red and gray plush, gimballed seats swiveled to face each other around a tiny table, big enough to play cards.
Mirelle and Titus were ushered to the same compartment, where Titus was given the seat near the porthole. Placing his bag between his feet, he began to crank the shutter across the port to cut the horrible light. As it was closing, he glanced out and noticed a runabout pulling up to the check station, where a long line still waited. The Tourist agent was called over and someone else sent to her work station.
Squinting, Titus recognized the replacement as one of Connie’s operatives. She had countered the move against Titus ten minutes too late. I should have gone to the end of the line, and damn the sun.
The Tourist agent had to retire, leaving Titus’s opponent to the same kind of trial Titus had faced. Despite his burning eyes, he wanted to watch his unknown adversary attempt to board. If he hasn’t already.
“What’s so interesting?” Mirelle leaned over him pushing her face to the porthole.
He brushed his lips against her neck, and she shivered, innocently unaware why her response was so strong, and obviously no longer playing her games. Titus, concentration disrupted, closed the shutter and murmured, “Perhaps the year won’t be lonely, for either of us.”
He reminded himself sternly that he wasn’t the least bit hungry. Despite that, their mutual response was intense. Mirelle might be a problem. She was obviously one of those humans who were both susceptible and deeply attracted to his kind. Restraining himself by force, he set about winning her true friendship in the usual, agonizingly slow, fashion.
When Abner Gold was shown to their compartment, Titus excused himself and went to the lavatory, taking his bag with him. When he got the bag open, his heart froze. His packets of powdered blood, his vital supply not just for the trip but for emergencies, had been replaced with plain white packets, half a million in street drugs, no doubt. Getting me out of jail would have kept Connie too busy to send a replacement.
He flushed it all down the toilet, hoping it wouldn’t be noticed when the collector was cleaned. Now he knew what the reporter had meant about starving on the moon. He clamped his teeth over the chattering fear. He would survive on the supply to come in his luggage...if it arrived. He would not let the Tourists know they’d scored.
When he returned to his seat, Mirelle wouldn’t let him stare out the window pretending to brood while he watched the check-in line. She coaxed him into the conversation even though Gold preferred to monopolize her.
Gold was just past middle age, while Mirelle might have passed for almost forty. Titus, however, appeared to be in his twenties instead of his actual thirty-eight. Gold was suffering the normal responses of an older man watching a mature woman flirting with a much younger man. He felt compelled to best Titus at something in front of Mirelle, and Titus knew he had to let him or surely make an enemy.
At this point, the fourth passenger in their compartment joined them. White haired, with a receding hairline and a middle-aged paunch, he moved as if he’d been commuting to orbit for years and could stow his things and strap himself in blindfolded. He dismissed the attendant with a wave and settled down to read as if there was nobody else there.
Titus found a deck of cards inside his chair’s arm rest. “Anyone like to play cards?”
Gold shrugged. “Let’s see if our fifth plays bridge. We’ll have plenty of time before docking at Goddard.”
All the passengers had boarded, and still their fifth did not show. An awful suspicion began to creep over him. If this was the only seat left, and someone was late, chances were good it would be his adversary. The Tourists would want their agent to watch Titus, and Connie would want Titus to watch the Tourist. Not that there’s anything either of us could do at the moment.
He felt and heard the distant clanging shudder and adjustment in air pressure as the hatch was finally closed. There’s no one coming. Connie’s blocked them!
Then he felt a powerful presence nearing, a palpable Influence he was very afraid he recognized.
“Strap in quickly, Doctor,” advised the attendant who ushered the tall gentleman in. To Titus she said, “You can take out the cards again when we’re in free fall. They’ll adhere to the table, or you may keep them on their holders. You’ll find the holders in the chair arms.”
Titus barely heard her.
The adversary stood with his back to them, as he doffed hat and jacket. “Sorry to be late.” His too familiar voice was cultured, his accent indefinable. “I was detained in traffic in Lima.” He appeared middle aged, but stick figure thin, as were all of their kind. He turned to face Titus.
Father!
“You seem surprised to see me, Titus,” he answered, aware of the humans listening. “I admit, I hadn’t expected you’d be here.” He added with genuine concern, “Are you sure you can withstand the rigors of this job?”
This was the man who’d dug Titus out of a premature grave and wakened him to his current life by giving of his own blood, the man who had resurrected Titus to the life of a vampire.
Titus swallowed the lump in his throat and chose his words for the humans around them. “I was reliably informed that you had declined the Project’s invitation.”
“I had, until I heard you’d accepted.” He added with peculiar emphasis, “Now, I’m glad I’m here. I will be able to...observe...your work as no one else of my persuasion could.”
Titus read him clearly. In his centuries of life, Abbot Nandoha had acquired many specialties. There was no sabotage Titus could do that Abbot couldn’t undo.
Abbot was saying quite plainly that he would stop at nothing—absolutely nothing—to get that SOS out.
CHAPTER TWO
As the attendant left, Titus answered, “I’m flattered...Dr. Nandoha.” He suppressed a shiver of cold dread and tried to sound implacable. “And I intend to observe your work as closely as I can.” What else could he do? Not only was Abbot much older and stronger than Titus, but he was also his father. Titus was completely in his power. There was no point in his trying to fight Abbot, and Connie knew that.
He suddenly envisioned the quiet battle she had been waging in Quito, trying to delay Abbot, to have him replaced. No wonder she let them get my bag, and almost let them get me! She only had eight operatives planted in the Project, and all of them were on Earth. Titus was the only one to make it to the moon.
To break the tension, Gold spoke up. “Well! It does seem you know each other. Titus, introduce us.”
Titus gestured to his far right. “Abbot, the gentleman by the door—I mean hatch—is Dr. Abner Gold, metallurgist. The lady here is Dr. Mirelle de Lisle, Cognitive Sciences. And—” The man facing Titus across the porthole had never said a word. He was totally absorbed in a newsletter printed in Cyrillic characters. “I didn’t catch your name, Doctor?”
The man was fiftyish, hawk-nosed, with muscular forearms and painfully short fingernails. “Sir?” prompted Titus. The man finally looked up as if returning from a far distance. He raised both bushy white eyebrows and gazed innocently at Titus, who repeated, “I didn’t catch your name.”
“Mihelich, Andre Mihelich.”
Titus
