Night Walk

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A winter night, sharp and frozen, had moved in over New Wittenburg, pressing down hard on the bitter streets, laying uneven swaths of frost on the concrete desert of the space terminal.

Tallon leaned against the window of his room, looking out. The long hours of night lay ahead, and he wondered how he was going to get through. Not even the possibility of passing through the eighty thousand portals that led to Earth could ease his depression. He had dozed on top of the rumpled bedclothes for several hours, and during that time the world seemed to have died. The hotel felt empty.

He lit a cigarette and exhaled a gentle river of smoke that coursed flatly along the glass of the window. Little circular areas of condensation formed on the inside of the glass, centered on droplets that clung to the outside.

Were they going to come for him?

The question was a dull ache that had gnawed at him since he made the pickup a week earlier.

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