Redline the Stars

10

"Not to tell you your business. Colonel," Van Rycke said after an instant of grim silence, "but it might be advisable to pay that alley a visit real soon."

"This very night, Mr. Van Rycke. All of us." She nodded when his brows rose. "I'm deputizing you six. My command's limited in number, and I'll need the others elsewhere. — Keil, get us a leg of rambeef, a fine big one with a long length of exposed bone."

Thorson frowned. "Will it work, Colonel Cohn? They've killed recently, apparently. No matter how nameless their victims, they'd still give themselves away if they did it too frequently. If the rodents are caged . . ."

"We'll give it a try. I'm putting credits down that the fall of a relatively heavy object on or near that step is the signal that calls them. If they respond in sufficient number, we've got a good part of our case. If they don't, all we've lost is a nice piece of meat. We're raiding those swill joints anyway, and the erotic houses as well. If the port rats are there, we'll find them. If we're extremely lucky, we may pick up some documentation as well, but I'm not counting on that."

"You'll be able to get warrants so quickly?" Rael asked in surprise. "With so little evidence of any sort?"

"We don't need any. Such niceties don't apply to Happy City and its sister pleasure districts."

She saw the spacers' frowns and shrugged. "The Canuchean government doesn't approve of what goes on there.

The lawmakers were wise enough to realize that an attempt to bar such activities outright would only result in driving them underground and open the way for a lot more besides. By confining the questionable industries to fixed areas, they can keep control over what does occur.

"Those who work in a pleasure district can, and often do, reap large profits, but they all must sign waivers accepting unannounced and possibly frequent searches of their businesses and residences, which also must be located within the district.

"Actually, not many complain. Most stay only a few years, make their pile, and run, and the legitimate concerns do recognize that the policy helps keep some less scrupulous folk relatively honest. The sale of raklick, crax, and a half dozen other similar poisons, the abuse of minors, grossly rigged gaming, plus all the violence that goes with them would be rampant without strong, unremitting control, to the point that a large part of the current clientele would be frightened off. Needless to say, there's always some of that going on, but it's at least kept in check, especially with the stiff penalties handed out for engaging in any of it."

"None of that's really Patrol work," Van Rycke pointed out. The interstellar force was on Canuche of Halio, one of this part of the Sector's better-developed planets, as a check against smuggling and to provide assistance to any ships coming into difficulty in the nearby starianes. They should not have a great deal to do with basically surplane- tary affairs.

"No," she agreed, "apart from watching for attempts to import controlled substances. The local police normally take care of Happy City, though we're legally empowered to do so as well. We'll prowl around in a slack period to see that visiting space hounds don't get into or cause trouble, but that's about the usual extent of our on-world activities. We step in when we're asked, of course, or if we happen to spot something that looks amiss. Otherwise, we leave Canuchean business to the Canucheans."

Halio was well set by the time the flier left headquarters. Rael Cofort was in the backseat, jammed between Jellico and Thorson. Colonel Cohn and Yeoman Keil Roberts were in the front, the latter at the controls. Their comrades had left some minutes earlier under the Sergeant's command, also in a civilian-type machine, to approach from a different direction. Those who would move in on the swill joints and erotic houses themselves were either already in place or would be so shortly. The spacers had seen none of them.

The others were waiting for them, concealed by the deep shadows, when the flier reached its destination a few minutes later. Their vehicle had merely dropped them off a couple of blocks back and returned to headquarters.

Keil frowned. The alley behind all four of the suspect drinking establishments was in total darkness. "We have them on lighting violations anyway," he said in an almost soundless whisper to his commander.

Cohn nodded absently as she and her companions in the rear slipped from the flier. She could, see a little, thanks to the weak illumination provided by the erotic houses farther in. The fences were extended along the whole of the passageway, all save those that should divide the space of each of the suspect buildings from that of the others. So. Whatever was going on here, and she could not doubt that something fairly extraordinary was, the swill joints were indeed in partnership, or at least actively cooperating with one another.

Music filled the air, blaring from every establishment, drowning out the more readily confined babble of voices.

Nothing moved out here. It was too early yet for the first loads of refuse to be dragged outside for morning pickup and far too soon for drunks to be seeking air or to unload the contents of their abused stomachs. Certainly, she could see no small, moving, furry things . . .

"All right, Mr. Thorson," she whispered, handing him the twenty-two-pound rambeef leg she had been guarding.

"You look like you've got the strongest arm among our junior members, not to mention the greatest height by an inch or two. Hop up that fence and give this a good toss inside."

"No!"

She glanced sharply at the Cargo-Master. "Mr. Van Rycke?"

"Look at that fence!"

The Patrol officer's mouth hardened as she realized what he meant. "Thank you, Mr. Van Rycke," she said quietly.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Thorson. I don't know how much of a charge that thing carries, but if you had been injured or worse, the guilt would've been mine. — Whatever about Doctor Cofort's theory, these sons of Scythian apes are involved in some strange business, and it's neither clean nor small."

She glanced at their vehicle. "Keil, bring the flier over here. He can throw it from the hood."

"I could just fly over and drop it," the Yeoman suggested.

"No. We'd be begging to be seen. Keep outside the fence.

We're taking enough of a chance as it is. Nothing vanishes faster than solid evidence."

The machine's body might be that of any civilian craft of the same general type, but its innards were all service standard. It started and moved with barely a whisper, hardly sufficient sound for them to catch although they were instinctively straining to detect the slightest noise. It would not give them away unless someone actually came or looked outside, and if that happened, they were betrayed anyway.

Jellico tensed as if for battle as Dane scrambled onto the rounded hood. The vehicle rose smoothly until it was level with the top of the wall, then hovered there. Thorson cautiously rose to his knees, his spacer's balance holding him in place as he prepared to make his cast.

Miceal glanced at the woman beside him. Rael Cofort was standing straight and perfectly still. She seemed utterly alone in this moment of testing, and as he had done in the Patrol-Colonel's office, he placed his hand on her shoulder, this time only one hand. The other grasped the hilt of his blaster.

He could feel the tension in her. In the next few seconds, her story might or might not be verified. That in itself was enough to draw the nerves taut, and if it did prove out, they could conceivably find themselves facing the same dire peril that had claimed the owner of that pitiful scrap of gnawed bone and an uncounted number of others before him. She had to be afraid, she who had the power to envision all this. The rest of them were.

No, he thought, he wronged the Medic in that, or wronged her in good part. He had learned something of her by that time. Rael was certain in her own mind of the accuracy of her deductions and had the imagination to appreciate very clearly the potential consequences of forcing this confrontation, but she was also thinking of the victims who had been taken in the trap they were trying to break and of those who would follow if she failed to prove her case tonight.

Dane made his throw. There was a sharp crack as the big bone protruding from the meat struck the pavement beside the step.

Jellico slowly drew his weapon. Like those of the others, it was set at broad beam to slay to provide the greatest possible defense. He glanced once more at Rael and nodded in satisfaction. She, too, had her weapon at ready in her hand.

Determination hardened in him. If the worst happened, if they found themselves facing the horde they had come to detect and could then not fight their way free, he would see to it that this woman met a clean death and then give that same grace to as many more of his companions as he could before being brought down himself. That responsibility, too, lay upon a starship Captain ...

For several interminable seconds, there was no response, then an irregular stain of deeper darkness flowed, flooded, out from the base of the building. A cluttering squeal, as if issuing simultaneously from a hundred thousand small throats, accompanied the charge. In the next moment, the bait was covered.

"Let's have the beams," Ursula commanded in a tone hushed as much by horror as by the need to conceal their presence.

The flier's lights might have penetrated the Federation's worst hell. There before them was a mouse-brown sea of writhing, struggling bodies, all snarling and fighting to reach the impossibly inadequate bounty that had summoned them.

A myriad on the outer fringes turned to face the intruders, fixing them with baleful, red-reflecting eyes, cruel fangs exposed in a desire that needed no common tongue to translate.

The outermost rodents came for the humans but stopped again as if at a wall a couple of inches from the fence. There they remained, stymied, access to the rambeef denied by the mass of their fellows, frustrated in their hunger to claim the greater feast beyond by the well-known power of the fence.

"That explains why it's electrified," Cohn muttered.

She brought the transceiver clutched in her left hand to her lips. "The rats are here," she said tersely to the raiders awaiting her order. "Go on, but in the name of all we revere, be careful when you hit the cellars. These things came out of there. They may go back in, and there might be still more of them waiting down there."