Judgment at Proteus by Timothy Zahn Page A

There was considerably more I wanted to say, facts and speculation both, and from the look on Bayta’s face I could tell she was equally eager to have that same discussion. But this was the room that had been prepared for us, in all senses of that word, and neither of us was interested in having that conversation where little pitchers with big ears would undoubtedly be listening in. “We can hope so, anyway. Well. Good night, I guess.”
    “Good night, Frank,” Bayta said.
    For a long moment we just gazed across the room at each other. We’d said these same good-nights a thousand times before, and for most of those nights it had been a routine and largely meaningless ritual.
    But not tonight. Tonight a Nemut was missing from Proteus Station, with every evidence of foul play. Tonight we were a long ways away from the Tube, with its multitude of Spiders and its weapon-free environment.
    And tonight we weren’t going to be sharing a double Quadrail compartment with nothing but a collapsible divider separating us. We were going to be half a kilometer apart, with neither of us able to quickly come to the other’s aid if any of that foul play headed in our direction.
    I wanted to say the hell with this, to just lock the door and settle down here for the night where I could protect Bayta while she in turn watched my back. But I didn’t dare. We were already too emotionally close for comfort, and the Modhri was just waiting for his chance to ensnare us.
    And if he got me, I would rather die than be the conduit through which he also got Bayta.
    So I nodded a last farewell and stepped out into the hallway, Doug padding out beside me. I waited there until I heard the snick of the inner lock, then headed through the quiet corridors toward my own distant quarters.
    Most of the space stations I’d visited over my career with Westali had run on a more or less round-the-clock schedule, with a noticeable drop in traffic and activity after midnight but nothing even approaching a complete halt. Proteus Station was different. The corridors were largely deserted as I walked along them, with only the jumpsuited patrollers still out and about. The lights were noticeably dimmer than they’d been when Bayta and I had left the security nexus, but they’d faded gradually enough that I hadn’t really noticed until Doug and I were on the glideway and I realized that I couldn’t make out the same details at the far end that I had when traveling this route earlier that afternoon. I assumed the station’s schedule was set to mimic that of the Fillies’ homeworld, but that was only a guess and with my reader locked up a quarter of the station away there was no way to look that up until I got back to my room and fired up the computer there.
    I spent most of the trip trying to think up a fresh approach to finding Minnario. But it had been a long, full day, and I couldn’t marshal enough brain cells to make even a dent in the problem. Maybe in the morning I would be able to think again.
    Maybe in the morning Minnario would already be dead.
    The receptionist station at the entrance to the medical dome was deserted. A few of the chalets were still showing lights, probably marking the presence of doctors or techs or maybe Shonkla-raa burning the midnight oil. The building where they’d been treating Terese was dark, and I briefly considered seeing if I could sneak inside.
    But a closed building at night would almost certainly be on Doug’s forbidden list, and there were all those sharp teeth to consider. Besides, even if Doug didn’t have a problem with it, the two small cameras set on the dome’s inner walls just inside the corridors would hold the images of me breaking and entering for the next hour. With the search for Minnario presumably still going on, the chance that someone would notice me was probably higher than I wanted to risk.
    And so I continued on through the dome without stopping. I did, however, make a few mental notes as to