Timothy Zahn - Dragon and Thief

Yet here he was, at it again. Only this time it was a K'da warrior who was doing his best to convince him he was doing the right thing.

One of these days, Jack promised himself, he would have to start thinking these things out for himself.

Twenty minutes. Jack listened hard, but even a loud fire alarm from the monitor room would be impossible to hear this far away. Still, if commercial fire procedures hadn't changed in the past couple of years, everyone should be scrambling out of the monitor room right now as the place filled with smoke. The firefighters would then go in, extinguishers at the ready, hunting for the source of the fire.

It wouldn't take them long to find the smoke bomb. Even if they didn't, the bomb would quickly run out of smoke on its own.

But for those crucial few minutes, no one should be watching the camera monitors. Which meant no one would notice if a few of those cameras suddenly blanked out.

Of course, commercial fire procedures could have changed in the past couple of years. If they had, he would find that out very soon.

He gave the people in the monitor room another minute to clear out completely. Then, pulling out a steak knife he'd borrowed from the dining room, he set the point against the mark Draycos had made on the wall. Hoping fervently that the dragon had made it exactly over the junction box, he shoved the blade into the wall with all his strength.

There was no flash of fire or crackle of electrical sparks. Nothing at all, in fact, to tell him whether or not the cameras had been knocked out of action.

If they hadn't been shut down, he would find that out very soon, too.

Twenty seconds' work with his multitool and he had the door to the purser's office open. Slipping inside, he closed the door behind him and turned on the lights.

No one was waiting for him inside. Jumping onto and over the counter, he went straight to the vault. With the end of his multitool, he pounded on the door with the thud-thud, thud-thud signal they'd agreed on.

For a dozen seconds nothing happened. A dozen horrible thoughts ran through Jack's mind in that time. Had Draycos not heard him? Had he panicked in the enclosed space? Was he lying whimpering in a corner, unable to move? Had the release lever malfunctioned, trapping him inside? Had he already suffocated?

There was a click from the lock, and to his relief the door started to slowly swing outward.

He grabbed the handle and pulled. The thing was heavier than he'd realized. But they got it open, and Draycos bounded out. "The exit mechanism is indeed as you said," he commented. The dragon was as calm as if he'd just been for a walk in the park, instead of being locked in a large metal coffin for over an hour. "A useful yet puzzling design."

"It's a safety feature, in case someone gets accidentally locked inside," Jack said, brushing past him into the vault. Setting himself in front of Box 125, he set hurriedly to work. "Like Uncle Virgil once told me, all the best tricks are already done before the magician snaps his fingers."

"You seem hurried," Draycos said. "Is there trouble?"

"There's always trouble," Jack told him. "In this case, even if I knocked out the cameras, there's probably a signal that goes off when the vault door is opened."

"Why did you not disarm it?"

"I couldn't," Jack told him. "It would be a separate self-contained system. But if I'm fast enough—ah."

The box popped open. "Get ready to help me close the vault door," Jack told Draycos, pulling out the cylinder and replacing it with the one from his inner coat pocket. Putting the real cylinder into his pocket, he closed the box and locked it. "Okay, let's go," he said, stepping out of the vault.

Together, they shoved the door closed. Half a minute later they were outside the purser's office, Draycos riding Jack's back, heading down the corridor toward the lounge where they'd done their planning that afternoon. "Should you not have locked the outer door?" Draycos asked from his headrest on Jack's right shoulder.

"No point," Jack told him as he stripped off his plastic gloves and tucked them away in a side pocket. Was that the sound of running footsteps he could hear coming down the corridor behind him? No, it was just his imagination. "They already know someone's been in there. Come on, this sort of work always makes me thirsty."

He was sitting in the bar ordering a fizzy-soda when the first group of security men went pounding past.

He gave the situation back at the purser's office forty minutes and two fizzy-sodas to come to a nice boil. Then, leaving the bar, he strolled back that direction.

Bad news, Uncle Virgil had often told him, was the only thing in the universe that traveled faster than the speed of light. Jack had never quite believed it; but as he approached the office he had to admit that maybe Uncle Virgil had had a point.

There were probably twenty people crowded into the corridor outside the door. Many were dressed in fancy and expensive outfits, probably fresh from the Star of Wonders formal late-night activities. Others were dressed more haphazardly, as if they'd been asleep and had just thrown on whatever was handy. Still others were wearing the neat but simple clothing of servants or bodyguards.

All of them looked anxious. Most of them looked angry.

Facing them down, his back pressed against the door, was a security man wearing a sergeant's shoulder patches. "I appreciate your concerns, ladies and gentlemen," the sergeant was saying as Jack joined the back of the crowd. "Our investigation of the room is proceeding as quickly as possible. When it's finished, you'll all be allowed to examine your individual deposit boxes."

He held up his hand as several voices tried to speak at once. "However, I can assure you right now that you almost certainly have nothing to worry about. At the moment, it appears that no one actually got into the vault."

"Then what set off the security alarm?" someone demanded. "I heard it right through the ballroom wall."

"And the captain told me that the vault had been opened," someone else added.

"That was the first report, yes," the sergeant conceded. "However, it appears now that it was a false alarm. The lock does not seem to have been tampered with, and no one entered any codes into it. We're doing an electronic confirmation of that now."

"Yes, but—"

Behind the sergeant the door opened and another security man appeared. The two of them talked together for a minute in low voices as a buzz of conversation rippled through the crowd.

The sergeant turned back. "I've just been informed that the lock pad has definitely not been tampered with," he said. "We can therefore assume that the door indicator was indeed a false alarm."

Jack smiled to himself. Security knew perfectly well that there was more to it than that, of course. The smoke bomb in the monitor room vent and the knife he'd put through the camera junction box proved that much, not to mention the unlocked office door. Someone in authority must have decided to downplay the whole thing so as not to worry the passengers any more than necessary.

To be fair, of course, the sergeant was certainly right on one point. The lock pad hadn't been tampered with.

"Lieutenant Snyder has also informed me that we'll be allowing you in now to check your boxes," he went on. "If you'll all wait out here, we'll take you in one at a time."

"How about we wait inside?" someone demanded.

"That's right," another voice put in. "I want to know if anybody lost anything."

A chorus of agreement ran around the crowd. "Very well," the sergeant said, giving in. "Follow me, please. And make sure you have your keys ready."

One by one, they were brought behind the counter. Each person gave his or her box number, showed some identification, and was allowed into the vault to confirm everything was in order. Then, satisfied if not exactly happy, they wandered off back to their staterooms or their interrupted evening's entertainment.