Crisis On Doona (29 page)

She did but was aware that Todd was uncharacteristically morose until she got to the part about DeVeer taking her with him to interrogate Klonski.

“You see, we were all working on the wrong assumption,” she said, looking at Ken, “that the brands had been altered somehow. Even Kiachif thought Klonski might be able to do that but he didn’t. In fact, he burst out laughing at the very notion that he was being accused of rustling.” The others didn’t quite seem to see the humor in that, so she continued. “He did much worse ... all to incriminate you,” and now she turned her gaze to Todd to see the dawning of hope in his eyes. “Klonski altered the log tapes ... By the way, which of you handed them over to Rogitel?”

“Neither of us did. He removed them from the unit himself,” Todd said.

“Well, then, that’s when he switched them.”

Todd opened his mouth to protest. “You know, you’re right. He bundled the log box into a plastic sack and carried it off in a proprietary fashion. I didn’t think about it till now and I was certainly too shocked at all he was flinging at Hrriss and me to think his manner odd.”

Kelly nodded. “It had to be Rogitel substituting the altered tapes and at that moment, since the ship had been properly sealed. I wonder where your real log went.”

“Into the nearest vat of acid,” Todd said with a deep sigh.

“Possibly not,” Ken suggested thoughtfully. “Go on, Kelly. What else did Klonski do?”

Her eyes glowed. “This is sort of the best part. He altered satellite security modes.”

“He what?” Ken lifted off his chair and Todd stared at her as if she had suddenly changed shape.

“Don’t know how, do know why,” she went on.

“To let the rustlers in and out,” Ken continued, throwing both arms in the air at such an obvious explanation.

“Klonski was rather proud of that. And DeVeer has it all on tape!” Kelly said, grinning broadly.

“Is DeVeer really on our side, Kelly?” Ken asked, his expression grim.

“I think so, sir,” Kelly replied. “He admitted he doesn’t really like the Doona Experiment. He was alive when the Siwanna Tragedy occurred but he also admitted that colored his opinions. But,” and she waggled her finger at all three Reeves, “he’s out to crush the rustling because too many uninoculated animals are being transported illegally. And he said the incidents of rustling had increased all out of proportion. He couldn’t figure out why.”

“I brought the illegal hides to him ...”

“And I’ve been squaring my eyeballs trying to match missing horses to those hides with duplicate Reeve marks.”

Ken brought his fist down on the table so smartly that it startled everyone else. “Okay, we’ve had the wrong end of the stick. Kiachif gave me a clue in reporting Mark Aden helping to load that leopard Appie for export. He was also about the height you are now, Todd, dark-haired and blue eyes, and to Zapatans that description also fits you. Let’s assume that Mark rustled while he worked for me. So he probably stashed unmarked foals, born in the pastures, in some blind canyon. He had the run of our ranch as well as our neighbors’. He could have picked up unbranded foals from all over. Every breeder expects a few mares to abort in a year or lose their foals to mdas before we round ’em up for branding. But just one or two from fifty or so ranches, and that’d make a nice shipment offworld. Especially if someone is turning off the satellite tape—or however your Klonski rigged the system, and your rustler’s away with no one the wiser.”

“Spacedep is involved up to its armpits,” Kelly said, “and I think Inspector DeVeer is going to prove it. Which reminds me, I promised my friend Dalkey that I’d sponsor him to Doona.”

“You did?” Todd gave her the queerest look she’d ever seen on his face.

“How else can we repay him for the help he’s given?”

“If there is a Doona for him to come to,” Todd said in a bleak tone. “Neither Hrriss nor I is cleared ...”

“You will be!” Kelly said emphatically.

“Kelly, this family can never properly repay you,” Pat said, tears of relief in her eyes. She dabbed at them with the edge of the dish towel she had had in her hand when she heard Kelly arrive.

“We’re neighbors, aren’t we?” Kelly replied, struggling not to get too sentimental. Wanting very much to hear Todd commend her. “And it’s Hrriss and Todd who’ve been jeopardized. I don’t let my friends get done over. How much more time do we have before the trial?” She looked at Ken Reeve because she couldn’t look at Todd, who still faced that ordeal unless lots of things fell into place in the next few days.

“We’ve not yet been informed,” Ken said in a taut voice. Then his face broke into a relieved smile and he leaned forward with his elbows on the table. “Look, we can’t do much about the satellite ...”

“Kiachif?” Todd asked, also leaning forward, his expression alert even if he wouldn’t look at Kelly next to him.

“Possibly,” Ken said, “and I don’t know how we’d locate the genuine log tape ...”

“Emma Sumitral?” Pat suggested, her eyes brighter with hope than with tears.

“I can ask, but now we concentrate our efforts on finding where stolen livestock could have been hidden.”

“Tadpole in a tangle of tiddlers,” Todd said, “but there’d have to be water, good grass, some sort of shelter ...”

“Well off all known trails, especially snake ones,” Kelly added. “But every rancher’ll help now.”

“They’ve all been helping ...” And Todd inadvertently turned his head toward her. Kelly held her breath, not wanting to turn away from the look in his eyes, keen again and as intense as they got when he was thinking rapidly, as he did on a Snake Hunt, examining and rejecting alternatives. He was her buoyant, marvelous, alive Todd again. He lifted his body from the chair in a lithe movement. “I’ll send out a revised message, for mares that ought to have foaled and didn’t come in with foal at foot. Let’s see how many come up missing on that data!”

“No, son,” and Ken grabbed Todd’s arm as he passed. “You’ll saddle up Gypsy and go out hunting for likely places to stash livestock. Pat, you send out a blanket message to all ranches to be on the lookout for such storage spots, and also query folks about barren mares. Kelly, will you ask your father and brothers to help?”

“I’ll go there first, but I promised Nrrna that I’d come over and give Hrriss the good news as soon as I’d told you.” She dared look at Todd again.

“You were nearer Hrriss if you came in on the village grid,” he said.

Kelly cocked her head at him, thought she wanted to shake him out of his stasis. Couldn’t he see what her priority was? She planted her fists at her belt so she wouldn’t do something drastic in front of his parents. “I’ve got my priorities in order, Todd Reeve. Hrriss doesn’t ranch horses.” With that she pushed past him and out of the house, down the steps, and vaulted to Calypso’s back before she thought what she was doing.

“Hey ... Kelly?” Todd’s plaintive, puzzled call followed her down the track.

When he went back into the house, he saw the amused expressions on his parents’ faces. “What’d I do to upset her?”

“For a bright man, you can be as dense as two planks,” his mother said, and took herself back to the kitchen.

Todd looked at his father, who was making strangled noises.

“I think, son, it’s more what you didn’t do that’s upset her. And you should get your priorities right. But not now. Now we got some rustler pens to find. You’ll have time to apologize to Kelly later.”

“Apologize?”

Ken turned his son around and shoved him toward the door. “Saddle my horse when you’re tacking Gypsy. Tell Lon what we’re going to look for and let’s get going!” Ken’s voice raised to a triumphant shout as Todd pitched forward and out the door from his father’s hefty push.

* * *

What he should apologize to Kelly for bothered him as soon as he set off in the southeasterly direction his father had appointed him to search so that he could stay within the Reeve Ranch limits for more klicks than if he went west or north.

Perhaps he ought to have been more effusive in his thanks, but he’d been so scared that Kelly had done something stupid—which she had, only it worked out right—or been abducted—which was not really a possibility, but in his anxiety he had imagined all kinds of gory fates. She really had come up a heroine to smuggle herself back to Earth on a Hrruban grid... he ground his teeth, knowing that she had faced a sentence of life on a penal world if she’d been caught. Why hadn’t she gone to one of those girlfriends she’d told him about? Who was this Dalkey Petersham? Why would she sponsor a Terran to Doona, a Terran working in Spacedep? It was analogous to inviting Jilamey Landreau to a weekend at her family’s lake cabin.

And this DeVeer Polly! Who hadn’t really listened to his father when he reported hides that didn’t match their records. They had got the wrong end of that stick, all right. Stupid not to have tumbled to the duplications. Kiachif once again to the rescue. Only then did Todd become aware that Gypsy’s gallop was slowing. Gently he eased the gray to a more sedate pace. No sense taking his frustration out on his horse. He gave Gypsy’s neck several affectionate slaps to reassure him and kneed him toward the nearest height. It commanded a good view over to the next range of hills. As he reined Gypsy in, he looked out over the land, peaceful and greening up well. More mares would be foaling ...

An odd noise attracted both him and Gypsy at the same time, the horse pricking his ears and turning his head to the right. An echo it was, a bass echo, too loud for a nearby mda. The sound gathered intensity, and suddenly, out of the fold of the hills before him, he saw the pointed snout of a shuttle angling upward. It pulled up above the hills, its engines roaring, thrusters blazing.

Todd sent Gypsy down the hill at a gallop while he grabbed for his radio and called the ranch.

“Mom! Notify Martinson at once. A shuttle just illegally lifted off our property. I’m going to see if there are any traces of stock near the launch burn.”

“What? Are you sure, Todd?”

“Mom! Don’t argue. Tell Martinson to monitor the tracking satellites. They can catch him as he leaves the atmosphere.”

Despite the clip at which he pushed Gypsy, it took him nearly an hour to reach the launch spot. What he saw there made him weep, but it was also incontrovertible truth that someone had been rustling Reeve livestock. Concealed in a fold of the hill, where trees formed a screen, a paddock had been fenced, the posts and rails so well disguised by shrubs, some of them rroamal, that Ken, or Todd, or Lon could have ridden by here every day and never noticed the setup. They wouldn’t have looked past the rroamal to the glade, for horses avoided that plant as carefully as Humans did. Water had been piped into a big barrel, fitted with a stopcock. Dung dotted the little glade, enough for twenty or so horses, just the number to make a nice profit for the rustler’s efforts. But not all the horses had been loaded and that’s what upset Todd the most. Three yearlings, well grown, freeze-marked with the Reeve brand, lay on the ground. One had a broken neck—probably caused fighting to resist being loaded, for the rope burns on head and neck were obvious. The other two had broken legs. The nails that had been driven between their eyes into their skulls had not been removed. Todd shuddered. Circling the corral, Todd also found the bleach marks that freeze-brand chemicals made when carelessly spilled.

His radio bleeped.

“Todd?” It was Lon.

“They caught ’em?”

“Nothing, Todd,” and Lon’s voice sounded as savage as Todd felt. “Linc Newry says there was no alarm from the orbiters.”

“But that’s impossible. I saw it launch. There has to be traces of that!”

“I’ll patch Linc through to you,” Lon said, and Todd was too enraged to bother to hold the handset from his ear to avoid the high-pitch squeal as the patch to the Launch Center was made.

“I know you think you saw something, Todd,” Newry said apologetically but firmly. “But no ships took off Doona today at all and none were scheduled to land.”

“Linc, I know what I saw! I know what I see about me right now—three dead yearlings with nails driven through their skulls because one had a broken neck and two had broken legs. Check your readouts, will ya? Check your equipment ...” Todd almost suggested that Linc check for tampering but that would be premature. He knew Linc Newry too well to suspect the man was in league with Doona’s detractors, but this was the time to stand pat and let someone with clout, like DeVeer, handle that end of the business.

“Todd, I’m serious. Nothing came through the atmosphere. All readings are normal. But you can be sure I’ll keep my eyes peeled to the gauges. Could be they only up-and-overed. Maybe they had another rendezvous but they won’t leave Doona without my seeing ‘em tonight.”

“You’re probably right. They up-and-overed. Thanks, Linc. Over and out!” He held the radio away from his ear as the connection ended, then dialed Lon again.

“Ouch,” Lon said. “I didn’t disconnect. I heard what he said, Todd, and I heard what you said. Fardling bastards! When I get my hands on ‘em ... Give me your whereabouts. We’ll join you to film the evidence. Got any idea whose they were rustling?”

“The one with the broken neck is a leopard Appaloosa,” Todd said, his shoulders sagging at the irony.

* * *

Uncharacteristically loud voices echoed in the Council room of the Speakers of Hrruba. Third Speaker raised his voice to be heard above them all. He was getting old, but fury gave his throat the power to shout down his opponents who were arguing over his tirade against Rrala. Only the banging of the gavel of First Speaker Hrruna put an end to the snarling and growls.

“That is enough,” First Speaker said in a very soft voice. “Third Speaker, will you give substance to your demand that Rrala be disbanded?”

“You have all read the report from the Treaty Controller,” Third said, raking his fellow administrators with a glare which stopped short just before it fell on First Speaker. “One of our most prominent young diplomats is involved in a disgraceful situation, in which he is accused of capital crimes, in violation both of the Treaty of Rrala and of Hrruban Law. Hrrss theft! Robbery from interdicted worlds! He has been corrupted by his Hayuman companion. I have been getting full reports from my representatives on Rrala, and none of it is good news. It would seem that this is not an isolated case. Honorable, honest citizens are being lured into a life of crime by these animals who walk like Hrrubans! Rrala must be closed to Hayumans, or all of society will suffer!”