“No.”
 
“Good.”

He wrote the location into his notebook.

A few minutes later another aircraft prepared to depart.

This one was smaller and leaner, its engines producing a higher mechanical whine as it taxied toward the end of the strip. It stopped there for what seemed like an unnecessarily long time.

Then the engines rose. The sound became enormous.

Koldin instinctively lowered his ears again.

Loose grass flattened behind the aircraft. Dust blew across the field. The machine began moving, slowly at first, then with accumulating violence. It passed them at speed and lifted from the dirt with an awkwardness that seemed incompatible with the fact that people did this deliberately.

Defort shaded his eyes.

“Still don't like that.”

“Flying?”

“Taking off.”

“Why?”

“Landing I understand. Everything wants to come down.”

The aircraft climbed above the trees.

Koldin watched it until the noise diminished.

“You use radios for a living.”

“Radios don’t fall out of the sky.”

“Zhey fall off antennas.”

“That’s different.”

They completed the outer perimeter without finding anything requiring more than notation.

Inside the public section of the airport, the heat became mixed with fuel fumes and the dry smell of freight.

The terminal consisted of one long room divided by counters. Ceiling fans revolved overhead. A departures board with removable letters displayed four destinations. One had been delayed. Another had been crossed out entirely.

At the arrivals desk, a uniformed official inspected passports and entry papers.

The passengers from the transport stood in a short line carrying hand luggage and expressions of fatigue.

Humans mostly. Two yinglets, and one baxxid.

The baxxid made the room appear temporarily too small.

Its long plated body had been arranged through the queue in a careful curve, luggage harnessed along its flanks with straps of heavy-duty cloth attached to a travel harness. Several locals stared openly. A child hid behind his mother's skirt and then leaned back out to stare again.

Defort tilted his head toward it.

“Heart.”

“No doubt.”

Koldin looked at the fitted travel harness, polished identification badge, and the way the baxxid waited for the human customs officer without either apology or confusion.

The official handed back its passport.

The baxxid produced a low infrasonic response too quiet to make out. Koldin felt more than heard the vibration.

Then it moved onward.

Nobody announced that a citizen of the Heart had arrived. They did not need to.

Koldin and Defort continued through the accessible areas and toward the freight side.

Business had already absorbed the newly arrived transport.

Its rear cargo doors stood open. Workers moved crates down a ramp onto wheeled platforms. A motorized carriage with a wide flat bed waited beside the aircraft while a foreman stood in its bed pointing at places where things should go.

Koldin recognized somebody.

Gray fur. Orange eyes. Wide hat.

The yinglet from the bus shelter that morning.

He was beneath the aircraft hauling a crate with another worker, his shirt now covered with dirt. They set it onto the carriage bed.

The gray yinglet straightened and saw Koldin. Their eyes met again.

This time the worker lifted one hand.

Koldin lifted his own.

Neither said anything.

The foreman shouted for another crate. The yinglet turned immediately back to work.

Defort followed Koldin’s gaze.

“Friend?”

“No.”

“You know him?”

“No.”

“He waved.”

“Saw him zhis morning.”

“That counts around here.”

The freight workers brought out another box. Koldin watched the gray yinglet take one end.

In the bus shelter he had seemed like somebody whose entire life consisted of drinking sugar and smoking tabak while waiting for transportation that might never arrive.

Here he moved with practiced efficiency.

One context had lied about him, or perhaps neither had.

Koldin continued.

They checked the warehouse lanes. Fuel storage. The open fence near the workers' gate. Two locked equipment sheds. An old drainage culvert large enough that Defort insisted on shining a light into it.

Nothing stared back. Nothing attempted entry. Nothing caught fire.

By the time they finished, the sun had begun falling behind the terminal buildings.

Defort looked toward the road.

“We walking back?”

“No.”

“Good.”

They found a teamster leaving the airport with an empty flatbed motorized carriage.

He was a thickset human with a stained hat, red beard, and a right arm tattooed with the name of someone who had perhaps once deserved the permanence.

Koldin asked where he was going.

The teamster named a district near the central market.