Eyes shifted to the last of the group. Tall and slender, olive-skinned, she paced the narrow space between the wall and the cell's central section. Her turn, no longer to be put off.
"Myra," she said flatly.
The silence closed back in.
Chapter FOUR
The meeting hall was roughly triangular, the rows of form-fit seats molded into the deck which sloped downward toward a slightly raised platform jammed into a corner. Alongside the platform a meter-wide view tank rose from the deck to merge with the overhead. A single cable snaked from the view tank's base and disappeared into the nearby bulkhead.
The six inmates entered, milled about, silent, their features without expressions. In their own time, they each took seats, several empties apart. The first three rows remained vacant.
Hodak broke the silence. "The Blue Plate Special the Looie gave didn't sound right," he growled. "I want to know more about what he was gettin' at with that crack about our schedule 'being different'."
Adari turned, eyebrows raised, to stare at him thoughtfully. She nodded slowly and turned back to join the others to focus on a figure perched on a high stool beside the view tank.
He looked tall, despite his being seated. A slate-gray uniform covered him from neck to ankles; his feet shod in high-top deck slippers that matched the shade of his garment. He wore no insignia. Long, crowded features and tawny space-worn skin formed a face of planes and angles. His hairless head and long hands looked like they might have been hacked from a block of Mercurian tuscanite and left to weather for a few million years in the sun's glare.
The hall quieted. Satisfied that he had their attention, the man stood. The mere suggestion of height, seated, did not do him justice. He unfolded like an articulated, mechanical crane. Fully extended, his towering frame rose more than two meters from heels to naked, gleaming scalp.