Free Gates of Hell by Susan Sizemore Page B

competently on Bonadem as she has aboard the
Tigris
.” After a brief exchange of pleasantries, it was agreed that a cutter would be sent out from Bonadem to pick her up. Eamon ordered a course change to rendezvous with the planetary ship. Then, and only then, did he address Roxy. What he said was, “Dismissed, Physician.”
    ———
    “Where do you think you’re going?”
    Roxy turned at Dee’s voice. She’d just come up to the lift near her quarters. She waited for Dee to catch up with her. “Cutter bay,” she answered. “I’m out of here.”
    “Just like that.” Dee snapped her fingers in Roxy’s face. “Gone. Poof. No big tearful farewell scene after all this time onboard? Not like you, Merkrates.”
    “I’ll be back in a month or so. Besides, I’ve done the tearful farewell bit.” The day-long scene with her husband had been both tearful and unpleasant before he finally, grudgingly acquiesced to the necessity of her leaving, since there was nothing he could do about it. “Everybody gathered in the recreation room and said goodbye an hour ago. There was cake. Where were you?”
    “Packing.” Dee held up a blue duffel just like the one at Roxy’s feet. “I’m coming along.”
    “What?!” Roxy had a vivid recollection of Kelem before she’d healed him. She didn’t want to see Dee in the same condition. “Why would you want to go to Bonadem?
I
don’t want to go to Bonadem.”
    “Bucons,” Dee answered succinctly. “If they’re dealing a drug that works on Sag Fever, I want to find it and synthesize it. Chemists are good for that,” she added. “Bonadem has a Bucon trading enclave.”
    “I know. I was thinking about that myself.”
    Dee patted her on the head. “Clever child. But you’re not a chemist.”
    Actually, she was. “True,” she agreed.
    “And you’ll be busy.”
    “True,” Roxy agreed again.
    “And I know more about Bucons than you do.”
    “Well… “
    Dee’s dark eyes narrowed. “My misspent youth was more misspent than your misspent youth.”
    “True, Nikophoris.”
    “Fine. It’s agreed.” Dee pressed the call button for the lift. “Let’s go.”
    “Uh—the captain? Bonita? Me? Don’t you have to get these peoples’ permission?”
    “Dr. Hernandez has enthusiastically agreed to supervise Life Sciences in my absence. Eamon doesn’t really want you to go by yourself, not that he said so in so many words. He did initial the temporary transfer form with a particularly sentimental flourish, I thought.”
    “What about me?”
    “You don’t want to go alone, either.”
    How very true. “It is a good idea. But remember what happened the last time you were off the ship.”
    “I got wounded. It wasn’t pretty. Bonadem is a civilized world.” The car arrived, its doors swishing suggestively open. “And you’ll be there to fix me if anything happens. Let’s go.” Dee stepped in and waited.
    Roxy hefted her duffel and looked up and down the empty corridor. “Right,” she said and joined her friend. “Let’s go.”

Chapter Five
    “I’ve changed my mind,” Pyr announced. It was the first time he’d spoken since coming onto the bridge. He had been silently watching the view screen and thinking until Linch interrupted his concentration to tell him the ETA to Calrod was two hours.
    Pyr stretched his long legs out before him as he lounged in the bridge’s center seat and looked up at the main screen through a fringe of hair. He kept his gaze on the silver-streaked tunnel of the FTL distortion field, waiting while a circle of eyes turned questioningly on him. Linch and Pilsane were in front of him, between the big screen and his chair. Mik was behind him at the engineering post. Simon and Rhod flanked him at the communications and ship’s functions stations. The
Raptor
was running silent, but Simon was monitoring the sensors for other ships’ chatter. There hadn’t been any so far. Taylre was with Mik at engineering. Pyr had been listening to