"Dhe Der-ran was happy," Calico burst out. "He sad ib we wanded a job, he would tak uz on hiz sheep. Dhen he dhanked uz. Bud he leafed before dhe hodel peeple found uz."
"Modher was mad," Blondie said sadly. "She sad we no more coud eggsplor. She sad we musd sday here undil oour bond one G.o.d here."
They had disa.s.sembled a vending machine? Without tools?
She was amazed. And a bit envious. She had lost more money than she cared to think about to obstinate soda and candy ma- chines. With some good training they could become the envy of the Maintenance Division. She certainly wouldn"t mind having them in charge of the equipment on any ship she was piloting.
If they could do that to a vending machine, maybe they THE ROOM KEY 35.
could take apart the door controls and get her out of here. But first, she had better make sure there wasn"t another way out.
"How do you get food and drink?"
"A serband brings id." Calico gestured toward the table with the plates and gla.s.ses. "Oou were asleep, zo we did nod wake oou or dell dem oou were here. Id wood nod been proper for oar bond one. Oou meed Modher lader."
These three aliens must be very important, or very rich, to rate personal servants, especially traveling in s.p.a.ce. And the more important they were, the more trouble she was going to be in when she was found in the room with them.
Pat glanced at her watch. Another fifteen minutes had pa.s.sed. She was running out of time. Plus, she did not know when the servants would be bringing another meal. She had better be out of here before then. She had a sinking feeling that if the relatives of these three found her here, they would be even more upset than Hotel Security.
She gave them another smile. "Do you think you could open the door by taking the control panel apart?" Breaking the locks on hotel complexes like Andromeda was supposed to be impossible. Hotel Security did not want thieves or a.s.sas- sins planting their own access codes into rooms. But if they could take apart a supposedly impregnable vending machine, maybe they could do something here, too.
Blackie leaned sideways and looked intently at the panel beside the doorframe. Blondie said, "Ooooh, Modher would nod like dhat."
Just as Calico opened his mouth to say something. Pat said sweetly, "But I would like that."
Calico"s jaws closed with an audible snap, and he looked at Pat. Blondie clapped his hands. "Ooooh, yez, yez, yez."
Blackie immediately stood and walked over to the door, brushing lightly against Pat as he pa.s.sed her. The other two closely followed him.
Feeling their soft fur brushing her skin as they crowded close to her made her think of her dream last night- She blushed. She almost shrieked when a very soft tail abruptly slid up between her legs. She grabbed it in her hand. "Don"t do that, it tickles."
Blondie whipped his tail away from her, then leaned against her arm.
36 Terry Kepner Standing beside them, her five-foot-ten-inch build topped them by several inches. The tallest, Blondie, barely reached her nose; the shortest one, BIackie, was not quite as high as her shoulder. They were much thinner than she was, making her feel chunky by comparison. At a hundred fifty pounds, she wasn"t a professional model, but co- workers at TSL had complimented her on her figure.
She stepped back from the door to give them more room.
Soon. all three were absorbed in removing the panel from the door, their tails waving and weaving among them in intricate patterns. Using their claws as screwdrivers, levers, and cutting tools, they soon had the panel dangling from a gaping hole, exposing wires and circuits.
How they knew what to do was beyond her, but from the short bursts of arguments between probings she decided that they were applying more guesswork than knowledge. After one such disagreement, Blondie jabbed his claw angrily into the wiring.
There was a faint pop, a distressed yelp from Blondie, and the odor of something b.u.med. Blondie jumped back from the small panel waving his hand. When he stopped. Pat could see a scorched spot on one side of his middle-finger claw.
BIackie smugly said something, which Blondie replied to with a growl. Calico eeped. inserted his claw carefully, and twisted it. There was a faint mechanical click.
Leaving Biackie to stuff the panel back into place. Calico grabbed the door handle and pushed it down. It moved smoothly and a moment later the door stood open. BIackie hissed at Calico, and together they finished securing the panel.
Not wasting any time. Pat quickly dashed out into the hall, with Blondie right behind her. "Oou bounse," he said, looking at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Calico and BIackie stepped through a moment later and quietly eased the door closed- Calico handed a belt and pouch to Blondie, then buckled his own around his waist.
She blushed and forced herself to relax instead of trying to cover herself with her hands. That would just draw attention to what she was trying to hide. Anyone seeing her would re- alize something was wrong. She could not afford that.
The hallway stretched empty in both directions. Walking quickly, she headed for the elevator. "Thanks for helping me, THE ROOM KEY 37.
but you don"t have to come along. I"m all right now." In truth, she hoped they would stay put. She really did not want them following her.
"Oou wand do leeve us?" asked BIackie unhappily.
Something in his tone stopped her dead in her tracks. She turned back to them.
"Whad did we do wrung?" asked Calico, just as unhappy.
Blondie sniffled. "I dhoughd oou liked us."
All three tails drooped to the floor.
"And you smell zo nise," Calico said sadly.
At first, she worried she had made them mad, but a second later she saw she was wrong. She watched, amazed, as liquid gathered at the edges of Blondie"s eyes, and a tear slowly trickled out. The other two were clearly just as upset, and not far from tears themselves.
"But what about your *Modher"?" Pat asked- "Shouldn"t you stay in your room? I don"t want to get you in any more trouble."
"We full adulds, now," Calico explained. "We bond wid oou. We no more hab do do as Modher say. We go wid oou.
We do whad you dell uz do do."
Another tear trickled down the side of Blondie"s face, fol- lowed by a sniffle.
"We bond oou. We go widh oou," BIackie whimpered.
Pat didn"t know what to do. She didn"t have the time to talk them back into their room; one of their people might come into the hall at any moment. If she just left them like this, though, they might go back into the room and tell their relatives. Or worse, they might tell security. And what was this "bond" stuff?
"Don"t cry," she said hurriedly. "You haven"t done any- thing wrong. I just have to get to my ship before it leaves without me."
"Bud whad aboud us?" asked Calico. "We wand do go wid oou." Blondie looked ready to collapse on the floor, weeping.
She hated to be on the spot like this, especially when time was running out, in more ways than one. "Okay. Okay. You win- Come on." She turned and started for the elevator.
Once in the elevator, she realized she had only one real choice for a destination. She had to get her room key, and that meant Registration.
38 Jerry Kepner As the elevator started to move, she leaned against the wall and hoped that no one would stop it and board. The lobby was going to be bad enough.
The aliens casually moved closer to her. All traces of their recent distress had disappeared. She had the feeling that she had been manipulated, and by experts. She shook her head, puzzled. They sometimes acted like children, and other times like adults.
Something tickled her foot and she started to rub it with her other foot. Instead, she found her foot rubbing across three tails. All three aliens had wrapped the tips of their tails around her ankle. It was bizarre, but rather cute. The silky- smooth slide of their fur against her leg sent goose b.u.mps up her back.
She decided not to say anything. By the time the elevator arrived at the lobby, she found herself ma.s.saging behind the ears of Calico with one hand while Blackie held her other like a shy teenager. Blondie was squatting on the floor in front of her and leaning back against her legs, humming. They seemed quite content with her company.
She normally didn"t like people crowding her, and three hu- mans doing this would have driven her to distraction. These three, though, made her feel relaxed. And their fur was just so soft and silky, it was all she could do to keep from petting all of them.
Blondie stood as the doors opened, and led the way into the lobby. Only a few steps into the large open atrium all three stopped to gawk.
Pat could understand why. The place was huge. The atrium was hundreds of feet high, disappearing overhead in the glare of artificial sunlight. Balconies from a thousand or more rooms opened onto the atrium, and over a thousand beings were visible all around.
Opposite the elevators, but almost two hundred feet away, was Room Registration. To either side were wide corridors leading to other parts of the Hotel Andromeda complex, lined with shops, eateries, and entertainments for the myriad races that pa.s.sed through the complex on a daily basis.
She felt dreadfully exposed standing naked in the lobby, but it was large and bustling with activity. She headed for the THE ROOM KEY 39.
registration desk. Fortunately, all she attracted were a few raised eyebrows and whistles from two men. Never had she blessed the existence of the Terran nudist colonies, but she did now.
Her three aliens were right behind her. She checked on them once and saw Calico hauling on the arm of Blondie to keep him from walking into a fountain. Blondie was more in- tent on staring around the atrium than in watching where he was going. She shook her head, wondering if dumb blonde jokes were popular in the aliens" culture.
Standing in the line at Registration was nerve wracking, but finally a clerk was free to a.s.sist her.
"I"m sorry to bother you," she said. "1 accidentally left my key in the room when I went to the swimming pool."
The man behind the counter didn"t bat an eye at her lack of clothing. "Your name, please?"
"Pat McCreney."
"Would you like a wrist or waist strap for your key?" the man asked while they waited for voice verification and the ar- rival of a new key.
"Why, yes. Please. A wrist strap would be best, I think."
Before she was finished speaking, the key popped out of the side of the terminal. A second later he was holding the strap up as she slid her hand through the opening.
"There you are, honored guest. I"m sony for the inconven- ience. Your check-in clerk should have offered you one"-he glanced down at his terminal-"last night."
"Oh, that"s quite all right." Her voice was steady in spite of the shakiness she felt inside.
"I hope your stay is pleasant and memorable."
"Oh, it has been memorable," she muttered softly, but he was already turning to the next customer. She hurried away.
This time the elevator trip was much shorter.
She stood for a moment with her back against the door.
While the hall outside was not nearly as luxurious as the other, this room had real furniture. More important, her bag was sitting prominently on the floor beside the bed.
Blackie and Calico were looking in the bathroom while 40 Terry Kepner Blondie was opening and closing the drawers of the desk be- side the computer terminal.
She looked at her watch. Oh, G.o.d. She had only ten min- utes to make it to the TSL Star Cruiser Africa. She hastily jerked open the cleaning bin and saw her clothes from the previous night neatly folded at the bottom. She sighed in re- lief that something, at least, was going in her favor. Her three aliens watched, amazed, as she quickly dressed.
When she started to brush her unruly hair into some sem- blance of order, Blondie said something to his friends and they quickly surrounded her. "No. Dhad we do," Calico said, taking the brush from her and pulling her over to the bed, ig- noring her protests. After getting her to sit, they started run- ning their claws through her hair. After a moment, she realized they were grooming her hair for her.
She sat impatiently for a minute before stopping them.
"Look, that"s very nice, but I"m in a hurry." She stood and checked her hair in the bathroom mirror. Actually, they had done a nice job on her hair, their claws making short work of the snarls. It had been good of them to do it for her.
When she opened the door, they immediately followed her into the hall. "Look," she said, "I have to catch my ship be- fore it leaves. You had better go back to your room before you get in trouble."
"Bud oou sad we cud go wid oou," protested Blondie.
"Yez," added Calico, "oou sad we cud go wid oou, 1 heared oou." Blackie started sniffling again.
Pat promised herself that this time she would not let them manipulate her into letting them get their way. "I"m sorry,"
she said. "But you can"t go with me. My supervisor simply will not allow you to board the ship."
Tears were already starting to flow from all three aliens.
This time, though, Blondie continued the protesting. "Bud oou bond wid uz. Oou sad oou liked uz," he wailed loudly.
Calico chimed in, "Oou sad we cud go wid oou," repeating what he had said earlier, but much louder.
This time the corridor was not empty. Pat looked up to see a security officer patrolling the hall. He was looking at the three aliens and Pat, and frowning. If he started asking ques- tions, she might not get away from him in time to make it to her ship.
THE ROOM KEY 41.
"I don"t have time to argue with you," she said, "I have to get to my ship." She spun on her heel and headed for the el- evator. She could hear the three of them padding along behind her.
The elevator ride was quiet. Again, she tried to talk them out of following her. They didn"t respond verbally. Calico and Blondie each held one of her hands, gently stroking them.
Blackie began combing her hair. None of them looked happy.
They seemed determined to come with her.
She decided that the best course of action would be to go to TSL Star Cruiser Africa"s berth and let ship security detain the aliens at the terminal while she boarded. It wasn"t a nice solution, but the best she could come up with, given her time constraints.
The elevator doors opened on the proper level for pa.s.sen- ger boarding at this terminal. Glancing at her watch, she saw she had only a few minutes. She started down the terminal corridor at a sprint. The terminal gale she needed was at the far end, of course. The three aliens trotted along behind her.
Something was not right, but she could not put her finger on it until she arrived at the designated gate. The boarding area was dark. Confused, she at first thought she was at the wrong gate. Examining the electronic departure board at the boarding gate showed that she was, indeed, at the correct lo- cation. Still unsure, she looked up at the clock on the wall above the boarding tube.
Astounded, she saw that it indicated the time as fifteen hundred and a quarter hours. She looked down at her watch, and stared as it changed from 13:59:59 to 13:00:00. For a mo- ment she was too stunned to move. Then she focused on Blondie. "You! You took apart my watch." She held her wrist out to him. "You made me miss my ship," she shouted. "You made me lose my job! Five years of hard work shot to h.e.l.l."
He glanced nervously at his friends, and licked his tips.
"We hab neber seen a dhing lik dhad. Oar clodks arr in oar pouches. We meaned no harm."
"Do oou hade uz?" asked Calico hesitantly.
This time there were no tears. This time they could see she was mad at them. This time they were afraid of her. They didn"t even try to touch their tails to her. They were very wor- ried- 42 ferry Kepner For a moment, she was absolutely furious with them. Then she realized that it really wasn"t their fault. Even without their meddling with her watch, she never would have made it to their ship on time. The TSL Star Cruiser Africa had com- pleted pa.s.senger boarding and sealed its hatches before she had even looked at her watch. "No," she said, her anger de- flated and drained away. "No, I don"t hate you." She sighed and started walking back up the corridor to Hotel Andromeda.
Her three aliens were still with her. What the heck, they were adults. They could do what they wanted, even follow her around all day. And ever since she had yelled at them they had been quiet and mindful, never straying farther than a few feet. Even Blondie was behaving.
She had not intended to stay on the station for more than a night, so she had not bothered to draw any of her pay. TSL tracked her earnings and anything she purchased was auto- matically charged against them. Incidental items were the only expenses that required real currency.
That left her almost flat dead broke. Fortunately, she had some change left in her travel kit from previous off-ship sightseeing. Unfortunately, it would only last her a day, maybe two. She had to find a job, and find it fast.