Again she toyed with the thought of calling Base Security, and again decided against it. It was ridiculous. Evans would call as soon as he had something, just as he had promised.
Who was she trying to kid? Evans would never call. He didn't consider her story worth investigating.
This waiting was getting to her. There was so much nervous energy bottled up inside her it felt as if at any moment she would explode. She had to be doing something-anything.
She shuffled to the door. It irised open and she stepped through.
Besides, she thought as she started down the corridor, they-whoever they were-might try again. They had already shown they could enter her rooms at will. If she stayed in her quarters, she would only make it easier for them. At least in a crowd she would stand a chance.
Chapter Four
Unlike Luna City, Fleet Base possessed little in the way of organized entertainment, and the exchange stores provided one of the community's few social outlets. The stores were always open, and because there was neither day nor night and work continued in shifts around the clock, they were always well patronized. There were, however, three peak periods within each twenty-four hours when the crowd was nearly intolerable.
Susan arrived almost an hour before one of those peak periods. It wasn't quite eleven hundred hours, yet the crowd was larger than she had anticipated, making browsing in the stores anything but enjoyable. And, although fighting the crowd was preferable to sitting alone in her rooms, waiting for a call she was certain would never come, after being jostled in several of the more popular shops-not really seeing the merchandise, but merely struggling through-then gulping down a hurried lunch at a stand-up deli while watching the crowd swell, she was more than ready to return to her quarters.