Read Online Gateway To Xanadu by Sharon Green - Free Book Online

get?”
    “I expected to get what my partner got,” he growled, not about to let himself be soothed. “Is that what you’ll be doing, Diana? The ‘easy’ ones?”

    “If they come my way, you won’t find me turning my nose up at them.” I shrugged. “If you spend too much time with your life constantly on the line, you get to the point where you’re too tired or too bored to put out maximum effort. After that you find yourself intimately involved in final sort of happenings, the kind that take you out of the game for keeps. What’s your departmental rating, Val?”
    “I don’t understand,” he said, surprised at the unexpected question. “How could I know my rating in a department I haven’t even officially joined yet?”
    “Well, you seemed to know what sort of assignments you should be given,” I pointed out. “If you don’t know what rating you are, how do you know what an ‘easy’ one consists of?”
    His face took on a frustrated look, an awareness of the way he was being backed into a corner without knowing how to get out of it again. He shifted in annoyance in the seat, his eyes not at all pleased with me, and then he found a corner to hang argument on.
    “You said you’d take the easy ones ‘if’ they came your way,” he countered, the feral look firmly planted in his eyes. “You obviously don’t expect them to come your way, but you want them to come mine.”
    “I’ve spent twelve years proving what I can do,” I pointed out. “I started learning what I was up against when I was eighteen standard years old, and the twelve years show how well I learned those lessons. I’m a Special Agent, Val, and in my frame of reference ‘easy’ means anything that isn’t automatically considered certain death. You better believe I’ll take an easy one if it comes my way, but there are too many assignments that aren’t easy-and not enough Special Agents to do them. If you prove to my people you can do what I do, they’ll be more than happy to change your designation. Why you would want it changed I can’t imagine, but you have to give them a chance to evaluate you.”
    His sharp, annoyed movements in the seat showed he was still struggling against the box I had him in, but sweet reason has it all over driving argument when you want to nail someone good. “They can evaluate me all they like while we’re working together,” he said at last, his tone announcing that that was the sole concession he was willing to make. “Partners are two people who work together, and that’s the reason I came here with you: to be your partner. What’s an orbital station?”
    The abrupt change of subject was a lot more of a concession than the one he’d voiced, and I smiled to myself as I turned back to the controls. When the time came, Val would do what he was told to do, and in the meanwhile I was no longer the bad guy.
    “An orbital station is part of the system the Federation set up to make traveling easier,” I said, letting the instruments confirm my estimate that it was too soon to change my heading for Faraway. “Major spaceports started out right on the planet designated as a change of trains’ stop, and all kinds of unexpected difficulties developed with them. If people had to wait a week or more to make connections with a ship going their way, they started wondering about what was beyond the spaceport fence. If they’d checked out local customs first, they might have been there waiting when their ship got in, but most sightseers didn’t bother. They just went their merry way and found out about strange laws the hard way.”
    I shifted away from the controls and continued. “The Federation wasn’t about to start a shooting war with half its planet even if the problem of shaking tourists loose from their grip was getting worse by the day, so some bright boy came up with the idea of orbiting stations where sightseers could wander all they liked and never get into trouble. If they want to hit