Unless, Ramsey thought, more perplexed than ever, it was the very bleak, ugly, [p 105] faceless infinity which made proto-man leave.
“Breakfast!” the Vegan girl called. Ramsey joined her in the kitchen, and they ate without talking. When they were drinking their coffee, an Earth-style beverage which the Vegan girl admitted liking, the apartment door irised and Margot Dennison came in.
Ramsey, who had replaced the letter where he’d found it, said: “Just what the devil did you think you were doing, locking us in?”
“For your own protection, silly,” Margot told him smoothly. “I always lock my door when I go out, so I locked it today. Naturally, we won’t have a chance to apply for a new lock. Besides, why arouse suspicion?”
“Where’d you go?”
“I don’t see where that’s any of your business.”
“Believe it or not,” Ramsey said caustically, “I’ve seen a thousand credits before. I’ve turned down a thousand credits before, in jobs I didn’t like. As for being stranded here on Irwadi, it’s all the same to me whether I’m on Irwadi or elsewhere.”
“What does all that mean, Captain Ramsey?”
“It means keep us informed. It means don’t get uppity.”
Margot laughed and dropped a vidcast tape on the table in front of Ramsey. He read it and did not look up. There was a description of himself, a description of the Vegan girl, and a wanted bulletin issued on them. For assaulting the Chief of Irwadi Security, the bulletin said. For assaulting a drunken fool, Ramsey thought.