There now remained the personal cabins, those of the engineering staff first. None of them were luxuriously furnished, and their cramped compactness meant that the men who lived in them were forced into meticulous neatness if they were not already that way by habit. There were no lockers, no storage compartments open. He went into each and inspected any possible hiding place, and those of the right size were very few. Each fresher, though the door might be firmly shut, was opened. There was nothing.
Next level up—Van Ryke’s combined living quarters and office. Dane stepped inside. Nothing here. Not for the first time since this began, he wished that its usual inhabitant was on board now. They needed Van Ryke. The cargo master’s years of experience in all the mazes of trade and alien dealing were, for Dane, the best preparation for solving what had happened now.
The treasure hold across from the cargo master’s quarters—seal safely intact, just as he had left it. Next level—junior officers’ quarters, Rip’s cabin facing his, the hydro garden, the galley, Mura’s section. This was to be the extent of his own exploration, and not all of it, as Mura would cover his quarters and the hydro. Dane had only his cabin and Rip’s.
He took Rip’s first—all in order—then his own. As he opened the door, only a fraction of off aim saved him. A stun beam clicked along above his ear, sending him reeling back into the corridor. He managed to push shut the slide door and leaned there, holding his spinning head, trying to think coherently. Someone— something—inside was armed with a stunner and had tried to down him when he entered. Had there been another intruder beside the dead man? That was the only possible explanation. He lurched along to the nearest com mike and thumbed the red alert.
“What—?” Wilcox’s voice demanded, but it sounded very faint and far away as if the jolt that had brushed Dane had left him partially deaf.
“Someone—my cabin—stunner—” He got out the warning. He was watching the door, though he was not sure how, unarmed, he could prevent that other from leaving if he wanted to.
But if the intruder in Dane’s cabin realized he had the advantage, he did not try to use it to force his way out. The Terran tried to think of where any stowaway might have hidden. The interior of the flitter maybe—though to take the acceleration of lift-off, plus the wrench of translation into hyper, without any safeguards would knock most men out. Of course, this might not be a human at all.
There was a clatter on the ladder as Jellico swung down. And Frank Mura came at the same moment from the hydro. Tau followed the captain. The medic went at once to Dane.
“Clipped me with a stunner,” he explained.
“Still in there?” Jellico looked to the cabin.
“Yes.”
“All right. Tau, how about sleep gas through the air duct?”
The medic pushed Dane closer to the wall with an order of “Stay put!” and then climbed back to his lab on the next level. He returned with a small container and a length of tubing, which he handed over to the captain. “All ready.”
“Did you see who it was?” Tau asked as the captain stepped into Rip’s cabin and began unscrewing the mesh protector over the air duct.
“No. All happened too fast. After he clipped me, I couldn’t see straight, anyway. But where could a stowaway have been—in the flitter?”
“Through lift-off? Well, maybe,” Tau conceded, “if he were really tough. But into hyper—I doubt it, unless he took the jump in Shannon’s bunk. Shannon was on duty, and the dead man was in yours—”
They could see Jellico through the open door, inserting the tubing, pushing it along with care as he stood on Rip’s bunk, his shoulders hunched, concentrating on what he could see of the tube’s reptilian passage until it reached the grill of Dane’s quarters. Then he made more delicate movements, and Dan guessed he was maneuvering the end of the tube to strike against the grill so that the released gas would go directly into the closed cabin.
“Now!” His grip tightened on the small container in one hand, while with the other he held the mask Tau handed him over his own nose and mouth against any back draft from the tube. The wait for the container to be emptied seemed endless to Dane. He was shaking off the effects of the stunner touch. Finally Jellico pulled back the tube and dropped to the deck.
“If whoever is in there breathes,” he said with dour satisfaction, “he’s out now.”
That statement sounded odd to Dane, almost as if the captain might share that monstrous suspicion about the dead returned to life again.
Dane reached the door first. It was not locked from the inside but gave easily, so they could see in, the masks supplied by Tau now in use by them all, while the medic was using a sucker to draw the fumes out of the air.
Dane so fully expected to see a man that for a second or two he was disconcerted when he sighted nothing of the kind. What lay on the floor of the cabin, one forepaw still resting on the stunner, was the male brach, while curled on the bunk lay the female. And both were unconscious.
“The brachs!” Dane went down on one knee and touched the feathery covering of the male before he believed it true. But it was the brach. There was no one else here. The animal had used the stunner with the intelligence of a man brought to bay. Dane glanced at the captain and for the first time in his service aboard the Queen saw Jellico startled out of his usual impassivity.
But Tau had crowded past Dane and was bending over the female brach to make a quick examination.
“She’s in labor. Let me through!” He gathered up the limp animal and stepped over the inert male.
“What about it?” Dane looked from the captain to Mura and back to the male brach. “It—it must have used the stunner. But—”
“A trained brach?” suggested the steward. “Conditioned perhaps to use a weapon under certain circumstances?”
“Maybe,” Jellico conceded. “But I don’t know. Frank, can you make that cage break-proof?”
“Put a chain on, rig an alarm—” Mura listed the possibilities. He came forward to lean over and stare down at the sleeping animal. Dane picked up the stunner and thrust it into the nearest compartment, which he slammed shut.
“An animal,” Mura said. “I swear it is—was—an animal. I have seen brachs. These acted no differently. Why, when I filled their feed bin—” He paused, a slight frown drawing his black brows closer together.
“You filled their feed bin and what happened?” the captain wanted to know.
“This one, the male, watched me latch it. Then he reached through the bars and shook the fastenings. I thought he only wanted more of the renton leaves, and I gave him some. But now I think he was trying the door lock.”
“Well, let’s get him back in the cage before he wakes up,” Jellico said. “And use the chain and the alarm, Mura. We might set a video on and hook it to general screen cast as a precaution. I want a record of what happens when he wakes up.”
Mura lifted the brach and carried it back to the cage. Both Jellico and Dane watched him take the precautions that had been suggested. Then Ya was called to rig the video so that they could keep the animal under watch as if he were a suspect in a cell, a snooper on him.
“Who is responsible for this shipment?” Jellico turned to Dane.
“The Norax lab. All the papers are correct. They are to be sent through to the Simplex people on Trewsworld—authorized project by Council permission.”