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casually looked that direction. “Looks fairly young,” she said. “Lower-middle-class, probably, from the headdress. Maybe even a bit lower…” She trailed off.
    “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking,” I agreed. “Did the Pirks suddenly discover deodorant when I wasn’t looking?
    “Deodorants don’t do any good,” she said, frowning at him. “The distinctive Pirk aroma comes from the food they eat. The by-products are metabolized and excreted through the skin pores—”
    “I was being facetious,” I interrupted. Cultural gaps aside, Bayta’s general book learning was very much up to date. “So does that mean this one’s on a special diet or something?”
    “I don’t know,” Bayta said. Her eyes shifted a little to the left. “Do you know those Humans he’s staring at?”
    Caught up in the novelty of it all, I hadn’t even picked up on the fact that he was looking at something across the way. I tracked along his sightlines, and found myself facing a similar bench two platforms over.
    There, chatting amiably together, were two men I did indeed recognize. “They’re a couple of my fellow torchliner passengers,” I said. “I don’t know their names.”
    Bayta tapped thoughtfully on our table. “There’s something about them that bothers me.”
    I took a sip of my tea. Now that she mentioned it, there was something about them that bothered me, too. I watched them out of the corner of my eye, trying to figure it out. They were both in their late forties, with similar bland facial features and rotund physiques that put them halfway to the dit rec cartoon version of Tweedledee and Tweedledum. They were nicely dressed but not ostentatiously so, with none of the look of the superrich that were the Modhri’s favored target for planting colonies inside.
    Still, I knew that up to now he hadn’t launched that kind of campaign against humanity, contenting himself with keeping an eye on us via low- and mid-level governmental functionaries. The two Tweedles could easily fit into that category.
    But then, so could any number of other people.
    So what was it about them that had caught our attention?
    And then, suddenly, it hit me. Since I’d been watching them neither man had checked his watch, or looked up at one of the floating schedule holodisplays, or even glanced down the track whose platform they were sitting beside.
    They had, in short, a settled look. Like two men who weren’t really anticipating the arrival of their train, but were simply hanging around the station enjoying the ambience.
    It was much the same look as our non-stinky Pirk had, now that I thought about it. For that matter, it was the same look Bayta and I probably had. Three sets of travelers, none of whom had anywhere to go.
    I lowered my eyes to the luggage nestled beside the two Tweedles. Four reasonably large rolling bags, plus two shoulder bags. Enough carrying capacity for someone who was traveling light to go anywhere in the galaxy. “Do me a favor,” I said to Bayta. “Find out when the next train is due to arrive on that track, and where it’s going.”
    Bayta’s eyes took on a slightly glazed look as she sent out a telepathic message to the station’s Spiders. “It’s an express heading outward toward the Bellidosh Estates-General,” she said after a moment. “It doesn’t arrive for nearly two hours.”
    “Ah,” I said. “Okay. Well, the good news is that your instincts are working perfectly.”
    I quirked a lip toward the Tweedles. “The bad news is that our friends over there seem to be waiting patiently for us to make our move.”
    Bayta nodded, a typically calm acceptance. “Do we have one yet?”
    I ran a finger idly up the side of my now nearly empty glass. “I think so,” I told her. “We’re going to need two different trains. The first will be a local going coreward to Yandro and Jurian space.”
    “Where are we going?”
    “Yandro,” I said. “The second will be another local passing outward