I shifted over onto my back, in the process making another unsettling discovery. I knew I had no clothes on, but I’d had the impression that I was covered with something like a light blanket. Now I could feel there was a warmth on me, from shoulder height down to past my toes, but the warmth wasn’t coming from anything as banal as a cover.
All at once I began feeling annoyed, knowing damned well that by rights I ought to be scared stiff, but the whole thing was too stupid to be scary. When someone puts you in the dark to terrify you, they don’t give you fur to lie on, and they don’t make sure you’re snuggly warm. I brushed my loose hair away from my face and made up my mind, then sat up slowly, holding one hand above my head to see if there was anything over me.
As soon as I was sitting straight, there was no longer any need to hold my hand up. A light had begun glowing from somewhere, starting very faint and low, then brightening to a good level. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, fairly sure – or at least hoping – that there was a photocell or some equivalent involved.
The room that had just come to view was no more than twelve by twelve, having very few things in it. There was a small round metallic shape next to the bed-couch I was lying on, an amorphous blob that might have been a chair, and nothing else. I looked down at the bed-couch under me, expecting to see fur, but saw nothing but cloth. Granted, it was a silvery-gray cloth that looked better than any other cloth I’d ever seen, but it was still just cloth. The couch-bed was a low platform, an eight-foot by seven foot oblong, raised slightly at the end that was against the wall, and seemingly upholstered. I shifted around a little, noticing that the warmth I’d felt earlier was fading, then decided to ask the major question: where the hell could I possibly be? It was fairly obvious that the proximity alarm bad meant another ship, but where had they come from, and who were they? And while I was listing interesting questions, it would be smart to include, why? Someone had gone to more than a little trouble intercepting my ship, had managed to pull me out of it alive – and then had neatly tucked me into beddy-bye before disappearing from view. I’m normally grateful for any help I get in saving my neck, but I’d learned to be skeptical as well.
The warmth was entirely gone, so I put my feet out to the fur-cloth floor and stood up, looking around again. The floor-fur was a deep green, setting off the light salmon-colored wall panels, the panels themselves being very plain. Each three-foot section of wall was separated from the others by a panel line, and there must have been a door there somewhere, but I couldn’t spot it just then. I also saw no window – which didn’t mean there weren’t any – but the far wall had something square on it. I moved closer, trying to figure out what the square might be. It was a light, slightly flickering gold in color, and could have been anything from an observation screen or window to an example of the art of tomorrow. I felt the urge to touch it, but pulled back suddenly. I was old enough to know better than to touch strange, unexplained objects; I’d had enough of waking up in odd places for a while.
“I see you’ve taken it upon yourself to leave your bed,” an annoyed male voice said from behind me. “Are you sure you’re feeling well enough?”
The unexpectedness of the voice startled me, that and the fact it was using an unknown language that I somehow understood perfectly. I turned slowly and took the time to prepare myself for whatever might be standing behind me, but the whole thing was a giant let-down. The only thing standing behind me, well to the right, was a mild-looking little man, round-cheeked and slightly pot-bellied, wearing a dark gold, one-piece outfit that could have been a uniform. The outfit had patches here and there, supporting the uniform theory, and the little man wasn’t looking at all pleased with me. The entire scene had a very unreal quality to it, as if it would all turn out to be someone’s idea of a practical joke, but I dismissed that thought fast and smiled my friendliest smile.
“How sweet of you to be concerned about me,” I purred, moving a step or two closer to him. “I’m feeling just fine now, and I’ll bet I have you to thank for it. I can see in your eyes that you’re a very-special-sort of man.
His blue eyes didn’t get any darker, but his chest swelled and his face settled into a prissy look of satisfaction.
“I did very little more than see to your comfort, my dear,” he said smoothly. “And yet you may rest assured that had anything been seriously wrong with you, I would have seen to it to the best of my ability. We’re rather isolated out here, but our medical facilities can’t be bettered anywhere.”
I let my smile warm slightly, mainly to cover the fact that I was still moving slowly toward him, and said, “I knew I was right about you, but I’m just a little confused. You mentioned your medical facilities here, but you didn’t say where ‘here’ was. Can you tell me where I am?”
The satisfaction shifted to a frown, and the little man peered at me.
“This is an observation outpost of our Absari Confederacy,” he answered sharply. “The planet is called Tildor by its natives. Hadn’t you any idea you were in our neighborhood? The area happens to be proscribed.”
I stopped where I was, about five feet from my visitor, determined not to show how off balance I suddenly was. Not only hadn’t I known that the area was proscribed, I’d never even heard of proscribed areas, not to mention something called the “Absari Confederacy.”
Things were back to being unreal again, but there was one thing I knew for a rock-hard fact: if my Federation had ever had contact with an Absari Confederacy, I would have heard about it. My not having heard about them meant we’d never contacted them, and I was back to wandering in the dark, searching for a candle.
The little man was still watching me closely, so I decided to use some of the confusion I felt to my own advantage.
“I must have gone farther astray than I thought,” I breathed weakly, putting my hand to my head. “I haven’t the faintest idea of how I got here.”
“But, my dear girl, where were you going?” he asked, stepping closer to me with professional concern. “And where did you start from?
Surely no one would have allowed someone with such meager knowledge of star locations to travel about alone?”
We were no more than three feet apart, and that was just about right for what I was going to have to do. He’d already asked three questions I couldn’t possibly answer, and I also couldn’t afford to wait around until those questions came from a more official source. I had to get out of there as fast as possible, without leaving anyone behind who could begin yelling before I was well out of reach.
I had stiffened the fingers of my right hand and was just lifting the arm, when a section of the wall panel directly behind the little man slid aside, showing a second male visitor. This one was a good deal larger than the first, much taller and with much broader shoulders and no pot-belly, wearing the same sort of one-piece uniform that the little man wore, but his was a cobalt blue, with the patches in different places. His dark eyes gave me a slow, frank stare of appraisal, and he must have been pleased with what he saw-his rugged face creased into a grin, and he stopped next to the little man, his eyes still on me.
“How’s our patient doing, Landren?” he asked in the sort of deep voice one would expect. “Is she up to having visitors yet?”
The little man had glanced at the newcomer, but his attention was still on me.
“She’s still a bit shaky, Commander,” he answered with what was becoming a familiar frown. “But there seems to be something odd going on here. You specifically told me she was alone, but why would such a helpless young woman be traveling alone? And another thing…”
“You’re perfectly right, Landren,” the man addressed as Commander interrupted. “I’m sure there are many things to discuss, but this isn’t the time for it. The young lady and I are going to have a chat now, and I’d appreciate it if you would have someone bring a tray of edibles to us. You and I can have a talk later.”
I stood casually where I was, making sure my muscles were relaxed in spite of the fact that the bigger man hadn’t taken his dark eyes off me and now stood between me and my erstwhile target. The little man was annoyed all over again, not knowing how close he had come to the end of every annoyance, but there seemed to be little he could do. he nodded once, angrily, and drew himself up.
“Very well, Commander,” he grudged to the larger man’s back. “We’ll discuss the matter later. And I’ll speak to one of your team members about the rest of it.”
He looked at me with what was probably supposed to have been a smile, bowed stiffly, then turned and walked out. The man who now stood and studied me with folded arms and sharp, intelligent eyes was nothing like the first man and would not be as easy to handle, but he would still have to be handled one way or another. I’d done a lot of bluffing in my professional life, but never in a situation where I didn’t even know what I was supposed to be bluffing about. The man’s eyes kept moving over me, as though he were looking for some sign of embarrassment on my part due to the fact that he was dressed and I wasn’t, but he wasn’t likely to find one. I’d been born and raised on one of the only two nudist planets in the Federation, and standing around raw had never bothered me. I looked away from the man, extended my left arm for inspection, then rubbed at an invisible spot with a small frown and a whole lot of concentration. I heard the sound of a snort of amusement, then the big man shifted slightly where he stood.
“You’re really very good, girl,” he commented in that deep voice. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were as innocent as you look.”
The comment did nothing for my peace of mind, but I smiled at him with polite interest.
“I don’t understand, Commander,” I said, putting just a touch of confusion into my tone. “Am I supposed to be guilty of something?”
The question made the man smile again, then he laughed aloud.
“All right, I give up,” he conceded with a chuckle. “I’d better stop trying to shake that calm of yours before I push you into trying something violent. I’ll start off by telling you that I already know you’re not native to our Confederacy, so you can relax as far as that goes. If you’ll join me out on the terrace, we can both relax and discuss the rest of it.”
He stood not three feet away from me, grinning informally but in no way off guard, and I didn’t know what the hell to do. Insisting you know something as a fact when all you do is suspect is such an old trick that lots of people have forgotten about it. If he was telling the truth, the fact that I wasn’t in a jail cell was an encouraging sign, but then I reminded myself that iron bars do not a prison make.
“I hate to seem dense, Commander, but I’m afraid I have very little idea of what you’re talking about,” I drawled. “Suppose you add a few details to what you’ve already said, and then maybe I’ll be able to hold up my end of the conversation.”
He studied me again, then he nodded.
“Considering your position, I can’t blame you for being cautious,” he conceded. “Maybe it would be better if we both knew what was happening.” he moved to his right, no more than five or six steps, then touched one of the salmon-colored wall panels. A thin, horizontal section of the wall snapped out, knee height from the floor, and the Commander sat himself down on it.
“All right, from the beginning,” he said, leaning back against the wall in his bench seat. “As soon as we looked at your ship, we knew you were not from one of the member planets of the Confederacy. By
‘we’ I mean my second in command and myself. he and I are the only ones who know about you, which is why Landren was so confused.”
He stretched his legs out and crossed his ankles, frowning slightly in concentration. “The Absari Confederacy has known about your Federation for some twenty standard years now, but the knowledge hasn’t been spread about. One of our scout ships netted a primitive rocket, calculated the direction from which it had come, then backtracked on it. When they began picking up communicator signals, they turned back and reported to Absar Central, and we’ve been tip-toeing around the edges of your volume of space ever since. We’re nearly to the point of introducing ourselves, but things like that take time.” His eyes came back to me, and the grin was starting again. “If I were going to execute you as an undesirable alien, it would have been done by now, so how about calling a truce and having something to eat with me? I’ll feel like a fool if I have to call a bodyguard before I can relax with you in arm’s reach.”
This time I studied him and his grin, weighing my options. I could trust him and take my chances or wipe him and take my chances, but either way it would be a risk. The way he moved and held himself said a lot about his ability, and the lack of fat on his well-muscled body said he had very little need of a bodyguard. I would have backed my own ability against his no matter what he knew, but even if I did best him and then managed to find my way to a ship without running afoul of anyone else, which way did I point the ship? Which quadrant had I come in from? I took a strand of my hair to chew on, and the Commander’s grin widened.
“You look as though you’re having trouble making up your mind,” he observed, moving his back away from the wall to lean one elbow on a broad thigh. “Suppose I add this as support for being reasonable: you must have a lot of questions you’d like answered, and I’ll be glad to answer them – as well as fill you in on what you said when I questioned you. You were unconscious at the time, so you’re hardly likely to remember it by yourself.”
I continued to stare at him for a second, then smiled, as did he. he was trying to bribe me with my own curiosity, and that made me feel better about him. A man who understands bribery can’t be all bad.
“All right, Commander, you’ve got me,” I laughed, shaking my head at him. “Curiosity always has been my fatal flaw, and I’ve got a question that’s been bothering me since that other man first opened his mouth. I feel as though I’m speaking my own language, but what I’m speaking and hearing isn’t my own language. I mean, I’m pretty sure it isn’t my own language, even though I’m thinking in it, too.