Night Train to Rigel Read Free Page A

exact geometric center of the Tube.
    And that was all the sensors revealed. Most of the experts agreed that the Coreline was the key to how the Quadrail system operated—all except those who insisted it was the fourth rail, of course—but that was as far as anyone had ever gotten. No scanning equipment compact enough to fit through the Tube’s hatches had enough power to penetrate the Coreline’s outer skin to see what kind of equipment was tucked away inside, and the more powerful warship-class sensors couldn’t penetrate the outer wall of the Tube itself. Information stalemate, in other words, which was exactly how the Spiders liked it.
    “Welcome, traveler,” a flat voice said in my ear.
    Speak of the devils. Adjusting my expression to neutral, I turned around.
    A Spider was standing behind me, a gray half-meter-diameter sphere hanging beneath an arching crown of seven segmented legs, the whole thing softly reflecting the Core-line’s ongoing light show. The whole thing was about twice my height, with the sphere hanging half a meter above my eye level, which marked this particular Spider as a maintenance drudge. That alone was noteworthy; usually it was the smaller conductors who did whatever communicating the Spiders deemed necessary. “Welcome yourself,” I replied wittily. “What can I do for you?”
    “Where is your luggage?” it asked.
    I looked back at the mass of bags being ferried up from the shuttle, some of them starting to roll away as their owners keyed their leashes. “Over there somewhere,” I said, pointing. “Why?”
    “Please bring it here,” the Spider said. “It must be inspected.”
    I felt my stomach tightening. In all my previous trips aboard the Quadrail the only times I’d seen anyone’s luggage pulled for inspection was when the Spiders’ unobtrusive sensor array had already decided there was something inside that violated their contraband rules. “Certainly,” I said, trying to sound calm as I tapped the leash button, hoping fervently that the bags wouldn’t embarrass me by dying halfway.
    For a wonder they didn’t, successfully maneuvering their way around the rest of the luggage to where the Spider and I waited. “Shall I open them?” I asked.
    “No.” The Spider stepped over them and shifted to a five-legged stance, deftly inserting the ends of its other two legs into the handles and lifting the bags into the air like a weight lifter doing bending bicep curls. “They will be returned,” it added, and strode off toward one of the buildings beside the track where my Quadrail was scheduled to arrive.
    I watched it go, wondering like everyone else in the galaxy what the devil was inside those dangling globes. But the Spiders’ metallic skin was just as effective at blocking sensor scans as the Coreline was. They could be robots, androids, trained ducks, or something so weird that no one had even thought of it yet. It disappeared-into the building, and with a sudden premonition, I spun around.
    The Girl was standing over by the pile of luggage, her carrybag at her feet, watching me. For a second we held each other’s gaze across the distance. Then, as if she’d just realized that I was looking back at her, she lowered her eyes.
    Scowling, I turned and headed for me platform. If the Quadrail was on time and I’d never heard of one being late it would pull into the station exactly eight minutes from now. Thirty minutes after that, it would pull out again, with me on board.
    The Spiders had until then to return my luggage, or there was going to be hell to pay.
    Seven minutes later, far down the Tube, the telltale red glow of our Quadrail appeared.
    The rest of the passengers had gathered on the platform, and once again I could hear the amazed and slightly nervous twitterings of the first-timers. The train approached rapidly, the red glow resolving into a pair of brilliant laserlike beams flashing between the engine’s oversized front bumper and the Coreline overhead.