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He grinned. Bad Worm.
The lift to his spirits was brief, though, and he went back to brooding.
Those lists. Ship landings. If
Harmon s as bad off as they say, he d sell his grand-mother and keep his
mouth shut about it. He glanced at the screen.
The Singer was lifting the harpcase. She slipped the strap over her shoulder
and went out. The table s clean. The papers are gone. What s she up to
now? If she s on the move.... He scowled at the screens set up on the table.
Most of his gear was packed in the lockboxes of the flikit; he wanted to be
ready to jump when the spy did and figured he wouldn t have much time for
packing. I can always set up again ... leave the EARS and the peeps ...
you re working Xman time, Worm. So do what he d do and jump.
He broke down the screens and the flaker, packed them in their case and
stowed the case in the flikit. He locked the door and the shed and scurried
for Star Street. And almost ran into the spy as he
came charg-ing from a sidestreet onto the walkway.
He slowed to an amble, stopped to look into one of the windows of Kautkas
Anything Shop when the spy paused to talk to Getto. He didn t have to strain
his ears to hear what she said.
Announcing it to the world, he thought.
She s definitely got plans.
even look at water. Gonna make another song?
Want to. Might. They come when they come, you know. She fluttered her
fingers at him and on her way.
Hiring a flit? Going out over water? Zoll! She s got it. Found something
in those papers.
Harmon. That s it. She s figured out he s the one took Lylunda. Bet anything
on that. And she s heading for her ship, going af-ter him. . . .
He snapped his fingers as if he d forgot something and went hurrying back the
way he d come.
4
As Worm swung the flikit south, skimming just above the long surges of the
ocean waves to avoid be-ing spotted from Haundi Zurgile and chased by the
lo-cal authorities, he saw a dark seed flying low over the water near the
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northern horizon. Must be the spy s flier. He clicked on the screen and
focused the pick-ups north and blinked at the gyrations of that flier; it was
swooping in long arcs, racing low enough to cream the water, lifting and
darting about like a waterbug having fits.
What s all that? Has she lost it?
The flier turned suddenly and swooped north, van-ishing over the horizon. Worm
took a chance and sent the flikit higher. He saw the flier swoop toward the
first of the island chain, a hump of rock with a tree and some seagrass, dart
round it, dive toward the next is-land. He saw something else, too another
flier hover-ing over toward the land. Gotcha. Grinder or the local lice. She
knows the watcher is there and she s holding cover until she can get loose
enough to run for the Wild Half.
He dropped the flikit again and squeezed all the speed out of it that he could
manage when he was fly-ing this low. Too bad he couldn t go up-and-over, but
the locals got mean with any unauthorized flights they happened to spot. He
understood that. It was a matter of cash; they wanted their passage fees and
their stor-age fees and their taxes.
He d gotten most of what he needed from the woman, a new target. He was going
after Harmon, go-ing to get there first and shoot the clot full of babble, pry
out of him where he left the woman and go pick her up. No more fussing about,
catering to locals. He didn t have time for that. He wasn t happy about
hav-ing to admit to his father that someone had scooped the smuggler out from
under him again, but he needed his father s sources. Fa would know where
Harmon was headed next. He kept up on that kind of thing. Funny how he could,
since he was stuck in that Sustainer back on Teripang. The drain of keeping
him alive was why Worm and Mort and Xman had to do so much work. More coin.
All the time more coin, so Fa could pamper his sources. Sasa, this time for
once, that pam-pering might pay off.
When he d nearly reached the shore of the Wild Half, he heard the scream of a
full-power lift and saw the flare of a ship s drivers burn an arc toward the
Break-Point.
Zoll! She wasn t heading here, the bint went and nicked the Elang s ship. He
grinned. I like her.
She s got class. She really must have come here on a worldship as part of her
cover. Din t have her own, knew one was handy, so she went out and got it.
Neat solution to the problem of getting away from
Grinder without handing him her head.
The locals started firing at her. He saw the dot seem to jump sideways, the
missiles swerved and missed. Then she was gone.
He tapped the controls, had the flikit berth open and waiting as soon as he
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