“Now don’t you go giving the little girl any ideas,” the chief said. “Anyone going ashore from the Wasp goes by the quarterdeck and does it right smartly. Besides, this space is locked down, and none of you know its combination,” the chief said, and gave Cara a knowing smile.
She smiled right back.
She’d learned early to smile when people smiled. She’d also learned on the streets of Eden how to spot an access number without letting anyone catch on that she had made the code.
You could say a lot against Gamma Ganna, but that she raised dumb kids or grandkids wasn’t one of them.
And Cara did indeed have a beef with the grown-ups around here. Not only did they ignore her, but they kept her cooped up on this little boat just forever.
They were nice to her. Nice the way they wanted to be. There was cake for her saint’s day and gifts. Gifts for Christmas, too.
But all the gifts were money! Her credit chit now had more money on it than she’d believed possible when she was a skinny runt running the streets of Five Corners. Yet she couldn’t spend a dime!
Nowhere would they let her go shopping. Even her new computer, Dada, was just handed to her. Auntie Abby never went to a store; she just ordered stuff off the net. Where was the fun in that?
Everybody knew shopping was the experience: the smells, the feel, the joy of the hunt. Why would anyone want a dress she hadn’t tried on!
Cara needed some serious window-shopping, some down-and-dirty store time, and everyone on the ship was just so not going anywhere.
It was time for a girl to take matters into her own hands. Especially now that Auntie Abby and Kris had gone down to the planet. They’d gone down and not even asked Cara if she’d like to go along with them!
First, Cara casually turned off Dada. She didn’t like doing that. Dada would probably be nearly as much fun to go shopping with as a real live girl. Still, there was no doubt in Cara’s mind that if Nelly asked where Cara was, Dada would be a snitch.
So Dada got turned off and left in the bottom of her lingerie drawer.
Then, with her credit chit in the pocket of her jeans, Cara casually headed for the amidships section. This whole idea would vanish like a genie in one of the stories she was reading if they’d changed the access code to that hatch.
To Cara’s delight, they hadn’t. Quick like a ferret, she was in the room, and the door slid shut behind her.
Leaving her in like total darkness.
She should have brought a light.
Next time she would. This time she managed to find a switch and turn it on. The rat catcher came off easily, and went back on quickly once she was on the other side. The sailor was right; she didn’t even have to bend over as she passed down the tie-down to the pier.
Of course, the pier didn’t look at all like the pier people walked on when they left the Wasp. But then, none of those people from the quarterdeck could see her. If Cara popped out in sight of the quarterdeck, she’d have three Marines, maybe more, chasing her down.
Nope, Cara would stay in the walls until she was well out of view from anyone on the Wasp.
That took a bit of climbing on a ladder with rungs spaced apart for people a bit taller than Cara. She made it, but she was feeling kind of tired by the time she reached the top.
The space she found herself in was painted gray with ducts and pipes painted in bright colors of red, blue, green, and the likes. She spotted a door and made for it.
Cara had to undog the hatch, it was an airtight hatch, but when she opened it, it was the main deck of the station that she saw! It was like a fairyland. A huge carpeted walk led to stores and stores and more stores.
Quick as a bunny, Cara was through the hatch. She dogged it back down and was on her way to do some serious shopping!
Or not.
As she skipped up to the first store, she found it shuttered and locked. So was the second one. There was still stuff in the windows to look at, but they were dusty and not a lot of fun. Who wanted to drool over things you couldn’t buy.
By the fifth or sixth store, she was starting to think this whole idea was just one big bust.
Then she spotted two Greenfeld sailors. Seeing them made Cara realize just how empty the station was. There had been a bunch of Greenfeld sailors marching in the distance, but there was nobody anywhere close to her. She’d kind of liked that. Now it was sort of creeping her out.
But now there were these two sailors. Well, a couple. One of the sailors was a girl, and the other a boy. They were looking around like they were afraid someone might see them, but they walked like they knew where they were going. Cara decided going somewhere was better than going nowhere and started to follow them.
At a distance, where they wouldn’t notice her.
They slipped off the main walkway and disappeared down a small hallway. Cara got to the passageway just in time to see them turn right. By the time she got to the end of the hallway, they were turning into a small store.
An open store!
It was a jewelry store, but it was an open store! Whether Cara needed a new bobble or not, at least it was a place she could look . . . and maybe the couple knew another store that was open.
The moment Cara entered the store, she noticed three things.
There was no sign of the couple she’d followed in. No evidence they’d ever been there.
The three men in the store turned toward her with wide smiles that didn’t look all that nice.
And then the door behind her clicked in a most decisive way. Cara turned back to the door to try the knob.
It didn’t turn at all.
“Who would have thought, three in one afternoon,” she heard from behind her.
Cara opened her mouth to scream. Before she got a sound out, a strange-smelling cloth was suddenly clamped over her nose and mouth.
A moment later, Cara’s world went dark.
21
Sevastopol was built around a series of bays. The minor bay that served as the fishing port was the closest, so that was where Kris aimed her team first. If Doc Maggie had caught a fishing boat to Sevastopol, and if she’d left behind some sort of record, and if that helped them find her . . . then maybe she could help them with the tougher part of the mission.
Even Kris had to admit there were a lot of “ifs” in that plan. The small wooden boats and nets looked like a picture that could have been taken anytime in the last three thousand years on old Earth. Birds mewed, and old men mended nets as others sailed out past the rocky breakwater into the rising sun.
“We got a problem, folks,” Chief Beni announced. “There’s no network up and running in this area.”
“Don’t the boats have computers?” Kris asked.
“Look at them,” Jack said, pointing with his chin. “Those boats are lucky to have bottoms.”
“There’s got to be a tax computer here. They catch fish. They have to record taxes,” Kris insisted.
“Maggie’s a doctor, not a fish,” Jack pointed out.
“But I’ll bet you she paid for her passage,” the chief said in support of Kris, “and someone’s bound to have taxed that.”
“I’ve spun off several net scouts,” Nelly said. “One of those overhead lines has to be carrying a net.”
They waited for a long five minutes while Jack drove as slow as he could around the bay.
“I got it,” Chief Beni yelped. “I’ve got a net. Now to get in. Oh, that was easy. I guess they don’t think the customs office down by the fisherman’s bay needs all that secure a net.”
“Or no one wants to mess with that fine old tradition of smuggling,” Abby put in through the gaping hole that might once have been a back window to the cab. “I think I could like these people.”