“Lady, the way I see it, you just brought the wrong weapon to a gunfight.” He nodded at the crowbar. “Drop it.” She hesitated and set it down. “Now the comm.”
She frowned in confusion, but he held out his hand for the strange little comm, and she handed it over. He tucked it into his suit pouch.
“What do you want?” she said, swallowing to get her voice going.
“Same thing you do. To get out of your hair.” He gestured with the gun. “Move.”
She didn’t. She stood her ground. “Who are you? Did Sam Grenady put you up to this? What did you put in my tack room?”
What? He followed her gaze, turning his head. There was the door and, behind it, theGodolphin.The woman started towards the door, which had fallen ajar. For an instant he was back inside the scuttled freighter, the wormhole chasing him down and drawing him in, towards the crazy screaming man.
“NO!” Merritt shouted, as she pushed it open.
She flicked on the light.
Without thought Merritt plastered himself up against the opposite wall, aiming at the door, his heart hammering, as he registered what he was looking at. There was no D-space, no wormhole, no freighter, no madman: just a tidy room lined with gear, harness and metal grain bins. Stand down, he told himself, just as something big snorted just behind his ear. Merritt whirled around and almost screamed. An enormous quadruped stood there, long-necked and big-headed. It eyed him and snorted again.
“What the hell is that thing?”
“Don’t shoot him!” the woman said, and she threw herself at Merritt, grappling for the gun.
They wrestled. The suit gave him extra weight and boosted his strength and he soon had her pinned to the floor.
“I swear to God, if Sam Grenady is behind this I will kill you both!” she shouted, still trying to squirm free.
“Stop,” he said.“Stop.You keep fighting, the suit will keep compensating, and I can sit on you all day, and you’ll never get up.” She listened to him, sullenly, fury still in her eyes. Merritt was suddenly enjoying himself. Finally, something was going his way. And even through the suit, he could get a sense of her beneath him.
“Now, I’m going to get up and I’m going to let you up. You’re not going to try that again, right?”
He waited. She didn’t want to, but she nodded. He got up, and held out his hand to help her up. She ignored it and got to her feet.
“Like I said, I just want out of here. I need to know where the nearest port is. What world is this?”
She looked as if she were trying to come up with the right thing to say, and one of her choices was not going to be complimentary. Finally, she settled on, “Get the hell out of my barn.”
“My pleasure. After you.” He gestured with the gun and she went in front of him. He followed. One of the quadrupeds stuck its long neck out and eyed him with interest. Merritt scraped along the opposite wall, but she reached out and stroked the animal’s neck. A pet? A thing that size was apet?
Outside the barn the skies above the trees were filled with unfamiliar stars. Merritt stopped, enjoying the rush of wind against his face, and wishing he had theCrane’s nav service to tell him where he was. There was a swath of galaxy above him, but he couldn’t tell which spiral arm he was marooned on from here.
She led the way through an ornate gate that swung silently on oiled hinges, past a small stone house and pointed down the mountain. In the pale starlight a road shimmered faintly before him. “That road leads to town. I don’t know who you are, or what you are doing here, but I would appreciate it if you didn’t come back.”
“You and me both,” Merritt said. The sooner he got off this rock and back to civilized space – well, the sooner he would be back to dodging the police and trying to hustle a living. He remembered the key and opened his glove. With a sudden surety that took him by surprise, he said, “I think this is yours.”
She stared at it in the faint light from the stars. It lay in his glove, flat and heavy, and he waited patiently. She took it finally, and through the extra sensitive material of the glove he felt the gentleness and warmth of her fingers. He turned and began to walk down the road.
In the warm light of the kitchen, her heart still pounding, Edith began to dial 9-1-1, then hung up before the call connected. What the hell was Sam up to? If he had put this guy up to it, what couldhe want? To make her sound crazy when she called the cops and said there was an astronaut in her barn? She got up and paced.
What if Sam wasn’t behind it? What was crazier, that there was a guypretendingto be a spaceman in her barn –
– or that therewasa spaceman in her barn?
Her gaze fell on the key. It was an old-fashioned skeleton key. A shiver ran down her spine. The farmhouse had been modernized more than fifty years ago, but before that, it had a key very much like this one. And that key had been lost for generations, she knew that for a fact.
She should have called the cops on him. She could still call the cops. She looked over at her phone, but she didn’t call.
Crazy guy hides out in my barn wearing a spacesuit, pretends he’s an ET who doesn’t know what a horse is. Yeah, she should have called the police.
Except. She remembered the sound coming from the tack room. That hadn’t sounded like anything she had ever heard. And he was terrified when she pushed the door open.
