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must have seen the thunder in her eyes because he shifted his weight slowly and jerked his blunt chin towards the inspector.
    Al Shei erased the message and tucked pen and film back into her pocket. “Inspector, will you need my seal for anything?”
    Davies blinked up at her. “Mmm? No, no, not until the results are in.”
    “Good. Watch,” she said to Schyler, “call me when I’m needed back here.” Mindful of her balance, Al Shei turned around. She did not need to fall over right now. What she needed was to find out was if Tully had left the station yet.
    Once she was back in the stairwell, she wrote her request for a trace to Tully on a green wall tile and waited impatiently while the station’s AI tracked him down. He was in the Desdemona Hotel module on the outer ring, getting himself a drink in the Othello coffee shop.
    Al Shei declined to transmit a message to say she was coming. This time, she took the elevators and moving walkways three modules down and ten sideways until she reached the hotel.
    Once coffee houses had been introduced, they had never left human history. When humanity took itself out to the stars they brought their problems, their religions, their arts, and their cafes. Every station that had the room kept a coffee house for its patrons.
    The Othello was on the edge of a spacious, plant-filled lobby. The stairwell had been gilded and four different fountains splashed around it. As she made path towards the cafe, ducking and weaving between the other patrons, Al Shei decided that if this module went into unscheduled free-fall, she’d rather be elsewhere.
    Tully sat at a wide, round table. He leaned back in his chair with his legs kicked straight out in front of him. In between sips from a bulb of rich, black brew that could have been coffee, sarsaparilla, or Guinness stout, he whistled cheerfully between his teeth.
    Al Shei unclenched her fists and waded between tables and server carts to where he sat.
    “Tully.” She sat down across from him. Startled, he drew his legs in and straightened his back. Someone in his ancestry had supplied his parents with the genes to allow shockingly blue eyes to shine out of his medium-brown face. “Tully, what have you been doing?”
    He set his bulb gently down on the table. “Nothing you need to be worried about, Katmer.”
    An alarm bell sounded far in the back of Al Shei’s mind. If Tully had been engaged in his usual petty hacking and cracking, he would have said so. “One day you’re going to remember that I don’t believe you when you say that.” Al Shei leaned forward. “I’ve got a client saying the Pasadena pulled a security plug out of Toric’s Stations secured codes.”
    Tully glanced quickly around the cafe. “You really want an answer in public?”
    Al Shei’s fingertips scraped against the table top. “Marcus Tully, you can run your little civil disobedience racket however you see fit, but if you call attention to the ship I have to fly, I am going to have you in the tightest sling the communications collective can sew together for you!”
    Tully sighed toward his bulb. “The guy got hold of a rumor.” He glanced up at Al Shei, as if to see how she was taking the comment. Al Shei didn’t even blink, and Tully looked down again. “Resit will assure him that your crew and my crew have nothing in common. You’ll get the job and all your profits, and there won’t be a problem. Just like there’s no problem for me when you skirt the regs a little too close.”
    Al Shei was glad he couldn’t see the hard line of her mouth. “Tully, what do you think you’re doing?”
    He shrugged again. “Keeping the corporations on their grubby little toes, oh-my-sister-in-law. Same as you.”
    “I do not break anybody’s law.” Her voice was low and furious.
    “I’m not asking you to protect me.” He pulled another long draft out of the bulb. “If I’m careless enough to get caught then I deserve it, and you’ve got the Pasadena and