Marooned - Christie Golden [9]
She let him talk nodding her head occasionally, as he explained the facilities available for passing ships. Certainly she and her trained crew would be better able to execute the needed maintenance and repair of Voyager than any of the Oasis crew, but spare parts that could be adapted to the Starfleet vessel were hard to come by. Oasis might be just what Tomes had hoped for.
The corridor ended and Dhad paused in front of a large, circular door. He punched in a code on a lighted keypad on the wall with his oddly thin, webbed fingers and the door irised open with a faint breathy sound, almost like a sigh. Smiling politely, Dhad extended his hand, indicating that Torres might precede him. She stepped briskly through the door-and froze.
T'bere was a large docking bay, all right. But there were no ships, no parts of ships, and no maintenance crew at all. The door sighed closed behind her. Tomes had just started to turn, angry questions on her lips, when a terrible pain crashed down on the back of her head and she saw a blinding light, then nothing at all.
A thin fine of annoyance appeared between Janeway's brows. She was fairly certain that the little statue shop had been just a few stores back down the way they had come, but she had apparently been mistaken. Ahnost a half hour had gone by in her fruitless search.
Finally, she turned a corner and smiled. There it was! And the lovely, six-centimeter-high orb of polished stone still sat in the window. It really was quite pretty, its softly glowing surface decorated by an equally beautiful carving of a humanoid female head. Janeway stepped forward to get a better look at it.
"Ah, greetings," a cheery voice welcomed her. Janeway glanced up to see a squat, red-faced, multieyed being hasten up to her, its moist snout twitching with what she assumed to be pleasure. "I see you have very good taste. What ship are you from?"
"Voyager, " Janeway replied. "Your station administrator Aren Yashar has made us feel quite welcome."
"Ah, one of Aren's friends!" the ugly being exclaimed. Its snout twitched even more vigorously. "Someone special, I see. Why don't you accompany me to the back of the shop and let me show you some of the items I keep in the safe?"
Janeway had just opened her mouth to accept when suddenly, an angry female voice interrupted her.
"I don't care!"
Janeway frowned and looked around. Right beside her was the young Rhulani couple she had heard arguing earlier. They apparently had managed to find something else to quarrel about. The female had her arms folded across her chest, just as she had before, and looked every bit as unhappy.
The male ran his hands through his long hair. "Dear one, I swear to you, that relationship was over a long time ago."
The girl pouted. "Not the way she was touching you, it wasn't!"
A chill ran down the captain's spine. "Now, that's not my fault."
"Oh, really?"
It was the same conversation. Exactly the same conversation, word for word, gesture for gesture.
"If I wanted to be with someone else, would I be giving you this?" The youth produced something that glittered, that caused the young woman to squeal happily and embrace him.
Something was very wrong here. Janeway stared at the young couple, a terrible suspicion beginning to form in her mind.
"Captain Janeway?" It was the shopkeeper, looking as if he felt a sale slipping through his fingers. Another something wrong. Janeway hadn't introduced herself. She knew with a deep certainty that she was not about to set one foot in that shop.
She smiled easily, as if nothing at all were the matter. "Thank you, but I don't think so. I'd like to wander a bit, do some comparison shopping. You understand."
"There's no store on Oasis that has items as attractwe as this," the shopkeeper insisted, a touch forcefully.
Again Janeway smiled. "The customer is always right," she chided, and walked away, slowly, not drawing attention from the shopkeeper, ignoring the young couple who, after some