Stardust Dreams (13 page)

"I see you are still
determined to share our bunk rather than the captains."

Cherry held up a warning
finger in front of Dot. "Don't start that. This ship is too small for you
to pretend you don't know exactly what is going on between Gallant and me. If
it wasn't for this mission of his, he'd hand me over to the first passing ship
to get me out of his hair."

Dot started to argue, then
changed her mind. "At least you are getting along now. Have you agreed to
assist him on Zoenid"?"

With a sly smile, Cherry
confessed. "I was planning to help ever since he explained the situation
to me, but I didn't tell him until last night… right after he creamed me.
Beat
me," she amended for Dot's sake, but it didn't alter her look of confusion.
"At
cubit."

"Oh, yes," Dot
said with a relieved nod. "I understand you have become quite a formidable
player."

"Ha! I thought so
also, but the two times we played for more than fun, he's won. I have never
seen anybody as lucky as Gallant. It's almost as if he can order those cubes to
come up any color he needs. I'm telling you, it's really bizarre."

Dot smirked. "Hmmph. There
is nothing uncanny about it. He must be using his—"

Suddenly Mar shifted toward
Cherry. "Would you please get us a wake-up beverage? We are unusually
fatigued this morning."

Cherry started to go when
she realized Mar had rudely interrupted Dot. "You never have refreshments
at your station. Turn back around. I want to speak to Dot." The he-she
hesitated a moment, then complied. "He cut you off on purpose, didn't
he?"

"It was nothing of
importance," Dot answered quietly.

Cherry frowned at her. "You
promised not to lie to me. What were you about to say about Gallant's
luck?" When Dot couldn't seem to find the words to answer, Cherry made a
guess. "Is he cheating somehow?" Dot's eyes rolled upward. "Has
he got loaded dice? You know, cubes that he can make do what he wants?"

Again Dot's eyes rotated,
and Cherry understood that she was abiding by her agreement to be honest or say
nothing at all. Since it was clear Mar didn't want Dot revealing whatever this
was about, Dot was giving her answers the only way she could. Cherry opened the
drawer beneath the table and removed the cubes. "Are these crooked or does
he just switch them for another set when he's losing?"

Very slowly, Dot mimicked
the way Gallant would rub his chin, then run his hands down the front of his
open vest.

How many times in the past
few days had she seen him go through those motions? A
lot.
She had
thought it was some sort of nervous habit. That son-of-a-bitch! He had been
switching cubes with a set he had hidden in his vest.

"What's going
on?" Mar demanded, but Dot wouldn't let him turn them around.

Cherry returned the cubes
to the drawer, saluted Dot, and marched down the hall to Gallant's room. Without
bothering to knock, she pressed the door opener, but Gallant wasn't inside. With
her temper building by the second, she headed for the facility chamber.

The moment she stepped
inside, she heard the sound of the blower in the sanitation stall. She was
tempted to barge right in on him, but the sight of his clothing laid out over a
chair gave her a more vengeful idea.

As stealthily as possible,
she tiptoed across the carpet and lifted his vest. Within seconds she
discovered the concealed cubes and quickly removed them. She suspected if she
played with the trick ones for a while, she would surely figure out how they
worked. Then she would turn the tables on the rotten cheat. And, of course, she
would make sure the wager was something outrageous.

Just as she replaced the
vest, Gallant came out of the stall.

Gloriously naked.

Cherry was caught, and knew
she should have been stuttering apologies and excuses for invading his privacy,
but the only word that came to mind was
big,
and in a matter of
seconds, he was even bigger… and bigger. Not staring was out of the question. "Holy
stars," she whispered.

Suddenly she was in the
midst of a shower of falling stars, but a split second later they disappeared. Another
space sickness hallucination?

Except for covering his
left eye with his hand, Gallant didn't move or make an attempt to shield any
more of himself. To get his clothes he would have to come closer to her. "What
are you doing in here?"

Cherry swallowed hard and
dragged her wide-eyed gaze up to his face. "I… I… thought you were still
sleeping, and I came in to use—"

"You're lying,"
he said in a hard, deep voice. "You would have heard the blower when you
walked in. I recall your once giving me ten seconds to explain. I'll give you
five. If you're not out of here by then, I’ll draw my own conclusions. Five."

The temptation to stay was
strong enough to make her forget every crummy thing he'd done.

"Four."

God, but he was gorgeous.

"Three."

She simply had to stand
still, and all that man would be hers.

"Two."

But then he'd discover what
was in her hand. The reminder of why she'd gone in there and how angry she had
been kick-started her brain. She wanted revenge.

"One."

She turned on her heel and
walked swiftly to the door.

It took several deep
breaths before Gallant regained the ability to move. When he could, he went
back into the stall to cleanse the film of perspiration from his heated flesh. He
was beginning to doubt that he would get through this assignment undamaged.

He couldn't allow himself
to dwell on why she had come into the chamber. He supposed she could have been
as curious about him as she was about everything else. But the trapped look on
her face when he had exited the stall, combined with the fact that she did
leave without fully satisfying that curiosity, told him she'd been up to
mischief of some sort. He just couldn't imagine what it could be.

If there was any way he
could quickly get hold of Frezlo without Cherry's help, he would avoid using
her, but no better plan had come to him. Now he had run out of thinking time. They
would be docking in an hour. He could only hope that Cherry didn't renege on
her promise to help once she heard what she had agreed to.

Cherry sat on Mar-Dot's
bunk, closely examining one of the trick cubes. To her eye, it looked exactly
the same as an honest one. There didn't seem to be any weight difference
either. No shaved edges or rounded corners. She picked all four up and dropped
them on the floor. A blue quad came up— the same color set that had won the
last game for Gallant. But he had been able to roll greens, reds, and purples
at will also, which meant there had to be a way to manipulate the outcome.

She was determined to
figure it out if it took the rest of the trip to Zoenid. In the meantime, he
would get a surprise the next time he tried to switch cubes on her and
discovered nothing but air in the secret pocket of his vest. She could hardly
wait to see his reaction!

That thought made her
reflect on his
reactions
when he saw her in the chamber. He had
covered his eye rather than his body. Although none of the Noronians she knew
were overly modest, it still seemed to be an odd response, especially
considering just how strongly, and
quickly,
he had responded. The
other curious thing was, in the split-second peek she had, his left eye had
appeared to be normal… which was more than she could say about the rest of his
extraordinary body.

All of a sudden she felt
pressure build up in her ears and she automatically yawned to pop them. The
sensation of pressure went away a moment later, followed by a drastic change in
the sound of the ship.

Quickly, she hid the cubes
beneath the mattress and hustled to the bridge to find out what was going on. There,
she immediately saw the reason for the change. Looming some distance ahead was
a large, rusty brown sphere. Awareness that it was her first glimpse of a
planet sent every other thought out of her head. "Is that Zoenid?"

"Yes," Dot
answered. "It would be advisable if you were seated somewhere when we
dock."

Not wanting to disturb
anyone further, but hoping to get the best view possible, she went in front of
the control panel and sat down on the glass floor.

Cherry thought she heard
Gallant make a groaning sound, but she was too fascinated with the view to be
concerned with him at the moment.

The color of the planet
didn't improve any as they approached it. She had assumed it would look like
satellite photos she had seen of Earth. Instead, the surface was nothing but a
never-ending desert. Where were the oceans? Mountains? Forests? Where was the
civilization?
"Do people really live down there?" she asked aloud.

When Gallant didn't answer,
Mar did. "Not generally. But there are some small oases in the
southwestern quartersphere where some species reside. We will be coming around
that side of the planet very shortly."

"Species?"
She looked
backward, but he had returned his attention to the monitor in front of him.

As promised, it was not
long before they began a vertical descent toward the section Mar had spoken of,
but Cherry wondered how he could have used the word "oasis" in
connection with what she was seeing.

At least a hundred boxlike
structures, of the same rusty brown shade as the land, encircled a green,
bubbling mass that could have been a cross between quicksand and nuclear waste.
Had she not been looking closely, the various-sized buildings might have been
thoroughly camouflaged. Here and there along the otherwise barren landscape,
clusters of tall straight sticks jutted upward, making Cherry think of stands
of bamboo trees that had lost all their leaves.

About a quarter mile from
the buildings, however, was an even stranger sight: space ships in a variety of
shapes were lined up in rows like some futuristic parking lot.

"You've got to be kidding!"
Cherry exclaimed to Gallant as they touched down. "I distinctly remember
your saying Zoenid was
a fascinating little planet.
What do you call
hell—a tropical resort?"