do it.”

We looked, but the man was gone. Sasha frowned. “Assuming it was the same man, and assuming he’s interested, how did he know when and where to look?”

I shrugged. “Beats me. I made the reservations under phony names.”

Her eyes locked with mine. “I had the expense money. Until the corpies took it, that is. How did you pay?”

“I transferred some funds from my bank account.”

“Smart,” she said sarcastically. “Real god-damned smart. Phony names don’t mean shit when you give them an account number. The greenies have sympathizers everywhere. One of them pulled a record of your transactions, gave the information to the guy in the green sports coat, and bingo, he was waiting for us to show.”

Sasha didn’t point out that Trans-Solar could have done the same thing and probably had. She didn’t need to. Even I could figure that out. The shame was familiar by now. Like a relative you don’t like but can’t get rid of because they’re part of you. But something good came of it as well, a rare moment of blue sky when my brain actually functioned.

“This is more than a standard snatch, isn’t it? Why are the greenies after you, anyway? And what’s the deal with Trans-Solar?”

Sasha’s eyes clouded over and her head turned away. Her voice was flat and unconvincing. “You know as much about it as I do. My mother might be able to tell us, but we’ll have to reach her first.”

I tried to see through the words to the truth beyond, but the patch of blue sky had disappeared. My hands made fists at my sides. “Have it your way, Sasha, but remember, you’re the one they’re after. 0011100100111.”

Her eyes came back to mine. They were softer now, like those of a mother with her child. “You did the best you could. What’s done is done. We’ll lose them on the habitat. Come on.”

We made our way down the corridor. The line in front of Gate 426 was relatively short and consisted of down-and-outers like ourselves. There were some spacers, a tech type or two, and a couple of beat-up androids. One had a faulty servo and whined as it moved.

We shuffled forward and stopped in front of the counter. I identified myself as Roger Doud and proved it by providing the account number I never should have given them in the first place.

The ticket agent was an android whose torso ended at the countertop. He had the solemn manner of an undertaker and an electronic speech impediment. “Your ffflight is on time. Please ssstep through the detector and wait to be called. Thanks fffor flying FENA Air.”

The detector looked like an over-sized free-standing door frame. Sasha stepped through and I followed. Buzzers buzzed, lights flashed, and a pair of lunchy-looking rent-a-cops lurched to attention. Neither was exactly athletic, but the woman was the more obese of the two. She used her nightstick as a pointer. “Stand over there. Spread your legs. Put your hands behind your head.”

I didn’t like her tone, but there was no point in making a scene. I obeyed. The man stepped up, blew garlic in my face, and passed a wand over my body. My first thought was the.38. But it was stashed in Floater Town, where Maureen had promised to clean it occasionally. And the Browning.9mm was not only legal, but made entirely of plastic, and therefore undetectable. No, the problem was my skull plate. The man stood on tiptoes to pass the wand over my head and grunted when it made a whining sound. “Take the hat off.”

I did as I was told.

The man looked at my head and nodded. “Put it back on.” He turned toward his partner. “No problem, Gert. This guy’s got enough metal in his head to build a Class A shuttle. Let him pass.”

The woman nodded, stared at my head as if it was the first one she’d ever seen, and allowed us to join the passengers in the holding area. It had been furnished with the same low, crouching furniture that graced the rest of the spaceport. The androids huddled together as if for mutual protection, and everyone else spread out. Sasha sighed. “So much for the disguise.”

I said, “Sorry about that,” but didn’t really mean it. That’s the great thing about being stupid. You worry less.

I took a look around and wondered how I felt the first time I headed into the Big Black. I’d been a good deal younger back then, nineteen according to the records, so it stood to reason that I’d been scared. Scared of zero-G boot camp, scared of the unknown, scared of dying. And I was still scared of dying, though I wasn’t sure why, since living was a major pain in the ass. Sasha’s voice brought me back. “Max?”

“Yeah?”

“They called our names.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

We followed the others through a door, down some stairs, and onto a loading dock. A man looked up from his portacomp as we approached. He was dressed in a dark blue jumpsuit with “FENA” stitched over the left breast pocket, a pair of ear protectors worn around the neck, a pair of black combat boots with pink laces. He gestured towards a cargo module and the autoloader that supported it. Both were snuggled up to the edge of the dock. “Your carriage awaits. I will call your names. Please enter your assigned tubes. Aarons, tube one. Axel, tube two. Benning, tube three. Cooper, tube four…”

Sasha shook her head in amazement. “I’ve spent a lot of time in space but never seen anything like this.”

I felt defensive. “Sorry, but you had the expense money, and this is what $800.00 will buy.”

Sasha smiled apologetically, stood on tiptoes, and kissed my cheek. “Don’t worry, Max. Tube four is fine.”

I touched the place where she had kissed me. Was it my imagination, or was that particular spot warmer than the surrounding skin? I wanted to say something, wanted to thank her, but she had lowered herself into a tube by the time I was ready. My alias was called shortly thereafter. I looked, but the man in the green sports coat was nowhere to be seen.

I trudged over to the cargo module, peered down into tube twenty-four, and inhaled the powerful odor of disinfectants. I kneeled, placed a hand on the cold concrete, and jumped. There was padding in the bottom and all around the sides. I bounced slightly and looked around. There was nothing much to see except for a tiny, almost miniscule vid screen, a headset with mic, and some waist-high tubing. I was still trying to understand what the tubing was for when a voice said, “Have a nice trip,” and a lid slammed closed over my head. There was a moment of complete darkness followed by a yellow glow as the light came on over my head.

The vid screen came on about the same time that the cargo module jerked, swayed, and went horizontal. The screen swirled and coalesced into a picture of a pleasant-looking, middle-aged freelancer. I fumbled the headset onto my head in time to hear most of her spiel. “…join us aboard FENA Air. Now, settle back in padded comfort while your high-tech passenger module is loaded aboard one of our first-class ships, and lifted into orbit.