“The dragons, how did they get through the protection?”
“The little one—when they hurt him—he opened it for them. They wished to go, so they used it,” the brach replied with prompt logic.
Well, it all fitted, if you were willing to accept the initial proposition that the brachs could think an open door through a force field. There was more and more to these mutated animals—no, they were not animals—these people (you must give them their proper status no matter what they had been on Xecho) than one could understand. What excitement they were going to cause when the scientists and lab techs learned about them.
Dane saw Ali coming on the run and slowed to a stop until the other joined him.
“Listen.” Dane pushed the brach question to the back of his mind as he quickly gave Kamil the story of the derelict crawler and what it contained.
“So you think Rip may have visitors?” Ali caught him up swiftly. “All right, we go in slowly and carefully.”
Both of them had been rubbing their mikes with a gloved thumb as they talked, so that none of what they said could be picked up by a listener. Now Dane was glad to pull down his visor against the frosty chill. Though there was a sun in the sky, it gave little warmth even here in the open, and as they passed into the shade of the wood again, even that illusion of light and heat was lost.
Approach the LB with caution they did. But when they saw what stood a little beyond it in the open, they were less suspicious. There was no mistaking the scout flitter of the Queen, Dane felt a warm wash of relief. So Jellico had sent for them—maybe they were now on the verge of solving the whole tangle. Reassured, they trotted on to the hatch.
Rip was inside, and Craig Tau, but the third man was not the captain as Dane expected, nor any member of the Queen’s crew. And Rip’s expressionless face, as well as Tau’s stiff stance, was warning that they were not at the end of their troubles.
The stranger was of Terran stock but somewhat shorter than the crewmen, wide of shoulder and long of arm, both of which were accented by the bulk of the fur upper garment that he had unsealed but not taken off. Underneath he wore a green tunic of a uniform with a badge on the breast consisting of two silver leaves springing from a single stem.
“Ranger Meshler, Dane Thorson, acting cargo master, Ali Kamil, assistant engineer.” Medic Tau made the formal introduction and added an explanation for his crewmates. “Ranger Meshler is now in charge in this district.”
Dane moved. He might not be right in his sum-up of the present situation, but one of the lessons of infighting that most free traders knew was to get an enemy or possible enemy off balance, to deliver the first blow and make it as unexpected a one as possible. “If you represent the law here, I have a murder, two murders, to report.”
He pulled out the ident strip from the crawler and the fragment of stone he had found caught in the plundered lock bin. “There is a crawler by the river, caught in the ice. I think it has been there for some time, but I don’t know enough of your planet conditions to guess how long. There are two men in the cabin—blast-burned. Their lock bin had been burned open, and this was caught in its door.” He put the stone on a shelf. “And this is the ident card from the control slot.” He laid the strip of metal next to the stone.
If he had planned to carry war into the enemy’s territory, he succeeded for a space, for Meshler was staring from him to the two exhibits and then back again.
“We have also to report”—Ali broke the short silence—“unless Shannon has already done it for us, the presence of a mutated antline—”
Meshler finally came to life. He was closed-faced now, all signs of surprise gone.
“It would seem”—his voice was as frosty as the air outside—”that you have been making a great many strange discoveries—very strange discoveries.” He spoke, Dane thought, as if he considered most not only improbable but also impossible, but at least they had proof, good solid proof of it all.
8.INVOLUNTARY FLIGHT
“What is the situation, sir?” Having done his best to throw the opposition off balance, disregarding the last comment from the ranger, Dane turned to Tau. He wanted to know just what they had to face.
It was Meshler who answered. “You are all under arrest!” He said that weightedly, as if the words disarmed them and made the odds of four to one wholly in favor of that one. “I am to escort you to Trewsport, where your case comes under Patrol surveillance—”
“And the charge?” Kamil had not moved from the hatch door. His one arm was behind him, and Dane thought he still had a hand on the latch. It was plain that Ali did not consider the odds in Meshler’s favor.
“Sabotage of shipment, interference with the mail, murder—” The ranger stated each charge as if he were a judge pronouncing sentence.
“Murder?” Ali looked surprised. “Whom did we murder?”
“Person unknown,” Tau drawled. His former rigidity had eased. He leaned against the wall, one hand on the edge of the hammock where the brachs sat in their nest of padding. “You met him dead.” He nodded to Dane. “He was wearing your face at the time—”
Now Meshler turned a sharp, measuring look at Dane, who, to aid him in identification, pushed back his hood. And for the second time the Terran saw a trace of surprise on the rather flat face of the ranger. Tau uttered a sound not far from a laugh.
“You see, Ranger Meshler, that our tale was the truth. And the rest we can prove, as well as showing you a man with the same features as that mask. We have the box that caused all the trouble, the mutated embryos, the brachs—Let your science techs test it all, and they will see we reported nothing but the truth.”
There was a wriggling against Dane’s shoulders. He had forgotten the brach in the pack. Now he loosened the straps and held the bag so that its occupant could climb out to join his family in the hammock. Meshler viewed that without comment.
Now the ranger produced a tridee shot from an inner pocket. Holding it, he moved closer to the hammock that held the “people” from Xecho, looking from the picture of the brachs and back again several times.
“There are differences,” he commented.
“As we told you. You heard them, or rather her, talk,” Rip replied. There was a tightness in his voice that suggested the time before Ali and Dane’s arrival had not been pleasantly spent.
“And where is this mysterious box?” The ranger did not look to them but continued to study the brachs. He gave the impression of still being skeptical.
“We buried it, in its protective covering,” Dane replied. “Only it may not be the first such shipment to arrive here.”
Now he did have the full attention of Meshler. Those chill chips of ice that served the other for eyes fastened on him. “You have reason for believing so?”
Dane told him of the antline. Whether he was making any impression on Meshler, he could not tell, but at least the man listened without any outward sign of incredulity.
“You found its lair, you say? And it was under stunner influence when you last saw it?”
“We backtracked it to the lair.” Ali cut in. “And, from the marks, it was on its way back there when it left the cage. We didn’t trail it again.”
“No, you were after your other monsters, to cover up what you had introduced here.” Meshler had not softened. “And these monsters—where are they now?”
“We tracked them as far as the river,” Ali continued. “The brach said they had flown across, and we were hunting a way of getting over when we were recalled.”
Tau spoke then. “The brach said? How did it know?”