“You can depend on it," he told them. They smiled back and looked from one to another, nodding.
“Let’s get Zallin into a vactube. Probably dump him later," Yalson said to the other three. She went over to the body. Two
of the Bratsilakins
followed her, and between the three of them they got the limp corpse to an area of the hangar deck where
they lifted some metal planks up,
opened a curved hatch, stuffed Zallin’s body into a narrow space, then closed both hatch
and deck again. The third Bratsilakin took a cloth from
a wall panel and mopped up the blood on the deck. Then the hairy clone
group headed for the door and the stairs. Yalson came up to Horza.
She made a sideways gesture with her head. “Come on. I’ll
show you where you can clean up."
He followed her over the hangar deck toward the doorway. She turned round as they went. “The rest have gone to eat. I’ll see
you in the
mess if you’re ready in time. Just follow your nose. Anyway, I have to collect my winnings."
“Your winnings." Horza said as they got to the doorway, where Yalson put her hand on what Horza assumed were lighting switches.
She
turned to him, looking into his eyes.
“Sure," she said, and pressed one of the switches covered by her hand. The lights didn’t change, but under his feet Horza
could feel a
vibration. He heard a hiss and what sounded like a pump running. “I bet on you," Yalson said, then turned and
bounded up the steps beyond the
door, two at a time.
Horza looked round at the hangar once and then followed her.
Just before the
Clear Air Turbulence
went back into warp and its crew sat down at table, the ship expelled the limp corpse of Zallin. Where it
had found a live
man in a suit, it left a dead youth in shorts and a tattered shirt, tumbling and freezing while a thin shell of air molecules
expanded around the body, like an image of departing life.