I got into casuals. I rolled my wet suit around the rest of my scuba gear and stuffed the stunner into one end where I could grab it fast. Stuffed the bundle into my backpurse—it stuck way out—and left the room.

Elevators led to the roof. Admissions was here, and a line of the big transfer booths, and a transparent roof with an awesome view up into the sea forest. I stepped into a booth and inserted my card. The random walk began.

A shopping mall, high up above a central well. Booths in a line, just inside a big water lock. A restaurant; another; an apartment building. I was jumping every second and a half.

Nobody noticed me flicking in; would they notice how quickly I flicked out? Nobody gets upset at a random walk unless the kids do it often enough to tie up circuits. But they might remember an adult. How long before someone called the police?

A dozen kzinti, lying about in cool half darkness gnawing oddly shaped bones, rolled to a defensive four-footed crouch at the sight of me. I couldn’t help it: I threw myself against the back wall. I must have looked crazed with terror when the random walk popped me into a Solarico Omni center. I was trying to straighten my face when the jump came. Hey—A travel terminal of some kind; I turned and saw the dirigible, like an underpressured planet, before the scene changed—Her!

Beyond a thick glass wall, the seaweed forest swarmed with men and women wearing fins: farmers picking spheres that glowed softly in oil-slick colors. I waited my moment and snatched my card out of the slot. Was it really—I tapped quickly to get an instant billing, counted two back along the booth numbers. I couldn’t use the jimmied card for this, so I’d picked up a handful of coins. Her?

Solarico Omni, top floor. I stepped out of the booth, and saw the gates that would stop a shoplifter, and a stack of lockers.

For the first time I had second thoughts about the way I was dressed. Nothing wrong with the clothes, but I couldn’t carry a mucking great package of diving gear into a shopping center, with a stunner so handy. I pushed my backpurse into a locker and stepped through the gates.

The whole complex was visible from the rim of the central well. It was darker down there than I was used to. Pacifica citizens must like their underwater gloom, I thought.

Two floors down, an open fast-food center: wasn’t that where I’d seen her? She was gone now. I’d seen only a face, and I could have been wrong. At least she’d never spot me, not before I was much closer.

But where was she? Dressed how? Employee or customer? It was midmorning: she couldn’t be on lunch break. Customer, then. Only, Shashters kept poor track of time.