Guybrush and Wally sat in the cockpit, twiddling their thumbs.
"Gee, I hope they're okay out there," said Wally, watching the external visuals on the viewscreen. "That space station is a real dump. Could break up at any moment! Not a patch on the orbital facility I used to work at. Why, we had hot and cold running water, variable-G gym-"
Guybrush tuned out on Wally's blather. He surpressed an urge to go check the docking latches again. XStation's dock had looked pretty broken-up and rusty from the outside. Might have done some damage to Boss Hog.
"-complete AV library, going back four centuries. All the standard scientific periodicals, of course. And the cooking! Fine dining every night-"
Still, he was glad to be here. This rust bucket before them was history, real space pirate history. When XStation had been established, there wasn't a settlement within two hundred million miles. The early explorers had lived in an isolation you could only imagine nowadays.
They'd decided to send Elaine, Mancomb and the Hermit over just half an hour earlier, as the latches were clanking into place. The Hermit had to go, naturally, as he knew Lane personally. Mancomb didn't, but Guybrush knew he was good in situations like this. Elaine was the wildcard. Guybrush thought she'd impress Lane further and win him over, and eventually Elaine agreed to go.
She was wary. A mission like this had every chance of ending abruptly, and violently. Which was where Guybrush and Wally came in.
They were the escape drivers. Guybrush had already fitted hot explosives around their side of the docking mechanism, which when detonated would immediately detach them from XStation. All the lasers and missiles were powered up. The antigrav unit could be jury-rigged to point at regions outside the ship, and Guybrush had set it to give them extra propulsion from XStation - or to hold them firmly together, if necessary.
And of course there was the portal stone in the hold...
They should have made it through to XStation by now. Guybrush turned up the volume on the radio.
Elaine was the last through the narrow gap. She bent her knees and stood
up. They were in a short metal corridor, copper walls tinged green,
dark shady ceiling a tangle of pipes, grille floor. The passageway ran
five feet then became a T-junction.
There was nobody here.
Elaine thought this was pretty curious, but didn't say anything. They walked down the corridor, the Hermit leading the way. He turned left, and stopped.
A short, stooping man stood with his back turned toward them, hunched over a table piled with paper. His hands shuffled the papers, apparently mindlessly. He gave no indication he even knew about them. In grey rags and wearing rubber boots, he looked like a hobo.
Elaine remembered their conversation with Lane earlier, when they'd been negotiating permission to land. Unusually, he hadn't used videophone, claiming the camera had failed...
"Lane?" said the Hermit.
Lane stopped moving, and let the papers slip from his fingers. Then he turned, slyly, and grinned at them.
Elaine flinched. Lane's head was a wet, suppurating mess. The whole of his face was covered in angry red boils, and his gums flapped loosely over jagged green teeth. Swatches of white hair stood out in thick clumps on his cheeks, lips and chin. His eyes were wavering and pink-raw. He looked like a wax figure half melted in the sun.
She heard Mancomb draw in breath, but the Hermit was silent. It struck Elaine that what she was seeing was perhaps not uncommon. Space Pirates and traders didn't have very good diets, and often food was simply unavailable - it was inevitable that some would start to exhibit symptoms of scurvy. Though this guy had gone well beyond that; he looked like he was suffering radiation sickness.
"I don't believe it," drawled Lane. "The Hermit!" He leapt shambolically toward them. "How are you, my good man!" He rubbed one cheek against the Hermit's, the other. "Still a legend, I hear. Ha! And who are these friends of yours?"
"Mancomb Seepgood," said Mancomb, and Elaine could hear a faint uncertainty in his voice. "Space Moose."
If Lane could hear it, he took no notice. He grabbed Mancomb's hand in both of his and pumped it up and down furiously. "Space Moose, eh? I know you guys! Tear up half the galaxy before breakfast. Wildest parties between here and Mars, right? You know, I stayed up till 3am last night."
Mancomb grinned back at him, and surreptitiously wiped his hand on the back of his pants.
Lane had already passed him and was standing in front of Elaine. His eyes popped. "Madam? Allow me to welcome you to my humble abode." He took Elaine's hand and brought it to his mouth. Elaine suppressed a shudder as those hairy lips brushed her knuckles, and managed a smile in reply.
"Hi," she said.
Lane gave her a smoldering Errol Flynn look that came off more like Jerry Lewis, then returned his attention to the Hermit. "So, what's been happening in the big wide world?"
Fifteen minutes later, Elaine and Mancomb were much more at ease. Lane
may have been physically repulsive but he was an engaging, if awkward
speaker. He and the Hermit were getting on like a house on fire, exchanging
anecdote after anecdote and roaring with laughter. Elaine and Mancomb
had done nothing but sit and listen. It was almost starting to get
boring.
The Hermit hadn't yet come to their reason for dropping in, but Elaine wasn't worried how Lane might react. The way things were looking he'd throw them the keys to the place.
"...and that was the last I ever heard from Evan about the tomato incident!" laughed the Hermit.
Lane was grinning from ear to ear. "Oh God, Evan's hydroponics experiments. Remember what those potatoes tasted like? Lark's vomit!"
Elaine coughed, politely.
"Anyway," said the Hermit smoothly, "I didn't just drop by for a chat."
"You didn't?" said Lane.
"No. I was wondering if you could perhaps help us out. About thirty years ago, I came to you with a shipment of cargo. The assayer I'd taken them to didn't know what they were, so I was calling them 'unknown treasures.'"
"Oh," said Lane. Suddenly the smile had gone from his face. But he didn't interrupt the Hermit's story.
"I think there were eleven, all up. Well, it's turned out they were quite valuable, in a way. We need the names of everyone you sold them to."
Lane said, "You know I can't release the names of my clients, I have confidentiality clauses-"
"Lane, don't give us that. It's me," said the Hermit.
Lane pursed his lips, and waited. He looked from the Hermit, to Mancomb, to Elaine, then back to the Hermit. He said, "Yeah, it's you. And that's why this is going to be non-lethal."
He pressed down one leg.
Instantly the whole structure of the space station became electrified.