Terl lined up ten coffins from the stacks of empties. He took off their lids and dumped them back of the stack. He moved the ten around so they would be in position to be picked up by the forklifts on Day 92.
From the shelves he yanked down the ten bodies and dumped them with thuds into the coffins.
Jayed's was the last one. "Jayed, you silly crunch, what a crap lousy I.B.I. agent you were. It ain't smart, Jayed, to come in here worrying your betters. And what did you get for it?”
Terl picked up the lid he'd made, checked the name. “A coffin and a grave burying you under the phony name of Snit."
The glazed eyes seemed to regard him reproachfully.
“No, Jayed," said Terl. “It will do no good to argue. None at all. Neither your murder, nor that of Numph, will ever be traced to me. Goodbye, Jayed!” He slammed the coffin lid down on Jayed.
He covered the rest of the coffins with his lids. He checked the small "Xs."
He took a tool that cold-bonded metal and sealed the lids down to the coffins. He put the tool on the shelf. He took the name– marking tool out of his pocket and put it where it belonged.
He looked around and stood straighter. So far all was perfect.
And he was all ready, a whole day early for the semiannual firing. He reached for the light.
He did not hear the whisper against stone as the button camera was withdrawn from the hole or the squish of cement as the hole was blocked. Terl opened the door. It was getting dimly light.
He walked across the open space, the firing platform, and up the hill to his quarters.
Behind him at the morgue, two caped figures slipped away into the ravine.
Four hours later on this Day 91,
Jonnie, Robert the Fox, the council, and team members concerned went over and over the picto-recorder pictures. They must not miss the tiniest possibility or the largest option. They could not afford to miss. The fate, not just of themselves, but of galaxies depended upon making no mistakes.
Part XII
Chapter 1
The recreation hall of the compound was ablaze with light and bursting with noise. It was jammed full of Psychlos and they were mostly drunk. It was a grand party on the evening of the semiannual firing. Char and two other executives were going home.
It was something to celebrate: the end of a duty tour on this accursed planet. Attendants rushed about with saucepans of kerbango held six or eight at a time in their paws. Female Psychlo clerks, released from the cowed decorum that was their normal lot, joked and got their bottoms smacked. A couple of fights had already started and ended without anyone discovering what the fight had been about. Games of chance and marksmanship were a tangle of disorganized confusion.
Jokes of a bawdy and discreditable nature were being buffeted at the departing executives. “Have a saucepan on me at the Claw in imperial City!” “Don't buy more wives than you can handle in one night!” “Tell them a thing or two at the home office about what it's like out here, the mangy slobs!”
The atmosphere was so convivial that even Ker was included, and the midget sat with pompous importance trying to judge a contest of how many bites a minute could be taken from a saucepan with the participant's paws held behind him.
Five executives were chanting a school yell that went, "Psychlo, Psychlo, Psychlo, kill'm, kill'm, kill'm," over and over, tunelessly but loud.
Down back of the firing platform a train of pack horses, hoofs muffled with furred hide, moved silently out of a ravine and through the dark toward the unlit morgue. The greenish compound glow reached toward them unrevealingly. A faint click of metal as Angus MacTavish unlocked the morgue door with a master key.
Char was very drunk, drunk and reeling. He walked unsteadily over to Terl-who looked drunk but was cold and tensely sober.
“That's a goo' idea,” said Char. He was always a nasty drunk and the more he drank the nastier he got.
“What is?” said Terl through the uproar.
"Tell’m a thing or two at the home office,” hiccuped Char.
Terl went very still. Char did not see his eyes narrow and flame. Then Terl said in a drunken slur, “I got a little present' for you, Char. C'm outside for a minute.”
Char lifted his eyebones. “Ain't gotta mask.”
"Thersh masks beshide the door port,” said Terl.
Unobserved by the rest, Terl steered him to the hall and they got into masks in a tangled fashion. Terl went through the atmosphere lock, dragging Char behind.
Terl led him down near the zoo cages.
There was no fire burning. It was too late. There was no bundle in front of the cage.
The spring chill of the exterior revived Char a trifle and he returned to being nasty. “Animals,” he said. “You're a animal lover, Terl. I never did like you, Terl.”
Terl was not listening to him. What was that down by the morgue? He peered more closely.
There were animals down there!
“You're awful clever, Terl. But you're not clever enough to fool me!”
Terl took a couple of steps toward the morgue, trying to see in the dark. He took out a pocket torch and flashed it in that direction. Brown hide? Hard to see.
Then he got a better view of it. A small herd of buffalo. They'd been drifting north for days now. Mixed in with some horses. He turned the torch off. The casually walking hoofs were distant, tiny thuds. Louder were the squeaks and crunches of the new spring grass being pulled up as the herd grazed its way along. An owl was hooting off somewhere. Usual nonsense of this accursed planet. He gave his attention back to Char.
Terl put his arm around Char's shoulder and guided him back to a point where the circles of the compound domes made a recess as they met. It was very dark here, hidden from all views.
“What didn't fool you, friend Char?” asked Terl.
The owl hooted again.
Terl looked around. There were no vantage points from which they could be seen.
Char was sneering. “The blast cap smoke,” he said, putting his face mask very close to Terl's. He reeled and Terl held him up.
“What about it?” said Terl.
“Why, that wasn't no blast gun that went off in old Numph's office. That was a blasting cap. Y'think an old mine boss like me can't smell the difference between a blast gun and a blast cap!”
Terl's paw was reaching for the small of his own back, under the jacket. He'd been trying to work out a way to furnish a reason for launching the gas drone day after tomorrow. He suddenly had it, and without stirring up any psychic powers either.
“Appointin' Ker, that miserable excuse, just hours before. Oh!” exclaimed the hostile Char. “You are clever enough for some people, but I see through you, Terl. I see through you.”
“Why, what did you think?” said Terl.
“Think! I didn't have time to think! When I get home I can tell them a thing or two. You ain't so smart, Terl. Think I don't know one smoke for another? And people will agree with me when I get home!”
Terl shoved ten inches of stainless steel knife into Char's heart. It was the knife Jonnie had given Chrissie.
He lowered the sagging body down to the ground. He took a nearby scrap of discarded tarpaulin and covered it.
Terl went back to the cage and looked in. The girls were sleeping.
The buffalo herd was still moving quietly past the morgue.
Terl went back inside. There was more to do tonight but just now the party must not realize he had been absent. He joined the Psychlos who were chanting. They were very drunk.
Down at the morgue men moved carefully so as not to disturb the buffalo they had drifted in on the place from the plain. The horses were unloaded and gone.