Dragon and Judge

Fortunately, they'd had a lot of practice in this lately. The K'da was up her sleeve and out of sight before the door even started to open. Alison even had time to flip her notebook back from the lock mechanism diagrams she'd been drawing to the pages with a far more innocent journal entry.

"Morning," Frost said as he strode into the stateroom. Dumbarton and the Brummga Mrishpaw were trailing behind him. "Enjoying your vacation?"

"Oh, it's great," Alison said. "Especially the sun deck. Are we going to be able to get another volleyball game going by the pool again before the formal dinner?"

"Cute," Frost growled. "I've got a job for you."

"If it involves scrubbing decks, the answer is no," Alison warned.

Frost's lip twitched. "It involves opening safes."

Alison raised her eyebrows. Taneem had told her Frost had suggested to Neverlin that she practice on the ship's safes. But it had sounded like Neverlin had scotched the idea.

Apparently, Frost had decided differently. This could be highly interesting. "What kind of safes are we talking about?" Alison asked.

"Let's find out," Frost invited, gesturing toward the door. "Grab your stuff."

The safe was a big walk-in vault with a keypad lock, unimaginatively hidden behind a panel at the back of a closet in one of the staterooms. It was, fortunately, a brand Alison had often worked with.

Even more fortunately, the closet's cramped space meant she could work without Frost or anyone else staring over her shoulder. That meant she could make a big show of the operation, dragging out the procedure and making the whole thing look more complicated than it really was.

She worked her sensors first, spending a couple of hours taking all the readings she could think of. After that, she took a few duplicates, just for show. Then, sitting down comfortably with her back pressed against the vault door, she sifted through the data while Taneem did her K'da over-the-wall magic.

She sat there until Taneem signaled by lightly touching her back with her claws. Then, declaring it to be lunchtime, she asked Frost to have some food delivered to her and returned to her stateroom.

There, after making sure no one had planted any new bugs in her absence, she and Taneem compared notes.

It was just as well that they had. Alison's own inspection had given her all she needed to get the vault open. But Neverlin had added an extra bonus to the vault that her sensors hadn't picked up.

There was a self-destruct mechanism on the inside of the vault door, designed to incinerate everything inside the vault if not properly disabled. It probably wouldn't be very healthy for anyone standing just outside at that moment, either.

Fortunately, Taneem's scouting had also shown the key to disarming it. The bomb was wired through the keypad, which meant that some special code had to be entered before the actual unlocking code was used.

At that point, the rest was fairly easy. Alison had already assembled the MixStar deciphering computer packed into her belt and the soles of her shoes and was running her data through it. All she had to do to fix the self-destruct problem was make sure to wait until the computer had extracted two separate codes instead of stopping with just one.

She had the two codes and was halfway through her meal when Frost returned. "You ready?" he growled.

"These things take time, Colonel," Alison said. She took another look at his eyes—"Fortunately, I've had all the time I need," she added hastily.

"Good," Frost said coldly. "Let's go."

Alison braced herself. "I want something in return."

Frost stopped dead in his tracks. Slowly, deliberately, he turned back around. "What did you say?" he asked quietly.

"I want Morgan's papers back," Alison said, fighting to keep her voice steady. "I'll trade them for getting the vault open."

His forehead wrinkled. "Why? What are they worth to you?"

"I don't know yet," Alison said. "That's why I want them back."

For a moment Frost gazed hard at her. Then, to her relief, he gave a casual shrug. "Fine," he said. "Of course, my associate will probably want to see them when we get to Brum-a-dum."

"Then he can ask me nicely," Alison said, trying to imagine Arthur Neverlin asking nicely for anything. "Is it a deal?"

"Sure," Frost said. "You can have the papers as soon as you get the second safe open."

Alison froze halfway out of her chair. "The second safe?"

"Think of it as practice," he said blandly.

Alison grimaced. "Just exactly how many of these safes are there?"

"Four," Frost said. "But I don't know if I'll want you to open all of them. We'll see." He gestured. "You coming?"

Alison sighed. "Well, the volleyball game was probably off anyway," she said. "Sure, let's go."

The rest of the operation turned out to be something of an anticlimax. With all the careful prep work behind her, plus Taneem's scouting, all Alison had to do was punch in the two codes the computer had given her, twist the handle, and pull open the vault door.

"There you are," Alison said.