I'd been sitting there for maybe half an hour when Penny showed up. "There you are," she said, working her way between the chairs and over to my two-person couch. "I wondered where you've been disappearing to. That's very rude, you know."
I glanced over at the lounge's only other occupants, a pair of lanky Fibibibi cuddled close together at the far side of the room. Their full attention was on the coruscating fire of the drive, which their ultraviolet-sensitive eyes made more spectacular than Human vision could appreciate. "Sorry," I apologized to Penny. "I have a lot on my mind."
"I can imagine," she said gravely as she sat down beside me. Way too close beside me. "Real men of action are also men of thought."
"I wasn't just thinking," I told her. Aptly and succinctly put, I noted to myself. "I've also been keeping an eye on the rest of the passengers."
It was half a lie, but only half. I had indeed done a little looking and speculating. But at this point it was mostly just academic. The walkers would identify themselves soon enough, as soon as we sorted ourselves out among the various transports at the Ghonsilya spaceport.
Penny, of course, didn't know anything about that. All she knew was that she was in danger from dark and mysterious forces, and that she was counting on me to protect her from them. "Mr. Morse is worried about them, too," she said. "He told me I should stay in my stateroom the whole trip except for meals."
I had to smile at the thought of Morse trying to keep someone with Penny's spirit caged up that way. "I take it you didn't think much of that advice?"
"You've got to be kidding," she said, her nose wrinkling. "There's nothing to do in there except read and sleep. At least the Spiders put computers in their compartments."
"I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss Mr. Morse's advice," I cautioned her. "He is a professional security agent."
"I know." Her nose wrinkled again. There was something rather endearing about the way she did that. "It's just that he's so British."
"And you're, what, German?"
"Austrian, actually," she said. "But I mostly grew up in Paris."
"Ah." I said, nodding. The Brits and French had had a running feud going for at least the past six hundred years. Sometimes it had been almost friendly, other times decidedly not. "Say no more."
Her forehead creased, and for a moment I thought she was going to take issue with my comment. But then her skin smoothed out again. "Anyway, I've got you here to protect me, right?"
"I'll certainly do my best," I said, gazing at her face, feeling all those unwanted emotions stirring inside me. It was bad enough when I was just watching her from across a room. To have her staring trustingly at me with those big brown eyes barely half a meter away was pushing things way past the line. "But in this case I have to agree with Mr. Morse," I managed. "Now that you've finished dinner, maybe you should go back to your stateroom for a while."
Her face fell a little. "Well …all right. But only because it's you who's asking me." Her expression brightened again. "Will you walk me there?"
"I—" It had been a long time since I'd stumbled over my own tongue. This wasn't just a stumble, but a full-blown barrel-roll reverse in the pike position. It took me a solid three seconds just to bring my voice back on line. "I can do that," I managed. "Sure."
"Because I feel a lot safer when you're with me," she breathed.
She shifted position; and suddenly that half meter of open space between us was gone. "You're not like any man I've ever met, Frank," she whispered, her breath making little hot puffs against my lips. "Thank you for caring about me." Her lips moved closer, brushing gently against mine.
I should have pulled back. Failing that, I should at least have frozen in place.
Instead, I moved in for the kill.
I don't know how long we sat there like that, our lips locked in a solid, passionate kiss. No more than a few seconds, probably. My blood was pounding in my ears, my whole body starting to tremble with adrenaline and desire and guilt.
But for those few seconds, the rest of the universe had ceased to exist. There was no Daniel Stafford, no mysterious Nemuti sculptures, no Modhri, no Bayta, no—
"What in bloody hell are you doing?"
And very definitely no ESS Agent Morse.
I tried to pull back, only to find that somewhere along the line Penny's right arm had gotten itself crooked around the back of my neck. I reached up and gently but firmly forced it away as I looked sideways past the sheen of her hair toward the door.
Morse was standing just inside the lounge, his eyes wide, his expression still trying to decide whether it wanted to be astonished, appalled, or just plain furious. Penny's face, in contrast, was flushed, slightly defiant, and completely unapologetic.
"Evening, Morse," I greeted him as I finished easing Penny away from me and rested my hands on her shoulders to make sure she stayed there. I was feeling rather defiantly appalled myself, but since both of those were taken I decided to go with unconcerned casual instead. "You must have skipped the dessert cart."
The contest taking place across Morse's face was instantly over, with furious as the clear winner. Quietly, genteelly furious, perhaps, but furious nonetheless. "That's more than I can say about you," he retorted, his voice gone stiff with a thousand years of proper British decorum. "May I see you a moment?" His eyes flicked to Penny. "Alone?"
"Certainly," I said, shifting my eyes to Penny's. They were big and brown and still unrepentant. "If you'll excuse us. Penny?"
She nodded silently and got up, weaving her way back through the chairs to the door. She passed Morse without a glance going in either direction and disappeared. "What can I do for you?" I asked, gesturing Morse forward.
He took his own sweet time in ungluing himself from the deck, and wasn't any faster in working his way over to me. By the time he pulled one of the other chairs around to face me and sat down, he seemed to have cooled down a bit. "We'll pass over for the moment the utter inappropriateness of your behavior," he began in a growl. "For the moment."
I nodded, returning the favor by passing over for the moment the fact that he had no authority over me and that I wasn't subject to any bureaucratic rules of behavior anyway. "Fair enough."
"What we cannot pass over any longer is what exactly is going on here," he went on, glancing at the Fibibibi and lowering his voice. "We make planetfall tomorrow, and you obviously know more about this situation than you're letting on."
"Not so much as you think," I said. "There's a group of people who want Künstler's Lynx—"
"What people?" he cut me off. "That's the real question, isn't it? Who are they, and who are they affiliated with? Are they a criminal gang, an insurgent group, a government—what?"
"As near as I can tell, they have ties and links to all three categories," I said, angling the truth only a little. "I know they've infiltrated several galactic governments, some of them at the highest levels."
His face hardened. "Including Earth's?"
"They've got a few people scattered around the UN and probably elsewhere," I acknowledged, frowning. Clearly, some unknown puzzle pieces had just fallen into place behind those pale blue eyes. "Fortunately for us, they've mostly been concentrating on other governments."
"I see," he murmured, darkly thoughtful. "That would explain a great deal. I suppose our four Halkan friends will be continuing with us the whole way?"
I'd only tagged the three Halkas who'd been on Ian-apof as the Modhri's local walker contingent. Apparently, there was one more I'd missed. "Until we decide to lose them, yes," I told him.