Titan's Plague: The Trial by Tom Briggs (story reading .txt) 📕

get any closer and perhaps be recognized, while at the same time, she wanted to be ready the moment Joe walked out. They had stopped by the hostel Joe was staying at and picked up the few possessions he’d took with him when he left Nancy. Along the way, it was an interesting conversation.

The man with the ship leaving in two hours was a recruiter for an ice-mining colony on a nearby moon. Joe knew him from his multiple trips to Karakorum looking for workers. He also knew there would be no questions asked of a couple of Earth-borns who wanted jobs and will work immediately.

Pati had never heard of the place. She questioned why, considering ice-mining was all she’d done for the last three months. Joe said the ice was not sent to Karakorum or anywhere else around Saturn but was destined for the inner solar system.

That didn’t stop her. She wanted to know what would happen when the constables at that colony recognized them. He had an answer for that, too. The moon was outside the McLear influence and not governed through Karakorum. It went straight to the confederacy for policing, which was a very, very long way away. Another reason it would be the perfect location to hole up for a while.

Pati wasn’t convinced, but she could not think of an alternative plan to ensure survival. Joe seemed confident, when he didn’t feel remorse for killing Nancy, which Pati hoped wouldn’t become a problem of its own.

She checked the spare handheld that Joe gave her. He’d been gone about fifteen minutes, and they had less than an hour to get back to the spaceport. She used the handheld to calculate how long to walk back, and they still had minutes to spare, assuming no other issues arose.

Her heart jumped when she saw him at the entrance. It beat harder as he stopped to talk. She couldn’t make out who he talked with, and possibly it was the static robot at the desk. He held her case she used for short trips and continued to talk. Pati leaned left and right as if it would help her see better. Finally, Joe walked away at a fast step toward Pati’s location. A minute later, he was walking up.

“We have to hurry,” he said, handing her the case.

“I know, did you get my tablet, too?”

“It’s in the case,” Joe said. He looked behind him. “The robot asked me to wait at the desk as I left.”

“Why?”

“Not a clue. He let me in when I said I worked for Nancy and came to pick up your possessions. Didn’t seem to be interested in me at all. Walking out, he called me by name. When I responded, he asked me to wait. When I asked why he wouldn’t give me a straight answer.”

“It’s only been an hour,” Pati said.

“I know.”

“Maybe they tried to contact the ship and got suspicious when there wasn’t a response?”

She saw Joe looked down and put his right hand over his eyes.

“Joe, we have to think this out,” she said.

He looked back up and took a breath. She could see him struggle to control himself. “We can walk while we think,” he said.

Pati agreed by taking the lead heading back to the spaceport. They walked over the trolley tracks and onto the walkway going south. Most people did that, and their faces would be less visible with fewer walking against them.

“Do you think the aliens have something to do with the robot?” Joe asked.

Pati considered it. If Nancy was dead, the alien in her had communicated that fact to the others. Maybe the possessed humans couldn’t overtly go after them, so they’d have to find a way to get the word out that fugitives were on the run. Maybe the robot that tried to detain Joe was the result?

Pati lowered her face and pulled her hat down a bit when a lady looked at her too long. She walked faster, and Joe kept up.

“We’ve only forty-five minutes before Gemini takes off,” Joe said.

“You sure this guy’s legitimate?”

“I know where he works, and it’s legitimate. Or at least I know it’s there and that they’re always looking for workers.”

Pati wished she had a hood to help hide her face better. The crowds weren’t bad, and as expected, most people walked with them, limiting the number who would see their faces. There was just too much to lose by being recognized, and Connie Pearson’s report didn’t help.

“From the Grand Center, it’s only another thirty minutes,” Joe said. “I think we're good.”

The road opened up on both sides as they entered the Grand Center. The walkway paralleled the trolley lines, going straight through the Grand Center, which shortened the distance they had to travel. Pati found a couple walking ahead of them, and she tailed behind. When Joe tried to walk around them, she grabbed his arm. He got the idea to use them as a cover. Not perfect, but at least it improved their chances of remaining undetected.

Groundcars buzzed by on their left, moving about twice as fast as the crowd walked. Pati had the thought of jumping on the back of one and forcing the driver to take them to the spaceport in half the time. They would probably get there, too, followed by half the constable force on Titan. Slow and steady had to be the motto now, and, of course, stealth.

Joe grabbed her arm and pulled her off to the right. In the one-sixth gravity, he carried her for a few feet till he stopped and let her feet back down. “There were constables in that last groundcar,” he said. “One of them turned around.”

“Oh—”

“This way,” he said. He pulled her again, except this time she followed and they walked to the outside of the crowd. Joe then resumed marching toward the spaceport.

“What now?” Pati asked.

“They’re turning around. I pulled you away right as we were in their blind spot.”

“Do you think they saw us?”

“I think that’s why they’re pulling back around. I don’t know for sure. I don’t want to stay and find out either.” Joe stepped up and fell back in line with the crowd.

Pati could see through the crowd what Joe imagined. The groundcar had an open top, and it wasn’t marked. The three men and one woman in it had looped around and were again heading southbound, and they were searching the crowd.

“Don’t walk too fast,” Joe said.

“They might find us.”

“Only if we look out of place. If they’re searching, it’s because they’re not sure what they saw.”

Pati wanted to sprint away. Instead, she forced herself to follow the crowd and stay in step with Joe. She pulled out her handheld and noted they’d lost a few minutes of time. The five-minute cushion they had when they left her apartment was down to three.

“Don’t worry about the time,” Joe said. “Try to keep people between you and the road.”

Pati complied, although she peeked every few minutes to see where the constables were. Since they hadn’t gone off-road directly toward them, she figured they were safe for the moment. And, by the time they exited the Grand Center, the crowd had thinned to where she could see the constables were no longer after them, if they ever had been.

“I think it was you they saw,” Joe said.

“Why? The robot stopped you,” Pati replied. They continued to walk in a thinner crowd.

“You were the last person they saw with Nancy in the courtroom. I’m just a husband who had no ability to even get to her, according to their knowledge.”

“You could have walked through the door to the spaceport hangar.”

“It’s locked from that end. With our code, we can get to the hangar from the courtroom hallway, but not the other direction.”

“I’m not sure, Joe. If the robot tried to stop you…”

“It just asked me to stay. I told it no, and nothing else happened when I walked off.”

“It had no ability to stop you. It was a static robot.”

Joe shook his head. “Yeah, but the constables could have been on me fairly quickly after I entered your apartment. I think it’s more about my wife missing and they wanted to contact me. Since those robots are part of the communications net, it responded to a request to find me for notification.”

Pati didn’t reply, because she couldn’t argue against his facts. Her feelings, though, said his facts didn’t tell the whole story. Still, he’d gotten her this far without issue, so maybe he still had a handle on the situation. Her instinct said otherwise.

In ten minutes, they passed by Pati’s old street. She would not even glance at the McLear house. Those days were gone, and there was too much work to do before she could even be free, let alone rich. Someday, from Earth, she might find the legal team to collect the settlement they had promised her. This was not the time to think about it.

They continued past the factories, and ten minutes after that were approaching the south terminus. Pati checked her handheld again, and they’d reclaimed the five-minute cushion they started with. They had only to get inside the terminal. That thought made her heart sink.

Joe led her into the parking lot Pati was familiar with. He stopped between two parked groundcars that were perpendicular to the route they’d take to the terminal. The groundcars were short enough even for Earth-borns to see over, and she could see the terminal entrance from where they stood. He turned to face her. “I’m going to scout the entrance and make sure it’s clear. Once we’re in, we turn right and go straight into the hangar.”

“I know the