Read Online Judgment at Proteus by Timothy Zahn - Free Book Online Page A

key the lock to our nucleics?”
    “I will call a room server immediately,” the Filly said, clearly relieved that the awkward situation had been resolved. “It will be ready within the hour.”
    “Thank you,” Bayta said, putting a hand on his shoulder and easing him gently but inexorably all the way out into the corridor. “We’ll wait here until that’s been done.”
    The Filly started to say something else, seemed to change his mind, and merely nodded. He was pulling out his comm when the door slid shut in his face.
    I looked at Bayta. “You’re kidding,” I said.
    “Why not?” she countered, starting along the edge of the room, her eyes darting everywhere. “I stay near Terese where I can watch over her. You stay here, where you can slip into the medical building when no one’s looking and figure out what they’re up to.”
    “And what happens if they do come after Terese, with me a good fifteen minutes away?” I asked. Bayta was heading toward the bed, so I went in the opposite direction, circling the room toward the computer desk.
    “They aren’t going to hurt her,” Bayta said. She reached the bed and knelt down to peer at its underside. “They’d hardly bring her across the galaxy for that.”
    “Unless she isn’t the one they actually care about,” I said, running my fingers beneath the computer desk.
    Bayta paused long enough in her examination of the bed to throw a frown at me. “What do you mean?”
    “In a minute,” I said, studying the edge where the desk met the wall. If the Fillies hadn’t had time to code the lock to our DNA, they probably hadn’t had time to install any listening devices, either, or at least nothing so subtle that we couldn’t spot it.
    Of course, the fact that I wasn’t all that familiar with Filly bugging devices theoretically meant that one of their normal, non-stealthy versions might still be able to slip past us. But listening devices shared certain characteristics, and I figured I had a fair chance of finding anything they might have put in here.
    Bayta was clearly on that same wavelength. One of the hazards of having hung around with me all this time, I supposed. We completed our respective sweeps, meeting halfway around the room. Then, again by unspoken but clearly mutual agreement, we both continued on, each of us now checking the areas the other had already searched.
    We finished without finding anything. I had no doubt that the other room, the one they’d planned for us, was bugged to the ceiling. But this one seemed safe enough, at least for the moment. “Of course, it’s only an assumption that they didn’t already have the lock coded for us,” I reminded Bayta as she sat down on the edge of the bed and I settled into the computer desk chair facing her. “Our helpful native guide might have used that passkey just to throw us off.”
    “I don’t think so,” Bayta said. “I touched the pad on my way in, and there was no click.”
    “Maybe that was because the door was already open.”
    She shook her head. “The first room door was also already open when I touched the pad there, but it still clicked. Why don’t you think they care about Terese?”
    I hesitated. Bayta had already shown she had a soft spot for the young and helpless, first with Rebekah Beach back on New Tigris and then for Terese herself aboard the super-express. I wasn’t at all sure how she was going to react to my current suspicion. “Here’s the score as I see it at the moment,” I said. “You remember, back on the super-express, we speculated the attack on Terese might have been staged as an excuse to get her to Proteus Station?”
    Bayta’s lip twitched. “Yes.”
    “I’ve been thinking about how to prove that,” I said. “So a while ago, when Aronobal brought up the fact that the baby was in trouble, I tossed out the possibility that Terese might want to abort him. Did you notice Wandek’s reaction?”
    Bayta nodded. “He was very upset.”
    “He was