Crisis On Doona (36 page)

Todd had the satisfaction of hearing Hrriss’s low and menacing growl as he swung around the marines and out the door.

Ken shot Rogitel a furious glare for his uncalled-for incivility to the Hrruban, but the commander paid no notice as he took his place in front of the detail.

“I’ve some things for you in the one bag we were allowed,” Ken murmured to his son. “I don’t think we’ll be gone long for all the precipitousness of our departure. “

“What’s up, then?”

“We’re to appear before a panel of the Amalgamated Worlds in their Terran offices.”

Todd was seething to tell his father what he and Hrriss had got out of Newry. More pieces had fallen into place, pieces he never would have considered as part of the conspiracy. And yet they fit!

They had no chance to talk on the way to the Treaty Island, not with Rogitel looking so smug and well pleased with himself. At the grid, though, Todd began to worry. The Treaty Controller and two strange male Hrrubans wearing sidearms awaited their arrival.

“Send them to Earth,” Rogitel ordered the grid operator.

The Hrruban glanced nervously at the Treaty Controller, who nodded, and the Hrruban had no option but to manipulate the controls. Todd watched the bright room around him dissolve and vanish. In
a moment, the features of their destination started to coalesce around him. He could see the posts of the transport station becoming solid at the four corners of the grid, and the blank walls of a corridor beyond them.

As soon as the Reeves had fully materialized, they were attacked from behind.

IN HIGH SPIRITS,
Ali Kiachif tapped at the door of the Reeve residence. He and the other two men had debarked so hastily from the
White Lightning
they were still in shipsuits.

“Now, this will just take a minute,” the Codep captain assured his two companions. “Hello-oo?” he called out, and rapped with his knuckles on the window. “Reeve, are you home? Ah, hello, Patricia. Surprised to see me so soon? Rank has its privileges, I always say. I brought someone by for your husband to meet. May I introduce Dr. Walter Tylanio? He’s the best laser expert in the whole galaxy. What he don’t know about ’em, no one does, if you see what I mean. Martinson you know.” The tall, bearded man behind Kiachif bowed.

“How do you do?” Pat asked. Her daughter Inessa and Kelly were crowded behind her in the doorway. The merchant tipped them a little wink. Their faces fell when they didn’t see the figures they expected.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Reeve,” Martinson said impatiently. “Kiachif, I have to get back to my office.”

“Patience, patience,” Kiachif said chidingly. “Surely you can give the man one moment to crow over all of you who thought so ill of him.
Honi soit qui mal y pense,
if you know what I mean.”

“Neither Todd nor Ken is here, Captain,” Pat said, her anxiety increasing because she thought it just possible that the captain might know where they were. “They were supposed to see an Amalgamated Worlds panel.”

Kiachif clicked his tongue. “That’s bad luck. I guessed he’d want to see my smiling face, soon’s my expert here had a chance to unreel that doctored log tape that was on the
Albatross.”

“Come in, come in,” Kelly said, usurping Pat’s prerogative, but Hrriss had told her and Nrrna all about Newry. And if this expert was so good, maybe he could figure out which function key controlled the security satellite bypass and how Klonski-Boronov had managed to scramble supposedly tamperproof chips.

“Martinson here,” Kiachif said, stepping lightly inside and peering about as if he hoped Ken and Todd were only hiding in their own home, “wouldn’t let me bring the tape to Tylanio, so I brought the mountain to the prophet.” He caught Kelly’s grin. “Well, I alter to suit m’purpose, girl, if you get my drift. Martinson kept his word of honor like the fine upstanding man he is, and the log was never out of his sight for a moment. So we have returned with the news and Martinson maybe has returned to Doona a wiser man.”

“What did you find, Dr. Tylanio?” Pat asked, absently gesturing for them to be seated. She signalled for Inessa to get refreshments.

“To give you the tall, small, and all of it,” Kiachif said, still dominating the conversation, “the log was some messed with,” Dr. Tylanio, who apparently took no umbrage from Kiachif’s ebullience, nodded agreement.

Martinson cleared his throat and shot a quelling look at Kiachif. “Let the expert explain, Captain. I thought that’s why you insisted he return with us.”

“The tapes had clearly been extensively altered, Mrs. Reeve,” Dr. Tylanio said. He had a pleasant tenor voice and spoke in the measured phrases of a born lecturer. “It was apparent from the tape that it was not recording anything on its homeward-bound journey: certainly not when they paused outside the Hrrilnorr system. Internal recordings were being taped. I would guess that the VU and transmitter had been tampered with.”

“But that doesn’t prove it was altered by an outsider,” Martinson said, obviously unsettled by Tylanio’s report.

“It does to me,” Kiachif said, accepting a glass from Inessa. “And there’s more. Oh, how I wish Todd and Ken were here right now. Walt says the box was only diddled once. That puts paid to that Spacedep stringy bean’s charge that the boys had been wiping the memory clean every time they were ex-Doona while committing all those piracies and smugglings.”

“That’s right, Mrs. Reeve,” Tylanio said. “The alteration could only have been made before or after their latest mission. Since the ship was sealed, that would mean it would have to have been done before. The inserted material was masterfully done, very carefully filmed to present such a single continuous record of multiple warp jumps and atmospheric insertions and launches. The most masterful piece of logging I’ve ever seen.”

“But couldn’t it have been substituted for the real log?” Kelly asked diffidently, for they had figured out how such a switch could have been made.

“Now, how could that possibly have been done, young woman?” Martinson demanded, irate. “I was present the entire time. I saw Commander Rogitel remove the log box myself, package it very carefully, and carry it off the ship. No one could have substituted this ... this ...”

Kiachif was waving a finger under Martinson’s nose. “That lassie has made a very good point, Martinson, so don’t get hot under your collar, which you aren’t wearing, but you’re getting riled.”

“Commander Rogitel...” Martinson began again with greater indignation, but Kiachif’s crow of exultation totally disconcerted him.

“I wouldn’t trust an Amalgamated Bond, sealed, signed, secured, if that Spacedep stringy bean gave it me. Ah, no,” Kiachif said. “I’ll bet my
White Lightning
herself that that’s when a switch occurred. Found the real log, lassie?”

Kelly shook her head. “We only figured out how and when the other day.” She wanted desperately to get Dr. Tylanio and Kiachif to herself to tell them about Newry, which she couldn’t quite do in front of Martinson. For all that she knew Martinson was respected and seemed straight as a die, she wasn’t going to take any chances. Especially as he seemed to think Commander Rogitel was such an upright type.

“So when d’you expect your men back, Patricia?” Kiachif asked easily.

“I don’t know, Ali,” she said, and began to wring her hands. “They should have been back the next day. And now there’s this awful rumor that they never appeared before the panel at all. That they’ve ... they’ve skipped out of an untenable situation.” Pat blurted the slander out and then began to weep. Kelly put her arm around her protectively.

“Never!” Kiachif said in a voice that would have been heard from stem to stern of the
White Lightning
through closed safety hatches.

“Commander Rogitel escorted them,” Kelly said in a caustic voice, her eyes on the captain. “With marines. I heard,” and while she couldn’t mention Madam Dupuis, she was certainly the most reliable source, “that two strange and armed Hrrubans took over from the marines when they got on the grid.”

“Did they, now?” Kiachif’s eyes went wide. “Now, that’s a nasty turn-up. And I’ll tell you one thing.” He swerved toward Martinson, his long stained finger almost in the man’s nostrils. “I don’t want to hear one more word from anyone that Ken Reeve, or Todd, skipped out of any obligation—to Doona, to Amalgamated Worlds, even to ol’ Terra! You see that gets put about right smart, Martinson. I’ve known Ken Reeve a quarter century. He’s run
at
a lot of stuff
I’d
never be caught charging, but he’s done it and won out over odds that would have pipped plenty on this planet. If he didn’t show up when and where he was supposed to, then he was prevented, if you understand me. Now, you dry those tears, Patricia Reeve, and stand up proud for your man and that fine son of yours,” he said, somewhat awkwardly but kindly patting her shoulder. “Your man is a fighter. Your boy, too. They’ll be back, sure enough, before you’ve any more time to miss them.”

“Thank you, Ali,” Pat said gratefully. “You know him in ways I don’t. You’ve given me new hope. And so have you, Dr. Tylanio. You were so good to come all this way for us.”

The laser expert took an envelope from his pocket. “This is a copy of my report, signed and sworn to by an accredited Amalgamated Worlds notary. Your son and your husband will doubtless find this useful. I will, of course, be happy to testify in person to the authenticity of my investigations.” Tylanio handed it to Pat and bowed. With Martinson at his side, he left the room.

“You see, signed, sealed, and sworn to. Proof positive of no perjury, Patricia,” Kiachif said in a low voice. He gave her one more squeeze and started for the door.

With the pretext of courtesy, Kelly followed him, touching his arm and bending close to his ear. “I gotta see you, Captain, and preferably before that expert leaves the planet.” Kiachif gave an almost imperceptible nod of acknowledgment, not so much as altering his stride as he continued on out of the house. Then she turned back to Pat, Inessa and Robin comforting her, and said in her normal tone, “I’d better get on home now but I’ll be back tomorrow.”

She clattered down the steps, whipped Calypso’s reins free from the rail as the men piled into the flitter. As it took off, it wallowed from side to side and she grinned. Trust Kiachif. Which she did.

* * *

Kelly had been looking over the last charges against the boys that still had to be cleared before Treaty Renewal Day. And the valuables and interdictables they were supposed to have stolen and secreted on the
Albie
would be the hardest part. Having Dr. Tylanio’s proof that the log tape had been altered, or even a carefully edited one substituted, was a real relief. If only they could somehow prove that Commander Rogitel had switched the doctored tape for the genuine log record ... He’d had more opportunity than anyone else. And reason.

But if the tapes of alleged visits to collect valuable artifacts, including the Byzanian Glow Stone, were adjudged a simulation, then they hadn’t been where they were accused of stealing things. They hadn’t stolen anything. As Todd and Hrriss maintained, all that junk had been planted on the
Albatross
and that had to have been done while the
Albie
was on the pad at Hrretha. Rogitel had been there.

But where were Todd and his father? Thank goodness, Captain Ali had soothed Patricia Reeve on that score. Maybe the word that they were detained would get out and Robin wouldn’t be sporting black eyes for defending the family honor. She knew Hrriss was lying low. Which was smart of him. Rogitel might not have considered the young Hrruban dangerous when he shooed him out of the Launch Center, but Newry knew different. Why hadn’t Todd come out with an accusation right then? In front of the marines. Surely they could be made to testify ... or could they?

A tiny noise penetrated her cogitations. Looking up from her desk, she nearly fell off her chair at the face grinning outside her window.

“You scared me to death, Captain Ali,” she whispered hoarsely at him.

“Your manner did suggest a need for caution, lassie.”

It wasn’t the first time Kelly had crawled through that window, and taking the captain’s hand, she ran with him to the deep shadows of the barn where no one was likely to look for them.

“You hit the nail on the head with Klonski, you know,” she said, “though I daren’t even get in touch with Inspector DeVeer right now.”

“And which nailhead would that be, lassie?” Kiachif asked. “Though Tylanio agrees privately with me that the work on the tape is exactly the sort of thing Klonski would do so well.”

“You also said he was a genius at fixing security systems.” Kiachif nodded, his eyes glinting in the dark. “And Dalkey’s records show he got paid several huge hunks of credit. I think some of it went to pay for him hobbling Doona’s security satellites.”

“Oh-ho-ho! I’ve been away too long.”

“You have. Todd and Hrriss found payments to a Doonan account ... and it belongs to Lincoln Newry.”

“Martinson’s assistant?” The whites of Kiachif’s eyes, for once, Kelly noted, without bloodshot cobwebs, were visible in the shadow. “No wonder you wouldn’t speak out in his presence. Does Patricia know?”

Kelly shook her head. “She’s got enough to fret over right now. ‘Sides, I didn’t think it would cheer her up.”

“Not a mite nor a moment, if her men are missing. Go on.”

“Hrriss said Todd broke Newry down into admitting that he’d been letting the rustlers in and out of Doona, only when he was on duty. The ship Todd saw the other night was probably registering on Linc’s screens while he was denying an atmospheric insertion.”

“But the beacons ...”

“Klonski’s fixed them. Hrriss said there’s an unprogrammed function key on the launch board that interferes with satellite recording. Furthermore, Linc Newry can authorize export documentation ... like for Reeve freeze-marked livestock going off-planet to unknown destinations. And the rustler is Mark Aden.”

“That young lad? Hmmm, isn’t often someone fools Ali Kiachif.” The captain frowned. “The nerve of him, making me transport rustled animals! And all that scud about making a new life.”

“Apparently he’s made a very profitable one,” Kelly said drolly. “At the Reeves’ expense.”

“But they always treated him well. He even said so.”

“Inessa didn’t,” Kelly said. “She had a flirt with him but she gave up on him because he always wanted her to get her father to help him get a ranch of his own. He was a funny guy, never forgave a hasty word or a silly joke on him. Hrriss thinks he’s the one seeded the ssersa. Todd found a half-empty sack of it by the corral he found. It’d be just the sort of rotten trick Mark Aden would do, to make Inessa sorry she ditched him.”