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there in two minutes. Have your man flash his reds and greens at one-second intervals. I will respond with standard flitter yellows at the same spacing. Over. Out." Zolan carefully adjusted the controls to slip the flitter away from the screening vessels. Clear, he maneuvered his craft close to a space buoy that marked the route through Fandango. A yellow-green striped tug appeared in the distance and grew larger. The Gateway's diameter could expand to pass the largest freighters or close completely. It could be straight or as convoluted as a randomly configured corkscrew. The tug passed through, flashing the agreed-on signals. Zolan responded. The tug stopped, reversed heading, and waited for him to line up. Inside the force field, the route took them over, under and around huge freighters and through swarms of shuttles, tugs, and barges. Five hundred meters from the depot Zolan pressed a disk on his control column and a mag beam reached out and locked on to the tug. The tug's thrusters glowed brighter with the power to match up both craft. Aligned, Zolan released the tug, and gentling his thrusters, brought his flitter to rest on a landing platform that had articulated from a portal. Space suit closed and glare screens partially activated to veil his features, Zolan strode the Depot's corridors behind his escort. Although he had docked at the portal nearest his destination, the spunnel console was still almost a quarter kay from the air lock. Reaching the console chamber, Zolan motioned his guide to wait outside. He entered and inspected the area for intruders and bugs. It seemed secure. Approaching the squat spunnel transmitter he noted that Hanno had activated the system for immediate use and disengaged all logs and file-for-record links. Confirming the disconnect, Zolan wasted no time in preliminaries. Inserting the capsule he keyed the transmitter to the channels assigned to Sentinel and set off his burst. The transmitter was a model that dated back several centuries to the depot's construction. Zolan knew from his training for the mission that a spunnel burst from the depot had to be arranged in parts. Each segment was to be inserted separately into the spunnel dispatch slot. The ancient transmitter could process only so much at a bite. Zolan held the final segment and reached to insert it. A couple of seconds and the transmission would be complete. The console was coded to dissol
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