Even before she stepped from the shower, she knew the attacker would be waiting. No words formed in her mind, nor thoughts that might be put into words--it never happened that way. Only a vague feeling that danger waited beyond the shower door.
She slid the door back and gazed at the man in the bathroom beyond. His stance was that of a well trained fighter. Although he stood only six inches taller than five feet, his frame was layered in tectonic slabs of muscle beneath a black, tight-fitting jumpsuit, the gold sword and shield of Base Security emblazoned on the glossy fabric over his heart. A pink scar an eighth of an inch wide ran from the outside of his left eye, down his cheek, to the corner of his mouth, standing out against skin tanned nearly black. All facial hair--including eyebrows and lashes--was absent, and his bald head reflected the bathroom's overhead light as if oiled.
A belter, she thought as her gaze darted to the stun pistol holstered on the man's left hip, then to the pendant suspended from a silver chain about his neck. The shape of a hen's egg and half the size of a closed fist, the pendant was fashioned from pitted dull-gray metal. Somewhere, sometime, she had seen another like it, but she could remember neither where nor when.
"How did you get in here?" she demanded.
The dark-skinned man did not immediately respond. Instead, he looked her nude body up and down, as if sizing her up for strength and ability. What he saw was a six-foot-four-inch tall woman, apparently thirty years of age (actual age: forty-two), her body glistening with water droplets. Her breasts were high and firm, her hips not much broader than they had been twenty years before. Coal black hair falling to mid-back, eyes brown, features slightly Oriental.
What he failed to see were her prosthetics, and a fighting ability honed to perfection through years of training and discipline.
"Captain Susan Tanner?" he finally asked, his voice deep and strong.
She wanted to ask who he was, but she couldn't; her thoughts were blocked. There was a unique quality to his voice, a certain hard inflection she had not heard in many years. It actually demanded a response.
"I'm Susan Tanner--"
The man's lips stretched tight over his teeth, and he barked a single word, "Traitor!" then lunged. His right hand flashed out in a vicious karate chop directed at her head.
She snapped her left hand up to deflect the punch, and the man's callused knuckles drove into the white ceramic tiles an inch from her ear. Pulverized tile peppered her body as her right hand shot out to slam into his throat. She felt his larynx collapse beneath her prosthetic hand.
Pain mingled with surprise washed over his dark features, and he staggered back a step, then caught himself and again scanned her body. He had expected neither her speed nor her strength.
"What's this about?" she demanded, putting as much authority as she could muster into her voice. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"
As soon as she asked those questions, she wished she hadn't. It couldn't possibly do any good. Even if he wanted to respond, he couldn't. She had seen to that when she crushed his larynx.
But there were those whose job it was to obtain that information. Base Security would get to the bottom of this. They could extract information from any mind; they had the Probe.
Before she could act on that thought, the dark man renewed his attack. Spitting blood onto the white tiles at her feet, he again came at her, this time half-turning and kicking out and up with his left foot, the side of his boot aimed at her solar plexus.
She side-stepped just enough to avoid his kick, then planted her bare feet as firmly as possible on the blood-slicked tiles and in Luna's one-sixth standard gravity, and shifted her weight. In the same motion, she brought her right elbow crashing down into her attacker's knee.
Bone shattered beneath flesh and his face contorted in pain. He tried to cry out, but the only sound his ruined vocal cords could produce was a soft gurgle. He crumbled to the floor at her feet.
Propping himself up on one elbow, he looked into her eyes. His gaze sent a cold shiver up her spine; it held a seething hatred greater than anything she had ever before seen.
Then she saw it: an inch long, white, horizontal figure-eight tattoo on his left temple. The symbol for infinity.
Without another attempt at communication, the man fingered the pendant hanging about his neck, and silently disappeared.
* * *
A fog of unreality descended over Susan's thoughts, and a tingling sensation began just behind her eyes. She felt suddenly dizzy.
She stepped around the spot where her assailant had lain only an instant before and staggered into the room beyond. Dripping water across the carpet, she went to the chair before the small wooden desk and sat as the tingling behind her eyes became a full-blown headache. With a sharp shake of her head she tried to clear the pain, but it did no good. The headache merely intensified.
Closing her eyes, she held her head in her hands and attempted to collect her thoughts. The headache, the dizziness, that feeling of unreality--she knew they had not been brought on by the dark man's attack. She could deal with violence. Since Aldebaran, nearly ten years ago, Admiral Renford had used her for myriad security assignments. Her superbly developed fighting ability and the power in her prosthetics made her a natural for such work, as did her ability to somehow detect coming danger, although she had never told the Admiral about that. On a number of occasions she had acted as temporary bodyguard for heads-of-state, and had often accompanied the Admiral and his family while they vacationed Earth-side. There were also her uncountable assignments as a diplomatic courier, transporting sensitive documents and various sealed packages. Many of these tasks had required violent action.
No, the belter's attack had not caused those symptoms. They were products of what had happened after the attack. They were brought on by the man's sudden and mysterious disappearance, produced when Susan's normally rational mind slammed up hard against the cold wall of something she simply could not understand.
She struggled with that for a few seconds, pushing against the mental wall, testing it, trying to break through into understanding. But she could not. And she realized she would not be able to function properly until she got beyond it.
There were questions she should be asking, certain steps she knew she should be taking. But those questions simply would not form, and the steps refused to fall into any sort of logical order. And, to make matters worse, the cobweb remnants of last night's nightmare pressed in on her thoughts--long past emotions and conversations, long dead faces--and her body began to tremble.
A multi-colored snowflake pattern blossomed in her mind. At first it remained confined to a small, isolated corner, but quickly spread to fill her entire consciousness. Within seconds she began mouthing guttural monotonal syllables in a language she did not understand.
Along with her subtle ability to predict danger in the immediate future, the pattern and the chant had mysteriously appeared ten years ago, while she recuperated in the hospital after the Aldebaran incident. Although she did not know precisely what the pattern and the chant were, they did seem to work. Somehow, they came to her aid when they were most needed, keeping her anxiety in check during times of stress.
She had never told her doctors--not anyone--about either the pattern and the chant, or her strange prescient ability. She did not dare.
The fog lifted from her thoughts as quickly as it had come, and within seconds she was filled with calm confidence where an instant before there had been uncertainty and fear. At the same time, both the pain in her head and the dizziness disappeared, and her body ceased its tremors.
The first clear thoughts to enter her mind were a string of related questions. Her attacker had been a belter--that much was clear--and the small tattoo on his temple marked him as a member of the Society of Bright Eternity, a mysterious cult that had established a colony on Ceres more than a hundred years before. But why had he been in Susan's rooms? How had he gotten past the door's spore-lock? Why had he attacked her, and why hadn't he used his stun pistol? And, finally, how had he pulled off that vanishing trick?
That last question was the real stumper. One instant he had lain on the bathroom floor. The next he was gone.
But to where? And how had he accomplished it?
And he had called he a traitor just before launching his attack. Why? Could it have something to do with Aldebaran? She did not know.
Again she thought of those whose job it was to ferret out that information. Her first task should be to contact Base Security.
She opened her eyes, then stood somewhat shakily and went to the holo-phone on the far side of the room. As she entered the lens cluster's field, the device activated with a date-time display--two-feet-high glowing red letters and numerals hanging in mid air before her: OCT. 3, 2187--0738.
"Base Security," she said. "This is a priority emergency."
Instantly the date-time display disappeared, replaced by the three-dimensional image of a man sitting behind a small wooden desk. Perhaps twenty or twenty-five, he was dressed in a black uniform with white corporal's stripes on both sleeves and a gold Base Security emblem over his left breast.
The young man reddened, his eyes becoming large and round with surprise. He reached out to the controls set in the desk top and his image vanished, supplanted by the date-time display: OCT. 3, 2187--0739.
"Are you still there?" Susan asked.
"Yes, ma'am, I'm still here," the young man's voice said, issuing from thin air before her.
"Is something wrong with the equipment, then?"
"The equipment is fine. I disconnected visual when I saw you weren't dressed."
Susan forced her sudden anger down. "Just a minute," she said, not bothering to hide her contempt. Earth-side, her nudity would have gone unnoticed.
She went into the bathroom, pulled a towel from its rack beside the shower, and dried herself. Toweling her hair, she returned to the bedroom and went to the closet. She dropped the wet towel on the bed.
Reaching into the closet, she took down a red Fleet jumpsuit uniform with gold captain's stripes on both sleeves. She stepped into it and sealed the pressure-sensitive fastener up its front. She drew matching boots from the closet and pulled them on, then fastened a utility belt containing numerous small pouches about her waist. She checked the middle pouch for her LIN/C, then snapped it closed again.
Log and Interface Neuro/Computer--a highly sophisticated, smart-card device functioning as both personal log and human/computer interface. An outgrowth of late twentieth century technology, at first the LIN/C had contained merely medical and payroll records, but later also held a complete service history. More and more was added, until by the year 2100 it included myriad sensors and a microminiaturized transmitter.
Each member of Fleet, as well as the civilian Survey Service, carried a LIN/C. It served not only as a personal memo and computer tie-in, but also continually transmitted a powerful locator signal to either the Fleet or the Survey Service computer on Luna through a network of satellites scattered throughout the solar system.
Again Susan positioned herself before the phone's lens cluster. Taking a final tug at her uniform, she brushed a stray stran of wet hair back over her shoulder and announced:
"I'm dressed. You can re-activate visual now."
The date-time display vanished, and once again the young corporal sat before her. His face was still red as he cleared his throat and spoke.
"What can I do for you, uh... Captain?"
"I was just attacked in my rooms. You can tell me how my attacker got in here."
"Attacked... In your rooms... Are you sure?"
"Of course I'm sure." Susan glared at the young man's image. "Look--" she began, almost telling him what had happened. But she decided against it. The corporal would only kick it up his chain of command, and she would have to tell her story all over again. Instead, she said simply, "Get me your watch captain."
"Yes, ma'am." Again he reached out to the controls set in the top of his desk, and his image was replaced by the date-time display.
While she waited, she ran through in her mind what she would tell the corporal's supervisor. That a man had tried to kill her, then vanished into thin air? That sounded too improbable.
And yet, it was exactly what had happened.
Suddenly, she wondered if perhaps she might be making a mistake. The man who had attacked her had been wearing a Base Security uniform. Could there be a conspiracy of some sort to kill her--something in which Security was involved?
That was impossible! The thought was strictly paranoiac.
Still....
The image of a large man of about sixty appeared before her, scattering those thoughts. He wore a gray flat-top haircut and Base Security uniform, and sat behind a desk identical to the corporal's. He smiled out at Susan in an almost fatherly fashion. After a few seconds of silence, he spoke.
"I'm Staff Sergeant Evans, Captain. How can I help you?" His voice was deep and pleasant, and without thought Susan returned his smile.
"An attempt has just been made on my life," Susan responded, "here, in my quarters."
"So I've been told." He looked down and to his left, obviously watching a display set in the desk top. His face wrinkled in a frown. "We haven't received record of the occurrence from the Fleet computer yet."
"I wasn't wearing my LIN/C."
The staff sergeant's gaze snapped back to Susan and his frown intensified, further creasing his features. "Why not?"
"I had just stepped from the shower."
He nodded. "That is unfortunate. So, the Fleet computer doesn't contain a record of the incident." He was silent for a few seconds, then said, "But my locator readout shows you are wearing it now. Tell me what happened. Meanwhile, I'll send an investigation team out to inspect the area for physical evidence." He nodded to someone outside the transmitting holo-phone's field of view.
Susan told Evans about the attack, and the smart-card in the pouch at her waist transmitted to the Fleet computer not only everything she said, felt, remembered, and thought about the experience, but also her pulse and respiration rate, pupil dilation, galvanic response, and several other physiological indicators. That transmission would constitute her legal statement, colored by her perceptions and emotions, in lieu of a record of the actual occurrence. It would be forwarded almost instantaneously to the Base Security computer.
"Could it have been a case of mistaken identity?" Evans asked when she had finished her story.
Susan shook her head. "Like I said, he knew my name."
"You confirmed it to him?"
"I had no choice. He used the Voice."
"Then it's lucky you crushed his larynx when you did. And you say he simply disappeared?"
She nodded.
Evans frowned and his gaze narrowed. He was silent for a few seconds. Finally he asked, "How long have you been on Luna, Captain?"
"Nearly eight hours. I arrived on the shuttle just before midnight."
"And what brings you here?"
"Fleet Admiral James Renford sent for me from Earth-side. I have an appointment with him this morning."
"You are on the Admiral's staff?"
"That's right."
"Here on official Fleet business?"
"Yes."
Evans nodded. Even if Susan knew more, she couldn't tell him, and he knew it. "You just sit tight until my people arrive," he said. He punched a button before him and his image vanished.
The date-time display read 0744.
* * *
Susan went to the chair behind the desk and again sat down. Instantly she resumed the line of thought she had started a few minutes before. Was there a plot to kill her?
If, in fact, such a conspiracy did exist, she doubted Evans was involved. Although she did not know why she should, she trusted the staff sergeant. Of course, that didn't rule out someone else in Security, and that might explain how the belter got into her rooms.
She didn't bother to wonder why someone might want her dead. She had made many enemies during her career in Fleet--one simply did not perform the kind of work Susan had for the past nine years without making enemies--and those who might want her dead, for one reason or another, could be counted in the hundreds, if not the thousands.
Then there was Aldebaran.
But why had he called her a traitor? What could he have possibly meant by that?
She simply did not know.
