The man blinked. “Not hard at all, Lord Auditor. I mean, it's not locked. In case of an emergency, people might need to be able to get in right away, without hunting me up. I might even be the emergency.” He paused, then added, “A few of my medications and some equipment are kept in code-locked drawers, with tighter inventory controls, of course. But for the rest, there's no need. In dock, who comes on and off the ship is controlled by ship's security, and in space, well, that takes care of itself.”
“You haven't had trouble with theft, then? Equipment going for a walk, supplies disappearing?”
“Very little. I mean, the ship is public, but it's not that kind of public. If you see what I mean.”
The medtechs from the two independent ships reported similar protocols when in space, but when in dock both were required to keep their little departments secured when they were not themselves on duty there. Miles reminded himself that one of these people might have been bribed to cooperate with whoever had undertaken the blood synthesis. Four suspects, eh. His next inquiry ascertained that all four ship's infirmaries did indeed keep portable synthesizers in inventory as standard equipment.
“If someone snuck in to one of your infirmaries to synthesize some blood, would you be able to tell that your equipment had been used?”
“If they cleaned up after themselves . . . maybe not,” said the Idris 's tech. “Or—how much blood?”
“Three to four liters.”
The man's anxious face cleared. “Oh, yes. That is, if they used my supplies of phyllopacks and fluids, and didn't bring in their own. I'd have noticed if that much were gone.”
“How soon would you notice?”
“Next time I looked, I suppose. Or at the monthly inventory, if I didn't have occasion to look before then.”
“Have you noticed?”
“No, but—that is, I haven't looked.”
Except that a suitably bribed medtech ought to be perfectly capable of fudging the inventory of such bulky and noncontrolled items. Miles decided to turn up the heat. He said blandly, “The reason I ask is that the blood that was found on the loading bay floor that kicked off this unfortunate—and expensive—chain of events, while it was indeed initially DNA typed as Lieutenant Solian's, was found to be synthesized. Quaddie customs claim to have no record of Solian ever crossing into Graf Station, which suggests, although it does not alas prove, that the blood might have been synthesized on the outboard side of the customs barrier too. I think we had better check each of your supply inventories, next.”
The medtech from the Idris 's Toscane-owned sister ship, the Rudra , frowned suddenly. “There was—” She broke off.
“Yes?” Miles said encouragingly.
“There was that funny passenger, who came in to ask me about my blood synthesizer. I just figured he was one of the nervous sorts of travelers, although when he explained himself, I also thought he probably had good reason to be.”
Miles smiled carefully. “Tell me more about your funny passenger.”
“He'd just signed on to the Rudra here at Graf Station. He said he was worried, if he had any accidents en route, because he couldn't take standard blood substitutes on account of being so heavily gengineered. Which he was. I mean, I believed him about the blood compatibility problems. That's why we carry the synthesizers, after all. He had the longest fingers—with webs. He told me he was an amphibian, which I didn't quite believe, till he showed me his gill slits. His ribs opened out in the most astonishing fashion. He said he has to keep spraying his gills with moisturizer, when he travels, because the air on ships and stations is too dry for him.” She stopped, and swallowed.
Definitely not “Dubauer,” then. Hm. Another player? But in the same game, or a different one?
She continued in a scared voice, “I ended up showing him my synthesizer, because he seemed so worried and kept asking questions about it. I mainly worried about what sorts of tranquilizers were going to be safe to use on him, if he turned out to be one of those people who gets hysterical eight days out.”
Leaping about and whooping, Miles told himself firmly, would likely just frighten the young woman more. He did sit up and favor her with a perky smile, which made her shrink back in her chair only slightly. “When was this? What day?”
“Um . . . two days before the quaddies made us all evacuate the ship and come here.”
Three days after Solian's vanishing. Better and better . “What was the passenger's name? Could you identify him again?'
“Oh, sure—I mean, webs, after all. He told me his name was Firka.”
As if casually, Miles asked, “Would you be willing to repeat this testimony under fast-penta?”
She made a face. “I suppose so. Do I have to?”
Neither panicked nor too eager; good. “We'll see. Physical inventory next, I think. We'll start with the Rudra 's infirmary.” And just in case he was being led up the path by his nose, the others to follow.
More delays ensued, while Bel negotiated over the comconsole with Venn and Watts for the temporary release from house arrest of the medtechs as expert witnesses. Once those arrangements had been approved, the visit to the Rudra 's infirmary was gratifyingly short, direct, and fruitful.
The medtech's supply of synthetic blood base was down by four liters. A phyllopack, with its hundreds of square meters of primed reaction surface stacked in microscopic layers in a convenient insert, was gone. And the blood synthesizing machine had been improperly cleaned. Miles smiled toothily as he personally scraped a tinge of organic residue from its tubing into a plastic bag for the delectation of the Prince Xav 's surgeon.
It all rang sufficiently true that he set Roic to collecting copies of the Rudra 's security records, with particular reference to Passenger Firka, and sent Bel off with the techs to cross-check the other three infirmaries without him. Miles returned to the Kestrel and handed off his new sample to Lieutenant Smolyani to convey promptly to the Prince Xav , then settled down to run a search for Firka's present location. He tracked him to the second of the two hostels taken up with the impounded ships' passengers, but the quaddie on security duty there reported that the man had signed out for the evening before dinner and had not yet returned. Firka's prior venture out that day had been around the time of the passengers' meeting; perhaps he'd been one of the men in the back of the room, although Miles certainly hadn't noticed a webbed hand raised for questions. Miles left orders with quaddie hostel security to call him or Armsman Roic when the passenger returned, regardless of the time.
Frowning, he called the first hostel to check on Dubauer. The Betan/Cetagandan herm/ba/whatever had indeed returned safely from the Idris , but had left again after dinner. Not in itself unusuaclass="underline" few of the trapped passengers stayed in their hostel when they could vary their evening boredom by seeking entertainment elsewhere on the station. But hadn't Dubauer just been the person who'd been too frightened to traverse Graf Station alone without an armed escort? Miles's frown deepened, and he left orders to this quaddie duty guard to notify him when Dubauer, too, came back.
He rescanned the Idris 's security vids on fast forward while waiting Roic's return. Paused close-up views of the hands of a number of otherwise unexceptionable visitors to the ship revealed no webs. It was nearing station midnight when Roic and Bel checked in.