Read Online Night Train to Rigel by Timothy Zahn - Free Book Online

“Who was it?” Bayta asked, coming out of the washroom.
    “A couple of Halkas looking for a friend,” I told her as I snagged my jacket from the clothes rack. “You didn’t happen to notice anyone following you when you got back onto the Quadrail just now, did you?”
    Her forehead creased. “I don’t know—I wasn’t really watching. I’m sorry.”
    “It’s okay,” I said as I punched the door release. “Don’t wait up.”
    The two Halkas were already out of sight, having either passed through the car’s rear door or else gone into one of the other first-class compartments along the way. Not especially feeling like ringing door chimes at this hour, I continued to the end of the car and pushed the release. The door slid open, and I crossed the swaying vestibule into the first-class coach car beyond.
    Late evening it might be by the Spiders’ clocks, but you wouldn’t have known it from the activity level. The card games were still going strong, several of the chairs having been repositioned as old conversation circles had broken up and new ones formed. The overhead lighting had been dimmed to a soft nighttime glow, but with each seat sporting its own reading light the only difference was that the brightness started at chest height instead of up at the ceiling. A few of the passengers were dozing in their seats, sonic neutralizers built into their headrests suppressing the commotion around them.
    There were several Halkas in evidence, some of them playing cards, others conversing or snugged down for sleep. I zigzagged my way slowly through the car, looking at each of them in turn. Halkan faces were difficult for human eyes to distinguish between, but I’d had some training in the technique, and I was eighty percent sure that none of these were the ones I was looking for. Certainly there wasn’t anyone dressed the way my visitors had been.
    I’d made it halfway through the car, and was starting to pick up my pace toward the rear door, when a human voice cut through the general murmur. “And Yandro makes five.”
    I froze in my tracks, my eyes darting that direction. An older man in a casual suit was sitting a couple of seats to my right, his face half in shadow from his reading light, his lips curled in a sort of half smile as he gazed up at me. “Come, now,” he said reprovingly. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your own catchphrase.”
    For another second I stared at him, my mental wheels spinning on their tracks. Then my mind edited in the missing mustache and beard, and it abruptly clicked: Colonel Terrance Applegate, Western Alliance Intelligence. Once upon a time, one of my superiors. “It wasn’t my catchphrase,” I said stiffly, and started to move on.
    “My apologies,” he said, holding up a hand. “A poor attempt at humor. Please, sit down.”
    I hesitated. As far as I was concerned, tracking my two Halkas was way higher on my priority list than reminiscing about the bad old days. Especially with one of the people who had made the last of those days so bad in the first place.
    But on the other hand, we were on a Quadrail, and aside from the restrooms and first-class compartments there weren’t a lot of places aboard where anyone could hide. And I had to admit a certain curiosity as to what a midlevel West-ali officer’s rear end was doing in a first-class Quadrail seat. “An extremely poor attempt. Colonel,” I told him, stepping through the maze of chairs to an empty one at his side. Swiveling it around to face him, I sat down. “So how are things at Westali?”
    “About the same, or so I hear,” he said. “And it’s Mr . Applegate now. I resigned my commission eight months ago.”
    I looked significantly around the car. “Looks like you traded up.”
    He shrugged, retrieving a half-full glass from his seat’s cup holder. “Debatable. I’m working for the UN.”
    “How nice for you,” I said, keeping my voice neutral. I’d never been able to prove it, but I’d long