She had chosen the Chateau Nectaris because it was the largest of the resort spots, and therefore the most likely one to be chosen by men who sought to hide out for a while. She had contacted the managers of all the resort chateaus and all had agreed to let her know of the arrival of any new guests.
There had been three of them during the morning, two arriving by groundcar and one by copter, at three different chateaus. She had driven to each one and circumspectly inspected the new guest, but none had been anyone she recognized from the Childress Barber College.
In a way, she wished she had yielded to Nuwell's importunities. There was much more of interest to do in Mars City. And Nuwell was charming and intelligent and rather dashing, and she did love him, and she did want to marry him. But....
But she was right in wanting to help identify those rebels who had been captured before she considered her task finished. And perhaps Nuwell had been right in his implied disagreement with her idea of coming first to Solis Lacus, so far from Mars City. Logically, would it not be harder to lose oneself in a fashionable resort area than in a good-sized city? But something within her had urged her to come here first. It was a hunch, and she intended to play it.
With a sigh, Maya pushed the hat off her face and stared with exotically slanted black eyes at the shining blur of the dome hundreds of feet above her. She sat up, hugging her knees with her arms.
A score of other guests were sunning themselves here also. At her movement, the unmarried men turned their eyes on her frankly; the married ones did so furtively, to be promptly yanked back to attention by their wives.
Maya's onyx eyes surveyed this dullness aloofly, then lifted over the nearby parapet and across the sparse terrestrial lawn which would grow only under the dome. The far cliffs of the Thaumasia Foelix Desert loomed darkly, distorted through the dome's sides.
The dome's airlock opened to admit a groundcar. She watched it, interestedly, as it scurried like a huge, glassy bug along the curving road and disappeared under the parapet in front of the chateau. Mail from Mars City, perhaps, or supplies. Maybe even a new guest.
Something struck her, now that the groundcar was no longer in sight. It had been a little too far away to discern its details clearly, but there was something strange about the appearance of that groundcar. A glassy bug, but not entirely sleek and shiny. Rather like a bug that had come out second best in an argument with another bug.
Maya arose, purposefully. She stretched lithely, to the delight of the assembled viewers, and padded gracefully toward the chateau's second-floor entrance, trailing the huge hat in one hand.