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Roic were all clearly identifiable, hastily unloading equipment.
A freight lock in one of the Necklin drive nacelles popped up next, and Miles caught his breath. A figure
in a bulky extravehicular-repairs suit marked with serial numbers from theIdris 's engineering section
lumbered heavily past the vid pickup, and departed into the vacuum with a brief puff of suit jets. The
quaddies bobbing at Miles's shoulder murmured and pointed; Greenlaw muffled an exclamation, and
Venn choked on a curse.
The next record back in time was of themselves the three quaddies, Miles, and Roic entering the
ship from the loading bay for their inspection, however many hours ago it had been. Miles tapped
instantly back to the mystery figure in the engineering suit. What time . . . ?
Roic exclaimed, "Look, m'lord! He it was getting away not twenty minutes before we found
t'portmaster! The ba must've still been aboard when we came on!" Even through his faceplate, his face
took on a greenish tinge.
Had Bel's conundrum in the bod pod been a fiendishly engineered delaying tactic? Miles wondered if the
knotted feeling in his stomach and tightness in his throat could be the first sign of a bioengineered
plague. . . .
"Is that our suspect?" asked Leutwyn anxiously. "Where did he go?"
"What is the range on those heavy suits of yours, do you know, Lord Auditor?" asked Venn urgently.
"Those? Not sure. They're meant to allow men to work outside the ship for hours at a time, so I'd guess,
if they were fully topped up with oxygen, propellant, and power . . . damned near the range of a small
personnel pod." The engineering repair suits resembled military space armor, except with an array of
built-in tools instead of built-in weapons. Too heavy for even a strong man to walk in, they were fully
powered. The ba might have ridden in one around to any point on Graf Station. Worse, the ba might
have ridden out to a mid-space pickup by some Cetagandan co-agent, or perhaps by some bribed or
simply bamboozled local helper. The ba might be thousands of kilometers away by now, with the gap
widening every second. Heading for entry to another quaddie habitat under yet another faked identity, or
even for rendezvous with a passing jumpship and escape from Quaddiespace altogether.
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"Station Security is on full emergency alert," said Venn. "I have all my patrollers and all of the Sealer's
militia on duty out looking for the fellow the person. Dubauercan't have gotten back aboard the station
unobserved." A tremor of doubt in Venn's voice undercut the certainty of this statement.
"I've ordered the station onto a full biocontamination quarantine," said Greenlaw. "All incoming ships and
vehicles have been waved off or diverted to Union, and none now in dock are cleared to leave. If the
fugitive did get back aboard already it isn't leaving." Judging by the sealer's congealed expression, she
was by no means sure if this was a good thing. Miles sympathized. Fifty thousand potential
hostages . . . "If it's fled somewhere else . . . if our people can't locate this fugitive promptly, I'm going to
have to extend the quarantine throughout Quaddiespace."
What would be the most important task for the ba, now that the flag had been dropped? It had to realize
that the tight secrecy it had relied on for protection thus far was irremediably ruptured. Did it realize how
close on its heels its pursuers had come? Would it still wish to murder Gupta to assure the Jacksonian
smuggler's silence? Or would it abandon that hunt, cut losses, and run if it could? Which direction was it
trying to move, back in, or out?
Miles's eye fell on the vid image of the work suit, frozen above the plate. Did that suit have the kind of
telemetry space armor did? More to the point did it have the kind of remote control overrides some
space armor did?
"Roic! When you were down in the engineering suit lockers hunting for that pressure suit, did you see an
automated command-and-control station for these powered repair units?"
"I . . . there's a control room down there, yes, m'lord. I passed it. I don't know what all might be in it."
"I have an idea. Follow me."
He levered himself from the station chair and left Nav and Com at a sloppy jog, his biotainer suit sliding
aggravatingly around him. Roic strode after; the curious quaddies followed in their floaters.
The control room was scarcely more than a booth, but it featured a telemetry station for exterior
maintenance and repairs. Miles slid into its station chair, and cursed the tall person who'd fixed it at a
height that left his boots dangling in air. On permanent display were several real-time vid shots of critical
portions of the ship's outlying anatomy, including directional antenna arrays, the mass shield generator,
and the main normal-space thrusters. Miles sorted through a bewildering mess of data from structural
safety sensors scattered throughout the ship. Finally, the work suit control program came up.
Six suits in the array. Miles called up visual telemetry from their helmet vids. Five returned views of blank
walls, the insides of their respective storage lockers. The sixth returned a lighter image, but more puzzling, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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