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By Root 701 0

some sort of spacer, because he wasn't as awkward as most tourists usually are on the free fall side. I didn't think he saw us, following, but he must have, because he wandered down Cross Corridor, weaving in and out of any shops that were open at that hour but not buying anything. Then he suddenly zigzagged over to the portal to the grav side. There weren't any floaters in the rack, so Bel boosted me onto its back and kept on after the fellow. He ducked into this utility section, where the shops on the next corridor—over on the grav side—move freight and supplies in and out of their back doors. He seemed to vanish around a corner, but then he just popped out in front of us and waved this little tube in our faces, that spit out that nasty spray. I was afraid it was a poison, and we were both dead, but evidently not." She hesitated in stricken doubt. "Anyway, I woke up."

"Where?" asked Miles.

"There. Well, not quite there—I was all in a heap stuck to the floor inside a recycle bin behind one of the shops, on top of a bundle of cartons. It wasn't locked, fortunately. That horrible downsider couldn't have stuffed me into it if it had been, I suppose. I had a bad time trying to climb out. The stupid lid kept pressing down. It almost smashed my fingers. I hate gravity. Bel wasn't anywhere around. I looked, and called. And then I had to walk on three hands back to the main corridor, till I could find help. I grabbed the first patroller I came to, and she brought me right here."

"You must have been out cold for six or seven hours, then," Miles calculated aloud. How different were quaddie metabolisms from those of Betan herms? Not to mention body mass, and the erratic dosage inhaled by two variously dodging persons. "You should be seen by a physician right away, and get a blood sample drawn while there are still traces of the drug in your system. We might be able to identify it, and maybe its place of origin, if it isn't just a local product."

The night supervisor endorsed this idea emphatically, and permitted the downsider visitors, as well as Nicol, to whom Garnet Five still clung, to trail along as she escorted the shaken blond quaddie to the post's infirmary. When Miles had assured himself that Garnet Five had been taken into competent medical hands, and plenty of them, he turned back to Teris Three.

"It isn't just my airy theories any more," he told her. "You have a valid assault charge on this Firka fellow. Can't you step up the search?"

"Oh, yes," she answered grimly. "This one's going out on all the com channels, now. He attacked a quaddie. And he released toxic volatiles into the public air."

Miles left the two quaddie women safely ensconced in the security post's infirmary. He then leaned on the night supervisor to supply him with the patroller who'd brought in Garnet Five to take him on an inspection of the scene of the crime, such as it was. The supervisor temporized, more delays ensued, and Miles harassed Crew Chief Venn in a nearly undiplomatic manner. But at length, he was issued a different quaddie patroller who did indeed escort him and Roic to the spot where Garnet Five had been so uncomfortably cached.

The dimly lit utility corridor had a flat floor and squared-off walls, and while not exactly cramped, shared its cross section with a great deal of duct work, which Roic had to bend to avoid. Around an obliquely angled turn, they found three quaddies, one in a Security uniform and two in shorts and shirts, working behind a stretched-out plastic ribbon printed with the Graf Station Security logo. Forensics techs at last, and about time. The young male rode in a floater broadly stenciled with a Graf Station technical school identification number. An intent-looking middle-aged female piloted a floater that bore the mark of one of the station clinics.

The shorts-and-shirt man in the tech school floater, hovering carefully, finished a laser scan for fingerprints along the edge and top of a large square bin sticking out into the corridor at a convenient height to bang the shins of the unwary passerby. He moved