Redline the Stars

9

All five men stared at the Medic. "Murder?" There was a new sharpness in the Patrol-Sergeant's voice.

Rael shook her head. She had herself well in hand now.

With the responsibility that rested on her, she could not afford a show of panic that would weaken and in all probability annihilate her hope of convincing the necessary authorities to take her bizarre and very repugnant theory seriously. "I want to talk to your commander. This could be a big operation with some fairly important people involved."

The agent nodded. "We'll play it your way, space hound, but if this is some sort of joke, trust that you won't be laughing when our old lady gets through with you."

"Do I look particularly amused, Sergeant?"

"No," he admitted. "That you do not. — Keil, collect our 'evidence,' and let's light our burners back to headquarters."

Dane saw Cofort stiffen and felt his own stomach tighten,

but the Yeoman was back again in a matter of seconds without mishap. Once more, he felt foolish, and he shot the woman a quick, sharp look. What in space or beyond it was she thinking, and, more to the point, in what kind of stellar mess had she involved them all?

Hats!" Patrol-Colonel Ursula Cohn's blue-gray eyes fixed the younger woman in no friendly fashion. "That's some tale you expect us to believe, Doctor Cofort."

"I hope I'm wrong, Colonel, for the sake of the unknown number of men and maybe women who I think died in that wretched place," Rael replied evenly, "but I don't think I am. The evidence is circumstantial, but it's there,"

"And you're the only one who happened to spot it, just picked right up on it, a stranger to Canuche of Halio and her ways?"

"My comrades can attest to the fact that my sense of smell is very acute. I'd been near heavy concentrations of port rats before and knew the odor, but I'd never come across anything so perceptible as that at a distance in the open air. There simply wasn't a mundane explanation to account for it. If the beasts were present in sufficient number to create a pack nest of the necessary size, they'd be all over the city, to the point that they'd represent a severe and immediate threat to human survival. Commercial starships would certainly be warned off until they could be exterminated. Since none of that was the case, I could only deduce that a vast number of rodents were being purposely kept confined close by under anything but the cleanest conditions. There're no industries or legitimate laboratories in Happy City as far as I knew to require the creatures, nor could I imagine any experimenting on that scale. I was completely baffled." Her mouth hardened. "Until Rip mentioned the clean-up."

"Clean-up?"

"Your agents saw it. Nobody washes a step and a ragged patch beside it."

"You or I wouldn't," the other corrected. "Navy-standard cleanliness is not a characteristic of those alleys. Mostly, the worst mess is just scraped away to satisfy the basic sanitary code."

"There would be more than one nasty patch, wouldn't there, after any normal night? There weren't any more scrubbed spots and no untouched messes that I saw, or any older residue, either. To judge by that absence and the pattern of frame stains, it looked like that whole section of the alley had been cleaned, really gone over, in odd patches at one time or another over a considerable stretch of time."

"So you came up with a scenario to explain all the anomalies?"

The tawny-haired spacer nodded. "The motive I don't know, but I can picture the events all too clearly. Some poor bastard meeting the criteria for a victim is gotten very drunk and maybe drugged to render him, or her, helpless or sick and is pushed or flung out back the moment the police or Patrol have made a swing by the alley. The rats are either waiting or are immediately released. They've obviously been accustomed to their work, and they're great enough in number not to need much time to complete it.

After a few minutes, they're recalled, maybe fed again as a reward to ensure their speedy return, and the few remaining scraps are swept up. There isn't even much blood left, and the pavement doesn't absorb the stain, at least not if it's mopped up quickly enough."

"Yeoman Roberts went into the place and returned without trouble," Cohn pointed out.

"Naturally, though I was terrified for him at the time.

The things couldn't be always on the loose. Besides, they have to be well fed to be kept under control and at the necessary concentration. They wouldn't feel the need to be out foraging in the daylight."

"It's a bit odd that none of the neighbors has noticed anything amiss if this has been going on for some time as you suggest, isn't it?"

Rael fixed her gaze on her tightly clasped hands. "A single incident wouldn't take long. The thud of the victim falling probably triggers the rodents. — It can't be the opening of the door itself since that happens all the time.

— There might be a muffled scream if the poor wretch was conscious, some thrashing, maybe, but little more than that. They'd work fast."

Her eyes glittered with a hard anger as cold as the depths of interstellar space. "However, I do agree that total longterm concealment would be impossible. Those running the swill joint across from it have to be involved and probably the staffs of the next one in from each of them as well. The third and fourth buildings on either side could be clean. They're erotic houses. There wouldn't be much activity out back from them, and the windows're either painted over or shuttered. As for passersby or patrons inside, with the general clamor, a bit more just wouldn't be noticed, or questioned if it were. It wouldn't be loud enough or last long enough to make that much of an impression."

"You've got all the answers, don't you?" The Colonel's face was a mask, her eyes hard, almost unblinking as they bore into the Free Trader.

"No, unfortunately. As I said before, I can't supply the motive, though I suppose it has to be greed. The involvement of several establishments rules out psychosis or vengeance unless they're all owned by one person. Even then, he couldn't do it without the knowledge and active assistance of a good number of others."

"Who are you proposing for the victims?"

Rael shook her head. "No one definite, not without knowing the why. They're probably more or less alone, people whose presence wouldn't really be noticed in a busy pleasure house and without friends, or powerful friends, to cause a stir about their disappearance, but the very opposite might be true, at least in one or two instances. — I just don't know!"

The emotion she had been holding in check had momentarily gotten away from her, but the woman gripped herself again in the next instant. "That's about it, Colonel. I've told you everything I can visualize that might be useful."

A knock caused her to glance back over her shoulder.

The Patrol-Sergeant took a note from the Yeoman manning the desk outside and brought it to his commander. She glanced at it, then called out permission to enter.

Two men strode into the already crowded room. Rael's spirit lightened at the sight of them. Miceal Jellico and Jan Van Rycke! She had no idea how they came to be here, but she felt a galaxy easier in her mind now that they were. A really good Trade Captain/Cargo-Master team was a force to be reckoned with on any level, even by the ranking officers of the rightly famed Stellar Patrol. Short as her term of service aboard the Solar Queen had been, it was long enough for her to recognize that these two were among the best in the starlanes. Their support would go a long way in bolstering her cause ... if they believed her story.

The Captain came to a stop before the Patrol commander's desk. "Jellico of the Solar Queen," he told her.

"This is Van Rycke, my Cargo-Master."

"Patrol-Colonel Ursula Conn."

Miceal gazed coolly at his junior staff. "What have these four shooting stars managed to stir up this time? Your agent informed us that you're holding them here but that they're not in trouble themselves."

"They're not unless they've dreamed up what they conceive to be an elaborate joke, which," she added hastily, forestalling an outburst of the anger she saw flash in Rael's tired eyes, "I don't believe is the case. They may, on the

other hand, be mistaken. — Doctor Cofort, please repeat what you've just told me. I have it all recorded., but I'd prefer to hear it live again myself."

The Medic complied. Although she felt drained and her nerves seemed stretched beyond the snapping point, she was encouraged by that request. It meant Cohn was giving serious consideration to her theory.

She did not take nearly so long this time. There were no interruptions, and her thoughts were fully organized and consolidated.

No one spoke for a few moments after she had finished, then the Patrol-Colonel pressed her hands on her desk as if trying to shove the whole matter away from her. "It doesn't sound any less wild on the second hearing."

Jellico walked over to the chair where Rael was sitting and lay his hands on her shoulders. Strength seemed to flow from him, bracing her so that her shoulders straightened a little. "Whether she's right or navigating clear off the charts," he declared flatly, "given their nature and the logic backing them. Doctor Cofort had no moral or legal option but to report her suspicions."

The older woman sighed. "No more than I have any option except to investigate her allegations." The spacer's suggestion was mad, vile, and an on-world police officer might have dismissed it outright as sheer insanity, but the Patrol had its file of atrocities; this would not even make the list of its stellar entries. Considering what misnamed humans had done to their fellows in the past—and not the terribly distant past—it had to be viewed as well within the realm of possibility.

"Then why are you holding us?" Ali demanded. He had picked that up from the Captain's introductory comments, and he recalled too clearly the treatment they had received while under suspicion of being part of a plague ship. It did not sound at all good to him.

"You four are staying out of sight until I've made some preliminary arrangements. I don't want any evidence destroyed before we can get our hands on it. If someone noticed my lads picking you up by that alley, I'd as soon let them imagine it had to do with a cargo or starship question, smuggling perhaps, and forget all about you.

Slight though the chance might be, I can't risk having a member of a conspiracy spot you on the loose, make some sort of connection, and start protecting his fins."

"Why bother calling the Captain if that's the case?"

"Because the Stellar Patrol doesn't make a practice of detaining innocent citizens incommunicado indefinitely!"

The surplanetary transceiver on her desk buzzed for her attention. The Colonel listened for a couple of minutes, then thanked the caller on the other end.

She carefully deactivated it again and turned to those crowding her office. "That was the lab," she reported somberly. "Your evidence seems to be the real thing, Doctor Cofort."

"Bone?"

She nodded. "Human, not long dead, and every part of it is scratched and scored, as if by the action of numerous small, very sharp teeth."