“Don’t you need to get to work?” I ask and Mooralan curses, hurrying to his own room to get dressed.
“He has the day off,” Ferrok says, watching the door. “Should I remind him before, or after he gets out the door?”
“Before. It would be funny if he got all the way down to the planet, but then you’d have to pay him back for flights.”
“His work pass gives him unlimited access to the planet. I wouldn’t have to pay back anything.”
“Want me to walk you to Phantom’s?” Mooralan asks, poking his head back in and buttoning his coveralls.
“No. Because you need to stay here and punish him for not reminding you it’s your day off sooner.”
“But… if you behave and she’s up for it, I might introduce you to Anne after breakfast.”
Ferrok gets out of bed. “I’ll get dressed. Just in case.”
Kissing both of them goodbye, I head out and almost make it to my usual entrance to the back hallways.
A Trulavian man—no,the sameTrulavian man from the Darosian aquarium—loops his arm in mine and pulls me back into the flow of foot traffic.
“What are you doing?” I ask it quietly, because I don’t want to make a scene if it’s just a mistake.
“You are not easy to get a moment alone with,” he says. “And we need to talk.”
“I think you’d better let me go, unless you want me to cause a fuss. My employer has a habit of getting people banned from the station.”
“And if you cause a fuss, you’ll never see yourMud Pieagain.”
I almost stop walking, but he drags me along. “Where is she?”
“She’s safe. For now.” He steers me into a nearly empty cafe. “You have something I want, and as long as I get it, she’ll stay that way.”
“What do you want?”
“Access.”
He pushes through the doors into a back room that looks like a lab, not a kitchen.
“Sit.” He shoves me toward a chair and paces.
The tracking chip… what the station administrator said. “I don’t know how to get to Earth.”
“Lucky for you, I don’t know what that is, or why anyone would want to know. What I care about is right here on this station.”
“Phantom’s?”
“No… I need genetic material, and you are the only one who can get it for me.”
Another alien, I don’t know what they are, comes in, speaking to him in a harried sequence of clicks and screeches. He answers them in kind and then grabs a small bag from them before they rush back out.
“You entertain a Sovian at Phantom’s.” He inhales deeply and then exhales like he’s the most beleaguered man in the whole universe. “And unfortunately for you… he doesn’t see anyone else, so it has to be you.”
“Whatexactlydo you want?”
He pulls out an empty vial. “Like I said. Genetic material. Blood is preferred, but I will take whatever I can get at this point. Skin, semen, a finger? Doesn’t matter as long as you bring it to me by this time tomorrow.”
“You want me to cut off one of his fingers?”
“No, I don’t want that, but I’ll take it if it’s the only option.”
