The universal time was 21:30 on the space station orbiting Tau Ceti prime. Alongside the boarding platform in the waiting area was a small group of people. The waiting area was quite large but only a handful of passengers were in it. At each end of the area was a monitor showing the name Galaxy Express with 15 minutes listed as the arrival time. Along with that a yellow status was flashing showing the reason for the small number of passengers. A status indicated the wormhole link was unstable with high flexing. This was a clear warning sign that the wormhole might soon collapse.

  According to Bacchus’s travel guide this train was known as the grand dame of the Tau Ceti run. It consisted of over 100 cargo pods, a dozen habitation pods, a crew pod, kitchen, café and a few first class dining pods. What made it stand out the most was its appearance. Unlike the usual sausage link look of most star trains the Galaxy Express sported a “Victorian Era” motif. The magnetic wedge in the front was fabricated to look more like a steam locomotive and the pods modeled like old fashion train cars.

  In addition, the amenities were all suppose to be top notch and designed to make the long multiple linked transits as comfortable as possible. This included a concierge for the first class pod/cars dressed as a historical conductor. The compartments themselves were decorated like a traditional train cabin with the monitor disguised like a window. When not being used for their stated purpose the monitors would show videos of a rolling English countryside.

  Each cabin was fully self-contained with all safety precautions installed. This included individual climate control and artificial gravity. There were also facilities to eat in the cabin if passengers did not want to join others in the dining car. The guide stated that the line promised a safe, peaceful, and uninterrupted trip for all passengers to their destination.

  Out on the platform in the waiting area stood a young police officer, resplendent in his uniform conversing, with a small woman wearing a climate suit with a face mask. Nothing was visible of the woman from the side except for a pair of pointed ears and a bushy set of cat whiskers. Oddly enough each of the whiskers had dandelion puffs at the end.

  An experienced traveler going by the ears, odd whiskers and style of the environmental suit might guess the woman was from Kemono colony. It was a small colony at the end of a line of small colonies that barely got any outsider visiting. That colony was on an overly warm planet settled by a Japanese cultural group with some unusual ideas and a tendency for “sakoku”. This was a policy of discouraging foreign contact to preserve domestic culture.

  The young police officer did not look to happy in what he was doing. His commander, the police commissioner had given officer Anzio strict orders to escort this odd woman to her train with every curtsy and comfort. Anzio didn’t even know the woman’s real name or what was so special about her. All he knew was the woman must have done something so important that his strict, by the book commander had order the VIP treatment.

  The only thing he knew about the woman was that the commander referred to her as “Maestro” in their greetings. He had been spending his time as they waited for the train to try and gain more information about the woman and why she was considered a distinguished visitor by his commander. From what he could determine from office gossip was that it must have had something to do with the colony governor and the rash of suspicious accidents befalling members of parliament.

  The Governor’s temper had been growing worse and worse for the past month as the Commander and the police force felled to find a cause. With half the colony’s police force working on things had quickly reached a boiling point. Suddenly, when things seem like they couldn’t get any worse this woman showed up.

  She had appeared at their office only a few days ago and before anyone could get her information the commander came to greet her in person. The officers had asked the commander’s secretary afterward who she was but the secretary was even more tight-lipped. All he would say was that the woman was from the 4th quadrant, just arrived by train and the colony governor had requested her presence himself.

  Once this “Maestro” had arrived a few seemingly unrelated things then began to happen. A distinguished political appointee had committed suicide and two others resigned. Several anxious faces in parliament lost their anxiety, and all the extra military security had disappeared. Things seem to have returned to normal almost overnight. The colony Governor quit having closed door meetings with the commander and the commander had actually been seen smiling. This was something no one had ever known him to do before.

  As Lieutenant Anzio went to pick the woman up from the commander’s office this morning he heard the commander thank the woman.

  “You have saved us, saluton, amiko,” said the commander emotionally, his great white beard trembling as he spoke. “You have saved the honor of my force and you have averted much bloodshed! How can I thank you for acceding to our request? To have come so far-”

  To which the woman had made a mysterious reply that raised even more questions “Do you not remember that once you saved my life? I am paying back that debt as is due and proper”

  The Commander started to disclaim any merit for whatever that past service was; and with no more mention of it or anything else they bowed to each other formally and the conversation ended.

  As to what it had all been about, Lieutenant Anzio was still in the dark, but he since he was given the duty of seeing this person off on the Galaxy Express he intended to use the opportunity to learn more. There was some major secret in why the Governor and his commander so admired this person and his curiosity was driving him to find out.

  Officer Anzio wasn’t sure how to go about it but thought making small talk might be a good start. After a silent trip up to orbit and walk through the station they were now waiting on a cold platform. As they stood there officer Anzio decided to try to start a conversation and find out who this “Maestro” person was and maybe why she was getting the VIP treatment. As he watched her shivering in her climate suit officer Anzio went with an apology for the station temperature.

  “Sorry”, he explained “our planetary regulations require that all station public area environments be set to the capital city’s current temperature. “

  “An odd thing to regulate, did they give a reason why?” the woman asked.

  “Well” officer Anzio said with an embarrassed look and small grin “officially it was to support visitor adaption to the planet’s climate.“

  After a second he continued with “Unofficially I heard it was because they got tired of all the arguments from people passing through who wanted it warmer, colder, wetter or dryer.”

  Hearing that reason the woman gave a quote "The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency”.

  Deciding this was his opening to find out more the officer asked “Is that a quote from your home?”

  “No, an Earth politician named McCarthy said that over 300 years ago, but it’s still true today.” She answered

  Officer Anzio wasn’t sure how to respond after that statement. The small talk approach didn’t seem to be working. He decided to just directly ask what he wanted to know.

  “Ma’am, I’m not sure how to address you but did your business on our world go ok?”

  The woman turned to look at officer Anzio with surprise and a bit of a twinkle in her eyes which somehow went with her small statue and the funny bushy whiskers. Without saying another word she reached into her travel pouch, pulled out what looked like a small piece of paper and holding it with two hands as was her colony’s custom offered it to the officer. Tentatively taking it from her officer Anzio was surprised looking at it to realize it was an old fashion business card.

  He had heard of them of course but this was the first time he had actually seen one let alone be offered it. Hesitating for a second he finally read what was written on it. The card only had a single line of text on it. It was a name in what he thought might be calligraphy. It took him a minute to puzzle out what the name was but when he did it shocked him. There weren’t many people whose reputation existed outside their own planet but this was one of them. The name was Felixia Popinjay, known as the greatest living detective in all of Alliance space.

  From what officer Anzio remembered this woman had started her career as a military investigator for the Alliance. She got a reputation for solving every case she had been assigned too. Everything from the heomax smuggling ring to the Luximand kidnapping. At the height of her career without a word of warning she suddenly quit the Alliance military. Reasons given were unclear but rumors persisted that it was political. It had something to do with a politician’s son and a major cover up.

  Since then the stories of what cases she was working on were constantly being talked about. Word was she was very picky on which cases she took and always refused to discuss them with the public. Still enough information got out about them that many of her cases became legendary. Law enforcement on multiple planets was constantly requesting her assistance but usually to no avail. As far as officer Anzio knew she had never been to Tau Ceti before so how did his commander and the governor know her?

  Looking at the short and surprisingly cute woman standing next to him officer Anzio had a hard time believing she was who she claimed to be. He had known that the famous detective was a Kemonian but he had always visualized her as some kind of tall, kick-ass military type with gray hair and a serious demeanor. This small, quiet woman shivering in the code was not what he expected. She looked more like someone’s little sister then the most famous detective in the Alliance.

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  Realizing how famous she was officer Anzio quickly switched to his most polished Esperanto instead of the pigeon version more commonly used on Tau Ceti. The planet’s colony had originally been established by people from Earth’s France region. This meant a lot of French words and sentence structure had sneaked into the official Esperanto making it hard for some outsiders to understand.

  Detective Popinjay’s normal language was closer to standard then most locals but local words did creep in occasionally. Officer Anzio had detected traces of traditional Japanese in the way she phrased things and thought it might be more polite to speak more carefully.

  “Are you heading off to another case? What is this new one about? Is it a murder” asked officer Anzio asked?

  “No, no, I’ve had enough with dealing with the darkness in the human heart for now.” The detective responded quietly.

  Officer Anzio wasn’t sure what she meant by that human heart comment but after a second decided to ignore it.

  “But Kemono is not on the Galaxy Express route, are you not going home?” asked Lieutenant Anzio.

  It was not a very subtle way of finding out more of the detective’s travel plans. Knowing who she was and the thought of finding out her next big case made his curiosity grow even stronger.

  “That is so,” the detective agreed “I am visiting Earth, the mother planet. I plan to visit my ancestor’s homeland.”

  Lieutenant Anzio assumed she meant Earth in general and not Japan specifically. From what he had read that small island nation had been severely affected by the rise in ocean levels. Most of it was now underwater leaving just a few small islands from what use to be its peaks. Before he could get more information there was an interruption.

  A loud whistle was heard echoing down the platform and into the waiting area. Both people startled by the sound of the breakout alert turned to look toward the entry portal. At that moment large screens folded out to enclose the waiting area. This was to shield the waiting passengers from portal breakout radiation. A common occurrence when the wormhole’s exit portal was widened.

  Lieutenant Anzio cast a surreptitious glance at the time on his communicator. With that alert the Century Express was now only five minutes away from wormhole breakout. Comparing the time on his communicator with the schedule it looked like the train was only a few minutes late from its estimated arrival time.

  Concerned that the famous detective would have noticed his checking the time and thinking he was impatient to see the detective off the Anzio quickly commented on the lack of waiting passengers.

  “There seems to be only a few people travelling this time of year,” he said, glancing around at the almost deserted waiting area.

  “That is so,” agreed the detective “The links in the line near here are showing growing signs of instability. They will likely collapse and need to be re-established soon.” I am surprised the train is only a few minutes late. That is a statistical anomaly when traveling a yellow status link.

  Lieutenant Anzio realized that with the threat of a collapse people would be hesitant to travel. There was officially no danger to the train and passengers for a collapsed link but rumors persisted. Historically when the link did collapse on a train it only accelerated it and pushed the train out at the next terminus. Still, rumors persisted of trains and sometimes only the pods on them being lost in whatever dimension the collapsed wormhole had existed in.

  Still hoping to make small talk the officer said “Let us hope you will not be discomforted by the tunnel flexing too much!”

  The flexing was referring to the higher twisting and bending the wormholes experienced when the instability increased. It was also why the train cars were connected by gimbals, stabilized by the magnetic rails on the sides and even why first class cabins had artificial gravity adjustments.

  The detective didn’t seem bothered by the possibility of a turbulent passage only the affect on her schedule as she asked “Do link collapses happen much on this route?”

  “Unfortunately yes, normally if the link collapses reestablishing another one should normally only for a few hours but there were an incident five years ago were it took several days.” Anzio answered

  Seeing the detective’s look officer Anzio explained more “A few of the links between here and Earth have periodic gravity spikes. Scientist say there is a quasar nearby causing the, either way when a spike is happening a new wormhole can’t be created so they have to wait them out.”

  “Let us hope, then,” said the detective “that is doesn’t happen this time. Missing my connection on Earth would be unfortunate. I planned only a few days there before heading on. The route to the Kemono colony only gets a star train once a week.”

  “Don’t worry!” Lieutenant Anzio said hastily as another pause seemed to be about to occur. “In three days you will be at the Earth station. You should have plenty of time before the Kemono connection arrives. You should be able to fit in several Earth sites to visit.”

  “Yes, that would be good” she responded. Then with an attempt at making polite conversation back she then went on to say “Paris, I have heard it very beautiful to visit.”

  Officer Anzio quickly agreed by saying “So I’ve heard, it’s suppose to be magnificent, now since the radiation levels have dropped. Still, if you go don’t spend too much time there sightseeing. Even with a protective suit the long term radiation exposure can be bad.”

  At that moment the arrival whistle blew again and the display monitor overhead switched to show the one minute countdown. Both of them turned to look once more at the entry portal at the far end of the platform. Currently the wormhole’s portal exit was too small to see with the naked eye. They could only watch as the torus that surrounded portal started to light up from the Kirin radiation.

  Then, exactly at the moment the countdown on the monitor reached zero the stubby nose of the Galaxy Express’s magnetic wedge appeared from out of the center of the torus. The portal continued to expand as more and more of the wedge and engine behind it appeared. Finally it had expanded enough for the full train to fit through as it glided into the station.

  Looking at the length of the train as it appeared from the portal the detective could see the designer’s attempt to make it resemble an old steam locomotive. The magnetic wedge in the front had been made to look like an unusually high cow catcher. A fake short smoke stack was added to the top with white steam escaping out in an attempt to resemble smoke.

  Each of the cars had what looked like windows that she assumed where painted on along each side. As the cars went by she could even see pictures of old fashion passengers painted inside of the windows. Overall she had to give it a C minus for its retro appearance. If they had animated the windows and added appropriate sound affects she would have given it B.

  As the train finished pulling in front of the waiting area the exit portal shrunk down. With the radiation threat no longer a problem the transparent shields around the waiting area released and folded back. With them gone the faint smell of ozone produced from the magnetic rails could be smelled drifting in to the waiting passengers.

  The detective wrinkled her sensitive nose at the odor. The one genetic change her ancestors had made that she did not wholly agree with was the enhanced sense of smell. It was one of the reasons Kemonians were so fastidious in their own body odors. It was also why they seldom gathered in large groups with other colonist. Not everyone was as careful with their hygiene.

  Seeing her twitch her nose with those fuzzy whisker puffs shake almost made officer Anzio break out in a laugh. It was surprising and much unexpected for such a famous detective to be doing such a cute action. He never considered himself a cat person before but the famous detective was definitely giving off kitten vibes to him.

  With a last whistle alert the train reduced its magnetic levitation and settled down on the platform. As the doors opened on each passenger car the travelers could be seen waiting to exit. A few seconds later stairs unfolded from below each door and passengers started to disembark. In the waiting room most of the new passengers started to stand and gather their items. Detective Popinjay’s attention was immediately drawn to the few who didn’t, it made them stand out.

  The first she noticed was a older/younger pair of women who from their attire looked like high society. What was unusual was the lack of servants. In this day and age it was considered a status symbol to be seen with a servant or two. It was almost unheard of for someone at a certain level of society not to travel with them.

  Switching from the older woman to the younger she decided they were probably a mother and daughter. Looking at the daughter she noticed something else odd. There was a harsh, possibly hateful look on the daughter’s face as she stared at another pair of passengers. A well dressed, middle age man who was traveling with a servant.

  Observing the man closely the detective decided he didn’t look to healthy. His face was peaked and he was sweating heavily in the cold air. With the detective’s full curiosity about all the other passengers now raised she looked closely at the servant. The only thing strange about him she decided was the lack of a stoic look servants are trained to always show. Instead he seemed to be displaying some concern toward his master and kept repeating “Of course, Mister Williams, yes mister Williams”.

  As the small crowd left the main waiting area to crowd by the exit she noticed one last set of passengers. These were two gentlemen standing at opposite ends of the waiting area. From their deliberate habit of never looking directly at each other it was obvious that they actually knew each other. What the detective found somewhat amusing was the poor attempt they were making to pretend that they didn’t. Looking closely at the expressions on each of their faces she could tell it wasn’t angry or embarrassed making them pretend not to know each other so the reason for their poor acting was “peculiar”.

  Before she could continue her observations the monitor displayed a “now boarding” status and the waiting area gates fully retracted. As she picked up her small travel bag to board officer Anzio offered his hand to the detective for a shake goodbye. The detective didn’t immediately take it and he found himself awkwardly holding his hand out. After a second or two the detective gave him a bow instead.

  Thanking him for the escort and a request that he tell his commander goodbye for her the detective headed out the exit to the train. As she reached the steps she turned and gave a searching look to the people still in the waiting room before turning around and entering the train.

  Officer Anzio followed his commander’s instructions to wait on the platform until the train left. He watched as a few of the last passengers to board argue with the conductor about the car they were assigned too not matching the one they were told to board. From what he could tell from what was said they had all been switched at the last minute to a different car then what they had originally booked. He didn’t understand why they were upset as he looked down the train at the row of identical cars. With a shrug of his shoulders he went back to watching the monitor giving the count down until train was dispatch.

  When the countdown reached 60 seconds the stairs folded up and the magnetic rails on the bottom of the cars energized enough to allow the train to start to levitate. As the train rose up the torus around the exit portal lit up around the portal to the next wormhole link. The train started to slowly move forward until the wedge reached the portal. There with a second’s pause the portal widens and the train speeded through.

  “Mi foriras!” murmured officer Anzio to the train as the Alliance’s greatest detective left Tau Ceti. Lieutenant Anzio gave a shiver as he suddenly realizing how cold the station now felt. For some reason he wasn’t sure it was the cold that made a chill run down his back with the good fortune wish to the train and its passengers.