“It did a good enough job on us.”

Though they could not find Aranimas’s stylus, whatever locked the deck plates in place had apparently been disabled when the ship was powered down. Twenty minutes later, they had torn up the whole floor, but found nothing.

“Shall we put it back?” Katherine asked, gesturing at the mess they had created.

“No point. The robots are going to know we were here anyway.”

“They have the key, don’t they?”

“Almost certainly. If they don’t, Jacobson does.”

Katherine sighed. “How are we ever going to find it? The size of this station-even if it were just lying in open view in a corridor somewhere, it’d take us weeks to find it. And you know that they’ve hidden it better than that.”

“There’s a lot of places they could put it that you can be sure they didn’t,” Derec said, looking around the main cabin one last time. “They won’t leave it unattended, you can count on that. Not like they left this ship.”

“Do you have any idea why they let us in here?”

Derec nodded slowly. “I think so. To send us a message. To tell us just how harmless they think we are. That there’s nothing we can do to them.” He sighed. “And they may just be right. Let’s get out of here, huh?”

Chapter 17. Partners In Crime

Squeak.

Brush.

Squeak.

Brush.

The sounds were soft and distant, but they were there, all right. If either he or Katherine had been talking, as they had been the first third of the way back, there would have been no way he would have heard them. But ever since they had fallen silent in individual introspection, the sounds had played at the threshold of Derec’s hearing.

At first he had thought them echoes of their own footsteps, or merely the product of paranoia. But as they were passing into subsection 51, Derec decided that they were real and not imagined. Something was following them.

“Don’t say anything and don’t turn around,” Derec whispered. “You hold both lamps. Keep walking.”

“What?”

“Ssssh. Keep walking. Keep the beams angled down so you won’t be silhouetted. Try to make it look like you’re two people.”

“What’s this about?” she demanded. But she contained her curiosity to a whisper, and kept walking as he had asked.

Handing the torch to her at arm’s length, Derec slipped away into the darkness and squeezed back against the wall. As he waited, he wondered who he was waiting for. One of Dr. Galen’s robots? One of Jacobson’s? Or Aranimas? He wished he still had the gas aerosol, or had kept his torch to use as a club.

Have to do it on your own, he told himself, dropping to his knees and huddling against the base of the wall.

The shadow was past Derec before he even saw it. Only when he looked back toward Katherine and caught a glimpse of it silhouetted against the glow of her torch did he move. Gathering himself up, he took three running steps and launched himself at the figure’s legs. He struck cloth and bone, not syntheskin and metal, and the stranger came down in a heap on top of Derec, squealing protest.

They wrestled furiously in the darkness, each with different objectives. Derec was trying to get a firm grip on an arm, leg, or neck and pin the other to the floor. His adversary was trying only to break Derec’s grip and escape.

Derec was much the more skilled. He had no difficulty getting what he thought were solid holds on the other. The difficulty was in maintaining them for more than a few seconds. Had they been wrestling in competition, he would have been getting the takedowns, his opponent the escape points. Part of the reason was the other’s compact strength, and part the slippery fabric its clothes were made of.

But in the dark, luck counted for more than skill or strength, and neutralized both. The two combatants rolled from one side of the passageway to the other, neither able to gain a lasting advantage. Then, with a sudden twist and a lucky grab, Derec found himself on top, straddling the other’s waist and with each of his hands locked in an iron grip on one of his opponent’s wrists.

Just then Katherine shone one of the lamps full on the shadow’s face. His adversary squinted up at him out of eyes nearly hidden by mottled gold and brown fur, and its mouth twisted into a familiar grimace.

“Wolruf!” Derec exclaimed.

“‘Ur stronger than ‘u look, Derec,” Wolruf said, still grinning. “But I ‘ope ‘u know I let ‘u win.”

Derec grinned back. “As ugly as you are, I’m awfully glad to see you. I was afraid we’d lost you when we were cut loose.”

“Why are you treating it like some long-lost friend?” Katherine demanded. “It’s Aranimas’s fetch-boy.”

“Girl,” he corrected. “Besides, you don’t understand,” he added, helping Wolruf to her feet. “She’s my friend.”

“Partners,” Wolruf said proudly.

“Oh? Then why was it skulking along behind us like that?”

“Following,” Wolruf said.

“What were you planning to do?”

“I never ‘urt ‘u-”

“You were waiting for us to find the key, weren’t you? And then you were going to steal it-”

“Katherine-she’s sick,” Derec said suddenly.

“What?”

“Look at her,” he urged. “Look at me,” he added, reclaiming his torch and turning its beam on himself. His clothing was covered with long gold and brown hairs. In the light of Katherine’s torch, the alien’s fur was so thin in patches that Derec could see the pale leathery skin beneath. And there was something about Wolruf’s eyes that telegraphed the distress she had been enduring.

“What’s wrong with you?” Katherine asked, a faint note of suspicion tainting her concern.

“ ’Ungry,” she said simply.

“Of course,” Derec said. “She’s starving. There isn’t even any food she could steal here.”

Katherine squinted at the alien through narrow-slitted eyes. “Is that why you were following us? Not to get the key, but to find out where we were getting our food?”

“I don’ care about the jewel,” Wolruf said. “Juss ‘ungry. I ‘ide, follow the robots, look for food. I follow them everywherr and never smell food.”

“You don’t like the robots, do you? It isn’t just Alpha,” Derec said.

“Brood-captain tell me a ‘undred times, never trust strange animal until ‘u’ve seen its meal table,” she said weakly.

It sounded like an attempt at a joke. “And robots never eat,” Derec completed. “Well, we’ll get you something. I hope we can get you something. Can you eat what we eat?”

“Just hold on,” Katherine interrupted. “You were on the ship with us the whole time? And you’ve been hiding out ever since?”

“I wass coming through interlock-Alpha, too-when heard the bomb go off,” Wolruf said. “Noise bring other Erani. Controls dead an’ ‘u not much better. So I cut us loose. When robots come I ‘ide, when ship dock I slip out. Been ‘iding ever since.”

“Where’s Aranimas?”

“Don’t know. Left behind.” Wolruf was noticeably unsteady on her feet.

“We can sort the rest of this out later,” Derec said sharply. “We’ve got to get her something, quickly.”

“Not so quickly,” Katherine said, stepping closer. “Where have you been hiding? Here, in the dark sections?”

“Mostly. No robots here. I like the dark better than I like robots.”

“How much of the dark sections have you been through, looking for food?”

“Lots,” Wolruf said. “But the jewel’s not there, if thass what ‘u’re wondering.”

“How do you know?” Katherine demanded. “Because you put it somewhere else?”

“I don’ want the jewel. Juss trouble for everyone,” Wolruf said. “But I know wherr it iss.”

Derec impulsively grabbed the alien by both cheeks and planted a kiss on her forehead. “All right!” he declared. “We’re in business!”

Katherine held her enthusiasm in check. “How do you know?” she repeated.

“I follow when they took it from the ship. I think they take it to ‘umans, ‘umans ‘ave food. Wrong. Robots took it wherr therr are lots of robots, no ‘umans, no food. I almoss got caught”