Free April by Mackey Chandler Page A

he had almost purplish tones. He was as bulky as her dad was slight, with a massive pillar of a neck and completely bald.
    "Ah, Sleeping Beauty! Glad to see you. I was ready to awaken you last night, but your father assured me you would be more coherent in the morning." He had a beautiful theatrical voice.
     Suddenly, he switched his tone and asked more seriously, "Did you sleep well?"
    The sudden shift threw her off balance and made her wonder if he was being sarcastic, but the question seemed genuine. Maybe this was some tactic he used for questioning. But he stopped and was waiting for a reply, so it did not seem rhetorical.
    "I slept well, thank you," and added politely, "and you sir?"
    "Sadly no, thank you, I have not got around to sleeping yet."
    April pegged the voice suddenly. It was the fellow speaking with the Australian security officer, in the scanner intercept yesterday.
    "I had some of my people seal off a room at the Holiday Inn, where your young man Art was staying. It does not set well with subordinates if you send them into potential harm and go off home to bed." He didn't mention the pair of corpses in the cable closet. The two events close together had his staff rattled and overworked.  "Not that I blame you for my lack of sleep," he explained. "I'm actually very grateful for your calling our attention to the fellow."
    "The Holiday Inn? He told me he was a company intern, so I figured he would be in company rooms. In fact I mentioned to him he was lucky not to be stuck in an Animal House bunkroom, with all the construction workers."
    "He had a lot of interesting stories, all less than truthful and they were very difficult to weave together, without contradictions, in such a small community as ours. A number of people already noticed discrepancies in his statements. It would not have held together much longer, before somebody sounded the alarm. However, the privilege was yours."
    "He told Housekeeping he was looking to rent cubic for a family business, so they spent most of a shift showing him every empty space on M3. He also did have a reservation on the FedEx shuttle as he told you, but he wasn't on it. He bailed out early, even though he only had a half shift wait to go on the commercial shuttle. I think you'll be interested in how he left. Watch this," he commanded and his screen reduced to a small square in the corner.
    The video running was from a security camera in a large airlock, an easy fit for four people. There weren't many so big. The walls were the dull lime anodized finish, common in the industrial areas of the station without decoration. Art came in and it was zero G, but he handled himself with the smooth, experienced motions of someone completely at ease in micro-gravity.
    Ignoring the camera, Art took off his hard shoes, securing them to a grab ring by the laces. He was wearing sticky footies with separate toes, just like a pair of gloves. He grabbed a bar with his toes and stepped out of his pants with easy motions, transferring his grip from one foot to the other as easily as most people could use their hands, stripped the braided belt out of them and secured them by tying one leg around a take-hold ring. There were some small items he put in the cargo pockets on his shorts. He added some things from his blazer and tied it down by knotting a sleeve on the same take-hold ring. An innersole, peeled back, yielded a small case he carefully kept.
    From the waistband of his shorts he removed his com pad and the thin long weapon in a holster April had correctly suspected he carried. There was a second straight handle sticking up behind the reversed pistol grip. Those got clipped on the web belt he'd removed. He gave the wall a push and pivoted on his toehold to open the cabinet holding emergency p-suits. An alarm should have gone off then, so he must have disabled it.
    The small flat panel by the hatch, to display warnings and the progression of the lock cycle stayed dark. This told them he