"Good-bye, Lloyd."
"No, wait a minute. Please. I don't know quite how—"
Suddenly they were not alone. A young couple had joined them. The color of their skin had changed from pale green to a warm burnt orange, and their clothing was different, but Durham recognized them without difficulty. A hard object prodded him in the side, and the young man, smiling, said to him, "Get into that cab." The young woman, also smiling, said to Susan Hawtree, "Don't scream. Keep perfectly quiet."
Susan's face went white. She looked at Durham, and Durham said to the young man, "Let her go, she has nothing to do with this!"
"Get in the cab," said the young man. "Both of you."
"I think," said Susan, "we'd better do it."
They got in. The doors closed automatically behind them. The young man, with his free hand, took out a ticket and laid it in the scanner slot, with the code number of the ship's docking area uppermost. The taxi clicked, hummed, and took off smoothly.
Durham saw the ticket as the young man removed it from the scanner. It was a passage to Nanta Dik aboard the freighter Margaretta K.
IV