My not-real vehicle slowed as it entered a glass-and-steel high-tech building and coasted to a stop. I got out. The car pulled away and accelerated out of sight. The room was huge, or seemed to be anyway, and was rather pleasant.

A network of paths led here and there, passing countless kiosks, each designed to look like the sort of destination you had in mind. I saw tropical gardens, a night club, an English pub, a beach motif, and many more.

Navigating by means of the arrow, I made my way over to what looked like a high-tech control console. A woman, crisp in her ship-type suit, looked up and smiled. Her teeth were slightly uneven. A nice little touch by a programmer somewhere.

“Yes? How may I help you?”

“1111000111000110000100100100100000.”

“What was that?”

“I want to visit Europa Station.”

The woman nodded agreeably and gestured towards a command chair. “Have a seat.”

It felt strange to sit in a chair knowing that I was standing in a com booth.

“How would you like to travel?”

“A space ship would be nice.”

The woman smiled patiently.

“No, how would you like to travel? First class? Business? Or coach?”

“Well, I normally travel first class, but the rich food plays hell with my waistline, so coach is better.”

She nodded as if my response was perfectly believable and consulted a free-floating computer screen. “The fair is $23, 879.12 one way.”

I shifted in my chair. “I don’t suppose you have anything less expensive? Dowand imbu odlepork.”

She shook her head. “No sir, I’m afraid we don’t.”

“Hmmm. Well, that being the case, perhaps a shorter trip would be best.”

She raised a carefully programmed eyebrow. “How short? Mars? The moon, perhaps?”

Like most freelancers, I knew exactly what I had in the bank. There was three hundred credits plus my pay from Droidware Inc. “How far could two people go on $800.00?”

The woman consulted her screen again. “Staros- 3.”

“Excuse me?”

“Staros-3 is an Earth-orbit habitat. That’s how far the two of you could go on $800.00. Assuming you’re willing to travel aboard a cargo shuttle with no amenities.”

“I see.”

Staros-3 fell way short of our destination, but it was a step in the right direction, and a reasonably good hiding place. Something we would need when Sasha was free. And if that seems a tad optimistic, remember that I’m half a lobe short of a full brain, and given to occasional oversimplification.

“Okay, Staros-3 it is.”

“Name?”

I gave it some thought.

“Roger Doud.”

“The name of your companion?”

“Imbelzweetnorkab.”

“Spell it please.”

“I meant to say ‘Mary Cooper.’“

The woman nodded, and her electronic hands went through the motions of typing while a computer did the real work. “Method of payment?”

“Electronic transfer.”

“Account number?”

I quoted the number from memory.

“Authorization code?”

“Privacy, please.”

The world went temporarily dark. I gave the code. “Lima beans taste like hammered owl shit.”

The computer heard, transferred the funds, and the surround reappeared. The woman smiled.

“Thank you, Mr. Doud. When would you like to lift?”

“Tomorrow evening.”

She checked the screen. “That will be fine. FENA Air Flight 124 will board from Gate 426, Surface Port 12, at 3:35 p.m. Each passenger is limited to ten pounds of baggage. Questions?”

“Nope.”

“Thank you, and have a nice day.”

I liked the sentiment but didn’t think it would come true. I decided to forgo the subjective ride and jump to the com booth instead. The voice returned along with the main menu. I asked for the business directory, ignored the characters that floated in front of me, and requested a listing of all Trans-Solar facilities located in the northwest section of the North American continent.

Looking back, I realize it would have been a good idea to learn more about the company in hopes of understanding why they had put the snatch on Sasha, but at the time the idea never crossed my mind.

The voice read them off. Trans-Solar had two northwest locations: a downtown business office, and a hangar complex out at the spaceport. It was an easy choice.

The days of enormous high-rise buildings crammed to overflowing with staff were long gone. A regional business office would house five to ten lifers, some overworked freelancers to make coffee, and some security types to protect them. The real day-to-day administrative work would be done by computers and freelancers telecommuting from home. No, all things considered, the office didn’t seem like a place to stash prisoners. Not with a hangar complex to work with.

The entire com booth shook as someone kicked the door. “You been in there long enough. Come the hell out or pay the price!”

I ignored the voice and summoned a map of the spaceport. There was a maze of yellow lines, lots of little red words, and a pulsating orange dot to mark the hangar’s location. Maps give me headaches, so I gritted my teeth, squinted my eyes, and forced the information into my unwilling brain.

A boot hit the door and it bulged inwards.

“You better come outta there, asshole! Or I’m comin’ in!”

My eyes found the main terminal, made obvious by its size and location, and followed a sequence of yellow lines to an orange dot. North, left at the first intersection, then north again. Right at the third intersection, let four grids pass, and watch for it on the right. I closed my eyes, visualized the pattern, and repeated the directions three times.

The door was ripped aside. A gang banger filled the opening. He was young enough to have peach fuzz and old enough to support fifty pounds worth of chromed chain. He wore leather pants, a matching jacket, and a light blue tutu. He held a piece of rebar, painted to match the tutu, and tapped it against his right shoulder. He grinned. “Hi there. My name’s Alice. Wanta dance?”

I showed him the.38. His eyes grew bigger. “Sorry, Alice…but my dance card’s full. 789123789456123.”

I watched him figure the odds, trying to calculate whether he could hit me with the rebar before I pulled the trigger. Caution won out. He bowed and made a sweeping gesture with one arm. “Until next time, then.”

I stayed where I was. “Is that a threat? Because if it is, I might as well kill you right now and have done with it.”

His face grew paler and he backed away. I nodded agreeably and left the booth. Kids these days. What’re you gonna do?

“Zombies have eternal peace of mind, think about it.”

Ad copy from Mindwipe Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Datastor Corporation

It took the better part of two hours and three different subways to reach the spaceport. In spite of the name “subways,” there was a time when wheeled vehicles, the direct ancestors of today’s hover trains, followed the same routes under the open sky. But that was before the urboplex grew up around them, raising “ground level” to coincide with the penthouses where the lifers lived, and leaving the trains to thread their way through the depths below. The trains and the people like me who had little choice but to ride them. Strip lights, alternating smears of white and blue, whipped by.

As with walking the halls, there’s some danger to riding the trains. The stops are two or three minutes apart, and a lot can happen in that amount of time. Sure, each car comes equipped with a Zeeb, but they tend to be too young or too old to do much good. The rest have other more important assignments.

My car was a good example. Our Zebra was a woman, pretty once, but gone to fat. Lard rolled back and forth as she moved, and her hips were so big that the regulation sidearm stuck straight out from her waist.

Still, some presence is better than none, and we arrived in one whole piece. Not counting the messenger droid who was ambushed, slammed, and scrapped, all during the sixty seconds or so that the Zeeb spent picking her nose.