It occurred to me that the crimes I was about to commit in order to clear my name were serious enough to rate to heavy jail time if I was caught. I considered suggesting that we go back, but I thought better of it. If Bodyguard decided I was guilty of killing his client he would track me to the end of the galaxy to put my ears on his belt. I mentally rehearsed throwing myself on the mercy of the court, and followed him toward the lock. The thought crossed my mind that he might have an accident, say with his suit seal. I didn't pursue the idea. I'm not a killer, and that belief had suddenly become important to me.
There was a transpax dome on the surface too, not far from the shiplock, about the same size as Constellation's dome. It seemed Reston Jameson liked to look at the stars himself. I looked up at the star-strewn sky. Watchbird Alpha was sixteen hundred kilometers up there, looking down at me with cameras good enough to pick out an individual in daylight. Somewhere down over the equatorial horizon Delta and Gamma kept their own vigils. I began to wish we'd come at night. I was sweating and couldn't wipe my brow. Dayside Ceres is fifty Celsius, which was enough to make my suit's cooling system run at a steady purr. It was standard night in the tunnels though, and that was what counted. Bodyguard had been unwilling to wait until standard night came into phase with surface night.
I felt dreadfully exposed in the harsh glare on the unrelieved terrain, and I muttered a few choice words about kzinti, after first making sure my transmitter was off. Scream and leap. How they'd ever managed to survive as a species was beyond me. I began to wish more fervently that I'd never taken Opal Stone's contract. Bodyguard seemed completely unconcerned as he took one long, practiced leap to the rectangular outline of a personnel lock. The mechanism was a simple pull bar-it was illegal to have a locking mechanism on an airlock, in case someone got trapped outside. Reston Jameson no doubt could have gotten around that restriction, but it seemed he had chosen not to.
And I knew the reason for that. As soon as the lock cycled, the computer would log it. His security teams would be there in a minute or less. Short of drilling through ten meters of rock and regolith we were no further ahead here than we were trying to access his private tube car station.
Bodyguard had come prepared. He drew a variable sword from his day pack, a highly illegal weapon anywhere in Sol System, and extended the blade. The magnetically stiffened monomolecular wire was invisible. I looked for the telltale marker ball that would let him track the tip but there was none. Instinctively I backed up, just in case he wound up cutting me in half by accident. He paid no attention, and with absolute confidence forced the wire into the heavy metal door of the lock. A fine mist of ice crystals began to jet from the incision, growing larger as, with straining muscles, he dragged the force wire around the inner perimeter of the door. The spray had stopped before he'd gotten halfway around; he'd voided the atmosphere to vacuum. A moment later he had a large, roughly square chunk of the airlock door cut out. I had no idea what he intended to accomplish by doing this. He could get away with cutting open the outer door because the lock itself held little atmosphere, but now it wouldn't seal. Tons of air pressure now held the inner door shut and if he tried to cut through it he would explosively decompress Reston Jameson's entire complex, probably launching himself into orbit in the process.
He crawled through the hole he had made and I backed up more to get out of the way of the impending disaster. He stuck his head out and gestured for me to follow him. Somewhat hesitantly I did. Personnel locks are cramped at the best of times. Sharing one with a kzin was downright claustrophobic. I was forced to curl into a ball in one corner while he grabbed the cut-out slab of door and carefully repositioned it where it had come from. Then I had to hold it in position, twisted like a pretzel with fingers straining against the awkward grip my suit gloves afforded while he got a tube of Quickseal from his pack and ran it around the cutline.
Now I understood. When the Quickseal set the outer door would hold pressure again. He could then repeat the process on the inner door without depressurizing all of Ceres. It was an awkward way to cycle through an airlock. It had the advantage of not triggering the alarms by opening the doors. The computer would no doubt log the pressure drop in the lock, but that was a maintenance issue, not a security issue. We were in.
Well, we were almost in. We had to wait an hour for the Quickseal to set properly, an hour I spent in a fetal crouch, half crushed by Bodyguard's weight. I lost all feeling below the waist before he judged it time to go on, and then there were more pretzellike acrobatics to allow him to start cutting the inner door, working with suit lights. The atmosphere hissed in to the lock and I watched the Quickseal carefully for any sign that it might fail as the pressure built up. If it did we would certainly die as we were blasted out that too-small opening, and a lot of other people would die with us as the tunnels depressurized. It was far too late for me back out now. My suit settled on me as the pressure equalized. The Quickseal held, and then Bodyguard was carefully lowering the chunk he'd cut from the inner door into the tunnel beyond. We were in, all the way this time.
I felt my weight surge as we came into the tunnel's artificial gravity field. The passage was dimly lit, standard night on Ceres, and it was opulently appointed. Acres of Persian carpet covered the floor, every kilogram of it imported from Earth, and expensive paintings hung on the walls. We stripped our vac suits and stuffed them in the lock, and Bodyguard Quicksealed the lock door so we could use it on the way out. I checked my tunnel map, and we headed off to the right, towards Reston Jameson's private quarters. The plan was to confront him directly, and as we advanced I could see more and more flaws with that idea. We were screaming and leaping in classic kzinti style. That approach had lost them six wars in a row and eighty-five percent of their empire. I wasn't encouraged by history.
We went down the corridor cautiously, unsure of what might be in wait for us. I'd highlighted a few points on the map where he was likely to be. The first one turned out to be his living quarters. I felt like a burglar, which fit the situation closely enough. There was nothing moving but us, and no alarms went off, but neither was Reston there. That state of affairs was fine with me. I was in no hurry to go forward, and spent some time marveling at the sumptuous furnishing, which made the lavish corridors seem sparse in comparison. There was no sprayfoam, no steel, no plastic. Everything was made of wood or wool or cotton. There was stone, but not the laser-cut basalt I was used to. It was all limestone and marble, minerals that could only have formed in the living forge of Earth. It was everywhere, carved and polished, tiled and inlaid, floors and walls and sculptures. The total mass involved was tremendous, the upship costs incalculable. Here in the Belt, where rock represented all that was common and cheap, Reston Jameson had transformed it into an expression of wealth and power.
And here I was challenging that power like a demented moth hurling itself into a bonfire. Bodyguard was undistracted by the setting. He made a short gesture and went ahead, not even bothering to look to see if I was following. I went with him for lack of a better choice. We found Jameson there, working at a broad desk of polished black stone. He looked up as we came in without surprise. "Good morning. I've been waiting for you."
Bodyguard snarled. "We have come to ask questions on the death of Opal Stone."
Jameson smiled. "I am sure you have."
The kzin's ears swiveled up and forward. I wasn't sure if he could pick up the smugness too. "What is your involvement?"