Space Stations

“Yes. We'll put her in one of the private rooms, and you can give her something to knock her out. I'll keep watch over her. It would be better not to involve any of the other medical personnel.”

“Understood.”

Tom had not asked her about why she was to hold the woman, and what Colonel

Sansom wanted with her, but she had expected that. He was safer knowing as little as possible and not risking his usually placid and extremely secure existence.

They left his office together, the physician with a portable scanner under his arm. He said nothing to her during the short walk through the corridor to the lounge. As they entered the room, Zaleski and the three Guardians with him stepped aside and stood at attention.

“I have an announcement to make,” Alonza said. The people sitting on cushions or on the floor looked toward her; those lying down stirred and sat up. “Since you have to wait here anyway until the dock's repaired, we've decided to give you all another med-scan.”

She heard groans, and a couple of men scowled. “Let me assure you that we expect to find nothing, given that you were all scanned before leaving your camp, but it doesn't hurt to be careful, and we've got the time for the extra caution.”

“I'll tell you what you'll find out,” a stocky blond man said in accented Anglaic. “We could all use some food. I vomited what little they gave me during that damned shuttle flight.”

Alonza narrowed her eyes as she gripped the handle of the stun wand at her waist. “You won't be here that much longer. Now line up in front of the ID console and we'll get this done as quickly as we can.” She turned to Tom as people cleared their throats, stretched, mumbled to one another, and slowly got to their feet.

The stocky blond man held out his braceleted wrist as the ID console's flat voice recited his name, age, and other particulars. He was scanned first, followed by two bearded fellows in worn brown tunics and baggy pants. Sameh Tryolla was near the back of the line; that was good. They could be done with this, get the operative secured, and send the Habbers and their human cargo on their way in two or three hours.

Tom circled each person with a med-scan wand, moved the wand up and down, stared at the readings on his portable screen for a bit, then gave a quick nod before scanning the next man or woman. The physician seemed his usual thorough self, and it occurred to Alonza then that he might actually find some sort of medical problem in one of these people that had not been caught earlier. The chances of that were vanishingly remote, but could complicate matters for her.

People held their arms out to the console, shuffled toward Tom, stood quietly as he waved his wand over them as though casting a spell, then moved toward the back of the room to lean against the wall and gaze sourly at Alonza and her Guardians.

When it was Sameh Tryolla's turn, a look of uneasiness flickered across her pretty face.

The ID console gave her age as twenty, which agreed with the data Alonza had seen in her file, but she looked even younger than that.

Tom passed his wand over her, stared at his screen, rubbed his chin, and sighed. “Stand right over there, young woman,” he said, gesturing in Alonza's direction.

“But why?” Sameh Tryolla asked in the high tiny voice of a child.

“Do as the doctor says,” Alonza said. Sameh Tryolla came toward her and waited at her left as Tom finished scanning the last three people.

“All right,” Tom said, “I'm done, and grateful for your cooperation. Now I better start by saying that nobody here has anything to worry about, but it looks like I'll have to do a more thorough scan of young Sameh Tryolla here.”

Alonza saw the young woman raise her brows, as if startled, and yet she did not seem that surprised somehow. Her body had not tensed; if anything, she seemed almost relaxed. In her position, Alonza thought, I'd be wondering what's going on, why I was being singled out, if somebody had found out what I really was. At the very least I'd be worrying about whether or not I actually did have some kind of unexpected and mysterious medical problem.

“There's nothing the matter with me,” Sameh Tryolla said in her little girl's voice.

“Now I'm just about certain that's true,” Tom said reassuringly, “and a complete workup in the infirmary will probably bear that out, but we can't be too careful. Scan here shows that you've got some kind of bacterium in your system that the med-scan program can't identify. I don't want you worrying, because people carry all kinds of bacteria as a normal thing, but we just want—”

“You don't have to explain it to me,” Sameh said in a softer but steelier voice.

Tom nodded. “We'll just isolate it and make sure—”

“I understand.” Sameh bowed her head, looking like a child again.

“And what about the rest of us?” the blond man called out. He seemed to have made himself the spokesman for his companions. “What are we supposed to do, wait around here until he runs all his tests on her?”