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to the Mag Force 7 team— disbanded since the Knights of the
Black Earth affair— to meet him on Megapolis, gave them the name and location
of the standard business-class hotel adjacent to the spaceport.
    A job for the
Megapolis Space and Aeronautics Museum wasn’t likely to call for top-level
security conditions; no need to travel to the edge of the galaxy, to Hell’s
Outpost to discuss their plans at the Exile Cafe, for example. Xris guessed
beforehand that this would be a simple job and he’d been right—in that, at
least.
    What he hadn’t
counted on was Amadi and friends dropping by to join the party— if that
woman at the museum had been one of Amadi’s. Logic told Xris she was a bureau
agent. Paranoia whispered that she was one of the Hung.
    Whoever she was,
he hoped to throw her off the trail. Xris and Raoul and the Little One drove to
the spaceport. No sign of Amadi or any of his agents following. Small comfort.
Amadi was good and when he didn’t want to be seen tailing a suspect, he wouldn’t
be seen.
    Dropping off the
rental vehic, the three merged with the crowds in the terminal, purchased three
tickets for an outbound flight, and then lounged around in the bar until it was
time for their flight to leave. Xris sipped a beer and studied the professor’s
notes. He formed a preliminary plan to steal the robot, then spent the rest of
the time worrying about Darlene.
    Raoul bought the
latest edition of the Galactic Inquisitor and caught up on the gossip
about the Royal Family, began ooohing and aahing over the first official family
photos of the newly arrived baby prince, attempted to show Xris, who wasn’t
interested. The Little One crept into the minds of everyone in the immediate
vicinity and, though he expanded his store of knowledge on humans considerably,
the telepath caught no one tailing them.
    When the flight
was called, they weren’t around to catch it. By the time Amadi—or whoever was
keeping an eye on them, if anyone was keeping an eye on them— realized
they’d been given the slip, the three were long gone. Xris, Raoul, and the
Little One left the spaceport, caught a tram to the nearby spaceport hotel.
    Xris had plenty of
opportunity for thought, with the result that paranoia fought logic and emerged
the victor. By the time he reached the hotel, Xris had worked himself into such
a fevered state of anxiety that he posted Raoul and the Little One to keep
watch, then used the house phone. Asking for Darlene under the name of Mohini,
he buzzed her room.
    Having already
convinced himself that something terrible had happened to his friend, Xris was
startled and relieved and even slightly angry at her voice—calm and
sleepy-sounding—at the other end.
    “ ‘Lo?” she
mumbled.
    All that worry,
and she’d been taking a nap!
    “Darlene, is that
you? Are you all right?” Xris demanded.
    She heard the
tension in his voice, woke up fast. “Yes, it’s me. I’m all right. What’s wrong?”
    “Has anyone been
inside your room? For any reason?”
    “No.”
    “Did anyone make
you switch rooms? Offer you cash to move?”
    “No, Xris.”
Darlene sounded exasperated. “And I remember the routine, okay? No maintenance
man has been in to ‘fix’ the phone, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
    “Good. What’s your
room number? I’m coming up.”
    She told him. He
switched off the phone, turned to Raoul. “The Little One latch on to anything?
Anybody interested in us?”
    Raoul shook his
head—carefully, so as not to disturb his homburg. “No, there is no one watching
us, no one following us, no one paying the slightest bit of attention to us, probably
because I am wearing this drab gray suit, which—while it is in the latest
style—simply does not suit my personality. May I add, my friend, that the
Little One and I”—he patted the fedora that stood somewhere about waist-level—”believe
that you are behaving most irrationally. It would indeed be remarkable if
anyone were to