A Passage of Stars by Kate Elliott Page A

here?”
    Paisley’s breaths came ragged. “Right. Big room. Then ya lock. I saw what sequence it touched, back there. I kin open ya lock.”
    “Can’t chance it.”
    All grey. The corridor opened into a large room. Equipment hung along the walls. Outworld equipment. A low bell rang nearby. The door into the room slid shut behind them.
    “Min Bach!” cried Paisley, dropping her hold on the alien and whirling back. She flung herself at the door.
    Lily staggered, pitched sideways by the sudden shift of weight. The alien slipped out of her grasp onto the floor.
    “Paisley!”
    The girl had found the com-panel. She fingered it, gasping back sobs. “But I saw him! It were this pattern. It were!” The door remained shut.
    “Paisley!”
    Paisley turned. “But we can’t leave him. Him and you be ya only friends I got.”
    “Help me,” ordered Lily. “Where’s the lock?”
    “Through there.” Paisley pointed at a dim recess, lifted a hand to wipe at her cheeks. She sniffed.
    “Come on.” Lily dragged the alien by his arms. “Grab his feet, something.”
    Paisley ran after, and they hauled the limp body into the recess.
    “There,” said Paisley through her tears, and she flung the alien down at the end of the niche, by the lock door. The com-panel blinked orange. Muted bells sounded over the intercom. A shrill whine rose from the room behind them. Paisley turned toward it.
    “Paisley, help me get him awake.” Lily slapped the alien. “Do that.”
    Paisley slapped it full on the cheek, a second time, with, perhaps, a shade too much enthusiasm. A word escaped it. Its eyes flickered. A voice came over the intercom. The shrill whine behind them increased in pitch, and it was that perhaps more than Paisley’s final, hardest slap that brought the alien bolt upright, eyes open. Lily stuck the knife along its face and pointed at the panel.
    “You know what I want.” She eased the point of the knife a little closer to its eye. Its eyelids flickered again, as if it were about to pass out, but it stood, very slowly, and lifted a hand to the panel. It touched the panel once, again, again. A sign, a sudden command over the intercom, five high bells. The lock opened.
    “But it be still—” Paisley’s words cut off as the second seal, five steps on, eased open. Beyond, they saw the familiar bands and symbols of a station docking sector.
    “By the Void,” said Lily. “I could swear that logo is Remote Station ident.” The alien shifted. Lily slugged him abruptly in the stomach. As he doubled over, she cupped his neck in one hand, and with the hilt of the knife hit it directly at the base of the neck. The alien went limp in her hands. She laid him over the doorway.
    “Now get past me, to the other door,” she said to Paisley. “Stand in the doorway.”
    “We ain’t leaving min Bach!”
    “No, we ain’t. Go. Don’t move from that doorway.” Lily ran back into the big room.
    The whine had reached an excruciating pitch. Lily could no longer hear the intercom above it. But the seal opposite was beginning to glow. Approaching it, she had to stop. Heat rose off it, spread toward her. She backed away, lifted one hand to shield her face, the other to cover one of her ears. A flurry of sound came from the intercom. The whine pierced through the chamber. Lily backed into the recess. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Paisley poised in the lock opening; beyond the girl, a figure in purple halted, curious, in the station corridor.
    With a shriek like a ghost caught in a drill, the door into the room ruptured outward, and Bach sailed through. Behind him, pale, scrawny figures merged and parted but did not move forward. Lily jumped backward over the unconscious alien.
    “Throw your gun down,” she said, backing up next to Paisley and tossing her own down. The knife she thrust back into her belt. Paisley let the weapon in her hand fall onto the floor of the lock, but her eyes focused on the interior of the alien ship,