He cursed, compulsively fishing in his pocket for his cigarette case. "You're in over your head, mate," he mumbled to himself. "If you're half-smart, you'll bloody run."
"I'll think about it," Lamont promised, lowering his voice to a whisper, "but we're playing a very dangerous game."
Constance smiled, and her hand briefly brushed over Lamont's as she turned to continue down the trail. "That's the only kind worth winning," she said.
Lamont's heart pounded in his ears, drowning out the sound of glass bells that tinkled from a nearby formation. He desperately wanted to follow her, but knew that it would be a terrible mistake if he did. After a moment, he weakly called out: "Take care, Miss Beckett."
Constance stopped and turned, still smiling, if only her mouth. "If you're still looking for Lee, you can usually find her by the windows facing away from the planet. Best view in the house."
Lamont watched her disappear through what looked like a curtain of shimmering iridescent beads that was suspended from a kind of organic pergola. A soft sound like a chorus of sighing whispers drifted to his ears from the curtain as she passed beyond it. He cursed, compulsively fishing in his pocket for his cigarette case. "You're in over your head, mate," he mumbled to himself. "If you're half-smart, you'll bloody run."
He glanced at his watch and cursed again.
"You're winded," Jihyun Lee observed, looking up from her notebook at Lamont as he staggered from the edge of the garden to the ring of soft floor that abutted the outer wall of the level. The astrophysicist seemed unsurprised by his sudden arrival, although no reflections were cast in the window-like wall. The dizziness caused by his jog through the garden was amplified by the disorienting effect of looking out into empty space, the feeling that in three steps he could simply float out into the vacuum. As he crouched down next to Lee, he told himself that if he reached out his hand and touched the surface of the outer wall, he'd feel better. But as always, he couldn't work up the courage. He still had no idea what it felt like.
"Those cigarettes are terrible for you," Lee continued, closing the cover of her notebook.
Lamont shrugged, his chest burning as he tried to inhale deeply. "They're synthetics. Only executives can kill themselves with real tobacco. Besides, they saved my life once."
The woman looked at him curiously. "How?"
There was always something a little bit jarring about seeing Jihyun. She was one of only a handful of people aboard Westward that were of Oriental descent. Lamont had heard somewhere that her parents had made a dangerous escape from the Scientific Society, but had never asked her about it directly. "We'll have to swap stories sometime. But speaking of swaps, Sofia came to see you a while ago, yeah?"
Lee's small lips curved into a slight smile as she returned her gaze to the gleaming stars and ghostly nebula outside. "Yes, Mr. Townsend. As I told her, I appreciate the offer, but I'm not interested in going back."
Lamont looked at her scrutinizingly. "Ever?" he asked.