The date-time display read 0744.
* * *
Susan went to the chair behind the desk and again sat down. Instantly she resumed the line of thought she had started a few minutes before. Was there a plot to kill her?
If, in fact, such a conspiracy did exist, she doubted Evans was involved. Although she didn't know why she should, she trusted the staff sergeant. Of course, that did not rule out someone else in Security, and that might explain how the belter got into her rooms.
She didn't bother to wonder why someone might want her dead. She had made many enemies during her career in Fleet-one simply did not perform the kind of work Susan had for the past nine years without making enemies-and those who might want her dead, for one reason or another, could be counted in the hundreds, if not the thousands.
Then there was Aldebaran.
Chapter Two
Susan's steps echoed loudly as she walked the well-lighted corridor in an awkward gait that marked her as one no longer accustomed to Luna's one-sixth standard gravity. Ahead, the corridor curved hard to the left, hiding until she was nearly on the single door she knew was located at its end. An occasional ventilation grill broke the finely finished metal walls, but there were no doors on either side.
She was almost an hour late for her zero-eight-hundred appointment with Admiral Renford, but that couldn't be helped. She hadn't even stopped by the officers' mess for a morning cup of coffee, a ritual she'd practiced religiously since accepting her commission nearly twenty years before.
The Admiral had an assignment for her. Lieutenant Krueger, Renford's administrative assistant, hadn't given her so much as a hint when he'd called Earth-side three days ago-security did not permit even the intimation of what an assignment might be until the briefing-yet Susan caught herself hoping it was a shipboard command. Perhaps now she would again be permitted to journey beyond Luna's orbit as both ship's pilot and commanding officer, something she had savored only briefly ten years ago.