“Softly, softly—”
The words were Basic but delivered with a hissing intonation that slurred them into what was just a series of “s” sounds. The curtain at the back of the booth had been pulled aside, and a woman came in—that is, she was almost humanoid enough to be termed that, though her pallid skin was covered with minute scales, and the growth that hung about her shoulders was not strictly hair, fine-fringed though it was. Her features were enough like his own not to be remarkable. She was wearing an affectation of Terran sophistication that he had last seen on that planet, narrow trousers of metallic cloth, a sleeveless jerkin of puff fur, and a half mask of silver-copper that covered eyes and forehead and hung part way over the nose in whorls of metal.
The dress, high-style Terran, was as out of place in this dingy hole as a drink of Lithean champagne would be, although it served as a disguise.
“You wish—?” Again that hissing speech.
“A call was made to the mail ship, Gentle Fem, the Solar Queen, asking that a security package be picked up for shipment.”
“Your ident, Gentle Homo?”
Dane held it out, and she bent her head a little as if the elaborate mask made it as hard for her to see as it was for others to view her face.
“Ah. Yes, there is such a package.”
“You are the sender?”
“Please to come this way.” She evaded his question, opened the front of the booth as if it were a door, and beckoned Dane beyond, looping the curtain for him to pass through.
There was a very narrow corridor, so narrow a vent that his shoulders brushed the wall on either side. Then a second door, one set in the wall, rolled aside as he approached it, probably set on an entra beam.
The room into which he went was in contrast to the dinginess of the Deneb’s open serving section. It was paneled in plasta sheets, which melted into one another in a never-ending view of wide sweeps of alien landscapes. In spite of the beauty of the walls, however, there was an assault on Dane’s nostrils that almost made him gag. He could see no source of that terrible stench—it just was, though the furnishings of the room were luxurious and its general aspect one of taste with plenty of credits to gratify it.
A man sprawled in an easi-rest. He did not rise as Dane came in nor greet him with more than a stare. The woman paid no attention to him but swiftly went past Dane to the other side of the room and picked up a box of dull metal, a square cube as large as two palms’ width.
“This you take,” she said.
“Who signs?” Dane looked from her to the man, who still stared at him so steadily that the Terran felt uncomfortable.
The man said nothing at all, though there was a small period of silence as if the woman waited for some order or move from him. Then she spoke.
“If it is needful, then so will I do.”
“It is necessary.” Dane brought out his recorder and leveled the lens at the box.
“What you do?” the woman cried out with urgency as if he proposed to shoot the package out of her hand.
“Take an official recording,” he told her. She had the box pressed tightly between both hands, the fingers outstretched so that she appeared to be trying to cover as much of its surface with her own flesh and bone as she could.
“You ship that,” Dane continued, “and you must go by the rules.”
Again it was as if she waited for some sign from the man, but he had not moved, nor did his eyes drop from their survey of Dane. Finally, with visible reluctance, she put the box on the edge of a small table and stepped back, though she hovered close by, her hands even outstretched, as if ready to snatch it to safety if threatened.
Dane pressed the button, took a picture of the shipment, then held out the mike of the voice tape.
“Verify that you are shipping this by security, Gentle Fern. Give your name, the date, and then press your thumb on the tape roll—right here.”
“Very well. If this is the regulation, then I must do.” But she picked up the box and held it against her as she leaned forward to take the mike.
Only she did not complete that gesture. Instead, the hand reaching for the mike slashed down at Dane’s wrist, and a nail, abnormally long, scored his flesh. For a moment he was too stunned to move. Then his hand and his arm went numb. As it dropped to hang uselessly at his side, the tape fell on the floor. He had strength enough to turn to the door, but he did not get even one step toward safety. His last clear memory was of falling forward to his knees, his head turned a little so that the unwinking stare of the man in the easi-rest was still on him. The other did not move.
There was nothing more until he crawled over a steamy landscape over greasy mud and awakened again sick in the inn room to make his way back to the Queen.
Then he awoke, to face the party crowding into sick bay, Tau bending over him with a restorative prick of needle, bringing him fully aware of where he was, but this time able to remember all the probe had brought to the surface of his mind.
3.CARGO TROUBLE
“The tape record.” Dane spoke his first thought aloud.
“The only one of your possessions that stranger did not bring with him,” Jellico replied.
“And the box?”
“Not here. It might only have been bait.”
Somehow Dane did not believe that. The woman’s actions, as he remembered them, argued otherwise. Or had they been meant to center his attention wholly on the shipment so he would be unprepared for her attack?
He knew that those crowded into the small sick bay had heard every detail of what he had relived. The probe not only broadcast but also taped it for the record while he was under, so all the few facts were plain.
“How did I get from the Deneb to the inn?” he wondered. There was something else, a small teasing memory of a face so fleetingly seen that he could not be sure. Had or had he not sighted in the outer room of the inn as he staggered out the man who had sat so silently when he had been struck down? He could not be sure.
“They could have carried you in as a drunk,” Ali remarked. “Would be common enough in off-port. And I take it you did not stop to make inquiries when you left.”
“Had to get back to the ship,” Dane returned. He was thinking of the box that had seemed so important to the woman. It had not been large, small enough, in fact, to hide. But they had searched the treasure room, his cabin—
“The box—”
Captain Jellico stood up. “About so big, wasn’t it?” He sketched dimensions in the air.
Dane agreed.
“All right. We’ll hunt it.”
Though he longed to join in that search, Dane was now tied to the bunk by his own weakness. The secondary shot Tau had given him was wearing off. He was suddenly so sleepy that he could not fight the drowsiness. But he knew that any search the captain organized would be down to the very plates that made up the Queen.
And the search, thorough though it was, revealed nothing, as Dane discovered when he roused, feeling much more himself than he had since leaving the Deneb. They had a dead man in deep freeze and nothing else, save the probe tape, which Captain Jellico played over again until Dane loathed hearing it, always hoping for some small new detail. There was only one thing to add to that account, the chance that the man in the inn who had witnessed his leaving had been also in the Deneb.
“If that was true, he must have had a shock,” the captain mused. “But it was too late for him to change their plans then. And we can’t do any more until we get to the local Patrol post on Trewsworld. I’ll take word- oath that there is no box hidden where we looked.”