I turned to leave them in the lock.
“Wait!” old Habibula whined angrily behind me.
“We’ve got our rights, even as mortal civilians.
The Green Hall guarantees our democratic freedoms.
You can’t make us say anything you might take to be incriminating.”
“True enough.” I paused at the inner valve.
“But I can’t afford to let strangers with incriminating secrets inside Nowhere Near.”
“Strangers?”
His gasp was almost a sob.
“Captain, don’t you know the history of the precious Legion?
Have you never heard of poor old Giles Habibula, who fought in the war against the wicked Medusae, and fought against the invisible Cometeers, and fought against the fearful human monster who called himself the Basilisk?”
“What if I do?”
Reviewing dusty memories of history lectures back at the Legion academy on old Earth, I made a rapid calculation.
“Don’t try to tell me you are that Giles Habibula.
He’d be dead of old age by now.”
“I am—almost!” he gasped.
“Life knows I’m mortal old—and waging a war to save my precious life!”
Sadly, he shook his pink and hairless baby-head.
“Perhaps it’s true there’s an evil stain across my past.
I must confess that I once picked locks for a living.
But all that has been atoned for—a million times atoned for, to the living glory of the Legion, with my precious sweat and blood and brains.”
He stopped to catch a sobbing breath, his dull-colored eyes squinting at me cunningly.
“When Ken Star arrives, he’ll tell you who we are,” he whined.
“Ken Star will vouch that we are not the miserable criminals you seem to take us for.”
“Please—C-Captain!”
The girl’s voice had an anxious little catch.
When I looked at her, her young loveliness became an aching throb in my throat and wild magic in my imagination.
“Commander Star’s—our friend.” She hesitated oddly.
“I know he’ll soon be here to assure you that we aren’t criminals of any sort —that we do have legitimate business here.”
Her bronze eyes were wide and warm, bright as if with tears.
“Captain, you can’t send us back to Scabbard and his gangster crew.”
The quiver hi her voice dissolved my resolution.
“At least you’ve got to let Giles tell you why we’re here.
You’ve just got to, Captain!”
Frowning to conceal unsoldierly feelings, I came slowly back to them.
The riddles around them had begun to tease my curiosity.
I knew that old Habibula was deliberately baiting me, but I couldn’t guess why.
I was still convinced I didn’t want them on the station, yet the girl had lit a glowing coal of longing in me.
“All right.”
I swung as coldly as I could to old Habibula.
“Why are you here?”
“Because I like machines.”
2 North of Nowhere
The old soldier moved toward me across the lock.
His rolling, cautious gait, in the low G-force here near the axis of the spuming station, convinced me that he was at least a veteran spaceman.
His pale eyes measured the shining steel valves, caressed the red-painted pumps, read the winking lights of the lock monitor.
“What machines!”
His nasal voice lifted happily.
“What divine machines.”
He gave the girl a pink baby-grin.