The room beyond was a sleeping cabin, with male attire in the slotted racks. The stamp of occupancy lay everywhere in the worn, neat articles stamped with a golden H. The other room of the suite had been fitted with heat tubes for warmth and cooking, and were piled high with salvaged foodstuffs.
Continuing, Kurland found a broken passage beyond this kitchen, leading deeper into the shop's waist, but cut off from the first suite by locked doors. The outlaw grinned wickedly and, reversing the charge silently burned the doors from their slides. There was no sound, no vibration as he laid them against the wall. Gion had not hunted him for nothing.
The room beyond was deep in rugs, the panelled walls well-hung with costly paintings. A recorder was singing beyond a brocaded drape, and Kurland could hear footsteps moving lightly across the padded floor. With one swift bound he was across the anteroom, ripping the drapery from its flimsy hangings, and stood upon the threshold of the inner room, a black, terrible figure looming in the warped doorway like the angel of Death. His voice rang softly through the sudden frozen silence as he faced the survivor.
"My apologies. I underestimated Gion."
Irene Francinet, whirling in anger at an intrusion she attributed to the hitherto circumspect Heywood, froze at the sight confronting her, a huge black-bearded stranger with the bronze face of a Japanese devil-mask. The gloved hands were gargoyle claws, hovering over the blasters slung at the intruder's steel-black hips, the blazing eyes lances piercing her to the heart. This was ... Death.
She had been preparing for a sun-bath under a lamp built into the wall over the bed. The hand clutching her garments across her breast sank for a moment, evoking a mirthless grin from the giant that froze her already icy blood.
"You needn't trouble," he said, his voice so low she barely heard him. "It won't work."
She drew herself up, dark head high, and tried to still the tremor of her knees. There was good blood in Irene Francinet, and long years of iron discipline.
"You are intruding," she said, and her voice was steadier than she hoped. "Who are you? Where is your ship?"
His courtesy was insulting as he bowed, his eyes never leaving hers. "Your pardon. I am Eldon Kurland, late of North Jupiter. You need no name."