“I’m coming.”
They went upstairs together, on tip-toe. Ramsey’s room was on the third floor, with a besooted view of the industrial complex on the river by day. The narrow hall was dark and silent. Behind one of the closed doors an outworlder cried out in his sleep. Ramsey had to cup a hand over the Vegan girl’s mouth so she wouldn’t scream in empathic fear. He opened the door of his room, surprised that it was not locked. He thought he had left it locked.
At once he was wary. It was dark in the hall, just as dark in the room. He could see nothing. The door hinges squeaked.
“Come in, Captain Ramsey,” a voice said. “I thought you would never get here.”
He stood on the threshold, [p 18] uncertain. The voice had spoken not Interstellar Coine, but English. It had spoken English, without a foreign accent.
And it was a girl’s voice.
Still, it could have been an elaborate trick. It was unlikely, but not impossible, that Garr Symm had learned Ramsey’s identity already and had sent an operative here to await him. Ramsey and the Vegan girl had come on foot. It was a long walk.
“I’m armed,” Ramsey lied. “Come over here. Slowly. Don’t put any lights on.” He could feel the Vegan girl trembling next to him. Not able to understand English, she didn’t know what was going on.
“You’re armed,” the unseen girl’s voice said in crisp, amused English, “like I’m a six-legged Antarean spider-man. You have an m.g. gun, Ramsey. It’s in this room. I have it. That’s all you have. No, don’t try to lie to me. I’m a telepath. I can read you. Come in and put the light on and shut the door. You may bring the girl with you if you want. Brother, is she ever radiating fear! It’s practically drowning your own mind out.”
The unseen girl wasn’t kidding, Ramsey knew. She could read minds. She had proved it to him. Which left him this choice: he could grab the Vegan girl’s arm again and get the heck out of there, or do what the unseen Earth girl told him to do. He wanted that m.g. gun. He took the Vegan girl’s hand and advanced over the threshold and closed the door and switched on the light.