“With us again, eh? Let’s see—” He went to work with quick competence to run a check on Dane’s still inert body. “Fair enough, though by rights you should be dead.”
Dead? He had been dead—Dane frowned. There had been a body in his bunk.
“The man in my bunk?” He made that a question, though he did not finish it.
“Dead. And I think you are fit enough now—” Tau went to the wall com. “Sick bay calling Captain.”
Captain—report to the captain! Dane tried to get up, but Tau had already pressed the button bringing part of the surface up under him as a support. A little dizziness returned but then was gone.
“That man—how—”
“Acceleration with a heart condition. He had no business trying to get off-planet,” Tau told him.
“His—his face—”
Tau took something from a nearby shelf. He faced Dane, holding out a plasta mask. Save that it had no eyes, only holes, it was like looking in a mirror. And a back stretch covered with blond hair like Dane’s turned it into a full head covering.
“Who was he?” The mask possessed a macabre fascination. Dane looked away from it quickly. It was almost like seeing a part of himself limp and flaccid in the medic’s grasp.
“We were hoping—are hoping—you know,” Tau returned. “But the captain wants it now.”
As if that were an introduction, Captain Jellico came in. His deeply tanned face with the blaster scar along one cheek showed no readable emotion, as was usual. But he glanced from the mask Tau was holding to Dane and back again.
“Diabolically clever piece of work,” he commented. “Not a quick job.”
“Nor made on Xecho either, I would say.” Tau put away the mask, to Dane’s relief. “That is the product of an expert.”
The captain came to Dane’s side and held out his hand. On the palm rested a colored tridee. It was of a man. His skin did not have the brown tan of a crewman but was bleached looking, though he must be Terran or Terran colonial bred. There was an odd, fixed look in his eyes, a frozen stillness to his features that was disquieting. His hair was sparse, sandy brown, his eyebrows above those fixed eyes were thin and ragged, and he had a rash of freckles across his upper cheekbones. To Dane he was a complete stranger.
“Who—?”
Jellico gestured to the mask. “The man behind that. You don’t know him?” “Never saw him—that I can remember.”
“He had your belongings, a forged ident in the bargain, and that mask. He was sent aboard to be you. And where were you?”
Dane outlined his adventures after waking in the inn, adding the information about the missing package—if it was missing.
“Inform the port police?” he suggested tentatively.
“Not for robbery, I think.” Jellico turned the tridee to look down at the face in it, as if, by the very intensity of his gaze, he could force some answer to the riddle. “This was a setup that required a lot of planning. It was, I believe, a means of getting a man on board.”
“A cargo master aboard, sir,” Dane corrected eagerly, “who would have access to—”
Jellico nodded sharply. “Fair assumption. Stowage reports—what are we shipping that would be worth such a long-range plan?”
Dane, entrusted for the first time with full authority for the stowage, could have recited the entire list. He ran over it swiftly now in his mind. But there was nothing—nothing that important. A mask would require time to make, a reason for a long-thought-out buildup. He turned to Tau.
“I was poisoned?”
“You were. If it hadn’t been for the metabolism shift after that ceremonial drink on Sargol—” He shook his head. “Whether they meant to have you dead or just put you out for a long time—anyway, normally it would have finished you.”
“Then he was meant to be me—for how long?” He asked that question of himself, but the captain answered.
“No longer than Trewsworld, I would say. First, unless he was exceptionally well briefed, he couldn’t play the part with shipmates who really knew you. It would require a complete memory switch for that, and they didn’t have you in their hands long enough for that. You went off-ship and apparently were back again in one Xechoian cin-cycle. A memory switch takes a planetary day at least. Also, he couldn’t play sick either. Tau would have been after him. So, he could say he was uncertain about his work—first run for him in cargo command—and could hole up to check his tapes and the like. The Trewsworld run is not a long one. He might have been able—with luck—to pull it off, or think he could, with that excuse.
“Second, there are only two reasons why he’d come on board—he was carrying something he had to transport under guard, or he himself had a very necessary reason for reaching Trewsworld in disguise. He was defeated mainly by chance—first, that you had your insides shaken up badly on Sargol so that their poison didn’t work, and, second, that he himself was not fit for space travel.”
“Did he bring anything with him?” Dane asked. “The registered package—they might have been after that all the time but have planned to walk off with it on Trewsworld, not jump me for it on Xecho.”
“Trouble was,” Jellico answered, “he was checked on board by the ramp cell, not by any of us. We don’t know whether he brought anything or not. There’s nothing in the cabin, and the holds are safe-locked.”
Safe-locked!
“Not the treasure room,” Dane returned. “I left that on half seal—couldn’t close it until the package came.”
Jellico went to the com. “Shannon!” His call to the bridge alerting the assistant astrogator was loud enough to make Dane’s ears ring. “Down to the treasure room on the double. See if it’s fully sealed or not!”
Dane tried to think. Where else, if the holds were on full seal, where else could something be hidden on the Queen?
2. MEMORY LOST AND FOUND
“Two holds full seal, treasure half seal.” Rip’s voice rang hollowly over the inter-cabin com, loud enough for Dane to hear. Captain Jellico looked to him for confirmation, and he nodded.
“As I left them. Must check the treasure—” Once on full seal, the intruder could not have opened either of the lower compartments where the bulk of their cargo rested. But the treasure room, for registered and special security shipments—Since nothing had been found in Dane’s cabin with the dead stranger and it was apparent from the fact he had strapped down that he had intended to ride out the voyage and not use the elaborate disguise for an on-and-off invasion of the Queen, then if he did bring something on board, they had better find out what as quickly as possible.
“You’re in no shape—” began Tau, but Dane was already sitting up.
“We may be in no shape later if I don’t!” he returned grimly. Once before the Queen had carried an almost lethal cargo unwittingly, and that memory would ride with her crew for years. Wood taken on ship on Sargol had been infested with creatures able to assume the color of anything they touched, creatures whose claws carried a soporific that hit the crew like a plague.
Dane was sure an inspection of the treasure room would assure him whether or not there was any unaccounted-for cargo on board, since a cargo master by long training carried most of his inventory in his head, as well as on record tapes.
They had to let him do it. The safety of the Queen by necessity came above all else. But it was Tau who gave him a shoulder to lean on and the captain himself who went down ladder ahead of Dane, reaching up to support the younger man’s weak legs.